Published at 24th of December 2025 7:58 am

Chapter 796: Chain of Command

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Erich had barely finished his cigarette when the radio on his hip crackled.

"Falke-Actual, this is Mindanao Command. Do you copy?"

He unclipped the handset, already annoyed.

"Mindanao Command, this is Falke-Actual. Go ahead."

There was the faint hiss of encrypted relay bouncing up to the sky and back down again.

"ISR package complete," the voice said. "Orbital and aerial reconnaissance confirm your preliminary assessment. Repeat: American regular forces have fully evacuated Mindanao. Remaining hostile elements are identified as Cuban expeditionary battalions, Filipino loyalist militias, and irregular village partisans. No significant U.S. combat formations remain on the island."

Erich closed his eyes for a beat.

Of course.

"Copy," he said flatly. "How long have you had that confirmation?"

A pause.

"Initial movement indicators were flagged thirty-six hours ago. Full pattern confirmation... approximately eight hours."

Erich’s jaw clenched.

"And when," he asked, voice very calm, "were you planning to share that with the brigade doing the bleeding?"

Another pause. Longer this time.

"Stand by for senior liaison," the operator said quickly.

The line clicked and reshuffled. A new voice came on, older, smoother, the tone of a man who spent more time behind tables than behind rifles.

"Oberst von Zehntner," the voice began. "This is Oberst i.G. Reinhardt, attached to Generaloberst von Witzleben’s staff. You are speaking to the theater command’s operations section. Your report was received and confirmed. Good work."

Erich stared at the jungle for a heartbeat, then grit his teeth.

"So," he said, "you acknowledge that everything I just risked men to verify was already sitting on your desk."

Reinhardt didn’t rise to the tone.

"Colonel," he said, "ISR data is filtered based on theater-wide necessity. Your brigade’s objective did not change. You were to fix and destroy enemy formations in your sector. Whether those formations consisted of Americans or Cubans does not substantially alter that directive. They use the same rifles, the same machine guns, the same artillery. They die the same."

"That’s your justification?" Erich growled. "We’re out here clawing through jungle and booby traps, and you decided it wasn’t ’substantially relevant’ to tell us the main threat already turned tail and ran?"

A nearby corporal tried very hard not to listen. Reinhardt’s voice remained maddeningly neutral.

"From an operational planning perspective, the distinction is minor. The enemy combat capability on the island remained high, regardless of nationality. Your rules of engagement, your mission, and your tempo were unchanged."

Erich laughed once, humorless.

"Tempo," he echoed. "You want to talk to me about tempo from your air-conditioned bunker?"

He turned, looking back toward the smoking treeline where his forward companies were regrouping.

"Listen carefully, Oberst," he said. "Had I known we were facing second-string amateurs and not hardened American regulars, I would have been pushing twice as hard, twice as fast. We spent the last forty-eight hours treating every engagement like we were up against their best. Careful, methodical, conservative."

He spat into the mud.

"If I’d known we were just putting down strays, I’d have run them over yesterday."

Reinhardt sighed, the slightest crack in his facade.

"Your caution kept your losses minimal, Colonel," he said. "Mindanao Command is not in the habit of complaining when a brigade accomplishes objectives without throwing bodies into the meat grinder."

"My men don’t need you to protect them from me," Erich snapped. "They need you to give them accurate information so they can finish the job within optimal parameters."

He took a breath, trying to unclench his teeth.

"You sat on knowledge that the Americans had already broken. You robbed us of the chance to exploit that collapse at its peak. Every hour they had to dig in their replacements, to rig new traps, to drag more villagers into the fight, is blood I pay now because you didn’t want to adjust your damn briefing slides."

That, at least, seemed to sting.

"Colonel," Reinhardt said after a moment, "with respect, you are not the only unit on the island. Information flow must be prioritized."

"I’m not asking for your entire intelligence dump," Erich said. "I’m asking for one sentence: ’Americans gone. Only auxiliaries remain.’ That’s all. Ten words. You could have fit it between sips of your coffee."

Static hissed in the brief silence that followed.

"You are emotional, Oberst," Reinhardt said tightly. "Understandable. You have been in continuous combat rotation. Theater command evaluates necessity on a strategic level. On that level, who holds a rifle on Mindanao matters less than the fact that someone still does."

Erich smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

"And there it is," he murmured. "Strategic necessity."

He shifted the handset.

"Tell me something, Reinhardt. When you go home and write your memoirs about how you helped ’coordinate the Pacific campaign from a map room’are you going to mention the part where you treated an evacuation of American forces as a footnote? Or will that be an appendix?"

"Oberst..."

"No," Erich cut in. "You listen to me now. I am not asking for a favor. I am telling you how this looks from the ground."

He gestured vaguely at the jungle around him, though the man couldn’t see it.

"Out here, your ’minor distinctions’ are the difference between a hard fight and a rout. Between calculated risk and wasted caution. If I’d known I was fighting puppets with their strings cut, I could have driven straight through them to the coast. Maybe cut off a few more ships before they cleared the harbor. That’s strategic effect."

Reinhardt was quiet for a long moment.

"The Generaloberst will not entertain a complaint framed in that tone, Colonel," he said finally.

"Good thing I wasn’t planning to complain," Erich answered. "I was planning to adjust."

"...Explain."

Erich’s eyes hardened.

"You have confirmed my assessment. That’s all I needed from you. From this moment on, my Brigade will not treat these engagements as if we are fighting America’s best. We will exploit weakness. We will assume their replacements lack discipline, stamina, and doctrine. We will press every inch. I expect Mindanao Command to keep up."

Reinhardt’s voice went cold.

"Are you implying you will disregard future directives?"

"I will follow my orders," Erich said. "But I will interpret them with the understanding that high command has a bad habit of underestimating how much ground we can take when you let us off the leash."

He let that sit.

"Anything else, Oberst?"

Reinhardt exhaled slowly.

"...Negative. ISR updates will be forwarded to your headquarters as available."

"Wonderful," Erich said. "Try sending them before they become historical notes next time."

He cut the connection without waiting for a reply.

For a moment, he just stood there, handset still in his grip, listening to the distant rumble of artillery and the crackle of sporadic gunfire.

One of his captains approached, mud up to his knees.

"Problems from upstairs, sir?"

Erich clipped the radio back on his harness.

"Nothing we can’t solve ourselves," he said. "Pass the word down the line: Americans are gone. What’s left are Cubans, loyalist militias, and whatever poor bastards got shoved into a uniform after breakfast."

The captain’s brows rose.

"That confirmed?"

"From the very assholes who didn’t tell us in the first place," Erich replied. "So yes. Confirmed."

The captain’s grin was sharp.

"In that case, sir... request permission to stop treating them like they know what they’re doing."

Erich actually chuckled.

"Permission granted. Increase tempo. Night pushes, aggressive reconnaissance, no more babysitting the flanks like they’re going to pull off some miracle counterattack. If they break, we don’t let them regroup. We stamp them out."

"Yes, sir."

The captain ran off, already shouting orders.

Erich lit another cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating the hard set of his features.

High above, a reconnaissance plane buzzed invisible in the dark. Higher still, a satellite crept along its orbit, watching everything with indifferent lenses.

They saw it all.

They always did.

The problem was never the watching.

It was who they bothered to tell.

Erich took a drag and started walking toward the front.

"Fine," he muttered. "You sit on your precious intel. We’ll make do with what we have."

The cigarette ember glowed as he exhaled.

"And when this island is finally quiet," he added under his breath, "they can put that in their reports too."

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