Tyranny of Steel

In the Bay of Brunei, a fleet of ships sat transferring loads of men, equipment, and supplies onto the island of Borneo. The Imperial Japanese Navy was far from large enough to land multiple divisions' worth of men in a single go. Instead, they had spent well over a month ensuring that a constant influx of personnel and resources ended up in their theater of war. 

After being at war for nearly two months now, the Imperial Japanese Army had seized Brunei and the lands which sat north of it where they had already begun searching for bauxite deposits to mine. However, despite this progress, the war was going far less smoothly than Empress Itami Riyo and all her Generals had anticipated. 

The Royal Majapahit Army had adopted a strategy of combined warfare, mixing guerilla units with conventional forces to a deadly effect. The death toll climbed with each day. By now, over ten thousand Japanese soldiers lie dead in the jungles of Borneo. 

The willingness of the Royal Majapahit Army to never surrender was the result of years of German Propaganda, which showed the horrific acts that the Imperial Japanese Army had committed in past campaigns. The men of Borneo were more than willing to die in battle against the enemy invaders, rather than subject their families to the atrocities the Japanese were known to engage in. 

However, with each mile the Japanese gained, they were forced to step over a mountain of bodies, and in doing so they had unknowingly stumbled upon a deadly disease. One which the Germans had planted for them. 

In an act of biological warfare, Berengar had ordered his scientists to create a deadly bioweapon, which came in the form of fleas, fleas who carried cholera. By now, thousands of Japanese soldiers were puking and shitting themselves to death in the trenches. So much so that they could no longer maintain their advance. Instead, the Imperial Japanese Army had dug themselves into their occupied territory, waiting for the disease to pass. 

In the capital of the Japanese Empire, Itami Riyo stood in astonishment as he heard reports of the outbreak come from her front lines. The Albino beauty was furious, but not because a sudden outbreak of cholera had hampered her soldiers' advance, but because she knew with every fiber of her being that the ones responsible for this pandemic were her German Adversaries. 

In a fit of rage, Itami suddenly found herself lacking the means to contact her enemies. After all, the Ming Dynasty had forsaken all ties with the Japanese Empire as a result of their invasion of the Northern Philippines, and the Germans had only ever contacted her through their embassy in Beijing. 

With no access to China, Itami had no way of screaming her thoughts at Berengar or one of his representatives. Biological warfare was not a possibility that she had considered when she first challenged the Reich. From Itami's perspective, such a thing was not only criminal, but a great evil. One that no sane man would ever take part in. 

Of course, the woman had no proof of these accusations, and for all anyone knew, it was entirely likely that an outbreak of cholera naturally occurred in the region. But Itami knew better, or perhaps she just wanted someone to blame, and her rivals in the west were the easiest target to pin on. Eventually she could no longer hold her tongue, and lashed out at one of her generals who was standing by her side.

"This is Berengar's fault. I know it is! I don't know how he managed to do it, but the cholera outbreak in Borneo had to have come from Germany!"

Itami's general gazed upon the woman as if she had gone mad with paranoia. Unlike the German Empire, the Japanese utterly lacked the medical industry to pull something like this off, and were only slightly better off than they were in the field of medicine than they were prior to Itami's reign. 

The idea of the Germans being capable of introducing a disease to the battlefields of Borno when they had very little presence in the area was simply absurd to them. On some levels, humans had been engaging in biological warfare since time immemorial, however, it was very crude, usually by disposing disease ridden carcasses into an enemy's stronghold. Obviously, no such thing had occurred. 

Never would the Japanese Generals had suspected that the Germans had deliberately taken fleas infected with cholera and bred a colony of them. Only to deliver them to the island of Borneo as a means of infecting the Japanese soldiers.

Such an idea was simply preposterous to the Japanese Generals who knew virtually nothing about biology, let alone its weaponized form. Thus, one of the men was quick to voice his disagreement with the Empress of Japan.

"While the outbreak of cholera among our forces is unfortunate, I would hardly say the German Empire is responsible. How would they even manage such a thing without infecting themselves? It would be an utterly foolish endeavor to attempt."

But Itami knew better than these men, for she had come from a world far more advanced, a world where anti-biotics were prevalent, and biological warfare was outlawed by international law. Though Itami did not know how advanced the German Empire was, she still knew they were more advanced than her own civilization. But to think they had advanced medicine to such a degree, it was truly staggering. 

Perhaps if Itami still had the Ming Dynasty as a trading partner, she could pay a hefty price for some antibiotics which made their way into China via trade with the Reich. But that was no longer a possibility. Now Itami had no choice but to pull back her forces, who were still deploying to the region, in fear that the Cholera outbreak would spread to them. 

She could not afford to send tens of thousands of men to a disease ridden area, where they were more likely to die in a puddle of their own waste, than they were to the enemy's bullets. Thus, she gave an order that her generals were not expecting her to. 

"Quarantine our occupied territory in Borneo. Until this outbreak is over, not a single soldier is to step foot on the shores of Brunei. Our men who are already stationed there will have to fend for themselves..."

To just leave tens of thousands of men to their deaths, it was far too cruel of an order for any of these Generals to stomach. And yet, they would not dare defy the orders of the Empress. Thus, they were forced to put a temporary halt to their invasion, until a time where the outbreak had passed. 

As for the soldiers still stationed in Brunei, they were given an order to advance upon the Majapahit positions, even if it cost them their lives. Any ground conquered would be worth the price in lives that Empress Itami Riyo had already considered lost. 

No longer willing to listen to further reports, Itami returned to her bedroom, and went to sleep at night thinking of all the ways she planned to get back at Berengar for this greatest of injustice. However, when she finally fell asleep, her unconscious mind had other thoughts, as the Albino Beauty dreamt of a rather intimate moment with the man she hated most in this world. 

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