Chapter 3: Crossing Lines
Apparently, the non-magical government did not want to call them in for help, which was slightly insulting. Then again, they could have been thinking that the magicals were required to aid in a battle they caused. Harry did not know which was worse, but he was so glad he did not have to deal with the politics.
He was pretty sure that he'd end up in wars more often than not - Gryffindor brashness did not bode well for diplomacy unless dealing with some magical races.
Namely Goblins and Giants.
Harry kinda felt bad for those that educated the giants. Well, that was until he found out that they tended to consist of Vampires ~ he felt that they would be evenly matched.
The Systems Alliance was so reluctant to ask for their help that they even went as far as them choosing to surrender than to ask for help. Well, they were about to, if Harry did not feel personally insulted by the methods the avian race stooped to. They used methods fit only for criminals and worse - they took hostages and were willing to murder the innocent civvies if their demands were not met. However, it was not simply that the avian race had stooped to criminal tactics that bothered Harry - he would have allowed the mundane military to make fools of themselves if that were the case. Instead, it was that some of his civvies were amongst the crowd, threatening to be executed. Most of which were too young or inexperienced to safely get away.
Luckily Harry had had the time to prepare some defences and plans to decimate the offending force in one fell swoop.
As in literally destroy a tenth of their presence in one move.
Harry said, "Now!" signalling all the positioned soldiers and their units to start the attack. His order was relayed immediately, and the magical race then really became a part of the war.
She had volunteered for the mission she was on. Technically the entire armed forces volunteered for the missions they were assigned to, as the military was strictly a volunteer force only.
The point was that she knew exactly what she was getting into, and she asked for it.
Didn't mean she did not regret her decision, not that she did for the first while.
At least her best friend matilda was with her, but then again that could be counted as a bad thing, as her sister in arms was to go on the offensive.
Her joy was to protect the civvies, both magical and non from the stereotypical bank-robber type robbins. Seriously, they looked more like birds than she did when she transformed into her fury form. At least they were all male, as that would help differentiate between friend and foe.
Just to be safe, though, she cast a little-known spell at all the friendlies to help her more wild side know what not to attack.
They got in position, finally, and the signal was received.
With her comrades, she then cast a very potent, powerful protection war against physical attacks. It wouldn't do much against magical attacks, but luckily for them, it appeared as though the aliens were magically impaired.
Then, as the aliens noticed something had happened, those that had not been ones to power the shield, began casting the deafness hex at all the friendlies. The civilians began to freak out a little, having just lost contact with an important part of their everyday life. The aliens decided to begin firing at them about halfway through the defining of people, furthering their panic, only for said panic to die down due to a use of area-of-effect calming spells and most noticing that the weapons were not having an effect on their number.
After all the spells were cast, the banshee of the group got to play. Bethany opened her mouth impossibly wide and let loose her defensive wail. There was something to be said about a banshee wail's effect on unprotected ears, but it need not be said as it was quite evident by the bluebirds clutching their head in pain, and then shortly after that there was a nice new dark blue paint job.
Apparently, Bethany had been practising her wail, as she had not fallen down immediately following as most did, and instead only wobbled unsteadily before she righted herself. Either way, Lillian thought that Bethany would not be able to do another for some time.
Indeed, Bethany wouldn't be able to do magic for a few hours.
That was why Bethany went and picked up one of the enemy's rifles. The magical military was trained on the use of mundane weaponry, so it didn't take long for Bethany to figure out how to use the similar design.
Having passed the danger of a banshee's wail, those that could begin to reverse the effects of the deafness hex. Those that were still having problems with the soundless life finally calmed down with their sense fully intact again. In fact, Corporal Lilian Withers thought that they had repaired some of their hearing; she caught sight of an older gentleman taking something out of his ears.
However, Lillian couldn't expand too much on that thought, as it did not take long for the aliens to restart their attack. The ward stone was finally linked to the kinetic barrier, allowing the rest of the soldiers to change their attentions to more important things. Like the attacking aliens.
As weapons fire rained down on the shield of flickering light, the magical species took out their own firearms and inserted their second wands. They took aim and fired.
Most of them were using the M401 standard issue assault rifle. It was based on the very basic primitive designs of mundane weaponry. However, the ammunition used was vastly different; where the primitive versions of mass effect weaponry took the idea of accelerating matter to a significant 1% of the speed of light to kill something, the magical version didn't use matter at all.
The M401 used a constant connection to the user in order to run magic into a particular set of runes, and finally accelerated through a channel, then leaving the weapon. Depending on what setting the soldier had it set to, that burst of magical energy had a variety of different effects, anywhere from a standard stunner to a more explosive option of a simulated Bombarda. They could be set to automatic, semi-automatic, or single fire modes.
It allowed for a very versatile weapon, capable of anything between a non-hostile takedown from afar, to simulating a grenade launcher. Another added benefit was that if the opposing force got ahold of the weapon, they could not easily use it as they required both a constant connection to a nearby magical source and a fair amount of training to use them.
The problem came when a user had to place their wand within the weapon to have a link to their nearby source. Most magicals did not like going long without their wand easily accessible, but they got around that by using secondary - or for the absolutely paranoid, tertiary - wands. An even larger problem came when the magical became magically exhausted, which was the same as running out of ammunition for a mundane weapon. At that point, they would not be able to use magic for a while - depending on the person - and would normally become very hungry. It depended on the species what they needed to eat.
Back to the combat around the corporal, her and a few other defenders were freely firing upon the incoming aliens, from their chosen defensive positions. As the defenders provided cover fire in the form of semi-automatic fired Reductos , the rest of the magicals advanced, pushing outwards, closer and closer to their objective.
As the advancers' fire faded away, they left only some occasional teams to harass the defenders. When things started to relax a little, people started talking again - mainly about the situation they found themselves in. They had not been allowed to talk during the impromptu imprisonment in the so-called "Safe Camp" bullshit.
Eventually, the colonists were brave enough to question their apparent liberators. One man, in particular, broke the language barrier by questioning Lillian. In Mandarin, because Mandarin was the most common tongue on Shanxi, the man asked, "Who are you? You don't look like any Alliance I've seen."
Lillian smiled, allowing some of her calming, pacifying abilities to flare slightly so as not to have anyone become alarmed. "I'm sorry, but I cannot tell you exactly who we are. What I can tell you is that we are not Alliance.
"I am Corporal Withers, that lovely lady over there holding the alien rifle is Private Sanders, and also the reason why the aliens' heads exploded. The man with the scraggly beard is Sergeant Volkov," Lillian had gained herself a rude gesture for her description, which made most paying attention to chuckle along with her. "And finally, we have the cold bastard over there named Left Tennant Blake, our medical officer." Said man only gave a single nod to the population.
When another, significantly smaller, unit of the bluebirds started another harassment mission, the group efficiently cut them down with the piercing power of the Reducto setting.
Over the alien rifle's noise, Lillian heard a faint "Wow," from the crowd. It appeared that they didn't notice the drastic difference in weapon designs until then.
As the ground war was slowly becoming more and more to the MSS's favour, so too were they slowly gaining air superiority. Dragon riders took to the skies to harass both air and land targets with their very sharp talons, extremely hot dragon breath, and mixed with a fair amount of spellfire from the riders themselves.
However impressive the air units were, they were nothing compared to the firepower the stealth starships provided against the previously unaware alien ships.
For only a moment was there a cease-fire, wherein the leader of the mundane military had been in the process of surrendering, before Harry's order came through. The first and second fleets were present in the Shanxi system as they started the attack, while others were either preparing to depart for the battle or were busy reinforcing other places.
After a while of the bluebirds' ships blowing up left, right, and centre, they began to panic a little. Their panic was made evident by the way they seemed to stop targeting and instead fire randomly every which way. Well, those that weren't taking their anger out on the System's Alliance that re-started the firing between the two Harry thought that it would end up like the whole drama about Han from his youth, between which side fired the first shot.
Rather surprisingly the race of avian creatures did not begin to retreat to the Relay, even though they were obviously out of their league. Harry had expected them to make a tactical retreat, all the while setting traps as they went.
As the enemy force dwindles, Harry's forces began further intel gathering missions. One such method of intel gathering was collecting the enemy tech for investigation. A more risky mission was to board the enemy ship to retrieve some vital intel. Intel like maps, and star charts.
Harry had decided not to risk his men on such a mission and instead had boarded the ship himself. He had been able to stealth through the ship, having been able to skilfully apparate from the flagship to the closest vessel. He had made liberal use of either low powered spells or passive magics so as not to interfere with the delicate nature of technology.
Just when Harry had gotten what he needed, the ship he was on was hit hard by the System's Alliance. He was jettisoned into space, and with a great deal of effort was able to apparate himself to his flagship's empty med bay. He was then treated to the "merciful" aid of the ship's chief medical officer, Lilly Potter.
Harry's youngest was less-than-pleased with his sometimes reckless behaviour, and displayed it quite well in his treatment of his gained wounds and exposure to the vacuum.
A/N: So the magical military joined the First Contact War! Now, I think the next chapter might be more of the Contact was and the peace conference after, but it might get too long to get it all in.
As always, I hope that you all enjoyed the chapter, and please let me know what you thought of it in the form of a review.
