"I'm terribly sorry, but these procedural matters take a backseat to more pressing threats." I.e, the deal you cut with the ENEMY. Isthmus for your ass and your staff's ass, to prove you're not a slimy monster out for yourself. You're a slimy monster out for your and all your staff's asses. You figure that'd tip the scales a hypothetical afterlife ethics committee, just a little bit.
On the other hand, the Honorable Judge, Mr. Tramonti, does not believe in this. You brought him to your office, your trifecta of aides, Seubi, Luca, and the newly loyal Alessandro waiting outside. The last is currently very nervous, because Luca is always one smart comment from butchering Alessandro in a duel, out of indignation that you have saved him from that awkward business. You entirely approve. A bit of terror is healthful, like eating roughage from time to time to firm up the guts, which is a thing you have to start doing soon enough.
"This is most against protocol, Marquis-Admiral!" Mr. Tramonti adjusts his glasses as he looks down at some papers. "There's charges against most of your officers. They're barred until they're cleared!"
"I'm sorry but the ENEMY obviously doesn't know anything about them. Perhaps they weren't invited to the meeting where the importance of staying on procedure was laid out."
"One, you mock me, and two, the ENEMY does have protocols that they stick to!"
"Oho!" Man's stubborn, you'll give him that if nothing else. "So you know what the ENEMY does, eh? And how, may I ask? Perhaps you are a spy? The brig is that way, sir!" You roll over his sputtering. "You can't stop me, judge. We lost Isthmus! That's a direct line to the heartlands, sir. I need every man jack coordinating the response, one that I might now have needed if I had my officers at their posts. This conversation is over. Good day."
Mr. Tramonti leaves with a huff and Alessandro enters. He drops on the seat where the judge sat seconds ago. You give him the good ol' gimlet stare since you've frankly got no idea what he wants. "Thanks for that thing," he eventually settles on.
What thing? What's he talking about? Oh, that thing, with Tramonti. "It's no big deal. You find some memorials you have to give the once over in your small forest of tabs. "I couldn't let that happen to an officer. Eh?"
Alessandro snorts a laugh. "Sure. Why?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know I fucked you and you tried to fuck me back. Okay, I get that. Why help me out, though?"
"Because you're a very intelligent and promising young man," you reply, more distracted by a proposal for some fool thing or another you're reading. Something about making field improvised adjustments to sensor systems. You eventually settle on a flat no, because the guy who came up with it came up on disciplinary action rolls for doing stupid shit with chemical rocket fuel.
"Thank you, Marquis-Admiral, I will remember your praise and not let it get into my head overrmuch."
"See that you do."
The chair creaks. He turns around before he reaches the door. "By the way, it's sort of funny how every time something bad happens, the ENEMY does something to fix that?"
You make a vague mumble grumble of agreement and hide your face behind your monitor.
"No paychecks from Centre, ENEMY flips a bunch of satrap nations so you can loot it. You're under investigation, ENEMY invades so you can get out of committee," he adds with a big smile. You can't tell if he's being haha, what a funny coincidence, or I know. "Seriously, guys out there saved our asses more than the guys back there. Anyway, Luca wants me to tell you that she's scheduled a surprise appearance at the planning station. Good for morale and all."
You lean back. "Bullshit. Luca'd do that herself."
"She wanted to," Alessandro agrees. "Me and Seubi talked her out of it. That shrubbery barbarian's got a brain, more than my fellow alumni. That's all, Marquis-Admiral."
"Make another plant comment at your fellow Lieutenant Admiral and I'll write you up for Conduct Unbecoming." You flick your fingers. "Dismissed."
Now consider the Isthmus. It's a long winding road through the Northern Front, about a couple hundred parsecs long. Optically it looks like a very long, very thin (relatively speaking) nebula. Cursory inspection of the mythology of the barbarians here will show that it has loomed large in the imagination. It has been the serpent of the heavens and it has been the scar on God's face. It has been a dragon, it has been the path from the celestial heaven to the howling hellish dark. Many myths have attributed to the Isthmus properties of travel, liminality, and connection between realms. Prevailing scientific explanation is that it was the aftereffect of some weapon in some long gone precursor megacivilization's war. You've never liked that theory, simply because you were always of the considered opinion that any theory including 'precursors did it' really wanted to say 'God did it, amen.'
It is fitting then, that it's spatial alteration properties has given it the role of being a speedy highway of material. If only one end didn't lie two steps and a skip ENEMY territory.
You had pulled out one of your many tricks to let the ENEMY take it. Cycled some weaker divisions into guarding it. You kinda felt like crap, but whatever, they signed up to die and die they did. Now the ENEMY holds 75% of the Isthmus, which is just enough to plop a fleet within three jumps of home territory. In a last flickering gasp of conscience, or adherence to duty, you've also did a snap sensors exercise near the Isthmus, which allowed you to catch one ghost fleet unaware.
Now you're back in the organ grinder, that nerve center for operations at your citadel. Blazoned on mugs are obviously evil novelty stickers. You know, spikes, burning red eyes, that sort of thing. The staff thinks it's funny. The center of the floor is overtaken by a 3d representation of Isthmus, which is so large that even in representation one glowing hologram end passes through the wall. All around crawl the neurons, collating this report, debating that signal, arguing over logistics and whatnot. This all comes to a halt when you bang open the doors flanked by your aides, on the overlooking third level.
One thing you kinda regret about Alessandro is that he makes three. When it was just Seubi and Luca you were symmetrical.
"At ease, gentleman and lady and et. cetera," you say in your oratory voice. "We have a war to win, so let's not stand on honors. I'd just like to say," you continue down the stairs, "that hazard pay is once again in effect, so feel at ease to lose a limb or two in the enthusiastic enactment of your duties." That wrings a chuckle out of the officers. "Talk to me. What you got?"
You move throughout the room. You soak up conversations, you interject yourself into high level arguments in favour of one thing or another. Eventually, the twisted strands of fate reveal a plan to you. You would like to think it's a good one, and you say as much after you've gathered some high level officers to a table. "Alright," you say, licking your lips, "here's the…"
THE PLAN
[]- THE CENTER CUT: Ball up as many forces as you can, take a portion of Isthmus right at the center and cut off the flow of troops and supply. Isthmus is the worst place to have a fight in, what with it being parsecs and parsecs of distorted space, backward time flows, and all sorts of other crap, but you have to do it. If you seize Isthmus then you've returned everything to the status quo, minus however many divisions you've lost in the process. Least risk, least fuss, least muss.
[]- THE COUNTER RAID: Get Gallu Fleet on the line. Hand some divisions over to their Commandant, and task them to execute a deep strike raid while maintaining a standard defensive posture, while finding what you can and sending them to reinforce the rear. The thing is, you're leaving the heartlands to burn. You're just hoping that the ENEMY will eventually decide that they can't take it anymore, pull it back, lads. Of course, there's a decent chance that the ENEMY decides that they simply could take it, seeing as how uh, they can burn down home systems faster than you can slog through ENEMY friendly barbarian states. The good thing is that you can use some people on this pushing your sphere of influence and therefore United Shipping's area of operations and therefore, and this is a very crucial bit, your paycheques.
[]- THE CONTRAVALLATION: Less of a military strategy and more of a political exercise, your plan is to conscript the armies of the heartland, the local system defense forces, the private armies, etc, under the perogatives of your office as Marquis-Admiral in order to construct a wide ranging defense. You will have to hand over some divisions as stiffener troops but you would have a wide ambit to assume military command over the internal heartland's troops. Except, you know, you'd leave the frontiers less defended, which means the ENEMY can try another invasion, without Isthmus.
