The Forbidden City, Beijing, China - April 12th, 1940
The journey from the throne room stripped away any romantic notions the officers had harbored about palace intrigue and imperial grandeur. Minister Chen led them through what felt like an endless maze of courtyards and covered walkways, each turn revealing another courtyard identical to the last. The Forbidden City, they were learning, was less a palace than a small city unto itself—sprawling, complex, and utterly disorienting to foreign eyes.
The military quarters occupied the eastern section, and the contrast with the ceremonial spaces was immediate and jarring. Gone were the gilded dragons and elaborate paintings. Here, function trumped beauty. Yet even stripped of decoration, the buildings spoke to resources that regular army installations could only dream of—fresh paint, solid construction, equipment that actually worked.
What impressed Kylian most was the organization. Multiple buildings served distinct purposes: a communications center where radio equipment hummed with activity, a logistics office whose walls were covered in maps marked with supply routes and depot locations, and a motor pool where several vehicles sat in various states of maintenance. This was no ceremonial guard playing at soldiers—this was a functional military unit.
"Song Zhongwei!" Minister Chen's voice cut across the courtyard. A young officer supervising equipment maintenance straightened immediately. "Your instructors have arrived. Prepare your men."
The man who approached them moved with the confidence of someone who had spent years drilling until every motion became instinct. Song Zhongwei couldn't have been older than his mid-twenties, but his bearing suggested far more experience than his years should allow. When he extended his hand in Western fashion, Kylian noted the calluses—this was a man who worked with his hands, not just gave orders.
"Captains." Song's English carried only the faintest accent. "We're honored to receive instruction from the Hanseatic Imperial Guard. I understand you specialize in communications and logistics?" He bowed with depth appropriate for greeting foreign officers of equal rank.
Wolfgang couldn't suppress a flicker of unease. Song was their age, perhaps even younger. How were they supposed to instruct someone who looked like he could be their academy classmate?
"Yes, Captain Song." Kylian gestured toward the communications building, where he could see German-made equipment through the windows. "You have impressive facilities here. Latest Telefunken sets, if I'm not mistaken?"
Something passed across Song's face—disappointment, perhaps, or frustration. "Until four months ago, we had German advisors. They trained us on the equipment, handled repairs, provided spare parts." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Then they left. Very suddenly. The radios still work, mostly. But when something breaks..." He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
"Supply coordination?" Wolfgang asked, noting the detailed charts visible through another building's windows.
"Same story." Song's jaw tightened. "The Germans taught us their system for managing ammunition, fuel, provisions—everything a mechanized unit needs. Without them, we're making do. But 'making do' doesn't win modern wars."
Understanding dawned on Kylian. They weren't here to provide basic training. They were here to fill a gap—the sudden, unexplained absence of German military expertise. The question of why the Germans had left so abruptly lodged itself in the back of his mind. It seemed like the sort of question that might have important answers.
Song led them to a courtyard where their students waited. Kylian had expected eager young soldiers, perhaps some junior officers hungry for foreign knowledge. What he saw instead made his stomach sink.
These were not students. These were veterans.
Sergeant Major Liu Kangshan stood at the front of the formation, and everything about him screamed experience. His uniform bore the subtle signs of long service—fabric faded to just the right shade, creases worn in by years of the same careful folding. When he offered the customary bow, his eyes assessed them with the flat, evaluating gaze of a man who had trained too many overconfident officers.
"Sergeant Major Liu," Song explained, "has run communications training for the Imperial Guard for eight years. Before that, he served in the technical corps. He worked directly with the German advisors."
"Eight years." Wolfgang's voice came out higher than he'd intended. He coughed, trying to recover. "That's... quite a record."
"Lieutenant Chen Hao." Song indicated a man in his thirties whose weathered face spoke to long campaigns in difficult terrain. "He coordinated supply operations during the western pacification campaigns."
The other students were cut from similar cloth. This wasn't a classroom of eager learners. This was a room full of professionals who had been promised expert instruction and were now confronted with two academy boys barely into their twenties.
Kylian felt the weight of their collective skepticism like a physical thing. He exchanged a glance with Wolfgang and saw his own anxiety reflected back at him.
They were in serious trouble.
The First Lesson
Wolfgang began with communications because at least he understood the theory cold. He'd aced every signals course at Bechaven, written papers on network architecture that his instructors had praised. Theory, he could handle.
"Right." He picked up chalk and turned to the blackboard, drawing quick lines to represent a command structure. "Hanseatic doctrine emphasizes distributed communications. Instead of relying on a single command frequency, we establish multiple paths for critical information."
The diagram grew as he sketched—units linked by various frequencies, relay stations, backup channels. On paper, it looked elegant. Comprehensive. The kind of system that earned high marks from academy instructors.
"Now, I know this looks complex." He tapped the board. "But once you understand basic radio theory—wave propagation, antenna positioning, frequency selection—it becomes quite manageable."
The room's temperature seemed to drop five degrees.
Sergeant Major Liu's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes went flat and dangerous. When he spoke, his voice remained perfectly polite—the kind of politeness that officers learned to fear from senior NCOs.
"Forgive me, Captain. A question, if I may?"
"Of course, Sergeant Major."
"You mention multiple frequencies prevent jamming from disrupting the network. But maintaining redundant systems requires additional operators, additional equipment. How does Hanseatic doctrine address these resource requirements in field conditions?"
The question wasn't hostile. It was worse—it was professional. Liu wasn't challenging Wolfgang's knowledge out of spite. He genuinely wanted to understand how this theoretical system functioned in practice, where radios broke, operators got killed, and supplies didn't arrive on schedule.
Wolfgang felt his confidence crumble. "Well, the advantages of redundancy are significant. If your primary frequency is jammed, you simply switch to—"
"But we have eighteen radios for sixty men, Captain." Lieutenant Chen spoke up now, his tone carefully neutral. "In your system, how many operators would each unit require? How do we train them when we barely have enough sets for current needs?"
"You would..." Wolfgang trailed off. The honest answer was that Hanseatic doctrine assumed abundant equipment, well-trained personnel, and supply lines that actually worked. It was doctrine written for a wealthy empire with modern infrastructure. It had never occurred to him that other armies might not have these advantages. "You would need to adapt the principles to your situation."
"Adapt them how, specifically?" Liu pressed.
Wolfgang had no answer. His throat felt tight. He was aware of every person in the room watching him flounder, aware that he'd just condescended to men with a decade of experience by suggesting they needed instruction in "basic radio theory."
Across the room, Kylian's logistics presentation was meeting a similar fate.
He'd prepared carefully, giving examples of Hanseatic supply forms, charts showing inventory tracking methods, documentation procedures for equipment maintenance. It was comprehensive. It was systematic. It was exactly what his instructors at Bechaven had taught him.
"The critical element in modern logistics," he explained, gesturing to a chart showing ammunition tracking, "is accurate record-keeping. Without proper documentation, you can't anticipate shortages, can't maintain equipment properly, can't coordinate resupply effectively."
He spread out the forms on a table. "These might look complicated initially, but they're designed to prevent the exact supply failures that cripple operations. Each form has a specific purpose in the larger system."
Lieutenant Chen studied the forms with an expression Kylian couldn't quite read. When he looked up, his voice was carefully controlled.
"Captain von Reichsgraf, the Imperial Guard has maintained supply records since before my grandfather's time. Perhaps you could explain how your methods differ from current procedures?"
"The differences are substantial," Kylian replied, trying to project confidence he didn't feel. "Hanseatic methods emphasize systematic approaches to—"
"We track ammunition by caliber, production batch, and storage time." Chen's voice remained level, but an edge had crept in. "Fuel by octane rating and storage location. Spare parts by compatibility matrices and priority classification. Medical supplies by expiration date and field requirements. What, specifically, do your forms do that ours don't?"
Kylian stared at the charts the Germans made. He'd assumed—they'd both assumed—that Chinese logistics would be primitive, disorganized, in need of basic instruction. Instead, he was facing a man who'd coordinated supply for thousands across hostile territory and clearly understood the subject better than he did.
"The Hanseatic system is... more comprehensive." Even as he said it, Kylian knew how weak it sounded.
"Could you give an example? A specific improvement over our current methods?"
He couldn't. His education had taught him Hanseatic procedures as if they were universal best practices, never considering that other nations might have developed equally sophisticated systems adapted to their own circumstances.
The silence stretched. Someone coughed.
"Perhaps," Chen suggested with exaggerated courtesy, "we could discuss the specific challenges we face. Supply bottlenecks we've identified. Then you could explain how your methods address those particular problems?"
It was a lifeline, a way to salvage some dignity from the disaster. But it also made clear what had happened—the student was now offering to help the teacher.
Aftermath
When the session finally, mercifully ended, Song Zhongwei approached with an expression of profound discomfort.
"Tomorrow." He wouldn't quite meet their eyes. "Perhaps we could focus on specific technical issues. We have several radio sets requiring repair, identified bottlenecks in supply coordination. Practical problems where your expertise might..." He trailed off diplomatically.
The unspoken message was clear: Please, for the love of heaven, stop trying to teach us basics and just help with actual problems.
Wolfgang nodded numbly. Kylian managed a "Yes, that would be more productive."
As their students filed out—carefully not looking at each other, carefully maintaining discipline despite what must be burning questions about why they'd been assigned such obviously unprepared instructors—Kylian and Wolfgang found themselves alone in the courtyard.
Neither spoke for a long moment.
"That was..." Wolfgang started.
"Don't." Kylian's voice was flat. "Don't say it. I know."
"We treated them like children. Like they'd never seen a radio or filled out a supply form."
"We assumed." Kylian felt anger building—at their instructors for not preparing them, at the mission planners for sending them, at himself for not questioning whether he was actually qualified for this assignment. "We assumed because they're Chinese, because their equipment is older, because their country is struggling, that they must not know what they're doing."
"They know more than we do." Wolfgang's voice carried a note of wonder. "Sergeant Major Liu has forgotten more about field communications than I've learned."
"And we insulted them. Treated them like ignorant natives who needed enlightenment from us." Kylian rubbed his face. "God, my brother is going to hear about this. The Emperor is going to hear about this."
They stood in the courtyard as afternoon light slanted across the ancient stones. Somewhere in the distance, guards were changing shifts. Life in the Forbidden City continued, indifferent to the spectacular failure of two young Hanseatic officers who'd thought an academy education made them qualified to teach men who'd earned their knowledge in ways classrooms could never replicate.
"Tomorrow," Wolfgang said finally, "we do better. We listen more than we talk. We ask what they need instead of assuming we know."
"Tomorrow," Kylian agreed, "we need to be more careful, it can't get any worse than this."
Neither mentioned the larger implication—that if their first assignment in China had failed this badly, what did it mean for the rest of their mission? What did it mean for relations between their empires?
Those were questions for later, perhaps after they figured out how to salvage something from this disaster.
If they could.