27th of January, 1882.
United Federation. Chambers of Congress, Capitol Hill.

The deafening thunder of silence rings through the small conference room. It flutters around the closed curtains and drifts around the locked doors, before alighting on the tiny conference table at which a group of humans are sat. The small group of men represent the key players in the United Federation’s political scene. At the head of the committee is the United Federation’s president, President McKinley, a broad red-faced Blue who earned his majority as a captain of industry before he decided to enter the political scene, though the warm and winning smile he normally displays when meeting voters or fellow politicians is nowhere to be seen today. Organized around the table with him are key members of his cabinet, including the Secretary of War, Harold Johnson and the Foreign Secretary, Christolph Bergenstien. The cabinet has been assembled at extremely short notice at the request of the chief of the OSS for an emergency briefing on the Equestria-Khan situation.

In McKinley’s considered opinion, the Equestrian problem is one that can be best solved by keeping Federal involvement to an absolute minimum, a view that most of his colleagues in the cabinet share. After all, Equestria is a problem just waiting to happen, and as long as it happens to a president that isn’t him, then that’s just fine as far as McKinley’s concerned. There is also the more practical issue of putting Federal lives on the line, and the Joint Chiefs have all taken the position that Equestria does not represent a threat. Shows how much they know. McKinley thinks. However, the President does not have long to consider the issue, as the door opens and Director Tobias Caine walks in.

Tobias Caine’s short steel streaked fair hair glints in the oil-lamp light as he strides into the room, conveying every air of a man who owns the briefing room and everyone in it. His cheeks and eyes are sunken and the first wrinkles are sinking in around his eyes.
“Good morning gentlemen!” He says, a bright smile upon his face despite the lateness of the hour.

McKinley glances at the clock, which most certainly does not read a morning time, before fixing his ebullient spymaster with a look.
“Tobias, I trust this is important?” He asks, and the intelligence chief nods.

“Absolutely sir, my agents in Tarhen have just sent word about the Equestrian envoy, she was attacked by insurgents that we think were being bankrolled by the Khanate Interior Ministry, or their church,” Caine says, depositing a sheaf of manilla wallets upon the table. McKinley raises an eyebrow, noticing how cheerful Caine sounds about the whole thing. Like a kid at Hearth’s Warming, the president reflects. “Right, and this necessitates you calling all of us here at this time of day, just to tell us that someone that we know hates Equestria decided they wanted to sling a coupla arrows at their local representative?” He asks.

The spymaster shakes his head briskly.
“Not especially. I know exactly who is gunning for the Equestrians, who organized the mob a month back. It’s not the church or the Ministry of Internal Order. There’s a cat named Aznan… He wants to provoke a war with Equestria. I don’t really know or care why, but I think we should be supporting him in this.” Caine says calmly.

The other members of the cabinet look at each other in shock, everyone is absolutely stunned into silence for a moment, and then Christolph Bergenstien purses his lips and narrows his eyes slightly.
“So you’re saying, just to sum up, we should support a military officer’s personal campaign against one of the largest, most dangerous national opponents that we face?” The Foreign secretary looks distinctly dubious, as do other members of the cabinet.

“When you put it like that, it’s something of a non-starter I’ll admit,” Caine replies, “But we need to take the following things into account: One, the Khans are going to go to war with Equestria eventually. Tensions are just too high, even if the current situation is normalized, they will backslide. It’s just a matter of time.” He says confidently, and the dubious looks from the other humans in the room are starting to fade.

“Two, we need to take into account the outcome of that war. The Khans have quantitative superiority in most aspects, current estimates say they have a one point five to one superiority in raw hulls when it comes to escort class airships, that increases to two to one when we consider capital ships. They also have almost ten million men under arms to Equestria’s two million,” He explains, and the other men in the room are passing each other amused looks.

“But the problem is that those ten million men are spread out putting down dissent in various parts of the Khanate and they’re mainly trained to do just that. I think they’ll struggle when it comes to dealing with Equestrian soldiers. Certainly, Equestrian soldiers are easily better trained and Equestrian airships are of a better quality than their Khan rivals, and the outcome of a war between Equestria and the Khanate would not be a sure bet either way. Now, humour me for a second and we’ll say the Equestrians win their war and the Immortal Empresses decide to take the Khanate as part of their territory, which they will because that’s what tyrants do,” The spymaster has a faint smile upon his face as he sees the other men at the table casting wary glances at each other. They’re on his wavelength and all of them can read a map. They can all see where he’s going with this.

“Equestria will be on at our borders. Now, they’re going to be able to replace up to seventy five per-cent of any losses the Khans inflict on them inside of a year, maybe a little more for the airships, but the bottom line is that they’ll be at our borders, with a combined industrial and population base big enough to cause us, and more importantly, voters, some serious panic issues," Caine takes a sip of water, before continuing. "The voters want something done, and whatever the Joint Chiefs have been telling you, we won’t come out of an open war with an Equestria that's taken the Khanate without some serious scars, if we come out at all," The members of the cabinet are now looking nervously at each other, as though they can almost hear the drone of the heavily armed Imperial Navy airships overhead right now.
"So what do we do?" The secretary of trade asks, and Caine smiles like a conjurer pulling a rabbit from a hat.

"We support Aznan, that's what we do. He’s chief of the army after all, if we can give him resources and supplies then maybe he can bog the Equestrians down in a slugfest that will either burn the Equestrians so bad that they won’t even think about foreign adventurism for a hundred years, or better yet, he’ll win and maybe he’ll push across the border and take care of that little problem for us. If nothing else, he'll serve as a convenient fall-guy that we can use for our own operations.” Caine finishes, looking at the studiously neutral faces of his audience. He can tell he’s got almost all of them hooked. Certainly the secretary of War looks ready to charge the Equestrian lines with nothing more than a short stick and harsh language.

The president shrugs slightly.
“You make a convincing case Director.” He says after a second and in that moment, Director Tobias Caine, chief shareholder of TransWorld Minerals, knows that he has his prize.

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