Magic as an art, and not a line of men to be ordered forwards.

Magic as a class, and not a just another job to fulfil societal needs.

Magic as a culture, and not another section in the Imperial military.

Magic as a talent, and not a mass produced skill to be educated into masses.

Magic as freedom, and not a club to be wielded by a tyrannical Empire.

Magic to be cherished, and not magic to be used.

Magic with defenders, and not without them.

Magic with you, and not without.

 – Untitled piece written by Written by Goddess Helenna, of Love, and Goddess Elassa, of Magic. One of the many texts produced in the effort to bring the Magical World into the Great World. This piece is one of the earlier works of text.

“You hear that? Seventh Armoured is an hour from Aris. Sixth Armoured is picking up speed. Eleventh Infantry will hit Aris from the north by evening. We’re sending you up into the pre-emptively to start flyovers over Aris.” Captain Douglas lazily leaned back in the deep bucket seat of his cockpit. Men in grey uniforms scurried around on the grey concrete runway, in between the huge grey hangers of corrugated steel. The grey chain link fence somewhat dimmed the colour of the grass and town in the distance. A truck, this one not grey but instead stripes of white and black. Raptor Two, also waiting to set off, was behind him although just out of vision from the rear view cameras. All grey, everywhere. All grey, apart from above.

Above, the ocean of deep blue. Above, the sky calling one to set sail in its endless depths.

Douglas sighed as Nestmaster kept up the commands. “Primary objective is securing the airspace over Aris. You will have assistance from fighter squads, they know they’re working with you. They’re Team Blue and Team Green. You’re Team Red.” Nestmaster was interrupted for a moment by a buzz, another audio channel switched on, slightly louder than the main one from the base.

“I like that.” Erik said over the private communications.

“I asked for red.” Douglas said.

“It’s a lucky colour.” Erik commented.

“I know.” Douglas answered and the two pilots of the Raptors returned to listening to the briefing.

“-Suspected enemies will engage you in the sky. The Ordeaux mission reports mention them being able to knock out missiles from the sky and-“

Once again, Erik interrupted the channel. “This is a new guy.” Douglas smiled. He was just about to make the same comment. It was always obvious when they had a replacement assigned to Raptor Duty because of moments like this.

“How long do you think before he realises?” Douglas asked back. Erik’s reply was only as chuckle as Douglas readjusted his helmet. The pilot of Raptor One went back to listening to Nestmaster.

“There’s been reports that some of them can throw rocks or other objects as makeshift anti-air fire, and although it sounds like a farce-”

“That’s my report.” Erik said.

“-, this pilot, Captain Erik of Raptor Two, recommends that…” Nestmaster trailed off as Douglas burst out in laughter. Erik came onto the main comms.

“You can keep reading Nestmaster. I didn’t quite catch that.” Erik said. Nestmaster took a few more seconds to reply.

“Was I reading your report the whole time?”

“Who do you think collects this data?” Erik replied back. Douglas burst out in laughter. One of the controls in Raptor One flashed for moment. The fuel truck on the ground started to drive away. A set of four jets appeared over the horizon, flying fast and low. The new lad at Nestmaster was obviously embarrassed. He shut up for a few moments before returning with a very formal tone.

“Apologies Captain. I didn’t realise that.”

“No need Nestmaster, no need.” Erik replied. “So the mission is what exactly?”

“Maintain air dominance over Aris. You are both tasked with holding the zone clear for three hours along with Team Green and Team Blue, and then replacements will come to swap over with you. Permission to leave combat area is granted in case of malfunction or battle damage, although if possible, you are to stay until replacements arrive, not until some time-mark.”

“That’s all you needed to say at the start.” Erik replied.

“I’ll remember that.” Nestmaster replied. Douglas smiled to himself. Raptor Duty on Nestmaster had one of the highest turnover rates in the whole airforce. Apparently, commanders used it as a punishment. Douglas honestly did not know why, he and Erik and the birds were not that bad.

“Course you will.” Erik’s voice replied. “Of course. Are those four birds landing or are we going?” Douglas leaned back and tap the steel hull of his cockpit. His eyes trailed to the printed photo of Operation Misfortune, the first time Raptor One had flown in battle. What a time. To think the bird didn’t have guns then and the afterburners were melting by the time they returned. The first of those four jets which was coming back to base had started to lower its altitude. The other three began to slow down, two pulled off to circle in the air.

“I was going to run flight checks first.” Nestmaster replied. Erik burst out in laughter over the comms and Douglas chuckled. The seat leaned back with him, and he had to pull it back forwards with the tiny handle by his side. Nestmaster came in, obviously not happy at all. His tone low and dour. “You did not mute.” Oh no! They made him sad!

“Boss.” Erik said. “The plane flies, the bullets are in, the fuel is good, right?”

“That’s not flight checks.” Nestmaster replied. “Run flight checks, you’re not setting off before the planes land.”

“They’re going to be wrong.” Douglas said dryly as he leaned forwards and patted the cabin of Raptor One. On the right was his modern console for managing the weapons. That had been added recently. It was a fantastic screen that was powered to the computer and was calculating the state of all the weaponry. On the left was the archaic set of devices which managed the bird’s flight. It was lever and button and more levers, without so much as a sticker to describe what each one was. This cockpit design was the primary reason as to why Captain Douglas and Captain Erik never had replacements.

How could you send a new pilot on a plane that had no speed indicator? Or no altitude or angle monitors? All of that, Captain Douglas did by pure intuition and feel and nothing else. And he could. He knew he could. He had flown enough with Raptor One to know by feel and nothing else on how high they were, purely because of what the pitch of his roaring engines were. The one part he did appreciate, and the one gauge that had been deemed important enough by the builders to be included, was the fuel gauge. Nestmaster stammered out a few syllables that could not possibly be a word for a few moments before collecting himself. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s going to be wrong.” Erik said. “You just deal with it.”

“We’ve just loaded you up!”

“Run the fucking checks then.” Douglas interrupted. Erik was the sort that could argue for hours and they had better things to do here. Frankly, Douglas didn’t even disagree with the man, running the flight checks was worthless on Raptors. It was just that a new Nestmaster would always need to learn the lesson the hard way instead of just believing what he was told. “What first? Wings?”

“Electronics. Power it on.” Nestmaster said. Douglas did not even look down as his hands moved by themselves. He pressed the required buttons on the light that would turn on the lights on the tips of the wings as his eyes went past that picture of Fer and Neneria and the sorcerers and the birds and himself and Erik and the ground crew in Operation Misfortune. He turned away from the photo in his cabin and watched the jet that was returning land. It was a small thing, one of the new Allian models. Single engine and half again small than the Raptor itself. The plane bounced on the runway. Once. Twice. Only twice. It screeched as it came to a stop. For a thing that small, the pilot overshot the breaking distance. The plane’s tiny wheels started to turn as the jet fighter began to drive to its parking spot.

“That’s a babe.” Douglas said into his mic. Babe as in baby, not as in woman.

“Fucker doesn’t know how to land.” Erik replied.

“You’re on open mic.” Nestmaster reminded them again.

“Are the lights working or not?” Erik said. Nestmaster took a few moments to reply. He was checking himself no doubt.

“I see you. The lights are working.” Nestmaster said. Douglas smiled as he leaned back and pressed the blinking on Raptor One which served no purpose he could discern save to be pressed and turned off. What turned it on? He had no clue either. All he knew is that pressing it shut the yellow light down. The awkward silence went on for a few more seconds before Nestmaster replied. “So?” He asked. “How is the electronics check?”

“That was it.” Erik replied.

“Lights are on.” Douglas said.

And once again, Nestmaster had to wait to reply. “Excuse me? That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Erik answered.

“What about the rest?” Nestmaster asked.

“That’s it Nestmaster.” Douglas interjected. Frankly, he wanted to set sail in that blue ocean already. “The monitors are on, we would have told you if there was a problem. The external lights are the electronics check.”

“You’re supposed to send a ping.”

“Oh not this again.” Douglas said.

“This plane doesn’t send pings.” Erik said over the mic. Douglas sighed and pulled up his visor. There was no reason to think this was going to end soon at this rate.

“What do you mean it doesn’t send pings?” Nestmaster asked. “It’s a radio function, not part of the plane.”

“They stopped pinging a week ago.” Douglas said. “I don’t know why, they just don’t do it. The radio has been inspected, they just don’t ping.” The blinking yellow light turned on again. Douglas pressed it. It stopped blinking.

Nestmaster finally spoke after he recovered from his stunned shock. “Are you kidding me?”

“Do you think I want to sit on the runway and argue with you about whether to ping or not?” Douglas said. “I know what it is. It’s not going to happen. I can’t fucking doing it. Erik won’t either because it just won’t happen. The birds don’t fucking like it. Electronics check is the external lights. Take it or leave it.”

That shut Nestmaster up. He was gone for a good while. He should be pouring himself a drink, but no doubt he had gone to complain to his superior and was getting told off. Douglas tapped the steel of the console again, just absent-mindedly. The light above him turned on. He pressed the button. The light turned off. Nestmaster finally returned. “Ammo check.”

Douglas was already on it. Unlike dealing with the archaic system to his left, he pressed a few buttons on his right and the ammunition came up. “Six missiles. Seven hundred and ninety-nine bullets.” Douglas read out what the bird told him.

“Six and seven-nine-nine here too.” Erik said over the come.

And once again, Nestmaster was not impressed. “How did you both lose one?” He asked.

“It’s in the chamber.” Douglas had come across the problem before. Sometimes, Raptor One was simply too eager and loaded by itself.

“How do you know that? You’ve not even turned the gun on.” Nestmaster said.

“Check yourself.” Douglas said.

“Just save us the time mate.” Erik said. “There’s a bullet in the chamber, the machine counts when it loads, not when it fires. Don’t ask why, that’s just how it is.”

“Yes but how?” Nestmaster trailed off. “Whatever, it’s not my problem, you both were loaded with full magazines it says here.”

“We didn’t eat them, promise.” Erik joked over the mic and Douglas laughed. The monitor to his right was filled with static for a moment and then turned off by itself. He didn’t care frankly. That check was over. This left the last one.

“Fuel check.” Douglas knew this procedure by now. He started clicking buttons as Nestmaster chimed in.

“Fuel check.” He repeated as if the boy on the other side of the radio had any sort of authority here. He was a glorified air traffic controller, nothing more than that. Douglas enabled the injector, primed the pump. Heard the main engine turn on as it started to pull fuel from the tank and towards the jets.

“Runway clear?” The fourth plane of that pack had just landed. The first two had undershot the distance. The third one was close. This guy had overshot it and almost went off into the grass. A small truck had to chase after the jet fighter to tow it back to its position.

“Runway clear.” Nestmaster replied. “Ground crew confirms safe distance.”

“Powering on.” Douglas said. “Ignition in three. Two. One.” Douglas pressed the ignition. He should have heard the roar of Raptor One’s four jets. Instead he heard spluttering and coughing and pipes creaking Raptor One rejected the fuel. A message came up on the weapons control screen: Wrong Fuel. Douglas did not spend even a moment questioning it. “We’ve got the wrong fuel.” He said into the comms.

“What?” Erik asked.

Nestmaster said the same thing. “What?”

“We’ve got the wrong fuel. The bird’s just told me.” Douglas said flatly. “Trying again. Three. Two. One.” He pressed the ignition switch. And again, Raptor One coughed like a pack-a-day smoker. The message blinked off and on. “Wrong fuel.”

“It’s the right fuel.” Nestmaster said.

“Not here apparently.” Douglas sighed and leaned back. Once again, the chair leaned back with him. Frankly, he did not want to go through these checks with this boy again. New blood was always the worst.

“It’s a new mixture.” Erik said. “It’s going to be a new mixture.”

“How do you know it’s a new mixture?” Nestmaster asked. “Yes! It’s a new mixture. It’s not Allian Oil anymore.”

“What is it?” Douglas asked.

“Does it fucking matter?” Nestmaster snapped back at them, then realised he was letting himself get carried away. “Sorry. It’s Imperial Oil. I don’t know where but we’re not getting AO anymore. You’re flying on this.”

“You don’t even have a tank of the legacy stuff anywhere?” Erik asked.

“We don’t. You’re flying on IO fuel. That’s it.” Nestmaster said.

“Well I’m not moving anywhere because the bird doesn’t like it.” Douglas pressed the ignition again. And again, the plane coughed. The sound was slightly different this time, but it obviously did not like the new fuel.

“Well your bird has to like it!” Nestmaster shouted back. “Because that’s all there. We’re sending you into the air.”

Douglas thought of a way to convince Raptor One the fuel was good. “So is it better, or what?” Douglas asked.

“What?” Nestmaster replied with his own question. “Excuse me?”

“The fuel? Is it better? Cleaner burn? Better efficiency? Or what?”

And once again Nestmaster was left stunned for a few moments. He could only say “Are you serious?” Before the sound of headphones being thrown away came through Douglas’ speaker. The pilot of Raptor One did not know how long he waited, but he sat there, tapping his fingers sequentially, until a reply finally came. “From the same mass, you get forty percent more flight time. Make of that what you will.”

Erik chuckled over the radio, but Douglas turned to look around the cabin. “Come on. We’re taking the piss.” He pressed the blinking button above him. The message on his right disappeared. It went from ‘Wrong Fuel’ to ‘Low Quality Fuel’. Whatever. This bird was always temperamental.

Douglas clicked the ignition again.

And this time, Raptor One did decide to work.

Private Riley Annerheim leaned back in his seat. He looked through the window of the airfield and saw Raptor One accelerate down the runway. Raptor Two set off before Raptor One’s wheels left the ground. The complete breach of protocol did not worry him whatsoever though. Frankly, he was past the point of caring about such minor infractions.

Riley could not believe what just happened. Did he actually just have to convince a plane it had the right fuel?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep