Counter Value (Magical Girls in a Cold War Gone Hot)

[enthalpy]

0715, 2 Xiaoshu, Zhengming 12
East Sea, 145 km ENE of Xinhu

"Eyrie Actual to Cormorant 1. Report status."

The pale blue sky stretched from horizon to horizon, bright and cloudless and clear. Far below, the sea surface gleamed in the early morning light. From a kilometer up, the reflection of the sun off the waves left it with a dappled appearance, like the shell of a tortoise. No, the scales of a carp, rather, shimmering with the waves' slow undulations.

"Cormorant 1. Skies are clear, no visual contact."

Chiaki's flight lead—Cormorant 1—was to her front right, just barely visible as a dark speck against the pale blue sky. Thankfully, she could sense the mana emissions from Cormorant 1's flight spell. Otherwise, she might have lost the other woman amidst the glare.

She'd been Cormorant 1's flight partner for a week and a half now, and Cormorant 1 had yet to offer her a single word that wasn't a direct order, not even a mechanically pleasant 'Good morning.' The joint patrols were allegedly to build camaraderie between the rookies and the veterans in the unit, but Cormorant 1 didn't seem especially interested. Still, the other girl's mana felt focused and serious rather than icy or arrogant.

Unfortunately, that knowledge was little comfort against the stifling silence during the long patrols.

According to the briefing, it would take just under six hours to fly their assigned path today. Six whole hours with nothing but the sea and sky and Cormorant 1's cold—if comforting—presence for company.

Six whole hours without anything to eat, at that. Chiaki had scarfed down one of the youtiao that had been on offer for breakfast before heading out, but the mana expenditure from flying on patrol always left her hungry and mentally exhausted. Hopefully, there'd still be something good to eat in the mess hall by the time she returned to base. With her luck, though... Just stewed eel left again, for sure.

The radio crackled to life again in her ear, jerking Chiaki's attention back to her patrol.

"Eyrie Actual to Cormorant 1. We have two Class Three mana signatures, bearing 055, range 350. Track is 180, speed 600. Flight level 25. Intercept."

"Cormorant 1, copy all. Out."

Chiaki's pulse quickened as she waited for instructions. She'd been on a handful of patrols involving unknown contacts before. They'd all turned out to be quite mundane, but maybe this time...

"Cormorant 2, adjust heading 090, flight level 45. Provide overwatch for the intercept."

Chiaki rolled to the right as Cormorant 1 provided instructions over their mental link, letting her flight spell carry her on a slow, banking ascent.

"Copy, Lead," she replied, about half an octave higher than normal. There was no response. Chiaki wasn't sure whether to be grateful that Cormorant 1 had declined to call out the change in her voice or disappointed that the other girl had no reassurances to give.

Fighting the urge to fidget with her staff's knurled metal haft, Chiaki focused her attention downwards at the sea surface near the horizon as she climbed higher. Hopefully, she'd be high enough that the faint glow of the targets' mana emissions would be visible against the water. At night, the targets would be beacons in the darkness, but here in the harsh glare of the morning sun, she needed the dark backdrop to spot the glow. With the benefit of a vantage point, Chiaki should—would—be able to visually spot the targets while having superior positioning in case something went wrong.

Ten minutes passed, silent save for the dull roar of the icy wind past her flight barrier, before Chiaki detected the targets. Not close enough to be visible just yet, and at the edge of her detection range. This far out, it was more a vague sense that there was something magical out there rather than a concrete mental image like what she could feel from Cormorant 1. But it was enough.

The foreign mana sources felt about the same in magnitude as most of the other girls in her unit would at this range. Class Three mana signatures then, as Eyrie had reported. A 'standard' threat level according to the handbook. As much as anything involving magic could be considered standard, at least.

"Lead, confirm contact. Bearing 330. Entering transmission range now."

"Copy, Cormorant 2. Let me handle this."

Cormorant 1's mana flared up, growing from a dim flame to a massive blaze in her mind's eye as she surged forward into communication range.

"Attention unidentified mages! You are approaching airspace under the control of the Baichuan Treaty Union. Identify yourself, and come to a halt for inspection or reverse course immediately!"

It took a moment for the reply to come. Chiaki tightened her grip on her staff, which warmed up in her hands as she started feeding it a trickle of mana. Just in case. She slowed down to give herself a more stable firing position as well, tucking the butt end of the staff under her right arm and aiming the other towards the unknowns. Her own magic favored intermediate to long-range attacks. If something happened, she'd be responsible for providing covering fire for Cormorant 1, who was a short range and melee specialist.

"Negative, Union mage. This is international airspace. I have the right to innocent passage. Keep clear."

There was a split second of radio silence. Chiaki could almost hear Cormorant 1 grinding her teeth.

"Cormorant 1 to Eyrie Actual. Unknown contact refuses to identify. Moving to establish visual ID."

"Copy, Cormorant 1. Stay safe."

They were close enough now that the magic emissions were faintly visible, not just the rich vermilion she'd come to associate with Cormorant 1, but also a newly visible pair of oblong splotches of light closer to the horizon. Their targets. Teal in front and yellow behind.

Their original flight path would have led to an intercept at a nearly ninety-degree angle; now that the distance had closed, Cormorant 1 turned left, pulling away slightly to give herself enough distance to accelerate before approaching the unknown contacts from behind.

"Cormorant 1 to Eyrie Actual. Coming into visual range now. Looks like a Republic—"

Mana burst out from one of the unknowns, but before she could shout out a warning, a brilliant yellow beam erupted from Yellow. It lanced out towards Cormorant 1, but her hexagonal shield snapped into existence, deflecting it at the last moment.

"Shit!" Cormorant 1 snapped out over the radio, an uncharacteristic hint of panic tinging her voice. "Taking fire! Weapons free, repeat, weapons free!"

Even before she heard the order, Chiaki had already begun expending her own mana. It drained from her hands through the circuitry in her staff. The focus set in its tip, already half-charged, flashed white for a single instant before a blinding, meter-wide beam in her own personal shade of amethyst shot out and swept towards Yellow.

Miss.

Yellow's mana flared as she dove for the sea surface, leaving the beam to charge off into empty air before scattering into nothing. The retaliation was almost instant. Yellow fired off a conical spread of shots aimed roughly at where Chiaki had been a few moments earlier.

It took a split second to gauge the safest path out of danger and plan out her own trajectory. Chiaki had just enough time to adjust her flight magic to direct thrust to her left, vision darkening for a few moments as she jerked sideways, before the incoming shot pattern was upon her.

As she corkscrewed towards the edge of Yellow's cloud of bullets, Chiaki caught a brief glimpse of Cormorant 1 bombarding Teal with a withering fusillade out of the corner of her eye. Streams of brilliant red orbs sprayed out in short staccato bursts as she tried to close the distance with her quarry.

In the span of half a second, Chiaki twisted her way through the barrage, angling towards the edge of the pattern where the bullets weren't as dense. Most of the projectiles uselessly zipped by with a flat crack, but despite her best efforts, a handful of fingernail-sized pellets still managed to strike her. Most of those deflected off her shields with a soft ping, raising a cluster of ripples that quickly dampened out, but the last few punched through to impact against her costume, leaving a few hissing scorch marks and some stinging bruises. Nothing critical.

She'd lost track of Yellow while taking evasive maneuvers, and it took a moment for her to reacquire her target, who was—

"Lead! Break right, break right!"

Yellow took a shot at Cormorant 1 just before Chiaki snapped off another beam too late to run interference.

Her own attack struck Yellow square in the back, generating a bright flash of light and a burst of smoke as it shredded part of Yellow's costume. Simultaneously, Yellow's beam clipped Cormorant 1 in the shoulder just as she pivoted to the right. Bracketed by Teal's shots, she fell toward the ocean surface in a flat spin.

"Good shot, Cormorant 2." Cormorant 1's voice was low and strained as she pulled up just above the sea surface, raising a short tail of spray as she clawed her way back into the sky. Not far away, Yellow fell, unconscious, into the ocean, raising a large pillar of saltwater that crashed back down to the sea surface, leaving behind only a slowly expanding circle of foam centered on her limp figure. The sea was fairly calm today. She would float long enough for them to finish the fight. Probably.

Chiaki nodded on reflex, realizing a heartbeat later that there was no one to see her response. "Th-thanks, Cormorant 1." She fumbled slightly with her staff, mouth dry and fingers weak from adrenaline.

"Cormorant 1 to Eyrie Actual. Splash one."

"Confirmed. Good work, Cormorant 2."

After losing her partner, Teal immediately pulled back, evidently not willing to continue the engagement alone. She climbed up, her flight path settling into a wide circle just out of attack range.

It took a few seconds for Cormorant 1 to level out at altitude.

"Eyrie Actual, Cormorant 1. One remaining hostile. Moving to engage."

"Negative, Cormorant 1. Cormorant flight, you have new orders. Return to base immediately."

"...Acknowledged, Eyrie Actual," Cormorant 1 ground out. "Cormorant 2, on me."

Chiaki followed Cormorant 1 on a wide turn that took them southeast, back toward land.

"What about Yellow, Lead?" she asked, giving Teal one last look as she turned away.

"Teal can fish her out of the drink," Cormorant 1 replied tersely. "I expect we'll have bigger things to worry about soon."

---

When the familiar buildings of the base finally came into view, the tension and adrenaline drained away from Chiaki's body, leaving her with a bone-deep weariness and the beginnings of a sour pit of hunger in her stomach.

She passed over the airfield first, flying over a squadron of fighters lined up in the staging area just beside the runway. Ground crew swarmed over the aircraft, slowly clearing away the mess of fuel hoses snaking their way across the tarmac. A few propellers were already spinning as the planes readied for takeoff.

There was, in theory, a runway reserved for mages on the other side of the control tower from the airfield, a short, 50-meter concrete road with an emergency medical aid station and a fire extinguisher attached. Barely anyone used it, though.

Chiaki followed Jiayu—Cormorant 1—in a slow descent towards the grassy lawn between the mage barracks buildings. Jiayu landed at a dead stop, only the brief flex in her knees indicating that she'd been flying just a moment before and not standing idly in the middle of a field.

Li Jiayu stood over half a head taller than everyone else in the unit. That slim red-and-gold jacket and pantsuit combination would have looked gaudy on anyone else. On Jiayu, with her high ponytail, it resulted in a sharp, handsome sort of charm. That, combined with her cold demeanor, had left quite a few of the other girls on base enamored with her.

It certainly helped that her mana was a striking shade of red. Prolonged usage of magic inevitably led to some physical changes. The most obvious of those was a change in hair and eye color to match the color of the mage's mana. Every year, the entire squadron would get called in to do a group photo, and each time it was a riotous explosion of color.

Jiayu was one of the few mages on base who chose to dye their hair. Every four weeks like clockwork, she would dye her hair black, leaving her with a full head of dark hair to go with her vermilion eyes. Chiaki was admittedly curious as to why, but she knew better than to ask.

Today though, Jiayu looked a little worse for wear. Her hair had been quite a bit longer and substantially less ragged when they'd set out, and her costume had a large, bloody gash at the shoulder, where Yellow's last beam had struck her hard enough to punch through the protective magic weave and draw blood.

Chiaki touched down close behind, taking a few running steps to bleed off some speed first before skidding to a halt, dragging an ugly brown furrow into the grass.

No time to ruminate on how she'd just made a fool of herself though; Chiaki joined Jiayu in a run towards the Agate Orchid Memorial Barracks, better known as Big Red.

The briefing room built into the basement was already packed to the gills, filled with girls, some in the standard-issue gray-green fatigues of the Mage Corps and others in costume like herself, clearly having just recently returned from patrol. The moment the doors opened, a chaotic din spilled out into the hallway, the noise of dozens of conversations drowning out the grating buzz of the fluorescent lights set into the ceiling.

On the far side of the room, a massive laminated map of the region hung on the wall. The markings of her patrol path from the early morning briefing she'd attended had already been erased, replaced by what looked like a comprehensive force posture diagram of all Union forces in the theater in red. Someone had also apparently seen fit to dig a lectern from storage and drag it to one side of the map, right under last year's group photo.

Jiayu vanished into the crowd the instant she stepped into the briefing room, leaving Chiaki to cast her gaze around the room, looking for a free seat. A brief glimpse of a waving hand drew her attention to the far side of the room, where one of the other rookies from her cohort, a girl with bobbed turquoise hair, was gesturing for her attention.

"Sugawara! You're back! I heard about what happened. Are you all right?"

Chiaki squeezed her way through the room and dropped heavily into the proffered seat.

"Nothing serious," she deflected. "We got into a bit of a skirmish, but my flight lead handled most of it. What's going on? The boss interrupted our fight to call us back."

Mikami Teruko stuffed a sachima into Chiaki's hands.

"Nope," she said smugly. "You're not getting off with just a 'nothing serious' today. A friend in Signals told me, and the news has been making the rounds. Everyone's got to know by now. Congrats on your first KO, future ace!"

Chiaki blanched. "What do you mean, everyone?" She looked around the briefing room. Most of her squadron was here, as was every single one of the squadron leaders, and even Yingyue from across the hall who was supposed to be on leave...

"Wait," Chiaki hissed, an uneasy knot forming in her chest, "did they call everyone back?"

"Sure did. And now we all know..."

"That's not what I meant," Chiaki insisted, idly picking at the plastic wrapper of the snack in her hands. She craned her neck, trying to get a rough count of the number of people in the room. "It looks like almost every mage on base is here right now. Did something happen?"

Teruko visibly deflated. "I don't know," she admitted, reaching up to her ear with one hand, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger. "We all got called in without any explanation about an hour ago, but there's been stragglers coming in the whole time. Like you, coming back from patrol early, I guess."

Chiaki grimaced. "You haven't heard anything?"

"Whatever it is, the higher-ups have been keeping it under wraps." Teruko shrugged. "Maybe it's some bigwig's birthday, and—"

Teruko's flippant remark was cut off by the lights in the back half of the room suddenly shutting off with a loud snap. In an instant, the entire room fell into a dead silence, and both Chiaki and Teruko sat straight up in their seats.

Chiaki had only had the honor of meeting Senior Colonel Bai Xinrui in person once, when she'd been assigned to the 3rd Mage Wing on her graduation from the Academy. 'Silver Crane,' renowned across the Union for her poise and steadfastness under fire, had been her role model when she'd first awoken to her powers, and the brief meeting had not left Chiaki disappointed.

Although Senior Colonel Bai had retired from frontline service many years ago, her powers waning with age, she still carried herself with the air of serenity she had been known for. She paused for a moment behind the lectern to look around the room, her silvery hair gleaming under the pale lights.

"As of 0720 this morning," she began, "a state of war exists between the Baichuan Treaty Union and the Grand Republic of Ordova."

She paused for a moment to observe the frozen silence that filled the room.

"Republic forces attacked our patrols immediately after the declaration of war was delivered in a coordinated assault. The port of Yashan and the surrounding areas in Nanyue State are being bombed as I speak, and we have confirmed that at least two corps-level formations have crossed the border..."

The rest of the briefing was a blur. Senior Colonel Bai spoke at length about the strategic situation, new wartime procedures to follow, redeployment orders for part of the unit.

Chiaki sat through the whole thing in a daze, the heartbeat echoing in her ears drowning out all other sound, staring dumbly at the map on the wall. Her own home town, Kozehama in Eirai State, should have been in the upper right corner, but today in its place was a mess of red symbols denoting friendly units. There was a naval base there, wasn't there? As well as an airfield? Eirai was separated from most of the Republic's territories by the entire breadth of the East Sea, but...

Chiaki's reverie was interrupted by a poke in her ribs, directly on one of the bruises left over from her fight. She hissed in pain.

"Hey! Earth to Chiaki! Briefing's over."

Chiaki looked up. The lectern was empty; Senior Colonel Bai had already left. Chiaki stood up for a moment before collapsing back into her chair, her legs unable to bear her weight.

"Chiaki?" Teruko asked, worried. "You all right?"

Chiaki nodded. "I'll be fine, just... just give me a moment."

Teruko bent down, laying Chiaki's right arm across her shoulders. "Come on, let's get you up. I'm scheduled for sensor duty later today, but I should have enough time to help you pack up, so you can rest a bit. And you want to get a shower in before heading out, don't you?"

"Pack?" Chiaki tilted her head, pasting a polite smile onto her face.

"Should have known you were zoned out again." Teruko grunted softly as she levered Chiaki to her feet. "The 1st Group is redeploying south tomorrow," she explained, slowly walking Chiaki to the door and joining the crowd slowly filing out of the briefing room. "Really, you've got to pay more attention to these things."

Jiayu was engaged in conversation with someone Chiaki recognized only as one of the other flight leads in the hallway outside the briefing room. She made a few sweeping motions with her arms that Chiaki recognized after a moment as flight paths from her dogfight earlier today before folding her arms across her chest.

As Chiaki passed by, Jiayu looked over for a brief moment, inclining her head ever so slightly.

"Come on," Teruko said, tugging softly on Chiaki's arm. "Just three flights of stairs, and we're there."

---

It hadn't taken long to pack. Unlike Teruko, who seemed to acquire some new trinket 'for good luck' on a weekly basis, Chiaki wasn't in the habit of buying things she didn't need; most of her paycheck went back home to her parents. Toiletries, a few sets of clothing, the maintenance kit for her staff, a few boxes of chocolate biscuits, her bag of emergency medical supplies, and a sheaf of papers went into the bag, and she was done.

Teruko had begged off immediately after, rushing off to her shift manning the base's mana sensors. Alone in her dormitory room, Chiaki finally let her transformation come undone. As she cut the flow of mana, her costume dissolved into a sea of glowing motes that faded over the course of a few seconds.

Even as a young child, Chiaki always preferred 'cool' to 'cute,' and when she first awoke to her powers and engaged her transformation for the first time, she'd been utterly dismayed to discover herself clad in a frilly black-and-purple gothic lolita dress with more lace than sense. Her parents had been quite taken with the design, but despite—or perhaps because of—that, it had taken her over a year to stop feeling reflexively embarrassed every time she took flight.

Unfortunately, there was only so much she could do to make alterations to the design. The most popular theory was that the costume was a subconscious reflection of the mage's personality, though Chiaki was sure the true cause had to be something else.

The bathroom at the end of the hall had a set of five private shower stalls. An obscene luxury for the conventional forces, but standard for mage facilities. Stepping into the one on the far left, Chiaki drew the thin plastic curtain shut.

With her costume gone, Chiaki was left in her flight suit: a one-piece, skintight neoprene garment. She fumbled for a moment with the zipper, then tugged at the collar. The suit stuck to her skin, peeling away from her body in fits and starts, filling the stall with the sour odor of stale sweat, and revealing a trail of bruises running from her ribs down to her thigh from where Yellow's bullets had slipped through her shields.

Once free, Chiaki took a moment to inspect the suit for damage. The mana-sensitive fluid in the legs had deactivated when she dropped her transformation. Pulled down by gravity, it settled at the bottom of the internal bladders it was held in, leaving the suit with unnatural, tumor-like bulges at the ankles and knees. No leaks, then.

There were still a few divots as well from where she'd been hit, too, though those would smooth themselves out with time. And...

Chiaki grimaced. One of the bullets had struck hard enough to pierce the suit, tearing a small hole through the rubbery material. It was almost invisible at first glance, but still enough to compromise the insulating seal it was supposed to provide. There wasn't enough time to get it repaired before her deployment tomorrow morning though; she'd just have to remember to handle it once she arrived.

Everything else was as she remembered, the unit patch of the 3rd Mage Wing on the right shoulder, the stripe and star of a Junior Lieutenant on the collar, and "Sugawara Chiaki" on an embroidered strip just above the left breast pocket, written both in the logographic script used in the Union and the alphabet more common abroad.

Inspection done, Chiaki hung the suit on a hook on the wall, then turned the water on, as hot as it would go. For a few long moments, she let the near-scalding water rain down on her shoulders, willing it to melt away the frozen fear that had settled like a dense cloud in the bottom of her lungs.

It didn't help.

When she closed her eyes, the cloud of yellow bullets came to mind, unbidden. If she'd been just a bit slower to decide on the direction to dodge, if she hadn't managed to set up her shields in time, if a bullet had hit her in the head rather than the ribs...

Chiaki brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, choking back a sob before it could force its way out of her throat.

No. There was no point dwelling on what-ifs. She pressed her palms against the cool tile of the shower wall and leaned her head in. Her reflection looked back at her, hazy and distorted in the white glaze.

Amethyst eyes and amethyst hair. The mark of a mage.

She was a full member of the Union Mage Corps. She'd been training for this since she was twelve: four years of the specialized education rack for mages followed by three years of combat training at the Academy. She knew, in the intellectual sense, that war was always a possibility, that this day might come.

But now that day had dawned, and something that had always stayed in the abstract realm of ink and paper and ideas had suddenly become real enough to slap her in the face.

There was a naval base in Kozehama that hosted a detachment of mages. Her parents had taken her to visit when she was younger, the month after she'd demonstrated her magic, proven herself to be a mage. The 'older sisters' there had taken her on a tour of the base.

She'd seen the separate area of the base reserved for mages, the barracks building almost a carbon copy of the one she was standing in today. She'd seen the sailors dressed in white, washing down the decks of their ships as they sat docked in the harbor. She'd had the chance to set foot on some of the ships too, curiously looking around the long gun barrels emerging ominously from the steel turrets and running along from bow to stern as the harbor breeze swept across the deck.

The sailors had called her 'our little heroine' back then. At the time, she hadn't quite understood why. But now...

She wasn't little any more, was she?

Chiaki shut the water off.

 

[enthalpy]

1110, 3 Xiaoshu, Zhengming 12
Above Central Nanyue, 600 km NE of Yashan

7.75 BALL (STEEL), TYPE 47, 1500 RDS.

Chiaki stared at the wooden crate hanging just in front of her face. The lettering stenciled on its side stubbornly refused to change, the contents identical to what they had been the countless other times she'd read it over the past four hours.

The quartermasters had stuffed the cargo plane full to bursting. The 80 mages of Chiaki's 1st Group had packed in first, sitting face to face on four rows of benches. A haphazard collection of supplies had followed after: crates of ammunition and grenades for the conventional forces, boxes of canned rations, even a few twine-tied stacks of empty burlap sandbags, all shoved into sagging nets slung from the roof wherever they would fit. It resulted in a ride that could, charitably, be described as cramped. Had it just been a matter of sitting in tight quarters for the duration of the five-hour flight, it might have been barely tolerable.

If only it were that simple.

Chiaki forced down the bile rising in her throat as the cargo plane shuddered violently, a raft adrift in a torrential river of air.

She had barely slept last night. The slight twinge of pain from her bruises had combined with her anxiety about the future and the dull apathy left behind in her adrenaline's wake. Paradoxically, it had left her too tired to fall asleep. Instead, she'd ended up idly lying on her cot for hours, alone with her thoughts and the slow shifting of the moonlight across her room.

The cargo plane's engines were slightly out of sync, the low hum—E flat—oscillating in volume in a grating, throbbing whine punctuated by an irregular metallic buzzing whenever some loose bolt found itself rubbing against a metal surface.

She shivered. The cold cabin air was leaking into her flight suit through the puncture she hadn't had time to fix.

The entire airframe groaned softly with each gust, each sharp motion churning the scent of aviation fuel and exhaust into the cloying haze of fear and dread that permeated the cargo bay.

Chiaki groaned, letting her chin dig into the canvas bag in her lap and squeezing her staff even more tightly between her knees. Normally, she found the harsh naphtha smell of the mothballs tucked in with her clothes unpleasant, but right now, any sensation was welcome, so long as it was strong enough to distract from the nausea.

The plane lurched downwards, dropping in free fall for a fraction of a second. The ammunition crate in front of her floated upwards. For a moment, before gravity caught up and sent it crashing back down, Chiaki spotted Teruko's bright blue hair on the far side of the plane.

The other girl was sitting with her head tilted back against the bulkhead, sound asleep, mouth slightly ajar.

Jiayu sat on her right, left arm pressed against Chiaki's shoulder, right shoulder jammed up against the cargo ramp at the rear of the plane. Her flight lead had spent the entire duration struggling with a pen and clipboard, though she would raise her left hand to check the time using the silvery watch strapped on her wrist every so often. With nothing better to do, Chiaki had counted. Sixteen times so far.

Jiayu raised her hand again.

Seventeen, now.

The plane suddenly rolled left, then right, like an injured beast. The crates swung back and forth just right, revealing Teruko, still blissfully asleep, for a single perfect instant.

In that brief moment, Chiaki contemplated murder.

She barely had time to consider the pros and cons before the plane lurched again, pitching down this time, raising a fresh wave of nausea and throwing Chiaki to her left. Chiaki squeaked, grabbing for support on reflex. Her fingers wrapped around something, and she pulled—

Chiaki looked at the strands of inky black hair clutched in her fist, then at Jiayu's narrowed eyes and slightly pursed lips, then back at the hair in her hand. Spurred on by the other girl's piercing glare, she loosened her stiff fingers one by one. Jiayu shook her head ever so slightly and swept her hair to her right. Chiaki wrapped her arms around her canvas bag, stuffing her hands into her elbows.

To her left, she heard a soft giggle.

Chiaki buried her face in her bag.

Only an hour left to go.

---

The cargo plane touched down hard on a bumpy airstrip, raising a shower of gravel that pinged off the metal belly of the plane with each bounce. As soon as the plane juddered to a full halt, the pilots cut the engines. Chiaki's ears rang in the abrupt quiet, the disappearance of the engines' noise almost disorienting in its suddenness.

The rear cargo bay ramp slowly lowered with a grating metallic shriek. Light spilled into the main body of the plane, accompanied by a few wisps of hot, damp air.

Jiayu was the first out, Chiaki stumbling out of the plane close behind. The sun was blindingly bright after five hours in the dim cargo hold.

Chiaki took in a deep breath, stamping her slightly swollen feet as she let the fresh air fill her lungs. It carried with it scents of earth and crushed grass. After five hours marinating in the stale air of the cargo bay, it smelled almost sweet.

She shaded her eyes with a hand, squinting to ward off the glare of the noonday sun. Looking around, a panorama of lush green slopes and rocky peaks rose like a jagged ring of teeth to meet the horizon. It seemed the airstrip they had landed on was built on the flat bottom of a bowl-shaped depression in the middle of the mountains.

To the east of the gravel airfield, a raised berm carried a two-lane road from north to south. It was the sort of rural road that might have seen no more than one or two cars a day in more normal times. Today, though, it carried a massive convoy of trucks, the column of vehicles stretching as far as she could see, their forms blurred by the haze of heat rising from the pavement.

From time to time, a dull crump-crump-crump of artillery firing in the distance sounded out, barely audible over the low roar of the trucks' diesel engines.
The plane's propellers were still spinning down, but the ground crew had already begun their work. A human chain trailed down the cargo ramp, workers passing crates of supplies one by one to the trio of trucks parked in the grassy field just beside the gravel airstrip.

A man leapt off one of the trucks and rushed over, gravel crunching underfoot.

"Captain Li?" he called out as he approached, scanning the group of mages who'd just disembarked from the plane. "Captain Li Jiayu?"

Jiayu raised her hand.

He rushed over, giving a quick salute that Jiayu acknowledged with a nod, then slid a sealed envelope into her hand before hurrying away to find his next recipient.

Jiayu inspected the envelope before tearing away the strip on the side and extracting the folded sheet of paper inside. Her eyes scanned the paper top to bottom, right to left, expression impassive.

When she was done reading, Jiayu folded up the paper into a small square. Producing a lighter from a zippered pocket of her flight suit, she held the flame to a corner of the square until it caught fire, then let the paper char for a few moments before releasing the embers to the wind.

For a heartbeat, Jiayu watched the soot and ashes scattering away with an unreadable expression. She heaved a sigh.

"All right," Jiayu announced. "Cormorant Flight, on me!"

Chiaki fell in with Jiayu. Lin Chenxi, Cormorant 3, and Zheng Ziyan, Cormorant 4, joined them a moment later.

"This is a temporary airstrip in the mountains about 100 klicks north of Yashan. Reports indicate that Republic forces are pushing toward the city along the coastal plain." Jiayu leaned forward, tracing a rough map of the region with the butt of her staff.

"The Republic is attacking the two bridges over the Kuiyang River on our forces' reinforcement route"—she jabbed at the map—"here and here by air. The next closest route is 300 klicks upstream. Our task is to provide air cover for this reinforcement corridor."

Jiayu stood back up, crossing her arms. "Unfortunately, all of our observation assets are tied up supporting the front, which means we'll be out of contact unless there are mages in radio range. There are a few friendlies operating in the area, conventional interceptors assigned to high-altitude CAP, but apart from that, we'll be on our own to start with. Questions?"

Chenxi sighed, smoothing out a few strands of mahogany hair with one hand and idly twirling a short baton—her focus—in her other. "Guess I get to play spotter again, then." She paused for a moment, shooting a look at Ziyan. "Say, Jiayu. You want to trade fledglings for this mission? I could use someone with a longer range to keep overwatch while I'm distracted."

"Flights are set up as mixed-range pairs for good reason," Jiayu admonished. "You should know better."

"Yes, but—"

"But nothing." Jiayu paused for a moment. Her eyebrows twitched slightly. "...You're from Nanyue, aren't you?" she asked, fixing the last member of their group with a stare. "Did you put her up to this?"

"Jiayu, don't—"

Jiayu waved her off.

Ziyan visibly shrunk back under Jiayu's attention, a hint of red crawling up her neck. "I don't..." She grimaced. "This is my home that's under attack here. I just don't want to be stuck on guard duty when—"

"You'll get your chance," Jiayu said firmly. "There will be plenty of opportunities. But not today. Sensors, like your lead"—she glanced at Chenxi, who shrugged nonchalantly—"are a priority target, and Chiaki is a sniper, not a bodyguard. You want to take the fight to the enemy? Good. But we don't just want to fight, we want to win. Do you understand?"

Ziyan scowled. Her jaw stiffened, fists clenched and unclenched as she stared down at her feet, her neon-green hair covering her eyes, but finally, she nodded sharply, a violent jerk up and down.

"All right. Anything else?"

Chiaki raised her hand. "How long is our shift? And what base are we going to be landing at?"

"Four hours," Jiayu said. "A second flight will join us in the area at the two hour mark, and the third flight two hours after that is our relief. I'll let you know what base..." She paused for a moment. "No, you should know now, in case I... Anyway. We'll be landing at Chang Kaishen Airfield, east of Yashan, roughly... here. And don't worry about your bags, the ground crew here will handle it."

She looked over the group. "Anything else? No? All right, let's go!"

Jiayu closed her eyes, slamming the butt of her staff on the ground. Her costume manifested over her flight suit with a bright flash of vermilion light, and after taking a few running steps, she leapt up and soared into the air.

---

Cormorant Flight pushed south along the Kuiyang River toward the sea. From her position on Cormorant 1's wing, Chiaki sensed Cormorant 3 and 4 trailing ten kilometers behind. Cormorant 3's mana was a beacon at her back, pulsing brightly at regular intervals as the sensor scanned the skies for other mages.

It was a beautiful summer day. Her day off, according to the duty schedule that her life had revolved around up until yesterday. She might have gone into town with Teruko. Spent the day idly reading in her room, perhaps. Or gone out flying low and fast over the sea, letting the salt spray and the sea breeze cool her off as she basked under the hot sun.

The river slid by beneath her, a silver thread winding through a patchwork of farm fields and rice paddies. A long string of boats and barges laden with cargo floated downstream. Supplies for the front, perhaps. Another line of vessels struggled upstream, laden with an altogether different sort of cargo. Refugees fleeing the fighting.

Would they see their homes again? Would she?

"Cormorant 3 to Lead. No contacts in range. We're clear for now."

Cormorant 3's voice echoed in Chiaki's mind, sounding bored, almost lazy, over the telepathic channel.

"Copy, Cormorant 3. Maintain course. We're coming up on the northern bridge. ETA ten minutes."

To the south, the first of the two bridges came into view as a smudge barely visible through the haze. A train was crossing the bridge from left to right, its flatbed cars each carrying some kind of armored vehicle. Mostly tanks with a few self-propelled guns, from the look of it. Eight tiny black specks too small to identify hung in the sky above, leaving curling white contrails in their path.

"Cormorant 2 to Lead. Fighters, twelve o'clock high."

"Copy, Cormorant 2. Should be ours, but stay sharp."

A large patch of clouds had formed to their front left, big, puffy cauliflower heads gleaming white under the sun, slowly blooming upwards. There would be rain later. Hopefully after their shift ended; Chiaki hated flying in the rain.

Smoke rose from the locomotives at the head and tail of the train as it pushed away from the boxy truss bridge, finishing its crossing as Chiaki approached. A convoy of trucks had begun crossing on the lower deck, obscured by the rail line above. The circular, pox-like sores of freshly-dug anti-air pits dotted the surroundings, interspersed with scattered bomb craters that marred the earth. Far in the distance, the graceful grey tower and slender cables of the second bridge were just emerging from the ground haze.

"Cormorant 1 to Cormorant Flight. We'll be flying a holding pattern between the two bridges. Three and Four, keep a safe distance north."

While the northern bridge was mixed road and rail, the southern bridge was road only. It too carried a long line of vehicles: trucks carrying cargo and troops with a few flat-faced APCs mixed in at random intervals, inching across. Further south, a few pillars of dark smoke rose into the air, their sources hidden beyond the horizon.

Chiaki settled into a patrol pattern, tracing an oval path between the two bridges, counting laps in an invisible racetrack in the sky.

The clouds shifted in the sky, drifting west with the wind as they grew. Below her, cars and boats and trains passed by like trails of ants on their way to or from the nest. The faint pall of smoke to the south slowly darkened.

Chiaki glanced up as she began yet another circuit between the bridges. The fighters were gone. No, not gone, but flying towards a set of contrails pointing north from the sea.

"Cormorant 2 to Lead. Contrails, heading north! Fighters moving to engage."

"Copy, Cormorant 2. No changes to our flight pattern, but be ready for inbound mages."

Lights appeared in the sky to the south, trails of red and green tracers zipping back and forth, accompanied by the sharp clattering of machine gun fire a heartbeat later. A burst of orange flame blossomed midair, then the sharp crack of an explosion reached Chiaki's ears. It left only a cloud of smoke and a single white parachute in its wake.

Chiaki licked her lips. Her mouth was parched.

"Cormorant 3 to Lead. I have four... No, eight! Repeat, eight contacts, eleven o'clock, range 80!"

Cormorant 1 didn't respond immediately.

"Cormorant 3, waiting for orders."

Another long moment of silence passed, punctuated only by the chatter of gunfire. Chiaki looked to her front right, towards Cormorant 1. Her flight lead was flying straight and true, utterly still.

"Cormorant 1, copy. Thinking."

There was an audible hum coming from the south now, an ominous vibration that shook the air in her lungs.

"Climb to flight level 45. Keep your range, engage only to prevent attacks on ground assets. If Republic bombers arrive... Two will be responsible for taking them out at range. Three and Four will provide cover with me."

The hum was louder, identifiable now as the drone of engines.

"The next CAP flight of mages is due to arrive in 25 minutes."

"Cormorant 3, copy all. I'll see you all back on base."

Chiaki shifted slightly, pitching up to climb to altitude as quickly as possible. As she did so, Cormorant 1's voice sounded again, not the pleasant mental voice of telepathy but the tinny crackling of the radio earpiece.

"All stations, all stations! This is Cormorant Actual, 3rd Wing, Union Mage Corps. We have two flights of hostile mages over the Kuiyang River rail bridge. Request immediate reinforcement."

Silence.

"Repeat, all stations, this is Cormorant Actual! Hostile mages over the Yashan reinforcement corridor. Does anyone receive?"

No response.

Chiaki climbed in an utter quiet, doing her best to ignore the prickling sensation crawling across her scalp. The fighters had returned overhead, circling as they rebuilt their formation. Their numbers had been reduced by over half, and a few of the remaining silhouettes left an ugly trail of smoke.

On the horizon, two groups of eight two-engine planes came into view, flanked above and below by four more flights of fighters.

Chiaki squinted, trying to spot any hint of the enemy mages. She saw nothing save for the glare of the afternoon sun.

Then eight glowing figures swooped down from behind the sun, diving on Cormorant Flight, and Chiaki's staff was braced in her arms before she realized she'd moved.

Cormorant Flight scattered under the sudden assault.

---

"Two, break! Break!"

Chiaki jerked right, Cormorant 1's warning ringing in her head. A pair of needle-thin orange beams zipped past her left shoulder, close enough to leave stinging heat on her cheek and a blue-green afterimage in her vision. She wrenched herself into a spiraling dive towards the safety of the antiair guns below.

Orange was aggressive. Chiaki preferred to fight at a distance, fighting for position to deliver a single decisive blow. Orange, on the other hand, sprayed fire haphazardly and routinely made use of high-g maneuvers that would have left Chiaki unconscious were she to try them. Orange clearly preferred knife-fighting range, where reflexes would determine the outcome, exactly the sort of fight she was worst-equipped to handle.

Chiaki dove towards the antiair guns ringing the bridge. The world rose up to meet her, spinning wildly while she forced herself to pitch up. Her stomach churned. Color drained from her sight and her flight suit clamped tightly around her legs. She arrested her descent a scant dozen meters above the ground.

Still dizzy, pulse pounding in her head, Chiaki took a deep breath, trying to still her shaking hands. Orange was already shooting at her as she leveled out at the bottom of the dive. Short bursts sailed past her while she rolled back and forth, trying to spoil her enemy's aim.

A stream of orbs stitched its way across her back, punching holes in a neat diagonal line from her left hip to her right shoulder. Her costume tore first, then her flight suit, then her skin.

Pain radiated from her back, filling her vision with white and forcing tears from her eyes. Her right hand spasmed uncontrollably, fingers loosening their grip on her staff. It hung suspended in midair for a single instant before she caught it, just barely, in the crook of her arm.

She dodged again, tracing a helical path through the air. A longer burst of orange shots sailed through the space where she'd been just a moment ago. A flash of red drew her attention, and Chiaki caught a glimpse of gunmetal grey and the brief silhouette of a soldier directly beneath her, signal flag raised, giving the order to fire. Before she could think to flinch, she was past. The gun emplacement she'd just cleared roared to life, rattling her teeth as it sent a burst of shellfire up into the path of the mage diving after her.

Chiaki risked a backward glance as she skimmed the ground surface, breath shuddering, lungs pulling in air filled with smoke and sulfur. The shells had missed, but they'd still forced Orange to the side, buying her a few hundred meters of distance. It was enough. She gingerly shifted her staff into her left hand. The motion tugged at the torn skin on her back, forcing out a sharp hiss through clenched teeth.

She looked above her. Lines of tracers and trails of smoke and flame from the fighters' duels marred the pale blue of the open air, but her path up, at least, was clear. She flared her mana, hurling herself back into the sky. Another long burst of shots accompanied her on her ascent, though this time they flew wide enough that she didn't have to dodge.

To her right, Cormorant 1 had just pulled out of a dive only to immediately launch into another spine-crushing maneuver. A sudden halt midair let her force an overshoot, driving one of her two pursuers off with a blind volley of fire.

Orange took advantage of Chiaki's momentary distraction, firing off another beam that singed off a few locks of her hair. A quick look over her shoulder confirmed that her opponent was still there, doggedly climbing after her, but shrinking in her vision as Chiaki continued to pull away.

To the north, Cormorant 3 and 4 traced tight arcs through a dense pattern of enemy fire. There was one enemy on her and two on Cormorant 1, which meant five on the other two members of her flight. Five on two was poor odds, but Cormorant 4 had gotten the fight she wanted. Chiaki hoped she wouldn't regret the wish.

Bright flames from below drew her eye. A battery of heavy antiair guns roared. Not long after, a series of explosions rang out in the air to the south, shells bursting among the bombers, obscuring them in a cloud of smoke and flak.

Chiaki looked back over her shoulder again. Orange was still a fair distance away, accelerating much slower than she had moments before. Content to wait until the other fights reached their natural conclusion and she could rely on the weight of numbers, perhaps, or maybe running low on mana after having spent it so casually on all of those attacks.

It meant she had enough room to loop around and rejoin the dogfight, help Cormorant 1 shake off her own tails, link up with Cormorant 3 and 4, buy time until their reinforcements arrived. It would be the easy thing to do. The safe thing to do.

She looked down at the trucks on the cable bridge, some accelerating, racing to clear the bridge span, others askew on the road as the occupants abandoned their rides and sprinted for the safety of land on foot. From her vantage point, they were tiny, insignificant things, trucks the size of a grain of rice and men not much larger than a mote of dust.

Her life was more important than the lives of these specks, these men, below. The policy book she knew by heart said as much; the survival of mages was to be prioritized above all else. She could do the safe thing, leave the bridge to the bombers and watch them wreak havoc from the air as she kept her distance. It would even be the correct thing to do.

But mages were more than just soldiers. They flew, wielded magic, worked miracles. They were heroines, and heroines didn't abandon their duties.

Chiaki squinted, trying to judge the size of the bombers in her vision. Too small, still. Not in range yet. Not quite.

The first group of bombers had already begun to descend into a shallow dive, flaps deployed as they started on their attack run.

Time to make a decision.

"Cormorant 2 to Lead. I'm going after the bombers."

"Cormorant 1, copy." A moment of silence. "Go, I'll keep these two off you as long as I can."

Chiaki turned south, burning through mana, warmth draining from her body as she sprinted towards the bombers. She'd been careful, almost miserly with using her magic up until this point, but it was time to spend those reserves. Behind her, Orange's mana suddenly surged as she tried to keep pace.

There were eight bombers stacked in two staggered diamonds, side by side.

She took a deep breath and raised her staff, tucking it tightly against her side with her elbow. The stabbing pain in her shoulder faded to the back of her mind as she focused on her first target.

Her beam lanced out, crossing the gap in less than a second, drawing a ragged line of splintered metal across the lead plane's wing between the engine and the fuselage. For a moment, the bomber continued flying onward as if nothing had happened, but then the wing folded in on itself and the plane tumbled out of the sky, spinning like a maple seed as it fell.

Chiaki shifted focus to her next target. This time, her aim was slightly off, and it tore a chunk through one of its horizontal stabilizers. After a moment, the plan began bucking up and down, pitching wildly as the pilots fought to regain control. A mission kill. She moved on.

The bomber crews had reacted to her presence, now. A stream of tracers reached out towards her from the nose guns, but they fell well short of their intended target. Chiaki returned fire, sending another beam up the tracers' path, where it slammed through the plane's cockpit and tore into the bomb bay. One long moment passed, then another, and then the plane ripped itself apart in a massive explosion, leaving only a small cloud of metal shards to rain down on the river below.

"Cormorant 1 to Cormorant 2! Two enemy mages have broken contact with Three and Four. They're headed your way, ETA three minutes."

There was no time to acknowledge the warning. One final beam slammed through the last bomber's left wing, fire and smoke blooming in the engine.

Four planes down. Four planes left to go.

A spray of brilliant orbs flashed by above her head. Orange was catching up.

The last group of bombers was already beginning their final approach, bomb bay doors open to reveal the ordnance they carried: a pair of massive, finned bombs, enough to shatter the concrete tower that held up the bridge deck.

More tracers reached out towards Chiaki as she focused her attention on the remaining planes, panicked fire from well outside the range that it could possibly hit as the crews did what they could to keep her away.

Her next attack hit the lead plane center mass, punching a hole clean through the fuselage to little practical effect. Chiaki cursed under her breath and spent a precious second adjusting her aim. Her second shot severed the tail, this time sending the plane into an unrecoverable dive.

She was starting to run low on mana now, fingers cold and clammy, vision swimming from exhaustion and blood loss.

Three planes left.

Another one of Orange's attacks shot towards her, close enough that she had to twist away, spoiling her aim. Orange was getting closer now.

There was no time left for another calculated shot, not with an opponent who was now fresher than she was hot on her tail. Chiaki aimed a beam in the rough direction of one of the remaining bombers and fired as she rolled over into a backwards dive, down towards the water. The beam carved a diagonal path through the middle of another plane's wing. After a moment, the remaining material failed, and the outer half of the wing snapped off, sending the plane into a steep, spiraling turn.

For the first time since the fighting had begun, the radio came to life in her ear.

"Pelican Actual to Cormorant Flight. Inbound from the east, ETA five minutes. Requesting tactical picture."

As she passed through their formation, the remaining two bombers broke formation, bomb bay doors slowly closing as they dropped their payload early and aborted their run. Before Chiaki could celebrate her success, Orange had caught up, her arrival heralded by a pair of needle-like beams that pierced through Chiaki's hastily conjured shield to land squarely on her left shoulder.

The force of the impact sent her spinning. Momentarily stunned, Chiaki dropped her staff. It gleamed in the sunlight as it fell towards the river below.
"Cormorant Actual to Pelican Actual. Sixteen active hostiles, eight mages, eight medium bombers. Cormorant 2 is engaged over the southern road bridge. Request Pelican Lead commit south."

Orange chased after Chiaki as she fell backwards, her figure growing larger and larger, framed in her view by a few errant strands of violet hair. She was close enough now that Chiaki could make out a few of her features. Orange hair, of course, paired with a puffy, layered wedding cake dress in orange and white.

Her implacable foe looked young. Younger than she was, perhaps, though the twisted expression of rage that marred her features made it difficult to say for sure. Her short staff was pointed straight at Chiaki's face, focus already charged and glowing.

Before she could muster up the mana to produce a shield, Chiaki landed in the river. She hit back first, skipping in a straight line across the surface of the water, each bouncing skid shooting droplets of water in every direction.

Orange fired, eyes wide, mouth locked into a savage grin.

For a single instant, light filled her vision, and then everything went dark.

 

[enthalpy]

????
Chang Kaishen Airbase, Nanyue

Chiaki opened her eyes.

The concrete above her was coated in a layer of bone-white paint. Chiaki stared at it, her mind as blank and featureless as the paint in front of her eyes.
It was an unfamiliar ceiling.

When Chiaki tried to sit up, the world came flooding back on a wave of pain. Her ribs shrieked in protest as the bandages wrapped tightly around her chest flexed. There was something stuck on her left arm. When she reached over to pull it off, something tugged sharply beneath her skin, accompanied by a twinge of pain. Confused, Chiaki looked over at her arm. An IV line led to a glass bottle hanging on a metal pole to the side of her bed.

A hand pressed down on her shoulder and forced her to lie back down in the bed.

It was Jiayu, her arm in a sling, dressed not in her flight suit but in the plain grey-green fatigues of the Mage Corps.

"Don't move," she ordered. "I'll find a doctor."

Chiaki's head fell back into her pillow.

Images flashed through her head. A pair of bombers aborting their run on the bridge. Falling, then water. Orange light filling her vision...

She groaned, pressing the back of her hand on her forehead. It felt hot to the touch. Memories of fuel and smoke intruded upon the smell of alcohol and iodine lingering in the hospital air. The lights on the ceiling were painfully, blindingly bright. Chiaki closed her eyes again.

Somewhere in the room, there was a mechanical clock, its steady ticking obnoxiously loud in the silence of the hospital room. Her heart raced, keeping time along with it, two sharp pulses for each tick.

An indeterminate amount of time passed before Chiaki's reverie was interrupted by the clacking of shoes on tile.

"She's awake?"

Chiaki blearily opened her eyes.

"M'wake," she managed, her tongue not cooperating with her attempt at speech.

The doctor was a slight man with brass-rimmed glasses. A nametag clipped to his white coat declared him to be "Zhang Xingjian, External Medicine."

"I'm going to perform a few tests. Nod your head if you understand."

Chiaki shifted her chin in a rough approximation of a nod.

"Look at the tip of this flashlight. Good. Follow its movement with your eyes. Good. Now look directly into the light. Excellent. Squeeze my hand? Other hand now. All right, that should be all."

He pulled a clipboard from the foot of her bed and scribbled a few notes onto the paper, flipping through the records briefly, yawning through his nose as he set it back down.

"Now. Do you want good news or bad news first?"

Chiaki stared at him dumbly.

"Bad news first, then. You have bruised ribs, deep tissue lacerations all across your back, and several torn ligaments in your shoulder. The good news: if everything goes well, you can be out of here tomorrow evening, though you'll need a sling for your arm for about ten days."

"All right, let's leave her to rest," he said to Jiayu. "She's running a low fever. Nothing serious, though it might impact her sleep quality. I'll order another round of antipyretics. Don't forget—no combat duties for five days after the sling comes off. She needs the mana for recovery. Same goes for you, Captain Li. I swear, I'm constantly amazed by how fast you girls heal..."

The voices receded into the distance. Chiaki let her consciousness drift away.

---

0650, 5 Xiaoshu, Zhengming 12
Chang Kaishen Airbase, Nanyue

When Chiaki next awoke, it was to sunlight shining through the window, directly into her eyes.

For a single moment, all was right with the world. Then she twitched, and the twinge of pain in her back reminded her of where she was.

Jiayu was still in her hospital room, right arm still in a sling, awkwardly shuffling through a stack of papers balanced precariously on her thigh.

"You're awake," she said, not bothering to look up.

Chiaki took a moment to collect her thoughts. Cormorant Flight, the bridges, the second flight of bombers, the enemy mages...

"How long was I out?" she asked, finally.

"Two days." Jiayu looked up and gave her an appraising look, then turned back down to her papers.

"What happened?"

"Pelican Flight arrived not long after you were knocked out," Jiayu reported. "We were able to drive off the enemy mages. They all escaped, but we think three of them were injured enough to be out of commission for the foreseeable future. The remaining bombers bailed when they lost their mage support. There was some minor damage to the southern road bridge, but nothing that can't be repaired quickly."

"How are Chenxi and Ziyan?"

"They're alive," Jiayu replied curtly.

"...And?"

"Chenxi burned through most of her mana on shields. The doctors say she'll be out for a few days, but she'll be fine otherwise." She grimaced. "Ziyan... She has a shattered femur. Almost lost the leg."

Chiaki's fist clenched around her bed sheets. "She'll be fine, though. Right?"

The question felt silly. Asking wouldn't change what had happened.

"She'll be out on medical leave until next year at the earliest. After that... We'll see how it goes."

Chiaki let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Ziyan had wanted to fight. Now, she'd be lucky to even be back on her feet before the start of winter. Still, the outcome was far better than she had expected, given the circumstances.

She frowned, thinking back on the last moments of the battle. The bridge, bombers, getting hit, her staff tumbling from her grip... Her staff!

"Where's my staff?"

For the first time that Chiaki could remember, a hint of a smile crept its way onto Jiayu's lips. "It was recovered after the battle and arrived while you were unconscious. I had it sent to your assigned quarters. The men who found it left something nice for you."

"...Nice? What do you mean, nice?"

"You'll see."

Jiayu painstakingly gathered up the papers, holding them down against her leg with her elbow, then rolling them up into an oblong tube with her left hand and tucking the bundle into her sling. She stood.

"One last thing. Senior Colonel Bai wants to meet with you once you're discharged. Nothing urgent, it can wait until tomorrow morning. I have some other business to handle, but I'll be back around noon with lunch."

The door closed, leaving Chiaki to her thoughts.

Now fully lucid, Chiaki finally had the chance to look around and inspect the space she'd spent over a day unconscious in.

The hospital room was a cramped, almost claustrophobic space. There was just enough space to cram in a single bed and a few chairs while leaving barely enough room to walk around without stumbling over the furniture. A row of windows lined the wall opposite the entrance; a door to what was probably a bathroom sat opposite the bed.

Still, it was infinitely better than an open ward. Infinitely quieter as well. There were none of the sounds she remembered from her last visit to a hospital, when she'd first found out she was a mage. No crying or groans of pain or coughing, just a placid silence interrupted only by the metronome ticking of the clock and the faint rumbling of engines from outside the windows.

And by the sound of footsteps outside as well.

The door opened ever-so-slightly, revealing a few wisps of turquoise hair. Teruko peered inside. Her eyes brightened when she saw Chiaki sitting in bed looking back at her.

The other girl slipped inside quietly, pushed the door shut behind her, and shuffled over to the bed. She stood there for a moment, just looking, then leaned in and wrapped Chiaki in a hug.

"Careful with the ribs," Chiaki hissed. Teruko's grip loosened, but she didn't let go.

"Are you all right? They wouldn't tell me anything about what happened! Do you have any idea how worried I was?"

"I'm glad you're okay as well."

Teruko sniffled softly, face still buried in Chiaki's shoulder. "I came by last night, but that flight lead of yours wouldn't let me in. Told me to 'come back tomorrow!' Can you believe that? What a bitch!"

Chiaki let out an undignified giggle that morphed into a coughing fit when her ribs protested the sudden motion.

Teruko let go as if burnt. She stood up and, after a moment of hesitation, pulled a chair over to the side of the bed.

They talked for a while longer, about everything and about nothing.

The water on base had a revolting metallic taste, and the hot water in the showers smelled like rotten eggs.

The food in the mess hall, on the other hand, was excellent. Teruko had snuck Chiaki a palm-sized doushabao, 'sort of like a steamedtaiyaki,' and there was supposedly a steady supply of crispy pork belly on offer. Chiaki would have to confirm for herself, though.

Half of the 1st Group had been informally assigned to be part of some kind of quick response force, scrambling into the air whenever flights of Republic mages were detected near the front.

Yashan was under siege. Teruko's flight had been running intercepts on rotation, and each time she'd gone, more and more of the city had been erased, buildings replaced by loose piles of rubble.

"It feels like we're being fed into a meat grinder piece by piece," Teruko complained. "They're sending us out one flight at a time because there's not enough mages around to send more, but there's not enough mages around because everyone's always out on a mission! We're always outnumbered in the field, and everyone's getting hurt."

"Surely it can't be that bad."

Teruko crossed her arms. "Your entire flight is out of commission, my flight is down one... There's ten of us in the hospital right this moment, I counted!"
Chiaki looked up at the ceiling. Ten out of eighty in just two days. She grimaced.

They sat in an uncomfortable silence.

"Jiayu said Senior Colonel Bai wants to see me," Chiaki said, finally. "Do you know what that's about?"

Teruko blinked. "No idea," she said. "Is it urgent?"

"No, she told me it could wait until tomorrow, after I get discharged."

A conspiratorial smile wormed its way across Teruko's face. "Maybe you're getting a medal."

"Surely not. I didn't do anything special."

"You stopped an entire flight of bombers by yourself, didn't you?"

"I was just—"

Teruko looked away. "Following your orders? To prioritize survival?" When she looked back, Teruko's smile had disappeared, replaced with a glower. "You survived, so they'll give you a medal. If you, well... hadn't, they'd have used you as a case study for what not to do in the Academy instead."

Chiaki sighed. "I'll be more careful in the future."

"That's not... That isn't..." Teruko sighed and looked down. When she raised her head again, the scowl on her face had already morphed back into her habitual smile. "I'll hold you to that, then."

They were still idly chatting when a sharp knocking sounded at the door.

Teruko smiled. "That's my cue to leave, I think. I have a briefing later anyway."

The door opened before Teruko reached it, revealing Jiayu, who was awkwardly carrying a brown paper bag in her left hand. She wordlessly stepped aside, letting Teruko out of the room, then walked in letting door close after her.

"I brought your lunch," Jiayu said simply. "Something to read, too."

A rumpled newspaper came out of the bag. The headline immediately caught Chiaki's eye.

Miracle over the Kuiyang: Salvation in Violet

---

Jiayu left after Chiaki finished eating, citing some planning meeting she had to attend.

With both Jiayu and Teruko gone, Chiaki had been left to find other ways to while away the time. After three readings of the newspaper from cover to cover, mortifying front page story on her own exploits included, she'd had enough. Chiaki climbed out of bed, dragging the IV pole along with her as if it were an especially ungainly staff.

It was empty outside, and silent save for her own footsteps and the scraping of the metal pole against the floor.

She wandered aimlessly down the hallway. Each of the doors had a cardboard placard with a name written on it, some familiar, others not. And, at the far end of the hallway, "Zheng Ziyan." She stopped for a moment, laying her fingers on the card, tracing the strokes one by one.

Chiaki opened the door.

Ziyan sat propped up against some pillows, right leg in a raised sling dangling from a metal frame attached to her bed, mouth set in a thin line. The curtains were open, and sunlight streamed in through the windows, casting squares of light that marched down Ziyan's leg and spilled off the foot of the bed.

"Sugawara," she greeted flatly. "I see you're doing all right."

Chiaki dragged a chair over to the bedside and sat down, looking over her flightmate. A metal cage had been clamped around her leg, providing support for the threaded metal rods that protruded from the dressings on Ziyan's leg at irregular intervals.

"I heard about what happened after I was knocked out."

"Jiayu must've told you, huh?" Ziyan shook her head. "Did she tell you I spent the entire engagement hiding behind a shield?" she said bitterly. "Didn't get any real chance to contribute to the fight. They knew Chenxi was a sensor. They must have, otherwise there wouldn't have been five of them after us right from the start."

Chiaki opened her mouth. What was she supposed to say? Consolation? Encouragement?

"...I'm sorry," she said at last, regretting the words the instant they left her lips.

"Sorry? For what? You didn't do anything wrong."

"I'm sure you didn't either."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be stuck in this bed for the better part of a year, would I?"

Chiaki had no response. She stared down at the floor, head bowed, feeling as if the the breath had been sucked out of her lungs.

After a few minutes of dead air, Ziyan let out a soft sigh.

"You should go," she said, her face turned away towards the windows and the sky outside. "Don't you have a war to fight?"

Chiaki stood and gave Ziyan a bow, as deep as she was able. She left in silence.

---

Night had fallen by the time Chiaki found her way to her new assigned quarters.

She'd ended up reading her newspaper two more times after she'd returned to her own hospital room. Partway through her third reading, a nurse had come by to inspect her wounds and change her bandages before unceremoniously evicting her from her hospital bed.

Chiaki had been left to find her way across the base on her own.

Despite the late hour, the base was permeated by a nervous energy. Trucks trundled along, their headlights casting bright cones in the darkness, and from time to time, the sounds of footsteps would herald the arrival of a group of soldiers running by at a brisk pace.

Unlike at Xinhu, the facilities reserved for mages were mixed in with the other buildings; the barracks she'd been assigned to was right next to what looked to be the air force officers' quarters.

Someone had helpfully taped a sheet of paper with her name to the door.

The interior followed the standardized layout Chiaki had come to expect: a narrow, deep room with a window at the far end, the bed, desk, and chair lined up against one wall. Even the switch for the light was in exactly the same place on the wall. It clicked on with a satisfying crunch, and after a few seconds of darkness, the fluorescent bulb on the ceiling came to life with a loud buzz that softened to a quiet hum.

The bag she'd left behind at that temporary airstrip had been placed neatly on the foot of her bed, and her staff had been placed on top of the desk, the ends extending past the edge on both sides.

There was an envelope propped up against the staff, plain white and completely textless. The surprise Jiayu had mentioned.

It had been left unsealed, and Chiaki folded the flap open, revealing a small card with some writing.

To our unnamed guardian:

We saw you over the bridge. Though we don't know your name, we won't forget what you did. We wish you a speedy recovery.
May your martial fortunes be ever ascendant.

—Cpt Chen Wei (Battery Commander), Lt Qian Haojie (Political Officer), Lt Han Xin (Executive Officer), and the men of the 188th AAA Regiment, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Battery

She flipped the card over. On the other side was a unit photograph not unlike the one with her in it hanging in the briefing room back in Xinhu, though this one had three rows of soldiers in freshly-pressed uniforms posing in front of a quartet of light antiaircraft guns. Its glossy paper was had a few spots of wear around the edges, and in the bottom right corner, someone had written a date: "13 Jingzhe, Zhengming 11." It was from over a year ago, from before the war had begun. A relic of a lost era.

Chiaki flipped it over a few times, committing the details to memory, then returned the photograph to its envelope. After a moment of hesitation, she carefully tucked it into an interior pocket of her bag.

She inspected her staff next. Someone had evidently taken the time to clean it off after its fall. Normally, the polished surfaces on the haft would be coated in her fingerprints, but right now, she could see a clean reflection looking back at herself in the polished surface.

Chiaki rolled it across the table, checking the balance. She liked keeping her equipment as pristine as possible, but on the last mission, her staff had unavoidably acquired a few permanent marks. Some scratches marred the clean finish on the butt end of the haft, and the chamfered edge at the bottom had a flat dent.

She picked it up off the table. Having its weight in her hands was familiar, comforting. A trickle of mana fed to the staff made the focus flash on for an instant before Chiaki cut it off. Everything seemed to be in order. The damage was just cosmetic, then, though she would have to take it to the range later to make sure.

With nothing else to do, Chiaki lay down on the bed, drawing the thin blanket across her chest.

The night deepened as she lay awake, replaying the short conversation with Ziyan over and over again.

Don't you have a war to fight?

It was a long time before sleep claimed her.

---

Chiaki arrived outside Senior Colonel Bai's office at 0700 on the dot. She knocked on the door, and when she received no response, Chiaki gingerly lowered herself into one of the metal chairs lined up in the hallway opposite the door.

A muffled voice emanated from inside the office, too soft to hear clearly at first, but escalating in volume to the point where Chiaki could catch a few errant phrases.

"—in one week, and not one moment sooner—"

"—critically understaffed—"

"—mobilization is already behind schedule—"

The loud sound of a telephone slamming into its cradle rang out. Chiaki shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

Senior Colonel Bai stepped outside a moment later, an empty glass mug in her hand, perfectly composed and with no signs of her earlier agitation. For a long moment, she stared at Chiaki, who sat stiffly in her chair, looking straight ahead, desperately wishing that the ground beneath her would split open and swallow her up.

"Sugawara Chiaki?" the senior colonel said, after a moment.

Chiaki belatedly shot to her feet and saluted. The Senior Colonel returned the gesture with an amused half-smile, then waved her off.

"Have a seat in my office," she said, glancing down at her wristwatch. "I'll be back in just a moment."

The Senior Colonel's office in Xinhu had beautiful hardwood furniture and upholstered chairs the last time she'd been there, as well as a few pieces of calligraphy and a beautiful ink painting of a mountain rising from a misty lake hanging on the walls.

This particular office was spartan in comparison. A desk piled high with paper, a cot with a pillow and a rumpled blanket, and a pair of enameled metal folding chairs were the only furnishings in the room, with the remaining space filled up with cardboard boxes full to bursting with papers.

Chiaki sat on the edge of the visitor's chair, back ramrod-straight.

When Senior Colonel Bai returned, she had an extra mug in her hand, which she placed on the table in front of Chiaki. It was filled with hot water and a pinch of tea leaves. Steam rose from the slowly-darkening water.

"In ancient times," Senior Colonel Bai began without preamble, sitting down primly across from Chiaki, "mages were known as shenji. Or kamihime, if you will. Daughters of the gods. They could defeat armies, save nations, bend heaven and earth to their will. They could work miracles."

Chiaki blinked, hands clamped around the mug she'd been handed. She hadn't been sure what to expect from the meeting. An interview on her last mission. Commentary on her performance. A reprimand, perhaps. But certainly not a history lesson.

Something glinted in the senior colonel's silver eyes.

"Today, of course, magic has been demystified by science. You were taught as much: the ideal spell geometry to maximize range, the amount of mana flux needed to generate a specific effect on a target, mana regeneration rate and its implications on flight endurance. All this through the lens of data. Numbers. And yet... We still reach out for those miracles."

A familiar-looking newspaper appeared in the senior colonel's hands, its headline the same as the one Chiaki had spent most of yesterday afternoon looking at.

"Junior Lieutenant Sugawara Chiaki. Do you want to be a miracle worker?"

Chiaki swallowed. "I... I don't..."

"The Nanyang Daily has requested that I make the mage responsible for this miracle available for an interview," Senior Colonel Bai continued. "I will be frank. The current strategic situation is unfavorable. Yashan holds for now, but the Nanyang Army is being driven back along the entire rest of the coastal plain. The Nanyang State government wants some good news, something inspiring to maintain morale on the home front. Are you interested?"

"Is this an order?"

Senior Colonel Bai took a shallow sip from her mug. "Normally, I would discourage my subordinates from interacting directly with the media. Fame is a double-edged sword, and it is not a tool most mages your age are well-equipped to wield. These are not normal times, however, and from your reaction, you might be more suited to life under the watchful gaze of the nation than some of the others I've spoken to on this matter."

"Why me?"

"Surely there must be someone else with similar achievements? Perhaps there is. But no one with your particular circumstances. To this day, Eirai State has remained somewhat separate from the other states of the Union." She raised her hand before Chiaki could voice a protest. "This is an observation, not a judgment. But in this specific instance, this separation has resulted in a lack of enthusiasm within Eirai State with regards to supporting the war effort. The existence of a national heroine from Eirai would certainly help in this respect."

"This is all..." Chiaki paused, trying to find an appropriately indirect way to phrase her thoughts. "I... Is there something specific I should say about what happened?"

"Your achievements are all real," the senior colonel said, giving Chiaki a warm smile. "You should be proud of yourself. Not every mage accomplishes what you have their first few times on the battlefield. War is filled with heroism, that is true, but that allows the journalist to choose a hero to illuminate; he does not need to create one out of whole cloth."

Did she really have a choice in the matter? Chiaki grimaced.

"I thought we stayed out of politics," she muttered.

"A common sentiment. It is indeed what you would have been taught. But I must ask, Junior Lieutenant Sugawara. How familiar are you with the history of the Union? Specifically the role that mages played in the process?"

Chiaki shook her head.

"We were the driving force behind the creation of the Union. The Union Mage Corps was initially a sort of social club predating the existence of the Union proper."

Senior Colonel Bai fixed Chiaki with an unreadable expression that made Chiaki's skin crawl.

"Have you ever wondered why Mage Corps is federal while the conventional forces answer to the states? That is why. This is all public knowledge of a sort, not advertised but not hidden either. All of the information is there for you to find, so long as you know what to look for."

She paused and sipped again at her tea.

"For us, refusing to take a side is, in and of itself, a choice."

Chiaki stared into her mug. The water had darkened to a rich amber, and the tea leaves had unfurled and sunk into the bottom of the cup, forming a layer of mossy green against the white ceramic.

Ziyan would be furious at her if she agreed. But Ziyan wasn't the one who had to make this decision, was she?

"Can I have a few days to decide?" she asked.

"Of course." Senior Colonel Bai pushed a thick folio across her desk. "Public Affairs has prepared a packet for you. It has some information on the interviewer, the questions that will be asked, the answers we suggest you provide... I will recommend that you read through it carefully, regardless of what you choose. Just to familiarize yourself with the procedures, if nothing else. You are a promising young mage, Sugawara Chiaki. If you ever need guidance on your career or navigating these sorts of problems, my door is open."

The folio was heavier than it looked.

On her way back to the barracks, Chiaki caught a glimpse of the hospital. She stopped for a moment to look. Ziyan was looking out one of those windows at the moment, no doubt. What was she thinking about?

Jiayu was standing outside the entrance to the barracks when Chiaki returned. She idly held a lit cigarette in her left hand, thumb pressed against the filter. A few wisps of smoke rose into the morning air.

"Well?" she asked.

"I have an interview to prepare for."

Jiayu glanced at the folio in Chiaki's hand, a hint of recognition appearing in her eyes. She tapped some ash onto the ground.

"Senior Colonel Bai can prepare a statement on your behalf. Or I could sit in for you instead." She brought the cigarette to her lips and took a long drag, then breathed out and let the smoke lazily drift away. "You don't have to do it."

Chiaki stopped for a moment. Jiayu was looking past her, focused on the horizon, face visible in profile.

"I don't," she agreed. "Thank you for the offer."

She opened the door and walked inside.

 

[enthalpy]

1315, Fructidor 11, 151
GRS Enchanted Evening, 350 km off the Nanyue coast
Alice Jennings inspected her appearance in the mirror. Her reflection stared back at her, haggard and pale. She'd spent the better part of half an hour in here already, alternating between fixing her appearance and repeating a few practiced responses to her reflection. She would be standing in front of the inquiry panel that would decide her future soon. She needed to be ready.

Alice tucked a stray wisp of golden hair back into place and tugged at her necktie. No matter how she shifted the knot around, she couldn't quite get it to sit evenly under the collar of her dress uniform.

A hint of color appeared behind her: Grace Beaufort, her orange hair unmistakable even in the dim light of the washroom.

"It's not fair to you, Alice." Grace's voice was thin and wavering. "I had her. I had that purple witch dead to rights. But she just kept..."

"It's not your fault."

"Well it's certainly not your fault either!"

Alice turned towards the open door.

"Grace, it doesn't matter whose fault it was," she said, laying a hand on the other girl's hair, softly patting her head. "I know you did your best. And besides, I was the mage commander for that mission. If you made a mistake, it was because my instructions weren't sufficient for you to do your job properly. Ultimately, the failure is my responsibility."

"But I—"

"You don't need to worry about me." Alice forced out a thin smile. "The Air Corps can complain as much as they want about what happened. The higher-ups will cover for me. You'll see."

Alice's clanging footsteps echoed in the metal corridors, punctuating the low thrumming of the ship's engines as she made her way up. A few sailors saluted her as she passed by. She returned the gestures with a brief nod as she hurried on her way.

Wing Commander Fairfax had pulled her into her office a day before, and the dressing down she'd received still rang in her ears.

"The Air Corps is displeased," the older woman had said after finishing her tirade. "They're trying to characterize what happened as a failure of command. We'll do what we can for you, of course, but they're after your head."

Spending the rest of her tour of duty running aerial policing missions over the colonies wasn't exactly her idea of a fulfilling career, but it could always be worse. Every one of the Republic's mages knew about what had happened to Gilded Lily, despite the century that had passed since that particular court martial.

Alice paused in front of the closed door of the captain's stateroom, her hand coming up to her throat to adjust her necktie once again.

She hesitated for a moment, steeling herself for what was about to come, then gingerly pushed the door open.

"Squadron Leader Jennings reporting."

The captain's stateroom had been transformed, the normal furniture gone, replaced by a long folding table. An easel carrying a map of Yashan and its surroundings stood in a corner of the room. Alice recognized the markings instantly; it was the flight plan of the failed bombing raid eight days ago.

There were four people sitting behind the table, each with their own distinct set of clothes.

An aged woman with light pink hair in the uniform of the Republic Mage Force sat second from the left. Grand Hyacinth's exploits were legendary among the mages of the Republic; there were at least two statues of the woman that Alice had seen in person.

On Grand Hyacinth's right, a Rear Admiral in navy blue intently examined the fountain pen in his hands. Alice recognized him as Alfred May. She'd met the man during annual fleet exercises aboard the GRS Terrible two years ago, when he'd just been a Commodore. Evidently he'd been promoted since then.

An Air Corps officer with greying hair and the shoulderboards of an Air Vice-Marshal and a heavyset man with thick horn-rim glasses and a tweed suit bookended the pair, rounding out the quartet of panel members.

"Squadron Leader Alice Jennings," the Air Vice-Marshal began, "you have been summoned before this Board of Inquiry, convened regarding the events of the joint mission between the Republic Mage Force and the Republican Guards Air Corps on 3 Fructidor 151."

Alice glanced at the placard in front of the man's folded hands and inwardly winced. Air Vice-Marshal Robert Thornton. He was one of the officers pushing for an expansion of the strategic bomber force.

"I understand, sir."

"Squadron Leader Jennings. We have reviewed your initial report on the events of the mission. Today, we need to understand the decisions behind it. If you would, Squadron Leader, please recount for us your reasoning regarding the tactical disposition of the mage forces providing escort for the bombers."

Alice nodded tightly, her hands clasped behind her back. She looked at Grand Hyacinth and received a barely perceptible nod in return.

"We initially faced four enemy mages. Based on intelligence assessments of Union doctrine, we expected two experienced mages, each paired with a rookie."

The words came out smoothly. The time she'd spent rehearsing helped.

"Additionally, we determined that one of the enemy mages was a sensor asset. Our current doctrine is to leverage numerical advantages where present to maximize attrition of the Union's mage forces, prioritizing sensor assets where possible. Accordingly, I tasked five mages to eliminate the sensor and her wingmate, while the remaining personnel ran interference on the remaining two enemy mages."

Thornton jotted down a few words on the notepad in front of him.

"You committed five out of eight of your mages to chase after a sensor. That left three mages to engage the remaining pair, and thus a single mage to cover the rookie you believed to be 'harmless'."

He steepled his fingers.

"Squadron Leader Jennings, when you were performing your pre-mission assessment, how vulnerable did you believe the bombers you were escorting were to mage attack? How did that assessment factor into your decision to split your forces immediately?"

Before Alice could finish composing her answer, Grand Hyacinth—Mage Commodore Lucille Dearheart—had already leaned forward, looking to her right at Thornton.

"Air Vice-Marshal. If I may be so bold, there is ample documentation on what our bombers can and cannot defend themselves against. This information would certainly have been made available to Squadron Leader Jennings during her pre-mission briefing. We are here to determine whether her assessment of the threat the enemy mages posed was reasonable, not to pin the blame for the failure on a scapegoat."

She turned back to Alice.

"Squadron Leader, when you made your decision to prioritize the sensor, what was your assessment of your opponents' capabilities?"

Alice took a deep breath.

"Based on the observed strength of our adversaries' mana signatures, I had no reason to expect any significant deviation from the capabilities of the typical Union patrol."

Thornton's pen scratched at his notepad. "You characterize the patrol you encountered as 'typical'. Would such a typical patrol include a mage whose range exceeded your estimates, as you say in your report, by a factor of two or three?"

"Her mana signature was unremarkable." Alice did her best to keep her voice level. "Her initial positioning suggested she was a rookie. By the time she slipped free and engaged the bombers, all of my forces were fully committed."

Thornton frowned.

"Fully committed? Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the impression that established doctrine encourages mages to hold forces in reserve where possible to respond to unexpected situations."

Alice swallowed. A few beads of cold sweat traced paths down her spine as her mind raced, trying to formulate an appropriate reply.

Thornton tapped his pen on his pad impatiently. "Squadron Leader?"

"Sir, I chose to fully commit my forces because we had a limited window of opportunity to act. Our intelligence reports suggested that there would be another flight of Union mages arriving within the hour, which would bring their numbers to parity. To keep the advantage in numbers, we would need to eliminate the Union flight on station as quickly as possible. That necessarily meant committing all of my forces immediately."

The man in tweed—the placard before him identifying him simply as "Mr. Marcus Finch, Republic Intelligence Service"—looked up from his notes and spoke up for the first time. His voice was soft and mild, in sharp contrast with Thornton's gravelly baritone.

"Miss Jennings, you mention in your report that the wingmate for the Union flight lead, the mage who broke free, had an unremarkable mana signature."

Alice nodded. "Yes, sir."

"The member of your flight assigned to her was a Mage Lieutenant Grace Beaufort. Why did she fail to prevent this purple mage from making her successful attack on the flight of bombers?"

"The enemy mage had a far longer range than typical—"

"Yes, Miss Jennings. I am aware of the contents of your report. But having a longer range would only allow the enemy mage to commence her attack from a longer range. What prevented Lieutenant Beaufort from interrupting the enemy's attacks?"

Alice felt the silence stretch. Thornton had put his pen down, leaning forward slightly as he waited for her response.

"It is standard practice," she began slowly, "to assign short range specialists to attack long-range 'sniper' mages. The staves that those mages use are, in general, poorly suited for close-quarters engagements."

"And your point, Squadron Leader?" Thornton pressed. Finch uncapped his pen and returned to his note taking, seemingly content to cede the floor.
"My point, Vice-Marshal, is that Grace—Mage Lieutenant Beaufort, that is—acted according to doctrine, and performed to the standards expected of her. To the extent that there was a failure, it was an intelligence failure."

Alice glanced at Finch after she was done speaking. Mercifully, he gave no visible response to her deflection.

"An intelligence failure. I see. I am given to understand that our mages are the best in the world. More experience, better equipment, superior training. 'Worth more than an entire bomber wing,' according to the budget report Parliament published last year. If a mage of ours was unable to handle a one-on-one engagement with a Union rookie, especially given the favorable conditions, then I am sure this board should conduct a thorough analysis of the underlying factors. At what point does an 'intelligence failure' become a training failure? Or a command failure?"

"Vice-Marshal." Grand Hyacinth's voice was soft, almost bored. "If you wish to discuss the Mage Force's training and doctrine, I would be happy to schedule a separate meeting on the matter at your convenience. But today, we are establishing facts, not holding a trial. Issues regarding personnel performance are an internal matter."

Thornton gritted his teeth. "It is a fact, Mage Commodore, that Squadron Leader Jennings had an absolute advantage in numbers, in training, in materiel, in experience. It is also a fact that the Air Corps lost six of its newest Northshire medium bombers and... Thirty-five airmen. All in a failed bombing raid with nothing to show for it. Enlighten me, Squadron Leader. If we cannot succeed with these favorable odds, then what degree of advantage would you say we require?"

The Vice-Marshal's last question hung in the stale air of the stateroom. Beads of sweat slowly gathered on Alice's forehead.

Thornton sat back in his chair. He crossed his arms and fixed her with a baleful stare. Alice stared back dumbly, unable to muster coherent thought. The air congealed in her lungs, and her fingers twitched impatiently.

Grand Hyacinth came to her rescue, her words cutting through the silence, a hint of tension in her voice.

"Vice-Marshal, I must remind you that Squadron Leader Jennings is here to provide testimony. She is not on trial, and neither is the Mage Force's strategic doctrine."

"I am well aware of the scope of this inquiry, Mage Commodore." Thornton growled.

"Then perhaps you should confine your questions to it."

"Robert, Lucille, that's enough." Finch's voice was calm. Measured. He paused for a moment to look at Grand Hyacinth, who gave him a curt nod. "Miss Jennings, one of the key points in your report regards the 'abnormal' range of this rookie mage who downed our aircraft. In your experience, do mages with atypical abilities such as this tend to display other atypical characteristics as well? Things that might help us identify these... exceptional Union personnel in advance?"

"I..." Alice paused, mouth slightly open, as she processed the unexpected question. She thought back to her own training, the mages she'd led over the years, the unregistered mages she'd hunted down in the colonies.

There had been someone. A girl in one of the villages she'd patrolled who'd just awakened to her powers. Alice's squad had been assigned to escort her to the nearest provincial academy. The girl had refused to leave her family.

The law was clear about the consequences.

In the fight that had followed, that young girl had displayed far more tenacity and power than any newly awoken mage had any right to.

Alice had woken up to the scent of smoke for days after that particular mission had ended.

"No, sir," she said, finally. "I've never seen anything like her."

Finch nodded, scrawling a few notes across the notepad in an angular script. "That's why I'm here. Now, what about this mage individually? Is there any information you could offer that would assist with identification? Some quirk of her mana signature, or of her appearance, perhaps?"

"Union mages all look more or less the same, especially at a distance," Alice replied, eliciting a quiet snort from Thornton and a disapproving glare from Grand Hyacinth. "That said, that mage's mana was unique. I've never seen anyone with mana anywhere close to that exact shade of purple before. It is difficult to describe in words, but in person, it is unmistakable."

"A unique mana chroma, then," Finch muttered. "Perhaps we may be able to analyze her signature in other ways to develop a fingerprint as well. Is there anything else? Were you able to identify her apparent age? What about her behavior during the fight?"

"I was engaged in combat with the enemy flight lead at the time." Alice grimaced, giving Grace a mental apology. "These questions would be more suited for Lieutenant Beaufort's testimony tomorrow."

"I understand. Right, one last thing, for the files, you understand. You mention that the enemy mage's mana was purple. Could you perhaps give a more specific answer? Lilac? Lavender?"

"...Amethyst, perhaps."

"I see." Finch made a few final marks on his notepad. "Thank you, Miss Jennings. You've been quite helpful."

The silence that followed was notably less hostile, though no less nerve-wracking. Behind her back, Alice's hands trembled. She clenched her fists tightly, letting her nails dig into her palms, but the tremors refused to go away.

"Is there anything else? Rear Admiral?"

May looked up from his fountain pen for the first time since Alice had walked in.

"According to our invasion schedule, Yashan should have been in our hands yesterday. While this task force can still operate effectively in the region for now, it will need to rotate back to Malikara for resupply if the port is not taken in the next ten days. Our inability to fully sever the flow of supplies and reinforcements into Yashan has directly caused this delay."

He paused for a moment.

"Squadron Leader, in your professional judgment, based on the outcome of your mission, do you believe the assets available to us are sufficient to sever this reinforcement corridor? Say, for the sake of argument, we were to fully commit the mage forces at this task force's disposal to such an attack. How likely would it be to succeed?"

Alice inclined her head, willing her pulse to slow. "The Union is... The Union is no doubt aware that those bridges are a priority target. If they detect us massing our forces, they will respond in kind. The last reports we've received suggested that they have moved most of a full wing into the region as reinforcements; while we have inflicted heavy casualties on the original garrison, I do not believe this task force has enough numbers to overpower their entire mage force in the field."

The Rear Admiral nodded, gaze returning to the pen in her hands. "That is in line with our own assessments. Thank you, Squadron Leader. That will be all."

Another moment of silence followed. Thornton scowled, a deep flush darkening his face, but said nothing. Finally, Grand Hyacinth spoke.

"Very well, then. Thank you for your time, Squadron Leader. You are dismissed."

Alice gave a salute, then turned towards the door.

"The panel will publish preliminary findings before the end of the month," Finch said, without looking up from his notes. "The RIS may contact you at that time."

Alice nodded curtly, then turned tail and fled.

The stateroom door closed behind her with a loud clang that Alice felt rather than heard. The sudden wave of relief that washed over her drained her of all her strength.

Dazed, Alice leaned against the metal of the bulkhead for a few moments, legs unsteady. It took a few moments to gather her wits before she felt ready to leave.

Grace was waiting just around the corner, hands clasped in front of her chest.

"Alice! Are you all right?"

Alice was not all right. Her collar was too tight and her blouse had started to stick to her back.

"I'm fine, Grace." Alice wrapped her arm around the other girl's shoulder and led her down the corridor. "I told you everything would be all right. Come on, I want to get out of this tie before it strangles me."

"What's going to happen next?"

Alice thought of the RIS man's parting words, then about the 'hypothetical' scenario Rear Admiral May had brought up.

She opened her mouth to give the practiced reassurance she'd become accustomed to providing, but the words stuck in her throat.

Eventually, a hollow laugh came out instead.

"I don't know, Grace. I honestly don't know."

 

[enthalpy]

1650, 1 Dashu, Zhengming 12
Chang Kaishen Airbase, Nanyue

Beams of purple light shot across the outdoor range one after another, each landing squarely onto a fist-sized target mounted on the far end. The circular metal plates flashed red, then white, then burst into showers of sparks and slag.

Twelve shots, ten hits, ten seconds. An eighty-three percent hit rate at 200 meters. More than good enough to score passing marks if she were still being graded, but lower than what she was accustomed to. Maybe it was because of loss of calibration on her staff, or the faint tightness that still plagued her shoulder, or her lack of practice. Not as good as she should be.

One more round, then. She'd spent fifteen days on medical leave, and she had a lot of drills to catch up on.

A few moments later, another set of ten targets rose up on the other side of the range, shifting slowly from side to side. Chiaki closed her eyes, clenched her hands around the staff, and counted down.

Three. Two. One. Her eyes snapped open, and she fired.

It only took eleven shots to clear the range of targets this time. Not perfect, but better.

Chiaki took a few deep, slow breaths. After an afternoon of burning through mana on target practice, her heartbeat pulsed in her temples and her throat. A minute or so of controlled breathing would help her cool down.

The vaguely sweet smell of hot iron and the sharp metallic tang of ozone drifted down from the far end of the range. Teruko hated the smell and how it clung to her clothes, but Chiaki found it oddly comforting.

When she ran her hand along the haft of her staff, the metal was warm to the touch. A little on the hot side, but well within operating limits. Everything seemed to be in order.

The hexagonal quartz crystal set in the tip dimmed and went dark as her mana drained away. When she had received the standard-issue staff, the focus had been fully transparent, but it had slowly acquired a faint violet tinge with use. Some of the other girls in her class had tied charms to their devices or used paint to add a few splashes of color, but Chiaki had kept hers plain and unadorned. The color of the focus was enough to mark it as hers.

Chiaki finished packing up, turned around, and found someone standing directly behind her. She reflexively reached for her staff and stumbled backward, hissing as the back of her head collided with the partition behind her. She'd heard a few soft footsteps before, but had expected the new arrival to take another spot at the bench.

Chiaki grimaced, rubbing at the back of her head with one hand and shouldering her bag with the other.

The other girl was a stranger. Young, with steel blue hair, and standing nearly half a head shorter than Chiaki herself despite her stiffly formal posture.
"Junior Lieutenant Toyokawa Shouko. Please take care of me." The newcomer gave Chiaki a picture-perfect salute. She was wearing the formal dress uniform of the Mage Corps, and the gesture made her look like a new Academy cadet posing for her official photo.

Chiaki returned the salute on reflex. A glance at the girl's collar showed a star and a stripe, partly obscured by a few strands of hair. The insignia of a Junior Lieutenant, exactly the same as the one pinned to her own lapel.

Reporting? To her? She cocked her head and looked at Shouko expectantly, waiting for her to announce her purpose.

"Senior Lieutenant Lin instructed me to introduce myself to you," Shouko offered after a long silence. She stood stiffly at attention, palms pressed against the sides of her legs, directly meeting Chiaki's gaze.

"Oh, you're the—"

Chiaki cut herself off before she could finish the sentence. It would be impolite to refer to someone who she'd be fighting alongside for the foreseeable future as a 'replacement'.

"I'm here to reinforce Cormorant Flight."

Ziyan's... substitute, then.

Cormorant 4—the former Cormorant 4, now—had been unceremoniously loaded onto a plane and transferred to the mage medical facilities at Jiankang. The doctors had assured her that Ziyan would be able to return to the front, eventually. But 'eventually' could be quite a long time.

It was only due to luck that she was at the range here today and not confined in a hospital bed in the rear. Chiaki's shoulder twinged at the memory of the metal brace around Ziyan's leg. Perhaps it would have been better if they had switched places.

Chiaki looked at Shouko again. Freshly pressed clothes with sharp creases, black leather shoes polished to a mirror sheen, and the stiff posture of the student awaiting their teacher's inspection.

She prided herself on her knowledge of military regulations, but this girl was a living example of the book itself. There was a right balance to strike, a proper way to live within the rules without becoming them. Where Ziyan and Teruko fell on the 'too casual' end of the scale, Shouko had shot right past the appropriate point and ended up on the far end.

Would this slip of a girl, this interloper, be able to fill the gap Ziyan's absence left? Had she even finished the standard curriculum?

Irritation rose within Chiaki's chest. She did her best to quash the feeling. It wasn't Shouko's fault that Ziyan had been injured, nor was it her choice to be assigned to Cormorant Flight. But it grated, still.

"Are they commissioning cadets early at the Academy now?" Chiaki shifted back on her heels, regretting the words the instant they left her lips. She forced out a polite smile, doing her best to ignore the slight narrowing in Shouko's eyes.

"Thank you for your concern, Junior Lieutenant Sugawara. The academy curriculum was curtailed due to recent events. However, I was on track to graduate within the top three of my class." Shouko looked up as she spoke, a hint of pride flickering briefly in her eyes before she caught herself and looked back down. "I am confident in my ability to rise to any challenge presented to me."

"I'm sure you are." Chiaki sighed. "I'm Cormorant 2, Sugawara Chiaki. Though I suppose you knew that already. Have you met our flight lead yet?"

"I was instructed to find you first," Shouko said. "I haven't had the honor of meeting Captain Li yet."

"Let's go find her then."

Chiaki led the way, her cheeks warming as Shouko followed stiffly behind her as if she were a fledgling following its mother. So that was where Chenxi's nickname for rookies came from.

Teruko had laughed at her for almost a full month last year after she'd caught Chiaki practicing her salute in the bathroom mirrors. It had only happened once, though. How long had Shouko spent practicing the same?

Surely she hadn't been quite this bad last year. Surely not.

---

With reinforcements pouring in, there hadn't been enough space in the administrative office complex by the barracks for all of the units that had found themselves stationed at Chang Kaishen Airbase. Cormorant Flight had drawn the short straw, and their assigned office was a small room in a converted warehouse about halfway across the base.

Chiaki had made one attempt at small talk on the way there, asking whether Shouko had settled in and what her thoughts on the barracks were, only to be rebuffed with a short 'Everything is adequate. Thank you, Junior Lieutenant Sugawara.'

She had given up after that.

The remainder of their walk passed in uncomfortable silence, Shouko following directly behind her, taking steps with measured precision.
The base hummed with activity. Logistics teams hauled ammunition from underground magazines to the hangars, aides-de-camp with bulging folios rushed out from the radio room, pilots ran to their planes from the ready room. Still, despite herself, Chiaki couldn't help but feel eyes lingering on her and her incongruously clean shadow.

She walked faster.

The former warehouse was filled with plaster panels that had been thrown up to divide the interior into neat square boxes as quickly as possible. The flimsy material provided no soundproofing whatsoever, and the ventilation system could barely keep up with the building's occupants.

As a result, Cormorant Flight's office was constantly filled with a dozen different conversations from all directions, even with the door closed. The noise combined with the aroma of stale coffee and cigarette smoke that permeated the cramped space usually left Chiaki feeling unwell after just a few minutes. Jiayu didn't seem to mind, though. More often than not, she could be found there, curled up with a stack of papers like an unusually large cat.

Today was no exception. Jiayu was seated behind the flimsy wooden table that was the centerpiece for the room, a pile of papers in front of her. Chenxi was there as well, seated on a corner of the makeshift desk, leaning over to point at something on the papers in the center.

Chenxi straightened up as Chiaki stepped inside. Jiayu raised a hand, interrupting Shouko mid-salute.

"Welcome to Cormorant Flight, Junior Lieutenant Toyokawa. Normally, you'd be placed in a shared pool for further practical training, but unfortunately the circumstances have made that impossible. For the time being, you'll be Cormorant 4, acting as Senior Lieutenant Lin's wingmate."

Shouko nodded, standing stiffly straight, almost vibrating with nervous energy. "Understood! Thank you, Captain Li. I promise you won't be disappointed!"

Jiayu glanced over to Chiaki, giving her a knowing look, then looked back at Shouko. Chiaki looked away, studiously examining the paint on the wall.

"Relax, kid," Chenxi muttered. "No one's going to be checking your etiquette here at the front."

Shouko shifted, her posture becoming even more rigidly perfect, but said nothing.

"Senior Lieutenant Lin will assess your skills and provide additional instruction as necessary," Jiayu continued, giving a pointed look at Chenxi, who rolled her eyes but gave a curt nod. "Any questions?"

"Nothing at this time, Captain Li."

"Chenxi, take your new partner on a tour of the base, would you? Chiaki, do you have a moment?"

Chiaki stepped aside as Chenxi led Shouko out, closing the door behind them.

"What do you think?" Jiayu asked, once the footsteps had faded.

"Senior Lieutenant Lin would be better suited to make that judgment."

"Not her combat capabilities." Jiayu hummed softly. "Her name doesn't sound familiar to you?"

"I can tell she's from Eirai too. I was expecting someone from Nanyue or Yan, though. Flights are supposed to be mixed, aren't they?"

In principle, mage flights were supposed to have at most one member from any Union member state, under the theory that it would encourage national unity.

"Usually, yes. This must be a special case." Jiayu frowned. Chiaki met her gaze, perplexed. "The name doesn't ring a bell?"

"'Toyokawa' is hardly an uncommon name. Though now that you mention it..." Toyokawa, Toyokawa... A few newspaper headlines and a few grainy photographs of a man in handcuffs surfaced from the depths of Chiaki's memory. Some kind of scandal?

"Her father was involved in an embezzlement case."

Oh. That Toyokawa.

"What, she's with the zaibatsu whose treasurer got jailed for embezzlement a while back?"

Jiayu inclined her head. "It's all in her file."

Chiaki had been too busy preparing for her exams and upcoming deployment to pay the news much mind at the time. The story had been in the headline for weeks, long enough that she could still recall that particular incident.

The Toyokawa Group was a major conglomerate with subsidiaries in almost every industry imaginable; Chiaki's own checkbook had their logo embossed in the cardboard cover.

Chiaki's own father was a fisherman, out at sea more often than at home. Whenever he came back home after selling the catch, he'd leave his share of the proceeds, a few bills with '100' or '500' or '1000' inscribed in capital numbers down the middle. There were more zeroes in the number printed on the papers—15.2 billion—than she'd seen before in her life. The amount was so large that it had felt almost surreal.

Maybe that was why she hadn't connected those events with the stiffly formal girl in the meticulous uniform.

Chiaki laughed softly. "What's a princess like her doing down here with us?"

"She's a mage," Jiayu said simply. "That comes before everything else."

Chiaki nodded slowly. "Is there something you want me to do?"

"Senior Colonel Bai assigned Shouko to our flight. She asked me to keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn't have any trouble settling in, that sort of thing."

"I understand," Chiaki said grudgingly. She was still out of practice, and having to spend time looking after the new girl meant less time to bring her own skills back up to par. "I'll do what I can. She may as well have lived in an entirely different world from me, though. I'm not sure how much I actually have in common with her. Teruko would be a better choice."

"Mikami Teruko? Egret 4?"

"Yes, that's her. Her family owns the shipyard in Kozehama. She's used to dealing with people like that, people who have money and connections."

"Maybe. But Shouko is in your flight, not your friend's."

Jiayu was right, of course. That didn't make her any happier about the task. "What should I do?"

"Chenxi is responsible for her continued training, but she still needs someone to look out for her. A peer, not a superior. Be a mentor or a friend, if she needs it. Her family is still important despite the scandal, you know. It never hurts to have friends in high places."

Chiaki had Teruko as a friend, of course, but she was sure neither of them had been given these kinds of instructions with respect to each other.

"I thought being a mage came 'before everything else.'"

Chiaki frowned. She'd had a conversation just like this with Senior Colonel Bai not that long ago.

"It does, but..." Jiayu paused for a moment, then let out a wry smile. "Well, we can't ignore reality, can we?"

Jiayu fell silent. After a moment, Chiaki realized that she'd turned her attention back to the papers on her desk. A map of the Yashan harbor, the outlines of the quays and piers visible against the flat blue of the water.

Chiaki opened her mouth, then paused. She had one last question. She hesitated for a moment, curiosity warring with better judgment, eventually emerging victorious. "Was I really like that? When I joined last year?"

Jiayu gave Chiaki a flat stare. "The Eirai branch of the Union Mage Academy is known for its emphasis on formality and strict standards for etiquette."

She really shouldn't have asked.

---

Chiaki arrived at the nearly-deserted mages' canteen just as its doors opened for dinner. She pulled a stainless steel tray off the rack and collected her food. Unsurprisingly, most of the dishes on offer were Nanyue-style cuisine. Blanched rapeseed in oyster sauce, assorted cuts of barbecued pork, and a bowl of rice topped off with a single fried egg, over hard. Different in style from the fare she preferred, but not bad by any means.

A flash of steel blue hair drew Chiaki's eye to a corner of the seating area, where Shouko was eating alone.

Chiaki paused for a moment, her tray suspended in midair.

Teruko would arrive soon; they were supposed to meet for dinner. Jiayu had requested she look after the new girl, though, and not leaving her to eat by herself was probably part of that.

Well, having an extra conversation partner over dinner would be fine. Hopefully.

Shouko looked up warily from her food as Chiaki sat down across from her. "Junior Lieutenant Sugawara. Can I be of assistance?"

Chiaki looked over the other girl's tray. In the middle sat a bowl of rice porridge flavored with a mixture of pork loin, century egg, and spinach leaves. Laid out neatly to the side, a few smaller dishes held a piece of steamed trout, a pile of pickled daikon, and a salted duck egg.

"Where's Chenxi?" she asked. "Isn't she supposed to be your mentor?"

"Senior Lieutenant Lin gave me a brief assessment before providing me with a training manual to read, then told me I was free for the rest of the evening."

"Do you mind if I call you Shouko? We're going to be working together for the foreseeable future, after all."

"You are my senior, Junior Lieutenant Sugawara. You may do as you wish."

Chiaki's grip tightened around her melamine chopsticks. Did this girl ever loosen up?

"Don't you find the constant formality tiring at all? You'll run out of radio transmission time if you talk like this when flying, you know."

Shouko set her chopsticks down.

"Thank you for the feedback, Junior Lieutenant Sugawara," she said, a touch of impatience appearing in her tone. "I shall take it to heart."

"Look. I know it's not easy being the newest member of a flight. I barely felt I was ready myself, and that was after a full three years at the Academy and another half year of practical training on base. I can't imagine what it would be like to join up and immediately get sent into combat. So... If you have anything you want help with, anything you want to talk about, you can come to me."

Shouko's eyelid twitched, her polite smile growing strained before disappearing entirely.

"I am here, Junior Lieutenant Sugawara," the other girl said acidly through gritted teeth, eyes narrowed, "because my skills were judged to be adequate to the situation. It has nothing to do with my family. I don't need any 'extra care'."

Chiaki arranged her lips into what she hoped was a conciliatory smile as she tried to formulate an appropriate response.

She was interrupted by the clack of another tray landing on the table next to hers, this one laden with plates of steamed buns and dumplings. Teruko, come to her rescue.

"So, this is the new girl on Cormorant Flight?"

Chiaki let out a soft breath in relief.

"Teruko, this is Toyokawa Shouko. Shouko, this is my friend Mikami Teruko."

Teruko looked across the table, her gaze flicking between Chiaki's strained smile and Shouko's politely neutral expression. Her cheerful grin froze, then slowly faded, a thin smile appearing in its place. She pulled her chair closer to the table and sat straight up in her seat as Chiaki watched with growing concern.

"Oh. It's you," Teruko said flatly. "Welcome to the front, Toyokawa. Do enjoy your stay."

"Teruko, Shouko. Let's not fight, shall we?"

Shouko ignored Chiaki's request. "Mikami. It's a pleasure to see you here. Your family is doing well, I hope?"

"Well enough, no thanks to yours. We're still cleaning up the mess you left us." Teruko glared, fingers whitening as she pressed on the edges of the stainless steel tray. "I see you've gotten exactly what you wanted. The perfect chance to prove to the world that you aren't just your father's daughter."

"Are you suggesting that I bought my way to the front, Mikami?"

"No. But it would just take a word from your grandfather to have you transferred to the 2nd Wing in Eirai, or the 4th Wing in Xiliang, or even to keep you in the Academy until you finish the normal curriculum. But you wouldn't be satisfied with a nice cushy post in the rear, would you? You had to come here to the real war, so everyone can see you rise above Toyokawa Masayoshi's scandal. Convenient, isn't it?"

"Teruko," Chiaki interrupted again. "Please."

Teruko grimaced. She looked at Chiaki, then shook her head slightly.

"Chiaki. I'm sorry about the outburst, but... You know the shipyard my family runs? One of our suppliers was a subsidiary of the Toyokawa Group, and we were affected by"—she waved a hand towards Shouko—"her father's misconduct. The parts they sent us were cleverly disguised garbage. It's cost us over a hundred million yuan. So far. Not a loss we can't afford to eat, of course, but still."

"That had nothing to do with me," Shouko hissed. She slapped her hands on the table, flinching at the noise she created, then forcing herself back into her previous posture.

"You are quite insistent on that point, aren't you?" Teruko asked, smug satisfaction spreading across her face. "And maybe it didn't. But what does that have to do with what I've said?"

"Teruko," Chiaki said softly, laying a hand on her friend's shoulder. "I think you've said enough."

For a moment, it looked as if Teruko would voice a protest, but she eventually gave a sharp nod.

"And you. Shouko. Calm down, both of you. Please. I... I don't know what exactly happened between your families. It's not my place to judge. But both of you are here now. We're all on the same side. This argument can wait until the war... Until everything is over. Right?"

For a moment, no one spoke.

Finally, Teruko stood, letting the motion shove her seat back with a clattering screech.

"I should go. I'll leave you two to eat together, then. I'm really sorry this happened, Chiaki. We'll have to figure out another time that works."

"No need," Shouko said, standing up as well. "I have no intention to interfere with your... friendship. I was about done anyway."

Shouko stalked off. Teruko stood in place for a moment watching her leave, then shuffled her way around the table to sit in the seat that she had occupied before.

"I swear I get into a shouting match with that girl every time I see her," she grumbled, settling into the new seat and sliding her tray across the table.

"You don't normally get angry this quickly. It's not just about what her father did, is it?"

"Well. It is, but it isn't, I guess. Toyokawa and I... We've known each other for a few years. We'd meet whenever our parents would meet for some business gathering."

Teruko paused to pick up one of the buns and tore it open, letting out a burst of steam from the sweet pork filling.

"She always was a bit full of herself. Little Miss Perfect, I'm sure you know the type. She just rubs me the wrong way, I guess. At the Spring Festival party three years ago, she spent two hours lecturing me on how the way I use mana is wrong. Said it was 'for your benefit' too." She huffed. "And after what happened with her father, well... She's only been more insufferable since then. I'm sure being his daughter isn't easy, but, well. That's no excuse."

Chiaki looked towards the canteen entrance. Shouko had made her way through the canteen, pausing at the door to rub at her eyes before leaving.

"I'm sure she has a lot of problems to deal with," Chiaki managed.

Teruko laughed unpleasantly. "Don't we all?"

Behind them, Shouko stepped out, her figure illuminated against the darkness in the instant before the door slammed shut.

---

Chiaki frowned. The fabric of her flight suit flexed uncomfortably against her back as she stretched. The garment had been damaged quite badly in the engagement that had put her into the hospital. A long, uneven seam across the top and the right side of her back marked the edges where a patch had been welded on to replace the shredded fabric that had been there. It looked flush with the surface on visual inspection, but didn't sit quite right when worn.

She'd put in a request to have the whole suit replaced. It had already been approved, but it would be a few weeks before the new suit would make it into her hands. She'd just have to put up with the repair job for now. It was still fully functional at least, just not comfortable. Less comfortable, rather.

Someone knocked softly at the door to her dormitory.

Chiaki frowned.

It was already late at night, the frenetic daytime activity on the base slowing, though the shifting sounds of planes taking off and landing never stopped, even at this hour, only slowed.

Who could be looking for her at this hour?

She pulled the door open. It was Shouko, still wearing her dress uniform.

"Junior Lieutenant Sugawara. I apologize for the late hour. Might I have a few minutes of your time?"

Chiaki wordlessly let the other girl inside and sat on the bed, leaving the chair out for her guest.

Shouko sat gingerly in the proffered seat. She looked around the room for a moment before turning her attention back to Chiaki. Not that there was much to see.

"I would like to express my apologies for the argument earlier," she said. "It was unprofessional, and I should not have allowed myself to be provoked in that manner."

"That isn't something you need to apologize for."

"I caused embarrassment to you and to your... your friend. The argument damaged the public image of our flight. I was disrespectful, too; both you and Junior Lieutenant Mikami are my seniors, from an earlier Academy class. It was improper of me."

"Shouko. None of that matters. Well, not really. Not that much, at least. We're here to fight a war, and we can't exactly do it with a superior command of etiquette."

Shouko's lips thinned.

"Mikami. Your friend, that is. She wasn't wrong," she admitted. "I met all of the requirements, of course. They pulled everyone who did, but Grandfather didn't want me to be here. I insisted on coming, though, and he eventually relented."

"I'm surprised he didn't pull some strings and have you sent somewhere safe. I'm sure my parents would want to make sure I was safe if they had the means to do it."

"I asked Grandfather not to the last time we spoke. I didn't want him to do it, not with all the scrutiny on my family still. I didn't manage to convince him, though. Something happened to change his mind."

Shouko looked down at her hands, neatly folded in her lap.

"Do you know why I got assigned to your flight?"

"I asked Jiayu, Captain Li, but she didn't give me a direct answer."

"I am not entirely sure, but I have some suspicions. You did an interview with the press recently, I believe?"

Chiaki nodded slowly. "A few days ago. I don't believe they've published the article yet. I was told it would take some time to get approval from the censors."

She wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of public attention yet. She'd have to get used to it eventually though. Not yet, but soon.

"Grandfather heard about it somehow." The chair creaked softly as Shouko squeezed the edge of the seat. "I expect he wants to put me next to a 'future hero.' He told me he negotiated something with the Mage Corps. Grandfather has always put a great deal of emphasis on publicity and reputation."

Chiaki thought back to the interview she'd given. It was all a bit of a blur in her mind, even though only a few days had passed since. She barely remembered anything about the interviewer's appearance. She'd provided practiced answers to the questions that had been presented to her, then been asked to pose 'heroically' with her staff, and tilt her head just so, and would you please smile for the camera...

She hadn't wanted to do it. Not really, at least. But she also hadn't not wanted to do it enough to refuse the request either, not when it had come from the Silver Crane herself.

At the time, she'd only considered what it meant for herself, but apparently it had also changed the fate of the girl sitting uncomfortably in front of her. In some sense, Chiaki was responsible for Shouko's presence here, wasn't she?

Chiaki had known that the interview was important. Senior Colonel Bai had told her as much. Knowing the role she played was an entirely different beast from having the consequences of her actions sitting in front of her, though.

She didn't like the feeling.

Did she really deserve to have that sort of power?

"I'm not anyone special," Chiaki muttered.

Shouko let out a soft not-laugh that she quickly stifled behind a hand.

"I suppose I cannot claim you are." She brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear and stood. "Thank you for your time tonight, Junior Lieutenant Sugawara. I won't keep you from your rest."

The door clicked shut, leaving Chiaki with her thoughts.