The Two Faces of a Hero

Soissons City Hall, the Mayor's Office.

I had just finished my farewell speech and was gathering my things—though "things" was a generous word for it. Any documents that mattered had already been burned or handed off to Hannah, so all that remained were a few personal effects.

Creeeak.

Just then the door swung open and a man stepped inside: an official administrator, dispatched from the Imperial Capital itself.

"Lieutenant Colonel Jäger. Are you ready to depart?"

He asked it with a deliberately affected air of superiority.

"As you can see, Administrator."

I gestured at the desk with my chin.

"Right here—the keys to the city, the vault combination, and the administrative ledgers."

The administrator rifled through the files with a suspicious squint.

Flip, flip.

"...?"

His brow furrowed. The pages began turning faster and faster.

Flip, flip, whoosh!

"Wh-what is this?"

"Exactly what it looks like."

"A budget surplus? A hundred percent supply rate? Zero pending civilian complaints? Public order status: 'Excellent'?"

His eyes were growing wider by the second.

"Y-you even secured a contingency reserve? Without a single act of pillage or requisition?"

"I prefer to call it efficient resource reallocation."

I tilted my chin toward the window.

"Look out there, Administrator. Do you see smoke rising anywhere? Do you see a single riot?"

As if entranced, he turned his head. Beyond the glass, all that met his eyes were citizens doffing their hats in salute as an Imperial Army truck rolled past, and the lively bustle of the marketplace streets.

Nothing like the tense, oppressive atmosphere typical of an occupied territory—frankly, it was more peaceful than the outskirts of the Imperial Capital itself.

"This is... impossible..."

His hands were trembling.

"An administrator with thirty years of service couldn't manage this. In a single month. A soldier... did this?"

"A city is like a great machine. Oil it properly, and it runs itself."

I rose from my seat and buttoned up my service coat.

"I've finished the oiling. All you have to do is hold the wheel, Administrator."

"W-wait a moment! Lieutenant Colonel Jäger! This 'miscellaneous income' line—how in the world did you...!"

"That one's yours ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to figure out. I have a departure to make."

Leaving him gaping behind me, I picked up my bag.

"Let's go, Hannah."

I walked out of the office without a shred of regret. From behind me came the sound of the administrator clutching the ledger and groaning.

"Good lord, good grief... it's flawless... not a single flaw to be found... How... how does this even make sense?"

With my term as Acting Garrison Commander at an end,

—on top of the experience I'd earned from Frederica just yesterday.

I had reached Level 22.

The plaza in front of City Hall.

The Jäger Battlegroup stood in formation. Leading the column was Major Frederica's Tank 101, followed by ranks of armor and infantry trucks, their engines roaring in unison.

"Colonel, we're ready to move out."

Hannah reported.

"Good. Let's go."

Guuuuguugu—.

The lead tank's treads rumbled across the asphalt, and behind it the armored battalion's tanks and the troop trucks stretched out in a long line.

The townspeople watched us pass with complicated expressions—relief, regret, and a strange awe for their conqueror all tangled together in their gaze.

And then it happened.

Someone burst through the crowd and darted into the road.

"STOP!"

The military police started to level their rifles, but I raised a hand to stop them.

"Guns down."

The one who had run out was a small girl.

A young blonde girl in a school uniform—a white blouse and a checkered skirt fluttering in the wind.

It was Marie Bernard.

She came sprinting toward my vehicle, gasping for breath, clutching a hastily woven bouquet of wildflowers against her chest.

"Miss Bernard?"

At my signal, the driver eased gently onto the brakes.

Marie looked up at me, her face flushed, her big round eyes brimming.

Status Analysis.

"Please... take this!"

Marie rose on tiptoe and thrust the bouquet toward me.

"Thank you... for saving us. And for protecting my papa... thank you so much!"

The fresh, earthy fragrance of the rough-hewn flowers cut clean through the acrid smell of diesel exhaust.

I gazed down at the bouquet for a moment, then opened the car door and stepped out. Taking the flowers with both hands, I bowed my head slightly as I accepted them.

"Thank you, miss. Of all the gifts I've received in Soissons, this is the most beautiful."

"*Hic*..."

Marie's eyes welled up as though emotion had overwhelmed her. She hesitated, then gathered her courage and lightly took hold of my sleeve.

"You'll... come back someday, won't you?"

"Who can say? Only God knows where a soldier's feet will carry him."

I gave her hair a gentle pat.

"But I won't forget the scent of these flowers."

"...Yes, sir!"

Marie nodded, her cheeks burning red. It was an impossibly pure image, straight out of a film reel.

Click, click!

Camera shutters clicked from somewhere in the crowd. The war correspondents were hardly about to miss a picture this perfect.

Smiling to myself, I arranged the bouquet prominently against the windshield so it could be seen by all.

"Move out."

The column began to roll again.

Marie stood there waving until we were well out of sight.

Once the car had put some distance behind it, Erika crossed her arms in the back seat and grumbled.

"Hmph, you might as well be directing a movie. Charming little girls now, are we?"

"Not charming them—winning hearts, Captain Erika. All of that becomes the reputation of our battlegroup."

"Like I don't know that. It's just... it rubs me the wrong way, that's all."

Erika puckered her lips, but her eyes kept darting toward the bouquet on the windshield.

"...The flowers are pretty, though."

I smirked and sank deep into the seat, watching Soissons recede in the side mirror.

The car soon left the city proper and lurched onto an unpaved road.

I pulled a leather-bound ledger from inside my coat. To all appearances it was an ordinary duty journal, but its contents were the secret account of Soissons' true cash flow.

The money I had quietly skimmed off the top during my month in Soissons.

7,450 gold coins.

With ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an Imperial gold coin worth roughly a million won and a silver about a hundred thousand, that came to some 7.45 billion won—a small fortune. No field-grade officer's salary, saved over an entire lifetime of merely breathing, could ever amount to that. It was more than enough to buy a three-story commercial building outright in the heart of Eisenburg, the Imperial Capital.

I could picture it clearly—that swine Gaston's hands shaking as he'd handed over his bribe.

"C-Commander... I'll release all the flour, every sack. So please, I beg you... have mercy...!"

"Mr. Gaston. Releasing the flour is a given. What we're discussing is the separate matter of your restitution for the illicit profits you made monopolizing supply contracts with the Republican Army."

At my one remark, the man had trembled like an aspen leaf and fetched the chests of gold hidden deep in his warehouse. Instead of throwing him in prison, I had simply accepted a "contribution."

The Republican slush fund was the same story.

At the coordinates Antoine had coughed up, there hadn't just been weapons—there was a vault of military funds the enemy had been trying to spirit away as they fled. Rather than report it up the chain for a few words of praise, I'd falsified the ledger, written it off as "lost in combat," and swallowed it whole.

'War is business.' Whoever said that wasn't wrong.

With Gaston, Jean Bernard, and Pierre under my thumb, I held the reins over every power broker in Soissons. Even if I retired when the war ended, the city would remain my personal treasury—and a dependable backer, to boot.

Of course, if those self-righteous military police blockheads or the administrators back home ever found out, they'd have frothed at the mouth. Why take bribes from such a corrupt merchant and collude with him instead of throwing him in a cell? they'd demand.

But this was the best option. A necessary evil, you might call it. Take Gaston—the man who had a stranglehold on the city's logistics. Throw him in prison and justice might be served, but come tomorrow morning the bread rations would stop, and the citizens would riot. That much was obvious.

Instead, I held his leash ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and made him cough up the blood money he'd been milking from the war. He got to keep his neck and his business license; I got a stable city and a fat envelope on the side. Everyone won.

Really, you could argue I'd merely collected a fair service fee. So I judged, as I fished a crumpled copy of the Imperial Daily from the corner of the seat and unfolded it. Beneath the front-page headline, a string of blush-worthy accolades ran alongside a photograph of me wearing a deliberately solemn expression.

"...As the war-starved generals of the Republic abandoned their citizens and fled, the Empire's young hero shouldered sacks of flour and set down his rifle. The citizens of Soissons testify through their tears: what he brought them was not the terror of an occupying army, but a warm salvation like the smell of freshly baked bread..."

Ha. The corner of my mouth curled upward.

All I had done was grab someone by their weak point, shake them down, toss out a few crumbs of bread, and keep them controlled. And the world called it "benevolent governance."

Propaganda truly is a sweet thing.

Good.

A fattened purse, an ironclad power base, and a level-up on top of it all.

For a month's leave, the harvest was more than bountiful. I crumpled up the newspaper and turned my gaze to the scenery flickering past the window.

Londinium, capital of the United Kingdom of Victoria.

Royal Intelligence Service Headquarters, the inner conference chamber.

Beyond the windows drizzled Londinium's signature dreary mist, the patter of rain against the glass filling the heavy silence.

Beneath the dim light, only three people were seated around a mahogany table.

At the head of it sat a woman with her legs crossed.

Sydney Wellesley—the Director and true power behind the Royal Intelligence Service. She set down her magnifying glass and put a cigarette to her lips.

"...The statistics are lying."

She muttered, smoke curling upward. Standing rigidly at attention before her was Lieutenant Colonel Sterling.

"Explain it, Sterling. A single ad-hoc battlegroup, without even a proper supply line, punched straight through the flank of the Republic's II Corps. By any calculation of the fuel and ammunition they expended, they should have ground to a halt long before reaching Soissons."

"Our reports... indicate they made extreme use of local requisition and captured materiel."

"Bollocks."

Wellesley tossed the documents onto the table.

"The captured ammunition is the wrong caliber, and the fuel is crudely refined. The idea that a forty-ton Imperial tank ran at that speed on the stuff is an insult to physics itself. This is beyond what luck or cleverness can account for."

She tapped the photograph of Max Jäger with her fingernail.

"This Max Jäger... is no ordinary man. Forging an entirely new supply route on the spot, out of nothing... that is nothing short of genius."

Amateurs study tactics; professionals study ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠logistics—and Director Wellesley had pierced straight through to that truth of war.

"I understand Admiral William's judgment. A man this dangerous must have his roots cut out as quickly as possible. For the sake of the United Kingdom—and for Her Majesty the Queen."

Wellesley turned her head toward the man sitting in the shadows.

"Are you ready, Arthur?"

From the darkness, Major Arthur stepped forward. He was one of the United Kingdom's proudest black-operations specialists.

"Give the order, Director. I will uncover that man's true nature myself."