You get an idea. It's a good idea, too. If the Edmonton in particular isn't a great basis for a conversion, what about other nations' service rifles? The Gallians are sure to be building a huge number of guns, Allegheny builds a lot of rifles and isn't building up for war, and you swear you remember something about an Akitsukuni rifle that was interesting and almost gave Helen Parr a run for her money. You could fire a message off to HQ asking for clearance for overseas purchases, and then negotiate with foreign companies, and now that you think about it, that'd be a long delay even before you get into how long shipments would take to arrive by ship. Worse, that'd mean entirely separate ammunition, coming from overseas, and needing to be spread out across the front. You look to Lily, and decide that rifles need to be arriving sooner rather than later. Exceptional women crawling through mud capturing rifles is no basis for a marksmanship programme. You decide the army cannot wait for you to arrange all the details, let alone for a foreign company to manufacture and ship guns halfway across the world to unfamiliar gunsmiths.
Your next thought is a scheme to have some manufacturers work on a better Katzen style action rifle while some mount scopes to Edmontons. You think that it might be workable, but it will be a long time until the Katzens start showing up, and before that point you'll have nothing to show for it. "It can't wait, can it?" you ask Lily.
"The rifles? The more the better in my book. If the gunsmiths run out of scopes to mount, get them going on open lenses so we can catch up sooner. We're in a dreadful state now and the sooner we're fighting back the better."
"Right." That settles that. "I'll secure the top percentile of Edmontons off the line for scoping, tell me how many you can handle."
You shake hands. You know how Albian industry will be mobilized to meet this challenge. The afternoon is spent making arrangements, but all the hard decisions have been made, and you're able to write that a solution has been found for this problem with Lily's assistance and that you're now able to move on to trying to start a recruitment drive.
-----
The evening post interrupted you as you were attempting to tell from the newspapers what the h-ll was going on in Gallia. You'd been lost in the desperate impossibility of your work training riflewomen up to standards for so long that you hadn't noticed the months slipping by. There was a common feeling that the war would be done by Christmas and the nasty unspoken certainty that Albia's army didn't have the replacements to last even that long if the continental armies stayed in the field.
And yet. Lily had said that when her arm was shattered, her friends had been there to see her off and she was sorry to leave them there. That was foreign to you. You'd been sorry to leave your friends behind after the battle at Descoteaux, having seen them off.
Wary of any other things that now meant something different from your first guess, you open the letter. It is an invitation to speak after dinner at the Sevenoaks Rifle Club, a very prestigious riflery club. Apparently, from the accompanying letter, the leading ladies of Isledon are resolved to do what they can to contribute to the nation's war effort, and you're invited there to talk about the future of riflery and discuss things from the perspective of the infantry. You are more than welcome to bring other distinguished officers whose perspective would be relevant, of course, that goes without saying.
That's convenient. It means you can bring Lily and ask her any questions you want since they're rhetorical questions for the benefit of the dinner party. Well, any questions about combat. You start to mentally run down the list of questions you'd ask her if it weren't for embarrassment and there's rather a lot. It'll be nice having more of a feel for what she did beyond earning Albia's highest honor and getting her name in the papers. You dash off an invitation to her to accompany you. The remainder of the evening is spent with the newspapers trying to picture her in the battles you read about.
-----
You lie in bed.
Yearly exercises had prepared you for a lot. You knew how to shoot, how to direct a unit's fire, and the vital skill of calling the range to keep the women focused on their target. What they hadn't, couldn't prepare you for was losing friends.
You shift.
You still had to consciously remind yourself that your 2i/c, Ellen Howell, was dead and gone. You'd see something, and you'd want to share it with her just to get her reaction or advice. She was a great listener.
You toss.
...
You turn.
...
You roll.
...
You clutch the covers tight.
...
You do not notice it when sleep comes.
-----
You'd forgotten what a hassle it was getting your full dress uniform to sit just right. You missed looking smart for the night, but you sure didn't miss working with your batwoman to get the girdle cinched down and then battling it to get everything else on before finally checking whether you'd gotten your body to match the jacket's shape. The result, though, made it all worth it. It'd been too long since you'd been able to remind yourself you could look like that. So long in fact that it felt almost like someone else.
After powdering your face to a natural, neutral complexion, you thrill at the sight of the woman grinning at you. It's been way too long, and even better you could spend the whole night talking with ladies of refinement, rather than having to endure a mixer with the men of another regiment. It was rare to get a chance to really talk to people with a properly different perspective on riflery, and the men were just hopeless. The best you'd ever gotten from one of them was flattery about how impressive you and your technique were, and groups were worse, they'd just try to show off to each other with how much ignorance they could affect. This night would be different. Among the finest and best traveled riflewomen in the world and all their experiences, you'd have to work to keep up with your knowledge of the Edmonton.
When you get to Lily's quarters, you aren't quite sure what to expect but you certainly don't expect sniffling. Taking care to click your heels against the floor, you rap on the door and announce yourself. After a bit of hesitation, you hear a response, "Come in". You hadn't seen Lily in such a state before. Her full dress uniform is laid out on her bed along with a decent amount of undergarments. The red blotchiness from her crying is fighting with an embarrassed blush, and the left strap of her bust supporter hangs at her elbow, unreachable by her good arm. You wonder how much of this difficulty she's been hiding under her comparatively shapeless field overcoat.
"I'm going to need a lot of help," she sniffles.
"That's fine," you mumble, gingerly lifting the strap up onto her shoulder. "Do you not have a batwoman? Why isn't one assigned?"
"It's part of the job. I'm basically out once I convalesce, remember? Not much need to have someone keep you fed in meetings and dress you for formal engagements while you heal."
"Right, yes. I'll have to see if there's anything I can do about that." You cast your eyes over the clothes on the bed, and find a light girdle. You lace it snugly to the curve of her waist, and wish it were as easy for you.
"Sure, let me know if you find a job for a Lieutenette who can't climb a ladder to go over the top," she scoffs. She's struggling to attach her stockings to their suspenders, and you go to help, but she insists she can manage it. It's an awkward maneuver. With the fingers of just one hand, she has to pin the attachment against the firm muscle of her thigh through a bit of soft flesh, hold the stocking in place on it, and then with her other fingers pull the clasp onto the point and with a strength belied by their fineness push the attachment stud firmly into the clasp through the stocking's resistance. Keeping track of the whole operation is just about past you, and more than once the awkwardness makes you want to help hold everything firmly in place against her leg. She manages, though.
"What's next?" you ask, looking at the rest of the uniform scattered on her bed.
"Whatever you choose, I'm reliant on you." She sighs and you run your gaze over her. Stockings cling to the contours of her legs, with only an imperceptible gather that could be smoothed over by quickly running your hands over it, and the suspenders run over surprisingly light pantalettes.
"Do you even need petticoats to structure your skirt?"
"Right, clothes, umm, there should be one under the skirt. The blouse and jacket should be out. I'll grab the hat on the way out the door."
As she takes a deep breath you realize something's weighing on her, something that she's not saying. You just have no idea how to handle it.
After a moment's consideration, you decide to...
[ ] Ask flatly what's bothering her (+2 stress, may cause offense)
[ ] Offer general reassurance
[ ] Try flattery to allay or draw out what's bothered her (+1 stress, lowest risk)
[ ] Confide your feelings of irrelevance (+2 stress, may reduce esteem)
