Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 651: The Southern Horizon

The war hadn’t started yet.

Not officially. Not on paper.

But to anyone with a shred of strategic vision, it might as well have.

In Wellington, a light drizzle clung to the windows of the Prime Minister’s residence, streaking the glass like tears on porcelain.

The skies were gray, not stormy, just heavy. Pressing. Watching.

Like the whole world was holding its breath.

Prime Minister Walter Nash poured a second glass of whisky.

The man seated across from him, Joseph Lyons, had accepted the first without protest, though he hadn’t touched it yet.

The Australian Prime Minister was not a man easily rattled.

Not by domestic squabbles, nor union unrest, nor the endless friction between Canberra and London.

But today… today he seemed distracted.

Nash finally broke the silence.

“Canada’s made their move,” he said.

Lyons nodded once. “I read the wire before boarding the flight. Majority vote. No formal commitment to conflict, but they’re in bed with Roosevelt now.”

“Quietly at first,” Nash murmured. “Then louder. That’s how these things go.”

The fire crackled behind them, an old hearth in a government house built when the Empire still dictated colonial architecture in marble and brick.

In this life, the ANZAC forces had mostly been sent as reinforcements to the meatgrinder that was Ypres.

Gallipoli had not occurred… Not in this life, for the Ottomans had fought alongside the British, a consequence of Bruno’s interference in the timeline.

Because of this, the ANZAC name carried no glory. Only loss.

The young men of Australia and New Zealand had been remembered as little more than cannon fodder, swallowed whole by the Western Front.

Both men were all too aware of the gruesome nature of warfare.

Whether as a direct result of participating in the slaughter, or having been shattered by its aftermath.

Lyons spoke first.

“You think they’ve got the stomach for it again?”

“Canada?” Nash raised an eyebrow. “Hard to say. But America does. Or at least Roosevelt does. You can hear it in his speeches, he wants this war. He wants his chance to fix the last one. And Canada’s the first brick he’s stacking.”

Lyons finally lifted the glass, holding it near his face without drinking.

“Empire’s splintered,” he said flatly. “Not gone, but tired. Britain can’t afford to force our hand like it once did. And they know it.”

“But that won’t stop them from trying,” Nash replied.

A long pause stretched between them.

The whisky remained untouched.

“They’ll come to us next,” Lyons said.

“They already have,” Nash admitted.

That got a look.

The New Zealand Prime Minister set his glass down on a side table and handed over a thin dossier. Not military, diplomatic.

“This came through last week. Not from London, but from Paris. Through a Canadian intermediary. They want to begin exploratory talks. Just in case.”

Lyons didn’t open it. He didn’t need to.

“They’re expecting the Reich to strike?”

“Officially, yes…” Nash said. “The problem is, we both know if anyone’s going to fire the first shot, it’ll be the damned French. De Gaulle, Roosevelt, MacDonald… war-mongers, the lot of them!”

Lyons whispered under his breath, his voice low, wary, almost fearful that the walls themselves could betray them.

“Careful now… such words could be perceived as treason.”

Nash, however, no longer cared to maintain cordiality.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes, voice tinged with something between cynicism and weariness.

“If speaking the truth is now treason, then may God have mercy on us all.”

He leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees.

His tone dropped into something quieter. More grave.

“This isn’t like last time, Joe. The Germans have spent the time victory afforded them cementing their alliances. Austro-Hungary fell, and in its place, the Habsburgs bent the knee, and the Hungarians carved their own empire with blood and iron.”

Lyons was eerily silent as Nash continued.

“Russia remains quiet… but if intelligence is to be believed, its military might is second only to the Reich. They’ve been building. Training. Drilling in the snows of Siberia, the forests of Karelia. If war opens between Germany and France, you’ll see millions pour across the Ardennes, along with enough steel to blanket Europe. And the Allies? What then?”

He shook his head, almost laughing bitterly.

“The Americans convinced Canada to sign its own death warrant. And now, here we are, standing in the last quiet corners of the world.”

Lyons finally opened the file.

A single page.

No demands.

No ultimatums.

Just… questions. Proposals. Possibilities.

“It’s like no one’s even pretending to de-escalate anymore,” he muttered. “What happened to diplomacy?”

Nash gave a humorless smile. “Drowned somewhere between the Atlantic and the Pacific.”

Another pause.

“They’re going to ask us to choose,” Lyons said softly. “Just like last time.”

“And if we don’t?”

“They’ll call us cowards.”

Nash shook his head. “No. They’ll call us irrelevant.”

That word hung in the air far heavier than any insult.

Neither man spoke for a while.

A log shifted in the hearth.

Eventually, Nash stood and crossed the room to a sideboard.

He poured himself a glass of water this time and looked out over the distant harbor, veiled in fog and drizzle.

“You’ve seen the state of Singapore,” he said.

“The British are pumping gold into it like it’ll hold the line by itself. But they don’t have the men, or the machines. Not anymore.”

“They’re hoping we’ll send both,” Lyons muttered.

“They’re hoping we’ll pretend it’s still 1914.”

Lyons gave a tired chuckle. “It’s not.”

“No,” Nash agreed. “It’s not.”

The silence this time was heavier.

More final.

No one needed to say what they were both thinking.

If war came, when it came, Australia and New Zealand wouldn’t be vassals anymore.

Not automatically.

The choice would be theirs.

And the weight of that choice… could crack the continent in half.

Lyons finally rose to his feet and stepped to the window beside his counterpart.

“The public won’t support another war,” he said plainly. “Not unless a bullet lands in Darwin or Christchurch. They won’t lift a finger for France again.”

“We don’t owe the French anything,” Nash replied. “But we do owe our children a world that’s not on fire.”

Lyons studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly.

“Then we’d better figure out how to hold a hose,” he said, “before someone throws a match.”

—

Bruno set the folder down with a quiet thwap, the corner of the intelligence report curling slightly under his gloved thumb.

He walked over to a nearby cabinet, pulling out a bottle of beer. He then opened the nearby freezer and pulled out a chilled mug.

Pouring the amber liquid inside before taking a seat while he sat down in his seat.

“Ottawa,” he muttered, the name itself carrying a bemused distaste.

He leaned back in the leather chair, posture loose, amused.

A log in the hearth cracked and shifted, sending a soft spray of embers into the iron grate.

The light flickered across his desk, across the stamped crest on the envelope, and danced over the words Meeting Confirmed: Roosevelt and King – Office of the Privy Council, Ottawa.

Bruno’s smile was dry, sardonic. He tapped a finger once against the paper as if addressing it directly.

“Did you really believe,” he murmured, “that holding the meeting in Ottawa would allow you, and what you say, to escape my ears?”

He laughed.

Not loudly. Just a single sharp exhale of mirth. Derisive. Amused. A lion chuckling at a mouse’s disguise.

“So naïve.”

He took another swig from his stein while flipping open the folder. Looking at the contents within.

Of course, Roosevelt had gone north. Of course he’d whispered to Canada first, thinking the Commonwealth’s eldest daughter would make a more palatable first bride in his courtship of the world.

And of course he thought he could do it quietly.

Bruno exhaled and looked toward the window, the moonlit peaks of the Alps rising like black fangs beyond the glass.

“You’re already playing the game,” he said softly, to the cold night and the world beyond.

“But you’re still bluffing with borrowed cards.”

Another chuckle.

Then silence.

Only the crackle of firelight and the faint scrape of Bruno’s pen as he scrawled three simple words across the report’s margin:

“Let him try.”

He shut the folder and tossed it onto a pile of others. His day’s work at an end.

Bruno then shifted to the nearby wall, where photos, medals, trophies, and other such mementos from a long military career were carefully displayed.

Among the photos was one from the start of his career. When he was just a junior officer, fresh from the academy, volunteering across the world in the Orient.

He gazed upon the familiar faces within it. His own, Heinrich’s and…. Erich’s.

A tinge of pain fluttered in his chest, which dispersed the moment the last drop of beer from his stein was swallowed.

He then glared at the photograph, his eyes narrowing, not into grief, but anger. His tone shifted, stirred with the cold rage of a man who had suppressed it for too long.

“This time… I promise you, I will end it… Never again will the world be given the chance to threaten what we have built. What your sacrifice bought us all….”