If it wasn’t autumn, I’d have slid a bug down your back by now.
When Vika told him this, it took Shin a second to realize why he said it—before it dawned on him that Frederica must have told him her real identity of her own accord.
Her true background was information they didn’t disclose to others out of concern for her safety, but if Frederica herself had decided to tell him, he wasn’t going to disagree with that choice. Vika seemed to understand that, so his talk of sneaking bugs down people’s backs was just a joke.
…Except his words prompted Lerche to charge at Shin with a poor frozen butterfly in hand, so Vika only treated it as a joke because he couldn’t find a bug even after looking for one.
Either way.
“—Oh. You already know where the base is. So you were already drafting the plan when the satellite bombardment cut you off.”
Since he was already in on the secret, Shin saw no need to hide everything else from him. Shin called a meeting for some made-up reason and was now seated at a table with Raiden and Vika.
“We already decided on the operation’s name, what units would participate, and its date before the second large-scale offensive happened. But now that the situation’s changed, we need to reexamine our information, and we’re reformulating which units should take part.”
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Operation Overlord.
Its goal was to seize a Legion command position and use Frederica’s blue blood as an empress to configure who had command rights over the Legion. Since the murder machines were still carrying on the Empire’s dying will, she could order them to shut down or self-destruct. It was a grand operation aiming to put an instant, decisive end to the Legion War. And with the second large-scale offensive surrounding all humankind and pushing them against the wall, it was their last chance to turn the tables at the eleventh hour.
“The free regiments we were hoping to include in the operation ended up being deployed across different fronts to compensate for casualties, and they can’t be moved… Problem is, we don’t have much time to prepare.”
Prior to the meeting, Shin had checked on progress with Joschka, who told him the elite divisions under the major nobles, kept out of combat so far as reserves, were being sent into battle. On top of that, the nobles were considering conscripting more soldiers to make up for their insufficient numbers.
The Strike Package for Operation Overlord, and so once Lena returned, he wanted Frederica to tell her and Grethe the truth. As brigade commander and tactical commander, Grethe and Lena would need time to consider the operation. And besides, having to withhold the truth about the possibility that the war could soon be over weighed on him. Being able to confide in Vika about the operation made him feel the slightest bit guilty, however.
He got the feeling that Lena could end up becoming oddly jealous if he didn’t tell her soon.
With this concern—which was both strange and inconsequential in the grand scale of Operation Overlord—crossing Shin’s mind, he looked over at a map of the western front displayed on a holo-screen. Raiden raised a brow, apparently sensing what he was thinking, and Shin decided to kick him in the ass later.
“Recently, several corps-size Legion forces have appeared on the western front. These forces aren’t the same size as the ones that wiped out the Republic… If I had to guess, a surviving country to the west or south must have fallen.”
It must have been a country from the southern or far west countries—which they hadn’t been able to establish communications with—or perhaps an eastern, far eastern, or southwestern country.
Vika scoffed. “New units have appeared on the United Kingdom’s eastern and western fronts, too. The one on the eastern front is probably the one that destroyed the Fleet Countries, but we don’t know where the one on the western front came from. Your assumption that a country must have fallen is likely correct.”
“Even a large country like the United Kingdom and a mountainous one like the Alliance are being pressured. It only makes sense that smaller countries would end up falling… The Federacy isn’t going to last for much longer, either.”
Even just holding their positions resulted in a mounting death toll, while the enemy’s numbers only increased. Even with refugees joining the conscription pool, they were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of how many trainees and reservists they had. The Federacy truly wouldn’t last long.
Eventually, they’d end up in a situation much like when Vika used all his remaining Alkonost units to retake the Revich Citadel. Right now, their only choices were to either throw themselves at a breakthrough solution, reckless though it may be, or wait until the enemy ground them down to nothing.
“Yeah… So we have to pick the bare minimum of forces we’ll need and confirm the information we have. Once we have that, we’ll make our move.”