Chapter Text
Tanya Degurechaff – Heroine of the Empire
Die Krieggeschichte eines kleinen Mädchens (diesmal wirklich)
Chapter IV: Forward to the Past...
Chapter 17: For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Oberleutnant Degurechaff was not sure on how she should really react at the onslaught of contradictory news and information she was receiving.
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The Dacian army was estimated to be over half a million strong...
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The Advancing forces were the "Elite" and at least three divisions strong...
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The Dacians had simply started advancing without shelling anything... They probably knew the Germanian forces in front of them were fourth rate border patrols... who'd fold like wet paper. (which they did... sort of...)
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The Dacian air force was inexistent...
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The advancing Dacian forces were transmitting radio messages on unencrypted frequencies, in plain text… Kind of like an old man handing out handfuls of candy to little girls to lure them toward his van by promising them even more… (or to little boys, let’s be inclusive…)
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The advancing Dacian forces had apparently very few motorized transports, not even cavalry... the few horses they had were dragging artillery pieces worthy of being displayed in a museum.
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The advancing Dacian forces apparently used single-shot rifles that still relied on black powder ammos... mostly Gewehr 1871s... It wasn't a “bad” gun in itself... just terribly outdated. Like their shiny uniforms by the way... They had no machine guns... no AA guns... and were advancing like a Napoleonic army corps... in square formation... there were reports of drum players walking in front of the troops...
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If all this information turned out to be accurate... Tanya would be facing soldiers who were practically incapable of mounting a serious defense to any aerial mage attack... their Gewehr 1871s might be able to hit a target at 1,600 meters, but seriously... against a mage shield generated by a Mod. 97, even a point-blank shot would be laughable... An entire firing squad firing point-blank would be laughable...
The main problem was to make sure to repel them back to their homeland... or to kill them all... The massive pain in the neck their attack was, consisted in the fact that the empire was already fighting on two different fronts... That the existing imperial military forces were already over-stretched... (due to severe attrition)
Tanya (with the damned salaryman memories) suspected foreign influence that had motivated the Dacian to launch an attack... But was not really sure why, they actually did it... to claim territories? to be on the winning side? Bribed officials?
Well… it wasn’t really that important… Tanya didn’t care about the motives of the perverts who had come to violate the Reich’s territory… even with troops equipped with completely obsolete gear, if there was nothing on the other side to stop them…
Waiting several weeks to do so wasn't a good idea either... the home front was holding strong... but an invasion that the Empire couldn't stop would cause serious unrest... and would surely force people to ask themselves painful questions about the war... Tanya knew that the war was mainly financed by the purchase of bonds... based on confidence in the “final victory”... If that confidence disappeared...
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Sadly not everyone would follow the words of The Lord, not with their wallets anyway.
The Dacian advancing forces had to be crushed, pulverized, annihilated, sent back to their borders in tiny specks of grounded meat...! Any identified HQ, with commanding officers nuked, if possible, any troop concentration above a thousand men “dispersed”... or gassed... (?)
Tanya's mind was soon filled up with the "accursed salaryman memories" of the terrible impact of the gas attacks of his world's WWI... Hum... on an open field, it was not an easy thing to do...
An artillery formula with thermobaric effect would have much better results... sadly the extended zone of effect was a problem... It would depend on the concentration of forces of the advancing Dacian... and Visha was still a novice with those attacks... Tanya had also no intention of killing her own forces with too powerful AoE attacks...
Tanya should ask Visha which of her artillery attacks was the most powerful and easiest to sustain over time, and go with that one... She could always wipe out a specific target herself if necessary...
The next dilemma was how many radio sets the Dacian army had... Too few would be a problem, as would too many... If the Lord permitted it, they would have an ideal distribution—one or two sets per battalion—which would make it easy to identify the regimental, divisional, and army headquarters... and to crush them.
An army without communications, no more mid-level officers, and no more headquarters is no longer an army... Dacia was not a rich country, even with its recent discovery of oil fields; the country was far behind the times... Electricity was scarce throughout the country. Tanya doubted they had many radio equipment...
Oh... The icing on the cake... Tanya knew Dacia didn't have a mage air force... Military-grade computational orbs were simply too high-tech and expensive for Dacia.
In a way, Tanya found herself in the position of a colonial army in the great south... A small group of soldiers facing a massive horde of feathered warriors...
Victory would go to whoever had the machine guns or the artillery... and enough ammunition... well, Dacia had no machine guns, and their artillery was garbage... Now... What would be the best way to kill as many soldiers as possible and break their “élan”?
The answer would come either from the scouts’ reports or from her own reconnaissance of the terrain... Tanya made sure that everything was being done within D12 to ensure an effective rotation of her meager troops... “Make sure I have hot coffee and chocolate when I come for resupply.” Time was fleeting... The time had come for Tanya to assess the reality on the ground firsthand.
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After a relatively short flight, Tanya, Visha, and four “pack mules” reached a distance far enough to accurately assess the Dacian troops’ advance into Reich territory. Tanya had a flashback from the “evil salaryman memories”; he was in a movie theater watching a “historical epic” about the Napoleonic Wars... Tanya felt as if she were watching the same movie... in real life...
The Dacian troops advancing in parade formation... flags fluttering in the wind... forcing a listening spell, Tanya could hear laughter rising from the moving mass...
"Visha... Build a 2D overlay grid of the terrain with 50-meter-by-50-meter squares, color code it with the radio emissions and their strength on each square, I want every radio set in a 5 miles radius detected ASAP! Oh, share your map on our Orbs with HQ... and to our “mules", "On it, Mam!"
From her vantage point and based on data from her own radio positioning system, Tanya observed that the Dacians had advanced only about thirty kilometers inland. They were moving along a relatively narrow front, in accordance with the terrain and the limitations imposed by their outdated equipment.
The initial results appearing on the newly created map confirmed Tanya’s initial assumptions, as did her own visual observations… apparently, the only cavalry units were messengers… The radios were at the battalion, regimental, and divisional levels… Oh… A large red dot appeared on the map… The enemy HQ, or where their radio center was... generally, the two were rarely very far apart... “Visha, add axes to your map grid—the horizontal axis with numbers, the vertical axis with letters.”
“OK, Visha, it's time to let our Dacian "colorful" visitors know that the Reich is requiring visas at the border... I'll take the squares with radios inside squares A through F and 1 through 12; you take G through L and 1 through 12... Hi-ex artillery formula on the radio itself... No need to rush, make precise shots! Report when you're done... We'll move to the next squares. If any Officer tries to re-organize troops, Show him how foolish he is... blast him...!”
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Even with the satisfaction of driving back the unholy troops who had dared to cross the sacred borders of the Reich... Tanya began to feel the routine setting in quickly (everyone knows that young children get bored quickly and change their interests even faster.).
So Tanya decided to start flying over the Dacian troops and advance toward their HQ, raining down 9mm Parabellum Hi-ex mana bullets on them, of course... By the end of the day, the terrain looked like a lunar landscape... If the moon had a grassy surface that had been freshly plowed and repainted blood red...
“I see the crows are just as pleased with how the day turned out as I am...” Tanya had laughed, standing in front of Visha, who had struggled to hide a gag reflex at the sight of the field... It’s true that it would have taken a Hieronymus Bosch to make the sight of the field look “artistic”...
The Dacian troops’ headquarters was now nothing more than a smoking crater… The few groups of soldiers still standing were rushing back toward their homeland, the contents of their colons marking the way they retreated... The scavenging birds had begun their feast as soon as the shooting stopped… almost fighting over the best morsels. Tanya longed for a hot cup of coffee, some chocolate, a good shower, a hot meal, a prayer to The Lord to thank Him for his many blessings, and a cozy bed… So she called for RTB...
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Lieutenant Colonel von Lergen felt torn... a conflicting emotion was gnawing at his stomach... On the one hand, he greatly appreciated that the Dacian troops’ advance had been “halted”, or even pushed back... On the other hand, he had witnessed firsthand that Oberleutnant Degurechaff had really gone to town...
Initial estimates by observers who analyzed the data transmitted by the Mod. 97 Orbs from the ground indicated that the three Dacian divisions had lost at least 63% of their troops, with 99% of them dead... the remaining 1% would die from blood loss shortly... (one of the staff members even made a dark joke, adding that the 63% were scattered across the battlefield, like jigsaw pieces!)
63%... 63%... It doesn't seem like much at first glance... The figure itself seems insignificant... von Lergen had calculated it right away... the result was 37,800...
Degurechaff and Serebryakov had “eliminated” 37,800 enemy soldiers... calmly and methodically, like soldiers at a shooting range... von Lergen felt sweat running down his back... He also knew that the same scenario would repeat itself in the days to come... The Dacian army still had a significant number of troops, and news would not reach their command fast enough to stop the massacre.
The Dacians’ treacherous attack on the Reich also meant that no high-ranking Germanian officer would dare order Degurechaff to halt her attacks. The initial fear had been too great and had to be concealed, and their anger would not allow the fighting to stop until unconditional surrender was achieved. von Lergen himself had complimented Degurechaff and Serebryakov for their "meritorious efforts" of the day.
Much to his chagrin, von Lergen also knew that the military’s duty was “Victory”; everything else was the domain of politicians and diplomats... At the end of the third day of the massacre, it was Oberleutnant Degurechaff who brought a glimmer of hope to von Lergen. Having noted the Dacians’ technological backwardness, she had suggested treating them the same way in the military sphere...
e.g. To launch a raid on the Duchy’s capital, raise the Imperial banner over the castle, take the Duke and anyone nearby hostage, and force him and his troops to surrender. (If he refused… to pose the question to the next Duke in line, and so on until someone agreed... or to just nuke the whole place and let the Dacians have their own republic or whatever had added Tanya...)
As a conscientious officer, von Lergen had forwarded the proposal to the General Staff. The response was swift: Degurechaff was to draft a “realistic” proposal and submit it for final approval as soon as possible... The “final solution to the Dacian problem” was a top priority.
In less than 24 hours, the matter was settled… Tanya had “carte blanche” to carry out her plan… The general staff had also suggested other “approaches” for negotiating with the duke… blackmail, bribes, threats against his family…
The Empire had to resolve this matter, whatever the cost… for the Dacian authorities, of course…! One factor working in their favor was that, since the Dacians had not declared a state of war between the two countries, the Germanian embassy in the capital still had its full staff, including the ambassador… radio communications with the embassy were still operational…
General Zettour, in coordination with Intelligence, was organizing things on his end… Tanya would have to “pick up” the ambassador, bring him to the castle, and play the “aggressive field Officer”, with the ambassador playing the part of the civilized, “moderate”… Tanya, of course, decided to take Weiss and his entire company with her. At worst, they would play the role of extras... Big scary tall imperial mages in the background...
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Without going into the details classified as “top secret”… Tanya’s mission was a success… at the cost of the lives of several of the Duke of Dacia’s elite guards, who lay lifeless on the palace floor, slashed by Tanya’s Zweihander, their blood staining the Persian rugs. (Tanya had figured that the “graphic” aspect would help the negotiations).
The imperial ambassador succeeded without much difficulty in getting the Duke to sign an immediate armistice, followed by the unconditional surrender of his troops within 24 hours—just enough time to spread the news. (The obvious, unspoken alternative being that Tanya would resume “her military activities” should the Duke fail to make a decision...)
The price for the Duke was modest: commercial contracts for oil and a significant portion of the country’s agricultural production. The Duchy even retained an army to defend its border with the Rus...
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When the news was officially announced, the imperial press jumped on the story with headlines, each more enthusiastic than the last… for days on end…! For their part, Tanya and the D12 Station team received letters of congratulations, bonuses, praise, and assurances of upcoming decorations and promotions… The fear had been so severe that an even stronger cocktail was needed to make it go away—and to celebrate the “just victory” of the glorious imperial forces...!
Tanya was promoted to Hauptmann, Visha to Leutnant, and Weiss and his company were all promoted up one rank as well. Tanya even received the Hoher Orden vom Schwarzen Adler for exceptional military merits from the Kaiser himself (in a discreet private ceremony in Berun.), which entitled her to add the particle “von” to her name.
Oberleutnant Weiss and his entire unit were permanently assigned to Station D12. Weiss himself, Gruner, and two other mages—as well as, curiously, two “Maria Schwartz” both of whom were non-commissioned officers—were qualified and authorized to use the Mod. 97. (They both had middle names—Sarah and Rebecca—which made things easier for the rest of the staff...)
The monotony of daily military life on a super secret scientific base led by a mad scientist, quickly set in again... Administrative reports, intense training for the rookies... Tests on how to create more creative ways to smitten the heathens and the François... Regular debriefings concerning how to put the reports of the "analytical analyses of the analytic reports based on the analyses reported analytically" into practical action... A lot of coffee was needed... and trust in The Lord...
“Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.”
Tanya was nevertheless delighted... she had coffee and chocolate in abundance, hot meals and showers, fresh clothes and underwear on a regular basis... and could praise the Lord without anyone shooting at her... which was greatly appreciated.
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But...
The war was far from over...!
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The source of all the evils afflicting the Reich had to be drained (Legadonia) - before they could finally turn their attention to the worst enemies of the human race, the earthly embodiment of the worst vices and depravities imaginable, those for whom personal hygiene was a curse in the eyes of the world... Tanya was thinking of the François, of course...
“And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
Tanya dreamt of washing up those evil François in the same lake... Would it be enough to cleanse their filth?
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