Courtly Chronicles 3

[Tanya Degurechaff von Goethe aka Tenya Deguchiya aka Archduchess von Goethe, circa 1924, age 10]

One of the more embarrassing parts of being in one’s sixties while being removed from all previous social connections is the constant habit of equating people in the present with people in the past.

Take Chief Engineer Adelheid von Schugel, for example. When Tanya first met the man, they immediately made the mental comparison to Mei, who had a similarly dismissive attitude towards explosions while working. But the two weren’t very similar at all. Mei was generally rather manic, her ideas and attention going from one project to another as she tweaked each one as she thought of improvements. She continually gathered feedback and ideas from both her clients and subordinates, assessing them independent of the source and incorporating any of them that held merit and claiming joint credit shamelessly.

One the other hand, Schugel tended to stubbornly focus on his path, testing and adjusting after each failure while insisting that the next one will work, contemptuous of his subordinate’s perspectives. Even expert opinions from other facets of his work were dismissed with the same sneer, even if the expert was brought in specifically to provide that opinion. Maddening.

“This orb is junk.” Tanya insisted. “It’s incapable of performing to the specifications you desire, and the design must be refined before further testing will do more than just kill more testers.” It was criminal how many test pilots died to this boondoggle of a wonder weapon.

“It will work!” Insisted the Chief Engineer. “You proved it!”

Tanya shook their head at the crazy man. “No, I proved mana fixation was possible. Which you already knew.” It took too much focus to do more with the mana gathered beyond eating it, but mote regeneration in this world was rapid enough that it wasn’t a particularly useful skill. “You’re trying to create a quad-core computer without even creating a working dual-core, and you’re going straight into a combat-ready prototype with multiple innovations rather than doing the sensible thing and working out the kinks out of each individual advancement first.” Tanya was astounded that they were already working on multi-core computing, actually. If they could get someone saner at the helm, their timetable on how long until their most complex spells become usable by computation orbs could be cut in half.

Schugel glared at Tanya for their impudence. “This is weapons development during a war, little girl.” He sarcastically explained. “Of course it has to be combat ready! If I show them some radio-sized monster of a computation orb that’s only half again the throughput and ten times the cost, they’ll pull my funding!”

That… was actually a very good point. Okay, maybe von Schugel was more like Mei than Tanya gave him credit. “Fair.” Tanya acknowledged. “Throwing the lives of soldiers away is something that a General would understand.” Their expression hardened. “That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put this four core nonsense away until you have better materials, manufacturing processes, and programming development so you can create something that isn’t an expensive bomb.” It was a tale as old as engineering itself, really. Physics was always worked out far before material science was ready for it. “You might even need to wait until an improvement in computational substrate arrives.” While Tanya wasn’t quite sure magical transistors were something that was possible, there had to be a better method than analog computation.

“Abandon my magnum opus?” von Schugel questioned, a look of disgust on his face. “Over my dead body!” This is the military; that could be arranged…

Tanya rubbed the bridge of their nose, wishing that they still wore glasses so they could menacingly adjust them. “You’ve over promised and under delivered, Schugel.” Still, Tanya didn’t have the authority to shut things down, but they were there for a reason. “My report will reflect the reckless disregard you have for my students, and a thorough condemnation of science through human wave tactics.” Still, von Schugel was still a respected scientist, so they should probably throw the man a bone if Tanya wanted anything to actually happen. “Dual-core computation should still be feasible, and I’ll start writing papers on how to adjust spell formulas to account for that capability.” Computing and programming was something Tanya did understand, even if adjusting to analog programming was a bit of a stumbling block. “A lot of capability can be added with an extra one hundred kilo-thaums. Getting that to the factories will be a much greater contribution to the war than trying to get this deathtrap functional.” Honestly, even if they got someone to make it not explode, they’d still likely be too preoccupied with keeping it that way to actually do anything useful with the thing.

“Don’t you dare, you brat.” Schugel spat.  So inflexible… “The orb is perfect, the fault is in the users.”

Disgusting. Mei had literally decked people for saying such things. “Are you sure you’re an engineer?” Tanya asked mockingly. “That’s the kind of attitude that’s only permissible when you plan on using the equipment yourself. You’re a mage yourself, Dr. von Schugel. If the orb works, perhaps you could show this ‘brat’ how it’s done?”

Schugel laughed off the dare. “The Type 95 cannot be operated by anything less than an A-rank mage. No others can operate the mana fixation formula.” Tanya wasn’t so sure about that. The amount required was around ten thousand motes before it became self-sustaining, but a B-rank could theoretically accomplish that… Tanya supposed it was somewhat risky.

“My point, Dr. von Schugel, is that demanding greater skill from the end user, from an engineer, is also known as failure.” The Chief Engineer scowled deeper at Tanya’s quoting of Mei. “You haven’t improved the design one bit after the death of two pilots. That is an expense that is both exorbitant, and unnecessary. The first pilot’s death was a failure of your design and procedures. The second was tantamount to murder, Dr. von Schugel.” From the tensing of muscles, Tanya thought they might have finally struck a nerve. “-or at least an execution.” Tanya added to soften the insult. The point is to get it through his skull, not to piss him off. “You’ve given me no reason to reconsider my report, so I will be off to write it.”

Schugel tried to say something, shouted really, but Tanya ignored him. The General Staff at least listened to Tanya’s reports, after seeing the results from the new mages. While they doubted that von Schugel would get shot like he probably deserved for his murderous incompetence, hopefully they’ll at least put the fear of the Kaiser in the man to make him take the safety of his pilots more seriously.

What a waste…

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[Tanya Degurechaff von Goethe aka Tenya Deguchiya aka Archduchess von Goethe, circa 1924, age 10]

One of the extra things that Tanya fit into her flight course was a few lessons on rescue procedure. It wasn’t quite as effective without something like the USJ to help, but extracting wounded from the combat zone was a useful support task that mages could accomplish, so they primarily focused on that part, with a side of fire rescue for urban operations.

Granted, this became a lot easier once Tanya installed a barrier stretcher formula along with the improved flight formula, but without it, fitting in rescue procedures in between the flight drills would have been impossible.

Still, the curriculum was harsh, but it was nothing that he wouldn’t put in supplemental educational materials for underperforming heroes who may not have been able to get a full UA education. Your average institution held academic standards they were held to vis a vis rescue curriculum, as it was essential for the licensing exams, but hero schools were not immune to the natural tendency of learning just enough to pass the test without properly absorbing the material, so remedial courses that could be taken discreetly was one of many resources that Tenya ensured was available to clients of PIllars of Heroism.

It was why Tanya smiled genuinely as they read the letter Major Weiss had sent, detailing the operation his battalion of mages underwent to evacuate civilians from a Francois advance on a town before an engagement. It spoke with pride of things that would mortify a soldier, as their efforts went against doctrine, letting the Francois know the number of mages in the airspace well in advance, but pretty much everyone Tanya knew in their last life would buy them each a drink without hesitation.

Tanya really shouldn’t be encouraging this kind of behavior during a war, but despite that information advantage and a two-to-one numerical disadvantage, the air battle was won, and the Francois advance was stalled.

“Ma’am?” interrupted Monika, who was still Tanya’s attendant. As a noble lady, it would be unseemly to go without one. “Lieutenant Colonel Lergen is here.”

“Send him in.” Tanya said idly.

The Lieutenant Colonel had become something of a liaison between Tanya and the General Staff, more for convenience than anything else. If Lergen was here rather than them sending a missive through official channels, it would be an informal questioning on Tanya’s future-knowledge, which was occasionally useful, if spotty on military matters. “Tanya.” Lergen said in greeting.

“Good morning, Legen.” Tanya replied, putting the letter away. “How’s the war going?”

Lergen frowned, but answered anyway. “Well, the western front is in a bit of a stalemate, but the invasion of Legadonia is going well.” As many people, including Tanya predicted, the Francois leapt at the chance to attack the Empire, with an absolutely pathetic caucus belli but everyone ‘knew’ that the real reason was just because they thought they could get the Empire to concede some disputed territory by attacking when they already had a war going on. So far? It was working, near as Tanya could tell. “Dacia’s invading now.”

“Oh? What do their forces look like?” Tanya asked. Last Tanya heard, the threat assessment on them was that they were dangerous foes with a massive army.

Lergen brought out some papers and slid them over. Tanya gave them a glance. Over half a million soldiers? Rough. But… “What does their armor look like? Artillery? Air forces? Mages?” At least the report included what kind of guns the soldiers were using. One of the attitudes that mystified Tanya when they overheard it was that infantry would waste ammo if they were given weapons with too high of a rate of fire, and it looked like that was doctrine for the Dacian forces, given how they reportedly had bolt action rifles.

But this was the early 20th century, while Tanya was still mostly familiar with highly trained forces that used technology rather than throwing more people at the problem, so it still took some mental adjustment sometimes to remember that this was a world that still used conscription. Auditing lectures and reading the books in the War College made up most of the difference.

Lergen raised his eyebrow. “They have some artillery, as noted…” He leaned over and pointed to a spot on the third page. “...here.” That… wasn’t much, and given the specifications listed…

“...Are we sure these are accurate?” Tanya asked. “Because I’m looking at a military apparatus that you could rout with a single army group, if you supported them with a battalion of mages and the appropriate air and armor forces.” The closest one was… the 17th army? In the Eastern Army? Tanya wasn’t supposed to know that, but the staff occasionally forgot that fact, so Tanya had a decent picture of which army was where and about how large it was from eavesdropping on the people who handle deployment of the new graduates, if about a month out of date. Seventy thousand men should be enough.

“It’s accurate.” Lergen insisted. After a moment, he finally asked: “...your proposal is giving them a ten to one advantage in numbers.”

“Sending two army groups would be safer, yes.” Tanya agreed. The 15th army from the Southern Army would be good. “But there’s nothing I’m seeing here that would stop a mage group from flying in and just gutting their command. Use artillery spells to wreck a few military targets, maybe something in the capital to scare the Grand Duke, three months to victory, tops.” One of the key skills of becoming and staying a high ranking hero is picking your battles, acknowledging when you had a decisive advantage so you could force a confrontation to occur on your terms.

“That seems… optimistic.” Lergen said, in the way one would when humoring their conversation partner.

“Weight of numbers has its place, don’t get me wrong.” Tanya deferred. “But this is the time of history where technology gaps became more and more important for determining the strength of the army. For the mages, it would be more of a live fire exercise than anything actually dangerous for them.” While it was possible the barriers could be overwhelmed with the weight of fire from the rifles, it would require the mages to just stand there and take it, so it wasn’t much of a concern. “While I could be overestimating our non-magical forces, I know guns and barriers, and if the specifications of these guns are accurate, there isn’t any realistic way for them to penetrate my student’s barriers with what they have.” To prove their point, Tanya used their printing formula to show the math, noting how many hits each shield could take at various ranges. “You could literally fly straight to the command tent, land right in front of it, demand a surrender, and kill about a hundred men in the five seconds it would take for them to reconsider their refusal.” Well, that’s only about three kills per soldier for a mage battalion, so you could probably go to twice that without much issue, but one hundred is such a nice round number.

Lergen looked through the numbers. “Their rifles aren’t that much weaker than ours.” He observed.

Tanya shrugged. “And if you were foolish enough to rely on our infantry rifle to defeat mages, they would be similarly difficult to deal with.” Much like heroes, mages were something that had to be dealt with. Unlike villains, armies were generally pretty bad at hiding. But they made up for it in fortifications. Dacia… had neither advantage. “Effective air forces, mages included, represent a paradigm shift in warfare. If you do not have solutions to them, you lose. You might as well pin your hopes on your enemy running out of bullets before you run out of men, and while there are historical examples of that working… mostly by the damned communists…” Even with Tanya’s patchwork pre-quirk history education, the USSR’s tendency towards human wave tactics still stood out. Tanya slapped the pages down on their desk. “It would take some serious mismanagement or arrogance for Dacia to even have a chance.”

The message finally seemed to sink in. “I’ll be sure to pass your opinions to the General Staff.” Lergen said neutrally.

“I’m sure they’ll welcome input from an armchair commander like myself.” Tanya said sarcastically. They haven’t fully followed anything Tanya suggested yet, but they usually listen on matters of magecraft, being the closest thing the Empire had to an expert on their Aerial Mage’s full capabilities. “On to other matters. Do you come bearing news on my experimental proposal?”

“It was rejected.” Lergen said bluntly. “On an unrelated matter, it was deemed appropriate to assign you an Adjutant, one with military training instead of…” He looked back at the door where Monika was, making sure the meeting was not interrupted by anyone of lesser rank than Lieutenant Colonel Lergen. “...a maid.”

Tanya frowned. Monika had taken very well to secretarial duties, as she had very little to do other than that, given that the War College’s staff handled most of the things she would otherwise do as Tanya’s attendant. “...Is this something that could be resolved by giving Monika a uniform?” Tanya asked, only half serious.

Lergen snorted at Tanya’s joke before turning to the door, raising his voice: “Corporal, come in.” After a moment, the door opened to reveal the good Corporal.

She had light hair cut longer than was probably acceptable in a military environment, but if she was an officer, even a low ranking one, she was unlikely to be in combat. It took a moment, but Tanya remembered her. “Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov, correct?”

The girl was shocked. “Y-yes sir!” Victoria said, saluting.

Tanya looked at Lergen again, sighing. “How much did you tell her about me?”

Lergen shrugged. “Nothing. She was one of your students, so she should know enough.” Ah. Tanya had some explaining to do, then. The students didn’t get the whole truth, just enough small tidbits to make the scuttlebutt explode. Being mysterious helped foster esprit de corps in their students.

The question was, was Victoria’s presence here an off-the-books acceptance of Tanya’s proposal? Or was it truly unrelated? “Victoria was one of my smarter students.” Tanya observed, carefully examining Lergen’s expression. “Would that have anything to do with her selection?” Tanya hoped they managed to infuse that question with enough subtle meaning, but doublespeak was only reliable with someone who you knew well, and despite knowing the man better than most of the Empire’s military apparatus, there wasn’t anyone in this world Tanya knew to that extent.

“I wouldn’t know.” Lergen deflected. Did that mean it was an unofficial endorsement? Or was that supposed to be taken at face value? “But there is talk of maximum mobilization of mages, and that would require streamlining your curriculum so more people could teach it to your standards.” On one hand, that was a bluntly reasonable assignment. On the other hand, it could be interpreted as an order to teach Victoria everything Tanya knows about magic.

This was why Tanya hated using most of the things Hawks passed on, too much guesswork where there shouldn’t be. Tanya’s modern knowledge on education and training groups produced tangibly superior mages than the ones trained by others who learned from Tanya, so this could just be that: orders to train someone more thoroughly on how to do that, but it could also be a off-the-books order to see if Tanya could train Victoria up enough to cast magic independently of a computation orb, as the throughout of unassisted casting was theoretically limitless, held back only by the mind of the mage directing it.

Tanya wasn’t really happy about potentially giving the Kaiser someone who could pull off the kind of destruction they could while being more willing to use it, but the theory was just so fascinating… What was the nature of magic, and why did Mathemagician give Tanya access to it in their past life? Did this world even exist before Being X decided to send Tanya here? There was so much that was achingly familiar… So many questions, and an experimental subject was just what Tanya needed to pursue those burning mysteries.

Well, one advantage to being given innuendo as orders is that pretending to take things at face value was a pretty safe bet, as they’ll eventually nudge again if that was the wrong call. It was a trick that served Tanya well when dealing with the HPSC, and the General Staff was no different, in a lot of ways. “Very well.” Tanya said. “I’d invite you for tea, but it appears I have a bit more work to do than I thought previously.”

Unbothered, Lergen inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Maybe later.” He said before leaving.

“Okay.” Tanya said as they turned towards their new Adjutant. “Corporal Serebryakov? At ease.” Victoria relaxed, making a tiny sigh of relief. “Now, before we do anything else, I have two questions.” Visha stood at attention again. “First, I deliberately avoided gaining a rank for a reason, so would you prefer I called you Victoria? Second, do you have any questions for me?”

Victoria took a moment to digest the questions, confused at the mixture of formality and informality. “Ah… My friends call me Visha?” She offered.

Tanya smiled. Good, she seems to understand. “Very well, Visha.”

Visha smiled back, relaxing more. Tanya’s office is not a place for military discipline, there’s enough of that in the rest of the college, and after a lifetime of it… Pass. “Um… Why don’t you have a rank?”

An excellent question. “It’s quite simple: If I have a rank, I’m a member of the Empire’s military. If I’m a member of the military, the General Staff can tell me to do anything they want on pain of military tribunal and execution. Including participating in the war directly.” Tanya explained. “It is, for now, acceptable under the current military regulations for teachers to not hold proper military rank, if they are subject matter experts for highly educated fields. For example, medicine, engineering, and magic.” Tanya gestured to Visha, giving her the metaphorical floor. “Any other questions?”

Visha’s face betrayed the massive amount of questions she wanted to ask. “...How old are you, really?”

Tanya laughed. Of course that was the next one. “It depends on how you count it.” Fewer and fewer people tried to hear the whole story, as rumor and misinformation took on a life of its own.

It was time to tell the story, once more.

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[Corporal Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov aka Visha, circa 1924, age 15]

Being Tanya’s Adjutant was a strange experience. Even setting aside the convoluted background, she went out of her way to make the experience working for her as un-military-like as possible.

Visha wasn’t quite sure what she thought about the story about being really sixty-four years old. On one hand, the story was ridiculous. On the other hand… Tanya reminded Visha of her grandmother, in a way. Back in the Rus court, Babushka paid keen attention to when there was anyone more important than her in the room, and when there wasn’t? She took the carefully cultivated manners of the court and threw them out the window, speaking with everyone as if they were her own family, utterly uncaring of what other people thought of her. Tanya wasn’t quite like that, but there were some similarities, in that she didn’t care if you believed her about it, as long as she got respect as a powerful mage.

While Visha was still unsure about how true some of the details of the life Tanya supposedly led… She could believe that Tanya was old. Still, her age aside, Tanya was strange in other ways. She hated communists, which was normal enough, but she also seemed to have a disdain for her own title, and nobility in general. With that, Visha could believe that whatever memories she had that were not her own, it was from a foreigner. Although Visha was grateful to the Empire for sheltering her family, she could understand that. The Empire was strong, but it wasn’t quite home. Home doesn’t exist anymore for Visha, not really.

Still, Monika was nice enough for a coworker, and they divided up the various tasks that they were theoretically both responsible for amicably. Visha took care of coffee and tea, while Monika handled snacks.

Visha was bringing Tanya her coffee when she decided to ask her something: “Tanya… were you ever married? Have a family?” To ‘make things more interesting’, Tanya had given Visha permission to ask any kind of question about her past life, twice a day. The details behind the stories were pretty interesting, if a bit difficult to believe.

Tanya blinked in surprise. “...You know, you’re the first person to ask me that.” Tanya admitted, before actually answering: “I was.” Tanya waved her hand, creating another illusion supposedly drawn from her memory. She had explained that to make using illusions of herself easier, she developed the habit of looking herself over in detail every time she changed clothes.

First she created the image that Tanya claimed was her former body: an older man, although this example was much younger than what she normally showed, taller than anyone Visha had ever seen, wearing a tuxedo. “This was me, the day of my wedding. The planning was rather horrific, with both my mother and in-laws having very different opinions on what constituted an ideal wedding. In the end, the compromise was that we held it in Italy… err.. It’s Illoda in this world… like Momo’s mother wanted it to be, but they also flew over most of my mother’s side of the family, who lived west of… let’s just say it was somewhere in the Empire’s lands.” Geography was one of the little things that Tanya tended to struggle with, claiming that everything had different names and borders than what she was used to. Given that she also claimed to be from the 2200s, that was fair, but Visha was pretty sure geography wasn’t that hard to remember.

Tanya moved on to creating an image of a beautiful Akitsushiman woman in a wedding dress. “Momo was one of the most beautiful women in the world. I’m biased, of course, but she’s won a beauty contest or two back in the day.” Now, Visha had seen Tanya smile before. But the look on her face as she spoke about this Momo… “More important than that, was her brilliant mind, and her dedication to helping others. Many from a wealthy background like herself become selfish or at least conceited, but she instead dedicated her life to protecting and helping others.” Tanya’s smile faded, and tears welled up in her eyes. “...That’s enough about my past for today.” She turned her chair around, presumably to compose herself.

Wait. It was real. All doubt in Tanya’s story fled Visha at the sight of those tears, Tanya truly did have memories from another life. The tragedy that was Tanya’s existence made Visha’s heart clench in sympathy, to be separated by an early death was bad enough, but to live with the grief of love lost, and knowing that the love of your life was suffering just as badly?

Visha wanted nothing more than to hug the smaller girl and have a good cry… But she knew that it would not be welcomed. Instead, she took her leave, to allow Tanya to cry in private.

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