Plus Ultra

by Carlo Zen

  The situation was so tense that even ever-indifferent Major von Degurechaff couldn’t conceal her bad mood. After all, Grantz himself had been shocked to hear the rumor that enemy mages had invaded the rear by airdrop. How could we miss the transport planes gliding into our airspace?

  “And apparently they joined up with the militia. Arene has fallen into the Republican Army’s clutches.”

  That was bad news. But honestly, what did it actually mean? For a moment, Grantz and some of the other mages couldn’t quite grasp the gravity of the situation. The battlefield paradigm required no thinking past Eliminate the enemy.

  In other words, as far as Grantz and the others knew, the situation would be resolved if they eliminated the militia and the mages. Defending an entire city probably wasn’t possible with just mages and militia. With no infantry arm, occupation was a dream within a dream. The militia could compensate to some extent with numbers, but he didn’t think they could hold up in real organized combat.

  In contrast, the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion was, for better or worse, a child of war that had learned to fight on the front lines and made achieving results their standard.

  “Naturally, we’re taking it back.”

  As she says it, Tanya herself is convinced that as a legitimate-enough conclusion, recapture is the only option. It’s a kill-or-be-killed battlefield. All they’re going to do is change positions on it. Compared to the horror of supplies being cut off, sortie orders are somewhat familiar. Both Grantz and Tanya tended toward agitated thought patterns, so they felt attacking was just what you did on the battlefield.

  “Now here’s the tricky part.”

  Even though she always conveyed their simple operation objectives without wasting any time, she took a deliberate breath.

  When he looked around, the other officers’ faces were tense, too.

  What the heck could it be? Grantz braced himself slightly.

  “Arene…”

  Grantz waited in uncertainty for her next words but then realized something with a shock. She said “Arene” and isn’t sure how to continue.

  An officer who would indifferently order a charge on hell was hesitating.

  She was shaking something off and doing something she found difficult to endure.

  Whatever it was was grim and oppressive. The unit had fallen completely silent, and nothing made a sound. Something was wrong. The soldiers who had been distracted by the impending sortie began wondering what was going on.

  Then, as if to interrupt their thoughts, she managed to continue.

  “Arene is now occupied by the Republican Army. Troops, to take back the city, we need to eliminate all the Republican soldiers.”

  Huh? That sounds totally straightforward. If Republican mages have joined up with the militia to occupy the city, it’ll be too dangerous if we don’t eliminate all the mages. Doesn’t that go without saying?

  Would it even be hard? Grantz didn’t really understand.

  No, actually most of the replacements didn’t see anything different from normal orders. They would be told to go as always, and then they would. That’s what they thought.

  Hoping to see if anyone knew what was going on, Grantz glanced at Weiss. The first lieutenant’s face was just slightly stiff. That seemed strange. He looked clearly nervous and shaken. Then he took a deep breath as if he was trying to steel himself.

  Steel himself against what? What was so horrible that it could rattle a Rhine front old stager so experienced he could be called a veteran?

  “It goes without saying, but firing on noncombatants is strictly prohibited; however, as we’ve been given permission to cause property damage, that won’t count.”

  She emphasized the rules of engagement. Their ROE was utterly ordinary. If there was anything of note, it was the exemption from responsibility for property damage. But even obtaining that exemption was part of normal procedures.

  “Furthermore, before engaging the enemy mages and after eliminating them, we will issue warnings to surrender.”

  Am I…am I missing something? A vague, confusing anxiety enveloped him.

  “Be sure to temporarily cease combat while the warnings are being issued.”

  She was giving them the same instructions as any sortie. The only difference was that it would be a city battle.

  Of course, a few of the constraints would be different. But even with those alterations, the primary objective of eliminating the enemy mages wouldn’t change.

  …At least, it shouldn’t.

  If he thought harder about it, maybe the warnings? But it’s obvious that an urban battle will have fewer casualties if you have the enemy surrender instead of finishing them off. And if they refuse, then you just conduct the moderately obnoxious battle to mop them up.

  “If they accept the warning, that’s great. If they don’t, we transition to wiping them out. That is all.”

  And actually, the tone of his superior’s voice was utterly flat, concealing her emotions as always. If they surrender, that’s great.

  If it didn’t work out, they would transition to taking them out as usual—totally normal.

  If pressed, he had to admit something felt strange. He sensed some kind of dissonance, something that didn’t sit right. That said, should I really be getting distracted right before we sortie? Having made that conclusion, he began performing the final pre-sortie checks on his computation orb and rifle. Rather than being unable to use his weapons on the battlefield due to insufficient maintenance, it was better to forget his other thoughts.

  The recruits had had it beaten into them that learning was the first step toward survival, and with each passing day, they were growing more familiar with war.

  The next thing they knew, they were on the battlefield that Major von Degurechaff had led them to as planned.

  “Bravo Leader to Combat Control. It’s a Named! Sending data now. Please confirm.”

  As expected, the Empire’s response was prompt in the strictest sense of the word. They sent over a battalion of mages in a matter of hours!

  Apparently, they’re taking this quite seriously. I guess the pain of air-dropping in was worth it?

  The commander of Mage Second Company of the Republic’s special ops forces, Lieutenant Colonel Vianto, was somewhat relieved to find some meaning in the operation he hadn’t been terribly keen on. Though he’d been nervous, he’d done it. He finally had the wherewithal to glance at his annoyingly stiff hands.

  The Republic was in a fairly tough spot. It had been looking forward to Dacia’s participation in the war, only to have that backfire. Republicans had to grit their teeth and watch the Entente Alliance collapse after the fleet tried to prevent the landing operation but didn’t make it in time. This nightmare was slowly wearing them out.

  The Republic’s below-the-surface contact with the Commonwealth was an open secret, but the Commonwealth was acting for its own national welfare. As a condition for its assistance, the Republic was liable to lose all its overseas interests.

  Considering the gravity of endangering its voice as a major power, the Republic felt a need to resolve things on its own to the extent possible.

  We need to push them back as far as we can before the Commonwealth joins the fight. It was for that political reason that Vianto was carrying out this crazy (to him) rear invasion.

  I can’t believe they pulled the so-called raison d’état card.

  “Data confirmed… The Devil of the Rhine? They brought out the big guns.”

  But apparently when it came to raison d’état, counting your chickens before they hatch worked. They had succeeded in drawing the unidentified Named known to every soldier on the Rhine front off the main lines.

  It was the Named who excelled in high-maneuver warfare and long-range firing, as did the elite unit she commanded. They were an annoying bunch who, as a mobile unit in the Imperial Army, defended a sizable territory; taking them out was high priority.

  This unit was even capable of mobile d
efense. Drawing them away from the front lines was more significant than drawing away any other mage battalion.

  Diverting this unit with a veteran Named, who could strike at their weak points, had an important effect on the battlefield that couldn’t be measured with numbers.

  “That said…they won’t be easy. I’m not looking forward to this fight.”

  Capturing a city the size of Arene would require several divisions of ground forces. It was up to the Imperial General Staff whether to scrape them away from the front lines or mobilize reserves, but apparently, they had gone all in. If only they would have underestimated us and sent troops in piecemeal.

  In any case, if they could hold this transport terminal, the Empire’s supply lines would dry up in less than a week, which meant they would definitely get results if they could hinder enemy reinforcements for just a few days. They could only hope that the troops on the front could pull off a major counterattack during that time.

  “Charlie Leader to Combat Control. You’re telling us to fight that battalion at range?”

  Even for an elite special ops force, fighting the Devil of the Rhine at a distance would be tough.

  They had anticipated doing little more than chipping away at the enemy.

  “No changes to the operation. The long-range fighting was only to distract them anyhow. Work to delay them.”

  If it didn’t work out, that was fine. There hadn’t been terribly high expectations for the ranged fighting, so it was no problem.

  Maybe a line of distracting fire? The point is to force them to evade, tire them out, and break up their formations. Anyhow, slowing them down is crucial. Time is on our side.

  ““Roger.””

  They promptly began their maneuvers according to the plan.

  Some mages lurking in buildings opened up with harassing fire.

  Those shots weren’t very likely to connect in a major way, but on the other hand, they couldn’t simply forgo it given that their enemy was Named.

  And after all, disciplined fire was the Republican Army’s specialty. If the enemy flew slowly, they could score direct hits.

  “The enemy mages are breaking. They’re evading our sniping.”

  But apparently, they were dodging the attacks. Well, that would be the natural thing to do, but Vianto had hoped to deal at least a little damage. As it is…we’ll only do a tiny bit or barely any.

  “But huh, they sent in a whole battalion right away. They’re making snap decisions that ignore the effect on the front sooner than I expected.”

  And they responded even quicker than we heard they did, which is a pain. With his plans upset, Vianto wanted to pull his hair out—even if it was good that they had managed to weaken the enemy’s frontal attack. If the Empire was committing a battalion of elite mages with no hesitation, he and his men had to be ready for the arrival of far more ground troops than anticipated and much sooner than expected.

  They must want to take Arene back as soon as possible. In the worst case, where they’re prepared to withdraw from the lines, things could get hairy.

  “We’re containing the Devil of the Rhine with two companies. What else can we do?”

  These were mages trained for special missions. Two companies of them had been sent in. Containing the Devil of the Rhine was really only one of their objectives, but his adjutant wasn’t talking nonsense.

  “So urban warfare is the key? But we won’t even last two weeks!”

  If the enemy was really focusing on them more than they had anticipated, this would be awful.

  At first, they thought it would be a simple charge or that maybe there would be a company of mages at most. If they were up against an augmented battalion all of a sudden, their enemy was determined.

  And Vianto’s biggest headache was their readiness to send in a Named.

  “Once the counterattack starts on the front, pressure from the enemy will decrease. Most importantly, the troops should be able to break through their defensive positions once the supplies are cut off, don’t you think?”

  “That’s just wishful thinking. I hope we succeed, but it’s going to be rough.”

  We have friendly backup and met up with the partisan militia, but what will happen when real ground troops show up? They would have mage support, and the Empire had more firepower than the Republic on a fundamental level. As far as ammunition, all the Republicans had apart from a small amount of air-dropped supplies were local stockpiles and what each mage had on them.

  They wouldn’t be able to last long, and they would probably take heavy casualties. Even worse, we’ll probably end up fighting with the civilians as our shields—something we should be ashamed of as soldiers.

  …Some of the believers in raison d’état even thought that in a worst-case scenario they could run the partisans into the ground to buy time. It was logical, but it was an ugly side of their nation.

  “So in the worst case, we continue delaying and try to cause as much damage as possible?”

  “That’s our only choice. Either way, a soldier is a rotten thing to be.”

  Humiliatingly, their duty was, basically, to faithfully carry out this operation to make civilians their shields. When they were told it would make winning the war possible, they had no choice.

  But there was no operation that put his raison d’être as a soldier more into question than this one. As Republican soldiers, for the Republic—to have Republican citizens die was a rotten business.

  “The enemy vanguard has entered the Air Defense Identification Zone! They’re rapidly approaching the city!”

  But even he was a soldier. He knew that while thinking could be meaningful, there was a time and a place for it. If he didn’t, he would have been dead long ago.

  “Commander, then we should—”

  “I know. Here they come. Prepare to ambush!”

  Once the enemy was closing in, his conflicted thoughts toward his mission had to be put off until later. He would do everything in his power to survive—because regret was a privilege reserved for the living.

  Have you ever been ordered to eliminate a fearless enemy assaulting an area in the rear? I haven’t until now, either. Thus, while I’m happy to have enjoyed such good fortune previously, I want to lament my current situation.

  But I want to do a proper job without letting anything stand in my way. I realized recently that I’m the kind of person who lives to work. I want to be proud of myself for being a levelheaded person who can think with common sense.

  …is the sort of thing Tanya is thinking, pretending to be upset about what a sad era it is when one gets intercepted just for flying through the sky as she deftly evades the long-range disciplined fire the Republican Army is so proud of.

  Even if the beams are no stronger than the lasers shot by some organic resource recovery unit that’s hostile to the human race, the hit rate is far lower simply by virtue of the fact that humans are spotting.

  Well, I do dodge them fairly seriously, since if one hit me it would be powerful enough to potentially pierce my protective film and outer shell and cause me to fall. Maybe if I poured mana into Type 95 with all my might I could withstand them, but that would be psychological suicide, so I hesitate to do that. In which case, the best thing to do is evade.

  “Engage! They’re fast! They know what they’re doing!”

  That said, just as it’s difficult to win a hundred of a hundred battles, it seems like breaking through unscathed will be impossible. The artillery fire is so dense Tanya is amazed in spite of herself; their history of beating up on nothing but second-rate forces in Dacia and Norden has come back to bite them.

  It’s good that everyone could evade a counterattack on a scale they didn’t anticipate. In the process, though, their strike formation has gotten pretty disorderly—even though the formation was designed to counter the Republic’s disciplined fire. She is forced to acknowledge the painful realization that they won’t be able to get past the enemy firing positions with speed a
nd spread-out maneuvering alone. The idea that speed is armor definitely has a few flaws.

  We’re still fine for now, but up against big believers in firepower like the reds, we might be in trouble.

  “Lieutenant Serebryakov, sorry, but I’m weirdly tired… Can I get a tonic?”

  As she thinks, the fatigued voice of Lieutenant Weiss comes over the radio, and Tanya frowns unconsciously. Tired? My vice commander who was put through the mill on the Rhine and in Norden is tired after just this?

  Tanya promptly throws her adjutant some alcohol—soldier fuel—as she has her go take a look, and her question is cleared up when Serebryakov’s panicked shriek comes over the radio.

  “Lieutenant Weiss, you’ve been shot! Hurry, stop the bleeding!”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t notice?! Let’s get this tourniquet on! Hurry!”

  From the first aid discussion and Serebryakov urging Weiss on, Tanya realizes the former was correct and sighs. Instead of subordinates who don’t have enough fighting spirit, I have berserkers that get hyped up on too much adrenaline to register that they’re injured; there’s something vaguely depressing about that.

  I didn’t even give him meth and this is what he’s like. It’s hard to know whether I should rejoice that I have the best soldiers or lament that I’ve gathered a bunch of war addicts.

  “…How’s the numbskull who didn’t even realize he got hit?”

  “It’s not life-threatening, but I think it will be difficult for him to continue fighting.”

  “What? Well, there’s no helping it. Weiss, fall back.”

  Still, what suddenly filled my mind was apprehension about losing my capable assistant. Despite being a war nut, he’s one of the ones with common sense, and more than anything, it’s particularly painful to have the chain of command affected so greatly in the heat of battle. But Tanya is already switching gears because she knows she needs to consider not only current interests but solutions to future issues.

  As the most sensible among her men, the good First Lieutenant Weiss seems to have a few thoughts about this operation. If he’s dropping off the battlefield, that means that one of her above-average mages nearly got shot down. Normally, Weiss would be the kind of mage to attain Ace of Aces level.