Commandant Marguerite Bientot was tired. Not the kind of tiredness that came after a good, vigorous session of lovemaking, an energetic training course or even brutal combat.
It was like a weight on her neck, dragging her down after every wrecked building, burned vehicle and small cenotaph marking a mass grave in the road.
She arrived to the Consulate of Albion in Paris, formally its embassy before the seat of the government had to be moved to Tolouse. After announcing her presence to the guard outside she was swiftly taken to a small meeting room and after less than five minutes the people she came to see crossed the door.
Countess Felicia Louisa Gresley was a name only those well versed in the hierarchy of the Celtic Covens could recognize, her work over the last sixty seven years could only be described as subtle, her guidance of rising stars amongst witches and the jobs assigned by the Crown being characterized by both discretion and gentleness.
Contrary to Dame Gresley there were very few who wouldn't immediately recognize Charles Lindbergh, an aviation legend and steadfast supporter of witches after one with the innate magic of tracking had saved his son from a kidnapper. As a colonel in the Army Air Corps he was contributing to the development of the Striker non-magical elements, optimizing fuel consumption during cruise speeds, greatly increasing practical endurance and operational range.
It was mesmerizing and a little intimidating to have a private meeting with both of them, in particular since this meeting posed a conflict between her oaths as an officer and those made to Hecate when she started learning The Craft under the watchful eye of her grandmother.
After briefly, and unnecessarily introducing themselves, Madame Gresley commented. "Thank you for coming Miss Bientot, I greatly appreciate you braving the trip to Paris."
"Don't worry madame, the security on the roads have greatly improved since the Liberation and general Leclerc mop-up operations. So far the greatest problem I suffered was the poor state of the roads due to the amount of trucks supporting the scourge."
"Indeed, is refreshing to think that traffic jams, potholes and ongoing construction are a headache instead of a nightmare. During Dunkirk after I ditched my plane I thought that I would die in the road to the beaches." The man who became famous for crossing the Atlantic laughed at the close call, however a contemplative look afterwards did tell her that it had been far closer than he wanted to think about.
She herself had been giving cover during the evacuation, mostly supporting the 150th Infantry Regiment until its destruction, barely escaping on foot in the middle of the night alongside a handful of survivors. "What I wouldn't give for the Neuroi to suffer a tenth of the hardships we suffered during the retreat."
"Well have to make due with simply blowing each and every one of them now that they can't conjure ten more from thin air." Lindbergh added. "But that will be easier with the new toys that our friends from the other side of the mirror, don't you think so? And by the way, nice piece of engineering you did to make their magical clocks work, I heard that Skunk Works is already modding an aether filter based on it."
"It was only a simple brewing purification circle, anyone could have done it."
"Well, you did found a solution the same day you discovered the problem and so far no one got a better idea so just accept the compliment and move on."
"Thanks." She steeled herself, the time for small talk was over. "Having seen it in operation I can say that the Computational Orb is truly remarkable, it's not only its size compared to a striker, or even that it uses a fraction of the magic pressure to operate. It got a repertoire of attack, barrier and utility spells normally only found as innate magic, that by itself is worth the technology even if we don't get a single additional witch."
"The ability to standardize spells will change the way witches are organized and trained. Witches with a particular innate magic are peddled by squadrons as if they were quidditch cards regardless of actual fighting skills to fill a hole in formations, usually left when the previous witch with a similar innate magic had to retire. Hell, statistically witches with too useful abilities retire earlier out of overuse of their magics at their early twenties."
"It's true, the young women who learn to rely too much on their magic gifts by the time they reach their twilight find harder than anyone to not use them when their magic starts dwindling, in particular since doing do might cost them their life. As such anything that prevents that is welcome." Madam agreed with a nostalgic sight before continuing with a far sterner voice.
"However the fact is that the governments that make the League of Nations are certainly more interested in the capability to perform magic without depending on the covens. Belgica still treats their witches as a property of the state, in Rus when Stalin tried the same the Red Guard killed him and elevated Trostky and they're not the worst offenders, history has plenty of examples of what happens when a government decides that a particular form of magic is no longer useful, or a liability…"
"Gaul's druids under roman occupation. It took five generations, but Julius Caesar's command to eradicate them was accomplished." She said as reality started to hit with the strength of a dive bomber.
"The Aztecs, not that didn't have it coming to them with their over enthusiasm for human sacrifices. Still the Conquistadors went too far."
"Or the eradication of Australis aboriginal dreamwalkers, the Crown's own shame. Right now witches are at their strongest political and military influence since ancient times but at the same time envy and resentment is higher than ever. The Warlock Program is all the evidence we need of it."
"I heard some rumors about it, very disturbing ones of artificial witches made with neuroi skins and remains of the Strike Witches. I'm absolutely sure those are false, but what happened?"
"Them experimenting with witches was thankfully false, the neuroi skin not so much although is not something that we can discuss with someone not cleared to know. But the relevant part is that Air Marshal Trevor Maloney is well known to hate witches, he likes to rant in parties even, and to finance his little toy…" The words were dripping with disdain. "…he embezzled money and materials from the 501º JSW and multiple albionese squadrons. The only reason I was briefed on this is because the League of Nations need to audit the entire RAF witches units and they can't depend on the locals to do so."
"Maloney couldn't appropriate so many resources on his authority alone, not with a dozen different squadrons being able to only partially deploy their Strikers and operating with two thirds of their support complements, which means that a significant amount of the officers corps cannot be considered reliable anymore, including parties in high command. Mayor general Doolittle is in charge of supervising the affected units as part of a new Joint Command to keep appearances while rear admiral Tanaka will be in charge of the investigation, while we… cleanse our command structure of Maloney's collaborators, something that as a nation will cost us for years to come, a cost that ultimately will be measured in blood, our blood."
At that point the part of her that dealt with uniform's politics reached an inevitable conclusion. "Wait, news said that the members of the Strike Witches were send to their homelands to rest and pass the lessons of the destruction of the hive to the rest of the Liberation Army, but I know that Dame Perrine Clostermann is on a leave of absence on her territory organizing relief efforts. I thought it was because she is young and inexperienced compared to the rest of the wing but if the situation is this bad…"
"The 501º is temporarily disbanded, their members are being recalled to get a debrief on either the Warlock incident, the destruction of the gallian hive or to testify on Maloney's court martial. Commander Minna has already made clear she will reform the unit, but a plan borne of bigotry just marred the greatest victory of mankind against the Neuroi."
"And now the League has an alternative to witches that gives access to potential mages outside the witch community and can be restricted by controlling the distribution of the orbs…" She said with growing horror as she digested the true magnitude of the impact of the orbs.
"First of all calm down. This is not the first or the last time the world changes and witches are forced to adapt. And I consider this situation as fortunate myself. We are getting a new tool for our sisters and daughters fighting against the Neuroi, just at a time were they are once again evolving in new and terrible forms. So instead of despairing we should focus in how to turn this to our benefit."
"Yes, madame." It still took a moment to process the words and rally herself, but she had indeed faced worst. "So what do we need to do?"
"The Liberion have been pushing for control of the portal, but the 501º found it shortly after their victory, in fact the destruction of the hive might have been the catharsis for its creation. Is part of the nature of the JSW to prevent any kind of cover-up or clandestine negotiations when one is involved, and Commander Minna dutifully filled her report not only to the Karsland's government but also to the LNAF command so everyone from Liberion to Fuso knows and wants a stake on the Orbs, which means research and deployment will be heavily monitored. I suspect that soon most of the personnel involved will receive detailed instructions to prevent the other nations to acquire information, scans or schematics, or for that matter for the research to be moved to a foreign lab. That will give us a window of opportunity to plan the appropriate strategy, not only between us but to coordinate a response with the joint covens."
"I think the first think we need is to estimate how much time we got before the orb conscription can be implemented. What we can do will be determined on how much time we have to do it. I know that G.E. is preparing the filters and those will take at least two weeks but once the design is casted the rest of the orders will be as fast to make as a carburetor."
She contributed her own knowledge to the equation. "Training on the orb for untrained recruits requires roughly one year, most of it for magic training and conditioning which can be compressed for mages with larger than average reserves. He mentions that in those cases it can take up to four months to learn the basics properly plus the time required to learn tactical skills and integration with larger formations, but that at least once someone successfully did a full advanced combat training and orb familiarization course of already graduated mages in two months. We have yet to develop a training plan for witches, but our comparatively large pool of magic power will certainly help with so… let's say that even if we get the orbs and experienced trainers today and start training recruits tomorrow it would take half a year to get a non-witch to become combat deployable in ideal conditions, and a witch no less than three months for direct usage, no idea yet of how long if we try to combine orbs and strikers."
"From the Mages side there is a bottleneck in the orbs production, mines in Liberion, Africa and Asia had been contacted to provide uncut jewels in behest of the Empire. Since its to their benefit to show complete resource independence regarding their magic tools I expect them to have severe limitations regarding their raw resources and are using our own to compensate."
"They also need to find proper researchers and trainers, which are always in short supply in the middle of a war and even with substantial payments measured in squadrons of planes they will be reluctant to release them to the detriment of their own army readiness. That by necessity will limit the size of the amount of mages they can graduate per class and the amount of integration between our two magic systems."
"Commandant, do you have an idea which is the current status of the Empire regarding manpower?"
"Two days ago I was eating dinner with Ilhen, and he told me a funny story about their volunteer laws, apparently those are far more open ended than ours, we got a hard limit of eleven years old volunteers for Second and First Class recruits, while the Empire's volunteers don't have a minimum age requirement or for that matter any other requirements at all."
"Captain Schwarzkopf tells me that one of his former subordinates escaped from her orphanage at the ripe old age of seven to join. Since the law allows for any and all mages to volunteer on their own without discrimination regarding age, gender or education there was literally no recourse for the recruitment office to turn her down, so instead they sent her to the mage officer course with instructions not to mistreat her but also not to give her preferential treatment, tutoring or physical dispensations of any kind."
"Now that's a set of contrarian directives." Dame Gresley said with a raised eyebrow.
"As they explained to Ihlen they didn't want to babysit a little girl, but neither they wanted to sour her to military service. After she flunked they were supposed to have a young officer adopt her and have her volunteer again at a more reasonable age. No one expected the girl to be top of her class in everything but P.E. and earn an early deployment post on merit alone. Recently she graduated from their War College twelfth in her year, got knighted for it."
"Oh ho ho, another person who learns that underestimating a young witch must be done at their own peril."
"The captain is tight lipped on actual information about their war, but after that anecdote the conversation naturally migrated towards the mobilization, I gave some of the numbers of our own and he did the same. Since mobilization recalls are done by newspapers and radiophonic messages no one bothers to hide the age groups called to arms. It won't give solid numbers but they help us get a decent impression of how hard pressed they are."
"Pretty smart…" Lindbergh said.
"Their mage mobilization is roughly similar to ours, the Chantiers de la Jeunesse I mean, for their B and A class mages start at fourteen. The main difference is that while our witches serve until age 21 or discharge for magical deficiency their compulsory service in peacetime is for twelve years after graduating from training before being allowed in the reserves and afterwards the mages must be registered to use magic in the civilian market."
"Allowed to retire on their late twenties at the very least? That's nearly a decade more than a witch gets, and the registry indicates that the remain strong enough afterwards. That longevity in addition to the ability to recruit males must give them a huge recruitment pool compared to witches."
"One that could be seen as either as wide as the ocean or as deep as a puddle. According to their own instruments one of our Third Class recruits is roughly equivalent to one of their A-class while their A-class is barely two and a half more likely to occur than our First Class witches. If their orbs weren't so efficient they would barely have a wing in total." In some ways that fact gave some perspective on the otherwise lackluster aerial performance of their orbs, their best mages, captain Schwarzkopf included, could barely reach the magic power of an average witch.
"This supports their own information on mage demographics, twelve years of compulsory service hinds to a permanent system rather than our own or the liberion points, not to mention the posterior registry which sounds similar to Stalin's proposed methods, at least the public ones before the Red Guard discovered his real intentions. Do you have any information on the rest of their forces? Traditionally the use of levies is a better indicator of the strategic situation."
"Peacetime they were supposed to be conscripted age twenty for two years of compulsory service, in a million strong army. They didn't mobilize at all when they at war with Legadonia, a country that is quite literally two thirds of Baltland, but they did after… after Gallia attacked by surprise without declaring war. As a precautionary move they declared universal conscription ages seventeen and up to forty-five for the army and critical industries but the captain is relieved that so far they are kept busy repairing roads and carrying boxes."
"Which means they probably only called or recalled part of their manpower and are taking their time to train them before deploying. Not desperate yet."
"And if they're not desperate they will try to hold the orbs in order to get a better deal. Not to mention that giving critical information about how to build them on our own is only going to happen if their war becomes an existential threat and they think we have a definitive way for it to resolve on their favor. And for all our advancements I don't think we have anything so terrifying in the worlds combined arsenals, not even with twenty years of refinements in war gasses."
"One problem is going to be Ossman Colonel der Maur has been giving Captain Ugar access to civilian texts of the Great War for them to understand how bad things are going to get if the trench warfare keeps going, he also issued very specific instructions of what they can be told in terms of tactics or historical information. Dangling the solutions reached through three years of battle plus dozens of large scale war games."
"I wish I was naive enough to hope that the lesson they learn is to start looking for peace. Margie, thankfully you weren't born yet, but sometimes the Great War felt darker than even this one. The Neuroi have been murdering us but at least humanity has rallied against them, compared to that the battles in gallian soil saw the worst of mankind."
"Just before the war I was fourteen and had just received my letter of acceptance to Saint Cyr my father took me to our country house in Bordeaux to spend the weekend, just the two of us hunting boar and then smoking it in a hut. He took the time to tell me of his experiences in the Great War, first it was light fare, his training dome of the skirmishes he had with the chasseurs on Africa against the Karsland's colonial garrisons. But then manpower grew scarce in the Republic, he had his horse taken from him, became the second in command of a company of chasseurs a pied and was transferred to the frontlines in Europe just in time for the offensive in Champagne, took a few trenches, survived being gassed out of those trenches, and then once more taking them back. By the end he recovered some kilometers of our land at the cost of so many loses that his company was disbanded and he had to take command of the consolidated platoon that was left, and before his unit was reorganized to go after the next target morale finally collapsed and the poilu rebelled."
"Dad's platoon hadn't suffered as much as the local divisions, so they kept discipline, and while he wasn't one of the unfortunate officers to organize a firing squad, he did set up machine guns behind one of the mutinying companies and forced them to disarm."
"And then the Neuroi came…" Said Lindbergh, as a staunch pacifist he was well aware of the timeline.
"And then the Neuroi came." Dame Gresley agreed. "I was part of the International Red Cross back then and the eruption of them in Verdun and Ypres took everyone by surprise. Suddenly the breakout both sides had tried for years was accomplished by a neuroi marabunta that neither side could contain without leaving themselves exposed to the enemy army in front of them."
She took one sip from her tea before continuing. "And while the armies were busy glaring each other the Neuroi rampaged at their leisure, devouring people, first in small groups, then entire villages. After three months they send the first aerial incursion through the channel while our navy and air force were blockading Karsland and Dover burned. It took six months before sanity was reasserted and a ceasefire was agreed in order to push the Neuroi off the continent."
The ceasefire agreement came only after in Gallia a series of protests by the civilians threatened to topple the government while at the same time the army became increasingly unreliable with the soldiers in the frontlines growing more frustrated with the rumors of entire cities devoured and even rear echelon units demanding to be send to the aid of the besieged countryside instead of suppressing the population. On the other side of the Channel the King of Albion decided to intervene by publishing an open letter to the Parlament at the same time that the Kaiser, freshly returned to Berlin after being kidnapped by a witch insurrection, forcibly dressed as a peasant and taken to a neuroi infestation in the occupied Nederland, and then after his kidnappers charged at a seemingly endless tide of monsters returning to safety as part of a refugee column send a missive to Helvetia to act as intermediary for a truce. Furthermore the Liberion doughboys who had the duty of cleansing the occupied areas of neuroi (a compromise borne out of the fact that as newcomers the karslanders believed that if there was a betrayal they would be easier to defeat than the battle hardened albionese and gallians) discovered that the widely distributed stories of the karslanders feeding children to the neuroi were false, sparking a controversy that president Woodrow Wilson would use to distance himself from the Entente and broker a treaty that made Karsland return all of the occupied territories in Gallia in exchange of relaxing the Monroe Doctrine, buying (at a discount) the albionese Falkland Islands as well as Pewenche territories and performing a joint investment in south american territories that would be developed into Neukarsland after the continental evacuation of the homeland.
"I think that I speak for everyone in my generation that I don't want to emulate anyone from the Great War, not the karslanders who invaded my country, not the gallian officers who decided to sacrifice our people rather than give up a few kilometers of bombed out territory, not junior officers like my father who had to threaten at gunpoint the poor men who refused to die in vain, and most certainly not like bastards like Gamelin and Petain, who out of spite over decades old humiliations delayed for months the deployment of the gallian armies when Wolf appeared over Berlin, allowing it to grow more powerful until it spawned motherships all over Europe."
"We are not going to create delays for the Orb project, too many lives depend on its success. Nor we are going to sabotage any attempt to reverse engineer them. In fact we're going to give our full cooperation to it. The League charter promotes joint research, so we will volunteer our best witches and magical engineers of every nation and we will look at the underlying mechanisms of the orbs and while those in power insist in reproducing the entire mechanism we will focus on understanding how they convert aether into magic, and how to bestow that ability into others, not only witches after the abandonment of their familiar but also men and women with the potential. We will introduce them to magic and offer them to be part of the covens and to fight for the same protections and privileges. Those in power think that we will greedily deny the gifts the gods gave us, we will instead offer them with an open heart."
