General Zettour had a sour look on his face when next he met Tanya. "Your tourism to Moskva was incredible, but diplomatically it has been nightmarish." Tanya inwardly cringed.

"As such," he continued, "it is important that you and your unit retire from the public eye for a while. But while typically that would mean an extended holiday in a far flung resort, circumstances do not permit such leisure. Intelligence informs me that Russy, humiliated by your actions, has decided to rehabilitate its mages from its gulags and form vastly larger mage groups than we can field."

"This, as well as their already substantial air forces, require you in particular to work overtime to develop means to counter these, and their overwhelming numbers of infantry and armor. To accomplish this, we now offer you carte blanche, within the means of the army, to achieve this goal. But time is of the essence."

Her mind already running overtime, her repeated, mumbled apologies to the general were taken at face value, he being well aware of her intense concentration when faced with a problem, and she was excused to carry out her orders.

Her first visit was to the intelligence department. The enlisted and junior officers snapped to attention when she entered the room. There she learned that the Russy mages were being taken from their numerous slave labor gulags and assembled together in one of their western gulags, and former prisoners agreed that their expectations would not be for rehabilitation, but extermination as a group. A rough estimate is that there are maybe 6,000 of them still alive, perhaps 3,000 of whom might be able to someday again function as mages, the weaker ones having long ago been worked or starved to death. The Gulag Dzerzenki, likely chosen as near a junction of rail lines. It is thought to also hold a number of Imperial soldiers as prisoners, whose backgrounds and conditions are unknown.

This is the great majority of the western Russy mages, intelligence continued. We have little or no information on the eastern mages, their numbers, abilities, or if they are included in the rehabilitation.

That night, before sleeping, Tanya pondered whether making a strike on that gulag and killing them all was the best course of action, likely the most humane thing for all of them. But before she could have another thought, Being X intervened.

"You are indeed a creature of war and destruction, and have yet to develop any appreciable faith despite my efforts. So I have decided that to improve this situation, I will offer you some good grace in exchange for good works." "What are you talking about?," asked Tanya.

"The people of that nation you are turning against hold deep and abiding faith, yet they are ruled over by savage, faithless monsters who oppress them terribly. Were you to tear down those leaders to allow the installation of more righteous ones, I might be inclined to relieve you of your damnation. No easy labor, of course."

"You want me to overthrow the government of Russy?", Tanya almost screamed. But Being X had already left before she let out an impressive string of curses and invectives directed at him.

Waking up still angry the next morning, she made her way to the offices of the Imperial Railway Service, to see Lieutenant Colonel Ugar. Slaughtering the Russy mages was no longer being considered. Instead she was formulating a scheme to steal most of them, which would do much to declaw the communists and strengthen the Empire. And for that she would need expert help.

Ugar was very thoughtful in his analysis. Because neither the trains nor the train tracks between Russy and the Empire were compatible, or even near to each other, some 6,000 people would have to be loaded on a long Russy train, taken to a destination where a fleet of trucks waited, unloaded and reloaded, then taken to and loaded on an Empire train to go to their final destination. They would be desperate for blankets, water and food. And all that time, the Russy military and police would be trying to stop them, with aircraft and ground vehicles. There would have to be a major distraction for us to have a chance.

Tanya remembered that several miles away from the gulag on the maps she had seen at intelligence, she noted a petroleum depot and a fighter airbase. That would be perfect. "But where do we get our hands on a Russy train?", Tanya asked Ugar. It would probably best to grab one at this station, he said, indicating it on the map, after it has been unloaded and refueled. Boxcars could hold more people, but in cold weather, passenger cars are more comfortable and hold almost as many.

Tanya did her homework before presenting her proposal to General Zettour, and went so far as to prepare graphic aids, mostly unknown in the Empire, but common practice in boardrooms in her time. However, she thought in retrospect that she might have done too good a job, as it gave so much more grist for the mill of his formidable mind that he began to stray off point looking for exploits. However, he had the discipline to suggest half a dozen very good ideas that could be prearranged.

However, the best laid plans often go awry. The expendable gliders would first drop scouts of the gulag, then the railroad team, and finally Tanya, to create the distraction, due to her speed and firepower. The first two drops had no problems, and at first she didn't think so either, quickly locating the massive POL dump. However, only half of the steel drums contained fuel, the other half had, to her horror, chemical weapons, perhaps a hundred thousand drums total. So after thoroughly recording this, she sought out and found a small, sealed container, then punched a small hole in the bottom of a stacked drum. The liquid weapon oozed out of the hole, a persistent agent like thick motor oil, and after catching an adequate amount she carefully sealed the container. For the intelligence department, this was worth a ten thousand times its weight in gold.

Then Tanya saw an exploit. The POL drums were higher than the chemical weapons drums, so if punctured, their fuel would flow between them, creating a great opportunity for incineration. Her machine gun punctured many holes and the fuel flowed. Then she left there are high speed and went to maximum range for a very powerful long range spell. The explosion was magnificent, but she had no intent to hang around in case the wind shifted and blew the extremely lethal smoke in her direction.

The fighter airbase was hopelessly forfeit, as was anyone within miles of the depot. Now all she had to do was to find her new train. It didn't take long to find, as it was barreling along at high speed, and according to Captain Weiss, acting as the engineer, it was the luxury personal armored train of none other than Chairman Josef. On top it has a turret with a 4.2 inch gun and plenty of ammo.

"Judging from how many cars it has, he likes to bring along his entire staff and a brigade or two of bodyguards and secret police." And the rations to feed them, added Weiss.

Soon they had arrived at the Gulag Dzerzenki, they were greeted by a grinning, if bloody Visha, who explained that she and Lieutenant Neumann noted that there weren't very many guards there, so they decided to take them out. Then while he kept watch, she went from barracks to barracks explaining in Russy to the captive mages that they were from the Empire, and here to rescue them. She was very glad that she had been refreshing her language skills. The prisoners were enthusiastic about leaving alive and so were being loaded aboard the train.

Lieutenant Neumann was anything but happy. He wanted to see the commander at once, because he had found the captive soldiers of the Empire. They had been tortured, maimed and starved. Neumann then ordered a subordinate to bring out the captive Gulag Dzerzenki commander. He immediately lashed out at Tanya, screaming foul Russy language and curses and asserting his rank and superiority. Tanya issued an order that the camp commander should not be harmed, but taken with them. Then to make her point, she felt she gave off her most terrifying grin, then noticed that no one was staring at her, but instead looking over her and shuddering. She turned around to see the bloody Visha had exactly the same grin on her face, and with wild, psychotic eyes.

For once Tanya felt the cold fear that others must have felt around her and resolved to be more judicious about her use of facial expressions in the future.

It took a long time to load up all the prisoners and get the train moving again. Only when they were almost to the truck rally point did word come in of approaching fighter aircraft. The next airbase was a long way away, so they must have pushed their engines to their limits and burned fuel like there was no tomorrow. Not knowing they were running headlong into a defensive screen of a battalion of elite mages at higher altitude. They were short lived, except for one who parachuted and was taken captive.

The mages followed the trucks all the way to the Imperial trains, before turning back to monitor the border. Before leaving Tanya asked Captain Weiss the rhetorical question of what would happen if that train was set in reverse at full speed, with all those munitions on board? Afterwards it was noted that it made it all the way back to the rail yard before fouling things up terribly for months.

With the encouragement of General Zettour, the Imperial Railway Service had laid out an amazing banquet of good food for the Russy mage prisoners, and those Imperial soldiers able to eat. But what they did could not be described as feasting or gorging, but as "sin-eating", according to Tanya, consuming the sins of all those soldiers who had saved them. Her soldiers present spoke long after of her profound spirituality.

The busiest person there was Visha, doing her level best to reassure the Russy mages that they were indeed safe, would not be abandoned or destitute, and supported by the Empire as citizens, not slaves. After the feast and using warm baths set up for them, and putting on clean clothes, some of them slept for days. The Empire's doctors insisted they get full medical and dental exams, and they did find some serious latent health problems that were then fixed. At least 20 of them could be labeled as top tier mages.

Visha's efforts were a huge success, as even without being asked, more and more of the Russy mages began volunteering for Imperial military service. Their numbers doubled when one revealed that he was an ordained Russy priest as well, whose church had been razed and his congregants murdered, only surviving because he was a mage. He offered to minister to others of as their military chaplain, which raised their morale considerably.

However, the sheer number of Russy mages created a problem itself. There was no way the Imperial army could accept such a large number of foreign mages in its ranks, or even in their own giant unit in the Empire. But once again, Tanya von Degurechaff provided to the general staff a brilliant, novel solution to many problems, all at once. She had already proposed the creation of a combined arms Kampfgruppe, a task force centered around mages, but now wanted to innovate further, by demonstrating that a Kampfgruppe is "scalable" and can be enlarged by several factors. But with an added element.

The first Mage Combined Arms Foreign Legion Division. With a core of 2900 combat mages, 500 support and reconnaissance mages, organic artillery, armor, mechanized infantry, close air support, a battalion of combat engineers and an antitank company. It would not be stationed in the Empire, but off the coast of colonial East Afria, on the island of Mazotte. Everything about it would be of the highest level of classification, a secret elite heavy brigade, though organizationally a division, of immense combat power.

It would be able to respond to any attack on the Empire with a second front counterattack quickly and with overwhelming force. Its heavy equipment would be moved by the navy, its mages carried and dropped by light aircraft, and its medium equipment carried by new heavy lift aircraft, soon to be produced. In a private deal with the navy, to pay her back for all she had done for them, they made an extraordinary commission with their top ship builder to produce a pair of giant submarines, with a slew of design improvements she specified, capable of carrying a great amount of cargo and personnel. They were so impressed that they forgot their puzzlement at the odd names she chose for them, the Yamato and the Musashi.

Since they had to change something, the general staff replaced the engineer battalion with a worker battalion of military prisoners, as engineers were still at a premium on the active front lines.

First of all, Tanya hoped that by doing things this way, it would allow the diplomatic tension directed at her to dissipate. Second she knew that it would give her plenty of time to train the Russy mages up to her standards, and to train the other combined arms of the division to work hand and glove with each other. And not to irritate the army or navy at the same time. And third, when ordered to engage by the general staff, her division would rattle the enemy down to its core, much like the 203rd had done, but at ten or a hundred times the scale.

Lieutenant Colonel Rerugen was dazzled by the scheme. It was such a radical departure from everything he knew about military organization that he was, he had to be, very dubious. Only when Lt Colonel Tanya arranged, with the help of an immense bribe, a massive training maneuver in an isolated part of the East Afria colony with three first class colonial divisions under strict orders to do everything strictly by current doctrine, were Lt Colonel Rerugen's eyes opened. It was an absolute rout. Those three divisions would have been annihilated, with her division not breaking a sweat. And Tanya didn't even use her simulated trump cards, Doctor Schugel's "ultimate weapons", tools horrifying enough so that if she had to use them, she would want no witnesses.

Rerugen's report was classified at the highest level of security, hand delivery only, receipt by signature. It became the blueprint for the eventual reorganization of the army at brigade, division, corps, army, army group, and theater levels. And while the general staff were willing to promote Tanya to brigadier or even major general after reading it, she insisted on no promotion higher than Colonel.

"Colonels are what runs the army. Generals have to contend with politicians, argue over budgets, attend endless cocktail parties, lunches and teas." Her situation now was at a critical and precarious juncture. To become a general now would leave her powerless and covered in steak sauce in the lion's den of Berun. The last place she wanted to be.

There were some in the general staff who were either compelled to tinker with her plans, perhaps to create a flaw in her armor that could be used to undermine her, or to add their own fingerprint to the plan for self promotion. And this was the case with rejecting her request for an engineer battalion, and substituting what was considered a somewhat useless drain, a worker battalion of military criminal convicts. But Tanya had other ideas.

German Combat Engineers, Pioneers, were woefully underdeveloped in the Empire, mostly associated with trench digging, pillbox construction, and other low skilled work. But she needed a highly skilled, mobile, and effective combat engineer battalion, though in retrospect she pondered that a brigade would have been better, even if overkill for her needs.

She poured over the convicts personnel files, and found that most had been convicted of foolish crimes like drunkenness, moral turpitude, petty theft and things like that. Two of them, out of 550, were obviously spies or political officers, so she made a special effort to turn them in her favor. But from there she had to recreate their morale from scratch to make them top notch Pioneers. A first step in doing so was to offer a full pardon and restoration for those who demonstrated good performance over time.

This organization included Combat Pioneer Troops, Construction Troops, Railway Troops, and Technical Troops. They were first and foremost to be assault troops, and construction workers second. But then Tanya made some modern changes to their task organization, by giving them an organizational structure with a hundred Russian combat support mages, and a mechanized rapid bridging unit.

To unify them more with the division, she created considerable overlap with the mechanized infantry, and with some pure wit and maliciousness, gave them both new "asphalt" uniforms she had specially made, with only her knowing that back on her world, they were uniquely symbolic of the Waffen SS.

Her reconnaissance people were kept very busy in the East Afria colony, but because of its great secrecy, her island had become the top espionage target of the world powers, and spies flooded into the colony looking for information or even transport to the island. So her people had become top notch at counterintelligence. Likewise, rather unexpectedly, mercenaries began showing up in the colony, perhaps with the hope of getting a piece of the action, or at least diving where the next great and small fights were going to be.

In retrospect, she had to thank the Russy Federation both for giving her a huge number of quality mages, but also the time to get her Foreign Legion ordered. This was by dint of her discovery, and recording, and destruction, of their highly illegal chemical weapons depot. It had created an effective pause or armistice in the wars around the world and close to a year of diplomatic debate and haggling to produce treaties against their use. Granted, every nation was using that pause to rebuild and reinforce their military, and also to surreptitiously build up their own stocks of chemical munitions.

But all too soon, Tanya realized that when this pause had ended, the wars would continue with renewed ferocity. So for once she decided to get a jump on things, and put her Foreign Legion through its paces, to make sure it functioned as an effective whole. A forward attack against the Russy Federation was out of the question, so instead she figured an attack from the rear would rattle them.

This meant paying a visit to the Akitsushima Dominion, or as she thought of it, Japan.

They, in the recent past, had spats with the Russy Federation, and still regarded them as enemies, so with her understanding of Japanese culture and history, she hoped both to cultivate a powerful ally, and to steer its extremely powerful nationalistic ambitions in less futile ways, and to severely cripple those of the Russy communists, opening a major second front for Russy, to reduce the pressure on the Empire.

After a brief consultation with the general staff in Berun, she made a roundabout effort to achieve an introduction to the highest levels of the Dominion government and military in a way that would be irresistible to them. Instead of meeting with their powerful leaders, she requested an enigmatic meeting with a seemingly ordinary Akitsushima Rear Admiral, in a lesser and infrequently used port away from the attention of the military or citizenry. Perplexed as to why a decorated officer of the Empire wished to meet with him for an entire week, Admiral Yamatoro, with the permission of his superiors and their foreign office, agreed.

He was utterly taken aback, expecting a blue water ship and a senior military man, to instead be greeted by a young, blond girl, in a ship's longboat pulled by eight sailors with oars. She then greeted him in formal Japanese, and asked him aboard. He was beyond speechless, and agreed. Nothing could have prepared him in any way for the surfacing of the Musashi, 400 feet in length, his mouth agape and staring. Then with a proper naval welcome, she asked him aboard.

Ushered in to the Captain's stateroom, Admiral Yamatoro paused in admiration, as the Empire's navy had spared no expense with the décor, either. Fortunately, while neither man spoke the others language, Yamatoro spoke a bit of English to express his awe, learned as a student in the Unified States years before, and the Captain responded, speaking some English himself, from time he had spent in the Commonwealth.

But before they could say much, Tanya, who had changed to her dress uniform with all its decorations, made her entry. The Captain came to attention and saluted, briskly. Yamatoro didn't even recognize most of her combat decorations, and strained to remember the rank structure in the Empire.

Commonwealth insignia would have been much easier, as the Dominion's navy was closely modeled on theirs in every regard. However, Tanya was all business. The first thing she did was order a full dinner and drinks from the well stocked mess, to eat while talking business. By the end of the evening, Yamatoro was utterly exhausted. This was the pattern every day of that week.

She was courteous enough to have the entire week written down, in Japanese, with maps, for him to take home to his military headquarters. It outlined most of their current operational plans, and told them what would work, what wouldn't and why. And she included a scheme that would turn a major operation the Dominion had planned into the largest massacre of Russy forces imaginable, a slaughter off the scale of war.

On her world, Japan had successfully taken Manchuria, which was only wrestled away with Soviet armies totaling one and a half million men, at the end of the war, against Japanese forces half that number, in a gigantic multi front pincer maneuver. Under her plan, this would happen sooner, and those Russy forces would be annihilated.

Near the end, she said she that just by itself, that it was unlikely what she had explained was believable, so to drive her point home she intended to make the Musashi and its plans a gift to the Dominion's navy, so that while its army was capturing Manchukuo, their name for Manchuria, their naval yards would be busy building submarines and improved surface ships. And she and the crew of the Musashi would return home via a different submarine, and later return to the Dominion when the time was right, both by submarine and surface ships.

She then gave him a list of the critical officers in their military, that he should personally engage with them and show them the plan.

Once the Dominion army was in place in Manchukuo, she would return with her Foreign Legion and lure perhaps 200 Russy divisions into obliteration at the hands of the Dominion. When they know I have arrived in Manchukuo, they will come in their multitudes, and you will be ready for them.

When Admiral Yamatoro was returned to the dock, after a very close inspection of the Musashi, and reviewed the plan for the Musashi to park at their largest shipyard, and the crew to disembark before heading out to sea on a larger surface ship which would rendezvous with the Yamato, he had to shake his head. Certainly their intelligence branch would assume their operational branch had been totally compromised, but there was so much information given to them that was not in their plans, that even they must eventually see this as a gift from God himself.

He knew that for the next month, at least, his life was going to be hectic. But before that even started, he made a priority request to the intelligence branch to find out every bit of information about a Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff, and for their diplomatic corps a request to establish extensive diplomatic contacts with the Empire as soon as possible.

By the time her submarine had again docked at Mazotte, the Russy were again planning aggression. Imperial intelligence had noted the incredible incompetence of those Russy officers selected for their political connections instead of military prowess. Though vastly outnumbered by the Russy, the Imperial forces using Tanya's combined arms organization were running circles around them.

The biggest enemy advantage was with massed artillery and aircraft, which meant the Imperial mages had become expert in anti-artillery and anti-aircraft operations. On the ground the Russy used an insane tactic of sending in unescorted tanks, that were opened up like rotten fruit by Tanya's anti-tank companies idea. Then after their tanks had been brutalized, they would order their withdrawal, and send in unescorted infantry in human wave attacks. Against water cooled, belt fed machine guns.

After a pause they would do it all again. In practice, in a lull, the anti-tank gunners would grab several rockets and a launch tube, and run forward to jump in shell holes. Then the tanks would come, be punished, and pull back. Following that there was a pause and the anti-tank gunners would run back to their lines. Then the enemy human wave attacks would come. It was madness worse than the Rhine theater.

Even at a rate of 100 to 1 or two killed, it was starting to erode the Empire. So Tanya's plan, of pulling most of the Russy army east to conquer lands taken by the Akitsushima Dominion was looked at with favor. Yet her return to the Dominion was next to impossible to be done in a discreet manner. This in a way was part of the plan, and it worked, because in the weeks leading up to her arrival, Dominion counterintelligence had captured dozens of Russy spies, saboteurs and assassins. Russy knew who she was, and were deeply hateful of her.

The conquest of Manchukuo was generally uneventful, and yet this peaceful occupation was very, very busy. Tanya was even more impressive to the Dominion general staff than she had been to that of the Empire. Her familiarity with the strongest parts of their culture was mythical, and all coming from a young, blond foreign girl. She indirectly, but unmistakably referred to the actions of their great historical heroes to justify her plans. And the entire time, Admiral Yamatoro was present, drinking it all in and taking copious notes.

The best way her plan could be described was to channelize the Russy forces into "valleys of the shadow of death". Protected from air attack and Russy artillery by her legion, the enemy infantry were to be forced to traverse narrow valleys, ringed by Dominion artillery. In some cases, drums of a thickened mix of kerosene and gasoline were to be detonated above them. Tanya was glad to even give a name to this last, which they had never heard before. "Napalm", she said. "Tamaya!", she said to the puzzled looks on their faces, before with some horror they realized what she was talking about.

She had underestimated how much Chairman Josef wanted to destroy her, destroy the Dominion forces in Manchukuo and claim that land for itself. She had estimated he would send 200 divisions, but he sent 300, though many were little more than conscripts with pointed sticks and refugees from one of his famines. After running out of shells, the Dominion asked Tanya's legion to take out the remaining concentrations, which they did. Thus her combined arms legion had a baptism of fire as one sided as her 203rd mage companies attack on the Principality of Dacia. As the cold, dry winter of Manchukuo turned into the hot, monsoon rain summer, large parts of its border area became uninhabitable from the stench.

The Russy army was so depleted that it had no choice but to reach an armistice with the Empire, which meant the Commonwealth and the Unified States were all that remained of its former enemies.

For Tanya's part, she could now spend much of her time on her island of Mazotte, with rare forays into Afria, mostly to keep the peace by putting down some revolutionaries while training her legion. But she was careful not to neglect Berun for too long, not knowing what mischief they might make. Her suspicions were confirmed when she was summoned to the office of General Rudersdorf.

"Intelligence reports indicate that the Unified States is constructing an extremely destructive weapon, with which it hopes to dominate the world. It is suspected that with a single use of this weapon, an entire city could be wiped out. We need to assess this threat and act accordingly. However, our intelligence resources in the Unified States are stretched thin. In addition, the security level of their suspected facility is such that only top tier mages might penetrate it."

Of course, Tanya knew exactly what he was talking about.

Rudersdorf also knew of her submarine, the Yamato, and though he sorely regretted the loss of the Musashi to the Dominion, he understood that the gift had not only cemented diplomatic ties between the two nations, but also in doing so it had resulted in the crippling of the Russy Federation, so was definitely worth the price.

"The Commonwealth, and likely the Unified States, keep our docks under continual surveillance, but your submarine can go to and from your island at will with no one the wiser. And it can also stay submerged the entire journey. For this reason, we request that you assemble a commando team to infiltrate the Unified States, seek out this weapons facility, evaluate the threat of this weapon, and if necessary, to take appropriate action to destroy it."

For the next several weeks, Tanya became a fixture in a very secure area within the Empire's intelligence branch, so much so that they soon built a special wing to their headquarters and assigned her a permanent detachment. She became very upset on learning that previously a commando team had been sent to the Unified States on a similar mission, had fouled up terribly, been caught and secretly tried and executed. So her next extended stay was at the new, very elaborate embassy of the Akitsushima Dominion, where she was met and greeted with reverential awe.

On hearing of her arrival at their embassy back in the Dominion, Admiral Yamatoro, now commander of all Dominion military forces, truly wished he could have seen his beloved friend, Tanya-sama, but knew that his appearance in the Empire would be a major problem, so he sent his three most trusted aides, representing the navy, army and air forces instead, with strict instructions to take exacting notes on absolutely everything she said.

She had no intention of just waltzing in to the Unified States, maybe blowing up an installation and leaving. Instead she intended to create the most elaborate, intricate, and invasive intelligence operation ever made. While the Empire did not have extensive resources there, the Dominion had vast potential numbers, though the majority were just ethnically Akitsushimans who had migrated there for over a century with the intent to become citizens. So she figured that especially those who were first generation immigrants might be amenable to working in support of a peace organization between the two nations, especially since Tanya knew them to be seen as second class citizens by the majority.

Meanwhile, the Empire had been busy, creating and filling comfortable dormitories for the very large numbers of widows and orphans created by the war, with a strong emphasis on learning the languages and accents of the Unified States, yet with a strong patriotic emphasis of the Empire and their love of its people. They were part of a plan of soft espionage, for the women to find and marry powerful and wealthy men, and they and their children to become part of the vital war industries and research of the Unified States.

When the espionage network was first engaged, Tanya was still in Berun. A highly classified, but otherwise routine communique from the Commonwealth was intercepted, and a very different substitute was sent to an incompetent Commonwealth embassy official in the capital of the Unified States. The evening before he had been plied with drink and so fell asleep en route to his office, forgetting his briefcase in the public transportation. Just coincidentally, a newspaper reporter in the employ of the Empire happened to find in it what was soon notoriously called "The Flatman Communique."

It was directed at the government of the nation to the south of the Unified States, allegedly from the Commonwealth foreign office, saying that they should encourage the Unified States to fight the Empire, and once they had sent their military to do so, leaving them weakened, the Commonwealth would support their military invasion and recapture of the western lands of the Unified States that had been taken from that country long before.

After it blew up into a major scandal, it did not help Deputy Ambassador Flatman that his briefcase was also filled with salacious, and generally accurate, stories of sexual scandals and bribery of Unified States government officials known to Commonwealth intelligence, which were also published. Tragically, Flatman soon perished en route back to the Commonwealth in a smaller aircraft, by opening a door and leaping to his doom over the ocean. "Doing the honorable thing", it said in the Commonwealth newspapers, not noting that he likely had help.

What wasn't published by the reporter was a far more serious memo, documenting allegations of widespread infiltration of the Unified States government by Russy agents and communist sympathizers. For this, Tanya rewarded the reporter with a secret commendation from the Empire and a stipend in addition to his normal pay, with a request to pursue this information at many levels.

By far, Tanya's most brilliant intelligence coup was discovering secret plans of the Unified States to wipe out the Dominion's aircraft carrier and battleship surface fleet in a sneak attack. When they heard of this, Admiral Yamatoro's aides at their embassy in the Empire were positively twitching with rage.

When Yamatoro read Tanya's plans for dealing with this, his spasms of undignified laughter were heard through much of his headquarters. And then with ice cold seriousness, he assembled his entire command staff.

Based on programmed intelligence fed to them by the Dominion, the arrogant Unified States government and navy believed it had a golden opportunity to establish hegemony in the largest ocean adjacent to their shores, by obliterating most of the warships of the Dominion in a great sneak attack in Dominion waters, not even bothering to declare war first. This was because every bit of intelligence they could gather indicated that almost all of the Dominion fleet would be as a group traversing a chain of islands where they would be sitting ducks to air and battleship attack. But in turn, the US carrier and battleship approach would have to be constrained, not as widely spaced as they normally would be.

Yet just before the Dominion fleet entered the death trap, they suddenly halted. On getting this report from their reconnaissance mages, the US fleet on the other side of the island chain halted as well. They next saw their mages being blown from the sky, and then they saw something that made them panic.

As one, fifteen Yamato-class submarines surfaced around them. Without thinking, a destroyer Captain gave the order to escape, his ship soon running into a dense minefield full of outsized sea mines. As a courtesy, the nearest submarine deployed several large life rafts to rescue survivors.

The Fleet Admiral of the Dominion submarines then broadcast on an open channel that the US ships were in a very restricted area of Dominion waters, and this had long been posted on international naval maps, and only after they had dropped all their weapons and aircraft overboard and had their large guns rendered safe, would they would be permitted to return home without further delay, but if they launched any aircraft or committed other acts of violence, they would all be immediately sunk.

To drive the point home in a big way, very quickly an unheard of assembly of mages appeared over all the US ships: Tanya's large number of Imperial and Russian mages, their numbers augmented by a lot of highly motivated Imperial Marine mages, and the minority of Dominion mages; but since all were wearing the uniforms of Dominion mages, it appeared that the Dominion had more combat mages, five times as many, than the rest of the world combined.

Aboard the Yamato, the sixteenth of the submarines, still submerged, Tanya was heard shouting out "Tora! Tora! (expletive) Tora!", to which a Dominion naval officer standing next to her said, "Tiger?" She replied, "It's just an expression of joy. Don't worry about it." However, including the curse word, it permanently entered the lexicon of the Dominion navy.

Of course it took the US carriers a long time to bring up and drop into the water all those fighter aircraft, and for the battleships to bring up and dump their propellant charges and shells prior to mages dropping thermite charges down their closed breech tubes, and it was early evening before the respective fleets began their trips home. The largest naval battle of all time with only small arms fire.

Dr. Adelheid von Schugel was indeed a mad genius. Tanya was mystified as to how he could have been the one in which Being X had invested such power. Every year now, the Empire's top secret missile program continued to grow beyond measure, restrained only by the number of workers he could obtain. She curled her lip at the thought he once expressed that even slaves would be enough to do the work he required, as long as they obeyed his demand to frequently pray in all the chapels and churches he had built.

Yet his work continued unabated into other things as well, such as the "ultimate weapons" he had given to her to use, that truthfully she had been too afraid to use, at least until now. He had simply called them numbers one, two and three, from least to most powerful. After his description of number one, the weapon chosen to erase the entire giant weapons facility in the Unified States, and all that had to be done to "safely" use it, she was even more terrified than on her first flight aboard the now archaic V-1 rocket.

"Fortunately for you, the weapon will not use your mana, as it needs far more than you could possibly have. Some time ago I attempted to make an operational orb pre-loaded with far more mana than a person could have, that then would be fed directly into their computational crystal, but it was far too unstable."

Something even Dr. Schugel thinks is unstable?, thought Tanya.

"But then I realized that if it could not have a stable discharge, what would happen if the discharge would happen almost all at once? And this lead to the creation of Number one. You need to go to an optimal altitude of about 15,000 feet, in a thermal suit and with oxygen, perhaps 5 miles away from your target. Expect a kick from the weapon, so be prepared to immediately brake, then to go at maximum speed away from the target to the rendezvous point. Do not attempt to record the blast with your computational jewel, or it could damage it. A ground observational team will try to record it on film."

Tanya was speechless. But it had been explained to her that this was perhaps the most important mission of her career. For the Unified States to continue to make these weapons they would become by far the most dangerous power in the world, able to make itself an empire with just threats.

After she had gone over every detail of the plan a hundred times, the actual execution seemed almost routine. Driven in an automobile by two men she had never met, both wearing suits, they stopped in a wooded area. She donned her thermal flight suit and operational orb, made sure she had her dark goggles, checked her bearings for the installation, which would be hard to miss even at that altitude and distance. Then she was handed the single use weapon that would fire number one.

It was like an old musket, but with what looked like a drum magazine halfway down the length of the barrel, and a strange looking butt, that would fit against a large chest plate she was wearing. Then one of the men opened the breech, while the other brought up a box and a pair of tongs. From the box he lifted an ominous looking black ball and dropped it in the back of the weapon, then closed the breech.

Without saying anything else, the two men saluted, but did not wait for a return salute, got in the car and sped away on the dirt road. Tanya swallowed hard and took off. For once she had been equipped with an altimeter and needed it. It seemed unusually difficult to judge by sight for once.

On the far side of a mountain, two technicians were doing a routine sweep for mana signatures, but dismissed her signal as an equipment flaw, as it was too high, around 11,000 feet, heading straight up, and disappeared on the high end of their screens. Just a blip. After the event, neither of them even remembered it.

She easily located the facility, that was suddenly illuminated by the morning summer sun. A clear day. She first put on her heavy goggles, then aligned her body so that when the gun butt pressed against the chest plate, by the sighting device it was aimed properly. Then she saw the single button she was to push and turned off the safety, re-sighted and pushed the button.

And that is the last thing she remembered for ten or fifteen seconds. Flying backwards at high speed she came to rolling like a ball and it was very hard to stabilize herself. The gun had been knocked out of her hands, and was hanging by its single long strap, but her rolling had wrapped the strap around her. Her momentum was fierce, and she started braking hard. It was then she thought she saw an illusion of two suns, before she realized that the second sun was in fact her target. As black as her goggles were, she could see it as plain as day. Finally, she recovered her equanimity and checked her altimeter.

She was at over 17,500 feet. She had to descend, and quickly, using a charm again altitude sickness.

There was still oxygen in the tank. She very fortunately was on the far side of a mountain before the blast wave hit, as much of the forest on the other side was knocked down. So here she was, in the backwoods, finally finding a paved road that eventually had a useful road sign after a few miles. With a map she saw the rendezvous site and made haste to get there. Only when she had taken off her gear and put on civilian clothes did she realize that the skin on her face not covered by the goggles had serious first degree burns, even with a few blisters. There's never a medical mage around when you need one, she thought.

Colonel Renfred, of the Nuclear Weapon Development Agency within the Unified States Army could not believe what he was reading. "You're saying the only traces of radioactive material found were of our making? Identical isotopes, identical chemistry, identical doping materials. Then what the hell caused that blast? Nuclear or chemical?"

"The best that we can tell is neither. There was a mana signature that knocked out mana detection equipment over 50 miles away. But we have no explanation for any of it. Even if it was man made or a byproduct of our nuclear enrichment program. Whatever it was, the seismic effects are causing small earthquakes across the region. Had there been a major fault line with stored energy nearby it could have caused a second disaster."

"Howsoever," said the Colonel. The top brass and the political leaders are in agreement that for the foreseeable future, the Unified States are out of the nuclear weapons business, likely for good.

Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff's return to her island of Mazotte was greeted with rare military pomp and enthusiasm. Deputy Commander Lieutenant Colonel Weiss and her Adjutant, Major Serebryakov, had kept her Legion in top condition, along with her Russyan subordinate Captains and Lieutenants, who were all singularly loyal to her. When the opportunity presented itself, they had trained and improved the colonial divisions, upgrading them to combined arms forces superior to most of the divisions in the world, which could act as a strategic reserve either for the legion or for the Imperial Army.

Tanya herself appeared in her colonial dress whites, sporting any number of medals not just from the Empire but also the Dominion. Fortunately, thanks to Visha, the remaining paperwork had been reduced to just a dozen essential pages. Reclining on a chaise lounge in more comfortable clothes in her private suite, Tanya found herself dozing off, more than ready for a well earned holiday.

She awoke with a start to find Visha kissing her on the lips. "Colonel," she said, "I just wanted to thank you for being such a truly good person."