Of Pride and Power - 39. Chapter 33: “Control the options, get others to play with the cards you deal”

In our original lives as Eric and Jack, Robert and I never studied military strategy as kids; though, Jack might have done so later in his life after my death based on how well-planned his alter-ego’s actions were. Like many other youths in our era, our knowledge of tactical warfare was ingrained through various popular media like manga graphic novels, and games, which we treated as common entertainment. The copious game-like plots such as occupying strong points for protagonists, cutting off reinforcements with swift attacks, and seeking hidden advantages likely contributed to the virulent militancy of our era’s populace towards one another. More conservative and nationalistic groups in our era gained similar knowledge from other equally popular media, like the Attack on Titan series, which portrayed its main protagonist, Eren, ushering in a genocide that killed 80% of all human life. He did that to protect those he cared about, it was the act of a pure anti-villain. Tragically, the militancy and ethnic cleansing elements within that story had more followers than the stories I’ve mentioned before. I was influenced as well, despite disagreeing with its ideals initially. To my descendants, I want you to understand that my amoral and unethical actions should not be championed. Do not use what I have written here as a template or justification for the future.

I knew from my encyclopedic knowledge of the timeline that this militancy led to needless conflicts without conclusions. When the battlefield is balanced by determined combatants, who view it as something greater than themselves, it is unlikely to create conditions for victory or defeat acceptable for both sides. A war to the destruction of an opposing ideology or identity cannot be won, nor can peace ever truly be achieved as no one will accept defeat. Thus, my goal had to be a tactical victory where no entrenched beliefs could remain.

At its heart, tactical warfare is the art of creating advantageous positions and motions with human beings engaged in various actions furthering these battle goals. However, winning a battle does not mean you win the tactical war. According to Carl von Clausewitz, a famed military tactician from my timeline, "Tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war". Ultimately, you need a winning strategy.

We had won a battle by countering the coup and capturing various leaders, but it was a positive reactionary response to the symptoms rather than the cause of the rebellion. There were still hidden elements within London from the Russian Empire and a noble army of ten thousand men outside the city waiting to invade. The mecha knights could have taken care of both elements over several days, but it would have allowed the retreat of the invisible Russian fleet that ferried their phantom legion to our shores and the escape of soldiers in the turmoil of battle against Thomas Radclyffe’s noble army, who would fester and plot. In my history, Queen Elizabeth’s lack of action against rebels during her reign led to several more assassination and coup attempts. With the factional conflict over resources and the cores that were being fought, I needed to stem these potential dangers before they occurred. The Russian fleet and rebel army had to be destroyed, and Prince Dmitry did not make idle threats.

However, I only had one attack submarine, six mecha knights, and two dozen royal guards, who survived the mutiny within their ranks and were not guarding the bunker housing various members of the royal court and their families. Many people in London were the servants and retainers of nobles and wealthy landowning members of Parliament, who I had executed for treason. These servants and retainers could act as fifth columns for my various foes if I were not careful. Without Titania’s natural ability to analyze and filter people, I had to use psychological techniques to get various people to do as I wanted.

My first move was to eliminate the radio jamming equipment. A key lesson learned from my era, communication is paramount to strategy, even more so than arms. By controlling the flow of information, you can control the tempo and flow of battle. Before Prince Dmitry Ivanovich of Russia’s public execution, I tasked the mecha knights to scour the city for radio jamming equipment, including in the private residences of nobles. According to my ability and the sensor suite of the mecha knights, the radio jammers only had a range of nine miles with four points of overlap at any location. This meant at most there were eight devices spread throughout London. I sent John with the remaining royal guards to destroy the radio jammers around the city, which was completed within an hour. By this point, it was almost dusk, when Jamie’s original birthday party would have occurred.

Lok, Brin, Alexander, and Helmut were dispatched to positions parallel to the gates of London, which faced the various units of the noble army. Gard, as knight commander relayed my orders and acted as my bodyguard, he was positioned at the base of a hot-air balloon. Jamie and I were watching everything from the elevated vantage point within the hot air balloon, approximately 2 miles above the ground. The Russian forces did not appear to have air units in the area and their long-range sniper rifles were incapable of reaching the balloon. This also gave me an unobstructed 360° view of the rebel army and the open sea with the hidden Russian fleet. I had a single core that allowed for rapid communications to all my forces, something I knew my foes lacked.

I had ordered Marc and Francis, who had deputized several agents of his intelligence network in London, to escort Prince Dmitry, Thomas Radclyffe, and captured soldiers towards Saint Margaret’s Church, better known in my era as Westminster Abbey, at an open field that served as a gathering place for the church. When the radio communication was restored, Francis sent out a public service announcement that explained what happened and the treachery of various nobles. He added that a public execution would occur at sunrise for the captured foreign prince and English lord, who conspired with him. Of course, it was a trap to draw out the remnants of the rebellion in London, it was quite clear and plain. However, it was an enticing target that drew a lot of attention, especially since I ordered that every one of these men be stabbed every hour until their execution. I wanted their screams of anger, resentment, and pain to be heard.

It was a cruel thing that I did to those men, including the rebel soldiers following Thomas Radclyffe and the Russian phantom legionnaires. A quick death is a mercy for those who I cannot allow to live, like my old friend William Paulet. A slow agonizing death is an objective example for those people who choose to harm those I love and those people who actively undermine me by force. By doing this, I had hoped to eliminate any further rebellions and instill a bit of respect. In my era, international laws like the Geneva Convention and Hague Principles were set up to prevent what I was doing outside St. Margaret, but they were empty lies of politicians to assuage the masses that cruel things would not occur in conflicts. It punished nascent evil but allowed mature evils to fester under the banner of freedom, cooperation, and sovereignty. For every war criminal these laws prosecuted, countless others escaped justice in the name of expediency and compromise. I do not advise my descendants to use these wicked tactics on common people or those who disagree with you or the direction of the country, but a line must be drawn with those who wish to suppress others and take power for selfish goals. As

The Russian phantom legion attempted to probe the grounds with several small squads, which I observed through my ability and directed Francis to create holes in the defensive formation to give the illusion of gaps. They were minor weak points that were unlikely to be exploited without significant forces, which was what I wanted. By this point, I had instructed Francis to cut out the tongues of the prisoners, both to increase their agony and make their words inaudible to their rescuers. The legionnaires did not know that we could pierce their “invisibility” technology with either the far more advanced sensors of the mecha knights or my special ability augmented with binoculars. After three failed attempts, the area fell into silence, but I could see activity on the Thames River with various small boats being launched. There were around fifty-seven men, and they were armed with bolt-action rifles and revolvers, weapons I furnished the nobles to create the Parliamentary compromises. They approached from the east. In the opposing direction, I used my ability to detect several phantom legionnaires with their active invisibility approaching from the south and north, totaling twenty-six soldiers in five units. These small legionnaires units were feints though as most of their forces were a contingent from the west, a mixed force of two thousand rebel troops and eight hundred legionnaires. The real firepower was in their Western forces, which had heavy machine guns and mortars. Under normal circumstances, there should have been a major battle fought on this day in Westminster.

However, my displacement ability was activated once their various forces neared the field. The arriving phantom legionnaires were eliminated by displacing their brainstems. I did not want to damage the remaining eight hundred and twenty-six battle suits as they were an impressive technical achievement without the use of a core to power or operate them. Marc or Francis caused damage to the other phantom legionnaires’ equipment due to the dangerous circumstances earlier, so it was a boon to have intact suits for researchers at Cadbury Hill. I had used a large amount of my focus to disable all the Russian phantom legionnaires, then document their locations for future retrieval by Royal Marine arriving at daybreak.

As for the rebel army and the noble sympathizers, my ability was nearing its limits by the time I vanquished the phantom legionnaires, so I limited the scope of my displacements to target only the heavy weapons and explosives of the rebels. Without heavy ordinances, Marc would have a nominal battlefield advantage as a mecha knight. After displacing the heavy weaponry, the enemy troops began to panic, I ordered Marc to wipe out all the larger force of two thousand royal troops and John’s royal guard, who had arrived at the abbey after destroying the jammers, to wipe out the sympathizer force arriving from the west. The royal guards were drawn from experienced soldiers and were armed from the private armory that I had built at Whitehall Palace, which included several mortars and advanced air-cooled light machine gun reminiscent of the Browning M1919, which weighed 31 lbs. and can fire around 600 rounds per minute. Unlike the heavier machine guns that were employed by the Habsburg-Roman Alliance for siege and destructive potential, our weapon development focus was mobility and flexibility, which can work in defense or offense.

I wish I could tell you all what happened during the fighting that night, but I was so drained from the use of my abilities. I barely maintained consciousness for the sake of Jamie, who was huddled by my side. I knew Francis was acting out the second part of our plan, communicating to the Russian fleet with the secure radio frequency transmitters acquired from the dead legionnaires. There was only three designated radio operators in the phantom legion. Due to the death of Fyodor Ivanovich at Whitehall Palace, Francis had gained tactical knowledge of enemy field operations and commands, including the faces and names of the radio operators. I identified the individuals with radio transmitters and Francis headed out to acquire their equipment. The Russian Phantom Legion utilized a burst transmission code rather than audio signals from their wireless transmitters. The lack of audio verification was a boon as Francis had not learned Russian and I did not have time to create a mind-like with him to transmit my knowledge of the language. Francis' ability has its limits in terms of information gathering and utilization, but it was very effective in these circumstances as he relayed command codes from the radio transmitters with Fyodor’s authentication. He remotely set up a rendezvous and convergence coordinate to the invisible Russian fleet, which would not be ready for the surprise Robert had planned for them. Robert like me was not feeling merciful, he was preparing a localized low-pressure area in the sea to induce hypobaric hypoxia, essentially, he wanted to strangle all of our son’s killers to death, literally. The fleet and its equipment would be preserved for research and development as well.

I patted Jamie’s head and opened the insulated basket where several sandwiches, fruit salad and a marzipan cupcake lay. It was a far cry from the lavish dinner that we had planned for the birthday party, but it was better than nothing. I set the cupcake with an unlit candle in front of my young son because it was dangerous to light a fire in mid-air with flammable materials around.

Instead of traditionally blowing out the candle to make a wish, I asked Jamie to hold onto the cord controlling the airflow for the balloon. When he was ready to make a wish, he could pull on the cord and temporarily cut the fire for the balloon.

After he silently looked at the cupcake for a very long time, I asked, “Jamie, are you ready to make your wish?”

He stared at me with tears falling down his face, “Can you bring back Harry?”

I had considered it, I ordered Gard to investigate the sight of the destroyed Tower for Henry’s remains, but all the organic materials were scattered in the debris with no intact components. If we had found Henry’s corpse, Robert and I would have spent every year of our lives redeveloping the technology to bring him back as Jack did for me. Hell, we’d have settled for allowing Henry to live out his half-life as mecha knight with Marc and Gard, which I think he’d be fine with. It was another reason why I was so ruthless that day.

I frowned at the question and considered lying to Jamie, but I have never hidden any facts of life from my children, “No, we cannot Jamie, the bad people had destroyed his body completely.”

“Why can’t they leave us alone? Aren’t they from far in the east, why do they want to hurt us?” Jamie pushed more questions to me.

It was a complex issue filled with a lot of geopolitics and needs from various sides in conflicts outside our borders. I think there are people in every era who have asked similar questions, but they will never find a satisfactory answer. In the worst case, some attempt isolation to avoid further conflicts, thinking by avoiding questions and answers, they can avoid conflict. It’s not how interactions work among human beings and never will be. There is no such thing as “Live and let live”. The notion is an ideal that falls flat because there are people with ambitions, goals, and dreams that are not and cannot be shared by others. It would be months later that I learned the reason for the massive coup attempt in England was due to the false rumors spread by Catherine de Medici about cores and weapons I had developed, which were used in the Poland-Lithuania Kingdom against the Russian army approaching Kyiv. During this era, Kyiv was a territory under Polish control, which in turn was a Roman Catholic-dominated monarchy and ally of the Habsburg Empire. In my history, Kyiv’s Orthodox Christian populace was unhappy with Catholic rule and had sought aid from Russia to remove their Polish overlords. The Russians would have been successful after a century of warfare, when the Cossacks had revolted in the area and joined the Russian Empire. The failure of Russian forces to win the battle, rumors of Jack Humes being England’s monarch, and the apparent rise of England as a major industrial power were enough to propel them to act. I did not know any of that, but even if I did, it would have been too complex to explain to a barely 3-year-old boy.

I was reminded of a quote from Queen Elizabeth II about tragedy, “Someone once said, Grief is the price we pay for love.”

In a shift of emotions, Jamie frowned at me, “What does that even mean?”

“I think it means that we can’t always know why bad things happen. Sometimes we just have to accept the tragedy when it occurs and remember the happier times we had,” I told Jamie while grabbing a plastic container of tea and two cups.

“That sounds pretty stupid, who said that?” Jamie asked, his grief melting into indignation.

I laughed for the first time in the day at his remark, “It would have been the future Queen of England, Elizabeth II. She had a weird way of trying to connect with modern people with paraphrased quotes that sounded disjoint. Give her a break Jamie, she was 75 years old when she said this.”

Jamie rolled his eyes, looked at the cupcake in front of him, and pulled the cord.