Advancing Step by Step

"Hmph, these East Africans are truly detestable! Look at these rifles—the oil on them is all fresh, and the rifling isn't worn at all. You can tell at a glance they're brand-new goods, yet they were willing to give them to those country bumpkin white bandits."

Little Pretoria cursed furiously after seeing the sample firearms Branca had delivered. As for the rest, Branca had intercepted them and used them to expand the troops.

"Mr. President, the East African border forces use Mauser rifles, while this is clearly a Wunderl rifle used by the Austro-Hungarian Empire's forces. However, given the relationship between East Africa and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it would be ridiculously easy for East Africa to obtain such rifles. They clearly had reservations about directly intervening in our conflict with the Orange people, so they did not openly provide the Orange people with their own weapons," one of Little Pretoria's aides analyzed.

"This is obviously good news for us. It shows that the East Africans still fear the British. Otherwise, the battlefield would probably already be full of East African standard-issue weapons. Although East African weapons are somewhat inferior in workmanship to those from the German territories, their logistics, cost, spare parts, and so on are correspondingly much easier to handle than importing from Europe."

"Furthermore, East Africa's choice to support the Orange people with Austro-Hungarian weapons adds another step to the process. They must pass through East Africa, cross the ocean, be transferred from the port overland, and finally sent inland by railway. That will consume a great deal of time, so supply problems are bound to arise. As long as we strike fast enough and fight well enough, the Orange people's logistics system will certainly run into trouble."

Yet Little Pretoria did not look happy in the slightest.