Open Sesame (2)

***

MAY, UNIFIED YEAR 1925

Operations should be launched with a clear purpose and objective.

On that point, the General Staff praised Operation Schrecken und Ehrfurcht (“Shock and Awe”) as a plan that embodied these ideals. Two major generals, Zettour and Rudersdorf, had drafted it.

The intentions of their proposal were plain and unambiguous.

By conducting radical but straightforward attacks that directly targeted enemy headquarters, it would be possible to knock out the opposing forces’ chain of command, ultimately leading to the collapse of the enemy’s lines.

That was it. One unit would be dispatched to complete one objective; it possessed the simple logic of two plus two equals four.

The reasoning behind it was obvious. A decapitated army cannot wage war.

Even a student at the academy would be able to grasp the intent immediately. After all, the strategy amounted to slicing off the enemy’s head—neutralizing the command capabilities that were critical for a modern army.

However, the nature of the plan caused various staffers to raise serious doubts from the very beginning.

Naturally, the headquarters were considered incredibly important. Any army would establish their field command in friendly territory far beyond the reach of their enemies.

Common sense dictated that the Republic’s headquarters on the Rhine front would be heavily defended. This foregone conclusion was confirmed with a reconnaissance in force at the cost of a great many lives.

Unless they could find a way past the enemy’s dense interception screen and deal with any forces scrambled for defense, there was little hope of success. The majority of the General Staff had taken that into account and judged that if they were wholly prepared to dispassionately sustain losses in order to achieve a breakthrough, they would lose an entire brigade of aerial mages in the process.

So when the aim and execution of Operation Schrecken und Ehrfurcht were revealed, many staffers thought that anyone who would give such orders had to be crazy. There were even those who openly opposed the operation, claiming it was a joke that would accomplish nothing but recklessly send soldiers to their deaths.

Of course, none of the realists on staff objected to the operation’s intended purpose. If it was possible to destroy the enemy chain of command by penetrating their lines and storming their headquarters, it didn’t matter what sacrifices needed to be made. Assuming a reasonable chance of success, any number of casualties was acceptable.

Despite the appeal of undertaking bold ventures with no regard for the price, the staffers rejected the proposal due to the slim chances involved. Wagering their valuable troops on an operation with such a small probability of success was an unthinkable outrage under ordinary circumstances.

If chances were good, then sure, some losses could be ignored. Did it matter how high the returns would be if the likelihood of victory was impossibly low? Was this the operation they were pinning the success of the breakthrough on? If that was truly the case, every officer would have been forced to bitterly admit that they were done for.

Deep down, most officers on the General Staff privately believed that if it were possible to strike at the enemy headquarters directly, the Rhine front wouldn’t have become a stalemate in the first place.

Such a meritless plan would normally be tossed in the waste bin and forgotten…but this particular proposal was drafted and jointly signed by none other than the generals Zettour and Rudersdorf.

At first, the staff were puzzled when they realized the two authorities on large-scale maneuver warfare seemed to be proposing the operation as a practical move. They reluctantly reviewed the document, and only upon an intensive reading did it dawn on them that the absurd plan was worthy of serious consideration.

In the end, loath as the other staffers were to admit it…they begrudgingly acknowledged that the operation might be possible. It all depended on committing the veteran 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion led by Major Tanya von Degurechaff, whose alias was in the process of shifting from the elegant “White Silver” to the more awe-striking and fearsome “Rusted Silver.” They would also require supplemental acceleration devices that allowed the user to climb to altitudes where interception was impossible and gave them the speed to outrun any pursuers.

On paper, at least, the specs of the supplemental acceleration device, combined with the unit’s accumulated achievements, made the proposal attractive enough to warrant discussion.

But even with all those cards assembled, the planners still hesitated—Zettour and Rudersdorf were suggesting, of all things, to dovetail Schrecken und Ehrfurcht (“Shock and Awe”) with their next major plan, Operation Lock Pick. Claiming that there was no hope of pulling off Operation Lock Pick without the success of Operation Schrecken und Ehrfurcht invited particularly intense debate.

It was no small dispute. After all, having made their wager on Operation Lock Pick, the General Staff had already crossed the dangerous bridge of withdrawing troops from the Rhine front, a move that would normally be unthinkable. They were long past the Rubicon. It wasn’t easy for them to maintain composure while listening to claims that their initial wager was now at the mercy of this gamble of an operation.

A fountain of objections erupted internally, and the debates that raged both in and out of conference rooms split the General Staff right in half. Calling the plan controversial didn’t do it justice.

With officers grabbing one another by the lapels in fierce disagreement and cursing their peers as stubborn fools, the state of affairs was wild enough that it was more like a wrestling match than anything. It was plain to see how chaotic the internal strife had grown after multiple officers were officially reported to have “taken a tumble.”

But in the end, the General Staff decided that the fundamental aim of attacking the enemy headquarters directly had a lot of promise. After all, even if they didn’t manage to take it out completely, the attempt alone would still cause a great deal of confusion.

It might be a quixotic one-way charge, but the Republican Army would need to seriously take into account the threat of a capable aerial mage unit conducting a raid ever after, and that was huge.

They could expect this result even if the attack failed. In other words, if the Imperial Army carried out just a single decapitation strike, the Republicans would have to be constantly on guard against another. They would have to station more of their precious few forces in the rear to guard the critical Rhine front headquarters.

It was a reasonable interpretation of the situation. Even in the sense of “trying is better than not,” making a real effort didn’t seem like a poor idea, either. At the very least, they would tie up additional enemy troops in the rear.

Some of the officers even added another thought in the back of their minds: Major von Degurechaff might actually be able to wring out even better results.

That said, no one could deny it was a risky operation. At worst, they would be sending their elite troops on a futile mission and could lose every single one. Of course, even if the attack force was wiped out, the threat would remain. It was a steep price to pay for a threat, though.

On top of that, the unit they planned to send in was the irreplaceable pet project that the General Staff kept close at hand—a quick response unit with a wealth of combat experience.

The 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion had been initially formed as an experiment, but it was currently serving as the General Staff’s proverbial workhorse, consistently surpassing expectations on every battlefield. Its less flashy but nevertheless vital contributions in the field of testing new tactics and assessing new weapons couldn’t be ignored, either.

This wasn’t the sort of unit that could be duplicated overnight, and yet it was precisely thanks to their elite capabilities that anyone expected them to succeed. After struggling with that contradiction, the General Staff eventually settled on dispatching a company. That took into account both the amount of troops they were comfortable deploying and the number of troops necessary for success.

Once the size of the force was locked down, the Empire’s intricate war machine became fully operational.

Twelve members of the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion were promptly selected and transported to a launch base in the rear as the strike force that would utilize the supplemental acceleration device (code name V-1) to carry out the attack behind enemy lines.

The participants received technical briefings from the engineers as well as intelligence on enemy territory. All preparations for their combat mission were completed without delay.

However, the test run Major von Degurechaff petitioned for was denied due to secrecy concerns. It was an unavoidable decision, since the whole point of the operation was a sneak attack; from a counterespionage viewpoint, the General Staff couldn’t allow it.

Of course, making an attempt with no practice was risky. The General Staff Office received many misgivings and doubts over this decision. Since the chances of success depended entirely on whether or not their unit could use the element of surprise, the mission’s clandestine nature was emphasized to the point of suppressing any dissent. Ultimately, even Major von Degurechaff had to acknowledge the need for counterintelligence, though she did so reluctantly.

The team carried out piloting exercises in the hangar, but there were no actual launches with any equipment. In exchange, maintenance on the supplemental acceleration devices was performed with extra care at Major von Degurechaff’s request.

The operation’s itinerary was itemized in rigid detail, eventually settling into a plan to at least deal a blow to the enemy chain of command and temporarily take their communications down. Immediately following the raid on enemy headquarters, the strike force would head north where a friendly submarine or ship would retrieve them.

The General Staff debate ended with all participants more or less in agreement. The V-1 unit was given notice, and X-Day arrived on May 25.

“You can still see the shocking results today.” (from the Commonwealth Army’s War History Compilation Division’s History of the Rhine Front Volume 3)