Chapter 33: Narita After-Action Report

It was only Tuesday morning, not even 11, and already, Cornelia wanted to retire to her quarters for the rest of the day.

One might assume such behavior was odd for the typically hard-working, no-nonsense soldier. Some might even assume she was finally acting like a spoiled princess when, while it was cold out, it was nearing the end of October, and it was still a lovely day. Clear skies and bright autumn sun warned the settlement, and the leaves on trees had already begun the process of browning and falling to earth.

But if one was brave or foolish enough to mention such to her, they'd be lucky if she demoted them. She didn't care for the weather or even the time of year. Instead, the reason for her persistent headache these past few days was her operation to crush the JLF and find evidence of their collaborators so she could finally see the nuisance of the determined Eleven resistance crippled.

Now, holding a meeting with her surviving commanders and several of the area’s important officials, she hoped for some good news.

"The Japan Liberation Front was nearly wiped out by your Narita operation, Viceroy. We're currently hunting down the survivors." One of the ministers she hadn't purged from government spoke up, which only made her hopes of good news vanish.

"Are you being sarcastic? Because that better be a poor attempt at a joke." She didn't care about the man, but her tone was enough for him to infer he was in hot water. "All we accomplished was taking some useless hollowed-out mountain base and killing a few dozen Elevens. In exchange, we lost a good chunk of our forces."

That was another reason for her foul mood these last few days. On paper, while Narita was a loss, it was far from a major one, with Area 11 garrison forces still strong enough to maintain civil order and ward off attacks from the Chinese Federation. However, that wasn't by chance but by choice, as she had hardly touched the local troops and only used them when she had no other troops for tasks, such as the now-defunct Area 11 chapter of the Purebloods.

The issue came from nearly all the losses suffered at Narita were from her own forces, men and women who had honed their skills and gained invaluable experience and strength through her many campaigns and deployments. Even now, days after the fiasco, they were still digging up units from the blood-filled mud to recover the dead. She trusted those men much more than the pathetic excuses of soldiers her brother had guarding such a vital area of the empire. Now, she found herself forced to rely on them even more.

"N-no, I didn't mean it—" the minister tried to return his statement, but Guilford cut him off.

“The occupational government is partly to blame for this,” the knight was blunt, his gaze locked on not just the minister but all of them who struggled to meet his eye. They've done nothing about Area 11's extensive underground rail and minding network, which allows these terrorists to move about as they place. What plans do you have for addressing this?"

The man coughed into his hand. Having been put in a tough spot and with no support from the rest, he would need to weather this by himself. "Well, we've proposed closing off the entry points and using demolition explosives to block routes, but it would be impossible to completely eliminate them. Those tunnels stretch across the entire country, and we just don't have the budget to fill or blast them in."

“And so you do nothing even as terrorists use them in their operations to strike at the occupation and retreat before they can be caught and judged for their crimes against the empire. Is the cost to handle this worth the tens of millions lost when military equipment such as a fully loaded Sutherland is lost?” Guilford wouldn't let them off with such a weak excuse.

“But my Lord, Prince Clovis instructed us-!”  Cornelia, turning her attention to him, gave him pause.

Tapping at his forehead with his fine silk handkerchief, he chose his words carefully. "The former Viceroy Clovis believed that using a forceful approach could fuel the rebellion, threatening our control over Area 11 and giving the Chinese Federation a window to attack. He even pushed for the honourary Britannian program to be simplified and opened early so that Elevens, who would otherwise choose disobedience and terrorism, could have more productive alternatives.

Yes, Cornelia had been aware of that from the moment as imperial law typically left that to the Viceroy to decide, but most often only opened up the position to the greater number populace after 25 years, a means to ensure that many of the young, unskilled labor they were recruiting wouldn't have strong memories of a time before Britannian rule, while at the same time robbing terrorist groups of those same young, able-bodied recruits.

Euphemia kept silent as things went on, though she knew that she knew what she did. She wondered if her brother had made such an unorthodox move more for political points than any genuine care for the Elevens.

"As if they need any further one than what they have now. Zero's growing stronger and bolder by the day, considering his involvement in our Narita operation. For all we know, he could be a Chinese agent, as we still have no clue about his true identity." Cornelia reminded them, as they didn't even know his ethnicity. Their analyst couldn't get anything thanks to whatever voice modulator Zero used, and his grasp of English and Japanese didn't lean any which way.

Dalton spoke up. The man was equally frustrated, but the grizzled soldier handled it better. “Vice-minister, isn’t it true that your department of internal affairs has appointed a group of Elevens to help govern Area 11 called the NAC?” He knew he was onto something when the room grew tense.

Frowning, he continued. “When we stormed Narita, part of our objectives was to find proof of their involvement in aiding terrorist groups using the wealth and influence their Britannian granted positions grant them.” How they started to sweat only made his suspicions stronger against this group, as perhaps they believed he was fishing, or perhaps they shared similar feelings.

Regardless, he went in for the kill. "Sadly, while the JLF's base was largely intact, all evidence that could have existed of such was either destroyed or taken with them. Still, our suspicions remain high. For that reason, while we can't arrest them, I would suggest we disband the NAC till such a time as terrorist activity cools.”

To the horror of the government ministers and officials, Cornelia seemed to be on board with Dalton’s idea. “Bluebloods and plutocrats, relics of a dead country.” She hardly trusted numbers; this was well known, but she had a particular revulsion to this NAC group. As far as she was concerned, they were spineless cowards who sold out their own countrymen for scars of power and influence. No one trusted traitors, so who could say they won't do to you as they did to others?

“W-wait, I beg you to reconsider.” The interior minister stood up, the man looking terrified of the suggestion as he pleaded his case. "I can't say that your suspicions are unjust, as they're Elevens all the same, but if we suppress them, it'll lead to a crush in the Eleven's economy, which would mean no tax revenue to end to the homeland."

Elevens might be barred from most things within the settlement and have few rights, but they still participated in the local economy and paid taxes. In fact, they paid a higher tax for their income brackets than a Britannian would. They were ill-equipped to handle the responsibilities of the NAC, and in the interim, tens of millions of pounds of taxes would go uncollected.

“Also, it’s a prime directive of the empire that numbers should take care of their own kind.” He added that Cornelia and the rest picked up what he meant: That they didn't have the people or resources to handle such a situation.

Euphemia also suspected that should they take such drastic moves, it would only further alienate many Elevens who otherwise avoided terrorist activity, and with her sister’s reputation still soaked in the blood of Saitama…

“And what progress has been made in the investigation into the whereabouts of the Black Knights?" Cornelia asked, giving the man reprieve, if only from that line of question.

"I-I'm afraid, not much, Viceroy Cornelia. We recovered their equipment from Narita, but the 2 Sutherlands matched 2 from the stolen Shinjuku. The Burai didn't yield much either as they're built from scarp and second-hand pieces, which can be easily purchased via the black market." He informed them.

“And Zero’s unit?” Cornelia’s gaze narrowed at the reminder of that Frankenstein of a machine, one which had been responsible for the deaths of many of her people and nearly killed her.

The defense minister spoke up for this, standing with the report in hand. “We’re classifying it as Terrorist Knight Unit, or TKU-1, while the second red unit is classified as TKU-2. With TKU-1, we've recovered the unit, but it's much the same as the Burai. The only ingenious thing about it was its set-up, which made 6-leg motion feasible. Its additional armor, parts, and weapons are all matched with files on Chinese-produced military equipment."

“Which could point to his origins as a Chinese agent?” Guilford questioned.

The defense minister didn’t look too sure about that. "That is a possibility, but it's well known that Chinese equipment is much easier to acquire via the Black Market, particularly in the Asian markets. It could just as easily be Zero making use of readily available supplies." Yes, that was a possibility, as with how corrupt and mismanaged the Federation was, one could buy entire tanks and Gun-Rus if they knew where to look.

The 'communist' superpower lacked the cohesion or stability of its fellow superpowers, but because of its size and vast manpower, taking it in a war, while possible, would be long, bloody, and most likely prove pyrrhic if all you gain is poorly built infrastructure and hundreds of millions of starving newly minted numbers with nothing to lose in fighting you.

“As for the…remains of the squad that found them, it’s another story.” The defense minister looked sick as he looked over the report, needing a moment to compose himself, which drew Cornelia's interest. What could the report say that could gain such a reaction?

"We were able to confirm that most either died from gunfire or stab wounds, but there were some irregularities. Of the dead, we confirmed that…the commander of the unit killed them.” His announcement made the room sit straighter and was immediately denied.

“Killed them? Impossible.” Dalton dismissed it out of hand, as those men had served under them for years. They were some of the best soldiers Britannia had to offer and were as loyal as they came. The notion that one of them, a superior at that, would gun down his own men...

The minister would have agreed with him, he had agreed with him at first, but when he had seen the results, he couldn't deny that it was damning. "Unfortunately, the lab results don't lie; the bullets that killed the two in question came from the commander's weapon, and with how the bodies fell, it would be near impossible for Zero to have stolen the gun, used it, and returned it the dead man and then posed all of their corpses to resemble such."

“Have you looked into the soldier’s record and background?” Cornelia asked, and while she didn't buy it, she couldn't dismiss it either. For all they knew, Zero had forced the man into it by targeting his family.

"We're going through everything with a magnifying glass, but thus far, nothing could tell us why he would turn traitor at that moment, and with the unit dead, we can't question them." He replied.

Cornelia massaged her brow. “I can already tell that wasn’t the only unusual thing about the scene.”

Sadly for her, she was right about that, as that wasn't the part that had turned the minister's stomach. "No, Viceroy. Another man wasn't killed by either gun or blade, though his remains showed signs of both.”

"Showed sighs? Pardon, but wouldn't it be easy to identify such?" Euphemia asked.

“Typical that would be the case, Sub-Viceroy. However, well…” How does one word this? His pause drew further confusion and frustration before he ripped the band-aid off. “He was eaten.”

Euphemia pursed her lips, looking at her sister and then at Dalton and Guilford. All of whom shared her expression about this before she turned back to the minister. “Eaten?”

To his credit, he seemed just as dumbfounded as they were, though with a dose of disgust. “Correct, the remains showed signs of extreme predation from what the lab believes could be raptors, though they can't explain why as no such birds that would attack a man live in Japan never would flock in the numbers to do the damage that the soldier’s remains spoke to.”

If this was a saner world, Cornelia would demand a second lab conduct the test because, clearly, this was comically false. It wasn't a sane world for her. “This is Shinjuku all over again, first rats and now birds…” She muttered, as they still had no clue why Clovis' royal guard had been devoured by rats, especially when dozens of dead elevens lay in the same warehouse, left alone by the rodents.

"So, if we can recap. You have nothing but more questions about Zero; can't make any moves to isolate the growing resistance, have no leads on the Black Knights, and insist we don't make any moves against Kyoto?"

As her sister continued the meeting, making it clear how frustrated she was with the lack of information or options, Euphemia focused on the casualty list. Seeing names and pictures of soldiers who had been killed, wounded, or were still missing. Some of which she recognized if only in passing by then came those who she had known. People who had lives, friends, families, and dreams.

Some of them's fates were unknown, as was the case with Viletta Nu, a member of the Purebloods and Jeremiah's closest confidant. Others were just gone; all that remained were bodies in coffins…when they were lucky.

One such unlucky one was General Alex, a stubborn mule at the best of times but still a respectable soldier. He was a loyal soldier, but when it was all said and done, they couldn't even recover enough for a child-sized coffin, so they would be sending his remains home after they had been cremated.

And that wasn’t the only thing on her mind, as she knew in the coming days, she'd be getting a new knight, one she didn't pick but that her sister did, which would make her investigation into the vi Britannia's difficult as she couldn't trust this person not to just report this to her sister or worse, someone else. So, she had to work fast as she had already used her authority as Sub-Viceroy to try and gain additional knowledge about the 'deaths' only to find nothing she didn't already know.

No, she would need to contact unofficial sources soon…which meant speaking with Lord Ashford or having Suzaku open up to her. She doubted either would be easy, but they were her only options.

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They weren't the only ones having a meeting about how the board had shifted. In a secret location, a gathering was happening by candlelight. True to Dalton's suspicions, it was the members of the NAC, or as the resistance knew them, the 6 houses of Kyoto.

“Cornelia has gone this far already.” One of the members spoke up, reading through the reports of the losses suffered, which, considering the circumstances, weren't nearly as high as he had thought they'd be.

“It's not as terrible a situation as it could have been. The Japan Liberation Front might have been bested but not destroyed.” Another tried to find a silver lining in the JLF being outed from their stronghold and forced onto the run.

Another didn’t see it like that. “It might as well have. Katase’s deal with Zero saw him surrender the JLF to him, allowing the Black Knights to absorb the entire organization.” They had received Katase's communication about his decision a day after it had happened, and they were furious. How could he make such a decision without consulting them?

“He had no choice, the coward, Zero all but forced him to agree to the terms else allow the JLF and the last embers of Japan to be snuffed out.” Another agreed, furious with the masked man for his dishonorable methods.

“Perhaps, but regardless of our feelings on the issue, the Black Knights are now the strongest fighting force in Japan. We can’t ignore that.” The first man and leader of the 6 houses reminded them. While they did supply them, they couldn't risk someone like Zero deciding to seek foreign backers and diminishing their power.

“And why should we ignore them when they carry on the hopes of our people?” The five heads turned to the sixth and youngest member, a young woman who sat behind a curtain. Zero might not be the sort of man we wish for our resistance leader, but perhaps that is the reason he's proven effective. He's bold, he's a risk taker, he's unconventional, and most importantly, he's gaining results.”

Even Zero's detractors couldn't defy such, as in the mere 2 months he's been an active and visible player on the board, he had achieved no so insignificant victories over their occupiers: protecting Shinjuku ghetto, slaying a prince, cracking down the criminal underbelly feeding on their people; and now, though his victory over Cornelia of all people, he inspired genuine hope in the Japanese, hope that their fight could be won, that Britannia could be bested and thrown back into the sea.

Still, while they couldn’t deny his results, the rest of the heads weren’t as eager to support a man they knew nothing about. “You've been fascinated with Zero since he rescued your cousin. So much so that you pushed for the Black Knights to receive the Guren Mk II over the JLF.” The head of Kyoto, her mentor, reminded her.

Through the curtain, she smiled, though they couldn't see it. "Was I wrong to do so? From the report we received, Zero had a pilot who was more than capable of using it, and because of that, we gained invaluable field data on it.” Of course, they had information on Kallen Kozuki, but they had no idea she was this capable a pilot. Which was even more reason not to alienate the Black Knights or Zero.

The masked man was no slouch either. Despite the complexity of his unit, the Nemesis, he had managed to use it to score kills himself and, along with the Guren, fought against a 7th-generation unit.

“In fact, with the Guren, they had nearly destroyed Britannia's latest prototype knightmare.” Kaguya continued to smile, though she kept the worst of her excitement to herself, having already swooned and sighed like a lovesick high schooler when she first saw the report from Zero on their actions during the Narita battle.

They had already sent the combat date to the Guren's creator, along with those of Zero's unit. The woman had been impressed that someone with no engineering or science background had managed to create the Nemesis, but she was more intrigued with its movement software, which she didn't have much to say to improve it, at least, not without taking time to study it properly.

The head of Kyoto hummed, though he still frowned. "I will admit that you're not wrong. However, Zero is still an unknown and arrogant one as he’s had the audacity to request that we supply him with another 50 Burai and a replacement Nemesis.”

Kaguya appreciated a man who knew what they wanted and didn't dance around the issue. So, really, she had no issue with such a demand because that was what it was. "Well, it just means he's plotting something, right?"

In fact, perhaps they could sweeten the deal, as he had requested Burai, but if they could organize a meeting of some kind, they could perhaps send him better equipment. They knew his command staff piloted Sutherlands; they could get their hands on them and their spare parts; it was just much harder, but for their premier fighting force, one which was going out and challenging Britannian control over their lands, one that was building real hope in their people, they could afford to get them better machines then mere Burai and their variants.

He had even gifted them data on Britannia's latest model, the Lancelot. How did he acquire it? She didn't know, but she wasn't complaining as combined with the combat data both the Nemesis and Guren gathered from fighting the thing and its lost arm and MVS blade, they were given a rare chance to study Britannia's latest tech in real-time, a chance to properly catch up and design counters for the ever-changing design and capabilities of knightmares.

Thinking about it, she knew that the Guren's creator was quite pleased with that, so Kaguya wondered if she couldn't try and send Zero a new Nemesis but an upgraded version built from the ground up.

It would be challenging and undoubtedly lead to some sleepless nights with the amount of work and correspondence she'll need to personally handle, but it would result in a fine present for Zero—only the best for her husband, after all.

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Writing for this chapter started late, and because of that, to keep it from being uploaded late, I had to cut it down and save the rest for next week. It's not ideal, I know, as my issue is typically posting chapters that are too long. I had the skeleton, which could have added another 2k words at least, but…well, filling that in, adjusting it to flow better, and editing would take too much time. Don't worry; when next week comes, that will be a full-length chapter.