Chapter 15: Inside the Bunker

"Ah, forgive me for killing the mood," Philipe, who had been sitting with his head bowed in sadness, lifted his gaze again and made an effort to smile at us.

None of us would have held it against him. Everything he had said made complete sense.

War is a disaster, I knew that well enough. I had never cared for politics, and taking sides in it was something only fools did, but I hoped the anti-war factions back home could see just how desperately the people of Zelparia were counting on us to come and save them.

"Don't worry, nobody's holding that against you," Lieutenant Bulgers said, showing his palm, which was exactly what I had been thinking. "By the way, may we start restocking our supplies?"

"Sure! That is precisely why we stockpiled them," Philipe said warmly, gesturing for us to go ahead.

With that permission and the generous gesture that came with it, Lieutenant Bulgers ordered the others to move toward the locker full of supplies for the continuation of our operation.

Setting their mugs down on the table, the men moved wildly and eagerly like kindergarteners scrambling to grab their favorite toy at a toy store. The mortar squad pushed to the front of the line since they operated Varexil weapons from the beginning, and because the caliber different from the Arkenian Hesley, this was a prime opportunity for them to restock with matching ammunition.

They all packed together in one dense cluster, and even I had a tremendous amount of trouble trying to squeeze myself in among them. The bunker, which had not been unbearably cramped before, became suffocatingly tight and made it genuinely hard to breathe.

"Hey, jackass! I grabbed this first!"

"Fuck off!"

It was so crowded I could not even tell who was shouting, but they were absolutely acting like children. Were they really getting into a fight over this? These gun enthusiasts were something else entirely.

"Damn, old man! You actually got that beauty?"

Through the gaps in the crowd I could make out Horgan working the action on a rifle and hoisting it with visible pride. I recognized that weapon. It had appeared in an Imperial propaganda film we had watched at the airfield on the night before we flew out two days later.

"That one came from a raid a few weeks back, but we have been struggling to source ammunition for it since the Empire only recently deployed it alongside a new caliber type. I am sure you understand."

The weapon itself was a striking departure from anything familiar. Nothing like the standard bolt-action or the submachine guns we were used to seeing. It had an ergonomic pistol grip, a long curved magazine, and a steel receiver finished in deep black that looked both solid and lethal. Its design seemed to bridge the gap between a precision rifle and an automatic assault weapon, a frightening new piece of hardware in the Empire's hands.

"You'd better be careful," Philipe's voice of warning squeezed in among the murmurs. "They have started distributing that weapon. I am afraid you will begin encountering soldiers carrying it more and more often."

"For me, I don't sweat it too much," Horgan replied, fiddling with the rifle he was holding. "We'll have something to balance it out eventually. Though we were honestly a little rattled at the airfield when we first saw it."

"Haha, that's all because of that poor bastard," Pisger chimed in, bringing up the idiotic incident from a few days back.

"He deserved it, though."

The weapon had initially put the soldiers at the airfield on edge after it showed up in the propaganda film. The twist was that the officer in charge of the screening had simply played the wrong film by mistake, and he ended up suspended afterward because what he had done was tank morale right before a major operation.

But since the troops had already seen it, the senior officers eventually issued a statement saying the weapon had only just been produced and had not yet been widely distributed, partly because as Philipe had mentioned, the new caliber required an adjustment period before it could be rolled out at scale.

Of course that statement did not immediately calm anyone down, and in the end our general was forced to reveal that we had actually been quietly researching a comparable weapon of our own in secret, currently in the process of being shipped out and expected to reach us within a few days of securing the beach. Really, classified information that never needed to see the light of day, blown open by one person's spectacular carelessness.

Anyway, watching how enthusiastic my squadmates were, it made me wonder whether they would ever actually use what they were taking. More likely than not, most of them were grabbing a few weapons simply to bring home as trophies.

"Ack-" someone had just driven their elbow straight into my nose.

"Ah, Lise. I don't see you there," Pisger turned to me with a somewhat guilty look on his face.

"I'm starting to think the Emperor had a point when he called you all uncivilized barbarians," I muttered, commenting on the whole madness of it while holding my sore nose.

After a tremendous struggle, I finally managed to claim a spot at the locker, still feeling the pushing from behind me. Unlike the others who were busy fighting over firearms, my own priority was to grab the canned food. My rations itself were still untouched, so carrying them on my own would already be a challenge, but even so I still reached for a few.

"Sons of bitch, give me some room!"

"Shit Elise, you squeeze in there any further and you'll come out flat, haha!"

"Shut it, Pat. I'm handling your food while you all fight over your girls."

Despite my complaints, none of them paid me any attention and kept shoving their hands past me to reach the bottom shelf.

Realizing it was pointless to hope they would settle down, I joined in the urgency myself, shifting the food supplies onto my arm and pressing them against my chest. There was clearly no more room to carry anything else, so I simply hugged whatever I could manage and started pushing my way back through the mob.

"Watch it, watch it, move please."

After carving through the madness I finally broke free into open air. With my arms already trembling slightly from bearing an uneven load, I dropped everything onto the table and it all scattered and spread across the surface.

After that I turned around and pushed back in again, grabbing more of the same until my arms were full once more. I repeated this several times over, losing count of which run it even was anymore.

Once I felt the pile on the table had grown sufficiently mountainous, I started sorting through the canned food by sliding it into two separate groups on either side. There was no way we could take everything, so I had no choice but to pick what was actually worth carrying.

Like it or not, the ideal food for a soldier was not what tasted good, but what could be consumed quickly and get into your stomach without fuss. That was the bitter reality of it, and there was nothing to be done about it. No five-star restaurant dining here.

As an example I also had to separate them by the weight of the cans themselves and check the calorie count based on what was printed on the label. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to be carrying a two kilogram can that turned out to be nothing but water and green bean skins. Low calorie and heavy to carry was a big no for us.

"Yo, what the hell happened here?"

Ashton appeared alongside Freddy from above after Lieutenant Bulgers had called them back in, having already set up the warning system around the perimeter.

"Oh! This is my favorite sardines," Ashton cheerfully reached for one of the cans sitting on the side that was not supposed to be taken.

"Don't take that!" I stopped him immediately and swapped it out for one that had already passed my sorting. "This one. This one has less salt."

"These are Pasya brand? Nah, too much grease," he said with complete indifference, tucking the salted sardines into his bag. "I'll stick with this one."

His total disregard made my blood boil on the spot. I ha dgnd been working hard this whole time to sort everything out, and he had the nerve to casually grab something I had already written off as nutritional garbage. And if anything went wrong because of it, I would be the one dealing with the fallout.

Clang!

"Hey! What's that for!?"

Honestly, I did not even know myself. I had been so furious that I flung the can at Ashton purely on reflex, and he had just barely managed to twist his body sideways in time, taking it on his upper arm instead.

What the hell am I doing? The problem was the sound it made was loud enough to kill the room dead in an instant. The whole crowd that had been busy picking through the weapons all went still and stared at me.

Even Raylan and Nira in the corner near the coffee maker had their little moment together was ruined because of me.

But what was worse was over in the corner, the strategic discussion between Lieutenant Bulgers, the Staff Sergeant, and Philipe came to a halt. Lieutenant Bulgers slowly lowered the map he had been holding and looked over at us with one eyebrow raised, an expression I rarely saw from him but one that was deeply intimidating. Philipe looked confused, his eyes moving from the can on the floor to me with a concerned look that made me feel even more ridiculous than I already did.

"Ju-just pick that up," I said, trying not to sound flustered, though it was largely pointless.

"We-well, alright then."

Fortunately Ashton was cooperative enough at this point, reaching down for the oil packed sardine can from the floor and returning the forbidden sardines in exchange.

With that I tried to manage the situation by turning my body sideways, averting my face toward the table and pretending to continue the sorting that had already been finished. Fortunately that worked well enough, because the awkward silence began to fade and everyone in the room returned to their own business, Lieutenant Bulgers included, his attention back on his map.

That outburst genuinely caught me off guard, and I could not stop thinking about it. I mean, what has been going on with me lately?

This had happened once before too, right before we all boarded the aircraft. We had been sitting in a row just outside the plane while I was handing out glucose supplement pills, the equivalent of dextrose, explaining what they were for and when to take them, and I had not been able to hold back my frustration when I found the platoon members talking among themselves without paying any attention to what I was saying.

I did not know anymore. Why had I become so short tempered like this when normally I preferred to just keep things buried. Maybe it was the extreme stress causing all of it, but that was still no excuse to just let it go unchecked. I needed to be more careful.

After everyone who had been crowded around the locker had their fill of picking through the weapons, it was time for them to take the surplus food I had set aside earlier.

Without being told, they formed a line and began choosing in an orderly manner. It was strange, genuinely strange, because I had never asked them to do that, yet they disciplined themselves for this entirely on their own. Not a single complaint from any of them, just grabbing what they needed and stepping away from me as I sat there watching it all unfold.

"Two each, Horgan," I said, folding my arms.

"....Yes, chief."

Well, whatever the reason, it was honestly a tremendous help. I no longer had to manage them like kindergarteners lining up for lunch.

As a result of all that, the pile on the table began to shrink. Each person was only allowed to take two cans to carry themselves, which worked out evenly for twelve people, meaning a total of twenty four cans out of at least sixty, the rest having been ruled out as unsuitable for our operational needs.

Hmm? The problem was there were still four cans left sitting on the table, which made me realize that Lieutenant Bulgers and the Staff Sergeant were too absorbed in the map with Philipe to have come over.

So I carefully gathered all four cans into my arms and held them against my chest. I took it upon myself to bring them over, worried they might forget entirely from being too focused.

"What about this route, Morel?"

As I drew closer to the three of them, their discussion became clearly audible, and just being in proximity to it made it immediately obvious how serious things were. Lieutenant Bulgers appeared to be pointing at something on the surface of the map.

"That won't do, Lieutenant," Philipe replied, still unaware I was standing right behind him. "That route is already flooded. In fact, Varexil, they flood many fields on purpose, all along the Lonfre coast."

Not wanting to interrupt their conversation, I found myself standing there in silence without realizing it, still holding the cans and just watching their discussion unfold.

"I always wondered why there were suddenly marshes that weren't on our maps. Well, that answers everything," the Lieutenant muttered, even though he now had his answer.

"This is all the doing of General Alexios Komnenos, Lieutenant," Philipe added. "Seriously, every idea that comes out of that man's head becomes a headache for us the moment it gets put into practice."

"Well, I really didn't expect him to go that far," Lieutenant Bulgers' long exhale was audible from where I was standing. "Before the operation we were already briefed on this general. We're also already told how visionary this guy was, wasn't that right, Sergeant?"

"For real, Skipper," that was Scarface's distinctive voice. "After the first Tuarian War, those southern states should've had a garbage military. But when I was there for their second invasion five years back, those bastards were suddenly tight as hell and a real pain in the ass to put down. Didn't make sense until they finally admitted the Empire had their hands in it the whole time. Still though, making us bleed that hard with an inferior force? Gotta hand it to the son of a bitch."

So my guess about Scarface having served far longer than any of us turned out to be right. On top of that, this was during the time the southern nations had united to push against us. I still remembered being ten years old in this world when the man who was my father here had been visibly shaken reading that news in his morning paper over breakfast at the table.

What made it truly terrifying was how far they had managed to push into Arken's borders, but thankfully because of soldiers like Scarface, their invasion had ultimately been repelled.

While I was lost in the memory of the tragedy that had set everything in motion, my gaze met Lieutenant Bulgers'. His left eyebrow finally lifted when he registered my presence. As he straightened up, his eyes drifted past Philipe and landed on me.

"Ah, Lise. I'm guessing those aren't just for decoration?" His expression softened just enough to acknowledge me.

"Ah," I startled slightly when he addressed me. "Yes, Lieutenant. These are for the both of you."

"Alright, hand it to me."

Hearing that I stepped forward toward him, passing Philipe who angled his body aside to make room for me.

"Here you go, sir," I stepped close enough and held out the two cans that were his.

"Wet corned beef," Lieutenant Bulgers examined the cans I had handed him. "Honestly, I'm not too thrilled about this."

"...It's all that was left."

"I know, I know. So please don't throw that can at me."

I could not stop myself from flinching the moment Lieutenant Bulgers took a jab at me about that incident. I did not even know whether he was joking or not, because I went completely silent and stared down at the floor trying to hold back the embarrassment crawling up my face.

But then I felt something tapping my helmet. "Alright, come on, I'm just messing with you, no need to take it that hard, haha. But still, let's not do that again."

"....Alright, sir."

With that I moved on to finish what I had come over to do. I shifted slightly to face Scarface who was standing there looking straight down at me. Standing directly in front of this man made it very clear just how enormous he was. Insane.

"You know eavesdropping is bad manners, right?" Scarface jabbed at me the moment he took the can I held out.

"My apologies, Sergeant. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, I just didn't want to rudely interrupt your discussion," which was honestly a partial lie, because I had been genuinely pulled into every word of their conversation.

"Alright, that's enough, Sergeant," Lieutenant Bulgers beside him put a hand on Scarface's shoulder. "No need to be that hard on her. She's just doing her job babysitting us."

Scarface responded to that with nothing but his trademark grunt, stuffing both cans now in his hands into the bag he was carrying.

Once again I could not figure out why he disliked me as much as he did. What made it worse was that he had gone out of his way to say back in bootcamp that if he ever got shot he would rather be handled by conventional medics than by someone like us, and judging by the scars covering his body, the shape of which suggested natural healing without any magical intervention, I was fairly certain he had meant every word of it.

"You got anything else, Lise?"

"Ehm, actually, Lieutenant," something had been on my mind, and here I turned toward Philipe standing behind me. "Mr. Morel, I know this might come across as a little forward. But do you have any medical supplies?"

"Just call me Morel or even Philipe if that goes, no need additional title," Philipe looked mildly surprised when I addressed him so formally. "Forgive me, girl. We are also short on that ourselves, which is why I refused when you wanted to inject that morphine earlier. I know how valuable that is for soldiers."

"I see, it's alright though, my bag is still fully stocked. I was just trying to get any surplus if possible, just in case."

"Surplus, huh? That's very Arkenian of you, that's very capitalism," Philipe commented with a light laugh.

"....Hahaha," I had nothing to say to that so I responded with a dry laugh instead.

"Wait a moment," Philipe's laughter did not last long because he suddenly stopped as though something had just come back to him, opening his eyes back toward my face. "Actually we are not that short. The posts in southeastern Lonfre have medical supplies, in fact many of the supplies there are better grade than what we have on the northeastern coast."

"Sorry, what's that mean?" I asked, trying to understand what he was actually getting at.

"Lieutenant," instead of answering my question, Philipe turned back to the Lieutenant. "Was all of this your doing?"

"What?" Lieutenant Bulgers raised an eyebrow, visibly surprised and confused.

Honestly his reaction represented not just me, but the Staff Sergeant standing nearby could not hold back his own bewildered expression either. All of us stared at Philipe who was stroking his chin, waiting for an answer from the Lieutenant who himself had no idea what any of this meant.

"You know," Philipe now moved his hand from his chin to scratch his head, struggling to explain something. "You got us, Lieutenant. Our intel picked up on the movement of the Empire's main forces being repositioned to the southeast, with their troops concentrating there. Varexil themselves became our source of intel for guessing your arrival. You people are really good at the deception, even we got caught by it."

The three of us went silent hearing his explanation, because we were all completely out of the loop, unable to make sense of a single word coming out of his mouth.

"What?" Once again Lieutenant Bulgers spoke for all of us. "Main forces? To the southeast?"

"What?" Rather than offering any explanation, Philipe did exactly the same thing back.

"What?"

What the hell is happening!? Suddenly the situation had turned into a game of ping pong, everyone just lobbing the same word back and forth.

"Wait, wait, don't tell me you actually overshot all the way to Lorvaine!?"

Lieutenant Bulgers furrowed his brow. "Well, we did overshoot by a dozen or so meters from the objective, but Lorvaine was our target from the start."

"Then why did the Empire move their forces-"

"Alright, that's enough of that," the Lieutenant raised his palm to cut him off. "I know this is too good and too hard to believe that all of this is just a coincidence. But if that's how it is, we are soldiers and we still have to carry out the mission without needing to know what's on the table upstairs. So let's keep this between us, agreed?"

That was directed not only at Philipe but at me as well, who should not have even been privy to any of this.

So that's how it is. That was why most of the forces we had encountered so far were nothing but Dretonian units, and exactly as Lieutenant Bulgers had said, all of this was too good to be just a coincidence. Even so, if even we ourselves had not been told, then whoever was behind it had kept it extraordinarily well under wraps.

To the soldiers working behind the scenes, I was genuinely grateful for everything you had done. Though perhaps that was not even accurate, perhaps this was all just an assumption we had taken too far. But what the hell? If the enemy really makes a mistake from own, we'll exploit it then.

"Haha, alright, I'll keep my mouth shut," Philipe answered, mimicking zipping his lips.

Honestly, Philipe deserved credit for even being able to piece together and think through that assumption. It proved he had a fairly seasoned background when it came to wartime intelligence.

"In that case," Scarface broke his own silence. "Any explanation for why their flak was accurate enough to mess up our entire Pathfinder wave if the only units operating in this area are undisciplined Dretonians?"

Ah, I had just remembered that. It was a good question from Scarface and I was equally curious about it. With that I slowly began walking closer and easing myself into the group. Lieutenant Bulgers noticed but did not seem particularly bothered by it. I appreciated that gesture of trust from him.

"About that," Philipe walked a few steps away from us, and from a distance I could see him opening a drawer, pulling something out, then making his way back. "This. This damn thing has been causing a lot of trouble. It's so effective that even a rookie anti-air crew can set the flak timer as accurately as possible."

While explaining, Philipe handed a printed photograph to Lieutenant Bulgers. I tried to peek at it but the height difference blocked my view, and before I could get a proper look he had already passed it along to the Staff Sergeant.

"This thing," Scarface cut in quickly, his voice rough as though he had just swallowed gravel. "The shape is very strange, nothing like our rangefinder. They shoot that accurate with just this?"

Philipe nodded, confirming what the Sergeant had said. "Exactly right. They call it the Aethel-Eye. Honestly I do not know how it works. Whatever magic they put into it, I cannot say."

Magic? That made me even more curious. "C-can I have a look too, please?"

"Why the hell are you still here-"

Before Scarface could finish his complaint, Lieutenant Bulgers had already taken the photo and handed it over to me.

With the photograph in my hands, even though it was not particularly clear and had no color, I felt an immediate sense of familiarity with the object in it. Yes, there were differences in certain parts, but however you looked at it, this thing was unmistakably identical to Germany's EM36 from the Second World War.

With its long horizontal body and two objective lenses at each end, it was a very distinctive stereoscopic rangefinder design. It truly was a masterpiece of optical technology. I still remembered how mesmerized I was when I saw one with my own eyes during a visit to a war technology museum.

"Ah, that face. Our walking encyclopedia is kicking in," Lieutenant Bulgers pulled me back before I got too lost in the photograph. "You know something about it, Lise?"

"Ehmm, no. I don't know anything about it.....at all," it seemed I needed to work on my expressions when it came to my nerdy side showing through.

"You clearly know something, spit it out, that's an order. What makes this rangefinder more accurate than ours?"

Well, that's it then. As usual, once it got to this point there was no getting out of it. "Uhm. I think this is not a regular coincidence-type rangefinder like ours that works by aligning two separate images, but this thing in the photo... I suspect it uses a stereoscopic principle."

I could feel Scarface's sharp stare and Lieutenant Bulgers' curiosity both fixed on me as I scratched the back of my head, trying to find an explanation simple enough to land.

"I-i-it basically works like this. Imagine the difference between trying to thread a needle with one eye closed versus using both eyes. This thing gives instant three dimensional vision. They no longer have to guess how far up in the sky we are because the lenses give them actual spatial depth. Once they lock onto us, the shell's detonation timing lands right in front of our noses."

With all of that I hoped they had grasped at least a fragment of the picture. I had done my best to make it as understandable as possible for a general targets. There were probably a few flaws in there, but for now it was good enough, and the rest I would leave to each of them to dig into on their own.

"I don't know what the hell you talking about, but that makes sense," Philipe responded with a contradictory comment. "That is quite surprising, honestly. Where did you learn that?"

"It's not that hard, I read it from a--"

"From a book," Lieutenant Bulgers cut in, finishing the word I was about to say.

Philipe looked genuinely confused by Lieutenant Bulgers' behavior, then turned back to me. "What kind of book were you reading?"

"Well, it was a bit--"

"A bit old and I forgot the title, all I remember is it was a good read."

Again!? Was I really that easy to read? "Sir please don't do that...."

"You're just easy to read, blame yourself," not a trace of guilt on his face, Lieutenant Bulgers stifled a chuckle.

"Sir!"

A sharp burst of static cut through Lieutenant Bulgers' laughter, making all of us flinch. In the corner of the room, Caspian, who had been hunched over the radio on his back this whole time, suddenly snapped upright. His hands moved quickly, turning the frequency dial, his face pressing closer to the speaker as a human voice began to emerge through the thick wall of noise.

"...calling any nearby units... Mayday! Mayday! This is Blue Heron... do you copy? I repeat, this is Blue Heron, we are down at Sector 3-Bravo! Over!"

The voice broke apart and was swallowed by the sound of explosions, but the message was clear enough. In that same instant, the easy atmosphere inside the bunker evaporated. The soldiers who had been busy with their newly acquired weapons began drifting toward the source of the sound, everyone listening to every word the radio was spitting out.

"Blue Heron?" muttered one of the men from the other unit whose name I did not know. "That's our regiment's HQ callsign!"

The radio crackled again, this time with a voice far more desperate than before. "Dretonians...they're closing in with their armors! We're pinned down on our glider! Is anyone out there!? Please, we need--"