The morning sun filtered through the high windows of the Berlin Palace, gilding the marble floor in pale light.
Outside, the city moved with calm precision, trains on schedule, factories humming, airships tracing contrails over the Tiergarten.
But inside the Kaiser’s palace, the heart of the Empire’s command beat with quiet intensity.
Reichsmarschall Bruno von Zehntner sat before the great table of maps and reports. The Kaiser sat opposite him, draped in a dark field-grey tunic despite his age.
The two n shared an afternoon of tea while attended by the royal staff. Eva sat off to the side, silent yet proud, while her husband and son did the sa.
Though newly returned from Sicily, Bruno the Younger had been summoned for his grandfather’s briefing, still carrying the tan lines of the diterranean sun.
Bruno’s voice broke the quiet first.
"They’ve bitten, Your Majesty. The Aricans took the bait precisely as expected. Sicily will be their grave now. They think it will lead them to Ro, when in truth, it will bleed them to exhaustion."
The Kaiser smiled faintly, folding his gloved hands over his cane. "Ah, so the trap is sprung. I trust the fields are fertile?"
Bruno’s tone was cool, almost clinical. "Fertile enough to drink the blood of their youth for months, perhaps years, should they persist. The Italian countryside will drain them. They will believe they advance, yet each kiloter forward will cost them a generation."
He turned toward the projection map on the wall. Red and blue markers glowed across the diterranean.
"They have committed fully. Their logistics are stretched thin. We, however, remain fluid. The Sicilian front will hold just long enough to invite their overconfidence... and then we cut their line of supply from the sea."
The Kaiser leaned back, tapping his cane against the marble. "And the Pacific? I’ve heard troubling whispers from our attachés in Bangkok and Saigon."
Bruno exhaled slowly. "The Philippines are proving... complicated."
He motioned silently for the two aides standing by to begin. The diterranean map was folded and replaced by the islands of the South Pacific.
Thin red lines traced Germany’s routes through Siam, the Dutch successor states, and across to Japan. The entire region pulsed with motion, an artery of empire.
"Our initial airborne drops into Luzon were a success," he explained. "Operation Donarsblitz was brilliant by every military tric. Airfields were captured intact with little contest, and half the Arican Third Armored Division was annihilated before breakfast."
He paused, eyes narrowing slightly. "But we have run into difficulties as we prepare to advance south toward Manila. The locals welcod us as liberators at first. Farrs, priests, even the old revolutionary guard. They rembered the famine and the fires from Arican rule. They wanted the Yankees gone as much as we did. But old wounds fester quickly."
Eva shifted slightly.
"You an the guerrillas."
Bruno nodded.
"Yes. Smaller factions, nationalists, anarchists, bandits who style themselves patriots. They see us not as allies, but as the next wave of occupiers. Their attacks are unpredictable: convoys ambushed, scouts vanishing into the jungle, villages booby-trapped and burned."
He turned toward his grandson, his voice hardening slightly.
"Your cousin Erich’s division was struck outside San Pablo yesterday. Fifty-three n dead, twenty-seven wounded, two supply vehicles destroyed. The enemy lted back into the forest before counterfire could be organized."
Bruno the Younger stiffened.
"Is he alright? Do the rebels have outside support, sir?"
"Erich is fine. But as for your second question that is unlikely, at least not for the ti being. Though there is one caveat in this regard. Arican air reconnaissance has begun coordinating with the rebels, marking our positions for local strikes. They hope to mire us in another colonial war."
The Kaiser grunted, gripping the table’s edge.
"And will they succeed?"
Bruno shook his head.
"No, Majesty. I won’t allow it. But..." He hesitated, then let the silence stretch. The map’s red lines glaring boldly across its surface.
"There are two divergent paths forward, and both are soaked with blood."
The Kaiser’s expression hardened. He could already sense the proposal Bruno was about to make.
As much as Wilhelm loved the man like a son, he knew Bruno carried a ruthlessness that bordered on the satanic.
"Go on," he said grimly.
Bruno allowed a faint smirk.
"Well, since you’ve given permission to speak, I won’t hold back. If I may be frank: winning over the hearts of the locals, and trying to gain their support, when they have such a history of foreign invaders... it is not a strategy that has ever proven to succeed."
Eva slowly nodded her head in silence. Her gaze was solemn and lantable, but understanding.
Her father had educated her well in history, strategy, and realpolitik. She understood exactly where he was heading, and chose to remain silent so as not to be complicit.
Bruno continued without interruption.
"If we loosen the leash, and allow our n to engage in, shall we call them, punitive operations... It will cost us blood in the short run. But if we target the agitators, execute the collaborators, seize logistics nodes, and make sheltering sedition impossible, then the population will have only one choice: hand the troublemakers over, or join them in the grave. You would be surprised he level of cruelty the human spirit will endure if it is the only ans of survival."
The Kaiser said nothing at first. He simply sat there, staring beyond Bruno’s visage, as if gazing into the darkness beyond the veil itself.
Bruno the Younger flinched slightly at his grandfather’s suggestion. His nerves were cald only by the warmth of his mother’s hand, which gripped his own for reassurance.
Finally, a hiss of air broke the silence. The Kaiser looked down at the photographs taken from the battlefield in Luzon, images of mutilated corpses, Germany’s youth cut down in a land half a world away.
And when he pushed the photographs aside, his eyes turned stern, his voice cold.
"You once told , when we were younger n, that no matter the circumstances of the war the Reich found itself embroiled in, you would pursue victory at any cost.
Are you saying now, in your old age, that you have finally grown sentintal?"
Bruno stared coldly as he sipped his tea, his face reflecting the weight of his response.
"Never."
The Kaiser rose from his chair, as if unwilling to prolong the conversation. His cane struck the marble with deliberate rhythm as he walked toward the door.
He stopped only once, glancing back toward the table where the Reichsmarschall sat in silence.
"Then you know what you must do."
Bruno the Younger and his mother, Eva, sat in stillness, witnesses to the exchange between two titans of a dying era.
One seed exhausted by the asures he had just authorized to be unleash. The other seed exhausted by the very concept of war itself.
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