In the center of the American heartland the heavy oak table in the War Department’s strategy room groaned under piles of telegraphs, blurry reconnaissance photographs, and urgent intelligence dossiers.
The atmosphere was electric with worry; a silent dread that no one quite dared voice yet.
A colonel ran a trembling hand through his hair. "Gentlemen, we have the latest aerial assessments. The coastal cities are... leveled. Not shelled. Not burned by ordinary bombardment. It’s as if the very air ignited. Entire districts erased in a single concussion."
Across the table, a Navy attaché tapped the photographs with a rigid forefinger. "Our analysts can’t even estimate the tonnage. They said it must be some new form of high-yield explosive. Look here; the shock patterns run for miles, the internal streets gutted by what they described as... as if a vacuum had torn through."
"Are you suggesting the Germans have developed some new type of blasting compound? Something beyond our own TNT and amatol stocks?" another officer asked, his voice cracking.
"I don’t know," the colonel admitted. "But whatever it is, it forced the Japanese to surrender outright. After only a handful of strikes."
The Secretary of War let out a long breath, the air hissing between his teeth. He reached for a decanter, poured two fingers of bourbon into a glass, and didn’t bother offering it to anyone else.
"So let’s put this plainly," he growled. "Germany just compelled one of the world’s largest empires to bend the knee using a handful of what; enormous aerial munitions? Rockets? A fucking supergun? And this was accomplished by their colonial detachments. Not even the armies they keep on their European frontier."
Silence fell like a coffin lid.
Finally, the intelligence chief rasped, "Sir, if that’s what they gave their colonial regiments, then God help us if we ever come to blows with their homeland divisions."
No one disagreed. The only sound was the slow swirl of bourbon in the Secretary’s glass, catching the light like blood.
Within the mythic halls of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service where shadows were born in the darkness of men’s hearts; the map room at Vauxhall Cross was thick with cigarette smoke and the sharp scent of sweat.
Across the walls, global shipping lanes and telegram intercepts sprawled like spiderwebs; pinned over with frantic new annotations.
An MI6 controller stabbed a hand toward a cluster of documents laid out on the table. "These are our latest reports from our agents embedded in the German colonial ports. Enormous quantities of nitrate compounds. Specialized turbine shipments. And these—" he tapped a grainy photograph "—what we think are long cylindrical casings. Far larger than anything for standard artillery."
Another analyst cleared his throat. "And the shock patterns in those Japanese cities... they’re like nothing we’ve ever studied. Not from naval guns, not from conventional aerial bombardment. Entire boroughs flattened outright. Brickwork sucked inward as if by a monstrous breath."
Someone nearby whispered, "God above... what sort of ordnance could do that? If it’s not sheer weight of explosives, it’s some new principle of blast."
The controller just shook his head. "We don’t know. That’s the horror of it. We’re still guessing at whether these are new chemical formulations, or some advanced pressure device."
He leaned over the table, voice dropping.
"And mind you, these were Germany’s colonial garrisons. Not their main armies. Not the divisions guarding the Rhine or Berlin. If their outposts can field such terror... what does the Fatherland hold in reserve?"
A silence fell so deep the wall clock seemed deafening.
Finally, a gray-haired station chief muttered, "Get me Whitehall. We’ll need to advise the Cabinet that Germany’s reach, and her mystery weapons, might force a complete reconsideration of our continental guarantees."
No one disagreed. They were all too busy imagining what London would look like under that same monstrous breath.
In the city of Paris, within the reconstructed halls of Versailles De Gaulle stood rigid at the tall windows of his private office, glaring out at the courtyard where Republican Guards drilled under the setting sun. His shoulders heaved with silent fury.
On his desk lay the latest report from the Deuxième Bureau, pages already crumpled and sweat-stained from his grip. It recounted, in grim, clinical terms, how Germany’s colonial forces had smashed Japan’s armies, toppling a major empire without ever summoning the Fatherland’s main divisions.
Worse still were the closing lines, whispering of strange new bombardments; monstrous concussions that flattened entire coastal districts, tearing structures inward as though the very air itself had collapsed.
De Gaulle’s throat worked around a raw snarl.
"Colonial detachments," he hissed. "Not the line regiments along the Rhine. Not the fortress divisions behind their damned wall of concrete and steel. And yet they brought the Rising Sun to heel."
He spun on the general, waiting nervously by the door. "What news from Belgium and the Netherlands?"
The officer swallowed. "Preliminary cables suggest... growing disquiet, mon Général. Their ministers remember well when our armies poured across their borders under Plan XVII. Now with German garrisons dug in from Antwerp clear to Strasbourg, they fear us. They may soon seek explicit guarantees from Berlin."
De Gaulle’s hands curled into fists, trembling with barely contained rage.
"So our onetime buffers turn to the very power that occupied us, just to escape another French incursion." He let out a bitter laugh. "Marvelous. France; the terror of her own neighbors."
He stepped closer, jabbing a finger at the general’s chest.
"Then double our armored battalions. Triple the new long-barrel artillery contracts. I want our chemical reserves expanded until every depot groans under the weight. And mark this well: if the Boche ever march, we’ll have every railway rigged to burn, every fuel store primed to torch. They may breach our frontiers, but they’ll find nothing left to feed their engines."
His breath hissed through his teeth.
"Because one day, Berlin will grow hungry again; walls or no walls. And when that day comes, we’ll drag them through a thousand miles of ruin before we ever kneel."
The general snapped to attention with a brittle salute, then fled the room. Alone, De Gaulle turned back to the courtyard, eyes cold and unblinking.
France would stand. Or it would burn everything in its path.