Breathing deeply, you looked out at the clearing sky. The storm was moving past, snow thick on the ground as you nursed a tin cup of coffee that was steaming ominously in the night. There was a hint of a waning moon up there, and in the distance you could see the headlights of the logistics trucks chugging along as they brought supplies down the road to other bunkers. If you got your binos out, you could see the lights and fires of the GWRR team where they were nearly done with the job, and in the distance the rattling rumble of the tracks could be heard. It was peaceful, even as the chill wind whipped at your hair and made the light flakes dance.
You'd decided, a few days ago, to actually take Takamachi up on her offer. Well, her offers, plural. Going solo was an invitation for the carnivorous woman to do as she wanted, but this time you were forewarned and forearmed- and, in no small part, looking forward to this. You'd been sleeping worse and worse these last few nights, lurid dreams dancing beneath your eyelids, mocking your single status. You were, in a word, getting horny- and experience taught you the best way to handle that was to head it off at the pass with one of your friends. The real reason harems were good wish fulfillment, you reasoned as a little snowdrift formed and vanished, was because someone was always going to be down bad so you had a partner.
The roads would be clear at night, and you weren't on shift for a few days- Asuna had been disgustingly logical like that, giving you "time off" now that you had "enough concentrated subordinates" and "no reason to need you every day" which was a lot of concentrated bullshit. Going inside to leave a note for the watch-stander (right now, Silica), you got the keys to your Drummond- and in a fit of pique, changed into your dress uniform.
The you were off, the roads surprisingly empty as you went for the short trip to the King to cross the river, and then up to Great Warden Dam. It was a soothing drive, with one of the local radio stations playing music of all things- scratchy old vinyls, well-worn and much loved. You heard
Lili Marleene, a little bit of
La Foule (that you sung along to terribly), the good Armstrong recording of La Vie en Rose, and even a little bit of John Lee Hooker- God willing, no relation to your terrible boss. The boarder was porous as always, and it wasn't long before you were slaloming your way into Great Warden Dam. A quick check-in at the town hall got their building, and then you were parked out in front with a smile. Stepping out, you moved up to the door of the concreted Garrison House with a smile, before pounding on it.
Instead of anyone you knew, a thirty-something with the worst underbite in England who last saw a razor in the hands of Jack the Ripper, all while wearing the same maid costume. "Yes?"
"General Orr, to see Captain Takamachi," you said lightly, letting your bearing speak for yourself. The caveman at the door just stared, realizing he was in the presence of a Capitol-O Officer, before turning the sort of sickly pale that reminded you of Death's horse or radiator fluid in the snow, before slamming the door and running away screaming.
"Captain! Captain! It's the General!" he shrieked, running back in while shrieking like a banshee. Sighing, you just waited, while a pair of lights went on in the windows and a distinctly feminine scream came out, before a loud 'thunk' and the sound of something heavy falling down the stairs. Whatever comedy of errors was happening slowly came to a halt, though, before a slightly frazzled Takamachi opened the door, her auburn hair all over the place and-
Wait. She was wearing pajamas. With little wrenches and hammers on them. It was adorable, sure, but how did she get more clothing options than you? Still, when Takamachi got a good look at you, her sleep-frazzled look morphed into a small smile that was trying to be somewhere between sultry and sleepy and failing at the first in this way that made you want to steal it off her face.
"Well if it isn't the golden girl herself," Takamachi said, leaning out the door to let a finger touch your clavicle, before trailing down between your buttons until it hit the strap of your officer's pelt. "Finally found time to dress the part, too."
"Not the worst name pun I've heard this week," you shot back, smirking, "but I'd rather a chance to dress down for once."
"Well, come on in. I'm sure one of my pet cretins remembered to leave a pot on the stove, and now that we're concreted up this is a pretty comfortable barrack."
As Takamachi lead you into the well-spruced kitchen, you smiled at the pair of mugs on the table full of coffee and the little bunt cake there. Looks like the caveman from the door wasn't that reprehensible after all. Taking your cover off and hanging it on a hook by the door, you followed your host in carefully. "Sorry for getting you up," you apologized lightly.
"Please, it's not like I didn't expect someone to be banging at my door."
"That doesn't make it not rude."
Pushing a slice of cake at you, Takamachi shook her head in a way that did interesting things to her sleeping ponytail and a
very nice chest. "I'll hardly look at a girl as good as you with an evil eye, even if it is well off my usual shift."
Your mouth went dry, as you started politely picking at the cake while Takamachi started working on her coffee. Picking the thread of conversation up, you tried to carefully carry it to the goal. "I came about mortar proto kits."
"I've got several, but I'll handle it in the morning," Takamachi said with a small frown. "Damn cosmetics team in Basin Sionnach taking their sweet time with the deliveries. I was supposed to get my hair dye shipment three days ago."
"Hair dye?" you asked, blinking. "That's oddly specific."
"This game has a ton of cosmetics, but they're locked behind shadow upgrades on the Town Halls," Takamachi said, rolling her eyes before taking a big swig of coffee. "Sionnach is the only one with them unlocked so far."
"That makes too much sense."
"I know, right!"
Sharing a laugh, you looked over at the pajamas again. "I don't suppose the pjs come from the same place?"
"Yep. Want me to get you a set?"
Thoughts of ten thousand cold little drafts whenever Asuna or Silica came into the little 1x3 bunker your office and bunks went through your mind. "Yes!"
"Then come upstairs, and I'll get you measured," Takamachi said. As you followed her up three flights of stairs to the attic rooms, you felt a short stutter of the heart. Time to do or die- and this half-year dry spell was not making it easier. As Takamachi nudged open the door, you balled up a hand, breathing deeply. She noticed your nervousness, though.
"If you're not comfortable-" she said, before you cut her off.
"No, I'm almost as gay as you think I am," you admitted. "It's just nerves. Performance anxiety, you know?"
"Think of how I feel, then," Takamachi tried to joke. "You're the most important woman in the whole game right now!"
"I can't be-"
"You are. So relax, and let's have some fun for a night. Or did you wake me up for nothing?"
Now you were challenged- and you weren't sure why, but that was what gave you enough of a kick in the pants to move up, pushing into Takamachi's space and kissing her on the lips. "I'll keep you up all night if I have to," you mock-threatened, "and you'll love every minute of it."
"Do your best, then,
Melanie."
"I will."
///
When you woke up next afternoon with a very naked and very happy Takamachi in your arms, you had zero regrets. Sneaking your way out of her arms and into a houserobe- more imported luxuries, you presumed- to go to the bath to freshen up, you cleaned up nicely without any real work.
From there, it was fairly simple to get back to the room, get yourself pants, and kiss Takamachi- no,
Loup- awake.
"Hey babe," you said, smiling as your newest fuckbuddy blinked herself awake, before she grabbed onto you and started kissing you frantically.
Now with two regrets in the form of matching hickeys on either side of your neck your collar couldn't hide and a half hour spent wearing out your wrists, you and Loup managed to get downstairs without too much trouble so you could get to work. Sitting down at the breakfast table with some mediocre lost bread and lingonberry jam, you got out your notebook.
"So this stays between us," Loup said carefully, "but people really don't like claiming proto kits. They tend to make their own, which is a problem. That's how we got screwed out of smoke grenades- that, and Colonel Mystery not actually having figured out how to do things outside Callum's Keep yet."
"He's in charge of your regiment?"
"Yeah. Every engineering center has us at it, and the only reason we're with the War Bureau is because it means I have enough techmats to get the job done."
You nodded- 'Captain' was, in most regiments, the same nominal rank as 'lieutenant' with the added trust that meant they could keep an independent deployment or bunker base or something operational. Being trusted on the literal other side of Warden Territory was a bit more trust than normal, though!
"Either way," Loup continued, "I've got kits coming out my ears, and you probably want mortars."
"Yeah."
"You drove here in your Drummond, right? That's got nine inventory slots, so I'll give you nine and we'll be good."
You shook your head slightly. "Make it eight, I keep some B-mats in there in case I break down or something."
"Done," Loup said, going back to the purring icebox and pulling out a pitcher of something she poured into a small pot, before putting it on the stove.
"That new thing from the Engineering Center, though?" you asked, going to get another cup of coffee, only to find the carafe empty.
"Oh, that. We can make custom blueprints for vehicles for a techmat. Just take the new blueprint and the vehicle to a garage, choose "modify", and pay the B-mat or R-mat cost, and presto: custom vehicle."
"And this doesn't slow down tech?"
"It counts for half on vehicles, and well," Loup said, flushing a little. "I don't do it for everyone, but you'll probably need something better than a Drummond at some point, if reports of you taking to the front line are as true as they sound."
You chuckled a little, but as the proto kits got loaded into your car, you tried not to think about that habit, just getting going after you gave Loup a kiss goodbye.
///
With your eight prototype kits turned into forty fucking mortar tubes (insert Lex Luthor joke here) the wheel of time kept turning. New recruits filtered in from your logistics department poaching off the Logistics Union, comps kept flowing out to the GWRR, and pretty soon you were at the point where bringing in more officers was starting to look like a good idea. Along with more officers, you'd also want another dedicated builder: tacking on twenty and three new souls meant you were right back to the joys of hot bunking and shared beds- and Asuna was mad at you for some reason, which meant you got Silica, who had the wonderful habit of kicking in her sleep.
As far as petty revenge for your inherent desire to get laid like a functional human being went, it wasn't that bad, until the time Silica managed to get into bed backwards and kicked you in the tit. Then it was that bad, which, well, get that builder so you could get on top of this. Things were so bad you had to put a bunch of them under Mihey, still parked out in the Morgen's Crossing Siegeworks, just so the base didn't break down entirely for being overpacked. Even with your people breaking sand on adding a bunch of Y-pattern bunkers, things were cramped as hell- and it would take time to get everything finished, with a lot of the logi people you'd snapped up needing a lot of training to get them used to working in the snow and lethal temperatures. After Landry had found most of a work shift dead in the snow with the rest barely holding on, you'd moved to making damn sure they were supervised and handheld as you worked them up in the regiment.
Still, the river was clearing, and the few times you had to go to the Pike to check on the militia there, you could see the waters clearly. Hooker had to be getting antsy about his assault, and you
needed more forces. The 62e had finally tied things up in Morgens and were looking to redeploy, now up to five companies with Kazoo ready to eat wire and spit nails, while you still needed to get in contact with Zairman. That would be a tricky ball of wax to handle- especially considering that kiss, outside Morgen's. Had that been the heat of the moment, or an honest affection? You didn't know, and were scared to find out.
Other than that, though, things were going surprisingly well. 142e Locomotive had volunteered to spin off a battalion into the 230e Locomotive to help promote rail over here on the east side of the map, hopefully to someday tie Port Tabasco in to the Foxcatcher refinery. More importantly, the colonel of 230e Locomotive knew which way the wind was blowing, and volunteered to help with the logistics of the operation. This was gonna max out the rail line's carrying capacity, but if Asuna's frenzied calculations were correct, you'd have enough throughput to run both the 9e and 203e on the tracks.
Which, in turn, meant more armor or artillery. While it might let you pull in more infantry on paper, the problem would be you'd end up with too many casualties too quickly. Shirts were a massive throughput item, and you'd end up going through them en masse with more infantry regiments and the related equipment to boot. Ospreys, bayonets, shovels, Harpas and Mamons, gas masks and filters: all more tools that would overload the system. Diesel, B-mats, and shells, though, would need more absolute throughput but would be less demanding on the system since you could sneak a few crates into every shipment and only needed vast sums of them: not vast sums of types of them.
Still, you could taste the call to action in the air. Unless another storm kicked things up, you'd be in position to start the assault any day now: and when you did, it would be bloody as all hell.
///
GWRR Request: Mine components to build a rail link between The King and the Weathered Expanse/Clanshead Valley Boarder: 36/40 completed.
BUNKER
(Choose One)
[] Expand your bunker base with additional infrastructure to sustain larger troop numbers.
[] Expand your bunker base with Defensive Patterns (Requires techniques, vote to begin development)
-[] With small patterns
-[] With medium patterns
-[] With heavy patterns
-[] With artillery firing positions
-[] With infantry fighting positions.
-[] With Modernist patterns
-[] With Utility Patterns
[] Begin developing Concrete (Write-in base to begin concrete development on)
[] Develop a new bunker base in a better location
-[] Write in hex and town/Relic, as well as distance to front line or intended purpose.
[] Get your builders to stop expanding the base for now.
[] Gift, Assign, or Abandon a bunker base.
-[] Write-in base by location.
PERSONNEL
(Choose One Two)
[] Go and recruit more personnel
-[] Mass recruitment: whatever you can get, get more of it! (Recruits 4d10+4 White personnel)
-[] Selective recruitment: Look for people who aren't clueless. The Logistics Union has a lot of folks. (Recruits 3d10+3 Green personnel)
-[] Picky recruitment: Get people who are at least as skilled as you are! (Recruits 2d10+2 Yellow personnel)
-[] Frontline recruitment: Go to the front and snag some blueberries! (Recruits 1d10+1 Orange personnel)
-[] Elite recruitment: Go find a group of lunatics, and shanghai them. (Recruits 1d10 Red personnel)
(You cannot recruit units of higher rating than yourself.)
[] Commit training!
-[] Vehicle training: Teach everyone drive good. Car goes on right hand side of road, revolutionary concept. Might as well also learn to drive a flatbed, or your Drummond if you're feeling nice.
-[] Rifle training: Everyone will spend time practicing the fine art of "bullet go plink"
-[] Administration Training: Basic delegation has been mastered, but the more officers you have the more the parts move. Therefore, figuring out how to grease the gears is important.
-[] Infantry Training: You've spent some time on the front, it sucks. Get better so it sucks less.
-[] Mobile Warfare Training: You know how to fight out of a truck bed. Now it's time to get good at that.
-[] Artillery Training: It is time to actually learn what the limitations of these guns are. It'll be expensive, but you need to know to keep mistakes from happening.
[] Extra work shifts
-[] More Scroop: Get everyone to do more rounds of scrooping at the scrap fields. You do your part, and more importantly, can use the B-mats to get useful stuff like more trucks or dedicated equipment.
-[] More Mines: Get everyone to do more rounds on the component mines and oil wells. Components mean R-mats, R-mats mean flatbeds, and more importantly: trains
(Begins work on GWR Request)
-[] More Building: Put everyone to work on getting your bunker upgrades planned. If you don't have some planned, the bunker will get what the troops think it needs.
-[] More Logistics: Put everyone to work on hauling more truckloads of stuff from point A to point B. Whoever's manning the bunker base at the border to Weathered Expanse will be very happy to get more gear for the inevitable offensive.
-[] Frontline Support: Put your people in the trenches on secondary duties: terminal logistics, machine guns, fortification, and other 'mostly safe' jobs to stiffen them up.
[] Begin operational planning for Something Big
-[] Write-in Something Big. May generate Billets.
[] Begin Operation Planning (+1 to all rolls when the next operation starts)
UPGRADES
(Choose One Two!)
[] Go out and get yourself a lieutenant! (You may have one per twenty Regiment members, minimum one)
-[] Teach them the way of the builder, as much as you know how that works. (Adds one action to Bunker)
-[] Teach them the way of the talker, so you don't have to do that crap! (Adds one action to Personnel)
-[] Teach them the way of the organizer, so you have more time to put out more fires (Adds one action to Upgrades)
[] Find a, uh, techmaid, and get some prototype kits by hook or by crook.
-[] Cremani Mortar: a 60mm field mortar, man portable and heavy enough to throw out your back with. Theoretically there's a uniform to make this less ass...
-[] Aalto Storm Rifle: a 7.92mm semiautomatic and fully automatic assault rifle persecuer. It's accurate, shoots easily, but has the mild devil of a time to keep it ballanced.
-[] O'Brien V.112 Highlander: A tracked variant of armored cars, with the same double-7.92mm light machine guns. Slightly more armor, actual off-road mobility, but definitely not a tank.
-[] 74b-1 Ronan Gunship: A naval fire support platform, with a short-barrel 120mm howitzer and a pair of twin heavy machine guns in a turret.
[] Requisition Material
-[] Logistics Support: Flatbeds, Fuel, and other nicities.
-[] Artillery Systems: 40mm guns, and 'soft' upgrades.
-[] Base Support: More concrete, more faster.
[] Get in touch with another regiment that does something you need (Discovers and improves relations with one random regiment inside the search group)
-[] Logistics
-[] Production
-[] Frontline Combat
-[] QRF
-[] Water Logistics
-[] Techmaids
-[] Partisans
-[] War Bureau
-[] Great Warden Railroad (GWR)
[] Find a way to get your guys some quality of life upgrades so things suck less out here.
[] Go talk to someone specific/Meet a Specific Regiment
-[] Check in with the Balfour Girls- you're not calling them the Bitches, even if it does alliterate
-[] Call in Zairman, and get him ready for this next dance- and maybe see how he'd feel about working with you on a permanent basis.
-[] Whoever the hell Kirito is, with 26e Commandos
-[] Write in named character or regiment number
(AN: TFW you accidentally don't check your questlines and world progress and accidentally introduce the mechanic that'll blow a massive fucking chunk of story up, thereby accidentally nuking the entire plot of Ch.5 out of existence)
