Tyranny of Steel

While Khorjin was being detained by her older brother in Anatolia, Honoria was visiting the German Embassy within the city of Constantinople. After learning that her father intended to sacrifice himself on the battlefields against the Saracens, Honoria was in a state of panic.

The Byzantine Princess rushed through the doors of the German Embassy, and did not even stop to speak with the ambassador. As the wife of the Kaiser, she had this privilege, but it was still an enormous act of disrespect.

However, the thought that she was disrespecting the German Ambassador did not even cross Honoria's mind. Instead, she swiftly made her way through the building, before arriving in a small room in the back where half a dozen intelligence operatives were busy conducting radio traffic.

The agents took one look at the panicked expression on the Byzantine Princess's face and knew that a serious development had occurred. Before Honoria could even give voice to her commands, the agents were already dialing in the private and encrypted frequency which belonged to the Kaiser's household.

"I want to speak with my husband. This is an emergency! Get him on the line!"

These were Honoria's words. Yet they did not need to be spoken. A radio operator nodded his head before speaking into the device and issued a command to the other side, who sat idly by in the city of Kufstein several hundred kilometers away.

"Priority message from Princess Honoria, this is an emergency. I repeat an emergency. Requesting the presence of the Kaiser immediately. Over."

Static existed on the other end of the line for several moments before another voice spoke in the german tongue.

"Roger that. The Kaiser has been informed and is on his way. Eta three minutes, over."

With every second that passed, Honoria felt as if she had endured a lifetime. Finally, after what can only be described as three minutes of mental anguish, Berengar's voice erupted through the headset, and in doing so calmed Honoria's troubled heart.

"What's the matter? Has something happened? Are you and the kids alright?"

It was entirely unusual for Honoria to make an emergency call to her husband via the radio. In fact, the moment Berengar was alerted to this message, he was within his war room, discussing with his generals the ongoing situation within the Indian subcontinent. He dropped everything and rushed to the communications hub where his agents patched him through to his wife. Hence, there was a hint of urgency in the man's tone.

Honoria's voice was filled with dread as she responded to her husband with tears in her eyes. She could barely make out the words, and thus her initial message was unclear.

"Berengar... Save my father!"

This statement stunned the Kaiser into silence for several moments. Though he was aware of the current crisis that Byzantium was facing, as far as he was aware, there was no real threat to the Byzantine royal family, or the city of Constantinople, for that matter.

For Honoria to make this request of him via an emergency call, something serious must have happened. Thus, the man's voice was filled with fierce resolve as he responded to his wife's concerns.

"Tell me what has happened, and I promise I will immediately dispatch my forces."

Nearly a week after this conversation took place, Vetranis and his army had gathered within the city of Ascalon, where the forces of the Jaylarid sultanate prepared to lay siege to. Nearly a hundred thousand Saracens were armored and ready for war as they pointed their weapons to the coastal city.

The aging Byzantine Emperor was dressed in elaborate armor, which harkened back to the days of feudalism. His soldiers were dressed in a wide variety of gear, while wielding a mixture of arquebuses, flintlock muskets, and medieval weapons. Whatever armor and weapons the Byzantines had left over in their storehouses were used to equip their poor excuse for an army.

Vetranis sighed as he gazed over the city's walls and upon the massive, and well equipped Saracen army. Since the Timurid Empire's lust for the Holy Land was quelled by Berengar's negotiations, they had invested substantially in the development of firearms and artillery. So much so that they were able to create rifled matchlock muskets and rifled muzzle loading cannons. Which they sold to the Muslim world in massive numbers, including the Jaylarid sultanate.

The overwhelming power of the enemy was not something a weakened Byzantine Army could contend with, and Vetranis knew this. Thus, he could only say his prayers before the battle began. Within the hour, the Saracen artillery opened fire on the city's walls. While inert, the projectiles launched were enough to deal significant damage to the primitive medieval walls which were not designed to withstand cannonballs.

The Byzantine defenders loaded their weapons and fired them in retaliation towards the enemy, but it was no use. The Saracens had an advantage in range, and thus they merely sat back and unloaded their artillery upon the city's defenses.

Before long, the Byzantine's morale was at an all-time low. These were not professional soldiers to begin with, as most of those who could claim to be such a thing were dead and buried after the Catholic Church's previous crusade.

Nor could the Empire's coffers afford such an expense. These were peasants conscripted from the fields and given weapons with little training. They weren't being paid to fight, nor were they experienced in the art of war.

Vetranis gazed upon the wavering mental state of his troops as the walls crumbled around them and sighed. He would need a miracle if this peasant rabble were to successfully defend the city, let alone win the war. Gone were the days where the Byzantine Empire was the mightiest force in the Mediterranean, their position usurped by the Reich. Now they could not even defend their lands from aggressors.

Perhaps this truly was the end of the Roman Empire and its ancient culture. Or so he thought. The man did not realize that his prayers had long since been realized, and help was on the way, even if he did not want it. It was only after he heard the shrieking cry of one of his soldiers did he come to understand this.

"My God, what is that?"

In the sky above the besieged city, a hundred planes flew in the air. These were no normal aircraft. Rather, they were strategic bombers, flown without escorts. The Me 264 planes were painted with a desert camouflaged pattern, and wore the Balkenkreuz on their wings and fuselage. Which proudly displayed their allegiance to the Luftwaffe.

Vetranis nearly shat himself when he saw such advanced weapons of war. He was there, in the city of Kufstein, when the Germans first revealed to the world that they had mastery over the skies. However, the aircraft they showed at the time was a rigid airship, and failed to compare to the sheer volume of bombers which currently flew by. It took him several moments to recover his thoughts, but when he did, the aging emperor called out as loud as he could with a voice filled with hope.

"It's the Germans! The Germans have come to save us!"

The soldiers of Byzantium could not believe these words, as they had not witnessed the Germans' mastery of the air. These were uneducated peasants. How could they possibly understand the complexities of modern aircraft?

However, in the next moment, what can only be described as thousands of projectiles fell from the bottom of the bombers and descended towards the earth below. Even Vetranis did not know how these German aircraft would save them. However, in the next moment, his doubts were cleared as the first wave of bombs carpeted the combat zone outside the city with explosive blasts and fiery streaks.

The Germans had not simply used explosive projectiles, instead they decimated the Saracen lines with napalm bombs. The hellish flames scorched the earth as if the devil himself had ascended from the depths of his fiery prison.

To the uneducated masses of these medieval peasants, it was truly as if the apocalypse had begun. Those unlucky Saracens, who were not instantly consumed by the flames, were left coated in napalm where their horrific shrieks filled the air as they slowly burned to death.

Even Vetranis himself hid behind the merlons, too afraid to gaze upon the ashen wasteland that was left behind from the German attack. Nor did he wish to face the heat of the flames, which seemed to suffocate the city from the outside.

To the survivors of this incident, they would speak rumors that the Germans had mastery over hell itself, a claim that few would believe. What remained of the Saracen Army was quickly mopped up by the Byzantine Army. However, it took some time before any of them were willing to step foot outside the safety of their city's walls and into the wasteland that was left behind from the German attack.

Before anyone could even react to the nightmarish bombing, the hundred planes were already en route back to the Air Base in Cyprus which they had deployed from. Where they would rearm, and refuel, before flying to Egypt where they would unleash the same hellish flames upon the Mamluk sultanate who dared to invade the Byzantine Empire's southernmost region.

As for the Byzantine Emperor, this incident would cause him to develop a sense of deep fear towards his son-in-law, who had the ability to destroy the ancient city of Constantinople with a single command. The capital of the Byzantine Empire, which had stood strong for a thousand years, was nothing in the eyes of the German Empire and their overwhelming power.