Rewrite That Witch
CH1407 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 1407: Setting Out

The first light of dawn was still a blur on the horizon when the ground crews began moving.

Most of the city slept. The airfield on the outskirts of the City of Glow did not. Soldiers and ground crew braced against the cold spring wind along both sides of the runway, their inner clothes already soaked from the labor of it, their breath hanging in brief clouds before the wind took it. One by one, then by pairs, planes were towed from their warehouses to the far end of the strip. Final inspections, loading, fueling — the rhythm of a departure that could not wait for warmth.

Inside the airfield’s barracks, Tilly had gathered every Aerial Knight with actual combat experience.

The numbers told a story she hadn’t expected to be telling a year ago. Successive recruitment drives, veterans bringing up recruits, the work of training forged into something resembling doctrine — more than a hundred pilots now could take the field. Students numbering twice that were deep in training that left no room for comfort. The unit that had once been called “new troops” to distinguish it from the ground forces had started to feel like it had always existed.

The battle at the Impassable Mountain Range had cost planes. The pilots who’d flown them, fewer than the numbers suggested they should. That was the difference between an aerial unit and a ground force: a soldier who lost ground was often already dead. A pilot who lost an aircraft could sometimes keep flying — below cloud, below the stone spears, gliding on whatever the battered machine had left — until the terrain offered a landing site. The Fire of Heaven biplanes were not fast, but they held altitude well and were maneuverable enough that even a crippled craft could be coaxed down intact. The demons had never figured out how to kill them cleanly with the steles.

These were the reasons the corps had continued to mature when it should have contracted.

“You all know the details of this mission.” Tilly walked the length of the formation with her arms crossed, gray hair coiled behind her head with a blue hairband, ready in the way that suggested the pre-battle state was simply the state she preferred. “Exactly as in the simulation runs of recent days: we penetrate the enemy’s defensive line and drop the ordnance into the deepest part of the floating stronghold.”

She let a beat pass.

“The difference is that this time, you will not be flying over the City of Glow’s airspace. You will be over the enemy stronghold itself. The interceptors will not be students from the school. They will be Senior Demons and Devilbeasts.”

“Your Highness!” A hand shot up.

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t that make it simpler for us?”

Good. Laughter broke through the room before it had time to become tension. Tilly didn’t stop it. That kind of arrogance, from the right mouth, was worth more than a prepared speech — it reset something in a room, made the coming fight a thing that could be won rather than a thing that had to be endured. And Good’s mouth was not the wrong mouth. He’d killed twelve Devilbeasts in personal combat. The words were not empty.

“It might appear that way at first glance,” she said, “but a Senior Demon mounted on a Devilbeast is not something to underestimate. I hope you’ll all return safely to prove the point.” She shifted registers without pausing. “Beyond that — I want to emphasize that the floating island’s surface is enormous. Penetrating the core means flying in their territory. A forced landing there is something I want to remain theoretical. When the opportunity to exchange your safety for an enemy kill presents itself — I want you to leave it. Every one of you. Understood?”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

“Good. Formation assignments. Those designated to ‘Fury of Heaven’ will execute the bombardment.”

Every pilot in the room sharpened. The quiet that came over a formation when everyone leaned forward at once.

The Fury of Heaven was the first upgrade to the Fire of Heaven airframe. Lighter body, enclosed cockpit with a round glass canopy — more elegant than its predecessor, people said, though Tilly had never seen the point of the comparison. What mattered were the improvements underneath the skin: a star-shaped engine derived from the Phoenix’s powerplant at reduced output, without supercharging but built to assembly-line tolerances; and an external weapons system, configurable by mission, that could carry autocannons or aerial bombs. The first ten units from the factory had come over by sea and were the heart of the strike exercise. The pilots who would fly them had been selected precisely — recognized by name, by record, by the particular quality of their attention in the air.

Tilly let the expectation build for a moment, then drew out the list.

“Per the plan, the ten planes will divide into two teams with escort wings assigned to each. First team Captain—” a pause no longer than it needed to be “—Good.”

“As you command!”

The room turned toward him. He’d earned it; no one argued. An unblemished record and the kind of aggressive precision that made other pilots track him in the air just to learn something.

“Second team Captain — Manfeld.”

A silence. Then the man himself: “Your Highness — you chose me?”

“Is there a second Manfeld here?” Tilly frowned.

“Yes — yes! As you command!”

The room buzzed. Compared to the veterans, Manfeld was new. His combat record fit on a short list. At the Impassable Mountain Range, he’d downed a single demon and otherwise performed without distinction. His training scores were strong, but that alone didn’t make someone a team captain.

Tilly hadn’t explained and didn’t intend to. After another battle or two, the others would understand on their own — or they wouldn’t, and it wouldn’t matter, because by then they would have seen it.

She’d seen it at the Impassable Mountain Range. While every other pilot was doing what pilots did — tracking their wingman, managing their own threat radius, flying the gap between experience and survival — Manfeld had been in a different kind of awareness. He’d held position at the formation’s most vulnerable point and spent the entire battle driving threats away from angles that would have destroyed someone else’s plane. Not flashy. Not recordable, really. He’d protected Good’s Phoenix so completely that Good had moved freely across the sky without once checking his rear — without ever needing to. Whether Manfeld had consciously shaped his contribution around Good’s movements or done it out of battle instinct, the result was the same. An entire engagement where one pilot made another pilot better.

That was a different species of talent from Good’s.

A knight’s lineage might have explained something about his spatial awareness, his instinct for formation geometry. What it couldn’t explain was why that same talent had failed to save his declining family. His physique was the problem there — in a one-on-one ground engagement, Carter could likely take him down with one hand. But a pilot did not need physical strength. The engine provided the force. The autocannons provided the reach. In the sky, the limitation that had cost him everything on the ground ceased to matter at all.

Tilly closed the list.

“Move out.”

The signal flags turned. Phoenix — her Phoenix — rolled first, accelerating down the strip until the wheels lifted and the plane rose into the cold morning air, sunlight striking the metal wings and throwing a fan of light across the grass below. Behind her, the Seagull — Anna had rebuilt it quickly after the first was hit; it doesn’t take long when I already know the shape of it, she’d said, in the understated way she said most things. Then the full formation: forty Fire of Heaven planes, ten Fury of Heaven planes with autocannons suspended beneath their wings, assembling into a fleet that banked wide over the City of Glow and flew west into the clouds.

The city shrank below. The horizon swallowed them.

Discussion

Suggest a change