Chapter Text
"I love geopolitics. It's like chess except for psychopaths."
- Citizen 34480
December 29th, 1925
Tanya’s return to duty was complicated by her reaction to a routine injection. After several days of bedrest and a series of checkups it was determined that she would not be leaving the Clinic until New Years Eve. Her extended stay was enforced by the fact that Tanya herself had demanded that her Cross be locked away. The staff made certain that she never learned exactly where their safe was.
Meanwhile, the war went on;
Few of the soldiers fighting in and around the small city of Random spoke any English, as so they missed the eerily ironic relation that name had to what was going on there. In the first four days of the Russy invasion, that city had changed hands four times, and a fifth time already seemed inevitable.
An Imperial force of distinctly 2nd-rate troops had hunkered down for a siege that was likely to be their doom. Deployed for an all-round defense, they were taken off guard when the enemy did not methodically surround them and begin to probe their positions. Instead, the battalion facing east was awe-struck to find themselves facing 15 times their own number of infantry coming straight at them. Practically shoulder-to-shoulder, singing and cheering as they fired their guns from the hip, they made a fine target… but no matter how many fell the rest just kept coming.
Six hundred Imperial soldiers fled in panic, and carried half a division along with them. With no enemy fire to pin them down, there was no panic among the other units, they were able to take most of their heavy weapons along with them. However, they failed to carry out many demolition missions, and the Russy had left their artillery behind. So it was that one of the two key positions on the front fell practically intact, a place that the General Staff had been willing to sacrifice all those men to deny Random to the enemy for just a few days.
The Federals passed through the place and moved on to their next objective quickly, too quickly, as it turned out. The first Imperial mechanized unit to reach the front was a Combined-Arms Brigade that launched itself on a raid behind enemy lines as soon as they arrived. 48 hours after Random had fallen, an Imperial Armored Regiment slashed their way through streets filled with rear-echelon troops, supply columns and a Russy Corps Headquarters. Believing they were alone and unsupported, the Regiment moved on after setting the town alight, and rejoined their Brigade as they fought their way back to friendly lines.
A Russy Cavalry unit came next. The use of horses to give mobility to fighting men was still a useful and reasonably clever thing to do; horses needed no fuel other than the grass on the ground or the hay that could be found in most farms. They were also handy for making quick raids or responding to emergencies, as they were when they re-occupied Random.
What they were not so good for was the defense of a fixed location.
The 113th Reserve Infantry Division restored it’s honor by attacking the Cavalry and re-taking Random an hour after they had arrived. After a vicious berating from Headquarters, the Division turned north and been lurking in the forest not far from the city. Communications soon broke down, but they were able to see the clouds of smoke, and assumed that opportunity was knocking. It was.
The Russy Cavalry was so busy putting the fires out that the Reservists were practically on top of them before they knew what was happening. Still at half-strength and in a much less comfortable billet, the 113th settled in for their siege.
Of course, they had needed some help to getting that far.
“Fox 23, well done, meet at Blue Nest.”
Visha keyed her radio; “Fox 66, understood.” She dropped slowly from the sky to the city street for a quick talk with the new commander of the 113th, a Colonel named Witschetsky. The General who had been in charge until an hour ago had died leading the charge, so chagrined by the High Commands’s reaction that he preferred a useful form of suicide over the inquiry he would have to face later. “Colonel? Sir, I’m afraid I have to go now. Will you be alright here?”
Witschetsky was looking at a fine little Gothic church who’s roof had caught fire, thanks to a few burning embers. “I’m a reserve officer, you know. In my day job, I am known as Pastor Witschetsky.”
“Really?” Only in the Empire she thought, and then added; “I’m sorry. This must be especially hard for you to watch.”
The Colonel gestured at the half-charred neighborhood surrounding them. “My parish.” While Visha was in mid-gasp Witschetsky shook his personal feelings off and straightened up, glancing at his men and then at Visha. “Not a single watch strongpoint stood in our way, we took them completely by surprise! Thank you. I have no idea how you did it, but everything was just as you promised.”
“Oh, we Mages have our ways.”
“At least we were able to save something from those swine! Burning a perfectly good town, and for what? For the love of destruction, that is all those Godless Communards have in their hearts!”
“Colonel?” Visha shook her head and looked down at the ashes drifting over the cobblestones. “It wasn’t them. It was the Tanks, when they came through-“
“Tanks?”
“Our … Tanks. That’s part of how I tricked them. I told the Cossacks that they had to stop the fires if they wanted a roof over their heads and stay healthy, them and…” At that moment the doors of the church burst open, and dozens of horses came charging out, panicked by the flames far over their heads. “… their horses.”
Colonel Witschetsky was rocked back on his heels. He was in no danger of being trampled, but any moderation of his prejudice Visha’s revelation might have inspired suddenly died when he saw that the ‘goddess communards’ had been using a church for a stable. “Catch them!” He roared at his men. “Don’t let them get away, its takes twenty horses to feed you all for just one day, twenty! Come back with at least that many or don’t come back at all!” He did not order any of his man to try to save the church, the roof was too high and there were more important things to do… from a military point of view. Witschetsky spoke to Visha without looking at her. “Keep that to yourself, about the tanks I mean. I need my men angry about this and just as willing to fight it out as I am. So… no talk of our tanks or how they left us behind, agreed?”
“Yes sir!” Visha was going to tell Tanya about this man the next chance she had. “How are you set for supplies?”
“Tell Headquarters not to worry about that. We have already found two of our underground munitions dumps intact, and there will be plenty of Horse meat in the stew for a while.” He did look at her then. “My cooks are very creative, it is a pity you can’t stay for dinner.”
Witschetsky’s remark was her cue to leave, which she did immediately. Visha had already retrieved her flight gear and thermal suit from one of the Division’s baggage wagons and put them on. “Farewell, and good luck!” When the Colonel returned her salute she took off and circled the city for one last look around. There were no Russy soldiers to be seen on any of the roads leading into Random, and soon it would be dark. Visha had followed the Major Raus’s advice to the letter; “Make sure to be quick when you are among the enemy; make it look like such an emergency that nobody has time to think twice, and always look panicked. Panic is contagious.” Young Captain Serebryakov had reason to be proud of her work as she sped off to the rendezvous point, and the Medic’s Armband she has covered her Propaganda Service patch with had worked like a charm.
Visha may not have retaken Random all by herself, but she had reason to be proud, and pleased with herself today.
General Strelnikov had been born angry and had only become more so with every passing day, or so his troops would say. His own mother was fond of saying that he was also destined to die angry.
“How could this happen! One tank, ONE! I just had a look over there, only one set of tank treads is showing, NOT the dozens you claimed attacked you.” The General reached out and slammed a Lieutenant, the highest ranking survivor, into the hull of a burned-out tank. “Get to work. You are to retrieve the remains of your comrades from all of these tanks before you ever think of speaking to me again!”
There were many charred tanks along this miserable stretch of dirt road, over fifty of them. Close to two battalions wiped out, and the Imperial bastards that had done it had gotten away.
The night before, these tanks had pulled up next to a column of trucks laden with fuel, a routine procedure that was a daily chore for them. Strelnikov surveyed the site, and decided that he might have chosen the same place himself, if he had been in a hurry and it was already dark. The forest came right up to the road on the left, while rolling meadows were all that could be seen to the right. The main attraction was the fact that this road ran perpendicular to the line of advance, and so was free of the traffic jams that had bedeviled his Corps from day one.
“But I damn well would have posted look-outs!” the general raged, and kicked a discarded helmet out of his way.
The Imperial tank had opened fire at just the moment when the tanks were connected by hoses to trucks full of fuel. Cruising along a slight rise a few hundred meters away, it had fired at least fifty 75mm explosive shells, about half that many 37mm rounds, and thousands of machine-gun rounds with the usual mix of tracers and steel-cored bullets. It could only have been one of the Fatherland’s multi-turreted tanks, which explained why the survivors were convinced that they had been attacked by more than one tank.
Strelnikov could imagine the chaos; first the front end, and then the tail of the column had erupted into flames. Trapped between them and fully illuminated, the remainder of the column had two choices; attempt to fight back while still hooked to highly flammable trucks, or abandon their vehicles and run off into the forest. The General was a little surprised to see that ten or so of the tanks had trained their turrets out to the right, trying to shoot back somehow. They would not have been able to see much, the towering flames would have reflected the snowy ground back at them much more clearly than a gray tank in the distance.
The heat had been so intense that it had melted the snow and ice up to 75 meters from the road, fireballs must have risen to twice that height, and a third of the tanks had no holes in their armor. Those tanks had been covered by a deluge of burning gasoline, the crews roasted alive inside unless they had shot themselves first. Some had exploded, one so violently that nothing was left but the chassis and the engine block. Few of the trucks had come through this holocaust in any better condition.
These were not the best tanks in the world, Strelnikov knew, very light ‘medium’ types with suspensions copied from Alliance machines. They also mounted a 45mm gun modeled after a high-velocity Naval cannon, so in firepower they were a match for the 50mm gun on the most common Imperial tanks, the Mark III. The lose of these machines was not nearly as bad as losing all those trained crews. And as for the ones that had attempted to escape into the forest…
The General and the small group of aides looked into the woods where a truck had left the road without unhooking from the tanks. The hoses had broken and left a trail of fuel as the truck threaded its way between the trees. The driver must have been good, this truck had made its way about 30 meters into the forest. That was when the trail of gas it had left behind caught fire, the flames chased the truck, ignited the hoses and touched off the half-full bladder with a capacity of 6,000 Liters. There was not much left of the woods now, the Forest Fire had burned itself out just before the General had arrived.
“That enemy tank would never have dared to take on two battalions by itself unless they knew what was going on here. An hour later or an hour before, and it would have been overwhelmed!” The vast majority of Imperial civilians had been evacuated, those few that remained could be assumed to be spies and so were either arrested or shot on sight. Even if it had a radio, how could that enemy tank have known where to find them at their moment of vulnerability?
“How did this happen?!?”
Two klicks away, Visha hunkered down with two fellow Brandenbergers watching the scene through binoculars. “Oh boy, that big fellow sure is pissed off!” Major Raus was not the one responsible for the scene he was admiring, that honor went to the young man named Szielasko between Raus and Visha. “How did you manage it?”
“It was easy! Those guys are always short-handed, and when someone who is obviously too young to be serving in the infantry offers to lend them a hand with the Donkey-work they will haul you right along with them. They took my papers to make sure I wouldn’t run off.” Szielasko had papers of course, very good fakes that were now ashes in the glove-box of one of those trucks. “As soon as we got here, I went off into the woods, quick-stepping as if I needed to take a-“ he stopped himself and glanced at Visha. “… a break. These little radios you gave us sure work great, but the batteries don’t work for very long and I need new ones now.”
Visha patted him on the back, knowing the 16 year-old volunteer was being so verbal because a woman was nearby. The Major would already have known most of what he’d been saying. Perhaps Raus was giving the boy a chance to show off, and who could say that he did not deserve it?
Like the vast majority of the Brandenbergers, Szielasko was not a mage.
“Somewhere between seventy and eighty vehicles, over a hundred men, and enough fuel to get them all halfway to Berun. Even for an assist, not a bad days work!” Raus looked to Visha. “How are things at Random?”
“They will hold it this time. How long depends on how long it takes the Russy to kill them all.”
“We’ll see.” Raus was skeptical of the disgraced Division, and he had ever right to be. He had not seen them as Visha had… but his cold dismissal of them also reminded her of another Major she had served with not so long ago. He squinted into his binoculars. “Uh oh, what’s this now?”
The others looked through their own, and saw one of the Russy officers stagger and stop yelling at the others in mid-rant as if he had just realized something important. His face turned even redder than it had been before as he clutched at his left arm, and then he collapsed onto the icy road. The other Russy officers hesitated before going to his aid, as if afraid that he would start yelling at them again for daring to touch hm.
General Strelnikov had proven his mother right, he died very angry indeed.
Once it was fully dark, Visha and Raus gave Szielasko a lift to their next rendezvous, heading northwest.Visha had thought this would take them to friendly territory, but the Major ordered a halt and the trio hovered in mid-air at an altitude of 1,000 meters. Szielasko took it in stride, seemed to be enjoying the ride. Raus was not enjoying himself at all, he was staring at a red glow on the horizon, and scanning ahead with his mage-sight.
“What is it?” Visha asked with he was silent for a heartbeat too long. “Another forest fire?”
“No. The only thing worth burning over there is Rundale.” He looked to the other two with him. “It isn’t really such a grand place, but it is the ancestral home of the Royal family. They left strict orders that it was to be burned to prevent it from falling to the Communards… but not until the Russy army was right on top of them.”
Visha blinked. “How far is that from the frontier?”
“Eighty kilometers. Eighty, and the Russy made it in five days. We have not been able to slow some of these Russy columns very much at all, it would seem.” This was the inevitable truth of their situation. No matter how far 1,000 Brandenbergers spread themselves out, there was only so much they could do. There simply was not enough of the Imperial Army to go around, and the Federals were so numerous that they could infiltrate every unguarded part of the countryside. The Major sighed, and looked to Visha. “Well, let’s just be glad we are not in Berun. There will be hell to pay for this.”