//------------------------------//
// Paradigm 
// Story: Blackacre 
// by Princess Woona 
//------------------------------//

31 December, Y.C. 969
Canterlot

“Will that be all, General?”
McNamare’s voice was kindly enough, but she was tired, and it showed. They had been at it for five hours now, starting at sundown. Mercifully, sundown was slated for something like four-thirty in the afternoon, so it wasn’t even particularly late, but five hours of constant concentration would wear anypony down.
“That’s everything,” said Batchall, nodding heavily. She almost imagined the bags under his eyes wobbled a bit — late or not, he hadn’t been getting any sleep for days.
“All right,” she said with an expression that had a trace of concern to it. “Get some sleep, Billy.”
“Will do,” he said, making as to pick up the charts, but stopped at a gesture from McNamare.
“Leave them,” she said. “They’re not going anywhere, and you won’t be using them tonight.”
“True enough.” He bobbed his head, and this time the bags definitely wiggled a bit. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said Aspia, then nodded at the handful of aides that surrounded him. “Gentlecolts.”
A flurry of murmured greetings as the hall drained. In two minutes it was empty, just a broad table, several dozen charts, and one very tired pony. McNamare took a deep drink of water, glanced at her notes, stretched a bit, and then sat back down, the shadows on the wall dancing faintly in the firelight.
“We’re alone.”
“Aren’t we all?”
A pastel glow lowered itself to the floor as Princess Celestia turned her mane back on, for lack of a better description. Most ponies in the meeting chamber noticed that it had high ceilings; few took notice of the platform built up in the rafters. Not that they would have seen anything if they did.
The Princess had been there for the start of the briefing, of course; that was the whole reason why they had started just after sunset. For two hours she heard the reports from General Batchall and the aides representing the Royal Army; for two hours they talked and discussed, setting out general elements of a broader strategy. This time around it was almost entirely military, but she regularly held these select sessions whenever there was any sort of crisis. Council meetings were good, but it was better to get the sharpest minds in a particular field on the same page at the same meeting.
All the while the Princess guided them with a gentle, if firm, hoof. She never dispensed blame or questioned past events; she always looked to the future. What was done was done; the question now was what they were going to do about it. For that purpose, no suggestion was too extreme, too silly; she in fact demanded that every pony present speak his or her mind. They were all in this together, and only by working together could they restore harmony.
After those two hours, though, she had excused herself, leaving McNamare and the others to “clean up the details.” Which usually entailed an hour of griping about the reasonability, or lack thereof, of the Princess’ demands, and then another two hours actually discussing the plans, without having to worry about speaking their minds in front of the Princess.
And after they were gone, once grievances were aired and she got a fairly good idea of what her generals were actually thinking, Celestia and Aspia could get down to the business of actually deciding what was going to happen.
“Eisenhorner is an idiot,” declared Celestia flatly. “From now on, Pommel runs the offenses.”
“You wanted him there,” said Aspia, making a note on a scrap of paper. “You thought he might be able to talk Beatrix down.”
“Damned idealist,” she said, stalking around the table to get a better look at the maps. Of course she could see them well enough from her perch, but there was something to be said about running a hoof over the parchment, feeling the battle lines. “Pommel was right. A quick attack, in force; take the castle by the end of the first day. None of this entrenchment business. And now it’s too late.”
“And now it’s too late,” echoed Aspia, a bite in her words. She was criticizing the actions of the Princess and she knew it. Anypony or anywhere else, and that would be the end of her career. Possibly worse. But right here and right now? Celestia expected her to speak her mind, to truly say what she meant. She demanded the truth, even if it wasn’t pleasant.
This just happened to be a situation where what was necessary, what was true, and what was pleasant, at least for Aspia, all coincided: she had recommended Pommel be in complete control from the very beginning. It wasn’t very often you got to tell a thousand-year-old and effectively immortal alicorn I-told-you-so, so she relished it.
But not too much, nor for long. There were still some lines that couldn’t be crossed.
“You heard the plans,” said Celestia, waving a hoof in the direction of the door. “Assess.”
Aspia was silent for a moment. She knew exactly what she was going to say, of course. The past five hours had been building towards this moment. Princess Celestia, the single most powerful being on the continent, was asking her for advice.
That wasn’t unusual. She asked a lot of ponies for advice; that was the point of the council. Fresh thoughts were also occasionally useful to reflect one’s own plans. And, most importantly of all, a policy of being open to others engendered trust in the political system, trust which had kept it afloat for a thousand years. No, the important part now wasn’t that Celestia was asking for advice.
The important part was that she would listen.
“They’re all wrong,” she said.
Celestia raised an eyebrow. This was surprising.
Surprising was good.
“They all are planning based on a set of assumptions,” she said, emboldened by the alicorn’s reaction. “Some of them are shared, and some of them aren’t. There’s a common set, though.”
“A lot of them are reasonable,” she went on, with a concessionary nod towards Blackacre, represented for the purposes of this discussion by the detailed topographical chart of the region that occupied the center of the wide table. “And a lot of them are speculative, but within reason on those counts.”
She waited for a second or two, to give gravity to her next words. Celestia waited patiently. There was no point in trying to outwit her with oratory, outfox her with logic. It was more a reflex, really; if she was going to make a point, she was going to make it elegantly.
“They all assume this is a conventional war.”
The corners of the alicorn’s mouth turned down.
“There are a lot of ways to define conventional,” she said, staring off into the distance. “There are some weapons even I will not use. Not against ponies… not yet.”
“By their definitions,” said Aspia, neatly sidestepping a discussion to which she was fairly sure she would never be privy, “they expect this to be a fairly straightforward contest. At a certain point, it will become apparent that Blackacre can’t win. They don’t have the numbers, they don’t have the supplies. By and large we outnumber them, and though they the defensive is an easier position to hold, our advance cannot be stopped.”
She shrugged. “Under that rhetoric, it’s simple. Sooner or later they will have to capitulate. The only question is how long it will take. Therefore, all of our plans boil down to debates over the best way to destroy Blackacre’s military assets. Slow advances to win the war of attrition. Strikes on their depots. Saturation bombardment of their trench lines.”
“They’re essentially asking themselves, if we were in Blackacre’s position, what would hurt us most? What would bring us to our knees first?” Aspia shook her head. “They all have different answers, but their questions are the same.”
“Their logic seems sound.”
“They assume that Beatrix and her… supporters will think like us.”
“They’re ponies.”
“Of course they are,” she said, and a sharp look told her that perhaps that tone was just a bit too far. “Yes, they are ponies,” she corrected. “To a large extent that frames their worldview, but that’s not what’s important. Look to the victory conditions.”
Aspia swept a hoof over the map, where hundreds of tiny little dots and the occasional question mark indicated the current disposition of forces.
“Our generals and tacticians are thinking of this just like with the Dragon Skirmishes. This is a war. War can be won by either dying for your country or making the other pony die for his. Obtain enough military superiority, either by improving your own capacity or destroying the enemy’s, and they will capitulate, because the alternative is destruction.”
“This thinking won the Skirmishes,” said Celestia, but this time with the slightest nod of approval. She understood where this was going. Aspia didn’t need to go on; surely the alicorn could figure it out. Still, somepony actually needed to say it, and it might as well be her.
“It did, but that was different. Pony versus dragon. Us, many and small; them, few but dangerous. At the end of the day? Good versus evil.”
Celestia smiled. That had been a terrific propaganda campaign, one that had originated in the keen young mind of a certain junior aide to then-major Pommel. He had brought the plan — and the pony — to Celestia’s attention, after which Aspia had shot up the ranks like a rocket sled on rails.
“This is different. Beatrix knows she can’t win. She never wanted to. All she needs to do is break us.”
“Break Canterlot.”
“Why not?” she said with a raised eyebrow. “Our generals expect a military victory, so they go after military targets. We continue to batter away at them. We lose forces. They lose forces. We seem to be winning — but then they simply don’t surrender.”
She wiped a hoof over the map, mimicking a total Canterlot advance.
“They’re not fighting to win. They’re fighting to not lose. All they need to do is wait for us to run out of steam. There might be three of them left alive, but as long as they’re still alive, they’ve won their moral victory.”
Celestia nodded slowly for a few moments.
“Your assessment of the situation is quite correct,” she said bluntly. It was as close to an acknowledgment of error Aspia had ever heard, or for that matter was likely to. “Your proposal.”
Aspia half-smiled. Celestia would know the answer, of course. Somepony had to say it.
“We cannot fight this war as we did against dragons, and it is a war. Make no mistake about that. It is a war of belief, a war of ideals. Starting right now this isn’t between Canterlot and Blackacre, it’s between us and them. It’s between loyalty and traitors, duty and cowards, honor and a stab in the back.
“Equestria knows you. How could they not? We use that. It’s between you and her. Stability and chaos. Harmony and dis —”
“Thus playing into her net,” said Celestia, cutting her off sharply.
“Yes,” she conceded. “At this point, their reactions are set. Nothing we can do will change that. But we can change how we approach this. If Equestria prepares for a military victory but they ring hollow, then we fail. If we prepare for a moral one, a crusade, then the military victories — or failures — don’t matter.”
For a long moment, Celestia stood in quiet contemplation of the map, her mane waving slowly in the cool air. The room wasn’t quite as grand as the council chamber, but it was high enough to have the wind whip around the towers. It wasn’t snowing, wasn’t supposed to for a day or two, but the night looked cold.
“I expect a full spectrum of choices by tomorrow morning,” she said calmly. “Publicity campaigns, military targets, talking points for the speech I suspect I’ll be giving tomorrow evening.”
“Understood.”
Celestia turned to leave the room, but instead held back, turning her head slowly to fix Aspia squarely in the eye.
“I also expect an outline for your second option.”
“Second option.”
“If any of them are left alive,” said Celestia flatly, echoing Aspia’s earlier words, “then even a surrender turns to a moral victory.” A look of grave determination flickered over the alicorn’s face. “And if we cannot inflict a moral defeat….”
Aspia paused for a moment.
“Preparations will be made.”