Training an Army

"Let's make one thing perfectly clear," I say, looking out over the assembled officers. There's at least a hundred of them in this group, waiting to for us to finish. Ichirou has already said his piece, and it's typical Allskin rhetoric about fighting and dying with honour.

He should know better.

"The job of this army is not to die for the people of Stardown. If any of you have thoughts of dying honourably in the defense of millions, you're going to forget it, and forget it immediately." They give me strange looks at that, but I'm not done. "Your job is not to die for Stardown. Your job, and the job of all your men is to make the enemy die for Goshi. We are going to kill every single one of those bastards. We are going to hit our enemy from every conceivable direction, make his life a living hell, harass him at every turn, and not grant him a single inch of ground before he's paid for it with the blood of thousands. Thousands of Goshi soldiers. You, and the men you'll lead are not allowed to die until you are ordered to do so. Is that clear?"

"Yes, ma'am!" they shout. A good quarter of them have never led anything larger than a hunting party before, but NOW they're standing like soldiers.

Not that I would know anything about how to be a soldier. ... But I do know how to kill, and how to kill very effectively. Such gifts as I have, I share.

"I know that some of you are new to this. Well, we're going to show you how to lead a unit. Consider this your crash course in small unit tactics. You're either going to learn it and learn it well in the weeks before Goshi arrives, or you and your squad will all die. Your choice."

Silence. I have their full and undivided attention.

'Think of how much mana I could harvest from nine million deaths, Oneechan...' Amaterasu whispers.

I ignore her.

And so it begins. I won't be here for every session, but I do what I can. And Ichirou does what he can. All of those with some level of military experience do the same. And as the weeks pass, they will definitely improve. Not as much as I would like, but they will improve: the threat of impending death has a way of focusing the mind. At least a quarter of their planned training will happen when they're already in position on the forward defensive line: we can't actually afford to wait before deploying the army, but if we don't give them at least some training, they'll never be able to fight as a coordinated army.

As the assembled officers salute me, I almost giggle. How strange to be here, helping to command an army. I've always worked in the shadows before. A knife in the dark. A well placed blast of psychic energy removing a potential threat before it has time to fester. A scalpel, cutting cancerous growths out of society.

It all looks so very different from here.

Still, we've got our spies and assassins as well. If all goes well, they'll wreck havoc on Goshi before they arrive here. The goal of our army is to destroy theirs, but the goal of our assassinations and infiltrations is quite different: those operatives are to spread something far more powerful than guns or effective squad tactics; those operatives are to spread terror, and fear. To demoralize the enemy before he even reaches us.

... 128 field operatives.

It should be enough to make a decent showing. I have no illusions. Our chances are slim. But I aim to maximize them as much as possible. If I did anything less, I'd never be able to forgive myself.

I nod to Ichirou, and he to me, and the training begins.