“The RRN Diego Silang has been forced to evacuate the naval campaign off the coast of Ginzhu after being struck by a Larissan torpedo, suspected to have been fired from a submarine. The torpedo reportedly struck the bow of the Rizalian helicopter carrier, but damage control alongside support from other Rizalian ships kept the vessel afloat. The RRN Diego Silang reportedly sent one last bombing sortie from its LF-20C squadron, before heading down south under escort by Rizalian frigates.”

  - Midori Imperial Herald

  +++

  West Orland

  November Palace

  January 19, 2026

  “We’re advancing through Kusari at a generous pace,” General Albrecht declared in the situation room.

  Amelie and the Heiss Cabinet were all assembled inside, alongside the various leaders of the Air Force, Navy, Army, and Royal Guard. The general himself even turned to the leader of the Royal Guard, Archduchess Pristina Dubois, with an amused smile.

  “I must say too, that the Royal Guard sure is starting to finally live up to its name,” General Albrecht declared. “The boys in the Marine Corps sure are starting to become impressed by the performance of your KDUs. I hope that continues.”

  Showered by that praise, Pristina nodded proudly, a hint of her suppressed arrogance somewhat breaking through in her voice.

  “Of course,” she replied. “We’ve whipped those girls in shape. I believe they will meet the standards needed to win this war. The Royal Guard won’t fail the Kingdom.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Amelie said, smiling. “Still, I heard the casualties amongst us are rising. Same with Hebei, no?”

  “Indeed,” the general’s voice turned low. “While we are pushing forward at a steady pace, I’m afraid that the multinational forces we have are still bleeding badly. Since we started the operation three days ago in Kusari, we have averaged around three thousand casualties each day. In Hebei, we’ve now reached forty-thousand casualties. Approximately two thousand casualties each day.”

  “Such a bloody affair,” Allison Thell said on the side. The Minister of Health and Social Welfare seemed fairly disturbed, quite clearly still unused to war casualties even after years of dealing with it. “At least…it’s nowhere near yet at the same scale that we saw back then.”

  “The Grand Duchy Campaign was quite brutal because both sides were equal in strength and sophistication,” General Albrecht calmly explained. “The situation isn’t nearly the same in Ginzhu and Kusari. Over there, the enemy is taking at least three-to-one casualties. We have no idea yet about concrete numbers, but estimates are that they already suffered one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand casualties since the first of January.”

  “Yet, Ginzhu is still holding for the most part,” Amelie said. “It astounds me.”

  “They’re dug in and determined,” Chief Air Marshall Zimmerman said, his hand touching his chin. “No matter how many bombs we drop on them, they seem to be stubbornly resisting under the rubble, trench works, and tunnels they’ve constructed.”

  “I’ve already nearly exhausted much of our cruise and ballistic missile stocks,” Admiral Halberd reported on the side. “We’re now down to sixty percent of our original number of hulls near Ginzhu, and our ports in Asanai and Rizalia are facing bottlenecks. We can’t reload our missiles fast enough for the scale of this operation.”

  “Can’t we pull them back to Orlish naval bases?” Jacqueline curiously asked. “I mean, that should help reduce the load on our allies’ ports, right?”

  “Then we’ll have to deal with our ships having to sail thousands of kilometers in the Pardan just to get to our ports, then thousands of kilometers more to get back into battle,” the Admiral rebuked it with a laugh. “Nope. It’s impossible. Most of the ships coming in and out of Orland to East Vaeyox are logistics vessels, alongside the anti-raider patrols.”

  “I see then…” Jacqueline sighed. “If only we can send more hulls into this battle, it might help share the load between our active ships better.”

  “That lies in the field of the theoretical. Realistically, at the rate of our naval production, it would take a year or two for us to even get close to being capable of truly fielding the numbers it would take for a sustained naval bombardment campaign,” Admira Halberd said. “As a silver lining, it’s quite lucky we didn’t lose any to a pitched battle.”

  “But, I’ve heard that the North Hebeian navy is still harassing us,” Amelie said. “They even nearly sunk one of our allies’ carriers.”

  “Indeed. There was a close-call with the IAN Shokaku too two days ago when forty-eight anti-ship cruise missiles managed to get close to them, but those were simply harassments from their air groups and submarines,” Admiral Halberd then laughed. “We’ve already shot down nearly twenty-nine of their planes, alongside sinking four submarines. We’re doing decently.”

  “Had we fought a pitched battle instead, we wouldn’t be able to support the naval bombardment,” General Albrecht added. “So it is indeed nice that it didn’t happen. But I suspect that the North Hebeians and Larissans are just letting us weaken ourselves.”

  “We’ve already included that eventuality in our plans,” Admiral Halberd. “It’s why our ships aren’t allowed to deplete their missile stocks below forty percent of their VLS and launch capacities, and they would rotate when they reached that.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Amelie said, nodding. “Now, I do have a question though.”

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  All the military officers turned to Amelie’s direction.

  “General Bohm’s situation is continuing to deteriorate,” Amelie explained. “So is it possible to perhaps…pull out forces from somewhere to help the L?t front?”

  +++

  “We will try our best then,” a soft voice replied from Amelie’s phone. It was Princess Denise van Ruland, the Arkelian foreign minister. “I’ve already talked to Chancellor Lozeman about this earlier. She told me that Arkelia will try to send eight more brigades to Orland, straight into the L?t front to support the 10th Army.”

  “Is that so?” Amelie asked, somewhat ecstatic.

  “Arkelia looks up to our sisters in Orland, of course, we will send as much help as we can to strengthen our new bond,” the Princess of Ruland declared, as her voice became much warmer. “North Opellia stands together under your leadership, and again, we thank you for the investments and equipment you gave us. It’s only right to give back.”

  “Right. Eight brigades then,” Amelie smiled. “I’ll relay this quickly to the OHC. Will you send the details tonight?”

  “Yes. I’ll get it on your foreign ministry’s desk within an hour or two. I’m just waiting for Chancellor Lozeman’s meeting with our generals to conclude. This is quite a sizable commitment after all.”

  “Indeed. Eight brigades mean…nearly thirty or forty-thousand troops if I’m not mistaken?”

  “Something around that ballpark, yes. It should be three divisions worth of soldiers. Though, I should say, that since most of our armored and mechanized guys are in other fronts, we’re only sending infantry and mechanized—”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Amelie said, reassuring. “We have the metal. We have the tanks. What we need is more guys holding the frontlines. I’m not even sure if we’re going to use your troops much. We just need reserves to free up our units in the rear.”

  “I can understand. Still, we are hoping to get those units engaged a bit regardless. One of the things the Arkelian Army needs is combat experience. Working with Orland and fighting side-by-side with you is giving us so much of that.”

  “I’m happy you find it so beneficial then,” Amelie smiled. “Anyhow, again, thank you so much, Lady Ruland. Orland will forever remember this.”

  “You're welcome, Your Majesty.”

  Soon, the phone line closed, and Amelie sighed a relief as she leaned back down on her chair. Another diplomatic victory. She pumped her fist a bit, before grabbing a biscuit from the box on her table, enjoying its sweetness. Considering the problems she was facing at getting more units to counter the Federalist offensive in L?t, this was a good development.

  Someone suddenly knocked on her door.

  “Come in,” Amelie cheerfully said, and immediately, William opened the door, letting Nia in. Afterward, he followed behind her and closed the door. Nia on the other hand dropped a huge stack of files on Amelie’s desk, all of which were countless battlefield and national reports she would have to sift through. “Ah…that’s…”

  “It stacked up for three days,” Nia said. “Why, you have a problem now?”

  “Nope! Absolutely not!” Amelie took one of the documents. “I did ask to get more detailed reports about everything. Thanks for sorting it for me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “On a different note,” William approached Amelie, and Nia took it as a cue to go for her desk. “We got a developing situation right now.”

  “Again…”

  “Yep.”

  Amelie groaned.

  “Alright, what is it? Is it a report from the OPM?” Amelie asked.

  “Indeed,” William nodded. “We’ve been coordinating with the RIU to send teams in the Pozneki Republic to observe and gather intelligence. We’ve also commenced a few sabotage operations here and there, including taking a tank plant offline for eight days—”

  “Damn, that’s impressive.”

  “What’s not impressive is the issue we faced yesterday,” he dropped a file on Amelie’s table. She quickly flipped through its cover, getting on its contents, and scanning the pictures on it. “Dahlia Team, one of the RIU’s newly established combat teams, was attempting to communicate and coordinate weapons shipments with one of the Pozneki resistance forces—the Red Ducal Legion.”

  “I’ve heard about them,” Amelie said, frowning as she checked the images of damaged buildings and apartments, alongside the faces of three dead RIU operatives from Dahlia Team. “They’re…royalists, aren’t they? Nobles still aligned with the Grand Duchess of Poznek?”

  “Indeed. Word is, they’ve found out where the Grand Duchess has been kept by the Pozneki regime since she disappeared. Considering the remnants of House Janowicz have been lobbying hard to get her saved, Marie decided it would be best if they tried doing something about it because it’s highly likely that the matriarch of House Janowicz is being tortured or worse…”

  “That’s sickening.”

  “Indeed. Hence why we tried to coordinate things with the Red Ducal Legion. They have quite a sizable number of knights and volunteers from the defunct Pozneki Ducal Army. Unfortunately, as you can see in that report, it didn’t go swimmingly well. The restorationists struck against one of the hideouts used by the Legion, forcing Dahlia Team into an unfavorable fight.”

  Amelie closed the file.

  “And three of our operatives died,” Amelie frowned. “Alongside five wounded. How are the rest holding up?”

  “We’ve managed to evacuate them all to Gallia, and they are largely recovering,” William said. “What the RIU is worried about, is that the Restorationists might have captured intel about some of the strongholds and facilities used by the Legion. That’s why I came here. I need your approval for an operation that would send three teams to prevent this. We will also attempt to rescue the Grand Duchess.”

  William then placed another folder on Amelie’s desk. It had the joint OPM and RIU logo on it. She opened it, and read the name of the plans. ‘Operation Red Dahlia’, was the codename, most likely as a reference to the recent incident.

  She quickly scanned its contents, before looking back up at William.

  “I see,” she took a deep breath. “Does Marie think this operation can succeed? What if the Restorationists take us by surprise again.”

  “We’re already making countermeasures for that,” William said. “As you can see there, I’m sending specialists from the OPM too to support and counter those guys. We’re going to be unveiling our new experimental weapons too with this one.”

  Amelie looked back down at the document. She nodded, grabbing her pen, and signing it.

  “Execute it well then,” Amelie said, closing the folder and handing it to William.

  “Absolutely. I’ll relay your approval to Marie.”

  Discord server here!