same place? The enemy’s caused multiple simultaneous uprisings for the express purpose of stretching the government’s forces thin, so I don’t see them throwing that advantage away voluntarily. After all, if they concentrate their forces, it only follows that we’ll concentrate ours as well.”
Lightly, he set the beret back on his head.
“And the other thing is that concentrating one’s enemies in one location goes against the fundamentals of strategy, which say you should knock out your opponent’s regiments one by one, without letting them link up.”
“So it’s a bad idea?”
Julian looked disappointed. The boy had thought his brain cells had been running at full speed.
Yang gave him a little smile.
“The idea’s fine. You just have to think about how to apply it. Okay, so for the time being, let’s leave aside the question of how to lure them out.”
He thought about it for a little while, then continued.
“We lure them away from their strongholds—that part’s fine. But nowhere is it written that we have to wait around for them to rendezvous. So instead, we predict the route by which the enemy will try to link up, then take them out individually along the way. If the enemy and allied forces are roughly the same size numerically, our side can split into two groups: the first can hit enemies A and B at staggered intervals, and the other can hit C and D. The likelihood of victory would be very high, since we’d be hitting each enemy formation with double its own force strength.”
Julian nodded with passionate intensity.
“There’s another way to do it, too, where the whole fleet moves together. First we strike enemy formations A and B separately, then head for the enemy’s rendezvous point to face formations C and D. At that point, it would give us a force multiplier if we could trick the enemy into mistaking friend and foe or if we could split the fleet in two to catch them in a pincer movement. With this method, you fight the enemy four-to-one at the outset, then two-to-one later on, so the odds of winning really are quite good.”
The boy sighed with admiration, while at the same time feeling hopelessly pathetic himself. Admiral Yang gushed out cunning plans like a fountain. Julian, on the other hand, would have been no match even for Yang’s prior self at age fifteen. This, in spite of the fact that he wanted to improve—no matter how small the increment—so as to become able to help him.
Julian had no intention of just living complacently as Yang’s ward. While he never dreamed of anything so grandiose as becoming a partner on equal footing with him, he wanted, in some form or fashion, to make himself indispensible to Yang.
“But anyway, I don’t want to use either of those strategies this time out. After all, they’re soldiers of the alliance, same as us. Even if we fought and won, it’d leave nothing but scars.”
“That’s the truth.”
“So, let’s think about how to get them to surrender without a fight. That way, most importantly, is easy.”
“Easy on soldiers, but hard on commanders.”
“Ah, you get it now.” Yang smiled, but his smile didn’t last long. “Still, I figure over half the people alive right now have it as hard as the commanders, who get so many soldiers killed.”
Voices saying that Yang Wen-li had landed his position too easily had reached even the ears of Yang himself. Those voices came from multiple sources, it seemed, and perhaps Dawson had lent a hand in spreading them. In any case, though, had Yang longer borne in mind those irresponsible words, he might have recognized instantly what lurked beneath Dawson’s order …
III
Yang summoned his staff to the meeting room and relayed the orders from Admiral Dawson.
“So he’s telling us to suppress all four of those uprisings?
Yang’s staff officers—Fischer, Caselnes, von Schönkopf, Murai, and Patrichev—were also stunned by how out of left field it seemed. Von Schönkopf was
Lightly, he set the beret back on his head.
“And the other thing is that concentrating one’s enemies in one location goes against the fundamentals of strategy, which say you should knock out your opponent’s regiments one by one, without letting them link up.”
“So it’s a bad idea?”
Julian looked disappointed. The boy had thought his brain cells had been running at full speed.
Yang gave him a little smile.
“The idea’s fine. You just have to think about how to apply it. Okay, so for the time being, let’s leave aside the question of how to lure them out.”
He thought about it for a little while, then continued.
“We lure them away from their strongholds—that part’s fine. But nowhere is it written that we have to wait around for them to rendezvous. So instead, we predict the route by which the enemy will try to link up, then take them out individually along the way. If the enemy and allied forces are roughly the same size numerically, our side can split into two groups: the first can hit enemies A and B at staggered intervals, and the other can hit C and D. The likelihood of victory would be very high, since we’d be hitting each enemy formation with double its own force strength.”
Julian nodded with passionate intensity.
“There’s another way to do it, too, where the whole fleet moves together. First we strike enemy formations A and B separately, then head for the enemy’s rendezvous point to face formations C and D. At that point, it would give us a force multiplier if we could trick the enemy into mistaking friend and foe or if we could split the fleet in two to catch them in a pincer movement. With this method, you fight the enemy four-to-one at the outset, then two-to-one later on, so the odds of winning really are quite good.”
The boy sighed with admiration, while at the same time feeling hopelessly pathetic himself. Admiral Yang gushed out cunning plans like a fountain. Julian, on the other hand, would have been no match even for Yang’s prior self at age fifteen. This, in spite of the fact that he wanted to improve—no matter how small the increment—so as to become able to help him.
Julian had no intention of just living complacently as Yang’s ward. While he never dreamed of anything so grandiose as becoming a partner on equal footing with him, he wanted, in some form or fashion, to make himself indispensible to Yang.
“But anyway, I don’t want to use either of those strategies this time out. After all, they’re soldiers of the alliance, same as us. Even if we fought and won, it’d leave nothing but scars.”
“That’s the truth.”
“So, let’s think about how to get them to surrender without a fight. That way, most importantly, is easy.”
“Easy on soldiers, but hard on commanders.”
“Ah, you get it now.” Yang smiled, but his smile didn’t last long. “Still, I figure over half the people alive right now have it as hard as the commanders, who get so many soldiers killed.”
Voices saying that Yang Wen-li had landed his position too easily had reached even the ears of Yang himself. Those voices came from multiple sources, it seemed, and perhaps Dawson had lent a hand in spreading them. In any case, though, had Yang longer borne in mind those irresponsible words, he might have recognized instantly what lurked beneath Dawson’s order …
III
Yang summoned his staff to the meeting room and relayed the orders from Admiral Dawson.
“So he’s telling us to suppress all four of those uprisings?
Yang’s staff officers—Fischer, Caselnes, von Schönkopf, Murai, and Patrichev—were also stunned by how out of left field it seemed. Von Schönkopf was
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