To say things were difficult would be a severe understatement.Over the past ten days, I had been overwhelmed quite thoroughly by the war. In all my past lives I"d never actually been the one giving out the orders in a war, I"d been captain once, back in the Maldives fighting Malagasy expansionism. But I"d never been the active chief commanding officer in an ongoing war, I simply never lived long enough to be one.
Finally seeing the story from both sides I quickly developed an appreciation for the work the Commanders in my past lives did. How they did it without completely breaking down? I hadn"t the slightest clue.
But then again, these ARE the same people that would initiate a war in the first place, perhaps I just wasn"t cut out for the job. The only thing keeping me remotely competent would be the War Tab on the intel-ii.
The little page that allowed me to navigate everything that had the slightest relation to the War in three-dimension. The warpage had allowed me to avoid complete defeat on many occasions, it also taught me that the Malagasy favoured their battles in the night like the devils they were. Unlucky for them, the War tab was set to alert me whenever action was being taken against my forces, which, in a war, happened to be quite often.
Sleep had become a myth. As much as I wanted so badly to drown myself in some quality bourbon, I knew once I did it would result in a terrible mistake.
So far, with its help, I"d managed to thwart every attempt the Malagasy made at demolishing our forces. I learned on the second day of its use that 50meter diameter was provided by every man on the field. Not much use seeing as it wasn"t truly effective unless each man was spread across. However, the aircraft"s provided approximately 50kilometres of surveillance and added to the general map. This meant that I had access to the information of whatever was around the men or aircraft.
The War Tab map was constantly updating with the slightest movement of the men, there were no unknowns behind our lines but across enemy lines is where the mystery lies.
The large cargo shipment from Namibia and Egypt had finally arrived, that meant we now had state of the art war machinery. Our men were finally armed to the teeth with true killing machines, enabling them to at last push back on the encroaching Malagasy, a retreat was no longer acceptable.
Among the imported standard military equipment, the Egyptian government had given us a dozen drones. No, not the ones that dropped bombs on the soil of foreign nations and was controlled by a computer program. The little ones that could carry small packages and carry out light surveillance.
These little drones were at the moment I distributed ten of them to captains in the army, part of the Schelarian Peoples Army"s equipment. The War tab recorded its existence and purpose in inventory too. But the fun part was, the moment it was deployed, it provided the same 50kilometer range of an aircraft to the War Tab map.
It was cheap, it was expendable, it was a breakthrough. I sent one to the penal production lines, along with replicating the new military equipment, their top priority was producing as many of the drones as they could.
I"d tried to contact President Masud and Bernador to thank them for keeping up the end of their deal, but my calls were simply not picked up by either of them. I was a bit worried about what would cause such and very paranoid to Masud, he"d better not be planning anything too wise.
But I didn"t bother my pretty little head with it. I"d gotten what I wanted, security, power, resources, and capital. Schelar would be on track even after the war was over.
For once I was in high spirits. We were pushing back the Malagasy with limited casualties now that we had the equipment from Egypt, we could now thwart would be ambushes with drones, the air force could focus on protecting our navies from aerial attacks and combat the enemies air superiority on land instead of constantly providing close air support for the troops.
For once I could breathe easy.
For once I THOUGHT I could breathe easy.
But on my hands, I had the bright red blood of one of the few people I"d found it in my heart to trust. I held onto Luciano"s free hand in mine, there was blood everywhere and it had gotten on me even as I kneeled on the floor, with my mouth hung open and dried up.
I still didn"t quite understand what had happened. The man who"d barged in to report the incident had described it as an explosion at the armoury while he"d been taking inventory for some reason.
By the time I"d gotten to the med bay, the doctors had begun operating on him and everyone else unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius. Despite the doctor"s pleadings I"d barged in anyway.
He looked terrible. s.h.i.t, he looked dead. His left arm was blown off above his elbow and shrapnel had done a great number on the left side of his body. The doctors had spent a great amount of time removing bits and pieces of rock, wood, steel and G.o.d knows what else.
"Sir, we have to ask you to leave. You are not sterilized and you bring a chance of infecting the patient."
That was all bull. I knew they only wanted me out of the room because they felt nervous manoeuvring around my body to get to where they needed. I"d admit I did stand in the way but I felt I needed to be by his side.
"Sir, you are also commanding a war…"
I blocked him out after that. I simply walked out, ignoring whatever it was that the doctors might have been muttering under their breaths.
He was right. I was commanding the success of the war, I had to win the d.a.m.n war or else Luciano almost getting killed would be for nought.
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Almost?
Why was I so confident he would live the operation? Or the aftermath of his injuries? I didn"t know anything about medicine past the necessary first aid measures but I knew he looked dead as a doornail. The doctors may have well been performing his autopsy in front of me.
s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t!
I"d lost it. The bit of relief I felt mere hours ago, the bit of hope for a happy, stress-free and secure future was thrown out the window. s.h.i.t, now I sounded like I was blaming Luciano for ruining my mood with his accident. I"m a terrible person, aren"t I?
I walk into the nearest bathroom, whoever was inside sped out with a salute as I entered. The water felt like nothing on my bloodstained hands. It seemed like the liquid didn"t want to have Luciano"s blood on it, his blood was my weight to bear, I was the one who put him in this situation.
I could have coordinated the army from my office in the capital but no, I just had to come down here and displace him into doing the most menial thing. Inventory? Jesus, Hasina.
I walk to my office, my squad of bodyguard following lightly behind me and some even ahead of me. My security detail had been increased the moment the explosion took off, shaking the entire base. The head of my security detail had even slapped a gun in my hand, ordered me to stay put and locked me in my office as he went out to scout what had happened.
I take out my phone, scrolling through my contacts and yet again I further worsen my mood. I scroll through countless contacts, mostly people from my past, people from school, a girl I"d dated the last year of high school, my favourite lecturers, my Father and Mother, heck even Loup"s contact was in here.
But at that moment there were only people I could call, only two people who would bother to listen to the wails I"d been "bravely" holding back, only two people that could love me.
"h.e.l.lo? Ha, hey, Aina."