With the Morpho’s bombardment ongoing, the number of evacuees from the frontier territories steadily grew, and even the central territories around Sankt Jeder were running out of room to accommodate them. Almost all the vacancies in hotels and apartment buildings had been filled to capacity when the second large-scale offensive began.
For the time being, public facilities were opened up and converted to accept evacuees, but even those facilities were limited in number. Daily necessities and foodstuffs were becoming an issue, too.
After being sent out to help with building facilities, distributing food, and having to be overwhelmed with demands and complaints and appeals that he had to comply with for days on end, Theo was exhausted. With the lack of combatants on the front turning critical, the reservists weren’t the only ones being called there. Soldiers were being pulled out of support units, leaving units like Theo’s understaffed.
And so he wobbled over to the base’s food court, intent on getting something sweet to drink in the form of caramel coffee. That was when he noticed it.
“…Huh?”
Both the café he was headed for, as well as the fast-food chain next to it, and indeed every store in the food court…had upped their prices across the board, albeit slightly. He wondered why while ordering his caramel coffee, and as he sipped on it, the question kept churning in the back of his mind until it suddenly occurred to him.
“Right… The territories…”
✦ ✦ ✦
Following the front line falling back due to the second large-scale offensive, part of the production territories had to be evacuated, which meant the production of their agricultural land, livestock farms, and factories was also lost. The influence of that was felt two months later, with supply dropping in Sankt Jeder and prices hiking all over the capital area. This applied not only to crops, which were after their harvest season, but also to dairy products, meat, and daily necessities.
As she watched a news report stating some necessities had to be rationed, Lena sipped on the synthesized tea Annette brewed her.
Such luxury items were the first to be replaced with the cultivated starch from the production plants. This meant that going forward, they would either become preciously rare or be churned out of the factories, which stressed production numbers over quality. It was much like how terrible the synthesized coffee and tea had been in the Republic, with the exception of products sold in a few rare shops in Liberté et Égalité’s department stores.
“I doubt they’ll start serving those plastic explosives as food anytime soon, but…”
Annette muttered this, apparently thinking the same thing. Lena cracked a faint, strained smile. During the two months of the first large-scale offensive, Lena had to eat the synthesized food blocks served in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. It looked like white clay and tasted like void, to the point that labeling it as food felt like a travesty. Annette probably felt the same and didn’t want to have to eat that thing again for as long as she lived.
“The Federacy is much larger and richer in resources than the Republic was, and things never came to that while the Republic was inside the walls, so I doubt it’ll happen here.”
“That might be true, but that just means the Federacy’s population is that much bigger. If the evacuation of the production territories doesn’t stop and more farms and factories end up abandoned, production will keep going down, and the shortage will get worse. It’s not impossible.”
Lena pondered this for a few seconds. Annette was right. And then Lena shuddered.
What if that thing became their primary source of food again?
✦ ✦ ✦
The voluntary evacuations following the Morpho attacks put the military’s transport net, which was already heavily congested, in a worse position. Groups traveled the roads unsupervised and unregulated, with no instructions of what paths to take or where their destinations were. They passed through trails they weren’t allowed to wander into. Roads that were exclusive for military use and railroad tracks were clogged by refugees, and they gathered at supply depots, seeking aid, which obstructed military supplies from arriving and moving.
All this meant that soldiers had to be relegated to guarding and guiding refugees, which pushed the supply unit, already stretched to its limit, over the edge.
As a result, the second northern front under Lieutenant Colonel Niam Mialona, as well as other fronts, were set to experience delays in their supply runs. The ammunition, fuel, medicine, and reinforcements they required wouldn’t reach them. This meant that units requesting supplies would have to account for the delays by making larger orders, which would further increase the supply unit’s burden.
Without necessary troops and supplies, positions that would otherwise hold on would start falling, and wounded soldiers who would have survived with sufficient medicine would die. That would cascade into more soldiers being injured and dying to the constant pressure the Legion applied, which would then require units to demand more reinforcements, which would further strain the logistic units.
That said, with the state of the war being what it was, reservists died soon after taking to the front, so there was a constant shortage of troops.
“This is a headache. What are we supposed to do?”
Lieutenant Colonel Mialona finally sighed. Be it lack of supplies or reinforcements, their sole grace was that the bare minimum of food supplies were arriving on time. The Federacy prioritized the army when it came to delivering the finest provisions, since high-quality meals helped boost morale. This was why the cities on the home front were suffering from a lack of food and a decline in its quality, while the soldiers on the front faced no such problems yet. Before long, luxuries like sweets, cigarettes, and alcohol would become precious commodities on the home front.
Her unit’s young operator, standing by her side, spoke with a stiff, serious tone.
“You can get a hearty meal in the army. Maybe that should become the Federacy military’s recruitment slogan, Princess.”
“What century did you pull that idea from?” She couldn’t help but smile bitterly at his black humor.
People enlisting in the army because they had no other way of filling their bellies was a situation that had never happened throughout the Empire’s glorious history. Sensing the joking in the air, her lieutenant then added with a jovial tone:
“Maybe we should gather all these evacuees and use them as reservists. That’ll relieve our lack of soldiers, lighten up the pressure on supplies, and resolve the food shortage back at the home front.”
Lieutenant Colonel Mialona’s unpleasant smile deepened. She knew this was just a joke, and yet.
“Don’t be stupid, Hisno.”