Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Fan Fiction ❯ My Magical Gate Experience Was Ruined, As I Expected ❯ YGS: 15 ( Chapter 15 )

[Tanya/Komachi]

I was flying overwatch to some trading city we’d heard about from our refugees. The bluenette, Lelei La Lelena. No, it was … no that was right. Hard name to say. Lelei had collected several hundred of the wyvern scales, which were valuable for trade, and wanted to sell them and use the money to help rebuild their town at Alnus Hill refugee camp. Admirable rather than sit around on the public dime. Hachiman, currently the site commander for the intelligence operations on this side of the gate, approved it since that would allow for a trading post to get setup and opportunities for selling beads to the natives and collect even more intelligence on the native population.

So a recon team was taking bags of organic tungsten carbide ceramic wyvern scales to some city called Italica. It was supposed to be a trading hub and farming center. The ground recon team was led by Itami, and sergeanted by Ebina. She complained bitterly, of course. Everything about Itami drove her up the wall, for some reason. Maybe this was how she expressed romantic interest? Knowing her…  yes that was probably it. I briefly considered telling niisan, then reconsidered a betting pool instead. It would be more amusing that way.

Alnus finally appeared in the distance, under a column of black smoke and lots of reflected metal. There was an army outside the gates. I reported it to the tactical net, which was received by both the ground team and Alnus, which copied. It appeared to be a siege.

The vehicles swung wide around to the far gate of the city and stopped. Niisan was sitting beside Lelei in the second truck, and the Apostle Rory with Itami, where she tended to enjoy sexually harassing him. I gathered she was centuries old, so this kind of thing was her way of expressing all sorts of conflicted issues a modern Japanese man would find quite disquieting. The blonde elf girl wasn’t helping at all. Considering she was a slowly maturing species with the mental faculties of a teenage girl, she was dependent and unobservant, not very bright, and showed worrying attachment to the junior officer. She was also part of why Hina kept complaining.

The apostle and several of the local girls and Itami dismounted about 100 yards from the sally-port, the name of the door in the locked gate and went forward to knock. I watched and laughed when the door flung open and some woman in fantasy bikini armor half-fell out, smacking Itami out cold from the blow. Sighing, I descended and applied first aid, if only to insure he wouldn’t die from a brain bleed from the head wound. Stabilized, they offered to invite us inside while he came to himself. The snoring suggested Itami might be working too hard lately. Command is a serious burden. I took charge, for the moment, and the red-haired girl claimed to the Empire’s princess with the most ridiculous name ever: Pina Colada. She was named after a drink served at Caribbean Resorts. It was ice, light and dark rum, pineapple juice, and coconut cream liqueur, sometimes served in a coconut with a straw, and one of those little paper umbrellas. I had never had one, being a civilized Japanese person, but I knew people who vacationed far from home and had raved about them in Jamaica or St. Martin. Whatever. This was not a coincidence, and suggested additional gates in that region in prior decades, probably small ones like the Outbreak Company fiasco.

Ebina was fretting over Itami. Rory was gloating. She winked at me, then made a very unladylike groan of pleasure, head swiveling towards the army outside the gates. This gained the attention of the princess.

“It seems we must beg your assistance,” declared the princess in her gutter latin. “The city of Italica is under siege. I have sent a messenger to bring the Imperial legion to defend Italica and drive off these bandits at its gates, but we must hold the city three more days. If we falter, they will loot, rape, and pillage the city, and kill any who resist. They are mad, madmen who have lost all hope after the slaughter at Alnus Hill. Most are starving. We must be valiant and defend the city gates with our lives! Please, will you guard the gate you entered from any flanking attack?”

She was making anime heroine gestures as she spoke. I suspect this princess might be dumb. The fantasy armor was ornate, had lacquer and gold leaf decorations on it but no dents or scratches. The two male veterans minding her back looked like competent bodyguards with a tough job keeping this thoughtless optimist alive in a world that was soon going to ruin her entire perspective, if she lived through this mistake. Then again, we’re here.

“I think,” I said and a politely contradictory way in my sweetest gutter latin, “that since we possess mobile horseless wagons we might make use of this advantage to deal with any problems, at any of the city gates.”

“But how will you know to come?”

“You have horns, right? Blow them three times, pause, then three more times and repeat until we show up. We’ll hear you across the city. I’ll do some aerial reconnaissance and radio our plan to Alnus hill. They might offer to help.” I stepped to the tall windows and politely bowed to the idiot princess, activated my flight system and flew out the window into the evening sky.

“Pixy-1 to Alnus. Over.”

“This is Alnus Actual. Come in Pixy-1. What’s your sitrep?”

I explained about the army at the gates and from my lofty position, my rough count was 20,000 madmen. This could be bad. I could use artillery spells and cut down on their numbers, but they were close to the gates and barricades and the city defenders on the walls were doing their best. A mage started casting and blinked briefly into view, firing a fireball at the gates before vanishing again.

“Do you require air cav gunship support?” asked Actual, the Alnus base commander. He was a decent guy for suffering through all the politics of both the JSDF and the Diet nonsense.

“There’s 20,000 men down there. I don’t have that many rounds, so yes, bring gunships and whatever you think we need. Sending digital image captures on digital band in 20 seconds, over.”

“Receiving ready, over.” I sent the packet data and they got the image like an email attachment on the digital sideband. Modern military radios were much better than the stuff we used before, and my own radio relay towers, setup weeks ago, were doing their duty admirably. More people using their brains. 

It was an hour of watching the gradually milling army getting up the nerve to attack. Then I spotted a breakthrough with ladders breaching the walls. I fired on them, but I didn’t dare use artillery spells on those stone walls, hitting a few with basic rifle bullets, but it was a waste of ammunition with so many swarming the walls. Men were atop the walls, defending and the melee was intense. I radioed down to Itami and his trucks roared through the narrow city streets toward the breach. I fired into some archers, though, and took out some onager catapults. This only seemed to spur on the invaders, who removed the critical barricades from the courtyard and opened the gates to the horde. Oh dear. Rory jumped the barricade and started swinging her axe around, chunking men into projectiles in a very familiar way. I felt a little ashamed, having seen my own videos. That’s what my own battle rage looks like. And she was laughing. The mana hummed, and then I saw Hina Ebina appear beside the loli apostle and there were muzzle flashes, the spray of blood off her bayonet. I taught her that! She reloaded a second magazine, dancing around and ducking the axe and defending Rory’s back, while Rory defended hers. It was beautiful. The bayonet broke off in some guy and Ebina grabbed her pistol and dropped three more madmen. There was a pause and then the attack helicopters struck, rockets blasting. The enemy commander on the top of the wall was flung free and dropped face down onto Rory’s pike point. She spoke to him, condemned him and flung him aside like garbage. The helicopters buzzed with rotary cannon fire and door gunners and even aimed rifle shots out the doors, pilots keeping out of the way. Some enemy troops approached a mounted ballista atop the way, trying to aim at an Cobra attack copter and it buzzed briefly, turning men and wood into splinters and blood spray before I could activate an artillery spell.

“Clear the courtyard. We’re going to ground zero that fire zone,” squawked the pilot over the radio. I spotted Itami and another soldier grab Ebina and Rory and carry them out of the kill box before there was a harsh buzz and plumes of rockets impacting. Movement stopped below us. The invaders were dead or fled in terror. The siege of Italica was ended.

Somewhere below, Rory Mercury slapped Itami.