Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 458: The Nikantha Proposal

When the White Deer City mutiny broke out, most of the garrisoned storm fleet went to Prince Hansburg, leaving naval officers and soldiers unwilling to fight civil war to take refuge in overseas territorial waters with more than a dozen battleships. Claude had intended to make dozens of battleships into offshore cruise ships under the direct control of the war zone as the first barrier against pirate attacks and harassment by the Navy of the Kingdom of Hicks off the coast of the offshore war zone, which was rejected by the Navy officers and soldiers.

The naval officers and soldiers of the former storm fleet soared to claim that they were the Royal Navy, under the authority of the Navy Department and under the orders of the King. Your immediate battlefield is only responsible for local guards, what qualifies them for your orders, and trying to coerce them into demoting them from the Royal Navy into local cruise fleets in times of distress. This is an act of treason committed by the following people who will never accept it...

To be honest, these naval officers who came to seek refuge suspected that they were destitute and had no money in the immediate war zone. Their conversion to battlefield cruise fleets, whether payroll or welfare subsidies, would be considerably lower than during the storm fleet, especially by cutting off maritime traffic with the Kingdom's mainland, which meant that they would no longer be able to engage in private cargo for personal gain in this oceanic shipping.

Since the good intentions of the theatre were rejected by these naval officers and soldiers, the theatre could only allow them to remain in the port of Cobichous under the direct authority of Tyrsim, with nothing but responsibility for their daily food supplies. Once these Navy officers and soldiers demanded that the war zone pay them, and General Scully refused to do so, again on the grounds that they themselves said that they were the Royal Navy, that they were not under the jurisdiction of the war zone, and that the war zone could not do anything suspect...

Although they are not saddened to eat and drink in the harbour, these naval officers and soldiers also lack money. After refusing to pay them in the war zone, they are forced to become self-reliant, such as fishing in the territorial sea, transporting cargo, setting up offshore shipping, or accepting merchants to hire them to escort their offshore freighter fleet, sometimes commissioned by the war zone to cruise the coastal area, and raw forced the navy of these kingdoms into a mercenary fleet.

However, after the opening of the overseas Minsheng Bank in the war zone last year, the economy expanded somewhat in the second half of the year. The remnants of the storm fleet actually wrote an application report requesting funds from the theatre to reconstitute the size of a sub-fleet of the storm fleet. Once again, General Skerry refused to reply that the Royal Navy was not under the jurisdiction of the theatre and that the theatre was not authorized to allocate funds to them, and that the two sides had begun to make a conflict.

Now that Claude has said that the remnants of the storm fleet will return to the mainland of the kingdom, General Scully is certainly happy that he cannot help but send them away sooner. It is enough that the theatre is responsible for providing them with free military food, but it is also desirable for the theatre to provide them with alcohol and fresh meat. Originally these were purchased by fleet personnel themselves, who were responsible for the battlefield if they didn't have the money.

General Skerry never relocated them, and the refusal should remain the same, willing only to assume the obligations incumbent upon the theatre. Anyway, they are not under the direct control of the war zone, whether they die or live. The conflict between the two sides has increased, and there have even been several incidents of fighting between naval officers and members of the Rock Corps troops stationed in Port Cobichous.

General Bolognick met with Claude to say that he agreed to the proposal after a while, except that when sending messengers from the war zone to Wangdu, he could always decide on the right person. At this point, Bok Al stood up and said he was willing to go back to the kingdom as this messenger, and Claude recommended it, and that's how it went.

Claude knew in his heart that Boc Al was anxious to go back to find his family. Unlike the remainder of the war zone, where family and relatives were brought to the direct jurisdiction, Bok Al's home was in Bai Lu town, and his father was considered a local celebrity and businessman, opening a major commercial branch in the capitals of the three southwestern counties.

So the family of Bok Al is not in the immediate war zone, and now the war is over, of course Bok Al wants to go back to White Deer City to find his own family for the first time, and he doesn't know if they are still alive. Newspapers in the West Coast colonies say that the troops of both the Grand Prince and the Second Prince fought a fierce war around White Deer City for more than a year and that White Deer City has been struck in ruins.....

As General Albert said, whether or not Grand Prince Hansburg was assassinated was not really a matter of direct jurisdiction, he was merely an impression of an acquaintance in everyone's memory, and seriously pursued the reality of the hostile relationship between the two sides. What really bothers the more than a dozen high-ranking officers in the conference room is that the Kingdom has not sent a messenger to communicate for five months, which makes everyone feel uncomfortable.

However, after deciding to send Colonel Bockhar as an ambassador to the mainland of the kingdom on his own initiative to explore the King's response, General Bolognick also lost interest in the assassination of the great prince and ordered General Skerry to contact the sheltered naval officers of the storm fleet in the port of Cobichous, telling them that they could return to the mainland of the kingdom, and gave Bockhar another seven days to prepare for the clean-up and announce the adjournment of the meeting.

Claude took Boquer back to his new estate and let Boquer live here seven nights without going to the barracks. Although he was a colonel, Bok Al belonged to the Sector Intelligence Service and was not led, except for a small dormitory assigned to him in the Sector Command Guard Force barracks. Normally, Bok Al seldom stays there, treating the small dormitory as a grocery room.

Claude decided to write a letter to Mrs. Maria asking Boquer to borrow the letter to find out what Wang Du thought of the Overseas Territories. Though she has not been in contact with Mrs. Maria for several years, Claude believes that her current status as a general of the kingdom will allow Mrs. Maria to reclaim her teacher's affection. So he wrote a lot about his family and sister, and asked Kevin to pick up some gorgeous and beautiful gifts for Mrs. Maria...

It took half a month for Bok Al to leave for the mainland of the kingdom and he brought a squadron of soldiers to escort him, mainly because he was carrying too much stuff. In addition to a collection of precious gifts dedicated to Prince Widreck, Sterling XI, collected in the war zone, all five generals also sent gifts to Colonel Tobok Al for their relationship in Wangdu, so that he could open the situation smoothly in all the kings.

Another reason is that General Scully's contact with the sheltered Navy officers and soldiers of the Storm fleet was not very good. Those guys heard that Bai Lu City had been recovered by the Royal Red Dragon Corps and were not in a hurry to pull out their anchors. Instead, they turned to blackmail the war zone, saying that the warships had not moved for three years and needed to be refurbished or something, demanding that the war zone provide them with a lot of money and supplies...

General Skerry did not hesitate to reject their request and warned them that they would no longer be provided with free food supplies next month and that if they continued to stay here, they would be waiting to be accepted into the war zone because they were no longer worthy of being a Royal Navy. The theatre also no longer recognizes them as the Kingdom's storm fleet, but rather as deserters.

Finally, General Bolognick came out and played a roundabout, allowing the theatre treasury to allocate a sum of money to them and to mobilize food and fresh water for their voyage, as well as supplies needed for their voyage. The storm fleet's naval officers turned to that sum to procure a large quantity of local specialties from various commercial firms in the direct jurisdiction before sailing back to the kingdom.

Once again, Claude travelled to the military barracks under Port Vibator to train recruits. After more than half a month, he received an urgent Hawk message from the theatre requesting Claude to return to theatre headquarters. Only this time, instead of receiving any information in the theatre, a Nikancha envoy arrived. They made a suggestion to hand over all the northern coastal and eastern mountain areas to the theatre, but asked the theatre to exchange 3,000 new rifles...

General Bolognick and General Skerry were unable to take the lead and had to send the Eagle again to Claude and others to go back to Lake Lang to discuss it.

The paralyzed Nikanths are back in their minds... General Albert, who came back with Claude, scolded the Nikanths all the way, never stopped talking, and he jumped like a thunder after seeing a hawk from the battlefield command, resolutely refusing to give the Nikanths a new rifle that was not fully equipped for their territory.

Upon returning to theatre command, Claude found that General Bolognick seemed to want to agree to Nikanca's terms, leaving General Bitchclin speechless and General Skerry ambiguous. General Bolognick believes that it would be a very cheap deal to hand over a new rifle to the Nikancas in exchange for this large area to allow for an additional direct jurisdiction in the theatre.

And Claude has said before that new rifles don't matter, it's important to replenish the bullets. Even if a new rifle is equipped with a hundred rounds of ammunition, the Nikans will eventually have to pay to buy from the war zone, where they can control the Nikans with bullets, and sell the bullets at a high price and gain a lot from the Nikans.

Perhaps this is why General Bolognick persuaded General Skerry in exchange for not supporting a no-objection attitude. At the same time, for General Bolognick, the deal implies a credit for opening up the kingdom's frontiers. Even if the king were to punish the five generals in the war zone later, he could be better treated for this credit, and no kingdom would be wronged by the generals of its expanded territory, otherwise he would be called a dazed monarch, and the book of history would be named.

Only General Bolognick chose a wrong approach because Claude coldly said, "I object! Let those Nikantha envoys go where they came from..."

“You...” General Bolognick was angry, but he held his temper, sighed and frowned before he asked: "Claude, why do you object? ”

Claude walked up to the wall hanging from the map of the Nikanca Nation and took the map with his hands and said, "You know why the Nikancas handed over the northern coastal mountains and the eastern mountains to our war zone? ”

General Bitchklin laughed: "Wasn't it their special envoy who came to complain that we didn't see them as our own men in the war zone, handing over 100,000 Nikans under our command, and nearly 60,000 men were killed in the first battle? This casualty has frightened the elders and chiefs of the Nikantha, and we have destroyed only about three legions of Hicks, followed by more than 400,000 men and horses in seven standing legions.

This Nikanca mission asked for an explanation of the armed youth of the nearly 60,000 Nikancas killed and injured, who believed that the continuation of the fighting against the Hicks would bring about the annihilation of their emerging Nikanca nation. Because it would be an unaffordable price for them to pay at least 200,000 casualties in order to defeat the seven standing legions of the Hicks.

So they want to deliver these two mountains to us and let our battlefields block their next Hicks offense. Our battlefield generals are bleeding hard ahead, and these Nikanchas are living comfortably behind them. It's just that they couldn't afford to deliver those two white pieces to our battlefield, and that's how we traded them for new rifles. ”

General Albert snorted: “They think so beautifully, let us guard their doors, let us fight the Hicks, and let us send them new rifles. Do we still have to apologize to them in our war zone for the pension and compensation costs of the nearly 60,000 Nikanchas who were killed and wounded by armed men? Don't these Nikanths know anything about themselves? They disobeyed military orders, disobeyed orders, and acted without permission, adding a lot of trouble to us..."

“More than that, they also held the battlefield responsible for the more than 2,000 Nikantha deserters who had been disposed of as a result of the ten killings, demanding that I be punished as commander of the defensive front...” General Bitchklin said with a bit of a yin and yang oddity, which seemed very dissatisfied with him.

General Bolognick smiled bitterly: "Bick, I have rejected this request from the Nikancha envoys and explained to them that this is a mandatory punishment, otherwise the second defensive front will not be able to hold..."

“Explain, why explain to these Nikanchas.” Claude was impatient and shouted, “What can you explain? Why do these Nikanths want us to explain to them in the war zone? Our war zone should ask them for an explanation! Alan, you tell those Nikancas that we don't want their land, and we don't want to negotiate with them.

By the way, tell them that in more than a month the last three standing legions of the Hicks will arrive in the Rodex Bay colony, and that they will likely launch another offensive at the end of May and early June. You make these Nikanths eat better and have fun, because they only have two or three months left to die.

In view of the unreliable nature of their armed forces and the troubles they caused our troops in the last battle, our theatre has decided to suspend cooperation with them, the Nikancha nation, in order not to be disturbed by them in the security of the theatre. So our battlefield is going to defend only the northern coastal mountains this time, and we're not going to leave a single soldier in the eastern mountains. In other words, that defensive front in the eastern mountains, we will give up and no longer insist. ”

Claude, who is anti-visitor oriented, is not prepared to accept the Nikanca proposal and the demands of the delivery site, but to abandon the entire eastern mountains. It is conceivable that if the Hicks found the eastern line empty, they would surely go straight in, and then the Nikancas would be thrilled to retreat to the original Hicks hinterland colony...

“Okay, I'll talk to the Nikanchas and get them out of here early.” General Albert laughed and said he was ready to go out of the conference room to look for the Nikanca envoys.

But he was stopped by General Bolognick: "Claude, don't mess up. You have to understand that these two fast tracks were voluntarily handed over to us by the Nikancas, not robbed by us from the Nikancas, which, taken together, would give the war zone another direct jurisdiction. And they just asked for 3,000 new rifles, and I think that's a really good deal. ”

Claude shook his head: “I'm not giving them a new rifle, and they're handing over only the northern coastal mountains and the eastern mountains to our battlefield without any good faith. If you look at the map, there are only two corners of these two areas, one small gold mine and two small silver mines, which are not worth paying for for our battlefield and are not worth the lives of our fighters. ”

“If the General wants to soil the kingdom, he can well wait for the Hicks to seize Nikantha territory before launching an offensive, which makes sense for us and the Hicks to be at war and occupy their land. As for the Nikanchas, our refusal to cooperate with them is no longer an alliance. Do the Nikanchas want their land back from our theatre after the war? ”