The Emperor's Calculus

The Emperor's study in Nagasaki was quiet. The forge was cold, the maps of Europe rolled and stored. The great map of Mongolia and the Northern Territories, however, had been unrolled once more, dominating the central table like a captured battle standard. Qin Shi Huang stood before it, alone, two telegrams lying starkly on the parchment surface. The air was still, charged only by the silent, intense workings of the imperial mind.

He had read the reports. The first, from General Yuan Shikai, was a document seething with barely concealed fury. It detailed the poisoning at Blockhouse #73, painting a vivid picture of betrayal and incompetence, and culminated in a biased, indignant account of Meng Tian's "cowardly" insubordination. The second telegram, from Meng Tian, was a model of military brevity. It was a clipped, factual report on the same incident, concluding with his refusal to carry out an order for "punitive extermination of non-combatants" without a direct, written decree from the throne.

QSH placed his fingers on the map, tapping lightly on the small red circle he had drawn to mark the location of the poisoned well. He closed his eyes, not to use his power, but to visualize the event, to dissect it with cold logic.

"She did not attack the track," he thought, the analysis crisp and clear. "She did not ambush a patrol. She attacked their water. More than that, she attacked their minds. A single act of terror that makes every soldier question the very source of his own life."

The voice of his inner chancellor, the personification of his own ancient pragmatism, answered.

Li Si: ("A clever pest, Your Majesty. Cunning. The kind you cannot simply crush under your heel. She has learned from your methods. Your General Yuan's brutality was meant to be a lesson in obedience, but she has learned a different conclusion from it than he intended.")

QSH's fingers stilled. "Yuan sees only defiance, to be met with overwhelming, disproportionate force. He is a sledgehammer. He cannot see that swinging a sledgehammer at a scorpion only cracks the floor and enrages it further. His proposed response—to wipe out the nearest tribe—is predictable. And it is catastrophically wrong."

Li Si: ("It is the response of a Warden of the Marches, Majesty. It is precisely what you hired him for. It sends a message of absolute terror. It is the method we used to pacify the Baiyue tribes. It works.")

"It worked two thousand years ago against superstitious barbarians!" QSH countered, pacing the length of the room, his irritation a palpable force. "This is different. This action sends the wrong message! It tells every neutral tribe on the steppe that their loyalty means nothing. That they are just as likely to be massacred as the hostiles. It will drive them straight into this woman's arms. It will give her a silent army of the desperate. Yuan's lack of subtlety, his primary asset, has now become a liability."

He stopped pacing, his gaze falling upon the two telegrams again. This was an unforeseen complication, a flaw in his grand design. His perfect machine, engineered to crush the northern frontier into submission, was developing a dangerous friction. Its two primary components, the Sword and the Ledger, were grinding against each other, threatening to shatter the entire mechanism.

"And Meng Tian," he continued his internal debate. "He hides behind protocol and honor. He is correct, of course, on the letter of the law. But his honor, so often a useful tool for inspiration, at times becomes an inflexible burden. He sees the obvious flaw in Yuan's plan but offers no viable alternative beyond rigid defiance. He wishes only for a clean, glorious war that no longer exists in this theater."

Li Si: ("He is your sword, Your Majesty. He wishes to be pointed at a worthy foe, not used to chop vegetables in the kitchen. He serves you, but his pride serves itself. It is a weakness you have always known and tolerated.")

QSH returned to the table. He picked up the two flimsy pieces of paper, weighing them in his hands as if they were the generals themselves. The problem had moved beyond mere anger or frustration. It was now a complex, multi-variable equation, and he attacked it with the cold, clear logic that was his true, most formidable power.

"To side with Yuan would be to condone a tactical blunder. It would reward his shortsightedness and risk alienating my most loyal and capable general. To side with Meng Tian would be to completely undermine Yuan's authority in his own theater of command, encouraging further insubordination from his other commanders and making me look indecisive and weak. Neither option is acceptable."

He stared at the map, at the vast emptiness of the steppe, at the thin red line of the railway, and at the scattered markers representing the Mongol clans. He saw the board, the pieces, and the flaw in his own initial strategy.

"I deployed a hammer to solve what I believed was a nail," he concluded. "The problem has evolved. It is no longer a nail. It is a cancer, spreading through the populace with whispers and poison. A hammer cannot excise a cancer. For that, you need a scalpel."

A third path illuminated itself in his mind. It was a solution that addressed the military problem while also resolving the political crisis between his commanders. He sat at his desk, took out his imperial stationery, and began to write, not one, but two separate decrees. His brush moved with a swift, decisive grace.

The first decree was addressed to General Yuan Shikai, Supreme Commander of the Northern Pacification Command. It was a masterpiece of calculated appeasement. It granted him the full authority he had requested, to take "all necessary measures" to ensure the security of the railway and pacify the region. It went further, adding a mild, formal censure of General Meng Tian for his public questioning of the command structure, reminding him that unity was paramount. On the surface, it was a complete victory for Yuan.

The second decree was addressed to General Meng Tian. It began by acknowledging his astute observations regarding the "changing nature of the enemy" and the need for a more "flexible and precise response." It then formally detached the Imperial Guard and two other elite cavalry regiments from Yuan's Northern Pacification Command. With a stroke of his brush, QSH established a new, independent entity: the "Dragon's Claw Division." Meng Tian was named its sole commander. Their mandate was not pacification. It was a specific, targeted "search and destroy" mission: to hunt and capture or kill the enemy cell leader known as "Altan" and her foreign handlers. They were granted carte blanche to operate anywhere in the northern theater, requisitioning supplies as needed, and answering only and directly to the Emperor. They were to be the scalpel.

QSH set down his brush, a faint, cold smile on his lips.

"Yuan will have the authority he craves," he thought, reviewing his work. "He will continue to be my brutal wall, terrorizing the general populace into a state of terrified submission. Meng Tian will have his honorable war. He now has a worthy, intelligent adversary to hunt. I have not chosen one general over the other. I have unleashed them both."

Li Si: ("You have set your two greatest dogs against each other, Your Majesty. It is a dangerous game. Their rivalry could fester and cripple the entire campaign.")

"No," QSH corrected his inner voice. "I have not set them against each other. I have created a competition. Now they will compete to give me results. Yuan, with his overwhelming terror and mass tactics. Meng Tian, with his precision strikes and elite warriors. We will see which method succeeds in breaking the will of the northern resistance first. The butcher's axe or the warrior's blade. Their competition will fuel their efficiency."

He pressed his imperial seal into the warm red wax, finalizing the decrees. He had solved the immediate crisis, not with a show of supernatural force, but with a masterful stroke of political maneuvering and strategic realignment. He had turned a problem of insubordination into an engine of progress. His gaze drifted to the small, ornate box on his desk, the one containing his half of the sympathetic needle communicator. The war in the north was a brutal, physical affair of poison and steel. The war Captain Jiang was about to begin in the heart of Europe would be a silent, insidious conflict fought with whispers and gold.

He was fighting on multiple fronts, against enemies both seen and unseen. For the first time, he felt the true strain of his ambition not in his body, but in his mind—the immense, constant, and draining pressure of managing a world that refused to bow as easily as he had planned.