[><] Hightailing Out Of Hell
Your hesitation lasts for a fraction of a fraction. You slam the throttles to full power, and the plane lurches forward. The cold was brutal enough in the hangar with the doors opening, but as the cockpit fully leaves the confines of the building it hits you like a physical wall, and you resist the urge to draw your wand and do something about it. The engine seems to handle it just fine without any further input, which surprises you. The cars start up behind you and quickly catch up after some difficulty starting. They swerve a bit from the icy airstrip, and you try to think very hard about not thinking about that, lest the same thing happen to you and bring your living career to a swift conclusion.
The sudden blitz has exactly the effect you want it to. The initial barrage of arrow fire is desultory, and by the time it picks up to a steady drumbeat against the skin of your plane, you're moving much too fast for them to be much threat - to you. You dare not look to your sides to see how the trucks are doing. You've no doubt passed them by now, and the wind is making the Vega fight you for every bit of speed.
The wind finally overcomes you right as the Vega leaps into the air, slewing you sideways for a heart-stopping second before you're free of the icy ground. You can practically hear the Baron's screams of rage as the arrows briefly intensify and you smell the ozone of magic being slung around. You hear the muted whump of of a fuel explosion, and there's a lull in the enemy fire, but only a lull, not a cessation.
The air intensifies to near-whiteout conditions, leaving you stuck at instrument-only - a very dangerous situation to be in at so low an altitude and in wholly unfamiliar terrain. Trees whip by under your wings, and at one point you can swear you nearly clip them on a huge outcropping of rock. And still, the arrows pursue you, the wind shaking the Vega constantly, your eyes only daring to leave the instrument panel when something actually appears through the fog and snow, and even then only long enough to haul on the stick and move out of the way.
The storm clears for a moment, just long enough for you to see a pair of rocky bluffs poking out of the snowy ground, forming a narrow V. Below, the trucks are still below, still being pursued by the Baron and a few stragglers as everything gets pushed towards the gap.
You wrench the stick to the side and feel something thump into one of the wheels, along with a sudden burst of arrows, then, nothing. You're through.
- .... . / .-.. .- ... - / -.- .... .- --. .- -.
The storm vanishes within minutes, though you almost wish it didn't. The endless snow under the equally endless blue skies of the Mongolian winter are almost blinding. More importantly they make finding a decent landing spot that much more difficult to the more reptilian parts of your brain; potholes and sinkholes could be anywhere. That's leaving aside how rugged the terrain clearly is. You're somewhere in that big patch of low mountains to the southeast of Lake Baikal, you're pretty sure, but that could be just about anywhere, and the maps on board the Vega naturally don't tell you where the base was. The mountains are no issue to the plane, but they are to the trucks, and that takes your route further and further off course of the true north you want to be following, and that costs fuel, time, and patience.
After what seems like ages (but is in fact only a few hours), you finally find a river valley wide and flat enough to consider putting down. Your landing is dicey, but you manage to slow down enough to only get bruises when one of the wheel struts decides to give up and sideways-faceplant the Vega into the snow.
It takes several minutes for the rest of your team to catch up to you, by which time you have fully extricated yourself from the cockpit. Upon stopping, the frame of the second Kurogane promptly breaks entirely, giving the vehicle a similar stepped-on appearance to the plane.
"Report," you wheeze, resting against the remaining functional strut as you wave for the strongest of your team to help unload the aircraft.
There are no serious injuries. Abigail had an arm struck by an arrow, but it was the metal arm so the arrow simply bounced off, though it did take off her entire sleeve. Indra lost his hat, as did Weronika, but beyond that, nothing to report, other than that the plane isn't going anywhere, and the Kurogane is likely to never move again.
As you are about to get up, you are approached by a small group of farmers. They start by asking you something in a language your Babel pins are quite incapable of parsing, then attempt again in stunted Russian, which sounds to you like stunted English with a bad Russian accent.
"You are - soldier, yes?" the eldest, an old woman, asks.
"Yes," you say, and start to say your name before realizing someone who didn't realize that right away might not realize that a Japanese woman could be fighting for the Allies. "I am Captain Williams," you finally say, and the Babel Pin helpfully has it come out in Russian.
Negotiations proceed smoothly from there. There is a village nearby by the name of Zakharovo. There's no hospital, but there is a doctor, and more importantly a phone. There is also food, and though you try to turn them down, they insist on giving you all a "soldier's meal" of some freshwater fish and winter vegetable soup, and lots of it. You appreciate it, mostly because magic can only do so much to stave off the bitter cold of Siberia.
As you finally connect back to SHADOCOM Asia to report, the very idea of that city makes you dream of somewhere warm.
And that's that! There will be at least a month break until the next chapter, probably, mostly because for the first time I actually want to plan out the next few chapters. That, and I have some fanfics I want to work on, but mostly the former reason. Certainly not so I can play Fate/Stay Night. I will say this though, we're leaving Central Asia at last, and we're not going to Alaska.
