Ulrike is consoling Lisa. When she met me, she had not learned, that a crocodile monster had gotten into the safe room in the hull. Of her four apprentice only one is alive and she is in an ambulance on the way to a hospital for surgery. She’ll take weeks to recover.

Should I have offered a healing potion? How would I explain that I had so many of them?

Everybody still has the stuff that fell from the sky. If you fired a magical weapon at a monster you have gotten at least coins. That feels very, very odd. People were blaming the EOA for the rain of money. In hindsight I should not have risked it. But you rarely barely escape with only your life, meet a beauty queen, get slapped (very hard I have to say. What I feel there is not just evaporated pride and dignity. That woman is Mike Tyson in a beautiful version.) and meet somebody you did not expect to see again until a veterans’ meeting years after the war. People make mistakes.

In hindsight I was stupid in even more regards.

Network troops arrived late. OK, so something went wrong. But we already have established that. If everything had gone alright we wouldn’t have been called in. They were the last reserves, just as we were and are, so they arrived late and uncoordinated, also well and good. Well, bad and explicable. Bad luck but sound logic. How had they been called in? Cell phones or good old radio.

But how had they come? I assumed by teleport. They were in a hurry and you won’t beat teleportation in terms of speed. But that did not explain why they had fired their missiles at the same time as our side fired its missile. The coordination itself is no miracle. The military has radios and so does the GDN. But then they should have required some time to set up their missiles and I should have sensed their auras during that time.

Had they arrived by car or even on foot? No, I should have sensed their auras growing more noticable with lessening distance.

Thomas looked at me. He could sense my emotional turmoil. Though that was exactly the issue.

T: What’s wrong? Has Lisa shaken you so much?

P: No. I have very good reason to believe that the Network can hide auras.

T: What evidence?

P: The Network bronze rankers appeared suddenly well within my range and fired at the same time in coordination with our side.

T: Hm. Could they have fired the missiles from outside your range and teleported in while they were in flight?

P: There is more. When I got my face rearranged, she told me to „control my aura“.

T: Bet that you’ll gaze into your navel and come up with new revelations?

Now he almost knows more than I do. I wish I could for once know the whole situation before I need to make such decisions. Though I am sure our commander on this mission, Captain Lindemann, shares that very wish.

Speaking of the devil …

CL: Would you join me and Major Alberts for a discussion?

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Is this a trap? I don’t think so, why come himself. I won’t let the Network take me though. If I sense something he will die.

P: Sure

We enter the office of the base commander, Major Alberts.

MA: Welcome. Let me make this short. Yes, there is a problem with you, no, it is probably not your fault, so relax.

He would say that anyway. But I better accept it for now.

MA: What do you think about the outcome of today’s mission?

P: After the wealth I was showered with, personally I cannot complain. Operationally, a partial success. In terms of everything else … a failure.

CL: You are saying that I failed.

MA: I had been called away. Nevertheless, this is my command, I am responsible. But please answer the question.

P: I am too old and have been too near to death to skirt around the truth. Yes, you failed. First you assumed to fight stupid animals and then you thought we are fighting an enemy with a sense of self-preservation. Both assumptions were wrong. They were reasonable assumptions, though. You had a calculated risk go wrong on us.

CL: Why were my assumptions wrong.

P: I don’t understand. That should be obvious.

MA: Captain, he is not a military man. He is a wizard. They think differently.

CL: Sorry, why did I make wrong assumptions?

P: Because there was no obvious indication that we were heading for an atypical case and we were too short on time to check.

MA: That is an adequate summary, especially coming from a civillian. And there is the problem. I have civillians fighting with my forces. I have to, no question, I need wizards. But it is not good.

P: I thought you’d treat us like the Americans treat those tribes they have fighting for them.

MA: We are not Americans and you are citizens. And does it work for them?

P: I have no idea

CL: What would you think about some kind of training in military affairs?

P: I would oppose it. I want to go home after the emergency and the girls we are training, whatever one may think about them, have to have priority.

MA: Do you think we’ll ever stop fighting monsters.

P: No major, I was in the battle of the Nuclear Power Plant. I accept monsters as a fact of life, but I have done my share and secondly whoever fights monsters should not think like a soldier.

CL: Don’t you think like a soldier?

P: No, at least not like an officer, you cannot win against monsters. New monsters will always come. Wizards are people maintaining a dyke, not conquering an enemy.

MA: Thank you, that will be all.

P: One question, if I may?

MA: Go on.

P: Why are you letting everyone keep their loot?

MA: You didn’t see the news. They passed the constitutional change yesterday. Fruits of magic are now enjoying quasi-religious status. I got a phone call from high up. I would like to confiscate the stuff for the war effort, but I am not allowed to.

--

Major Carstens enters the room.

MC: What do you think?

MA: I think beginning PTSD, if their brain still works like a human brain. Good tactical sense, terrible leadership qualities.

CL: His strategic insight looks correct to me.

MC: It is, but we can’t afford to act on it. Officers will need to be trained to look at both kinds of problems.

MA: How do we proceed.

MC: I have been instructed that the first generation must concentrate on research and training trainers. I don’t like it, but so are the orders. I will recommend this base to be used. Expect the politicians to be slow. In the mean time we really need the ritualists. We need to be ready for regional failures of fairly large magntude. This crisis must not repeat itself.