AN: Edited by Gremlin Jack, perfect_shade and Nla Eid
There's the main Chapter 22, then the Chapter 22's extra (separate from the main chapter because I didn't think it would fit well), and a non-canon spinoff story.
As for the two islands that will be mentioned, I would recommend looking them up in Google Map to understand just how close they are to the mainland.
Chapter 22:
1951, June 21st, Hawaii:
It was relaxing being able to avoid public attention for a few days. Exploring the wilderness and seeing the terrain change between dry shrubs, grassy, coniferous, bamboos and tropical, sometimes by just hiking (or flying) from one mountain range to another one.
We did get close to an active volcano. Visha found it exciting, but I was on the edge about that. You can always outwit a less competent mage. You can't outwit mother nature acting on the laws of physics and probability to burn you alive.
Of course, eventually word spread of the two women that were just trying to have fun. We did get an unusual invitation, from the Pearl Harbor base commander, who had offered us a tour of the base. It felt a bit weird, knowing what could've happened to it. But as long as I keep my mouth shut about any references to the Pearl Harbor attack in my previous world, I wouldn't mind this sightseeing.
"What do you think of the base?" Lieutenant General Walter Campbell asked as we concluded the tour.
"It seems a bit empty for a place of this size." Visha looked at an empty hanger.
"Ah, we had been drawing down forces here."
"Why?" I raised my eyebrow. "Hawaii is strategically important for supporting the Akinese and other Pacific countries to contain the CSR and Russy Confederation, and communist rebels that they are backing."
"With the Philippines getting their independence, the lack of any major rival powers in the Pacific, and President Taft's commitment to isolationism, there has been pressure from the higher ups on drawing down the military forces in Hawaii." Campbell shrugged. "Besides, it's not my decision. With the defense budget cuts Congress passed, something had to go."
"That's a shame considering that the communists aren't showing any signs of slowing down their involvement with the European colonies."
"I don't think it would be likely that they would provoke the Unified States. That would be foolish of them to push our President to drop isolationism, and they already saw what happened in the Bharatian War when we got involved."
Ah, there it is. Nascent American world policing. Having experienced the amount of material they could throw first-hand, I can attest to the weight of such implicit threats. "Do you have any plans to deal with mage infiltrators? They would know that any force buildup for operations in the Pacific of Southeast Asia will be done in Hawaii."
"We would see their merchant ships coming from a long distance, and know how to deal with them based on the tactics used by the Albish ships that successfully fought off their mages."
I nodded, "But they would have also learned from that, and would be seeking another way to utilize their mages."
"How do you think they would perform differently?" Campbell asked with a curious look.
"Let's assume that their frigate construction is just a cover. What could they potentially build instead to surprise us?"
"Submarines?" Visha interjected. "Small and relatively affordable compared to trying to build something larger than a frigate. But where would they get the schematics to build one?"
"Maybe from the Rus." Campbell shrugged. "We know they had submarines before the Second Europan War. They weren't very good at using them and took high losses from the Akinese Navy based on my Navy counterparts who bragged about how easily we could find them. After the war, all of the surviving Rus submarines appeared to have been mothballed."
"If the CSR does have submarines, deploying mages from them would allow them to infiltrate Hawaii and plan out their attacks on Pearl Harbor." I responded. "After all, there is a lot of wilderness on the islands that would allow them to hide in. We had been hiking throughout the island and probably could have sustained ourselves from hunting and gathering food."
"You're suggesting having constant anti-submarine patrols around the islands when there's no evidence of them using the submarines?" Campbell asked to which I shrugged in reply. "Well, it's a thought. But unless the communists have foreign advisors to show them how to improve the Rus submarine designs and competently use them in operations, I'm not too concerned."
It's this sort of lax attitude that led to Pearl Harbor being bombed in my first life, and I have no intention of letting the CSR score a blow just as bad, if not worse. "What if there could be permanently installed listening stations and sensors? Even when submarines are in quiet operation, they will still end up making noise at some point, especially when they need to recharge their batteries. With enough sensors, you could triangulate their position to send out ships or anti-submarine planes to investigate. That would help cut down the number of anti-submarine assets and their frequency of their operation."
"Interesting." Campbell retrieved a small notebook and scribbled something in it. "I'll bring that up with my superior, but there's no guarantee that they would be willing to adopt that idea."
1951, June 26th, Awa Province, Shikoku Island, Akitsushima Dominion:
Visha and I had finished a long hike through the woods. Flying would have been so much easier, but both of us agreed on walking through nature.
"There's a lot of people at that soba noodle stand." Visha pointed.
"Not there for food or drinks, it looks like they have a TV or radio." I said. "Now I'm curious about what is going on."
There was the recent news about Malagasy narrowly voting for independence, which was immediately followed by their local government requesting a trade deal with OZEV and to join the existing alliances between Germania, South Bharat and Akitsushima Dominion.
We got closer and it became apparent what it was. A radio played a broadcast of the Emperor announcing the independence and the formation of the Formosa Republic, although the Akitsushima Dominion would still have access to military bases and ports on that republic's islands. I provided a translation of what the Emperor was saying so Visha could follow along, although I struggled with understanding the Emperor's use of the Classical Akinese language. Reminds me of Emperor Hirohito's WW2 surrender speech that confused many people.
There had been rumblings of discontent in the Formosa Islands and crackdowns on suspected communists that had been branding themselves as pro-independence. Now that the Emperor had yanked the rug from underneath them, it would likely put an end to the communism threat on that island while ensuring that the Akinese can continue to use the island as a forward outpost against the CSR.
Time seemed to fly by as all of us remained glued to the radio to the end of the Emperor's speech.
As the locals broke into separate discussions regarding the speech, the radio broadcast switched to a news about an announcement from the CSR. They stated that they were tracking three Akinese high altitude photoreconnisance jets approaching their airspace and issued a warning for Akitsushima Dominion to have the jets turn around, or they will be shot down. No response from the Akinese government.
Of course the government in Germania asked the Akinese to do the spying for them, and gave them the jets to do so.
"I don't think the CSR has any jets of their own to intercept the three Akinese jets." Visha said. "Besides, they previously hadn't been able to stop the reconnaissance planes."
"There has to be a reason why the CSR keeps issuing the same boilerplate warning." I rubbed my chin.
"So if it isn't an empty threat, what could they have up their sleeve?"
"I have no idea, but I guess we'll find out real soon if the CSR is simply puffing up their chest again, or wants to demonstrate something to the world."
1951, June 26th, evening in Awa Province at a restaurant:
"Tanya, how much have you eaten? This is the third time you ordered something." Visha spoke with a tone of concern.
Look, I haven't had good Japanese food for decades other than that one meal with the Akinese ambassador.
"I'm just hungry." I spoke while still chewing on my food.
There was commotion at the bar and people started gathering around it. Visha went over to take a peek while I continued scarfing down food, and then she grabbed me by the arm.
"Tanya, you need to see this."
"Can't it wait until later?"
"Tanya!"
Her insistent tone had me getting up to follow her. And when I saw the TV, I realized it was far worse than I had expected.
Two Akinese photoreconnisance planes were shot down over CSR's territory. If any of those were captured mostly intact, then the Akis just handed jet plane technology on a silver platter to the communists.
A single surviving plane made it to the newly independent Formosa Republic's Kinmen Shangyi Airport while under hot pursuit from communist aircraft and taking fire from anti-aircraft artillery. The communist aircraft only turned around when they were less than a kilometer from Kinmen Island, which is only several kilometers from the Chinese Soviet Republic's mainland.
The photo of it showed just how much of a wreck it was. I was shocked that the plane managed to not explode into a fireball or crash far earlier. Missing body panels, holes in the other panels, parts of the wings were missing, the canopy was completely broken, and it looked like the entire plane's fuselage had been bent. And there was an unexploded missile that was sticking out from the side of the fuselage.
Damn commies, they were waiting for the perfect opportunity to spring an ambush and try to catch a live specimen.
The pilot, Captain Kaname Abe, passed away from his severe injuries shortly after the emergency landing. Lieutenant Zenji Harada remains in critical condition. The Akinese Imperial Air Force issued a statement that they are still analyzing the voice recorder and other information collected by the brave crew. There is still no update on the fate of the two other reconnaissance planes.
"How did the jet plane end up being slow enough to be chased down by propeller driven planes?" Visha asked.
"I think we're probably going to have to wait until tomorrow morning for more details." I sighed, looking at the remnants of my meal that don't seem that appetizing anymore. "I don't feel like finishing my dinner now…"
1951, June 27th, off the coast of Fukue Island,in the East Jiuzhou Sea:
Visha and I were exploring a relatively deep part of the area using our oxygen spells, artificially generated light and orb recording. We also needed body reinforcement spells to reduce the severity of the water pressure on us in order to avoid the diver's bends when we return to the surface. It was quite an experience of swimming through schools of fish, coming in contact with an octopus that was just as curious of us as we were of it, and watching the marine life on the bottom of the ocean floor.
We were so preoccupied with messing with a dense school of fish that we found ourselves getting caught up in a fishing net. Visha used a voice spell to ask if we should cut through the net. I wasn't too interested in messing with the fishermen's livelihood, especially after I asked her how much mana she had and she said it was probably enough for about another half an hour underwater.
I do need to make a mental note of campaigning for less damaging fishing practices and international regulations on fishing, because there will be disputes between countries over fishing rights when the fish stocks start dwindling. At least we could use magic blades to cut up the net to escape. Not so much for dolphins, sea turtles, or other marine life that was not supposed to be in the fishing net.
After we were dragged up to the surface, the fishermen on their trawler were initially confused, and scrambled to get us out when they realized we were in the net.
I didn't mind the boat ride back to the port. It was enjoyable to talk to some common folks about their life and their sea stories. They also offered us to stay at their place for the night. Visha was more than happy to take on that offer as she wanted to write about Akinese cooking, especially when the fishermen said they were willing to show a few different ways of how they prepare seafood dishes.
As a coast guard ship sailed past us, Visha spoke up. "Tomorrow morning, we should visit the reefs. No more deep sea diving."
"That sounds like a good idea. I also can't wait to take a shower so we don't smell like fish."
1951, June 29th, afternoon in Hizen Province:
Upon arriving in the city of Sasebo to shop at the seafood market for Visha to try cooking some of the local dishes, we once again found a mob of people gathered around a TV at an open air restaurant. It quickly became apparent to us that tensions had further escalated between the CSR and Akitsushima Dominion. The communists had provided two footage tapes to the Akinese government for distribution to the news broadcasting.
The first one was a recon plane that had performed an emergency landing at an airfield, with a very dead person in the seat behind the pilot. The communists used a megaphone to demand the pilot to step out of the plane. When they got no response, the soldiers swarmed the plane to force open the cockpit. That was when the pilot initiated the plane's self-destruct feature, which instantly ended the footage.
The third one was from Chairman Zhang Wentian. He was seated at a plain looking wooden table and two maps hanging on the whitewashed wall behind him. No frills. He also looked like he did not have much sleep for the past few days.
In light of the recent airspace incursions that our protests had gone unanswered, the usage of so-called "Formosa Republic" as a proxy forward military outpost, the Akinese using their photoreconnisance planes to provide information to the Germanians on which locations to later bomb, and Germania seeking to end our existence with nuclear weapons, which could be stationed on the Kinmen and Matsu Islands that are only kilometers from our homeland, the Chinese Soviet Republic's Executive Council and People's Assembly have convened to issue an ultimatum to the Akitsushima Dominion to safeguard the existence of our people.
We demand that the Formosa Islands be fully demilitarized within a week, which that time frame can be negotiated if the Akinese shows good faith in demilitarizing the islands.
The alternative is that Germania and Akitsushima Dominion provides us a guarantee that the nuclear weapons will only be used in a purely defensive role of their homelands, rather than as a heavy axe to cut unwanted grass or kill insects in a rice or wheat field. Although the Allied Kingdom and Germania previously demonstrated their dishonesty with sinking ships right as we had agreed on handing them back to the Albish, perhaps Germania can show that they are willing to uphold an agreement to not massacre our people.
The second alternative is that we prepare to neutralize the threat to our people, by subjecting the Kinmen and Matsu Islands to artillery bombardment until they have zero capacity to threaten us.
"Did they just threaten to declare war?" Visha looked on with concern as the news shifted to the Akinese government's own statement to the public.
"I think they're trying to avoid an all-out war by narrowing the scope of their attacks and seemingly only limiting themselves to artillery fire."
"Would that be enough justification for Germania to use nuclear weapons?"
"Depends if the Chancellor or the President ends up winning that argument." I rubbed my forehead in agony. "I can't believe how everything promptly fell apart after stepping out of office. How hard was it for them to at least just maintain the status quo instead of rocking the boat until it flipped over?!"
Curse you Being X!
1951, June 30th:
The Akinese Imperial Navy was put on high alert with the Kinmen and Matsu Islands being threatened with bombardment from regular and railway artillery guns, the CSR sending their half a dozen slow moving frigates towards the two islands as a show of force and the discovery of CSR having manually guided anti-air missiles to bring down jets. Apparently the memories of the damaged Albish ships pulling into their ports after being attacked by the CSR mages back in the Bharatian War was still fresh on people's minds.
The fuel to the fire was when the idiotic President Ernst just had to poke the dragon. By announcing that with the demonstration of the anti-air missiles, nuclear strategic bombers are now obsolete.
Instead, he would seek to emphasize the development of long range, high speed nuclear missiles to bypass anti-air defenses. Therefore, there was no need to reduce Kinmen and Matsu Islands to craters or invade the Formosa Republic if he could launch missiles from hundreds of kilometers away to "safely wipe out communism".
The CSR government's only public statement was accusing Germania of giving them reasons to be forced into fighting for their survival.
There was also the public dispute between Germania Air Force and President Ernst, as the air force argued that they needed better jets with missiles and missile countermeasure capabilities, while President Ernst pushed back, reiterating that combat aircraft are obsolete.
"So much for relaxing." Visha groaned as we walked away from the TV. "Why does trouble keep following us?"
Don't tell me that Being X is at it again.
"I don't know either. Maybe… Maybe we could go to South Bharat instead of sticking around here."
"And then somehow we'll be at the center of another war between North and South Bharats?"
"At least we would be together this time instead of me running off for months."
Visha lightly pushed me. "Oh Tanya, always ready for more action."
"In all seriousness, I do want to just have a relaxing time. I just don't understand why that's so hard to accomplish."
She leaned in close, next to my ear. "It might be because you just can't stop working. Always needing to do something."
I'm not sure how she got that idea. Sure, I do occasionally work long hours, but all of that was towards the goal of retiring. Except I can't seem to enjoy my retirement because of all of these ongoing events that we keep getting dragged into.
Somewhere in Akitsushima Dominion:
Three men in regular civilian clothing were seated around a table in a small, windowless room. There were no papers on the table.
Imperial Army General Kenji Shiizaki cleared his throat to begin the discussion. "The Emperor has rejected the Climb Mount Niitaka operation. He didn't even tell us to delay it or adjust it, but outright said it was unacceptable. Even after the Germanian President sent our Emperor a telegram assuring him that in the event of a war with the CSR, the President would push to have nuclear weapons dropped on the communists."
"And that cowardly Emperor allowed the CSR to continue to flex their power." Admiral Soemu Toyoda clenched his hands "To allow them to continue to flip the colonies to them by using the rebels as puppets? To then use those colonies to deny us the sea lanes throughout Southeast Asia and be separated from South Bharat for the next war? We could make the CSR surrender rapidly in the face of our military victories and the Germanian nuclear weapons."
"He also chose to let the CSR freely bombard two of our islands with their artillery guns. I know he declared them as part of the Formosa Republic, but I refuse to recognize that so-called 'independent country' when it should still be our direct colony." Imperial Airforce General Masataka Hatanaka added in while crushing his cigarette into the ashtray. "He has no honor. And the Prime Minister is all too happy to push for an investigation into us over the loss of the reconnaissance planes with the Emperor's tacit support, when he should be mobilizing our nation for an all-out war. There is no way the communists can resist us with the Germanians flattening entire cities and army formations."
"I never thought there would be a day where all three of us can agree on something, and that was only possible with the Emperor's incompetence uniting us, and his equally incompetent advisors and ministers. It's time that we proceed with our alternative operation." Shiizaki said. "My forces are ready to proceed."
"Should we wait for him to stumble into another controversial blunder so we can rally more supporters?" Hatanaka spoke with a edge of concern in his voice. "My contacts in the Kenpeitai are deeply divided as of now. If we act now, we can't guarantee having their support."
"He's plotting against us." Shiizaki spat. "The longer we wait, the more power his clique will pull from us. He had let the Imperial Army be humiliated after their defeat by the Russy Confederation. Then he pulled the Imperial Navy back home instead of allowing them to retake Josen. After splitting the Imperial Airforce from the Imperial Army to further weaken the army, he is now allowing the Imperial Airforce to be embarrassed with the shoot down of the three reconnaissance aircraft without allowing us to regain honor by hitting back at the CSR with decisive preemptive strikes on their ports, shipyards, airfields and coastal artillery guns.
"And he gave away our last remaining colony." Toyoda added. "Now the CSR is trying to take it over by first pressuring us to strip it bare of any defenses."
"When should we initiate our alternate operation?" Hatanaka asked.
"If we can at least guarantee that the Kenpeitai will be busy infighting instead of opposing us, that would be acceptable. Not ideal, but we work with what we have available." Shiizaki said. "I'll also need to finalize my plans to allocate some of my forces to keep an eye on the Germanians to ensure that they don't interfere with our plans, as it appears the Germanian President still have pacifists that oppose him."
"You want to attack the Germanians? That is madness!"
"No, but they won't make their move when we have checkpoints in front of them. If the Germanian government wants them to intervene against us, then we can make the argument that the Emperor is just a puppet for the Germanians and rally our population."
AN for Chapter 22:
Reference to the Formosa Island crisis: watch?v=SWzzC9gOFdo
Reference to the permanent submarine detection system: wiki/SOSUS
After WW2, the US significantly cut their military budget, which left their military very unprepared for the outbreak of the Korean War: wiki/Korean_War#United_States'_response_(July_1950)
Reference to bycatch: wiki/Bycatch
Reference to the attempted coup against the Emperor: wiki/Ky_incident
wiki/Interservice_rivalry#Japan
The "Kenpeitai" was the secret police of Japan: wiki/Kenpeitai
The "decisive battle" doctrine that Japan relied on: wiki/Kantai_Kessen
As for the significance of the phrase "Climb Mount Niitaka", that was the code word to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Chapter 22's extra, Into the fire
AN: Edited by Gremlin Jack, perfect_shade and Nla Eid
I decided to have this separate from the main Chapter 22 as it didn't seem to fit well in the middle of that chapter.
DCS videos that were some of my inspiration sources and setting the tone:
watch?v=1-ioBm1XOGU
watch?v=RYezgMj7IJw
The music "Thirteen Senses - Into The Fire" was what I had playing in my mind while I was writing the next scene:
watch?v=mX9L8IuiwJA
1951, June 26th, somewhere over the CSR:
"It's a bit cloudy below, hopefully that doesn't interfere with your photos too much." Captain Kaname Abe said as he leveled the plane's altitude.
"Nothing we can do about it. Flying below those clouds would put us in range of their propeller fighter planes that keep trying to climb up to us. The damn planes that they keep sending up is my biggest annoyance as they're cluttering up my photos." Lieutenant Zenji Harada responded as he fiddled with the camera controls. "Not that they can catch us even if we are at the same altitude."
"And if they do catch us, how much can your shielding spell stop?"
"Maybe one or two shells, and then the rest will just slice through us. I'd rather not try to use magic shielding when we should just be outrunning any threats."
Some time passed as Zenji Harada used magic spells to enhance a few of the photos.
Abe called out, "I see two planes coming up through the clouds on an intercept course towards us."
"Give me a second, I need to pull out the plane identification book." Harada responded as he started flipping through a book.
"Can you get an altitude check on those as well?"
"On it."
A few seconds passed and Harada, even more confused, tapped on a page in the book. "Those are Rus transport planes, and they're flying at a far higher altitude than what those plane models were known to be able to reach. These must be new planes or they had modified them for something."
"Unless those transport planes can somehow reach 14,000 meters altitude, I'm not concerned. I'm going to radio the other planes to give them a heads up about this though."
The radio hissed with static as Abe switched through the channels.
"Alright… Now I'm concerned."
"They're also jamming magic communications!" Harada shouted.
"I'm turning back home right now. What are they doing?!" Abe barked as he banked hard left while pushing the two jet engines to maximum power.
Harada took photos of the transport planes and cursed.
"A mage team coming off of each transport plane, seven mages per team. Each team appears to have four mages carrying some sort of a box that is far larger than an adult. All of those mages appear to be wearing helmets, pressure suits and oxygen tanks. Definitely prepared for high altitude operations… What the… I detect some sort of a magic scan…"
"I'm going to lower our altitude for more air speed to get out of here!"
"Roger. Uh… Two high power magic spells are being broadcasted straight at us, I don't know what those spells are..."
"Any luck that we're getting a warning broadcasted with magic?" Abe asked as he tried announcing over the radio to warn the other pilots about their interception.
"There is, but with the intensity of the spells from those mages are ramping up. A flash from each box…" Haruna abruptly cut himself off and pressed up against the glass. "What the- Oh fuck, ROCKET LAUNCH! ROCKET LAUNCH!"
Abe cursed again as he started banking hard in one direction.
"Hostile 1 coming from 6'o clock, hostile 2 from 9'o clock! And the rocket… it's following us!"
"What? Are they being guided by something!?"
"I think so! Fuck, I need time to decipher the spells being broadcasted from those mages! I have never seen these before!" Haruna looked out the glass and his eyes widened, "Hostile 1 coming from 5 o'clock… Bank right! Bank right!"
The second missile flew past the plane, but it soon turned around to fly head-on towards the plane.
"Hostile 1 at 6 o'clock! Hostile 2 straight ahead!"
"I can see that! Diving!" Abe yelled as he inverted the plane and pulled hard on the stick, putting the plane into a steep dive while continuing to perform erratic maneuvers. The airspeed velocity indicator shot past the Vne (never exceed) red line and the engines' tachometers approached the red zone as the plane began to shake.
"Bank left! Bank left!"
The plane veered hard to the left just as the missile burned past them. Harada put up a shield spell as a preemptive measure, but instead the missile flew off into the distance.
"Hostile 1 is still on us at 4 o'clock! What are you doing? We need to stop diving or we'll eat the ground!" Harada yelled as the plane began to violently shake.
"I'm trying to stop the dive! It's not responding!" Abe yelled back as he struggled to pull on the stick. "I'm cutting engine power!" he yelled next, setting both engines to idle power by cutting fuel supply, pulling up hard, and then banking hard right while pushing the engines back to maximum power.
The missile overshot them and flew downward for a moment before veering upward to reengage. The plane and the missile engaged in rolling scissors for a moment, before Abe cut engine power to force the missile overshoot, and then dived again while ramping up engine power.
The missile soon circled around again for another attack run, but the rocket motor sputtered out and the missile plunged from the sky and towards the ground.
"Fuck! What the hell was that!?" Abe exclaimed as he looked out the windows to confirm that the missile was out by the sputtering smoke coming from it, while shakily hanging on the stick. "Mage guided rockets?
"Maybe? I've never seen anything like it!" Harada responded. "God damn it… alright, I'm detecting far less magic interference and radio jamming, but no one is responding to my comm spells."
Abe cursed for a moment before going back down to talk to the radio.
"What the hell…? Two of the recon planes haven't responded back…" Abe muttered as he switched to a different frequency. "Wait! I got something! Enaga Three, Enaga Two, do you read me?"
"Enaga Two?" The response was a bit choppy, but Abe was still able to make out the words. "My sensor operator is dead. I have a dead engine and the other one is barely running. I'm making an emergency landing. I'll see you in Yomi. Goodbye."
There was silence in the cockpit for several seconds.
"We're on our own." Abe sighed.
"All of our friends…" Harada trailed off.
"Just for how far did those things chase us?"
"Umm…" Harada grabbed a scrap of paper and started to write down some numbers while running his orb, "Based on our plane's speeds, how far away the missiles were when they opened fire on us, and how long the missiles were in the air to pursue us, the maximum range of those missiles is about 25 kilometers." The sensor operator replied, stunning his crewmate.
"...That's well out of range of any air-to-air rockets." Abe said after recovering, "Not that it matters because unguided rockets at that range are useless against mobile targets."
"Yeah. Though did you see how huge those things were? It's like they're just mostly filled with fuel to deal with fast moving aircraft."
"I did… though what if they originally designed those missiles to be fired from the ground?" Abe asked. "Takes a lot of fuel to bring something from at rest on the ground to outrunning a jet plane high up in the sky… Or maybe even a mage!"
Harada chewed on his crewmember's words before coming to an epiphany, "Wait! I just realized something – The only way they could have maintained such high power magic output while operating at extremely high altitude… is if they augmented their B or A tier mages and found a way for them to be boosted for a long duration instead of physically disintegrating within a few minutes of usage!"
He rounded on the pilot, "No mage can face-off against someone like that, it would be suicidal! Even if they didn't have missiles for the first shot engagement, to go up against mages that can shrug off everything you throw at it with their high power shielding, while they're continuously maneuvering at their maximum speed, and with return fire that will tear through your shields like paper, would just result in a pointless death. It would be like regular humans trying to fight a mage, or a mage going up against the chancellor! That mage would only lose when they get exhausted from slaughtering everyone!"
"What? I'm no mage but that sounds- wait… I think I see another transport plane off in the distance!"
"Shit." Harada pushed himself up the glass again to see, "We're probably already in range of their missile… Seven magic signatures! They're lighting up a scanning spell! Start evading now!"
"On it!" Abe yelled as he yanked on the stick to bank hard away from the transport plane.
"I'm detecting that they're trying to broadcast something to us." Harada said. "They're telling us to follow them to land at an airfield or they will shoot us down."
"Absolutely not!" Abe retorted.
"They're locking-on!" Harada called out as the plane shuddered from Abe pulling on the stick to point the nose upward. "We haven't fully recovered the altitude that we used up in that earlier engagement."
"I'm detecting their missile command spell. They've launched it! It's coming at us from 5 o'clock!"
"Can you see what commands they are sending to the missile?"
"I'm reading their commands right now…. It's unencrypted!"
"Can you send false commands to confuse the missile?"
"Even if it does work, it would give away that we can see their commands!"
"Then any suggestions of how to make the missile's 25 kilometers range run out?!"
Before Harada could say something, the missile suddenly started spiraling out of control.
"What's going on?" Abe asked. "Did we outrun it already?"
"They're trying to compensate for a possible mechanical failure with a massive number of magic spell commands. Don't get cocky yet." Harada replied as the missile regained some control to continue the pursuit.
Through the rear view mirror, Abe saw how the missile soared upwards instead of following his turn and overshooting. "Are they trying a High Yo-Yo against us?"
"I think so, that matches up with the missile commands!"
Abe slacken the control for the plane to pick up on airspeed while still turning.
"The missile is now diving straight at us!" Harada called out.
Abe then pulled on the stick for a tighter turn. The missile overshot and was sluggish in regaining altitude to remain on target.
"Any status on their control of that thing?"
"Shut up, I'm focusing on what their next moves are!"
Following another rolling scissors with Harada relaying the missile's intended move, Harada said. "They're pulling diagnostic data from it…. Strange, the data seems to have Rus language."
After a half a minute of maneuvering, the missile started spiraling increasingly out of control until parts of it ripped off, which the missile then plunged toward the ground. Both crew members looked at the debris falling out of the sky and let out a sigh of relief.
"Whoa… shit… I-I'm not exactly sure where we are now. I'm just going to point the aircraft east and hope we find international water soon." Abe said as he began regaining altitude. "Best hope that CSR didn't have any anti-air guns ready, because we are well within even their short range guns, and that's without their magical ammunition."
"They probably didn't expect us to make it this far. Just keep your eyes open." Harada replied. "I'll take some photos and try to match it up with the map."
The two crewmates were silent for a minute, both of them cooling down from the experience of very much nearly getting shot down. Eventually, it was Abe who spoke first:
"Hey… Remember when proximity fuses rockets were first introduced in the Second Europan War? How it has completely changed how aircraft and mages fight each other?" He spoke as he steadily pulled the plane up for altitude. "I think we just witnessed a new era of aerial combat… Planes will need their own guided missiles and missile countermeasures to match the CSR missile mage squads' range."
"That'll be tricky." Harada reluctantly replied, "I identified spells that were used for missile command – high powered, but they were seemingly broadcasted in the directions toward the missiles instead of us. Which tells me that they're using two mage for tracking us and the other one to guide the missile. I also noticed they were using two separate tracking spells. One for a wide area scan to have situation awareness, and the other one to precisely track us. The only reason I can think of them using three mages is because their augmentation or orb isn't good enough to allow a single mage to handle area scanning, target tracking and missile guidance simultaneously. Putting that setup in a plane… putting three mages in a plane, I think it'll be done some other way instead."
Neither one of the crewmembers spoke for a while after that. But after a few minutes of relative calm, Harada looked up from his map. "Alright, I got good news and bad news. Good news is, we're not too far away from Formosa Island with our current course. Bad news is, there is a wide area magic scan ahead of us and they're closing on us. Their target tracking spell is trying to lock onto us."
Abe cursed, "How fast are they moving, and how many?"
"Three, and they're moving fast for a transport plane. Taking a photo."
Moment later, Harada announced, "Those are two-seat dive bombers, and one of them have something mounted under them."
"Another missile." Abe bitterly remarked. "Oh that's just great, mages in planes can also make use of them."
Harada would have cared more about how he's eating his own words right now were he not the target. "We should turn around and try to gain more altitude. They shouldn't have the same operating altitude as the transport planes."
"And fly back into another high altitude transport plane carrying a mage missile squad? We're low on fuel anyways. How far are we from the coastline?!"
"About another 50 kilometers. We're within their Fujian province and… damn it, missile launch! 10 o'clock!"
Abe groaned as he pushed the plane into a dive again, banking hard left and right and spiraling with the airspeed indicator right at the Vne red line. The aircraft shuttered and creaked from the high G force.
The missile overshot and nearly crashed into the mountain below the plane before correcting its course.
"Pull up now!" Harada called out.
The missile then exploded below the plane, crackling with magic energy. While Harada put up a magic shield, a few shrapnel punched through.
"Engine 2 is losing power!" Abe screamed.
"It's on fire!" Harada yelled. "Put it out!"
As Abe cut the fuel to engine 2, Harada asked, "What is our max plane speed with just one engine?"
"Not enough to shake off high speed propeller aircraft."
"That's a problem, because I'm picking up on radio comms from the Chinese dive bombers vectoring fighter aircraft towards our location and requesting all anti-aircraft guns between us and the ocean to be ready."
"I am out of altitude, airspeed and ideas. Time to use the mountains to throw them off, even if it means crashing into the surface from a small mistake."
"I am running low on mana as well."
AN for the Chapter 22 extra: Inspired by the F-16 that dodged at least 6 Iraqi surface-to-air missiles:
watch?v=TJE5gDDnq9s
watch?v=H8InuaTRKnY
On a more humorous note, I came across this DCS video:
watch?v=5D9T8Q7CKlw
wiki/Air_combat_manoeuvring
High Yo-Yo: wiki/Basic_fighter_maneuvers#High_Yo-Yo
Rolling scissors: wiki/Scissors_(aeronautics)
As for why the plane lost control at high speed during the dive: wiki/Coffin_corner_(aerodynamics)
"As an airplane moves through the air faster, the airflow over parts of the wing will reach speeds that approach Mach 1.0. At such speeds, shock waves form in the air passing over the wings, drastically increasing the drag due to drag divergence, causing Mach buffet, or drastically changing the center of pressure, resulting in a nose-down moment called "mach tuck". The aircraft Mach number at which these effects appear is known as its critical Mach number, or MCRIT. The true airspeed corresponding to the critical Mach number generally decreases with altitude."
"When the airplane exceeds its critical Mach number (such as during stall prevention or recovery), then drag increases or Mach tuck occurs, which can cause the aircraft to upset, lose control, and lose altitude. In either case, as the airplane falls, it could gain speed and then structural failure could occur, typically due to excessive g forces during the pullout phase of the recovery."
VNE, the never exceed speed: wiki/V_speeds
How the missiles were being guided: wiki/Manual_command_to_line_of_sight
A man portable anti-air missile that used MCLOS guidance: wiki/Blowpipe_(missile)
Based on the number of missiles fired and the aircraft/helicopters shot down, the Blowpipe had about 1% accuracy when hitting aircraft. In the hands of a mage that can use reflex spells, target tracking spells, explosive spell casting on the warhead, and other magic, the accuracy and lethality would be very different.
The range of the air-launched missile's 25 kilometers range was made using the comparison of the reduced range of ground-launched AIM-120 missile compared to the standard air-launched AIM-120:
NASAMS (ground-launched AIM-120 system) was introduced in 1998: wiki/NASAMS
"NASAMS can engage target at a maximum altitude of 15 kilometers (50,000 feet) and a maximum range of 33 kilometers."
wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM
"The AIM-120C deliveries began in 1996."
"Operational Range: AIM-120A/B: 55–75 km, AIM-120C-5: 105 km"
Definition of Yomi: wiki/Yomi
AN for "Apocalypse": This story below was just for fun. Non-canon. A spur of the moment.
"Apocalypse"
1960 , September 25th, somewhere in the Alps next to a city:
My heart pounded in my ears. I couldn't go any faster or else I would break my single-core orb. My Type 99 and 97 orbs are non-functional until I can find replacement parts for them. And I had turned my Type 95 orb into a magic bomb a long while ago to wipe out a large number of enemies that were about to overrun a survivor's settlement.
I look behind me and squeeze off a few rounds. The bandit mages behind me dodged my fire. I couldn't keep shooting as my bullets were also running low.
As I rounded a mountain, I suddenly sensed movements below me, and I accelerated upward, pushing my orb to the limit. The bandits weren't as quick and were body checked by the mages that flew up from the forest to greet them. It didn't take long for blood curdling screams to echo throughout the area.
I turned around again and this time finished off both the bandit mages and the ambushers.
While taking some breaths, I initially considered going down into the forest to loot the corpses. But I could sense flickering magic off in the distance, and it was not the type made by normal mages.
I took my cue and made a run for it again.
As I returned to the campsite, I cursed myself. Wasted bullets and I'm starving as well from all of the mana usage. And we were running low on food. It was supposed to be a simple hunting trip.
I would have cursed Being X, but I don't think he would be getting much prayers from whatever abominations that are now roaming the world, and the many, many dead people.
It's funny. I remember my previous world being fixated on the idea of "nuclear winter" and "zombie apocalypse". And here I am, living both of those nightmares simultaneously. Tanya von Degurechaff, a Japanese salaryman, then an orphanage girl, made my way up to a major in the military, left penniless after being discharged, clawed my way up through politics, lead a country through various crises for about a decade, retired from politics, came back to try to save the concept of civilization, and now this.
Thinking back on how all of this happened, all it took was some dumb international incident to spiral out of control. The new Germanian government convinced the rest of OZEVto invade the Russy Confederation. Akitsushima Dominion soon joined the war when North Bharat, Afghanistan and Burma launched an invasion against South Bharat. That was when CSR revealed the full extent of their open secret mage eugenics program, by utilizing numerous mage divisions that even had manual command missile squads to threaten jet planes and snipe helicopters. Their augmentations were also more advanced than originally expected.
Before the CSR could make any serious headway with their mage armies and Elya's coup could succeed to put me back in power in order to put a stop to the war, the Germanian government in their moment of genius decided to utilize their ace card.
By nuking the communists.
Lots of nuclear bombs were used, and that generated enough smoke, soot and ash to block out sunlight around the world and caused a noticeable plunge in global temperatures. Crop failures throughout the world were inevitable.
And it turns out the communists had their own ace up their sleeve. Their agents unleashed biological weapons throughout Europe and the Unified States. Sure the BND caught some of them before they could succeed, even at the cost of the agents' lives with how dangerous the biological weapons were, but it was just too much for us to stop. In Germania alone, entire herds of cattle were wiped out by the diseases, and whatever wheat crop that had survived the summer frosts were also devastated. The food shortages and infectious agents caused plagues that probably eclipsed the Black Death, and it didn't take long for the plagues to spread to neutral countries.
A few CSR mage armies had avoided much of the nuclear bombings. They were pillaging Kieva and Belarusia, and made their way into Pullska. Probably because they were also seeking food and supplies, which made me wonder just how badly the communists were doing in the aftermath of the nuclear bombings. It was a monumental struggle of leading a deteriorating OZEVmilitary force to slow down their pillaging campaigns.
By this point, Germania and the rest of OZEVpolitically ceased to exist, along with many other countries. The ambassador from the Allied Kingdom hanged himself when all communications ceased with his government and family. It didn't matter how hard Visha, Elya, and other people in the collapsing Germanian government tried, we were going up against a monstrous mother nature that couldn't be bargained or reasoned with.
Due to the food shortages, the diseased crops and animals were still consumed by people. And with the world being a pretty sorry state, fuel shortages were also common so that made it difficult for some people to fully cook the food.
That was when the freak show kicked off. Some of those diseased food turned their victims into semi-intelligent zombies, and zombie mages were just as much fun as one would expect. Even without their computational orbs, they were still a major threat compared to regular zombies. And I did mention about the CSR mage armies that were tearing through agricultural areas like hungry locusts.
Normally it would have been straightforward to contain a zombie outbreak. Lock down an entire region, use loud noises and lights to bait the zombies into prepared kill zones, and keep doing that until it's safe enough to clear out villages and city blocks one by one while quarantining any survivors to make sure that they weren't carrying the disease. Use a lot of firepower against zombie mages. Except the nuclear winter and the epidemics of other diseases made any coordinated responses against the zombie plague impossible. Whatever Germanian military forces that we could still command were deployed to shut down the nuclear power plants and dump their fuel rods into the ocean.
All because I wanted to retire from politics. Just a few years away from the steering wheel was all it took for everything to go to hell.
I sighed and walked toward our tent. Visha was trying to get an earth oven going. Using an open flame was incredibly risky as the smell could draw the attention of zombies or bandits.
"No luck?" Visha said.
"Things didn't go according to plan." I shrugged my shoulders.
"At least you're alive, that's what matters." She cracked a smile.
"And the campsite is still here instead of being overrun. So I guess I can't be too upset."
There was a moment of silence, and Visha spoke up. "I think we may have to visit Wien or another city to scavenge for food if we are to survive the upcoming winter. It's already getting cold."
I shook my head. "That's a death sentence. I flew next to a city and zombie mages almost grabbed me."
"It's either that or we starve and freeze to death. Or we become bandits."
I retrieved my two broken computational orbs. "I supposed we would eventually need to go into a city to get parts for our orbs."
AN:
The theme I had playing in my head as I was writing this:
watch?v=qqEpSOFDXGA
watch?v=WEP25kPtQCQ
As for running a government in the midst of a major climate change, the Yuan Dynasty did not have a good time with the Little Ice Age that started in the 14th century. It was not common for droughts, summer frosts, locust plagues, floods, typhoons and other natural disasters to hit the dynasty simultaneously or in rapid succession: watch?v=iCgGoYGjeds&t=194s
The Yellow River referenced in that video had shifted course significantly from major floods, which was devastating to farmers and trade: wiki/1344_Yellow_River_flood
No idea if I want to make this spin-off story into a mini-series. If someone wants to write a story based on that short writing, I would be happy to see it.