Re: Blood and Iron
Chapter 528 - 528: The Calculus of Power

The map room was filled with smoke, euphoria, and applause. Officers clustered around the glowing plotting table where Japan's losses blinked in red.

Animated arrows from Russian armored divisions now pressed through Korea like the iron jaws of a bear. Naval staff watched U-boat kill confirmations scroll across the ticker feed like some surreal, blessed lottery.

Yet in the center of it all, Bruno von Zehntner sat silent—hands folded, eyes half-lidded—barely acknowledging the room.

The Kaiser, flushed with exhilaration, pointed toward the strait off Buka with childlike wonder.

"Mein Gott, von Zehntner! You've shattered their entire Pacific Fleet. And with only four ships and a minefield. What do we even call such a maneuver?"

Bruno didn't smile. He didn't even look up. He merely exhaled through his nose like a man forced to explain arithmetic to children.

"Ambush. Kill-zone doctrine. Coordinated fire control. What we've rehearsed since 1920."

The silence was brief, broken only by the rustling of uniformed men trying to look intelligent.

"Still… it's working," the Kaiser said, trying to meet Bruno's eyes. "It's working better than we ever thought it could."

Bruno finally turned, slowly.

"No, you never thought it could. I knew. That's the difference between a planner… and a prophet."

He stood, walking to the side table where a pot of coffee steamed beside untouched crystal. His voice was flat, dispassionate, yet absolute:

"Japan assumed we would fight like them. We didn't. They assumed the Reich still chased glory. We don't. We fight to end things, not prolong them."

A younger general, red-faced and beaming, blurted out, "Herr von Zehntner—if this continues, we'll push them back to Hokkaido by next year!"

Bruno glanced over his shoulder.

"I don't want Hokkaido," he said. "I want leverage. Let them feel the burn of defeat—but leave enough pride that they come to the table without humiliation. This isn't conquest. It's deterrence."

The room quieted. Even the Kaiser no longer spoke.

Bruno stirred his coffee once. No sugar. No milk. Just bitter black—the only thing that matched his philosophy of war.

He turned back to the map.

"And tell the Russians... they may have Pyongyang. But they are not to take Tokyo."

The generals exchanged uneasy glances.

"Why not?"

Bruno's eyes narrowed.

"Tokyo is not a prize. It is a symbol. And symbols, when desecrated, create martyrs instead of lessons. The world must not see a humiliated Japan—they must see a disciplined one. Subdued, not shattered."

The officers broke nodded their heads in understanding before breaking out into laughter again, raising glasses, gesturing animatedly over maps and reports. The scent of victory filled the war room like expensive cologne—artificial, fleeting, overapplied.

"Have you seen the casualty estimates from Pyongyang?" crowed General Löwenstein. "Seven hundred dead Russians… over five thousand Japanese. We haven't seen a kill-ratio like that since Ypres!"

"Pah!" snorted another. "Ypres was a charnel pit! This is elegant! Clean. Like the blade of a surgeon. Thank God for Zuse's fire-control computers. And those new 80mm self-adjusting fuses. We're twenty years ahead of the world!"

All eyes turned to Bruno, expecting some rare moment of pride. But the architect of it all said nothing.

He simply stood at the far end of the room, watching the ticker scroll. Pulse steady. Eyes cold. Not joy. Not even satisfaction. Just measurement. Evaluation. Contingency.

The generals toasted, oblivious to the future their laughter would never see. They believed in the present. Bruno lived five years ahead of it.

They don't understand, he thought.

They never do.

This technology—these fire-control networks, subsonic jet-assisted artillery, fast attack cruisers, were already obsolete.

Privately, production had already shifted toward the next paradigm: turbo-prop powered aircraft, carrier based naval doctrine, stealth and ballistic submarines, wire guided missile platforms and so much more.

There were even early prototypes of Fort Defender 2 style plate carriers, and composite level IV grade plates being trialed in Königsberg.

Not to mention advanced composite materials for new production E-Series armored vehicles, and early explosive reaction armor equivalents.

What was fielded now?

Just the already-aging bones of last decade's revolution. The tools of a reserve army. Weapons meant for lend-lease programs, Neocolonial suppression, or proxy state redistribution. The true arsenal of the Reich remained sealed—underground, unspoken.

Because Bruno knew something they didn't.

Victory today meant nothing if tomorrow turned against them.

He remembered 1919. He remembered 1945. He remembered 2015. He remembered the world that punished Germany for daring to exist.

He would not let that happen again.

Not now. Not ever.

There were bunkers beneath the Alps. Others in the Sudetenland. Sealed vaults buried under Tyrol. Inside them were canisters and devices that no flag bore. Some chemical. Some thermobaric. And some… theoretical.

One warhead, marked Projekt Morgenrot, remained under constant development and observation by a scientific detachment loyal only to him.

Its yield, calculated at twenty kilotons, was never tested—never needed. But it existed. As did five others. Atomic deterrence by implication alone.

He took a sip of his coffee, still silent, and watched the officers toast a war already won.

Let them celebrate, he thought.

Let them toast maps and machines.

They need not know what's necessary to keep the demons at bay.

But I do.

Like Saint Michael before the gates of Heaven, I stand watch.

The dragon still sleeps—but I will be the one to slay it, should the time come.

The weapons buried beneath the Alps, the Sudetenland, and Tyrol were not built for conquest.

They were built for retribution.

Insurance against the unthinkable.

Because if the German Fatherland were ever to fall—if its soil were ever occupied, its people broken, its sovereignty erased—then the world would burn with it.

No Versailles.

No Weimar.

No surrender.

Only fire.

Only ash.

Bruno's final contingency.

Never again would Germany die alone.

Call it what they will—madness, obsession, heresy. But to Bruno, it was math. If x equals collapse, then y must equal extinction. The threat alone was meant to suffice, but with every threat, if one did not have the might backing it, then it was utterly pointless.

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