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I had long known that Elya had hired many of her former co-workers in the intelligence corps to work for our polling operation. I approved, of course. I was hardly in a position to condemn anybody engaging in a bit of nepotism and in any event I was happy to have as many aerial mages as possible working honest jobs. I could only imagine the kind of chaos a well-trained mage could cause if they turned to a life of crime.

I was a little taken aback when I discovered that some of her subordinates were keeping active in their old roles as gatherers of military intelligence. In general I didn't approve of anybody moonlighting when they were on my payroll, however indirectly. It was hard to be too upset with them, though, when the discovery was coupled with the delivery of vital information.

"The Francois have mobilized the 32nd corps. They are gathering at Saint-Avold, near the border," Elya announced. "The entire corps will be in place and ready to receive further orders within the next two or three days."

The room fell silent as she finished speaking. None of the people here were prone to shock or despair, but they all understood the significance of this news. Everybody sitting around the table had a look of concern on their face.

I had gathered my closest confidantes together for this meeting. Besides myself and Elya, the only people I had invited were Visha, General Lergen, and General Zettour. For something this monumental it was important to hash out some kind of workable plan even before sharing the news with the cabinet.

The experienced General Zettour finally broke the silence.

"The 32nd," he said, stroking his chin in thought, "that should be 20,000 men. Not to mention the supporting battallions of artillery, aircraft, armored cavalry, and aerial mages."

There was another moment of silence. I was a bit startled when I realized everybody was looking at me. It still felt strange, being General Zettour's superior. Part of me still instinctively wanted to curry favor with the old man and anticipate his orders, but these days it was actually his job to offer me advice. It was my responsibility to take charge and make a decision. I needed to start by taking control of the meeting.

"General Lergen, what would happen if the army tried to go toe to toe with the 32nd corps?" I asked.

"We could slow them down, but that's about it," General Lergen said. He had a sour expression on his face, no doubt upset by the sorry state of our military. "If I scraped the border forces to the bone I could gather around 40,000 men. More realistically our primary force would consist of 30,000 troops. Our men are better trained than the Dacians, but no amount of training can make up for the fact that we lack the tools to fight in a modern war."

Well, it was about what I expected. Although, it wasn't true that we completely lacked the tools of a modern army. This didn't seem to me like a time to be coy about our capabilities. I was about to say something when General Lergen finally acknowledge the knowing looks he was getting from Visha and Elya with a rueful smile and a shake of his head.

"With an augmented battalion of combat mages we could give them a bloody nose, but it wouldn't be enough to change the outcome," Lergen said. "Even if the Francois don't know about our specific capabilities, they are well aware of our Chancellor's background. They won't be leaving any anti-aerial mage weaponry at home."

Visha looked a little offended by his analysis but I found I couldn't disagree. I had always expected our aerial mages to be a unit that could at best snatch some small victories on the strength of strategic surprise. In the face of a paranoid enemy all that we could do was engage in some pointless slaughter before being overwhelmed ourselves. It would be a profligate waste of human resources to seek out that kind of pitched battle.

"Do you have any other units available that might tip the balance on the battlefield?" I asked. I wasn't holding out much hope. At best I figured he had a company or two of tanks and planes stashed up in Daneland. It was a little ridiculous to ask for him to pull a secret army out of his pocket with enough firepower to drive off a full combined arms corps.

General Lergen humored me by thinking over the question for a moment before replying. "No."

He didn't elaborate on the exact nature of the reserve forces he had available. I thought it was a little paranoid to hide such information even in such a small meeting. I'd learned over the course of the war, though, to trust Lergen's judgment, so I didn't press him on it.

"Whether we can stop them or not, isn't this strange?" Visha asked. "The 32nd corps is far too large for a raiding group but not nearly large enough to occupy the country."

It was strange, now that she mentioned it. If the Francois wanted to mount a proper invasion they'd be mobilizing army groups with hundreds of thousands of men, not just a single corps. If they wanted to scout ahead and pave the way for an invasion force while they were still getting the rest of their troops in order, a full corps was an unwieldy tool for the job. If they just wanted to destroy some particular thing or another-such as an inconvenient Chancellor, for example-putting 25,000 men on the job was an exorbitant waste. Despite that, as Visha said, 25,000 men, no matter how well equipped, could never properly occupy the whole country.

Occupy. Something about the word tickled at my memory. I'd only ever had an amateur's enthusiasm for military history, so my knowledge of the time between my world's two world wars was sketchy at best. Still, it seemed familiar. Occupy. Occupying. Occupation. Occupation?

The occupation of the Ruhr! I could only dimly recall the details, but the basic story of a country snatching a modest material gain in exchange for a horrific public relations hit had stuck in my mind, even after all this time.

"They intend to occupy the Rhine industrial area," I said. "They've plundered everything they could from our government's coffers, so now they plan to steal from our citizens directly. The 32nd corps is about the right size to garrison the area. Besides being wealthy enough to target, the location is also convenient for shipping their loot back home."

Everybody stared at me for a moment. Elya, bless her heart, found the relevant map and laid it out on the table. Nobody said anything for a long moment, occupied by studying the terran and transportation links. I was happy to see that the map confirmed my hunch: if you were looking to get rich quick and had an army backing you up, the Rhine industrial zone was definitely the place to go.

"Turning an army to organized banditry?" Zettour said. "I suppose there are historical precedents."

"Even if we set up defensive lines," Visha said, tracing the terrain with her finger, "it wouldn't be worth much, I guess."

She was right. Even if we were given copies of the enemy's orders, let alone just predicting their actions, there wasn't much we could do to stop them. Fortunately, as I realized once I took a moment to think things over, stopping them shouldn't be necessary.

In all honesty, the most likely reason for the army to be mobilized was not for an occupation but as a negotiation tactic. In our modern day and age no country would just launch an invasion unless they concluded that further discussion with the other side was completely pointless. I was a reasonable person and I was willing to negotiate a reasonable settlement of our debts, even to the point of submitting myself to exile. The 32nd corps would never even need to cross the border.

Still, there was no harm in discussing what I would do in the unlikely event that the Francois were foolhardy enough to launch such a half-baked invasion. Giving my subordinates something to do would help to calm them down and everybody would be happily surprised when everything was resolved through peaceful discussion.

"I wouldn't seek out a pitched battle right now regardless of our chances," I said. "It's rude to interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."

"A mistake?" Zettour asked.

I smiled at the nostalgic feeling of explaining a new view on war to my old superior. It was always a pleasure to discuss interesting hypotheticals with an intelligent man.

"The Francois Republic may be able to push us around for now, but in the long run they can't possibly sustain that advantage as long as we exert ourselves properly," I said. "The real problem is what stands behind them."

"Albion," Zettour said. "And the Unified States."

"Exactly. We need a wedge driven between them," I said. "It would be impossible for us to do it by ourselves, but an ugly occupation has a way of making allies keep their distance."

"Will it be an ugly occupation?"

Well, in reality there would be no occupation. But it was good to keep in mind what would happen if they were to invade. Even if our military couldn't impede the Francois, they would hardly be welcomed with flowers and hugs by the Germanian people.

"It usually is, when two nations hate each other," I said, before turning my attention to my secretary. "Elya, some of your subordinates may have to take up their old duties in order to help fan the flames."

I felt a little bad to be dragging people into a wartime role when they'd settled into civilian employment, but there was no doubt that they had the qualifications for it. Besides, everybody knew the dangers of going above and beyond your job requirement and catching the boss's eye: the universal reward for work well done is more work. In the end, once I hashed things out with the Francois the only real impact on Elya's subordinates would be a few days of unpaid overtime.

"Yes," Elya said, already jotting down plans.

"The most important thing is to be careful. Don't do anything that could get them caught," I said. I didn't need any of them running off half-cocked and causing an international incident. Also, if an occupation actually developed, the last thing we needed was to hand the Francois the propaganda coup of proof of our meddling. "Although we want to provoke the Francois into overreacting, it's also important that we receive reports of their misbehavior. With pictures, if possible."

The foreign press was hardly going to run with our reports of Francois atrocities, no matter how truthful. A picture, though, could speak for itself.

Elya nodded again, snapping her notebook shut after she finished writing. Next to her, General Lergen looked like he was troubled by something. I waited for a moment to see if he would volunteer what was bothering him but finally had to gesture at him to speak up.

"To benefit from our citizens' suffering..."

I should have expected it. General Lergen always had shown a remarkably healthy conscience for a senior officer in the Empire's military. It was natural that he would be uncomfortable with this kind of strategy.

"If I could crush the invasion force with impunity, naturally I would do that," I said. Although, honestly, that strategy hadn't even worked out for the Empire back when it had enjoyed a much better overall situation than our own. "Since I can't, and our citizens' suffering is inevitable, all we can do is ensure that the fatherland benefits from their sacrifice."

Hmm. It really was a lot easier to call for sacrifices than it was to be the one expected to make the sacrifice. I felt a little guilty to be parroting the kind of nonsense that I had mocked when high command had tried to sell it to me. Fortunately, I could comfort myself with the knowledge that I wouldn't be stumbling into a massive war over minor border violations, unlike our previous set of politicians.

ooOoo

One week later, I was feeling much less comfortable with the situation.

"The behavior of the Francois is an outrage!" I said. "Not only does it violate every principle of international law, but also the letter of the Treaty of Triano that they purport to enforce."

My audience didn't look all that impressed. It wasn't a surprise that the ambassadors from Albion and the Unified States would be partial to the Francois Republic's point of view. It had been three days since troops had crossed the border and made a beeline for the Rhine Industrial area. They probably thought I should be grateful that they were meeting with me at all. Honestly, they weren't exactly wrong. I'd issued ringing condemnations of the invasion for the benefit of our local press, of course, but with the tepid international response I had been starting to feel like I was talking to myself.

"The Francois claim that your failure to pay violated the Treaty of Triano," Mr. Lloyd said, calm as ever, "which they are now acting to enforce."

He might have been discussing the weather or his preferred brand of tea. No, he would have been more passionate about the tea.

"Fail to pay? I did no such thing. I merely put forth my interpretation of the nature of our obligation to pay. Specifically, that it is to be excused in the case of hardship such as Germania is now suffering," I said, a little irritated at being forced to explain. This had all been laid out in the letter. "Under article 27 of the treaty, paragraph c, clause roman two, section little b, in the event of a dispute as to the interpretation of the language used in the treaty, the signatories are to meet and come to a mutual agreement as to the meaning to be attributed to the language in question."

"That's certainly," he said, before pausing for a moment to search for the right word. "Certainly a creative interpretation of the treaty."

If he'd wanted me to help find loopholes before the treaty was signed, he could have hired me back then. It wasn't like I'd been too busy to take on the job. Since he hadn't, though, it was practically my duty to find every part of the treaty that might be useful for Germania and turn it to my own ends. I thought it was rather unsporting of the Francois to present their own arguments by way of their army.

"Well, what sort of brute responds to a perfectly reasonable dispute over interpretation with a military invasion?"

That prompted a laugh from Mr. Johnson, the American ambassador.

"For someone who spends half her time poking at a bull," he said, "you sure do act surprised by the horns."

I suppose he thought he was dispensing useful folk wisdom. I had to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and bite back the first two responses that came to mind. The Unified States was a massive industrial power. It wasn't worth offending them just because they had sent me an insufferable ambassador.

"Whatever I may have done to provoke the Francois in the past, this invasion is a naked act of unilateral aggression," I said. "Do you truly mean to let it stand?"

"The way I see it, this feud between you and the Francois ain't really any of my business."

What an admirable declaration of neutrality. If only the Unified States had been so enlightened as to pursue this policy during the previous war.

"The Allied Kingdom, naturally, wishes to see a peaceful resolution of the situation," Mr Lloyd said. "To that end, we have offered to mediate."

At last, somebody was talking sense. I sighed in relief before reaching for the proffered olive branch.

"Very well-"

"Unfortunately, the Francois insist that your outstanding debts under the Treaty of Triano be paid in full as a precondition to any meeting."

Ah. They didn't want a negotiation. They wanted my capitulation.

Why? Why was it so hard to negotiate my own surrender? My own exile? All I wanted was to preserve a few scraps of dignity as I toddled off the world stage. And, I suppose, some guarantees of my own safety. I didn't think that was too much to ask. I didn't expect the Francois to thank me for heading off a second Great War, but they seemed intent instead on rubbing my face in the dirt as much as they possibly could.

"If we could afford to pay in full," I said, "none of this would have happened in the first place!"

That was the crux of the problem. We could have come up with the money if I were willing to wantonly loot my own citizens the way the Francois were, but if I did that my government wouldn't last long enough to tender our surrender. The only purpose for such an unreasonable requirement was to drive us to the brink even before we reached the negotiating table.

"Be that as it may," Mr. Lloyd said, "I can assure you that we will continue to exert ourselves in order to bring about a negotiated settlement."

In other words, he promised nothing and would likely achieve nothing. Of course, if by some miracle something good did happen, he would be happy to take the credit.

I was utterly screwed.

Sure, the invasion should ultimately be a disaster for the Francois. Elya would make sure of that, although much of her work would just be gilding the lily. The problem was that it would be a disaster for me too.

I had promised during the campaign that we could crush the Francois if we were just willing to try. Here was a chance to put my money where my mouth was, and I was running to other countries to try and get them to call off the Francois. Every day they camped out on Germanian soil was another day that proved the impotence of the army under my command. I stood revealed as the worst kind of political liar: the kind who got caught.

All I could do was shift the blame as best I could to foreign countries instead of myself. That sort of scapegoating wouldn't work forever, though. At the end of the day, I was the Chancellor and my nation was facing a problem: if I couldn't fix it, the voters would hold me responsible. Even worse, I couldn't see the Francois treating me with any more mercy once I was voted out of office.

What a mess.

ooOoo

"What a bloody mess."

Foreign Secretary Oliver Henderson was enjoying a brief moment of solitude in his office. On second thought, perhaps enjoying was the wrong word.

Spread out before him were a selection of recent issues of the Manchester Guardian. The photographs featured prominently on the front page told the story of a disastrous occupation.

A young Germanian woman, sprawled on the ground at the feet of a leering Francois soldier as he reached for his belt buckle. A starving Germanian boy, all skin and bones, reeling back from the butt of a Francois soldier's rifle. A young Germanian man in civilian clothes, pistol to his head in the moment before summary execution.

Oh, the Francois had their excuses ready whenever he reached out to his counterparts in their government. The photos were misleading. The very presence of a photographer suggested a nefarious plot. The stories accompanying the photographs were all a pack of lies. But they never, ever tried to claim that the photographs themselves were fake.

The photos were real and captured events that had actually happened. The Francois just wished the public would draw different conclusions than the obvious from what they saw. Of course, any suggestions that the Albionese press be allowed access to the occupation zone in order to get out the real story were firmly rebuffed.

All this and the occupation had only been going on for six weeks. Henderson's instincts were screaming at him that this had all the signs of a disaster in the making. Being too closely associated with this debacle could not only hurt his party's standing at home, but also taint the reputation of His Majesty's government abroad.

Unfortunately, to oppose the Francois, or even to reduce the support on offer, was to aid Tanya von Degurechaff. It was quite the sticky wicket.

He was drawn from his thoughts by knock on his door. Looking up, he walked to the door to welcome the guests he'd been expecting.

First through the door was Archibald Lloyd, his ambassador to Germany. The man was a bit of a cold fish, but he had a solid head on his shoulders. Henderson could only admire his impeccable grooming; nothing about him

betrayed the rushed trip that had only recently brought him back to the city. Lloyd wasn't exactly a frequent visitor to Henderson's office, but he was no stranger to Whitehall.

The other guest was rather more irregular. Lieutenant John Green had experienced perhaps the most unusual journey through the ranks of any soldier in the Great War. Initially an enlisted man, he had served as a volunteer aerial mage both in Norden and on the Rhine front. As a result of distinguished service he was awarded a battlefield promotion to Lieutenant and shuffled into the Africa Expeditionary Corps.

Following Albion's first disastrous direct encounter with the 203rd, Green was recognized as more or less the only officer who hadn't embarrassed himself. In a rather desperate move he was awarded a brevet promotion and put in command of the remaining three battalions of aerial mages. What followed were two years of an utter stalemate. The General Staff had at first been ecstatic at the news that the 203rd had been stymied. As time went by, they had grown more and more dissatisfied with Green's inability to win a decisive battle given his numerical advantage. When Degurechaff and the 203rd were transferred back to the continent, Green's rank had quietly been reverted back to Lieutenant and the man himself shifted to guard duty in Londinium.

It was an interesting story, but not one that would ordinarily have caught Henderson's interest. The reason for today's invitation, of course, was that the man had spent more flight hours than anybody outside of Germania sharing the sky with Degurechaff.

"Archie, damn good to see you," Henderson said, shaking Lloyd's hand and receiving a curt nod in response before turning to face Green. "Lieutenant."

"Sir."

"Well, I'll not beat around the bush," Henderson said, leading the two of them to a set of comfortable arm chairs spaced around a coffee table. "I'm being pressed to offer my opinion about the mess in the Rhine. Of course, any time I look at the situation it always circles back to Degurechaff."

Frowning, he turned to address Green first. "I have always felt you can't help but become familiar with someone you face across the battlefield. What can you tell me about her?"

"Put an orb in her hands and she's the best in the world. I never seen the American girl," Green said, then shrugged. "Anyone else, the devil was head and shoulders above. Man amongst boys, like."

"It was that bad?" Henderson asked. He did his best to push aside his irritation at the stamp of Liverpool that Green was barely trying to keep out of his voice and focus on gathering information. He'd heard the stories about Degurechaff, of course, but it was hard to tell truth from propaganda from tall tales.

"Rule was, thousand meters yellow, hundred meters red," Green said. "Get within a klick and lose track of her and the devil'll get you. Get close enough to be stood on the same football pitch, you're already dead."

Not for the first time, Henderson gave thanks to the fact that the civilian administration of the fallen Empire had been so far below the standard set by their military.

"I suppose we can be grateful that the Francois insisted on such thorough disarmament," he said, receiving another shrug in response. "How was she as a commander?"

"Well," Green began, before pausing, lost in thought for a moment, "the only way to put it, I figure, is careful."

"Careful? That's not a word I usually hear spoken about Degurechaff," Henderson said. Berserker. Maniac. Butcher. Those were some of the more restrained descriptions of Degurechaff's fighting style that he had seen.

"True enough, she's a demon in a scrap, when it's just her," Green replied. "But her men? Them she was very, very careful with."

"In Osfjord?" Henderson asked. He wasn't a professional military man, but even he knew that jumping from an airplane deep behind enemy lines wasn't anybody's idea of safe.

"Well, there's the trick," Green said. "Safe for a mage with a good orb isn't the same as safe for anybody else."

That was a fair point. Aerial mage combat was still a very new discipline. It was perfectly reasonable that yesterday's daring innovation could be considered today's standard tactic. In that case, the sheer shock present in all of the contemporaneous reports on Degurechaff was simply an indicator of how far behind the Allied Kingdom had been in its thinking.

"Watch the recordings, you start to see the same tricks," Green continued, warming to the subject. "Get in fast, find a weak spot, hit it hard, get out. Then do it all again."

Although, if Degurechaff was that far ahead of her time, in both tactical acumen and magical technology, that did raise an obvious question.

"So all that time in Africa?"

"Keep your spacing, stay disciplined, don't show any weakness," Green said, then shrugged, "the devil'll wait to take you another day."

It was a casual way to describe years of painstaking and ultimately thankless effort. Henderson didn't embarrass the man by making a fuss. The people who Green cared about already understood what he had accomplished. That ought to be enough.

"So if we were to wash our hands of the matter, what do you think she'd do about the occupation?" Henderson asked. He could already guess at what Green would say, but with the man in front of him it was worth hearing him out.

"If she can make it an easy fight then she'll fight. If winning isn't worth it she won't bother," Green said. "Cold girl, the devil."

Henderson nodded, then turned to face the other man at the table. Ambassador Lloyd had been listening attentively to Green's account. It was time to hear his thoughts.

"Archie?"

"She's very driven. Resolute," Ambassador Lloyd said, "and she certainly has her share of that Germanian self-righteous hyper-literalism."

He paused for a moment to fill a glass with water from the carafe on the table, then took a sip before he continued.

"On the other hand, she's never threatened or even hinted at military action," he said. "In person, she gives quite a different impression than one receives from reading her speeches."

Lloyd looked down at his glass for a moment, idly tilting it back and forth.

"Does she have something to do with the frogs' troubles? More than likely," he said. "Would she launch some futile war absent our guiding hand? I doubt it."

Henderson thanked the men for their time and saw them to the door. That done, he wandered back over to his desk and looked at those newspaper photographs again, lost in thought.

It was vital to the interests of the Allied Kingdom that the Empire not rise again. It was also vital that no other hegemon rise to a position of dominance on the continent. He would honestly have been a bit worried if the occupation were going smoothly. It was a perilously short step from occupation to annexation, sometimes.

Perhaps it would be wise to take a step back. Let the Francois keep paying in blood for the wealth they were so keen to get their hands on. They would certainly do their part to stomp even the idea of the Empire out of the Germanians. After a few more months of bloodletting, both sides should welcome the reappearance of a level-headed mediator from Albion.

Yes, it seemed for the best to let the Francois and the Germanians sort out their own affairs for the moment.

ooOoo

There was a small, nicely appointed conference room just off of my personal office. Deep in the heart of the most highly protected building in Germania, it was built to an exquisite standard of soundproofing. Truly, an ideal place to discuss official secrets.

"This keeps getting worse! I didn't even think it was possible!"

It also served quite nicely as a venue where I could vent my feelings. At the moment, I was pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly as I spoke. Visha sat at the conference table in the middle of the room, watching me with sympathy.

Whether as a political leader or a military officer, showing doubt in front of my underlings was strictly forbidden. They looked to me for cues on how to react in unexpected situations. An uncertain commander made for uncertain morale. That kind of thing could easily turn a temporary setback into a strategic defeat.

Even I, though, could not remain completely stoic over the long years of slowly deteriorating conditions as we lost the last war. Visha, as my longest serving subordinate, had willingly shouldered the position of sounding board and sympathetic ear. In front of her I could rant and rave to my heart's content about the idiotic decisions of high command and their habit of burying their mistakes in piles of dead soldiers. Once I had gotten those feelings out of my system I could resume my usual neutral demeanor and do my best to salvage a series of increasingly bleak situations.

It had been a few years, but she easily slipped back into the role. I felt a little awkward at the fact that the idiotic decisions I was complaining about had been my own, but anger was a versatile tool that allowed me to sweep my shame to the side and blame others for my own failings.

"Aren't things going according to your plan?" Visha asked.

It was certainly true that we had accomplished my goal of provoking the Francois into bad behavior. The problem was that it was too much, too fast. I had been planning for a situation where my voters' anger could be assuaged by mere reassurances that I was working on the problem.

"I didn't plan for the Francois to be quite this foolish," I said. "I expected them to mistreat the population, not to indulge themselves in rape and murder!"

Once it was a matter of life and death, it was only natural that people demand action. Accountability. Such a joke. If I had dedicated my life to one thing, it was of course to avoid the senseless destruction of human life. If were to expand the list to a second item, it was to avoid being held accountable to others' unreasonable expectations.

"Can't we fight back now?" Visha said, gesturing at the table in front of her. "Albion won't interfere."

The table was covered with notes regarding the current situation on the Rhine. Here and there computation orbs had been pressed into duty as paper weights after I had looked over the video stored within to pick out the most poignant moments to be turned into photographs. Currently occupying pride of place on the table was the diplomatic missive that had prompted this meeting.

What a poisonous reward for weeks of diplomacy. A letter from the Allied Kingdom making clear their position on this occupation: they wanted it to end, but they wouldn't actually do anything about it. To that end, they were more or less publicly stating that they were willing to ignore any fighting that occurred on Germanian soil while keeping open their offer to mediate a negotiated end to the conflict.

It was a master stroke that had knocked out one of the pillars I had been relying on to support my position. When my voters called for us to fight back, I always had the excuse available that however easily we might defeat the Francois, we had to be cautious or their allies would intervene. Now that fig leaf had been taken away, exposing my campaign rhetoric as the empty boasts it had always been.

"Those perfidious bastards!" I said. "If we push harder in guerrilla warfare, the Francois will retaliate in kind. Of course Albion is happy to stand back and watch us kill each other."

We certainly couldn't manage an open assault on the Francois military. The 32nd corps had initially commandeered housing in Duisbusch, one of the major cities in the Rhine industrial area. A steady trickle of soldiers had proceeded to "go missing." When normal levels of vigilance had proven unable to stem their losses, the Francois had relocated to a large plain outside of town where they had established a fortified camp. At the moment it was merely a collection of tents surrounded by trenches, barbed wire, and watchtowers, but the artillery and aerial mages stationed within rendered it an impregnable fortress. Even if the aerial mages under my command were able to sneak close and launch an assault, there was a limit to the damage they could dish out before being overwhelmed.

"We can't do anything, but we can't just do nothing," I continued. "Every day we stand by is another day for the Francois to visit their depredations on our citizens."

And on our voters. Damn it, there was a reason I wanted to be safe and comfortable in exile. Let my successor suffer from the inevitable losses and humiliation.

Visha stood, then, and laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. "You'll think of something. You always do."

It should have been a meaningless platitude, but even I could be moved by a subordinate who showed true faith in my abilities. I sighed, letting the tension drain out of me, then took a seat at the table. Perhaps another look over the situation would jog loose an idea.

The Allied Kingdom had gotten one over on me. There was no shame in that. It was a bit shameful, though, to whine about being outplayed. I was fortunate that Visha wouldn't hold it against me.

"You're always able to calm me down," I said. "You'll make a fine wife some day."

She blushed and looked away. As always, my assistant was more comfortable handling incoming artillery fire than a compliment.

The buzz of the intercom broke the momentary silence. I leaned over and hit the button to accept the incoming call. "Yes?"

"Chancellor!" Elya said, her excitement unmistakable even through the poor sound quality of the primitive transmission. "An old friend of yours is here. He says he knows the key to ending the occupation!"

I frowned. An old friend... to be honest, I didn't have that many old friends. Most of the people who qualified were people I saw every day. I had no idea who this could be. Still, Elya wasn't the sort of person who would accept something like that without verifying it for herself. Perhaps I was forgetting somebody. I shrugged and indicated for Visha to open the door.

As the door swung open my mind went blank for a moment. An automatic form of self-defense, perhaps.

Framed in the doorway was a gaunt figure dressed in tattered robes. His hair was an unruly mess. His beard didn't look like it had been cared for in years. All in all, the man is the very image of a hermit or a monk. To complete the look he had a glint of fanaticism in his eyes.

A very familiar glint of fanaticism.

"I dreamed of this day!" Doctor Adelaide von Schugel, one of the nation's foremost scientists, cast his arms wide as he cried out in joy. "What an honor it is to have safeguarded the instrument of God's will!"

He reached inside his robe and fumbled with something for a moment. I saw Visha and, behind him, Elya both tense up, but I remained calm. Doctor Schugel was never one to present a physical threat to me, after all. I watched not with alarm but with weary resignation as he drew forth an object that I had not seen in years, unless one counted my nightmares.

I'd almost forgotten just how small and unassuming the Elenium Arms Type 95 computation orb was when it lay dormant in the hands of a civilian.