A Young Girl’s Outer Heaven


    24


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    Commissioned by kyo amamoto.


    <hr>


    I leaned back in my very comfortable plush seat, reading a book as our plane shook slightly with a bit of turbulence. Faintly, I could hear the Americans talking among themselves, trying to keep their voices down. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem—the sound of engines would drown out most quiet conversation. Not so with the newly retrofitted mana engines on our luxury transport aircraft. They were completely silent. The only things I heard were the sound of the plane cutting through the air, the sound of the radio (a mana based alternative to the record player we’d had originally), and the sounds of a group of very tense soldiers sitting around and waiting for things to go wrong.


    Turning the page on my book, I continued reading, keeping an eye on them with my mana sense. Though, I could understand their agitation. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was currently jamming all magical radio signals in and out. They couldn’t radio ahead. They couldn’t request or receive instructions. They didn’t even know where we really were.


    We were supposed to be landing at a U.S. naval base in Florida, based on the instructions the squad leader had given us. We weren’t, obviously. Instead, we were using information gathered on the U.S. before the war and pre-war maps to fly to a naval base a little closer to my target. We were on course for Norfolk, Virginia, and the current largest U.S. naval base on the east coast—and that wasn’t likely to change any time soon.


    A timer went off in my head—a formula I had set to count down based on our air speed and the distance to our target. We were currently moving much faster than the B-17’s specs said it should be capable of, but that was mostly dependent upon the engines. Edwina had stress tested them and getting them up to just above Mach 1 was fine—they could easily sustain a cruising speed of 800mph at altitude. Marking my page, I put the book down and stood. The soldiers looked up, some of their guns twitching but not quite turning my direction. Making my way up to the cockpit, I stepped inside and closed the cabin door.


    “We’re almost there,” Edwina answered the unspoken question as she looked up. “I’m going to need to radio ahead soon, or they might get antsy.”


    I nodded. “I’ll go get someone in a moment. Once we land, you need to leave as soon as everyone debarks. Don’t wait for clearance. Don’t wait for me. Leave and return to Brasa.”


    “But ma’am,” Visha protested, “how will you get back?”


    “I’ll fly under my own power,” I assured her with a smile, even as she sent me a skeptical look. “I’m a bit faster now than I was.”


    That was an understatement. I had done some testing with the help of Dr. Schugel. I could easily outpace even Sturmvogel if I wanted to. The only issue was my clothes getting damaged unless I maintained a shield constantly. Oh, also running into the occasional bird and insect—the typical risks any aerial mage took when they went up, really. It was why I preferred riding in style. It was much more comfortable and convenient to ride in my new car, or in our dedicated VIP air transport, than it was to fly—even if flying was faster. I couldn’t enjoy a book and a good cup of coffee or even take a nap if I were flying myself, after all! It was also easier to transport sensitive documents without the risk of whatever case was holding them breaking.


    Not to mention having a handy restroom. Life as an aerial mage came with certain… allowances one had to make for the sake of practicality, and I would be perfectly happy if I never had to take another midair piss again because we couldn’t land for a bathroom break.


    “We could find a nearby field and wait for you to meet us,” Edwina suggested, and I shook my head.


    “No. They’ll definitely scramble aerial mages and fighters to try and intercept you. Remember, they want this technology as much as they want me. Why do you think they were fine allowing you to fly us in? They’re expecting to try to take the plane. They probably won’t hurt the two of you because it’s part of the deal we made, but they would absolutely break that deal when it came to taking the plane.”


    “They can have my Royal Flush over my dead body,” the pilot grumbled.


    “If they had to, yes,” I agreed.


    Visha made a frustrated noise, looking conflicted and annoyed as she did. “This is so…”


    “Frustrating? Stupid? Yes,” I nodded, a grin pulling at my lips. “That’s the U.S. government. Why negotiate when they can take, or get their way by force? It wasn’t the reaction I had hoped for, but I can’t say it was unexpected.”


    Looking curious, Edwina asked, “What were you hoping for?”


    “A negotiation as peers. Equals. Where we both sit down and work out our needs and wants and determine how we can best help the other achieve those, and at what cost. It was perhaps a bit idealistic on my part, to expect them to be willing to listen to reason right from the start. After all, they don’t know or haven’t acknowledged that they’re dealing with a peer. At the moment, they most likely believe they’re dealing with an upstart. It’s the difference between an officer of equal or slightly lesser rank formally requesting a meeting and a private storming into headquarters armed to the teeth and ‘requesting’ a meeting. Of course there would be resistance. Push back. They need to test and see where we stand in regards to each other. That’s why they sent a team to capture or kill myself and Dr. Schugel. If they can get away with doing it with no repercussions, then they aren’t going to take us seriously.”


    Edwina frowned as she thought about that, while Visha made a quiet sound and let out a whispered, “Oh no.”


    The pilot turned to my adjutant in her co-pilot’s seat. “What?”


    Instead of answering, my blonde subordinate and friend turned wide blue eyes on me. “You’re going to make an example of them.” A smile pulled at my lips and she shivered, her head jerking back to Edwina. “As soon as they’re clear of the plane, we’re leaving. Full speed, right back home.”


    “Huh? I don’t get it.”


    “The first time the general made an example of someone, we went from routing an invading Dacian force three divisions strong to conducting a night raid on their capital that same night to cripple their weapons production.”


    I rolled my eyes. “I told you, you shouldn’t even count those as divisions. They were little better than a mob fifty-thousand strong.”


    My adjutant met my eyes and said only a single word in response. “Moskva.”


    “It’s not my fault they had no air defense for their capital!” I protested. “That was entirely a failure on the part of the communists!”


    Looking further confused, Edwina asked, “I don’t get it?”


    Viktoriya took a breath then let it out in a sigh. “How far is Norfolk from their capital?”


    “A little over—”


    I cut her off with an exact answer. “One hundred and fifty three point five miles from our landing area to the White House.” Visha sent me a knowing look. “Perhaps I merely wanted to go visit? Introduce myself? Say hello.”


    “At,” Visha checked her chronometer, “just past four in the morning.”


    My smile returned. “Well, it’s only fair. After all, they kicked in our bedroom door in the dead of night. They shouldn’t complain when we return the favor, just to underscore the point of how utterly rude and disrespectful such a thing is.”


    My subordinate turned back to our pilot. “Now do you see?”


    “Right,” Edwina nodded. “In and out, fast as we can. I’m just going to shove you out as we’re rolling down the tarmac. Not even gonna stop. You can tuck and roll. You’re their problem now, boss.”


    “Har de har har,” I sighed, turning away and heading deeper into the plane, before waving to the enemy soldiers’ leader. “We’ll be landing shortly. You’re up. Need to radio the local air base and let them know we’re friendlies landing so they don’t try to shoot us full of holes.”


    Standing, the man nodded, before lifting a set of chains and shackles. “You’ll need to wear these.”


    “When we step off and not a moment before,” I countered. “Your men will go first, then you and I, then the rest bearing your dead last. You should inform them of that and have someone waiting to take the dead.”


    The man hesitated, stopping as he came even with me. “Why are you so worried about it?”


    Sighing quietly, I shook my head. “I know what it’s like to lose those under your command to stupid orders or by being sent into a poor situation without enough information. Too often, we’ve had to leave our dead behind—or worse, they were chewed up by the machine of war and there wasn’t enough left of them to put in a body bag. We may stand on opposite sides of the field today, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t afford them the dignity they deserve, or their families the right to lay their sons to rest at home. I am not the monster or the mad dog your people and your allies have painted me as. Perhaps, where it comes to protecting my own life and those of my subordinates and people, I am every bit the Devil they’ve labeled me. But I am a soldier and an officer first. If allowances can be made for this sort of thing, they should be.”


    It also cost me nothing and earned me goodwill by showing that we were willing to be civil, and word of that would spread. We were going to need that goodwill, because I knew the American playbook for dealing with enemies. I’d seen it before in my own world and time, after all. I saw the things they said about the Germans, twice over. About Japan—although I will give them that our peoples had a fundamental misunderstanding of each other at the time. I saw what they said about the Soviets—though if we’re being honest, what was said about the commies barely scratched the surface of just how bad they actually were. Vietnam. Korea. Iraq. In every conflict America had participated in from their Revolutionary War all the way to the day I died, they had gone out of their way to vilify the opposing force—to propagandize to their own people and everyone else, that the enemy were morally evil and America was always unquestionably morally good.


    Some of it was truth, but much of it was propaganda—if not outright lies. And most normal people, unfortunately, had a hard time sorting fact from fiction—especially when everything they saw sold them the same lie.


    Japan during the Second World War, for instance. The things Manchu Detachment 731 did were monstrous, I wouldn’t deny that. The treatment of prisoners, on the other hand, was from a misunderstanding. At the time, Imperial Japan still somewhat adhered to certain older beliefs—one of those being death before dishonor. Thus, an enemy who fought to the last was expected and honorable. An enemy who surrendered, on the other hand, was subhuman and either to be killed or completely at the mercy of their captors, and their captors would absolutely torment them. It was a very different sort of mentality from those in the West where war and the handling of prisoners were approached with certain expectations; if an enemy surrendered, prisoners were expected to be treated with certain bare minimum standards—especially the officers. This was why there were many such cases of Japanese outright refusing to surrender to America troops, out of fear of what would be done to them—because it’s what they would have done, thus they expected the same sort of treatment.


    There was no way that this didn’t end with America slandering Brasa for generations to come. It was almost unavoidable. The only thing we could do was plan and deal with it in our own time, and part of that meant getting ahead of the propaganda campaign by showing that we were the reasonable ones in this situation.


    The problem was, being reasonable had to be balanced with being someone America was afraid to attack. Too accommodating and they would take advantage, either financially or with direct action as they had today. Too hard and we would have not learned the lesson of the Empire—that being, appear too strong and you’ll drive other nations into a mad frenzy to kill you for being too great a threat. It was a difficult balancing act. Metaphorically speaking, I needed to give them a black eye for the unprovoked attack they had made, but then I needed to extend a hand to help them up once I’d knocked them off their feet and offer peace.


    That was the problem of not having the option of MAD available and commonly understood. Until they understood that they could be utterly annihilated any time they overstepped, they would still feel that launching a large scale offensive was viable. I needed to dissuade them of that notion, to convince them that if they ever tried this again, there would be dire consequences.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Returning to my seat, I listened in as the leader of the Americans’ hit squad radioed down to the naval base we were approaching and made arrangements. Less than ten minutes later, Royal Flush thumped and the tires squealed as we hit the tarmac and Edwina began braking. The cockpit was closed up tight and I knew Visha would be waiting on the other side of the door with her SMG. As soon as we pulled to a stop, the squad leader ordered his men off the plane, except for those who were on corpse detail. Once they were clear, he held up the shackles.


    “Can’t let you out without these.”


    “Mm. Very well.” I took a moment to button the top button on my uniform coat, then slipped my arms out of the sleeves, leaving it hanging off me like a cape. Holding out my hands, I offered them up and waited. He approached warily, cautious of some last minute trick, but I did nothing as he slapped the cold metal bands onto my wrists. The metal was thick and much wider than handcuffs, with about a foot of dark chain between them.


    I felt the effect immediately as they tried to scramble my internal mana to prevent casting and immediately tapped into my mana to fuel a written strengthening formula on the shackles and chain to prevent anyone from cutting them. It was a pretty ingenious design, I’ll admit. Any normal mage would be completely at the mercy of whoever had these. These just weren’t made with someone like me in mind.


    Turning them over to record all of the enchantments for later reproduction, I tucked my arms under my hanging coat to mostly hide the shackles and the two of us left the plane. Outside, we found his men had lined up to either side of the door and come to attention. The leader’s hand on my shoulder directed us to the end of the line, on the other side of which was an army green truck marked with the white and red cross of a medical unit. Then, the last of his men began walking down the stairs of the plane. Reaching up, I removed my hat and watched as they were carried down the line and loaded into the back of the medical trucks.


    As soon as the last of them was clear, I saw Visha pull up the plane’s stairs and close the door. Royal Flush was pulling away a moment later and I grinned and pulled my hat back on as it quickly picked up speed. People looked around confused and the team leader at my side frowned, but said nothing as it quickly got up to speed and took off.


    It was at that point that several military police approached with weapons drawn to take custody of me. As I was being led away, I turned and sent the man a smile. “You and your men should go home. Soon.”


    “…Why?”


    “You and your men were allowed to leave alive. I’ve cooperated with you and you are no longer in a position to engage in hostilities against my people. You were allowed to bring one of your targets here to America and hand me over into their custody. Your mission is officially over, is it not? With this, the deal you and I had is concluded, wouldn’t you agree?”


    He thought about it for a moment, keeping pace as the MPs pulled me along and hauled me into the back of a troop transport. Finally, he said, “Even if you lived up to the reputation, not even you can escape this.”


    I hummed. “You think? They didn’t tell you, did they?”


    “Tell me what?!”


    I chuckled as the transport started up. “You’re missing information. As I said, you and your men should go home if you value your lives. Things are going to get very lively here, very soon.”


    The truck pulled away, heading deeper into the base. Checking my timer, I watched and waited as we moved along towards a building off to the side of the others. When we stopped again. I was roughly pushed out of the back of the truck as half a dozen MPs filed in around me and began directing me towards the building. When I abruptly stopped, fixing my mana into place relative to the Earth and making myself practically immovable, the guns came up and the shouting began.


    “Gentlemen.” The MPs around me hesitated as I spoke. “Thank you for the hospitality, but I am afraid I must decline. I am late for a very important meeting, you see.”


    Finally, one of them moved in and put his trench shotgun against my forehead. At that, the rest pointed their weapons at me and flipped off the safeties. “Do you not understand the situation you’re in?!” The shotgun pressed into my forehead just a little harder. “With those cuffs on, you’re no different from us. We have orders to open fire if you resist. Now, come along quietly, or things are going to come to a bloody end real damn quick.”


    “Do you?” I smiled. A collective shiver ran through the group at that. “Because you see…” I held up my hands, the chains clinking between them and drawing their eyes. Focusing my mana, I began pushing it back towards the cuffs, running it between them—through the shackles, down the links of the chain. Eyes went wide as the links began to smoke, then glow as they quickly turned cherry red.


    “I am…” A little more mana and they went yellow and began to sag, before starting to slag and fall to the ground.


    A quiet whisper came from one of the men as the metal hissed and cooled on the ground, more quickly joining it. “Oh shit.”


    “…right where I want to be.” The cuffs and chain fell away entirely, leaving my arms bare. A little red from the heat, but that faded back to my usual coloration as I watched. “So—”


    The shotgun in my face went off. Someone yelled “Open fire!” and the sounds of automatic rifle and shotgun fire filled the air as they unloaded on me. I didn’t bother with a shield as bullets hit my skin and the mana beneath solidified, strengthening the skin above. Bullets and shot flattened and split as they impacted, falling to the ground in a soft patter barely audible under the sounds of weapons fire. Running mana through my clothes and reinforcing them with it kept them intact—it would be a shame if my uniform were destroyed in this pointless little display, after all.


    Finally, the fire stopped as they ran out of ammunition. The MPs stared at me, slack jawed, as I brushed off still hot bits and pieces of lead onto the ground. When I finished dusting myself off, I shook my head. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a negotiation to get to.”


    With that, I lifted off the ground to the sound of alarms going off across the base. I felt multiple people keying up on the magical radio frequency and chuckled, casting an invisibility formula and pulling my mana in close, holding it tight as I left. I’d let them get the word out and scramble assistance. The more attention there was here, the less there was at my destination, after all.


    I created a thin shield to keep the wind off and rapidly climbed, accelerating northwest.


    <hr>


    President Calvin was pulled out of a deep sleep by the door to his bedroom blasting open in a minor explosion—sawdust and splinters filling the room with debris as it was blasted off its hinges. His wife screamed even as he sat up and looked around blearily, his heart hammering wildly as adrenaline coursed through his veins. A figure stood in his doorway, back lit by the lights from the hall, casting their figure into shadow—but whoever it was, they were relatively short.


    There was a quiet inhale of breath, and then a shout—no, not just a shout, it was like someone was yelling into a PA system. “GET UP! GET OUT OF BED AND GET ON YOUR KNEES! SURRENDER OR BE FIRED UPON!”


    “O-okay! Okay!” he raised his hands, easing his way out of the bed and standing, putting himself between the intruder and his wife, and wondering where the hell his security detail were. “Please—”


    The figure marched into the room and clicked on the bedroom light. President Calvin’s heart stopped as he realized he recognized her. General Tanya von Degurechaff. Here. In his bedroom! In the White House!


    Further thoughts were temporarily whited out as she jerked him down to her level, then brought her fist up to smash into his nose, breaking it and sending him sprawling to the floor. Nodding, she wiped off a bit of his blood from the back of her hand. “There. Now we’re even. That was exactly the amount of force one of yours used to buttstroke me when your people forced their way into my own bedroom earlier tonight. Don’t worry, I only used exactly the same amount of force he used. I measured it, after all.” Shaking her head, she clicked her tongue. “It’s quite rude, isn’t it? Waking someone up in the dead of night in this manner and assaulting them. You would think that heads of state and high ranking officers would be exempt from such treatment, out of fear of some sort of international incident…”


    “AAAHHH—”


    The blonde terror gestured and his wife’s screaming was silenced—though a check back in her direction showed she was still alive and unharmed, just… silently screaming, apparently behind some formula. The Devil sighed, “That’s enough of that. Now,” she turned her attention back to Calvin. “Get up and get dressed. Your wife can stay or leave, I don’t care which. You’re coming with me. We’re going to have a little… negotiation.”


    Finding his balls, President Calvin pressed a hand to his bleeding nose and stood. “You come into my home. Into the White House. The very heart of this country. And dare attack the President of the Unified States of America? There’s nothing to negotiate. This is war, plain and simple. Just a continuation of the Great War, in a new theater. We’ll raze Brasa to the ground, dig your people out of whatever hole they’re hiding in, and drag them before the courts to stand trial for their crimes against humanity!”


    “I see,” the Devil murmured, nodding slowly. “If that’s how you feel, then I suppose a demonstration is in order instead. Now, get dressed and come along. If you’ll direct me, we can stop by a mage medic and have that nose seen about.”


    “I’m not going anywhere—” President Calvin fell silent as she raised her hand and pointed a single finger at him. The tip began to glow ominously and he realized that she had a formula primed and ready to kill him where he stood. Once again, he wondered where the hell his security was—


    “If you’re wondering where your security is, I’m afraid I neutralized them already. Don’t worry, they’ll live. They’ve just got a few broken bones and I destroyed their computation orbs and weapons. We’ll be long gone by the time they raise an alarm and get a team here to respond. Now, I won’t tell you again. Get dressed, or I’ll dress you myself, and I assure you neither of us wants that.”


    Looking to his wife, President Calvin sighed and made his way over, feeling his skin tingle as he stepped through a bubble around here. Immediately, her wailing filled his ears and he winced. “Janie, it’s okay,” he called, moving over and hugging the woman. “We’re okay for now.” She eventually quieted down and he let her go. “I have to go for a bit. I’ll be back soon.”


    “No! You, you can’t! She’s, she—!”


    “Shh, shh. It’s fine,” he shushed her as he stood and went into his closet, pulling out one of his suits and starting to dress.


    Soon enough, he kissed his wife goodbye and left, walking beside the Devil as they moved through the strangely quiet halls of the White House. It was surreal, if he was being honest. He had never seen the place this empty, this quiet. All of the people who should have been moving about even at this hour were gone.


    “How do you know the infirmary is even going to be staffed?” he asked, sending the young woman a curious look. “You didn’t do anything to them?”


    “I can feel them from here, now that I know the general direction we’re heading. They’re the only other mages in the building. And no. I went after the largest concentration of mages and any individuals roaming the halls near the President’s Bedroom. Second floor, southwest corner. That’s all public knowledge,” she shrugged.


    The rest of the short trip was spent in silence, until they reached the infirmary. There was some sort of brief magical clash, but the general clearly came out the winner as the man on duty quickly relented and treated President Calvin’s wound—a formula easing the bruising after he set the broken nose back as it should be. Once they were finished, she led him out the rear exit, to the back yard.


    “Now what?” the President asked.


    The Devil hummed, considering. She closed her eyes briefly before nodding. A moment later, President Calvin yelped as they lifted into the air, before flying almost directly west.


    “War between us would be a mistake,” she began speaking as they slowly flew along, gaining altitude and letting President Calvin see the city from above, the first time he’d seen it and not been in the seat of a small aircraft looking out a window. “I have a question. Did Agent Samuel Singer not report his findings?”


    “No, he did,” President Calvin glared at her, crossing his arms over his chest. “We saw the bomb you set off,” he said, and she nodded. “You’re a madwoman with her finger on a button. If you think you can force the Unified States to bend to the whims of some third world dictator, a war criminal, with the threat of annihilation from above then you’re sadly mistaken. We will kill you. Even if you kill me here and now, more will come for you. They only have to get lucky once. And then, when you’re not in control of the arsenal above our heads, we can route the rest of your people at our leisure.”


    The young woman blinked, before sending him a confused look. “Excuse me? What arsenal?”


    President Calvin scoffed. “Don’t take me for a fool. We’re aware the satellites overhead. Flying bombs you’ve got hanging over us like a gun pointed to our heads.”


    “Ah,” she murmured, making a particularly queer face for just a moment, before her lips twitched into something approaching a rueful smile—as opposed to the one that had made him want to crawl under his bed and hide until the threat had passed. “Yes. That arsenal. You’ve got me, Mr. President. I couldn’t pull one over on you,” she chuckled.


    “Damn right!” he nodded firmly.


    “So, just to clarify… You know about the satellites. Which are mana bombs flying overhead, even as we speak, under the control of my people. Bombs which have an adjustable yield in the range between kilotons and megatons. Three hundred of them, in fact.”


    “That’s right,” President Calvin agreed as they came to a stop overlooking the Potomac River, and the island there they were considering naming after a former president—though they hadn’t quite decided which yet. Maybe after this is all said and done, they’ll name it after me, for all the good I’ve done for this country. Stopping this madwoman and putting down the rabid dogs she calls soldiers should earn me that much. Hell, I practically ended the Great War myself! They’ll be talking about me for generations to come.


    “Mm. I see,” she murmured. “And did it not occur to you that if I were killed, my people might take umbrage with that? That they might decide to launch a retaliatory strike all on their own?”


    President Calvin’s train of thought derailed and caught fire as his blood ran cold. “They, no. No. They wouldn’t! No one would just kill that many people in retaliation—!”


    “Is that what you think?” she asked, that smile back on her lips. “No, Mr. President. You are sadly mistaken. But you’re not alone in that. That was the mistake everyone else kept making too. Everyone was so focused on The Devil of the Rhine that they didn’t stop to really look at the people around me. Every one of the mages under my command has a confirmed kill count of other aerial mages in the dozens. Each one of them is an ace of aces in their own right. They are the most trained, the most skilled, and the most dangerous individuals currently alive on this planet. If it weren’t for me being there, every one of them would be listed as a Named mage, but it gets kind of confusing when you have to start calling out so many individual names over the radio, which is why the entire battalion is known by name instead. My men are bloodthirsty maniacs. They are what I like to call default aggressive; that is, with a lack of instruction, they will resort to destruction. Meaning that the only thing holding them in check is me. And you thought it was a good idea to kidnap or kill the one person who wanted to talk instead of just, as you implied, press the button?”


    His mouth suddenly dry, President Calvin swallowed thickly. “…They would do it?”


    The woman sighed. “President Calvin, before I left, I didn’t have to give orders to perform a retaliatory strike if I wasn’t returned inside of twenty-four hours. I didn’t need to. All I needed to do was do nothing. To not order them <u>not</u> to do so. I’m here to try to save lives, not end them. To that end, that demonstration. You need to witness firsthand what it is you’re dealing with. Because those bombs? I have direct access. I can call down a strike any time, from anywhere on the planet. And in the time I’ve been speaking, I’ve done just that. I’m surprised you didn’t notice the shields forming around that little island there,” she nodded towards the almost mile long strip of uninhabited, forested land in the middle of the river. “I put them there to keep the blast from affecting anything else.”


    “You, you can’t! No mage could contain a blast that large! It’ll destroy—!”


    “Too late.”


    The last thing President Calvin saw before the world became nothing but a white flash and a roar of sound was that damn smile again. Like staring into the face of a hungry tiger.


    We’ve truly grabbed the tiger by the tail and it seems to have grabbed hold of us in turn. Now what do we do with it?