by Carlo Zen
In a battle where direct fire support is available, having the enemy swoop in for hand-to-hand combat is basically a nightmare.
So we need to get out front.
“Th-they’re headed this way!!”
It’s precisely because Tanya feels the enemy got the better of them that she can’t stand to waste any time at this juncture. Wüstemann’s frantic voice irks her.
“I know! Handle it!”
“Then disciplined fire should…”
No! Do I really need to shout at him again? Trying to fight a war with subordinates who are slow on the uptake is such insanity!
“Don’t stop, Wüstemann! They’re rushing us! That means we have to charge! Go! Got it? We’re going to slam into them and force them back!”
Even elites hesitate when they’re taken by surprise, so of course officers and mages with little experience are liable to be overwhelmed.
That’s why it’s important to give clear orders and show them what needs to be done.
“Charge! Go, go, go!”
It’s an abrupt order, but the replacement company just barely manages to keep up with the rest of the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion on the charge and crash into the enemy.
“Don’t get bogged down! Keep climbing and don’t let them get near our forces on the ground!”
Keeping in mind that our advantage comes from orb performance at high altitudes, Tanya orders her troops to ascend. But then she’s met with something that completely floors her.
The intention was to climb and mock the enemy from above, but we can’t shake them.
“The enemy’s keeping up at eight thousand?! Of all the—I didn’t think they would climb so high!”
This can’t be happening. Tanya has to swallow that comment—the scene in front of her refutes it all too eloquently. It’s difficult to believe, but the Federation mages, who were always low-altitude specialists, have followed us as a unit up to the same airspace to force us into a dogfight.
They’ve reached not only quantitative parity but qualitative as well? That’s hard to stomach. Nonetheless, these guys who shouldn’t be any good at hand-to-hand combat are closing in on us at altitude.
“01 to all units! Climb to twelve thousand! I realize that’s asking a lot, but… Wait! I take that back! Cancel that! Maintain altitude at eight thousand!” Right as Tanya is about to order everyone up to their maximum operational altitude, she realizes at the last possible second that it’s a mistake and retracts it in a hurry.
Normally, having them ascend would be the right decision.
But not now—not this time.
The replacement company isn’t even used to the Type 97s yet; they haven’t done the necessary altitude acclimation training. I have serious doubts whether they would physically be able to go that high. This isn’t the time to try taking advantage of altitude differences.
“Maintain your current altitude and coordinate to cover one another! 02, you’re a trapper! Go after the enemies targeting our newer arrivals!” As she’s about to continue with an order to take aim, Tanya notices black specks in the sky. Yes, multiple.
It takes her only a minute to realize what she’s found.
“Enemy planes?! Break! Counterattack!”
At the same moment she shouts, the enemy mages who had been relentlessly hounding them begin pulling away all at once.
Hurtling toward the bunched-up mages are enemy aircraft—fighter planes. I’m not about to let someone shoot at me with a cannon—the concentrated automatic fire of a heavy, high-caliber cannon, at that.
What comes next happens in a flash.
The 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion responds to this unexpected new attack with a promptness worthy of their veteran status.
Each mage performs random evasive maneuvers as they fire explosion formulas to obstruct the vision of the enemy fighter pilots.
This is probably the ideal speed at which a unit taken by surprise can react. No one becomes the General Staff’s pet project by bluster alone. It requires the strength to pry challenges open as they arise, pin them down, and break through.
“Casualty report!”
“Minimal casualties!”
Such a pleasant reply from Serebryakov.
Not that the enemy scoring on us doesn’t sting, but the fact that we didn’t suffer many losses cancels that feeling out somewhat. I can be proud of my successful investments in education and human capital.
Tanya’s cheeks are about to relax into a smile as she scans the sky, when her expression tenses all over again.
Standing still would’ve provided the enemy fighter planes with perfect targets, so everyone resorted to erratic evasive maneuvers and deploying explosion formulas. However, this has left the unit too spread out.
The formation is collapsing!
“Stick with your wingman! The enemy’s coming in fast!”
The sight makes Tanya want to click her tongue. The other units are fine, but Wüstemann’s company is so slow, she could just die of fury.
“Watch out for fire from below! Shit, what the hell?! The Commies have really gotten good at harassing people!”
“I mean, they’re Commies!”
“What about it?!” Tanya shoots back without thinking. And her adjutant’s reply is epically witty…or perhaps it’s meant completely seriously.
“Didn’t you yourself say that’s how they are, ma’am?”
“Ahhh, yeah, you’re right. I guess it makes sense that they would learn how to do what people hate even in a war.” Holding back the urge to click her tongue, Tanya acknowledges the enemy’s skill. As her troops scatter, climbing in an attempt to drive off the enemy mages that won’t let them get a decent shot off, the Federation fighter planes return to the scene.
The enemy aircraft stick to hit-and-run tactics, emptying their automatic cannons and then swiftly withdrawing.
The altitudes and speeds involved are so different from our own that counterattacking is nearly impossible. What’s more, we have company from below—and not just a follow-up attack.
But that’s all it is.
As far as I know, there’s no logic or reason that makes continued failure inevitable. I never give up. Mistakes simply need to be recovered from.
Tanya takes a small but deep breath.
Steeling her determination, she shouts, “What a bunch of heroes, coming to challenge us to close-quarters combat! These Federation fellows must really love magic blades, so fill their stomachs with them until they’ve had enough!”
Of course it’s Weiss, the practiced vanguard, who volunteers to lead. “Permission to proceed as usual…?”
“Granted. Go!”
He hardly gets out a “Yes, ma’am” before he’s zooming off to fight. This is what it means to be on the same wavelength.
“Company, follow me! Charge!”
“Give them support!” Tanya urges Wüstemann’s company to move.
“Three rounds of covering fire!”
The fact that they manage to fire properly, despite the rush, probably means they’re finally growing accustomed to live combat.
As long as I can trust them not to misfire, it’ll be fine to dedicate them to a support role.
“Wüstemann! Keep it up! But no need to fire for no reason!”
“Understood!”
His acknowledgments are acceptable, if nothing else.
No, it’s not nice to be spiteful just because they lack experience. Experience can be earned. Failing to distinguish between a lack of ability and a lack of experience is hardly fair. And for Tanya, being fair is a given.
Maybe being on the battlefield for so long has made me combative. It could also be the stress of General von Zettour’s unreasonable defend-it-with-your-life order.
“This isn’t what I need to be thinking about right now.”
Tanya shakes her head lightly to clear out the extraneous thoughts and refocuses on combat. The timing is perfect. The enemy is busy with Weiss’s charge…and the rest o
f us are in striking formation.
It’s time. Tanya looks to her adjutant. “Lieutenant Serebryakov, we’re going to follow Weiss with our own charge. This isn’t any different from usual, but…watch my six. Be especially on the lookout for enemy airplanes that might come barging in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, here we go. Everyone, on me!”
Accelerate, accelerate, and accelerate some more.
The Type 97 isn’t called an assault computation orb for no reason. The designers at Elinium Arms are nuts, but strangely, their technological prowess keeps pace with their outrageous ideas.
It’s only natural to give the enemy a thorough beating while they’re overwhelmed by approaching at full combat speed—the standard air battle method. After Weiss’s unit breaks off, the enemy mages are hanging around in a daze, so we attack all at once from above.
When they notice us, they abruptly raise their defenses, but their reaction is sluggish.
“Hmph, that was slow.”
It happens just as Tanya’s zeroed in her rifle and is about to pull the trigger to deliver a formula. She nearly licks her lips, eager to score another kill, when an unexpected shot from her flank hits her defensive shell hard, forcing her to change course.
The Commies lured us out?!
“…A trapper?”
Tanya grinds her teeth in spite of herself. By the time it’s clear we’ve been had, the enemy mage blows past Serebryakov’s suppressive fire like it’s nothing.
Support won’t make it in time, but Tanya’s in no position to withdraw, either.
“Fucking hell!”
She puts a hard bend in her flight path to change directions. To ward off the enemy coming up on her flank, Tanya opens fire with her submachine gun.
Aware that her magazine is empty, she tries to gain some distance and strains the high-precision Type 97 Assault Computation Orb to accelerate as fast as possible.
“Colonel! Are you all right?!”
“Nothing to worry about!”
She comes very close to being shot two times…but it’s not bad enough that the Type 95 needs to come out.
If you concentrate, the Type 97 developed by that miserable, obnoxious mad scientist can deploy a defensive shell that’s able to take some hits, just like the new Federation Army model.
“Neither we nor our orbs are lousy enough to get shot down like that!” Tanya barks at her subordinates, but inside, she feels exactly the opposite.
There’s no way to hide the shock from being taken by surprise so completely.
A Federation mage moving faster than her in close-quarters combat is enough to make me consider this a paradigm shift.
What would the enemy mage have done to Tanya just now if she hadn’t had a submachine gun that could fire a hail of bullets?
“…Tch. Man, I really hate these guys.”
After just barely slipping away, Tanya turns back to observe the enemy.
Between the rapid approaches and interlocking fire, there’s usually little point in distinguishing between the faces of the enemy soldiers, but this time, visual input is the priority. After studying the gear, uniforms, and even the race of the soldiers themselves, it hits me. I thought for sure these mages were from a guard unit, but after watching them for a while, it’s very apparent that their uniforms are the normal ones most Federation mages wear. I can’t spot any difference in their insignias and so on, either.
Still, is it just me, or…? They seem awfully old. The Federation is currently reorganizing the mage component of its armed forces, so it’s rare to see anyone over forty.
Are they instructors? Either way, if the Communists are so pressed that they have to deploy personnel who are no longer young, that’s a good sign for us. Maybe the reinforcements Zettour promised will take less time to arrive than expected. Being kept waiting is a drag.
“…This is good news. Although that’s not something someone who’s just been duped should be saying.” With a wry grin, Tanya prepares to fire back and pierce the enemy’s defensive shell with an optical sniping formula, hoping to increase her score, but…she can’t land any hits.
Not only that, whenever she absentmindedly stops moving to concentrate on aiming, the enemy is relentless in obstructing her. What can she do if she gets immediately shot at before she can even take aim?
“Ngh, shit. They’re bizarrely coordinated.”
Every time Tanya aims at an enemy’s back, she ends up finding a barrel trained on her instead. That’s the epitome of how two-man cells should work, but she can’t believe the Federation’s troops might be even more in sync than her own.
Taking another glance, I note the veteran’s wingman is another older fellow. Maybe it’s two instructors? That might explain why they have such good coordination. The two of them are so in sync that simply shooting at them isn’t enough to break their formation apart.
In which case, there’s no choice but to respond to their challenge.
As if at this point reckless bravery is a reasonable option, Tanya rushes them, swinging as if she means to crash, and finally manages to down one of them with her magic blade.
“Damn it, this is taking way too long… What the hell?” she snaps as she surveys the area in open confusion.
The 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion, generally acknowledged as elites in the Imperial Army, the cutting edge in terms of mage operations, is practically evenly matched with these Federation mages, who are supposed to be inferior.
In fact, wouldn’t it be fair to say that throughout the entire war, my unit has consistently been on the superior side? As the commander of that elite unit, Tanya honestly has trouble believing what she’s seeing.
Federation mages shouldn’t be able to perform at this level. Having to judge her own troops and the Federation’s by the same standards gives her veteran battalion a worse reputation than it deserves.
And while I’m trying to mull over this in midair, the enemy gleefully takes the opportunity to attack.
“Argh, you’re so annoying!”
As Tanya fiercely manifests an explosion formula as a smoke screen and tries to take some distance, she notices that her partner, Serebryakov, has stopped moving.
“Visha! What are you doing?!”
“Colonel! Look at that—the enemy’s defensive shells!”
“Hmm? What about them?”
“…Your explosion formula peeled some away!”
“What, really?!” When Serebryakov excitedly points at the enemy, Tanya yelps in shock. The whole reason for struggling in this melee was due to her assumption that the enemy had strong shells.
If area suppression is still effective against them, that changes everything.
“Let’s give it a shot!”
With formulas that prioritize range over power, Tanya can keep up with these speedy enemy mages to some extent.
Squinting, she tries to make out the results of her shot, but she can’t see any difference in the enemy’s movements. Just as she’s about to click her tongue in disappointment that it didn’t work, she notices out of the corner of her eye a patch of red seeping into the enemy’s uniform.
“Turns out they’re more fragile than we thought.”
If the protective film was blown away and the defensive shell sustained damage, however slight, then the enemy orb’s defensive performance is far inferior to what she anticipated.
This is good news. Tanya chuckles to herself.
“Weiss, Wüstemann! These guys aren’t using the new model. Don’t bother with piercing formulas—focus on area suppression!”
““Huh?!””
The officers’ confused voices coming over the radio in harmony are strangely amusing. Apparently, Tanya wasn’t the only one laboring under the assumption that the enemy had thick defensive shells.
It must have been due to an erroneous rule of thumb. The resilience of the Federation mages made us recoil, so the preconception of Federation mages as tough enemies had a harmful i
nfluence on us.
“It’s not a problem even if your aim is slightly off! Ready explosion formulas! Fill the skies with fire! Just do not under any circumstances accidentally hit our troops below!”
““U-understood!””
Good. Tanya shouts more orders over the radio. “01 to all units! 01 to all units! Blow up the entire airspace and the enemy along with it! And put some energy into your defensive shells! Open fire!”
An instant later—as if the order had been a literal trigger—explosion formulas blossom all around them.
Perhaps it’s a bit excessive to completely obliterate the airspace above friendly territory. But per the possibility and potential Federation anti–air positions already demonstrated, being determined enough to simply engulf everything in fire and explosions ends up making many things much easier.
The enemy must not have thought the Imperial Army would go that far. The Federation mages are blown away as the air fills with flames.
But their casualties are surprisingly low.
“Tsk, these guys are stubborn. What a respectable retreat.”
Caught up in the explosion, they must have flown away from the blast rather than try to endure it; most of the Federation mages are singed, but their numbers haven’t decreased very much.
“These persistent bastards… I guess we have to regroup… Were any of our guys stupid enough to get shot down by friendly fire?”
“Zero dropouts! Some minor burns!”
Tanya chuckles at Serebryakov’s report. “Must be thanks to the Type 97s… Glad they were able to put up a better defensive shell than the enemy.”
Speed, durability, reliability. Once these orbs, which excel in all three dimensions, can be mass-produced and issued across the board, qualitative superiority will be ours again…if we can find enough mages who can operate them, that is.
At any rate, the enemy mages are retreating.
As far as our aerial support objective goes, all that’s left is to repel the Federation ground troops, but…it seems the Federation realized what folly it is to send in the infantry when they don’t control the air.
Looking down below, everything seems peaceful. The ground units must have been watching our fight like it was one great big show. How nice…