bbbyouuujhhjhgyh

I was reeling as I left President Rudersdorf's residence. By the time I made it home, though, I had more or less gotten myself together. Once I had a moment to think things through rationally, I felt a little silly for having been so upset in the first place.

First of all, Rudersdorf was obviously viewing the past through rose-colored glasses. When he talked to me now, he was talking to a colleague who had accompanied him through the ups and downs of the war, not to mention a veteran with a sparkling war record. Naturally he would be willing to forgive any past transgressions that I confessed to him. However, he hardly would have cut the same amount of slack to an officer fresh out of War College. Back then, cowardice would have been rewarded with an order to charge the enemy lines, not a cushy rear line position.

The more pressing issue, of course, was that I looked to be stuck in charge of the country for the foreseeable future. Now that the voters-not to mention the governing class-had had a taste of success based on reckless brinkmanship, my own resignation would hardly put the country on a trajectory towards a peaceful future. Instead, my only chance was to serve out my term and try to steer things in a more reasonable direction.

I hadn't wanted to take on the task, but now that I was stuck with it I didn't think it was completely impossible. After all, the foreign policy theory of the day was appeasement, and then if that didn't work, more appeasement. In the history that I knew, it had taken a nigh suicidal level of constantly escalating provocations to push countries out of the appeasing mindset. As long as I maintained a more reasonable foreign policy, there shouldn't be a second Great War.

One week after the election I met with the Pullskan ambassador at his request, only to be presented with his plan for a nigh suicidal level of escalating provocation. While I often worried about the interference of Being X's invisible hand, it seemed that human idiocy would be the more pressing danger.

"And I can assure you, Chancellor," he said, winding up his pitch, "that you wouldn't see such an insulting result as merely eighty-seven percent of the population voting in favor of reunification!"

I glanced to the side at General Zettour. Or rather, Foreign Minister Zettour. I had shuffled the Cabinet around after the most recent election. With domestic affairs more or less in order, the dangers we would face over the next few years would come from abroad. I wanted Zettour to play a key role because he was by far the most effective member of my cabinet. He had the savvy that came with years of experience and the energy of a man half his age. He also knew when to play the bad cop.

"Do you have a reason to believe we could win the Second Great War that such an action would provoke?" he asked.

"It wouldn't..." the ambassador protested, floundering for a moment. "Our actions would be in line with the principle of self-determination that the Americans put forward."

Time for me to jump in and nip this in the bud.

"The only principle the Americans believe in is the profit motive," I said, smiling to take some of the sting out of the rebuke. "You should know that."

He stared at me for a moment before giving a resigned nod. As I'd expected, he had simply allowed optimism to overcome his better judgment in the heat of the moment.

"It's possible that the Americans might keep their nose out of things, considering the recession," Zettour added, "but it's not like we'd have an easy time of it just fending off the countries of western Europe. And, of course, we've already seen that it's unrealistic to expect the Americans to sit on the sidelines forever."

The ambassador looked down, his shoulders slouching. "We truly can't hold the vote?"

"Unfortunately," I said, "we can't just do what we want and ignore world opinion until we're strong enough to fight off the whole world."

The fight seemed to have entirely gone out of the ambassador. That was a relief. It would have been a real mess if Pullska had decided to bull through with a referendum despite our warnings. With the application of the stick having convinced them to back off, it was time for a liberal application of the carrot to make sure that Pullska stayed on the right track.

"I do understand your concerns," I continued. "There are a few things we can do."

As much as the people of Pullska may have gloried in their time as part of the Empire, they wouldn't be so eager to reunite out of simple nostalgia. No, a more plausible explanation was readily visible: fear. Pullska, a small nation, shared a border with the gargantuan Russy Federation. They had security guarantees from the Allied Kingdom and Francois Republic, but as the saying goes, distant water can't quench immediate thirst. Pullska's best option for genuine security was to earn the protection of a strong neighbor that could see off the commies.

I would have been happy enough to ally with them. Unfortunately, Germania was forbidden by treaty from allying with any of the Imperial successor states, let alone reuniting with them. I'd gotten away with thumbing my nose at the rest of the Europe once. A second attempt would certainly lead to war. Still, there were some things I could do to help discourage Russite aggression.

"The Treaty of Londinium prohibits any overt military cooperation," Zettour said.

"However, I can recommend a few men that you may wish to hire as consultants," I said. "They have personally observed the Russy army in action and helped develop modern defense works capable of fending off modern armies."

Koenig and his team had recently returned home from their unofficial military tour. They had done a great deal to throw sand in the gears of the Russite military machine and slow down the communists' advance, but in the end thirteen men could only do so much. Even thirteen aerial mages. The sheer mass of Russy's anti-aircraft fire had hemmed in their ability to do anything.

Fortunately, Koenig had heeded my directions to preserve the lives of his men and had resisted the urge to pursue any foolish heroics. Instead, he retreated in good order once he judged he was unable to contribute any further. He returned with a great deal of useful military intelligence, the grateful thanks of the Akitsushiman Dominion, and an armful of truly atrocious sake.

He and his team had been stationed at the new aerial mage academy since their return. They were running a special course on infiltration tactics. I was confident that he could spare some time to apprise our neighbor of the realities of modern warfare. Considering my own memories of training cadets, he'd probably appreciate the vacation.

"We are also prohibited from stationing any troops on Pullskan soil or conducting joint military exercises," Zettour said.

"Of course, it shouldn't be a problem for a few Pullskan observers to accompany our own military during training operations," I said. "And if you take a fancy to anything that you see, our arms manufacturers have been instructed to make their whole catalog available to you at a very reasonable price."

I was happy to subsidize any arms purchases that Pullska wanted to make. Any gun that they bought was another gun between me and the Red Army. All the better if the gun was a modern design. Push come to shove, I'd be happy to ship them boxcars of anti-tank guns for free. As for the costs, I could count it as economic stimulus.

"This is a lot to think about," the ambassador said.

"Well," I replied, "whatever the official state of things, we're all in the same boat if the Rus start marching west."

Koenig estimated that the Akitsushiman army had a few months of fight left in them before they'd be forced to retreat off the mainland. Based on my own memories, I thought it was too optimistic to think that the Akitsushimans would rationally cut their losses and retreat in a hopeless situation. Even factoring in a bunch of disastrous last stands, though, I doubted the war would last more than six months. After that, well, it would be interesting to see what the commies decided to do.

"As for economic cooperation," Zettour said, "considering that we already have a free trade agreement, there's not much more the government can do."

"The good news is that some Germanian firms should soon be establishing factories in Pullska," I added.

In this benighted pre-Internet era, good economic statistics were hard to come by. However, Germania did have access to one handy metric, thanks to my ongoing infrastructure improvement project. When I had first started the program, we were able to attract swarms of workers simply by offering three meals a day and a place to sleep. Now, as we expanded the highway system into Osterry, we had been forced to pay significant wages in order to maintain sufficient staffing.

The slow but steady process of economic recovery had gradually lifted wages across Germania. New job openings were no longer greeted with the same press of hungry applicants that they used to produce. As a result, I expected Germanian companies to take advantage of our trade links with former Imperial countries and look to expand their operations into areas with less competition for workers.

"I understand," the ambassador said. "I'll have to consult with my superiors before we take the next steps."

I saw him off with a smile. It would be a comfort to have a strong, independent bulwark on our eastern border.

The next big meeting, a week later, was something that I had deliberately scheduled so that my successor could be brought up to speed on the status of Germania's military. And, of course, so I could avoid the work. With my plans thwarted by my inexplicable electoral success, I had to bite the bullet and do my best to provide guidance at our comprehensive military review.

The basic concept was relatively straightforward. Germania had only recently been allowed to produce modern military weapons after years of treaty-imposed stagnation. Not only that, but I had pushed for some particular developments based on my memory of my original world's history. Once the new military technology had been issued to our soldiers, I had insisted on undertaking a series of large scale training exercises. The purpose of this meeting was to assess the performance of the troops as well as the new technology, and to make plans for the future.

I was attending to represent the civilian government. I was accompanied by Visha and General Lergen. General Groener and General Gude were present to represent the general staff. General Ziegler attended for the army, and Admiral Albrecht for the navy. Weiss was there as the head of the aerial mage branch of the air force, along with his boss, the overall head of the air force, General von Richtoffer. Rounding out the group was General Thiel, who managed Germania's experimental weapons development institute.

Looking around the table, I could see a lot of fancy shoulder boards. Weiss and von Richtoffer were noticeably younger than the heads of the other service, reflective of the youth of their branch of the military. They had both distinguished themselves during the Great War, though, and remained composed even in such rarefied company.

After a brief round of introductions, General Ziegler gave the first presentation on practical matters. He started from the ground up with a discussion of the new assault rifle. The StG-38, as my attempt to replace the AK-47 had come to be known, had been met with some initial skepticism by the ground troops. As they gained practical experience with the weapon, though, that skepticism had turned into acceptance and then into a competition to be the first issued the new weapon.

As I had expected, it was hard to resist the charm of a reliable semi-automatic weapon. The design team had only made a few changes in order to aid mass production. Soon, the assault rifle would be our standard infantry long arm. Ramping up production would also give us a stockpile that could be issued quickly to the reserve in case of war. Eventually, I envisioned sending crates of them to resistance movements within the Russy Federation, but that was just a dream for the moment.

As a side effect from the popularity of the assault rifle, arms manufacturers had proposed a variety of new automatic and semi-automatic weapons. The army was pursuing three such guns in particular: a new general purpose machine gun, a smaller caliber machine pistol designed for automatic fire, and a larger version of the StG-38 for aerial mages that remained accurate at longer range. All in all, our average infantry unit would be putting out a much higher volume of fire than they had managed during the Great War.

The report on the newly developed tank was more mixed. Of course, the new units were more effective than the clunkers the Empire had relied on during the Great War. However, the reliability problems that the Empire had experienced, which designers had tended to put down to wartime conditions and outdated technology, were still popping up with the latest models. Large scale exercises that featured fake bullets and fake explosives had resulted in a disturbing number of very real mission-killed tanks solely due to mechanical breakdowns.

Ziegler presented an overview of the army's plans for modifying the new tanks to be more reliable and easier to fix in the case of problems. All well and good, assuming everything worked out, but unfortunately Koenig's return had revealed a more fundamental problem with the design.

"According to our analysis of the most recent data," General Groener said, "our current tank would be unable to penetrate the frontal armor of the latest Russy tank, except perhaps from point blank range."

Ziegler shrugged. "It can still fulfill its expected role."

He had a point. Strictly speaking, the purpose of a tank wasn't really to kill other tanks.

While I had reincarnated with a level of historical knowledge that had allowed me to predict the general evolution of warfare, even in a world of magic, I hadn't really grasped the nitty-gritty of trench warfare until I experienced it in practice. In my mind, the war would involve two armies crouched in opposing trenches taking pot shots at each other. Occasionally one army would attempt an assault, only to be cut to ribbons by machine guns. I even dared to hope that mages could break the stalemate.

Unfortunately, trench warfare in reality was more dynamic and more resilient than I had imagined. First of all, it was quite possible for a determined assault to seize a trench. There was a reason armies kept sending men over the top. Of course, taking one trench was hardly a decisive breakthrough. There were more trenches lined up behind the first and, more importantly, railroad tracks to carry reinforcements. While the attacker was stuck sending reinforcements slogging through no-man's-land, the defender could bring them in by the train car. The disparity was even greater when it came to artillery.

Tanks allowed the attacker a fighting chance. Instead of having to drag an artillery piece through the mud, or having to try to chivvy a horse across no-man's-land, the attacking force could bring in their big guns in the form of a motorized vehicle. The ability of one tank to defeat all challengers one-on-one duels was irrelevant to the question of whether it was good at performing its assigned task.

"While that's true," General Gude said, "if trenches become obsolete then the next war might feature maneuver warfare on a large scale. In that case, the expected role of a tank would change."

It was nice to have a General Staff devoted to thinking about that kind of thing. It saved me the embarrassment of having to pass off my memories of WWII as original insights.

"I assume you have a suggestion," I said.

"We've had designers working since we received the initial report," General Groener replied. "The design isn't complete, but they estimate that a tank that supported sufficient firepower for our needs will be in the neighborhood of forty-five or fifty tons."

I wracked my brain, trying to recall long-forgotten facts and figures. Was that a reasonable size for an actual working tool of war? I'd like to defer to my generals' military judgment, but I had a feeling they would try to put a railway gun on a tracked platform if I let them run wild. Well, adding another twenty tons didn't seem too crazy. And we would need something capable of going toe to toe with Russite armor, most likely.

"Let's plan to make this larger design our new main battle tank," I said. "Please take as many cues as possible from our current design."

I held back a sigh and waved farewell in my mind to our projected budget surplus. It would be painful to purchase what was essentially a second complete fleet of tanks, but that was the cost of staying on the cutting edge. I consoled myself with the thought that it would be far more expensive for our military to be found wanting in a moment of need.

"Yes, Chancellor."

"Also, please conduct a study on other possible uses for the existing platform," I added. "I'm told that Russy's army makes heavy use of tracked anti-aircraft guns and armored personnel carriers."

Rather than just scrapping the obsolete tanks, I hoped to at least get some use out of them.

"Yes, Chancellor."

With that, we were through with the technical challenges facing the army. On the administrative front, we were hitting our recruiting targets. We were also gradually building up the reserves to an acceptable level, although we certainly weren't in a position to launch a reprise of the Great War.

News from the navy was more or less as expected. Building an aircraft carrier was a unique technical challenge. Even working off the guidance provided by the Akitsushima Dominion, our first carrier wouldn't be complete for another year or so. The first of our newly designed destroyers was also still in the early stages of construction, albeit for less technical and more bureaucratic reasons.

Once the navy had taken to heart my directive that the number of ships they could buy would be driven by the number of ships they could afford given their allotted budget, they had launched a series of redesigns on the destroyer. It had warmed the penny-pinching portion of my soul to see them put so much effort into streamlining and modularizing the build process in order to bring down the cost. Sure, it was a little ridiculous that a relatively simple ship was taking so long to build, but it wasn't like we had any pressing naval commitments.

The new sub had exceeded my expectations by putting to sea and, so far, not exploding.

Of course, the actual effectiveness of the navy as a fighting force would rest on the work of the weapons development group. General Thiel's report on that topic was heartening. The hydrogen peroxide based propulsion system used in our new submarine had proven well suited for the new generation of torpedoes. Crews working with them would have to undergo rigorous training, but it was nothing like the submarine, which was only allowed to travel while its engine was under the supervision of the original designer. Overall, a small price to pay for a torpedo that was capable of exceeding sixty knots.

The torpedo's magnetic trigger had been tested to the point that it was almost ready for deployment. I didn't quite follow the physics, but apparently with modern ships it was more damaging to set off an explosion immediately underneath their keel than to simply ram a torpedo into their side. The team was also working on an acoustic guidance system, although that was a ways off from practical usage.

Really, the only reason not to be excited about their work was that there was no likely opponent to serve as a convenient target for all of this technological wizardry. Any conflict with the Francois would be resolved on the ground, and our little tricks wouldn't make any difference in a fight with the Allied Kingdom's navy. Still, I could appreciate that our weapons engineers were doing a good job.

The progress on developing missiles into practical weapons was less impressive. While Dr. Schugel's work had been revolutionary, it didn't provide a sound basis for others to build on. Most obviously, there was no guidance system available for missiles that weren't intended to pack an aerial mage as the warhead. The more subtle problems arose from Dr. Schugel's general disdain for safety standards. Traversing the gap from an inventor's baby to a deployed weapons system would take effort and time. I was still confident that our team would get there eventually, but I was starting to doubt that a practical missile weapon would be rolled out while I was still in office.

The weapons development team's efforts at supporting the army had also failed to yield practical fruit, at least so far. Despite some hair-raising experiments, they had yet to develop a flamethrower that was anything more than a bulky terror weapon. Similarly, while they had shown some truly creative uses of explosives, they had yet to develop a man-portable anti-tank weapon that was more likely to result in the death of the target rather than the user if deployed on the battlefield.

General Thiel's team was also working with the cutting edge of airplane technology. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they had a jet engine under development. I was less pleasantly surprised to discover that the prototype was so unreliable that some members of the team thought a rocket-powered plane would be a more practical design. Overall, that section of his report sounded like it would be a wash until the general mentioned that they had a functioning prototype of a revolver autocannon.

"Unfortunately," he concluded, "the prototype falls far short of the goal of 1000 rounds per minute."

"Wait," I said, sitting up straight, "how many rounds per minute can it fire?"

He looked down at his notes. "Two or three hundred, I believe."

Across the table, I saw von Richtoffer sit up and take notice as well. "Firing 20 or 30 millimeter shells?"

Thiel looked at him, somewhat taken aback. "That's right."

"That project should be given the highest priority," I said. "Even just mass producing the current prototype would give airplanes a much better shot at taking out aerial mages."

Breaking through an aerial mage's defensive screen with machine gun fire required a level of sustained impact that was almost impossible in a dogfight. On the other hand, a single twenty millimeter cannon shell would be enough to ring any mage's bell. Against a careless or weary opponent, just two hits might be enough for a kill.

"That's not to mention the effect against other aircraft," von Richtoffer added. "It's one thing to harden a plane against machine gun fire, but quite another to try to shrug off a cannon shell."

Thiel made a note and showed the simple joy of a child receiving candy or a mad scientist hearing praise for his work. I could only hope that the autocannon would make the transition from prototype to mass manufacture without any unnecessary explosions.

With that, it was time to move on to discuss the air force. General von Richtoffer didn't have any big surprises in store for us. The current air fleet was a solid first effort, as he described it, but with ongoing advances in engine technology opening up new avenues of aircraft design, it was time to start developing replacement models. Once again, it was galling to retire so much military hardware before it even fired a shot in anger. Once again, I tolerated it as the cost of maintaining a modern military.

My one contribution was to insist that the air force at least develop a prototype aircraft to take on the close air support role often filled by aerial mages. The new autocannon wouldn't just be useful in a dogfight. A plane designed to loiter over the battlefield firing multiple 30 millimeter rounds per second ought to do a decent job replacing a mage firing explosive spells.

It wasn't that I wanted to put our mages out of a job, but aerial mages were just too versatile. Almost any military mission could benefit from a touch of magic. By handling previously mage-only work with newly developed aircraft, our mages would be freed up to do other things. Our Republic didn't have nearly as many mages to go around as the Empire had enjoyed, after all.

Weiss's report on the status of our nascent mage corps would close out the meeting.

He led off with a bit of bad news. The new orb was still stuck in development. I could only nod in support of Weiss's decision to deny Dr. Schugel's request to stop "babying" his test pilots. I'd push for faster development if we were at war, of course, but for now it was just fine to delay rolling out a new orb until a decent period had passed after we had sold the Americans our old orb.

"Dual core orb production is set to outpace our projections," he said, continuing his report. "Our training program is also proceeding as expected. Although..."

"Is there a problem?" General Groener asked.

I gave Weiss a sharp look. I had sent Neumann and Dr. Fischer to the Unified States with a trunk full of computation orbs and training manuals from our academy. Their mission was to have an American mage beat Neumann's time on their obstacle course, using an American made orb, as soon as possible. It would be embarrassing if a problem with our training methods made the Americans feel like I was welching on my side of the deal.

"Using a dual core orb to its full potential requires a certain mindset. It's completely different from a single core orb," Weiss explained. "A few mages pick it up right away, most are able to understand after enough practice, but some of them just aren't getting it. It looks like we may have to fail almost fifteen percent of our inaugural class."

I relaxed. If a few of the Americans couldn't cut it, that was their problem. As long as Neumann could get a few of them up to snuff, we'd done our job. Although, I was a little concerned about that failure rate. It wasn't like A and B class mages grew on trees.

"If memory serves," General Gude said, "the entire 203rd was able to adapt to the Type 97 shortly after it was introduced. Is there a reason that we can't replicate that success?"

"Well, mages do seem to adapt quickly when they fear for their lives," Weiss replied, "but this is a peace time training program."

I tapped my chin in thought. Weiss and the other members of the 203rd were good, but I didn't think I was just being conceited to believe that the two best flyers in the country weren't currently serving in the military. I glanced to the side, where Visha was taking notes while listening attentively to the ongoing discussion. Maybe the trainees would benefit from a new perspective.

"Visha," I said, "do you think you could swing by the academy to conduct a few remedial lessons?"

She looked at me, startled, then put down her pencil. After a moment's thought, she nodded.

General Gude looked uneasy. "Do you mean to have her simulate a life-threatening environment?"

I laughed at the idea that anybody would be terrified by Visha, of all people. "There's no need to simulate anything."

I saw a trace of doubt in Visha's eyes. That brought me up short. It was rude of me to load something like this on top of her official duties. Not to mention the unofficial work she put in making sure that I was eating enough food and getting enough sleep.

"You shouldn't need to do this for every class," I said, patting Visha on the shoulder. "For the first products of our new academy, though, I'd like to start strong."

She nodded again, her expression firming up. "I'll do my best."

I smiled. With Visha there to nurture their development, even the complete dunces should be able to handle at least the basics of aerial mage operations.

ooOoo

My last big meeting wasn't something I'd set up of my own initiative. Not really. When I'd received a letter from a pair of concerned physicists warning of the development of a new type of extremely powerful bomb, I'd felt obliged to clear some space in my schedule.

The two letter writers, Dr. Leo Spitz and Dr. Eugene Wigner, looked a bit wide-eyed as Elya led them into my personal meeting room. They likely hadn't expected to be invited so easily into a discussion with the Chancellor. There was a distinct coolness in the atmosphere when they noticed that Dr. Werner Wecklein was already present. I didn't mind. For an important conversation like this, it was important to make sure that the theories presented could stand up to some adversarial scrutiny.

After a brief round of introductions, Dr. Spitz took the lead. He first explained that certain papers recently published in the Francois Republic suggested that they were catching up to the Germanian understanding of nuclear physics. Those papers had prompted the concern that had led him to reach out to his colleague and to the government, ultimately leading to this meeting.

As I had feared, he then introduced the concept of a nuclear chain reaction. His presentation more or less matched up with my memories from the introductory physics that I had picked up long ago from school and from a few idle evenings spent on wikipedia. It was hard to say whether the discrepancies that I noticed were the result of future scientists having confirmed or rejected his current speculations or if he, as a highly decorated scientist, had a deeper understanding of the matter at hand than I did.

In any event, his conclusion was both expected and depressing: according to the best available science, building a bomb based on nuclear fission was completely possible.

"Such a bomb could be delivered by a single plane," Dr. Spitz said, "and explode with the force of hundreds or even thousands of tons of TNT."

I sighed. "It's a shame that this world should have to suffer the existence of such a weapon."

A part of me had always held out hope that, in this world of magic, nuclear bombs might not work. On a personal level, nukes would undermine the physical invincibility that I usually enjoyed as long as I had a computation orb on me. On the national scale, I knew that developing atom bombs was horrendously expensive. Germania's economy was doing better than it had been, but it wasn't like I had a few billion marks sitting around in a slush fund. A nuclear arms race would favor bigger, richer powers.

And, I suppose, a widespread nuclear war would also be a humanitarian disaster. We'd all be better off the key isotopes all just magically disappeared whenever they appeared on this earth.

"That's not necessarily the case," Dr. Wecklein said, breaking me out of my funk. "I'm not convinced that the critical mass would be so low as to be practical for a bomb."

That led to a storm of discussion between the three physicists. The blackboard that I had set up for this meeting was soon covered with scribbled equations. When it looked like they might come to blows over possession of the last stick of chalk, I interrupted with a sharp rap of my knuckles on the conference table.

"Enough arguing," I said. "Scientific questions can be answered through experimentation, right?"

That much, at least, all three of them could agree on.

"Then the first order of business will be to investigate, and hopefully eliminate, material that might serve for a practical atom bomb," I continued. "Whether it's uranium or plutonium, I will expect a thorough examination of every possibility."

Again I received nods all around. It looked like Dr. Spitz wanted to say something, but he held his tongue for the moment.

"Secondly, we should explore the potential of this technology for power generation. After all, size constraints are far less pressing for a power plant than for a bomb," I said. "I would much prefer to use uranium to replace tons of coal, rather than tons of explosives."

I was pretty sure that operating nuclear power plants at our current level of technology would be ruinously expensive, not to mention dangerous. On the other hand, I was also pretty sure that one of the byproducts of running a nuclear power plant was material that could be used to make a bomb. I wasn't sure if the country would be able to fund the project through to fruition, but at least we wouldn't be burning money on a dead end.

"How are we to go about doing all this?" Dr. Wigner asked.

A fair question. I rubbed my chin for a moment, lost in thought. My usual style of telling my underlings what to do and letting them worry about the details probably wouldn't work as well with scientists as it would with soldiers.

Actually, I could take some inspiration from mathematics in dealing with this issue. All that I had to do was reduce the situation to a previously solved problem.

"This will have be organized as a military project," I said. "Expect to hear from a recruiter soon. Of course, if you would prefer not to participate, that's fine, but I expect that you would keep this conversation secret, regardless."

I would need to put the project under the management of a reasonably diplomatic officer with a firm grasp of logistics. Max Ugar was the first candidate who sprang to mind, assuming that he wasn't working on anything particularly important these days. I'd have to check.

The project would also need a healthy dose of espionage and counter-espionage. We'd have to keep an eye on those Francois physicists, and perhaps do a bit more than that. Well, I could leave the details to Elya.

Really, the more I thought about it, the happier I felt. After all, a nuclear bomb would be quite a deterrent. It ought to keep our neighbors from getting any expansionary ideas. As long as the costs were kept under control, I could think of it like buying a lottery ticket. Sure, it was probably just wasted money, but there was still the chance that I could retire in peace and comfort under the protection of the Germanian nuclear umbrella.

Maybe the Great War truly would be the war to end all wars, after all.