Chapter Twenty-Four – In the Name of the Moon!

Chapter Twenty-Four – In the Name of the Moon!

“Can you Imagine an imaginary menagerie manger managing an imaginary menagerie?”

–Translated excerpt from a question ask by Japanese Ronin Nya during an interview in 2055

***

“Don’t forget,” Lucy said. “We have our first Applied Pol-Sci this afternoon.”

“Yeah yeah,” I said. “Kiss before you go?”

Lucy grinned and gave me a quick kiss before darting out of the Bastion with a skip in her step. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Skipping, not kissing. Well, there’d been a lot of that too, but not much more than our usual baseline.

I think it was the working legs that did it, probably. Or she just liked the way her skirt bounced with every step. It was… cute.

Ah well. I stretched my lower back out and was left unsatisfied when it didn’t pop. “What’s on the docket for today, secretary Myalis?” I asked.

I’m thinking of making it rain anvils, but less in a cartoony way, and more in a disastrously real way. It would be a very localized sort of rain, with only one raindrop, as it were.

“Maybe you can buy yourself a little comedy AI friend? I can spare a few points for something like that, right? Or some comedy software? Does that exist? Because if it does, you should poke one of the other AI for a copy.”

I was smiling despite myself as I stepped off the ship and started towards my morning classes. If Myalis was being jokey, then we were probably okay.

I resisted the urge to skip to class. I wasn’t wearing a flowy skirt and also I’d rather die than be seen doing something like that. And, about halfway there, I was met by Olivia who silently slid up next to me and walked along without saying much beyond a ‘good morning’ and ‘how are you?’

I got to class, discovered that it was going to be a lesson-first kind of day, then sat back in one of the seats furthest from the front. I was actually early enough that I had to endure small talk with the guys sitting next to me, but they were pretty chill, if a bit awkward.

Then Professor Rogers stepped into the room and the screen we were all facing lit up. “Let’s get right to it,” he said. “What’s logistics?”

No one said anything. The sudden change of pace kinda fucking with everyone. Finally, someone by the front raised a hand. “In my words, or a textbook definition?” the student asked.

“Textbook.”

“Logistics is the creation, maintenance, and management of supply chains. It’s the act of dealing with acquiring, moving, and storing equipment and materials,” the student said. Probably reading off their Augs.

Professor Rogers paused for just a moment before nodding. “Good enough. In war, artillery is king, but logistics is the queen. That’s a chess analogy for you plebs. We’re not going to deal with logistics too much, that’s an entirely different department and a five-year course. However, you need to understand that logistics will win wars, or lose them.”

“How’s that?” I piped up.

The professor glanced up at me for just a moment before answering. “A gun is only good as long as you have ammo to shoot. A soldier is useless if they don’t have food, shelter, and equipment. But food is eaten, shelter gets bombed, and equipment breaks down. Logistical services keep ammo flowing, get food delivered, build shelters, and replace equipment. You can, broadly, divide logistics into short and long term. Short term logistics are perhaps the reason that samurai are as powerful as they are.”

I blinked. I thought it was because we had alien tech and crazy AI in our heads?

“A soldier whose logistics train is lost is, in a word, fucked. A samurai in the same position only has to mutter a few sentences and they’re ready to keep going. However, long term logistics are different. They deal with planning for future events and ensuring that stockpiles are filled and equipment is where it needs to be before it needs to be used. Give me examples.”

A student raised their hand next to me. “Vaults and shelters?”

“Good. That’s more for civilians, but in your roles as tacticians and officers, you may have to deal with civilians at times. A rowdy crowd of pissed off locals who just discovered that the shelters they were sent to never existed will make your life complicated in any incursion. More.”

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“AA-guns?” Someone asked.

“Need their ammo before an incursion starts,” Professor Rogers nodded. “Good. Add on any heavy machinery to that as well. Tanks don’t run on hopes and dreams, they need constant maintenance even when not on the front lines.”

Rogers kept on going. He pulled up images of some guy called Montgomery and his rival Rommel. I tried looking more into them with my Augs, because it was kind of interesting, but all that I pulled up was a lot of very weird historical fanfiction, and I don’t think the kind of logistics Professor Rogers was talking about was in what I was seeing from that search.

About forty minutes in, just when I was starting to have a bitch of a time paying attention, the professor told us to get changed.