“She’s in your hands now… While she looks good on the outside, her insides are a mess. I hope you mages can navigate all right. It’s going to be hard flying without a flight engineer. I wouldn’t put too much stock in the engine oil or expect it to have had regular maintenance, if I were you. With respect, don’t push it.”
“I imagine it has taken much longer to build pilots capable of properly flying a machine in this state than it has to build the machine itself.”
“You are a tiny giant.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” I say, shrugging with deliberate casualness. “My height has proved highly convenient.”
“Why? Do you still get the kids’ discount?”
“Exactly. Especially during trench and air combat, where, as a smaller target, I get a massive discount on my odds of being shot. It’s a great bargain when it comes to the cost of staying alive. In any case…” I say, holding a parachute toward the captain and smiling softly, “it’s time to say farewell.”
In truth, I am incredibly jealous of this captain, who gets to escape the situation. If I could have traded places with him, I would have done so on the spot…but I can’t have those commies crushing the world, either. In the end, it looks like there is no choice but for Tanya to do her job.
“Until next time,” I say, seeing the pilots off.
“I wish the mages luck.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
With a quick goodbye, the pilots jump neatly from the plane. Hoping they land safely, I speak to my second-in-command, who is next to me.
“It’s almost time for the festivities, then,” I say, grinning sarcastically, although deep down I feel like I’m screwed. “I wish we could at least put in for jump badges and extra pay.”
A humble wish. On-site personnel working to the bone like this should have the right to expect at least that much. But there is no place for even such tiny, selfish dreams within the logic of an organization.
“Oh, but, Colonel, under current regulations, if we put in for bonus pay for a combat drop as aerial mages, our flight qualifications would be suspended and our pay grade would decrease.”
“What? Is that true, Lieutenant Serebryakov?”
“It is. Someone from the same class as me recently had a similar thought and was going to apply, but apparently it turned out the rules had changed… They collided headfirst with a mountain of new protocols and found themselves up the creek instead.”
I stare at my adjutant in shock.
“What? Why would the Imperial Army do something like that?”
“Apparently, on the Rhine front, when mages were assisting the trenches, there were multiple instances of mages dropping in to fight, and the question came up in the back offices as to whether drop pay should apply… After some long deliberation, it was determined that while it had previously been provisional pay, as of the end of last year, the uniform interpretation would be that drop pay does not apply to soldiers holding mage qualification.”
“In other words,” I say to my adjutant, shocked, “we essentially received a pay cut just before this airborne operation began?”
As Serebryakov nods, frowning, I immediately howl in response.
“Those heartless bastards!”
A one-sided decrease in our allowances, after zero negotiation with labor. Reducing costs is all well and good, but what sense does it make to pull from only the mages, when we already excel in terms of cost effectiveness? I think, suddenly feeling the vehement need to assert my rights.
Hold on, I think, suddenly freezing. What do I mean, assert? If jurisprudence tells us anything, it is that rights must be protected through constant vigilance.
“Perhaps this is the consequence of sitting on my rights without exercising them. Now that I think of it, I was not very proactive in applying for drop pay. This may be an example of the natural extinction of the right to claim…but seeing as it was based on a change in interpretation, maybe I can submit a differing opinion.”
It is such a basic mistake—the sort of thing written about in textbooks. How have I allowed war to so mangle Tanya’s cultural purview? I am reminded of what is truly important in life.
We must not allow ourselves to pretend, like those commies, that we are working for the greater good while actually straying down a path that makes matters worse for everyone. Rights must be asserted. I write that down in big, bold letters on my mental list of things to do.
But the situation within the transport plane is not so calm that I can spend my time navel-gazing about the future. Frankly, I am issuing more reminders to my subordinates in their respective pilot seats than I can count.
“Pilots! Check your instruments. Compare them to the compass.”
Mages are not flight-control pros, and flying an airplane is not simple work.
Honestly, if these transport planes weren’t equipped with autopilot systems, it’s doubtful we would even be able to fly in a straight line. Yet the higher-ups declared that as long as there were basic flight assistance systems on board, mages trained in navigation would be perfectly capable of making any necessary “corrections.”
Unfortunately, theory and reality are not one and the same. I am quickly realizing that aerial mages actually make the worst flight crew for a plane.
It isn’t that we are incapable of navigation. As far as our ability to read the winds goes, we usually feel the air through protective films, so our minds surely cannot be any less up to the task than those of professional pilots.
Despite this, I am forced to realize that a mage becomes useless the moment you shove a control stick into their hands. After all, mages have no experience serving as handmaidens to that tricky heart of a plane known as its engine.
“Don’t break formation! Signal to plane two! They’re out of position! They’re drifting too far to the side! Don’t cross the nose of the plane behind you!” I shout, urging First Lieutenant Serebryakov, who is operating the signal lamp, to act quickly, while I stare through my binoculars with cold sweat running down my face.
Flying in formation is one of the most basic combat operations—or at least it should be. But apparently, for mages, flying solo and piloting a transport plane are two entirely different beasts. With the plane behind us drifting unsteadily, I begin to prepare for the possibility of a midair collision. This is awful.
Please, for goodness’ sake, steady out.
I watch tensely, occasionally issuing a correction, before finally managing a sigh of relief.
“It looks as if plane two has finally managed to recover its course. Just barely, though…”
Flying in a straight line is turning out to be quite the challenge. While I am still coming to grips with this discovery, First Lieutenant Serebryakov calls over her shoulder.