23rd August 1997 (65:05:01)
— Contact plus 01.11.21:22.15

Beth's troop drifted over the water, the sands of the beach sliding back out of sight, the wave tops glowing with the evening sun. Flying in a cloud around her were dozens and dozens of people on their new two-seat brooms, mages leaned low at the front and muggle soldiers at the back bristling with the bulky jagged shapes of heavy weapons. Idly glancing around, she quick checked that everyone had taken off smoothly enough — a few brooms here and there were lagging behind, but nobody in her troop. Not that she could blame them, getting used to flying these overlong things had taken some practice, very awkward.

Ahead and above, deceptively small from distance, hung the spiral-shaped alien mothership, craggy orange and brown and blue, large enough it cast a visible slash of shadow across the air. In a ring around it were a cloud of smaller ships — relatively speaking, of course. A pair of the shell-looking ones, which Beth knew were nearly two kilometres long, were just tiny little triangular wedges by comparison, the smaller vaguely cylindrical ones — the exact length varied, normally two to six hundred metres, the one they'd taken down over Paris two years ago about average — nothing more than tiny dark splinters against the blue of the sky. Countless little grey-white threads streaked down from the ships through the air, smoke trails left behind by lavabombs dropped from an unnaturally low, slow orbit, aimed in a ring around their landing sites, providing cover for and softening up defenders against their advance.

Which was exactly what the brass had been waiting for.

Things had been quiet for a while, the aliens floating out around the moons of Jupiter, only occasionally flying back to Earth to bomb the shite out of something before leaving again — short hit and run attacks, apparently just reminding people they were still here. Then, nearly a month ago now, their ground telescopes (the aliens still had space superiority, they hadn't been able to get anything back up there) had observed reinforcements coming into the solar system to join the fleet at Jupiter — including two of the shell ships and a variety of smaller craft, plus a few slower big blobby ships they marked as civilian transports, and another of the huge, spiralling-starfish-shaped motherships. It looked like there'd been some kind of disagreement over there, they'd even snapped pictures of the aliens firing on each other, destroying at least three ships — some kind of leadership dispute, maybe? — but eventually things settled down, the now much larger combined fleet pulling itself together.

A week later, they attacked Earth — but the delay had given them time to prepare, war-wards primed and civilians moved into shelters, reserves and volunteers already called in and ready to jump the second the aliens showed up. The bombing had been heavy, falling in stripes all around the world, but the wards around important shite had mostly held up, atmospheric craft and attempted landings quickly hunted down and obliterated. Beth's troop, alongside similar mixed magical–muggle divisions from other countries, had spent the couple weeks skipping around the world, responding to alien sightings and attacks within hours. They'd been building up magical transportation networks ever since Zero Day, they could move in overwhelming force on very short notice, wherever it was needed, overwhelming the aliens before they could move their big ships back around to provide cover — helped along by a healthy wariness of the occasional nuke shot up at them.

It'd been a long slog, dragging on for weeks, but the reports on the radio (when she had time to listen) claimed that the damage suffered was relatively minimal — at least compared to the initial attack two years ago now, obviously any losses still sucked. The aliens had given them too long to prepare, they were spread out too much, they were losing.

Apparently someone in the alien leadership had realised that, and had decided to concentrate all of their forces in a single spot, in the western Pacific. There'd been intermittent reports of alien activity in the region going all the way back to late '95 — the assumption was that there were pockets of survivors on some islands somewhere, but they had trouble tracking them down — maybe chosen for that reason, or maybe just due to the comparatively sparse population. There'd been several landings, spread across various islands, provided cover by most of the fleet, all of their forces concentrated in a relatively small area to ensure they could get a foothold on the surface again.

That was, it turned out, exactly what the brass had been waiting for — now that the aliens were thoroughly dug in, it was time to spring the trap.

Beth listened with half an ear to the chatter on the radio — units checking in, a few last-minute orders and updates — watching the alien fleet up ahead. If everything went according to plan, most or all of them should be broken up and on fire in less than an hour.

She was tugged out of her musings when she heard Luke's familiar voice. "All guns, confirm keys are set for retrieval."

A series of confirmations followed, as all the gunners double-checked the settings on their brooms' built-in portkey, which were a neat trick. A little box in the middle of the broom, just a little bit behind Beth's seat, held a specialised radio with slots for the little data cards that were getting around these days (based on the original designs that came out of Hermione's team). The cards held the targeting information needed for a portkey to work, the portkey enchantment itself built into the box — a signal through the radio could trigger whichever slot, either sent on a timer or manually, to better coordinate drops and retreats, or else evacuate people in an emergency. They could be triggered manually by the gunner too, of course, but the timing on this operation was very tight, better to let command handle it.

She felt and heard a little click as the cover was slid aside, Reese quick checked it was set to take a signal from the radio. Reese verbally confirmed, followed a second later by Elliot.

A low flat, professional-sounding voice cut through the chatter, saying, "Alpha-Red, launch. Alpha-Green, launch. Alpha-Blue, launch..." and on and on, nine launches in all — one for each of the individual landing sites they'd identified.

There it was, they were on a timer now. Tension trickling down her spine, Beth leaned her weight further forward, her hands tightening on the shaft. "All squads," Luke called, "priority is to clear L.Z., then make some noise. Focus fire on wings and guns, keep to the centre to draw eyes from the shore. Don't get clever, make a mess until the package is in and get out."

Beth flicked to her team's channel. "Caitlín, I'm going to pop down to the L.Z., watch over us." She ignored Reese cursing behind her — he'd never quite gotten the hang of being apparated around. Unfortunately for him, he'd gotten paired with her, and that was kind of her thing.

After a moment, a feminine-sounding voice answered in Gaelic, "Understood," before switching to accented English to add, "I think we want to come in with burst rounds."

"Agreed," Elliot said. "I need to swap that out, one second." Warning her because the gunner shifting around back there could throw off the mage's balance — Reese behind Beth was also preparing for the drop with a clicking and clanking of equipment, but she just firmed her grip on the broom hardly without thinking.

There was a faint tingle of magic, Beth glanced over her shoulder. A bunch of flyers had abruptly disappeared, a hole scooped out of their formation — that would be Yellow, their torpedoes had the shortest transit time.

Right around then, there was a call on the radio, the gruff masculine voice speaking with an American accent, vaguely familiar. Some command officer, presumably, must have heard him over the radio before. "Spear teams be advised, shield teams report contact. You'll be going in hot."

"Lovely," Reese shouted over the wind. "Just once, I'd like to be ported in cold, for the change of pace."

"All squads, transit in fifteen."

"What, and just leisurely glide about until someone shows up? Sounds boring."

"Boring, honestly..." ("Five.") "...I've seen quidditch..."

Beth was smirking when the broom abruptly came alive with the giddy snapping magic of a portkey, her hands cemented to the ceramic surface, and the sea and sky vanished in a swirl of colour, her elbows and shoulders twinging as the broom yanked her bodily along. A moment later, the world snapped back into focus — she and Reese, along with the other seven brooms in their troop, were now floating over a small, low-lying island, only like a dozen square kilometres or so. The shore was shallow, the sands below tinting the water a vibrant almost glowing blue, a few smaller outlying arcs here and there, maybe tiny coral islands that had splintered and dissolved over who knew how long.

Practically the entire surface was covered with alien structures, shells and the big starfish-tree things, patches of the shallows walled off into lagoons, some kind of crops already beginning to grow.

The gunners immediately opened up with the screaming of rockets and the harsh percussion of automatic gunfire, "Iratos!" several spells following close behind. The streams of bullets hit and burst with the force of a minor blasting curse, tiny explosions stitching across the ground and chewing alien buildings to pieces, the rockets releasing braces of slicing curses or flinging out countless globules of colourful liquid flame, melting through the calcified armoured skin of the starfish-trees as easy as butter. The long red current pouring out of Beth's wand spread out into the maw of a dragon, the neck and the body and wings forming behind it a moment before it struck, hard enough a hot wind blew back up at her, stinging her skin. The fire quickly began to spread, resolving into the form of leaping stags and lions, hawks and dragons, writhing beds of snakes, Beth wrenched the fiendfyre around, directing it off away from the same curse another of the mages had cast and away from the LZs toward the shore, living flames pouring between shell-houses and setting aliens alight—

Releasing her grip on it — that could go ahead and burn on its own for now — Beth whipped the overlong broom along and jolted into motion. The island was suddenly crawling with activity, like an overturned anthill, she noticed one of the big lava-guns turn toward them, a swish of her wand and an invisible band of a vanishing curse (Sirius's favourite) bisected the thing, the ammo released to pour out over the ground. "There!" their assigned LZ coming into view as she moved around a collection of starfish-trees. "Caitlín, we're dropping." Beth didn't wait for a confirmation, settled her feet firmer onto the foot-pegs, and yanked, leaning hard into the disapparation.

She reappeared, pulling the nose of the broom up — her arm burning, she swirled her wand in a circle, a ribbon of vivid red spellglow flying out in every direction. Even as the Thousand Lances started to hit, shattering shells and burning into a few of their rocky fighter craft Beth had first seen over London two years ago now — their LZ happened to be right by the main airstrip — Reese started firing, the enchanted bullets firing out blasting curses at a frankly intimidating rate, tearing apart alien buildings and air- and space-craft in seconds. Beth swung around in a little spiral, giving him more things to aim at, occasionally tossing off a curse of her own to clear away obstructions or tag fleeing aliens, quickly carving out an expanding circle of destruction. A second augmented machinegun tore another channel through the settlement a short distance away as Caitlín and Elliot caught up, bolts of lightning booming and sizzling.

"Pulling up!" Reese stopped firing (just in case he accidentally hit someone as he was jostled around), and Beth lifted up higher off the ground, before whipping right back around. "l-Arḍu tuṭwa!" The overpowered spell burned through her, Beth gritting her teeth, the bright pink spellglow zipping out to slam into the centre of the LZ. Once it struck the ground, it ballooned up into a violet glowing ball about a metre wide before bursting — the earth itself seemed to rise in a wave, spreading out in all directions in a ring, like the waves cast by tossing a rock into still water, the force flinging debris away from the centre, overturning the remains of buildings, a burning fightercraft lurched and deformed from the impact...

Beth tapped channels over, "Green-four clear!" before switching back to her patrol. "All right, keep 'em busy."

The aliens had been taken by surprise, not expecting a surprise attack so far behind their lines, but they didn't just sit there and take it — it'd taken them a moment to respond, but soon they were moving, soldiers scrambling and artillery and vehicles coming alive. Beth's team were conveniently right next to the main airfield, a stream of pilots rushing off toward the waiting planes (or whatever), she cast a quick heat illusion to send the bugs following them whizzing off course before strafing over the pilots, Reese pounding them into bloody pulp with an uninterrupted rain of enchanted bullets, Beth cutting apart the rayfish planes and rocky fighters with Sirius's vanishing curse—

—one of the skiprays got off the ground, spraying sticky nets over the flyers, trying to pin them down, but Beth and Cynfelyn burned through the trap with calōre vindicāns, Caitlín seizing it up with a torrent of lightning, blasted apart by RPG rounds before it could recover—

—lavabombs from surface-to-air artillery streaking past, Caitlín charged in a zigzag in their direction, holding a bright silver shield charm as Elliot took potshots around her, Beth waited until they had the gunners' attention (Reese raking over dinos tossing bug-grenades up at them) before apparating around behind the big guns, Beth and Reese blowing the emplacement into burning rubble before they could react—

—Beth reared in surprise as several spots around the shoreline suddenly erupted into flames, shockwaves criss-crossing through her, burning debris flung spinning away as clouds of smoke quickly surged upward, those would be the torpedoes, the delivery teams should be– yes, she saw activity at one of the LZs, any minute now—

—bug-grenades filling the air, Beth and Caitlín misdirecting them so they could be easily incinerated in batches while Reese and Elliot fired on the aliens who'd thrown them, her heart jumping in her throat at Bill's voice on the radio, "Fuck, I lost Art! Broom's cracked, cover me—"

"Alpha-Green Two, package delivered."

—a pair of fire-squids lumbered up to their full height, pierced from multiple directions before they could even starting spitting at them, liquid fire sprayed over their surroundings—

—more bugs and lavabombs streaking past, Beth barely weaving out of the way, Reese was caught in the middle of reloading, carefully aiming away from any of the LZs (fiendfyre would destroy the bombs as easily as anything else), "Iratos!" the cursed fire chewing through the aliens and crawling over the emplacement—

—"Felix is gone, I'm going down!" Beth wheeled around, looking for—

"Alpha-Green One, package delivered." "Alpha-Green Four, package delivered."

Luke's voice on the radio, tense but still level, "Dean, report."

After a short, hard silence, Dean said, thick and harsh, "I'm banged up, but—" He cut off with a curse through his teeth. "Landed in the middle of the bastards that took out Felix, all around me." The radio wouldn't have picked up the gunfire, so—

"We lost Alpha-Green Three, three packages secured and armed. Green-Spear, standby for retrieval."

No! Dean was on the ground, he'd be left behind! "Get a flare up, right now!" Glancing over her shoulder toward Reese, "Hold on, this is going to be rough."

Pausing to reload, Reese reached forward to clap her on the back. "Fuck rough, let's bring him home."

Bill was on the radio, offering to swing by and grab Dean, Luke ordering him to keep back (his broom was damaged already, too big a risk), but Beth wasn't paying attention, spinning around in a little spiral, her eyes scanning over the island, Reese spraying fire in random directions to dissuade anyone from paying them too much mind, her limbs sizzling with tension and her heart pounding as she counted down seconds in her head, come on, come on, come— There! A streak of blue light rising from the ground, there was a cloud of smoke in the way, she leaned hard over the handle, the broom surging forward, Reese letting out a surprised shout, ten, fuck fuck fuck, nine, eight—

She saw him! Spraying bullets at aliens closing in on him, the fire magic enchanted onto them washing over the nearby buildings, she had him! "Hold fire, left hand up!" Four, she stood up on the foot pegs and dug hard into an apparation—

—she appeared next to Dean, two, snatched his wrist and pressed his hand against the handle of the broom—

—magic crackling over the ceramic, it suddenly jerked under her, the portkey yanking them along, the burning smoke-shrouded island washed away with swirling colour, the wind howling in her ears, something big and heavy fluttering after them, banging against Beth's legs—

—and the world snapped back into clarity, her head spinning. The magic of the portkey released Dean's hand, his momentum sending him tumbling down toward the sands below, her wand dropped back into her hand and she whirled around, caught him in a levitation charm. He immediately vomited, sick falling on toward the ground, but he started cursing over the radio a second later, he was fine.

The tension abruptly evaporating, leaving her shivering, Beth sagged against the broom, resting her sweaty forehead on the ceramic, letting out a shaking sigh. Fuck, that was too close...

Once they were all settled, they started flying toward the station — Beth tugged up on her levitation charm, bringing Dean to float level with her and Reese a short distance away. She glanced around, counting brooms. They were only one broom short, though Bill's wasn't good to fly, the back end bent and splintered, his flight path drifting and stuttering. It looked like he was somehow holding it together with a charm or transfiguration of some kind, his wand arm turned back to point at the damaged part, which was absurd, brooms were far too complicated, Beth would have no idea how to do that. But then, Bill was the genius cursebreaker, he just did shite like that sometimes. Artie and Felix were gone, and a few of their people looked like they'd gotten a little banged and/or cut up, but nothing too bad.

That was...good, she guessed. Beth had lost far too many comrades in this fucking war already. Losing two still sucked — especially Felix, one of the mages she'd helped train, they'd spent a lot of time together, but she tried to swallow down the pressure burning at her throat, this wasn't the time — but it could have been much worse.

And at least she'd managed to get Dean out of there, at the last fucking second. Floating along next to her, sweaty and pale, he gave her a little nod. Once he was done wiping the sick off his chin, he said over the radio (the wind too loud), "Thanks for the rescue, Princess, thought I was fucked."

Beth scowled — the boys knew she hated being called that, only ever did to tease her. "You know I can still drop you at any moment."

He just smirked over at her, shameless bloody bastard...

Passing through the clingy film of a wardline, their rearming site appeared beneath them. They weren't the first team to get back — if she recalled the timeline correctly, they should be fourth — but a place had been prepared for them ahead of time, they turned straight for the empty patch of grass-speckled ground marked by the green flags. Landing on these special brooms was awkward, but she'd gotten the hang of it by now — once she was close enough to the ground, she gently set Dean down and then hopped right off, one hand staying on the handle so she could hold the levitation in place for Reese. As her troop landed they were suddenly swarmed with healers, quickly crawling over them, analysis charms snapping and sizzling on the air. Not that it looked like there was a lot to do. A couple of them had gotten scrapes from close-passing bugs or debris, a few mild burns here and there, and Dean was a bit banged up from his crash landing, but other than that they all seemed fine.

Once the healers were done, then there were some logistics staff people immediately taking their place, dragging along crates of replacement ammo and equipment — enchanted, the crates expanded on the inside and floating unsupported, easily tugged along by a single person — biscuits and bottles of mineral water passed around. Moving quickly, they were on a very short timer, would be sent along to support the shield teams in...less than five minutes now. Since Beth obviously didn't need to resupply at all, she just ate her biscuit and took big gulps at her water, watching the activity going on around. More teams were coming back after them — they'd tried to time the bombs to go off more or less simultaneously, but they were limited by the travel time of the torpedo battery, couldn't sneak submarines everywhere they needed to get it to be quite at the same time — some of them looking rather more badly chewed-up than Beth's troop. Listening in on the radio, they'd already confirmed detonations at all of the landings, so all the teams had managed to get at least one package delivered, which was good enough. They absolutely hadn't needed four, even just one would do, but they'd decided to go with redundancy, just in case, and she guessed some teams had had more trouble keeping their packages secure than others. It was fine, though, they'd done well enough, mission success and all that.

(Looking to the north, Beth could already see a pair of mushroom clouds beginning to rise, vague and tiny in the distance.)

They did have replacement brooms here, along with the rest of the equipment, but Luke decided Bill would be staying behind anyway. It was less than ideal to be flying one of these without a gunner, and Dean's injuries were worse than they looked — he had a few broken bones, apparently, sicking up had been at least partially due to his injuries being stressed during the rough portkey trip (felt bad about joking to drop him now) — and their recovery window was just too short for him to be ready in time. So, they'd be two brooms short — that should be fine, with the help of their shield team she was sure they could cover their carrier no problem. Especially since they'd just wiped out all of the aliens' airfields and surface-to-air artillery, so, they'd be fine, don't worry about it.

Bill was still arguing with Luke about it — she didn't blame him for not wanting to be left behind, she would worry too — when their one minute warning came over the radio. Everyone scrambled to finish whatever they were doing, rushing back to their brooms. Beth wasn't sure which one she'd had for the alpha phase, but it really didn't matter, just grabbed one at random. Once Reese was ready, she gently lifted up off the ground, the others rising along with her, a couple of the other teams moving too, one vanishing even as she watched. Reese had been busy loading back up, so he hadn't had as much time to rehydrate as she had, she could hear him chugging from the bottle behind her.

Turning over her shoulder, Beth said, "Reese, make sure you're strapped in." There were enchantments built into the broom she could use to lock herself into place when she needed to, but it took directly interacting with the broom for it to work, which muggles couldn't do — they needed to physically strap themselves in when in high-speed mode. He didn't stop drinking from his bottle, just gave her a thumbs-up.

"Green flight, the shockwaves slowed down Beta-Green, you're going to be dropped a couple minutes ahead. Estimate twelve minutes to delivery. Good luck." Only a few seconds after the update went silent, the portkey built into the brooms was once again whipping them away in a swirl of colour and an aimless roar of motion.

When the world snapped into clarity, she was immediately blasted by a high cross-wind, just for a fraction of a second before the shielding spells built into the broom caught up, reducing it to a gentle breeze. The portkey had brought them high, absurdly high, above the range of traditional brooms. The clouds were well below them, streaks and poofs of white glowing yellow and orange and pink on their west faces, the ocean far enough away to be a flat featureless blue floor, who knew how many kilometres below. Beth could make out multiple mushroom clouds around, still ballooning up, backlit a grim hellish red-orange by the nuclear fires within, the clouds around blasted away and worked up into a froth, smoother rings of condensation spreading out...

The blast zones were quite far away, the size of the clouds and their height just messed with any intuitive sense of scale and distance. They'd been told they might end up pretty seriously irradiated during this mission anyway, but there were potions for that, wasn't a big deal — and there were spells and beetles to help with the fallout, so.

(Beth suspected Hermione wouldn't like the plan, since there were, like, coral reefs and shite out here that would have been incinerated in the blast, but she was pretty sure the aliens would have already ruined those anyway, and they had to get them out somehow — popping in and out in a surprise attack meant they could do it with very small numbers at low risk, making a proper landing would be far more costly. And literal nuclear fireballs would make sure any contamination from their tech wasn't left behind, it was simply the safest option they had.)

And above, there was only the sky, flat and vividly blue and clear from above the clouds — except for the alien ships, of course. At this angle it was more obvious they weren't so tightly concentrated, spread out over a rather large area, the wedges and cylinders hanging overhead here and there and over there, scattered in all directions. And the mothership over there, of course, fucking huge from this distance, blotting out a large disc of the sky...

This wasn't actually the highest Beth had ever flown — she'd occasionally been lent out to the Commission to test the prototypes that had led up to the thing she was on now, as well as the broom substitutes they were hoping could eventually be used by muggles. Apparently being a skilled broom-flyer with experience flying in battle, so she had a feeling for what would be useful and what would just get in the way, who could also speak all the languages the Commission used made her a very valuable prospect for those tests, who'd have thought. She'd actually participated in the series of tests that had confirmed for certain that enchantments didn't work in space. (Though the ceiling was under the point where muggle scientists said space started, they hadn't managed to get brooms that high yet.) She hadn't been the first person to hit the elevation ceiling, like the fifth or sixth or something, but it was still a neat story to talk about — it was super freaky when that happened, the enchantments gradually weakening before just stuttering out, the broom going dead and tipping down into a freefall, until she passed back under the ceiling and could start gradually putting power into the flight spells again, gently to make sure the broom didn't snap around her from the torque. Thankfully they'd been smart enough to use muggle safety equipment doing the tests, so Beth had still been able to breathe when she lost the air bubble. There was a brief time, for like a week or so, when Beth had actually held the world record for both elevation and velocity achieved with a directly-operated flight enchantment — obviously muggle vehicles beat both records by absurd margins — before the elevation was passed with the next test, and the speed one a couple tests later.

These days Beth seemed to be collecting crazy shite she'd done, but strangers were increasingly familiar with her for those reasons before stupid Girl Who Lived stuff or being a literal princess now, so she was honestly fine with it.

Anyway, this was high, but the size of the clouds and the colour of the sky above were enough to tell Beth they weren't too close to the ceiling for this broom model. They definitely needed the air bubble projected by the broom to keep breathing safely, though — apparently when you got this high there was a point where your spit started boiling on your tongue, freaky as hell.

On arriving, they wheeled around, some of them distracted looking up at the spacecraft overhead, following the streaks of smoke from lavabombs stitching across the blue overhead and all around, or else at the still-growing, glowing mushroom clouds, others tipped down to scan the sky for their carrier. Command had said they were only a couple minutes ahead, but the thing should be cruising at, what, five to seven hundred kilometres an hour? so it could easily be twenty kilometres away or more. It'd look pretty small at that distance, and with the sun lighting up the clouds it was hard to see...

"There!" Cynfelyn said over the radio. A second later there was a green slash of spellglow in the air — an illusion, maybe some kind of navigation aide, pointing down and—

Oh, Beth saw them now. The plane a flat little stick with a bent wedge through it, a cloud of tiny little specks buzzing around it. As Beth watched, a volley of lavabombs burned down out of the sky toward them, but there were barely-visible flickers of spellglow, the bombs vanishing or redirected away...

"Good, still flying. Cynfelyn, mark their approach for us. Start speeding up to come in alongside them, eyes up for bombs, go." The green glow stretched, pointing both forward and back — swinging back and forth a little, Cynfelyn must have adjusted the spell to track where the plane was headed — everyone wheeled around to face the right direction. Beth quick set the broom for high-speed manoeuvres, and then leaned into the acceleration spells, the posts kicking against her feet.

Beth hadn't been aware of this before, but there had been people playing around with absurdly high-performance brooms for decades now, partially inspired by the advancements of muggle flight. Experimental stuff, you know, trying to see how far they could push the magic involved. She'd thought the Firebolt was fucking fast, but it didn't reach nearly the top speed people had managed to get with this kind of magic — it was just about as much as they could manage with a quidditch broom, which had its own limits and requirements. In the last few decades, they'd entirely stopped using wood for these experimental ones at all, instead switching to various kinds of magical ceramic, compartments on the inside packed with reservoir stones and countless runes, the bristles replaced with metal wires covered with more tiny tiny runes. They'd managed to get their top speed a lot higher, but had issues dealing with air resistance and the effects on the rider; the shielding they had to do to protect the rider became very unstable when they got too near the sound barrier, resulting in a number of serious (even fatal) accidents. Since Zero Day, enchanters and scientists put their heads together, more advanced muggle knowledge of aerodynamics and shite solving some of the problems they'd been having.

Beth herself had flown at, what, twice the speed of sound now, which was honestly absurd to think about — she'd spent most of those flights praying that the air bubble held up, because it would not end well for her if those spells failed. That's what those fatal accidents had been about, after all.

These brooms weren't rated to go nearly that fast. They weren't designed for it, with the extra passenger and all, and the plane they were meant to be escorting wouldn't be getting anywhere near the sound barrier anyway. Beth gradually ramped up their speed, not immediately jumping into a hard acceleration — they had to wait for the plane to catch up, after all. The wind inside the bubble stayed relatively light, just little flutters now and then, the friction between their bubble and the air passing outside starting as a quiet whistle, eventually building into a low drone, vibrating in her teeth. She kept an eye on the green track Cynfelyn was laying down for them, occasionally jinking a bit to the side to follow the plane, glancing around to make sure they were staying with the rest of their troop — spread out a bit as they accelerated at different rates, partly on purpose to reduce the risk of ramming into each other at three hundred kilometres an hour — the shape of the plane behind them growing and growing...

The roar of the plane's engines started to build behind them, Beth cast a quick sound-muffling charm inside the bubble before it got too close. Another volley of lavabombs was screaming by up ahead — the angle coming much closer to them now, the plane not so far behind them — she counted off seconds in her head before tossing an overpowered storm spell up and ahead. She wasn't the only one, that spellglow from Caitlín, that one was probably Cynfelyn — the spells streaked up above their heads for a moment, but the angle they were rising at quickly had them falling behind. The lavabombs passed a moment later, close enough Beth could hear the whistling of wind, she waited a second before glancing back over her shoulder. There was a big cloud of steam above and behind them now, most of the lavabombs aimed at the plane knocked off-course, the shield team already moving to intercept the ones that got through, noticeably darkened from getting blasted by water.

Ha, she had timed that correctly! A little impressed with herself, honestly, aiming spells at speed was hard...

The air turning choppy, the broom vibrating and twitching in her hands, there was a low, deep thrum echoing in her chest, like a constant shiver spanging through her — that would be the plane. Beth glanced over her shoulder, saw it coming up a short distance behind and below her, only a few dozen metres behind at this point, she quick sped up a little to match it. The thing was surprisingly large from close up, easily thirty metres nose to tail and wingtip to wingtip. The part people could actually walk around in was narrower, maybe only five metres or so? But still, the big damn metal thing seemed like it should be too big to fly, but she guessed that was what the huge noisy jet engines were for. Beth wasn't used to planes — the first one she'd ever been on was the one that'd taken her down to the Congo nearly two years ago, which she knew had been much larger than this, and only a couple others since, all smaller planes related to the flight test programme — so it still kind of took her aback how bloody huge the things were.

Distracted watching the thing coast along behind her, she twitched a little at Luke's voice on the radio. "Beta-Green, this is Green-Spear. Your full escort is here, keep on course and we'll get you there."

"Copy that." Beth happened to be looking at the time, spotted one of the little figures through the windows at the front wave up at them. "I'm told eight minutes to delivery."

Eight minutes? Command had told them twelve — about ten now, knocking off the time it'd taken the carrier to catch up. Their targets must have moved further into range since their last update...

Their breather was very brief, a moment later a dozen lavabombs were streaking in at the carrier, and then another dozen, and more and more and more, bombardments from multiple spaceships trying to shoot down the carrier. The aliens couldn't possibly know what they were doing (it wasn't a trick they'd used before), but she'd guess all of their landings being nuked simultaneously had probably made them understandably infuriated and/or wary — and it was hardly as though these fuckers needed an excuse to kill people anyway. Thankfully, the cloud of brooms swirling around the plane were more than enough to keep every angle covered. Beth quickly realised it was unexpectedly easy to prevent the lavabombs from getting anywhere near the carrier, she didn't need to destroy them, or even redirect them that far. She slipped up another few dozen metres, flying ahead of and above the carrier, and would just nudge the bombs a little, banishing or summoning charms, levitation and wind spells. As fast as the carrier was moving, all she had to do was slow them down for a second and they'd end up passing well behind the plane, only a few degrees extra inclination enough for the carrier to slip past.

After a minute she recommended the gunners hold their fire — they could blow them pretty easily, but the rain of superheated rock that resulted could do pretty serious damage to the plane anyway, the shield team forced to keep an eye on that — the fliers taking places in a ring over the carrier, casting spell after spell after spell after spell, countless balls of burning rock, the air screaming as they passed, nudged aside down to the ocean below, the spellwork rapid but easy. Beth was hardly even breaking a sweat, she could keep this up forever...

"Beta-Green, fighter launch detected, eight rocks bearing on your position. Three minutes to contact."

Beth quick checked her watch — if the pilot had the time to delivery right, the fighters would get here two minutes before the bombs would be sent. That was just perfect.

"One and three: stay with the carrier; gunners ready dust balls and take targets of opportunity, check friendly fire. Two and four: happy hunting."

At the orders, Beth grimaced. Luke was keeping the teams that were short a broom on the carrier, which she guessed made sense, but four brooms against eight rocks were pretty shite odds. They only had to survive two minutes, but still. "Caitlín, try to pull them away from the carrier. Don't stop moving — apparate if you're boxed in."

The bombardment from above didn't let up, Beth and the others staying on covering the plane. If anything, the lava bombs were only getting thicker, coming from all directions — they were under the fleet now, one of the tube-shaped ones almost directly overhead, a spiral-shell one just over there, a constant stream of smoke stitched between them and the spaceships. But even with the increase in fire, it wasn't too hard to keep up, Beth weaving back and forth in her arc of the circle, little nudges to push them off course, even with her sound-muffling charm the vibration from the engines and turbulence and the hissing of superheated air starting to give her a headache—

And then, abruptly, the bombs stopped, the air above them clear.

"Left!"

Beth reacted to the shout over the radio without thinking, her wand jabbing ahead, "Chấn-âm!" The spell was colourless, spreading out in shimmery waves, like a heat haze, down and to her left. Just as the plane was catching up, the shimmer a cloud to its side, a droning low whistle cut through her muffling charm, and a group of their funny rocky fighter ships were zipping by — passing in a blink, impossibly fast, Beth's wand clacking against the ceramic as she scrambled to steady her broom against the turbulence in their wake. They'd shot out a cloud of their smaller lavabombs on the way, but Beth's spell jolted them this way and that, flinging them off course, the rest blown out of the way or caught on shields—

That wasn't her problem, she immediately yanked the broom into a banking turn, up and to the right, rotating to the side against their momentum. She could see the ships ahead, the eight dark blobs curling around, half of them angling up and the others continuing on...curving around to come at the plane from behind. "We're going back low!" Beth turned back forward and sped up a little bit to partly close the distance her turn had lost, repeatedly glancing over her shoulder, watching the four rocks curl around...

"Understood. Elliot, we'll wait for them to come around, and cut across—"

"I'm going to apparate back to them," Beth told Reese over the radio, too loud in here. "Come out shooting, behind and up."

"I'm ready when you are."

"I'm going to try to keep on them, be ready for a lot of apparating and crazy flying."

She was pretty sure she heard Reese curse to himself through the noise leaking into their bubble.

The rocks behind had finished their turn, suddenly jolting ahead, the acceleration these things could get was absurd. A glance, the other four tiny ahead and up, they were probably coordinating to slash across the carrier at the same time, trying to split the defenders. Beth kept with the plane — a bit behind it, the air noticeably smokey with exhaust, but thankfully the bubble kept it out — glancing back, trying to judge distance by eye. Not yet...not yet...not yet...

...now! She cut off the flight spell, turning in place as their momentum carried them along, "Ulcīscere!" a wide swirl of dark red quickly dropping behind her, dug down on the foot posts as the handle came back forward, disapparating—

—the second the tight black of apparation space released her she immediately leaned hard on the flight spells, the broom jolting forward even as Reese opened up, the indecipherable rattle of machinegun-fire echoing in her head and vibrating up the broom shaft. She heard a high whoop, glanced over her shoulder, an arc of burning impacts stitched across one of the rocks, slowing and wiggling in flight. Two of the rocks blasted past them (far faster than her broom), another jolting up and away from the gunfire — and then immediately spinning back around to point its nose at them. Beth cut back and yanked the handle up and to the side, slowing and arcing up, putting the damaged ship between them in a blink, only metres away, before it could try to use its gravity shite on her her wand was in her hand and slashing across, then immediately ending in a flourish, "Akropoli!" a silvery arc appearing in front of them to intercept a stream of lavabombs even as her vanishing curse bisected the first rock, the uneven halves each pulled into a wild tumble.

Beth sped up, leaning hard into it, the wind itching at her eyes even with the bubble intact, aimed at the plane far ahead — they'd lost a lot of distance jumping back and slowing down. She heard the deep whistle, a shout from Reese, braked hard and jinked to the side and down, lavabombs streaking over her head followed a second later by the surviving rock, streaking by in a blink. Far up ahead she saw one of the rocks was slipping sideways next to the plane, constantly spitting out lavabombs, the funny gravity shields covering it from return fire—

"Grenade in three!" She felt Reese's weight shifting, held the broom steady and accelerated, squinting, trying to place the positions of the flyers up there... "One!" She disapparated—

—appearing above and behind the rock pacing the plane. After a short delay, there was a scream of protesting air and a streak of fire, just for a blink before slamming into the rear of the alien ship and exploding with the force of an overpowered incendiary curse, splintering the rocky material and sending burning bits of debris off in all directions (quickly falling behind due to drag). Beth followed up with her own piercing curse, aiming for the hole Reese had burned into it, and the wounded ship was struck from multiple angles simultaneously, pummelled out of shape and cracking into pieces, dropping and falling behind...

"Confirm three rocks dead, one minute to delivery."

Beth scanned around, looking for where the bloody things were— There, a pair of dark blots against the sky, and another pair, and a fifth. Not moving in to attack at the moment, seemingly keeping their distance for now. If Beth had to guess, they'd surprised them by knocking three of them out in a matter of seconds. Well, fucking good — surprise was the name of the game today.

"Fire incoming — keep eyes on the rocks." She glanced up, there were lavabombs coming in, but she ignore them — the shield team and their half-strength fire teams could handle those — kept scanning around the sky, looking for the rocks all around...

"They're splitting up," she realised. "Bet they circle in just as the bombs are passing."

"Copy that. Need shields on the belly, Spencer, watch for—"

Tuning out the chatter, Beth slipped a bit to the side, letting a little distance open up. She concentrated for a second, covered them with the special heat-neutralising paling — less efficient in mid-air and at this speed, but it should be good enough to at least partly hide them. "I'm tracking this one," she said to Reese, pointing at one of the rocks, from the look of it zeroing in to slash up at the plane from behind and to the right. "I'm going to burn it, be ready to chase after one coming the other way."

Instead of answering aloud, Reese just reached forward to clap her on the back, some kind of clicking of equipment going on back there.

The big, heavy lava bombs were reaching the plane now, volleys from multiple directions at once, but they were all turned aside or— Beth twitched at a sudden bright flash of light from above, her broom listing for a blink before she wrenched it back into control. Her neck arching to the side, she spotted a ball of blue and orange fire, scattered fragments streaking away from the epicentre. Then there was another flash, one of the tube-shaped ships vanishing in light and fire and dust — that would be Beta-Red.

With a bit of experimenting, they'd learned that enchantments didn't work in space past a certain point, the exact ceiling depending on how much magic the thing in question needed to work. But magic still had a presence past that — it was simply too sparse for an enchantment to pull in quickly enough to function. For most things, the distinction didn't really matter, and personal transport magics like portkeys were dependent on a global coordinate system. The fact that there was magic up in orbit was mostly irrelevant.

Unless, of course, you wanted to teleport something straight up a couple dozen miles. Something like, say, a nuclear fucking warhead.

Turns out? The alien ships didn't have anti-transport wards. Funny, that.

The deep drone of a whistle, the rocks were moving in. The one Beth was eyeing zipping up at the plane, she adjusted her angle a bit and tipped into a dive, cutting in ahead of the ship around... "Iratos!" The fiendfyre bloomed out away from her in a cloud, her forward motion stretching it into a sort of teardrop — the rock tried to jink out of the way, but it reacted too late, flying right through the fires.

They didn't have to worry about that one now, fiendfyre worked just fine on their funny living spaceships — something that big and solid wouldn't die instantly, but it wasn't a threat anymore. Beth turned back up toward the plane, jolting ahead. Puffs of shimmering black smoke had appeared around all sides of the plane since last she'd checked — those would be dust balls, some alchemical thing designed to dissolve apart their lava bombs somehow — the other ships were criss-crossing the plane, their shots uselessly poofing into nothing in the black. One suddenly veered off at an unnaturally-sharp angle — the way these things seemed to just ignore inertia was still wild — another drifting alongside the plane. The plane jolted, lurching and rolling to the side — that one was using its gravity thing to pull at the plane! Beth dug in to apparate, and—

And the ship was suddenly pelted with enchanted bullets from one side and a burst of eerie black lightning from the other — never mind.

There was another scream of protesting air as Reese fired a grenade at one of the rocks, having strafed the plane to come back in their general direction, the grenade curving in flight to follow it. (The enchantments they put in those now really were neat shite.) The pilot saw it coming, though, the grenade snatched out of the air with a shield, the ship spinning in place — abruptly pacing them from like a hundred metres away, again just ignoring inertia — the front end glowing orange—

"Package one delivered."

—Beth apparated behind it before it could fire, after a second Reese started firing, a little wild from the apparation. The broom shuddered under her, lurching toward the rock — it'd grabbed onto them with that weird gravity-manipulating magic of theirs — her wand retreating back into her holster so she could use both hands, she spun the broom away from the rock and leaned hard into the acceleration spells, slaloming back and forth. She could feel the thing struggle to hold onto them, the shear pinching at her skin like friction burn, Reese was keeping a steady stream off fire on it, she glanced over her shoulder, most of the bullets sucked up by its gravity shields but a few slipping through to blast pockmarks into its rocky surface. Not doing much damage, but the whole point was to keep the rocks off the plane, as long as they held it here they were doing their job...

"Package two delivered."

Its front end was coming around at them, starting to glow, Beth tipped the broom at a shallow angle, swinging in a wild orbit around the ship, still slaloming back and forth in random directions, watching over her shoulder, whenever she saw a glow of fire she'd swing around against its turn, at unpredictable angles so it couldn't trap her, Reese keeping up a withering barrage of enchanted bullets, preventing the alien from getting a second gravity thing on them or opening up with all of its guns — the gravity shields would suck up their lavabombs too — now and then a burst against the ship's hull carving out a chunk of its rock surface, hand-sized flecks of debris yanked back behind them in a blink from drag, the whole time Reese keeping up an almost unbroken shout of anger and defiance, occasionally screaming curses and insults—

"Package three delivered."

Beth was again twitching out of the guns when the ship was abruptly backlit with an explosion of greenish-orange fire, one of the grenades, the tether holding them released with a hard jolt, the ship shuddering and slowing. It wasn't out, though, Beth checked its motion with a quick glance, her wand dropping into her hand, she disapparated to appear right above the ship's cockpit. A single Lance of Modestus transmitted through the translucent barrier and tore apart the pilot's chest into mangled black mulch — the ship immediately listed, tipping into an uncontrolled spiral, quickly falling behind.

"Thanks for the assist," Reese said over the radio. Beth glanced up, spotting another broom not far away. Too far to make out much detail, but by the small, slight figure of the pilot, topped by a bright orange smear, that must be Caitlín and Elliot.

She'd guessed right, Elliot's voice coming a second later. "Couldn't let the princess get shot down, could we? Bill would never let us hear the end of it."

Beth rolled her eyes, but didn't respond. They'd fallen rather far behind the plane, surprisingly small in the distance — only being followed by one rock now, by the look of it, a second still visible not far below, a tumbling ruined wreck, not bad. She leaned hard into the acceleration spells for a moment before apparating to catch up—

"Package four delivered. Beta-Green confirm all packages armed and delivered."

"Copy, Beta-Green. Ringing doorbell, stand by."

They were catching up now — the cloud of brooms around the plane was slightly smaller than before, they must have lost a few people when she wasn't paying attention. The plane tipped, started dropping under her, Beth curved to follow it. There were more colourful glowing balls of nuclear fire overhead, space ships incinerated and crumbled to fragments, some already burning from reentry, streaks of fire through the blue—

Shields appeared in the air, the rock was taking potshots at them, keeping its distance. Bastard learned his lesson, apparently. One broom apparated over there, but the ship mostly managed to cover itself with its shields, zipping up and around out of the way, still tossing lavabombs at them—

There was a sudden flash of light, illuminating the clouds blue and white and orange — only seen indirectly, their downward motion putting the source behind her. She glanced up and back over her shoulder, a couple balls of glowing blue-orange-green where cylindrical ships had been before, one of the bigger shell-looking ones half-pulverised and split apart. The huge, spiral-shaped one had several holes rent through it, plumes of burning debris and dust flung out like little fiery geysers, the central ball and the long curling arms ponderously splitting apart into pieces—

"All teams advised: Mother-One destroyed. Repeat, confirm kill on Mother-One." There was victorious shouting and taunts and insults on her troop's and Beta-Green's channel, Beth tuned it out as well as she could, keeping an ear on the command channel. "Beta-Blue, Beta-Orange, stay on target, two minutes to delivery. All other teams, begin retreat. Shield and sword teams, stay on your carriers, watch for debris. See you at home."

Partway through the announcement and series of orders, their plane tipped into a steeper dive — opening up more distance from the shattered spaceships beginning to fall to the earth, giving the broom flyers more time to respond to any fragments that might threaten the plane — one wing tipping up a little to pull into a gentle turn, beginning the arc back the way they'd come. Beth angled down to follow them, occasionally glancing back at the obliterated alien fleet above and all around — another series of explosions flashed eye-piercingly bright, shockwaves rippling through the growing debris cloud, some of the remaining ships incinerated...

As fragments burned in streaks through the sky, the screaming engines of the plane reverberating through her and the wind droning against the broom's protective air bubble, celebratory chatter loud and overlapping on the radio, Beth could feel the ecstatic grin pulling at her face, her chest light and bubbling with unvoiced laughter.

And that's the end of the second section, woo. I'm going to jump to The Good War for a couple chapters, and then we'll come back to start right in on the third section. Bye, then.