Plus Ultra

by Carlo Zen

  “CP? What’s going on, CP?”

  “CP to Viper Battalion. Fall back immediately.”

  The awaited retreat orders came down in a tone that brooked no argument, but he never imagined they’d get them like this. What the hell happened?

  “We have permission to retreat? I appreciate it, but is everything all right?”

  “Rejoice—you have reinforcements. A battalion is rushing over from Sector B-3. Once you join up with them, you’ll be under their command.”

  Reinforcements? What woodwork did they suddenly come out of this late in the game? If we had reserves, why did we end up in this struggle?

  “Reinforcements? That’s news to me. If we had extra troops, what were we waiting for?”

  “They were dispatched from Central. Call sign Pixie.”

  The operator ignored his attitude and simply conveyed the information. If it was a unit from the central forces, they must be getting caught up in the fighting as soon as they arrived. It was likely they had shown up ahead of schedule and Command thought, Great! before throwing them right in.

  “And you should be happy. Their commander is Named.”

  He forgot his grudge in spite of himself and nearly whistled in amazement.

  Wonderful. That’s absolutely fantastic. A battalion of reinforcements and a Named. It’s like the harvest festival and Christmas both arrived at once, and we got this terrific present. If I could, I’d open a bottle of champagne and welcome them with a toast.

  “Viper 02, roger. Those are some fancy reinforcements.”

  If we’re getting that kind of quality backup, then…yes, I see why we were granted permission to retreat. I want to shout hooray, but I do wish they could have come a little sooner.

  At that last thought, he realized humans rescued from hopeless situations tend to expect an awful lot, and he winced. Well, he knew it was completely unreasonable, but he still had the nerve to think that if the reinforcements had come earlier, his battalion wouldn’t have had to suffer so much.

  Add some fighters, and it’ll be perfect. There probably wouldn’t be many, but he was sure they would scramble some to intercept before too long. His mouth naturally relaxed into a grin at the prospect. It was such a load off to know that the enemy would be crushed one way or another.

  “When will the fighters be taking off?”

  “…They were judged to be unnecessary.”

  The unexpected response stunned him.

  Fighters? Unnecessary?

  “Huh?” He wanted to ask what the radio operator was talking about.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just hurry and meet up with your reinforcements.”

  “…Roger.”

  AT THE SAME TIME, NORTHERN ARMY GROUP HQ

  The staff at Northern Army Group Headquarters were staring at the map of the war at a loss, and that was when they got news they didn’t really want to hear. The deputy director of Operations in the central General Staff had gone out of his way to come and deliver the notice in person. It might have been central interference, but the wording was simple: “We’ve dispatched reinforcements. Don’t touch them.”

  “The damned General Staff. Why do they think they can go around meddling in frontline business?”

  The complaints of the high-ranking officers of the northern forces that it was insulting were unsurprising. After all, they finally thought they were getting support from Central, but the moment they had managed to accommodate the hastily deployed Great Army, most of it was transferred abruptly to the western front, and they were left in disarray. It was only human nature that anyone stuck enduring unnecessary hardships in that chaos would want to give Central a piece or two of their mind.

  According to the report from the observation post, a battalion-sized group of aerial mages was indeed rapidly approaching.

  Aha, well that certainly is a nice batch of reinforcements. Seeing as they were sent immediately after we requested them, they’re apparently serious about being a response team. But Central giving us reinforcements and then telling us not to touch them is overstepping their bounds.

  “Well, maybe they gave us really elite troops?”

  Even so, from another perspective, this is an opportunity for the Central Army to pay us back. It pulled out the Great Army before the battle was completely decided. Those guys are proud—they won’t come bowing in apology. Although he wouldn’t go as far as to accuse them of taking advantage of Northern Command’s current issues, they were probably thinking to cancel out the debt.

  “Are they trying to make us feel indebted to them…?”

  “But ‘Don’t touch them’? That takes some nerve.”

  Yeah, I can’t believe they said that. And if they were trying to make us feel indebted…the northern supply depots are in trouble! Do they realize that the already poor logistics framework for the Northern Army Group could completely collapse?

  “They’re talking pretty big considering the northern supply lines are in crisis. I wish I were that confident.” You could even call that warning arrogant. He made his spiteful remarks without thinking, but from someone in the thick of it, it was the natural response. Then came even more dumbfounding news.

  “We just got a telegram from the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion. ‘This is the Pixie Battalion.’ Uhh…”

  A telegram from an incoming battalion of reinforcements? Normally, they would report their call sign, and that would be all, but for some reason the radio operator was hesitating.

  “It’s fine—read it.”

  A suspicious staff officer urged him on, and he finally continued.

  “It says, ‘We don’t require assistance. Have the Viper Battalion retreat immediately.’”

  “We don’t require assistance”? The Viper Battalion has been intercepting up until now, but they want it to fall back? This went past impressively confident to overly confident.

  There were two mage battalions and bombers out there reinforcing the enemy side. It definitely didn’t seem like an attacking battalion fresh off a forced march could handle it on their own.

  They were supposed to put their units under a commander who didn’t understand that? That was simply out of the question.

  “…We can scramble fighters to intercept at any time, right?”

  “Every hangar is on standby. One word and we can send them out.”

  A few staff officers began quickly developing their own interception plans. Even if the time they had to climb was limited, fighters scrambled from the surface should be able to contain the bombers.

  Originally, they were outnumbered and needed a way to deal with the mages, so they were grateful for reinforcements, but…perhaps it would be smart to stop the bombers on their own?

  “Shouldn’t we use them? This situation is plain bad.”

  “Well, it’s an order, though. Doing anything more would be…” He swallowed the words acting without permission, but they embodied the worried staff officer’s fears.

  Staff members’ authority did not extend to acting without orders. Their job was to plan operations, not make decisions. That was one of the hard things about being a staffer. What freed them from that agony was ironically the source of their current headache, the Pixies.

  “The control unit got a read on the Pixies. Forty-eight signals. Speed 250, altitude…” The control unit on watch detected the incoming Pixie Battalion.

  The reported speed of 250 kilometers per hour was virtually the maximum. If they could fly that fast and still maintain formation, it indicated they were highly trained.

  “That’s awfully fast. Hmm? What about the altitude?”

  The staff officers were starting to feel like maybe they could count on this backup and asked for the altitude data.

  “They’re at…7,500? No…they’re still climbing.”

  “What?”

  “Are you sure? They aren’t fighter planes, you know.”

  Lessons learned in combat made six thousand feet the commonsense limit. Maybe the d
ata said the record was eight thousand, but it was hard to trust that until they saw it in an actual battle.

  The theoretical values the engineers talked about and the values a frontline unit could achieve were of completely different importance. The members of the class known as soldiers were always suspicious of new frameworks, weapons, and technology. It was healthy skepticism given their lives depended on whether the things were usable or not.

  And that was why, in one sense, they had no choice but to be humbled by what they were witnessing now. That was the weight of proof in combat.

  “No mistakes. The Pixie Battalion is currently at eight thousand feet!”

  “They’re accelerating! Three hundred?!”

  Just as unbelievable was the jump in speed.

  A unit flying in formation toward combat on the front lines was at virtually the same speed and altitude that the tech tests had achieved. If the data was real, it would indicate skills on a whole new level.

  Is it true? If it was, this battalion’s performance was in such a realm of its own that it would render all the existing units obsolete.

  “Are those control unit readings accurate?”

  “I don’t see any other abnormalities… Everything’s operating normally.”

  The same unbelieving expression rose to all the staff officers’ faces.

  “It seems the central General Staff has a deviation as their trump card.”

  “Seriously. Deviation is right.”

  The only thing they could say was that they were glad this battalion was on their side.

  COMMONWEALTH VOLUNTARY ARMY FRONTLINE COMMAND

  “It’s Named! It’s a Named who was spotted in the west! We’ve got an individual match—it’s the Devil of the Rhine!” the observer cried out in surprise, and the entire HQ focused on him for a moment. The Named they weren’t even sure existed had appeared.

  The one who flew casually through the death zone.

  The one who single-handedly slaughtered a company.

  The one could use interference formulas so powerful they distort space.

  When their contact in the Republican Army had given them the intelligence, they’d laughed it off thinking it was too early for April Fool’s, plus he’d been drinking.

  It was true the Empire had superior technology and tactics, but they’d thought this was beyond impossible. Their analysts had said she was a sort of battlefield legend. Though they respected the Republicans and wanted to avoid outright denying the claim, they figured she was at most a phantom generated by the chaos of the battlefield. The gossipy officers had whispered that sort of thing, questioning whether this Named even existed.

  But now if their own observer was detecting her in real time, they needed to reevaluate the data they had tried to forget like a bad joke over a nice cup of tea.

  “She’s real? I thought the Republicans were just daydreaming.”

  Misunderstandings weren’t uncommon. If you took every confused soldier’s report at face value, you’d join the ranks of the insane from the paranoia. Thus, the Commonwealth officers who had realistically deemed her either a false report or, at worst, some kind of mass hallucination had to leap for their machines.

  Some jumped for receivers to wake up the analyst squad. Others promptly notified high command.

  “We’ve identified the signature. There’s no mistake. She’s heading this way.”

  Then multiple observers succeeded in identifying her. They had input the pattern half wondering if it was even real, but now they had a match. An individual might misreport, but the conclusion reached by multiple precise observations made by several observers wasn’t likely to be wrong. At this point, they had to acknowledge that she was real.

  “The enemy reinforcements are a battalion-sized group. We have no record of this unit.”

  Add to that the signal of a group containing numerous unknown signals. Judging from the scale, it had to be a battalion—maybe even an augmented battalion. If the mana inclination didn’t resemble any existing records, that meant the Empire had deployed new mages.

  The fact that there was almost no overlap with the Republic’s library from the Rhine front had to indicate that the Empire had as many reserves as ever. Apparently, despite the muddle, they could still produce a new unit led by a Named.

  “…I’m surprised they’re sending out a new unit when they already have so much pressure on the Entente Alliance.”

  “You think it’s the unit from Dacia? Most of the fighting is over there, so they could probably afford to transfer them.”

  Aha. He didn’t know who, but someone had said the Dacians couldn’t even stand up to Boy Scouts, so certainly an Imperial Army Named would have no trouble blowing them away. And it made sense to think that if they were free, they would be sent to take care of the impudent Entente Alliance command team and its rampage.

  “We’ll take data. You got the recorders running?”

  “If it’s true, he’s a monster who can take out a whole company on his own. Don’t miss a thing.”

  The intelligence officer may have been chatting, but he was staring at the data the whole time. This unit had a mana inclination he’d never seen before. And more than anything, he couldn’t ignore the actual existence of the rumored Named from the unconfirmed reports in the west. If they had so little info on a battalion led by a monster of that caliber, it had to be a failure of their espionage in the Empire. So he realized, even if he didn’t want to, how important objective observation of this new enemy was.

  “Picking up any transmissions?”

  “It’s no good. They’re using an unknown code and protocol. At least, it’s not in the library.”

  That was the answer he had expected. Even if they couldn’t decipher them, by intercepting and recording wavelengths, they would be able to grasp enemy unit hierarchy and movement.

  But if all the records they had didn’t contain this code or protocol, who was this new enemy? He was keenly disappointed that Dacia had fallen so quickly. They had gone so fast it was no wonder they weren’t able to get any data out of the conflict, but he still wished for the impossible.

  “Commander, it’s nearly certain they’re a new unit with the Empire. There are almost no similarities with existing records of the Northern and Western Army Groups.”

  “All right. Well, gosh, I’d really like to send up a control unit.”

  Everyone grinned. Even deployed in the frozen north, they hadn’t lost their sacred sense of black humor. All of them understood. They didn’t need to be told that they were under too much pressure in this war. It was evident that the Commonwealth was wrestling with political restraints at home, which limited its military in ways individual soldiers could do nothing about. God and the devil seemed to be involved somehow, so after a round of curses for each, the officers on-site reluctantly accepted their circumstances, resigning themselves to their fate.

  “Yeah, we can’t send a plane in.”

  “Right… We should probably be more worried about whether we’ll be able to withdraw with our gear in one piece.”

  Pressure on the Entente Alliance Army was gradually increasing. They weren’t completely falling apart yet, but that was just it—the only way to describe the current situation was not fallen apart yet.

  The calmer third-party observer could see that the Empire, without even making this front its main focus, was driving the Entente Alliance to collapse. The Entente Alliance was like a bedridden patient with a serious illness, just barely hanging on. If the situation changed even slightly, it would have a seizure and breathe its last.

  “Ngh. Well, for now, alert the front lines.”

  “Roger.”

  But the CP officers consciously cleared those thoughts from their minds and focused on the tasks before them, shouting instructions into receivers.

  Determining the enemy’s status was a task that involved many difficult elements, but at least the team on the scene was a group of intelligence-gathering veterans.
They had been sent out with an eye on future fighting with the Empire.

  Since the Commonwealth hoped they would gain all sorts of experience and learn a lot in combat, from a national defense standpoint, it was very considerate toward its personnel and had outfitted them well.

  “But I’m surprised. Who’d have thought a battalion could come flying over at three hundred kilometers per hour?”

  “That’s far from what you’d expect. Maybe the apparatus needs tuning after all?”

  So these men chosen from across the Commonwealth’s armies were expected to learn from the Imperial Army and master their tactics. But even these most promising soldiers hadn’t had much combat experience, and on top of that, the assumptions that had been pounded into them were all prewar doctrine. The reality of the battlefield was far removed from the experiences and techniques they had accumulated during peacetime.

  Thus, if they didn’t learn a thing or two before their country was enveloped in war, they would pay for it with their own flesh and blood.

  Most of the staff officers had thought this Named couldn’t exist, but she did. In other words, she wasn’t an illusion of the battlefield but a real nightmare. It was no laughing matter, but the predictions made far from the actual fighting had already missed their mark.

  Ironically, the fruit of the Commonwealth’s diplomatic victories was a vexing dearth of combat experience. Only specialists can do the analysis necessary to distinguish subtle changes in the war situation. Their failure to read the situation was irritating.

  In intelligence work, there wasn’t anyone who could teach that essential sense—you had to develop it through your own experience. Of course, there were no specialist textbooks, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be of much use.

  “…We should probably be ready for about half of what we heard.”

  For that reason, most of the officers dispatched were chosen so that they would gain experience. Of course, most of them weren’t told they had been selected for purely educational purposes, but the ones who couldn’t figure it out were forcibly sent home as wastes of time and resources. That being the case, the remainder went about performing well-focused, objective analysis.