by Carlo Zen
“Fairy 08 to 01. I’m hit. Going to fall back.”
It isn’t uncommon for the guy flying next to me to be put out of commission. As for the efficiency of their interception alone, though, as long we have their radar whited out, there’s no way they can use disciplined fire.
Conversely, with skilled radar observers guiding the fire, they probably would have been able to intercept more effectively.
But the Republican Army, which tends to rely on radar observer fire and mages’ disciplined fire, is horrible at visual combat.
The main reason we’re still taking damage is the sheer amount of iron they’re throwing at us.
You can connect even with lousily aimed shots if you fire enough of them. It’s just terrible.
…Seeing this extravagance, I realize I should have bought stocks in ammunition companies. I can’t regret this oversight enough.
While they are consumables that cost little individually and therefore aren’t very profitable, if they’re getting squandered like this, the manufacturers must be doing gangbusters. I had been putting my salary into natural resources, thinking the profits on munitions would tend to be kept low, but maybe that was a mistake.
“01, roger. 06, 09, cover him. I’m gonna take two shots, so fall back during that time.”
What is done cannot be undone. As I reconsider the conclusion I reached back then, I need to apply what I learn to the future.
Here it is, my constructive orientation toward the future. It’s important to always have a positive attitude.
Anyhow, right now I need to fill in the hole left by my injured man. That’s only a matter of course, but it’s better if I can avoid danger. Then is not covering him because I fear danger the right thing to do? The answer, unfortunately, is no.
Amateurs tend to be scared of any danger they can see. They worry that if they do anything, something terrifying will happen, so they freeze up.
So an amateur frets that they’ll give their position away if they shoot. Certainly, they may be right to perceive some danger there. But it’s still only an amateur’s thinking.
Doing nothing means losing an opportunity to do something.
What humans should fear the most is forfeiting profit. If I offer the retreating man an escort in this situation, I attach two of my subordinates to him as support. So we have a cluster of three people. If I fire two supporting shots, the sky is still full of smoke from bursting shells and searchlights. I doubt anyone will notice a couple of shots in the middle of all that.
If anything, I can expect that the two supporters will get a great reaction as decoys. In other words, while they’re withdrawing, they’ll monopolize the enemy’s attention. If by taking a slight risk I can steer clear of danger, then naturally, that is the rational choice. And they do have the chance of falling back to a safe area, so in game theory terms, it’s not too bad. It’s not zero-sum, after all.
Best of all, if I send out decoys under the pretext of providing support for a retreating soldier, I can pursue my personal profit while caring about my subordinates. The chances that the idiot who got hit will be saved increase. This is it: a win-win scenario.
“Commander, it’s too dangerous.”
Of course, my men are pros, so they recognize the danger. They don’t want to be decoys. That’s dangerous. I understand very well why they want to protest.
“We have no choice. There’s no time. Do it.”
But oh, how sad. No, for me, I should probably say it’s happy. This is the army, and I’m the superior officer leading my troops.
Of course, when she remembers that the whole reason she’s stuck here suffering in the first place is because this is the army, she’s sorry. In the capital, her superior officer, General von Zettour, gave her strict orders in writing to operate under the direct command of General von Rudersdorf.
The orders had come down the official route in the proper format. In other words, since I have orders from General von Rudersdorf, I have no choice but to accept them and be the rear guard here. This world is quite easy to understand.
“It’s an intense mission, but I know you can handle it”?
“The higher-ups have extremely high expectations of you”?
I’m sure no one can euphemize forcibly sealing lips so well as him. Since I couldn’t get him to listen to my objections, it must be that. It could be a misunderstanding, but it’s best to be a pessimist and prepare for the worst.
So once I’m prepared like a pessimist, I’ll be an optimist. Ideally, I’d like to build a win-win relationship with the General Staff. I don’t think I have a bad reputation as a staff officer in the first place.
Then there’s a fairly good chance that I’ve been sent here out of military necessity. Thinking that, a slight grin appears on Tanya’s face. Yeah, maybe I’ve been worrying too much.
Surely it must just be that my superiors want to break out of this war situation. I want to work with both major generals again as soon as the opportunity presents itself. If possible, I’d like a chance to chat with them. Of course, first I have to get out of this. The future is important, but right now, surviving is even more crucial.
I quickly load an interference formula from my computation orb into a rifle bullet. I deploy a defensive shell in front of my troops to shield them from the disproportionate shots flying up at us.
By interrupting the line of fire, I give them temporary safety. Put another way, even the Republican numbskulls can tell I’ve used an interference formula to manifest some sort of wall that is blocking their shots. Naturally, they’ll realize there is something behind it.
At that point, most of the hail of bullets will be aimed that way.
“01 to 06 and 09. Get a move on. That won’t hold for long.”
Anyhow, if the decoys move too slowly, they won’t last very long, either, but I need to keep the enemy’s eyes on something besides me.
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
“Roger, good luck.”
“Yeah…may the Lord protect you.”
Irritatingly, instead of “may your luck be everlasting” or something like that, I say some incomprehensible nonsense about the Lord’s protection. I want to cry, but without the Elinium Type 95, my protective film would be blown away in an instant, and I’d be destroyed, defensive shell and all.
In a way, Being X is like consumer finance. I don’t want to borrow, and I shouldn’t, but I have to. Ahh, eat shit.
The only weapons that can intercept us at eight thousand feet are anti–air cannons, but if I get hit with one of those, it won’t end well.
“CP to Fairy. Report on casualties and status.”
“Fairy 01 to CP. Half of us have already dropped out. So far, we’ve achieved half of our scheduled numbers. Been looking for that Republican Army ammo dump but can’t find it.”
Thanks to that, even my battalion of tough mages is losing lots of men. No one has died, but there are probably more than a few who will never return to the lines. I’m glad I was honest about the “constant danger” when I was recruiting.
If I was accused of false advertising, I would have betrayed the first principle of sales born of the modern era: honesty. I’m not such a halfwit that I think I can fool the market by shouting about “mislabeling.” A lack of faith in a trust economy is terrifying, just terrifying.
Sheesh, I guess I should be breathing a sigh of relief. Or should I lament that just because we blew up the factory in Dacia everyone’s gone off and convinced themselves that if anyone can blow up an enemy ammo dump, the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion can?
“CP, roger. 01, got some bad news for you.”
It’s not as if I believe in luck, but I recall that my forerunners emphasized it as a factor. Apparently, when the great Matsusheeta25 hired people, he asked whether they were lucky or not. Before I was inhumanely sent to this insane world, I didn’t understand it.
But now I do. It may only be a question of probability theory, but luck is worth researching.
“Wha
t is it?”
“A battalion-sized group of mages is rapidly approaching the Rhine lines from the edge of our radar range. Hold them off until the end of phase three.”
“…Fairy 01, roger. Transitioning to interdiction combat. Anything else?” Suppressing the rage welling up inside me, I just barely maintain a businesslike tone. They say it so simply.
I may say interdiction combat, but we’re essentially the strength of two companies performing recon-in-force. We’re not in close formation. On top of that, just passing through defended positions takes a lot out of us.
In contrast, the intercepting side is full of energy. The air we’re flying above the firing positions is their home turf, so as long as they don’t get hit accidentally, they don’t have to worry about that.
It has to be much easier on their nerves.
We may be a band of elites, but I doubt our opponents are the type to unthinkingly say “yes, sir” when ordered to intercept us.
After all, they’re a battalion scrambled from the surface to obstruct our recon mission.
It goes without saying that they’re a select team. I don’t want to kill myself by wishfully hoping the enemies are numbskulls. The only way to survive is to prepare like a pessimist.
“You have permission to immediately abort your recon-in-force mission.”
And then, hmm, that’s an interesting thing to have permission to do.
It’s a fact that permission to abort a mission like this isn’t given very often. Certainly, now that we have interdiction combat orders, if the retreat is going according to schedule, aborting this mission would be one way to limit further losses.
So it seems rational for the brass to allow it. But think about it. I definitely won’t fall back. Or rather, a little thinking tells me military practicality is a trap.
If someone offers you a paved road straight to hell, even with good intentions, it’s much safer to veer off and drive across the wasteland.
“…I hope that won’t be necessary.”
I’m not an amateur. As an economically minded person who values rational thought, I didn’t go through training for no reason. I wasn’t built to the specifications of some impractical entity like Being X. I can swear it on the honor of the intelligent winners of evolution who survived as the fittest, Homo sapiens.
“What? What do you mean?”
“The point of recon-in-force is a survey of the enemy’s interception capabilities. If we abort now, we risk revealing the deceptive purpose of the mission.”
If the recon-in-force ruse to mask the withdrawal fails, the rear guard will have to hold out and buy time till the very end. If we fail to buy time, that’s it. What is now an orderly retreat of ground troops will descend into chaos, and they could be trampled.
For that reason, we should hesitate to even transmit this sort of conversation, even if it is encoded.
Tanya’s only choice is to have them move the retreat along as quickly as possible. The side giving the orders will probably order the rear guard to buy time even if they have to get literally wiped out doing it. If I were on the side giving the orders, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it that way, either. It’s logical. If there’s a problem with this plan, it’s that I’m on the receiving side. Fucking hell.
Either way, evading this battalion only to be pursued by every Republican unit on the Rhine front would be way stupider.
In other words, considering the risk, staying here is all we can do. I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t know the folly of not investing because you’re scared of a tiny risk. What matters most is the returns.
“Since we can’t have them finding out until phase three is over, the only choice we have is to take out this intercepting unit and continue our mission.”
“…Understood. I’ll have them move as fast as they can.”
“Thanks. May the Lord protect you.”
In the end, I’m relieved that CP is cooperating. Honestly, this is so rough. Now then, in order to survive, I’ve got to be brave and do my best not to lose to this abnormal world.
I have no intention of sacrificing myself to an order to keep flying after I can no longer focus and my will is nearly broken. I’m fighting for my life, and that’s it.
“Okay, attention, all hands. We’re headed into a counter-mage fight. Let’s teach the fools challenging us a lesson.”
Geez. You could have been enjoying a nice break in the rear, but you came to challenge us? Personally, it’s hard for me to praise that attitude because I know that unpaid overtime doesn’t contribute much to labor productivity. Why would you proactively enter such a pain-in-the-ass battle?
I’m a peace-loving person, so this pains me. Surely there is no one who loves human beings more than I do. And yet. It’s rare to be ordered to kill them so often as I am. As a rational, thinking person, it would be embarrassing to curse my fate. Still, I sense some absurdity.
It’s almost as if the conceited face of Being X is about to appear in the back of my mind with all the narcissism of a transcendent existence. Oh God, if you exist, you are surely a rotten bastard.
Things really don’t go how you’d like. I just want to live a quiet life.
Nothing seemed particularly different about that day. Anyone would say so: It was a normal day. No, it was a normal battlefield.
If anything was out of the ordinary, it was that there were a few military observers visiting from the Commonwealth to foster friendly relations. But that wasn’t enough to register as a blip when everyone’s emotions were so exhausted.
After chatting with the bigwigs over dinner, the visitors were guided by one of our officers to begin their inspection. For better or worse, it wasn’t of interest to the troops. They were so tired they didn’t care, so they banished it from their consciousness and went to sleep.
At that point, the Third Mage Battalion belonging to the Republican Army’s Twenty-Second Division was already on its ascent. Whether sleeping on the ground or heading into the sky, the soldiers were faithful to their duties… To the mages who took off upon receiving the scramble order, protecting the sound sleep of our fellow soldiers was part of our job.
The mission was to eliminate the battalion daring to try recon-in-force, and we anticipated a secondary objective of assisting ground troops. Our biggest problem was troops not being able to sleep due to harassing sneak attacks, so the importance of the mission to restore tranquility might be difficult for someone who hasn’t been on the front lines to understand.
“Control to all hands. Our guests today are pretty serious. You’re going to have your hands full.”
And the words from the combat controller, though somewhat grave, were overflowing with the confidence that things would work out somehow. If a division or regiment of mages had forced their way through or infiltrated to attack, it might have been different, but repelling a battalion doing reconnaissance-in-force wouldn’t be so hard.
After all, despite the “in-force” tacked on, it’s essentially “reconnaissance.” They would probably withdraw upon making contact. Well, I genuinely had to hand it to the guys charging in that day, though—they were really going for it. It takes a lot of determination to get as far as they did. And judging from the size of the unit, they’d make quite a racket with harassing attacks, so we had to stay vigilant… Numbers is a problem in any era.
“Control, who are the invaders?”
“An augmented battalion. They’re already past the third defensive line. It’s only a matter of time till they break through the fourth.”
Usually a recon-in-force mission would sniff around the first or second defensive line positions and fall back. At an attack position, they could expect support, and from the second defensive line, it was still fairly easy to get back to their base. If that was how it went, it would have a limited effect on the front lines, since they were prepared. More than anything, it wasn’t something that warranted waking up the officers sleeping in the rear.
If we woke up th
e whole army for every little scuffle with these frequent recon missions done expressly as a feint or to distract us, that would be playing right into their hands.
Everyone just hoped we could get enemy engagements done quietly. The little fights between recon-in-force units and our interceptors happened so often they were facetiously treated as part of the nighttime scenery.
“They’re too fast. What are the guys on the defensive lines doing?”
Maybe that’s why we hesitated at this enemy coming in so rapidly. It went without saying that they had to be a pretty enthusiastic unit if they were already past the third defensive line. There was a good chance they had located our shelters and frontline command.
There were rumors of a desperate imperial offensive.
I was suspicious, but…unless the enemy was awfully determined, they wouldn’t usually be able to get past the third defensive lines. What’s more, usually once the second line is passed, the standby unit is scrambled. We only received sortie orders after the third line was breached, and it was fair to call that an unbelievably slow response.
“Widespread magic jamming has paralyzed our scouting network, so our response is pretty delayed.”
And of course, the controller’s voice reflected the frustrating state of affairs—how could it not? The situation was unclear; we were a bit miffed at the urgent order to intercept after being told repeatedly to stand by.
I can’t believe we’re stuck having to stop them before they pass the last defensive line. We risk damage from harassing attacks as well as them taking home intelligence. Inevitably, this state of affairs had everyone feeling ashamed.
A battalion of mages may have breached the lines, but the Rhine general headquarters should have been able to crush them easily. Considering the intelligence they had, though, this was liable to end in disaster.
I was sure a few high-ranking officers’ heads would roll because the response to the widespread magic jamming was delayed. The radio operators would surely be crawling around unrolling cable to strengthen our communications. And I bet it would be our job to cover them.
“And apparently the anti–air fire is stuck relying on optical instruments, so watch out—the enemy force might be doing just fine.”