Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

[open_sketch]

You returned to your apartment that night alone. In the end, the feeling that this was a betrayal of Yachi's trust was just too strong, and it ate at your whole evening.

You emptied your pockets out onto the shelf nearest the door. Pencils and pens, a few scrawled notes, and, importantly, the napkin you'd sketched the Dragonfly on. Minami had scratched her name and address into the paper later in the night. You hadn't agreed to meet back up, but it had been implied. You'd have to decide what to do about that later.

You pulled out your futon and climbed in, pulling the cord above your head to activate the light switch on the far wall. It had been a little questionable, trying to find your way back to bed at night when your concussion was still really bad, so after your recovery you'd built a simple little breaker and rerouted the wiring of the light so that it could be turned on or off both at the door and in bed.

Your head against the pillow, you stared up at the ceiling in the dark. The year was rapidly nearing its end, and you'd seen your boyfriend for four days total during all of it. You couldn't quite remember what his voice sounded like, save that you loved it, what his hands felt like, save that you missed them.

Hopefully, there would be a letter awaiting you tomorrow. You'd write him back immediately, of course. You didn't know if you'd mention Minami just yet. Maybe that could wait.

You just wanted this all to be over and for him to come back. The factory was starting work laying out the first train-hunters next week. In a month they'd be in the air, and you'd be working on something new. The gears just keep churning.

 

[open_sketch]

October 16th.

You are Major Arita Yachi.

You have been at war nearly a year now. That time has changed you in many ways.

You have killed. You have watched friends die. You have crashed planes, been wounded in battle, and been promoted. It's been glorious and terrifying and cruel.

Eleven days ago, you'd been passing back over the line, having just shot down your 27th plane, a Cossack-2 harassing a photo-recon Pit Viper. A stray bullet, fired by some bored Caspian infantryman at the tiny dots above, had passed through the side of your aircraft and clipped your calf. Blood streaming down your leg, you'd made the landing at the closest airfield and staggered out, shock taking hold. It was remarkable how slight a wound could be and still overwhelm a man.

Originally, they told you you'd been grounded for a month. Nobody wanted to risk their star pilot flying wounded. But that had changed, suddenly, and you'd been whisked out of the warm billet, sleeping in what you think had been a child's room in a town behind the lines, back to the front.

Your wound had been mostly superficial. You were walking a bit funny, but you were fine. Honestly, you were grateful. You couldn't forgive yourself if Shiro died in your absence.

Right now, you were waiting in the back of a military truck. In a few minutes, a soldier would come to take you to the briefing for a mission. You didn't know much about it, but you knew it had to be important to have brought you back to the front so quickly. Across from you was your wingman, Captain Amari Shiro. He was twenty, young, handsome. He had a scar now, a cut across his hairline from where a piece of a Caspian aircraft had detached as he fired into it and sliced across his head. It had grounded him only three days. He still insisted of flying bareheaded, not even wearing goggles, though he carried a pair of tiny oval ones in his cockpit. Instead, he wore a pair of tiny round sunglasses, so he had a better chance of spotting any C-2s coming out of the sun. You couldn't question him on that: He'd racked up his sixteenth kill in your absence. He knew what he was doing.

These days, you flew with a pair of large, multi-segment goggles, a leather cap, and a blue and white headband you'd originally been given for a propaganda shoot which you'd kept because it kept the air out of the tiny gap between the top of your goggles and your cap. Your black scarf was tucked into your flying leathers, which was a long and fairly shapeless set of clothing you'd purchased yourself. Amari had a set just like them. It was so cold up there, you needed something like that.

You and Amari were close. Torio Tanaka had been a good friend, but Amari was... a comrade, an extension of your senses, and, in a moment of weakness, a lover. You'd dragged yourself back after a long mission, showered off in the empty officer's quarters, and found yourself in each other's arms. It was all a blur. The last year was a blur.

You'd explained to him why you'd felt so badly about what had happened, why it couldn't go on. You could tell it hurt him a little, but he hadn't brought it up since.

In the distance, outside the truck, you could see airplanes being moved around. Your Super Dragonfly, which you'd painted all black. Beside it, Amari's, whose original airframe colour was long lost. He'd turned it into a sort of flying shrine, and it was covered in the names of lost comrades and lovers from everyone in the flight group. He'd even strung paper prayer tags on the wires between the wings.

There was two other machines there, too. You recognized them as Super Dragonflies from the V-shaped strut, but there weren't many more of those in service. One of the ones there belonged to Captain Nashio, the second-highest scoring ace with twenty-two kills. You hadn't seen that man since you'd put him in hospital: they'd transferred him out west. He'd painted the nose and wings of his with a red starburst, framed in yellow.

The final machine had an orange and white arrow on the front. You didn't know who that belonged to.

You could see a private soldier heading to the truck to give you orders. It was time.

Create a plan vote distributing 4 points between your stats of Hard, Keen, Calm, and Daring.

Your current statline is 0 Hard, +1 Keen, 0 Calm, 0 Daring.​

 

[open_sketch]

[X] Plan Fly Safe

You and Amari entered the closed hanger, seeing before you at least a hundred and fifty chairs, about half of them filled. You were seated in the front row to the right of the briefing board by one of the soldiers: you noticed the other pilots being shuffled in were being sorted by their squadron.

"Any idea what's going on, Yachi?" Amari whispered. "Looks like we're throwing a whole festival."

"Looks that way." You said, watching as the twelve combat pilots of Dragonfly Squadron R-6 filtered into their seats. "Are those Navy back there?" You indicated to some of the white-uniformed pilots milling about in the far corner. There was maybe two dozen of them coming in, being stared at at all sides.

"Spirits, I think so. Why the hell are their fish in our briefing? I sure hope we aren't sharing the skies with the brutes." Amari said.

The chair next to Amari was filled, and you glanced over to see Captain Nashio. He looked away when you met his gaze.

"Hello, Major." He said, tone flat.

"Captain." You replied neutrally. He looked like he might say something, but then he wisely didn't.

You realized that it wasn't just seats. The back of the room was filling up with standing observers, gunners, and bombardiers. It was a proper crowd now, at least two hundred people packed into the thin sheet-metal hanger, chatting loudly. The mummuring grew even louder as somebody entered the room, and you saw a foreign woman striding across the room to you. The trainer, Coralie D'Ambois, in a blue Akitsukuni uniform with a skirt. She sat beside you and smiled.

"Major Arita. Good to meet you again." She said, her accent still thick, but comprehensible. You'd actually wondered idly how much she spoke when you trained with her, if she had a good command of the language or merely a few phrases and a script.

"Good to see you... Captain." You said, still reeling a bit over her rank pins. "If you don't mind, what are you doing here?"

"Flying, my good man. Officially as an adviser, of course, though it turns out that I have more flight hours than anyone in your military. None in combat yet, but that shall soon change, I think?" She said, smiling. "Of course, I have read the reports of all three of you men quite closely."

"Reading isn't fighting, ma'am." You said, and her smile grew even wider.

"It is not."

A man finally moved up to the front of the board, and the mumurs stopped instantly. General Horikoshi, the man single-handledly responsible for the modern Akitsukuni Army Air Force. Whatever this was, it was huge.

"Pilots." He said, his voice projecting loud and clear despite his age. "I know a lot of you boys have noticed activity around the lines and have felt in the dark. Well, today, you're all going to get enlightened."

The cover was pulled off the map board, revealing a map of the entire front line, covered in arrows.

"As we speak, our Navy is engaging in the largest battle of this war thus far, fifty kilometers up the coast from the front. As of..." He checked his watch." Eleven minutes ago, six divisions of infantry, with accompanying artillery, cavalry, and armoured cars, began landing behind the enemy lines, here." He indicated to a small spot on the map, next to a river inlet. "Their northern flank is screened by the air cover provided by the Naval Aviation Service and the presence of river monitors. The Caspian fleet is still responding, and have been delayed at the mouth of Port Georgia by submarines, mines, and an airborne raid by saboteurs. This is the single most complex operation our military has ever engaged in, and we've been planning it for more than six months."

Shocked silence. For your part, you were convinced that the war would never move from the fixed engagement.

"This is not an indefinitely sustainable landing due to fuel concerns. The Caspian fleet will break out, and if a link-up is not achieved, our screening forces will be unable to contain the Caspians. However, the Caspians must redeploy their reserves now to contain the landing, or our forces will cross the rail-line and strand three hundred thousand Caspian soldiers without supplies on the front line. If our troops move quickly, we estimate this will take three days at most. Less, if the roads are good enough for our armoured cars."

A giddy excitement started rising in your chest. This was it. This could actually end the war.

"The Caspians know this. They will be moving their reserves. That is why, in thirty minutes, infantry divisions will be launching an attack at the center of their line, here. Gentlemen, you task today will be to screen that attack. The hope is to put Ivan in an impossible situation, where he either must defend the front or redeploy to contain the landing. With luck, he will be able to do neither."

There was an energy in the room building, like a rubber band stretched taut. This was it. This was it.

"If we succeed today, the Caspians will have no choice but to come to the table. But if we fail, it will be the last gasp of this military, and possibly the end of our Empire. Between the weather, the enemy fleet, and our own forces, we will never have another chance like this again. The Empress is watching all of you today. Make her proud, do your best, and die with dignity if you must."

The general left the stage, and a cheer broke out across the entire hanger that chased him out. You almost participated yourself.

A Colonel stepped in front with a bullhorn and yelled down the crowd. "Okay! B squadrons, meet your section leaders at hanger 4 for target selection! Y and R squadrons, you'll be briefed at your hangers! C squadrons...."

Lt. Col Muranaka moved from the assembled senior officers to your small group, and you all got to your feet. "Where are we heading?" You asked. You hadn't flown in a proper squadron in more than a month, you and Amari forming a special sub-division of Flight Group Center.

He beckoned you out of the noisy hanger and had you form around you. "You four are being formed into a special flight group, S-1 Squadron. We're looking to you as troubleshooters on this one. This attack only goes off if every part of it goes perfectly, so you're leading in the first attack wave." He pulled out a map showing scribbled arrows all over. "Your first goal is to accompany R-6, B-1, and B-3 on an attack on Areodrome Iroha. After that, you're heading back to the ground and will scramble yourself for anything that looks like a problem during the actual attack. We're going to be sending up Ducks to attack artillery positions and strongpoints until nightfall, so..."

Areodrome Iroha was one of the six Caspian areodromes opposing Army Group Center, and was by far the largest, being built on a main road. Areodromes had yet to be major targets of bombing, as it was generally seen as unwise for Ducks and Pit Vipers to hang around them for attacks, but with this many aircraft in the air...

"So it's going to be a busy day." You said.

"It is. By the way, you have new standing orders. No matter what you mission is, if you have a chance to take down one of their aces, you take it. It's going to be a target rich environment for them today, so if any of them get taken out, that's a huge boon for us." Muranaka explained.

You nodded. There were three Caspian aces you concerned yourself with, known and feared by Akitsukuni pilots by the livery of their Cossack C-2s. Stripes, who flew a yellow and black plane painted in a disorienting pattern, like the dazzle camouflage their fleet were experimenting with. Lightning, whose plane had dark grey wings and who specialized in daring attack dives out of the clouds. And, of course, Red, your opposite number, the Caspian Ace of Aces. In the few months since her debut, she had shot down twenty-five of your comrades. You'd fought her three times since your first encounter, and twice you'd come away with bullets in your machine. She was the slipperiest pilot you ever fought.

---

Fifteen minutes later, you were out in the field, clustered around your planes, and you looked across the field at the assembled tangle of aircraft stretching out to either side. Dive bombers, scouts, pursuit planes, and some models you didn't recognize. One of them nearby was a two-engine three-seater with a pair of long, looping wires coiling out of its hull, presumably some form of radio carrier.

You gathered your tiny squadron around you, trying to hide your nervousness at flying with a woman who'd never fought and a man you loathed. "We stick in pairs. Myself and Amari, Nashio and D'Amboise." You instructed. "I know this looks like the big day, but I don't want any stupid heroics. The Army will need us for a while longer yet."

The team broke for their planes, and you climbed into yours, waiting, nervous energy building. Your old picture of Asuka, with their old hairstyle, stared up at you from the spot on the dashboard where you left it.

"I'm going to come home to you." You said to the picture. "I'm going to survive."

"Contact!" The mechanic behind you called.

"Hot!" You said, flipping the magneto switch.

All around you, all the way up and down the line, a similar call and response was playing out.

The propeller was swung, and the whole plane jerked to the left as the engine screamed to life. You pulsed the blip switch, relishing the roar. There was a sudden, excited joy to this again. It had meaning. You were flying for a purpose.

Shiro waved from his cockpit to you. D'Amboise saluted in her weird Gallian way. Even Nashio gave the old thumbs-up the pursuit squadron used when you flew Desks.

The chocks came out and you started rolling. Takeoffs were staggered, by only slightly. All around you, planes were rising into the air, a massive, discordant clash of colours and sound, a festival of kites with lethal purpose, and you started towards the line. At your back were twenty-five Ducks and eight Dragonflies, plus your own squadron.

They'd never know what hit them.

Roll 2d10 for Engage.

At the end of this, we'll be rolling 2d10 for the war score on either side.

You get +1 for everything you shoot down, +3 for every ace out of the air, and +2 for each mission accomplished.

If any members of your squadron die, the Caspians get +2. If they stop your missions, they get +3.

We will fly three sorties.​

 

[open_sketch]

You were used to them coming out of the skies. That's what they did, now. Those sturdy, overbuilt, overpowered monster Cossack-2s would throttle to nothing and drop out of the clouds, out of the sun, whatever it took to get the drop on the enemy. And the Ducks had a fixed flight pattern: they flew at a thousand meters flat so they could achieve their full dive and drop low, but still high enough to pull out. It limited your options.

Fortunately, you weren't so limited. The Dragonfly squadron attached to the bombers could stay at a thousand meters, skimming the bottom of the clouds. You signaled to your little group to go up, up, up, to fifteen hundred, to lie in wait. Either they'd try to pounce the formation below and encounter you, or they'd try to dive on you, and the formation would get away. You were cruising at 150 kph, a bit faster than the formation you were escorting, so you'd have energy to turn into the fight if things started heating up, and you looped frequently to stay just behind the formation and keep a good eye on them.

The only problem is that this height was right at cloud level. You were plowing through one now, just momentarily, the world around you all grey-white, water droplets forming on your windshield, when you heard the first gunshots, the overlapping tack-tack-tack of Cossack-2 pan fed guns somewhere below you.

You broke the cloud, still in close formation, and saw that in the thirty seconds you'd lost sight of them, the enemy had pounced. A whole squadron of Cossack-2s were just finishing their pass, diving in between the fighters and bombers. You winced as one of the Cossacks misjudged their trajectory, slamming into one of the Ducks, and both planes whirled down, down, down, their structures interlocked together by the force of the impact.

You pulled the keys on both your guns. This was it.

What do you do?

Instrument Panel​

 

[open_sketch]

Nothing you could do now, but they just put themselves in a bad spot and they hadn't even realized it because you were in the clouds. Sure, you wish you could have saved the two Ducks and lone Dragonfly that were currently falling to earth, but what was about to happen would be fairly comprehensive vengeance.

The enemy planes pulled up, up through the formation, racing upward on the energy of their long dive, their engines roaring to life to carry them as high as possible and conserve as much momentum as possible. A few of them must have spotted you, realized what was happening, and broke off the climb early, but not all of them. Seven of the yellow planes just kept going up, their energy running out, starting to curve into hammerheads and rollovers as they reached the apex of their arc, hanging in the air like balloons.

You were on them in an instant. You lined up the gunsights over one and held the trigger down for three whole seconds, fifty rounds thundering through your guns, the spent casings clattering down the chutes and out the bottom of the plane. You led a little too much and kept firing a little too long, but in the middle of that you scored solid hits through the nose of the plane. As it rolled back over, it did so spraying black smoke and oil, and the engine cut as it began its descent.

To either side, your wingmen picked their targets and fired as well. Nashio tore the tail assembly off his target, and it flopped over and over toward the ground in an endless somersault. To your right, Amari poured tracers into his target until it simply came apart into a flurry of free-floating wing panels and components. A quick glance to the far left, though, and it looked like Cora's tracers had mostly traced under the arcing plane. Whoever sent this woman in the air was a fucking moron.

You zipped past your targets, coming around in a strong left turn. The four planes were preparing for another terrifying 500 meter dive towards the formation below, with the knowledge that the speed would be the only thing that would keep them alive. Four more were milling about around two hundred meters below you, circling to try to keep from offering too tempting a target to you.

What do you do?​

​

+1 Kill​

 

[open_sketch]

You brought yourself around as sharply as possible in a turn, the canvas rippling around you, rolling to invert yourself and come down behind the diving enemy planes. They were soon going to build up more speed than you could, but for a short while, you could still catch them.

Amari and Nashio were right behind you, but D'Amboise was nowhere to be seen. No time to worry about that now. You nudged the nose of the plane to line up behind one of the diving Cossacks, watching as the rudder swung out and the wings warped as it tried to evade you. You twisted further, the roll pushing you against the side of the cockpit, then straightened out behind them. You lined up the plane perfectly in the little iron sights, holding until the shots were just right, and then you mashed your thumb against the firing trigger.

The guns rattled, shells clattered down through the chutes, and then they clicked shut. You pulled the stick back to level out, swearing profusely. Your guns had jammed, within a half-second of one another. You had the bastard! You'd put a dozen rounds through the wing root and part of the canvas had come loose and was flapping in the breeze, but you couldn't finish him off.

As you leveled out, you took a moment to look around yourself. Best to make sure you were clear before taking your hand off the controls and charging you guns. Good thing too, because directly above you loomed three planes, about three hundred meters high, rolling into a dive. The lead plane had dark grey wings.

What do you do?

Your panel.​

 

[open_sketch]

You knew your best chance against a diving C-2 was to get under the guns, as counter-intuitive as it was, so you hauled about and let the engine run hard to try and slip past the incoming aircraft. You had your eyes locked on them the entire way, and sure enough the two wingmen overshot handily. One of them started climbing back up steeply, while Nashio got the other to swerve with a burst of tracers and started in after it.

But not Lightning. Lightning rolled mid-dive, curving around hard, and came down on you like a thunderbolt. Angry yellow tracers stitched through the air around you. A few passed through your wings, and one right past your legs. A round skipped off the locking pin for the right side flaps, shattering the handle off: there was no way now to engage the flaps, they were locked in a raised position now. Well, you could technically engage the left flap, but that would create asymmetrical lift and probably spiral you into the ground.

This was going to be a fun landing.

Lightning swooped past your right wing and started upward on his climb. You had a small chance to maybe catch him as he started back up, but it would be a small window indeed, especially with the need to clear your guns. You glanced over to check on the rest of your squadron, and spotted only Nashio, who was forced to roll away from his prey as his wingman came back around to give chase.

Below, the bombers were being strafed by two or three enemy planes. You watched as a dragonfly caught one and it came away from the formation trailing smoke.

Below that, the artillery barrage preceding the main attack was in full swing. The Caspian lines had disappeared in a cloud of smoke and mud.

What do you do?​

 

[open_sketch]

You raced out in a long looping turn, letting the engine scream unimpeded and flying flat, watching anemometer climb to two hundred, the rattling RPM gauge. You finally took your hands off the controls one at a time to pull the gun keys and recharge them. One of them had the ring of an empty cartridge, probably a stovepipe jam, the other the heavy clunk of a loaded round hitting the chute. By the time you were turned around, you had a good view of the whole combat unfolding.

There were 6 of the original Cossack-2s still in the fight, having bled enough energy now to be directly dogfighting the escorting Dragonflies below. Still, there was a gap in the formation where two more Ducks should be: your margin of error was closing.

Above, entering another high arc, Lightning's two escorts. You spotted Nashio driving in a tight circle, as if daring them to come for him. D'Ambois was orbiting just outside; if one of them did get the drop, she'd be ready to pounce or peel away. Maybe she'd actually paid some attention to those reports after all.

And there was Shiro, tearing across the sky at full speed towards you head-on. Coming out of the clouds maybe four hundred meters above him was Lightning.

He was trying to set you up for a head-on intercept as Lightning slowed at the bottom of his attack run. Dangerous, but it could work...

[ ] Meet him head on. (Attack with Advantage. Amari is in danger)
[ ] Signal Amari to break and evade.​

 

[open_sketch]

You leveled with Amari and started gunning for him, thumb hovering over the trigger, leaning forward in your seat. You just had to get there. You had to get there first. He was coming in perfect, it would be a perfect shot...

You weren't going to get there in time. You knew. You knew Shiro had to know, because he started to roll, and then the rounds tore through his plane, tracers spearing him through like smokey spears. The moment seemed to hang in the air for an eternity.

You passed over him in a split second, but you felt like your eyes met a moment through his broken sunglasses before his plane began a slow descent, the propeller snapping to a stop in a haze of smoke. You saw the blood against his windshield, and the sudden pain in your gut mirrored his wound.

Lightning dipped past you, dropping low under you and coming up to escape vertically. Something seized you, and you snap-rolled inverted to the left, stomping the rudder, jamming the stick back and to the right. You span so fast the blood rushed to your head, and then back down to your feet as you swung around and followed your foe through his arc, holding the trigger down the whole way. You didn't release the trigger, but instead your guns simply stopped. One, then the other, the heat from the long burst meeting the cold air and jamming them up.

Lightning flopped around into a roll and came level with you, one of his elevators blowing loose, held by a solitary wire. He was on your turf now, without the authority he needed to operate in the vertical, and you knew it. He was good, but you'd killed dozens of men like him. Dozens of stupid young boys.

You took one last look at the beautiful little plane, covered in streamers and prayers and the names of the dead, one last look at the man who had been steadfast by your side these last four months, and then you set in to pursue.

[ ] What do you do?

I made some errors because I forgot to factor Handling in. Your speed and G-force have been refunded.

Gun jams now affect pairs at once. We presume that individual jams are easy enough to fix that we don't worry about them.

Here is your sheet.​

 

[open_sketch]

After a quick glance behind you, you pushed your nose back down, letting your engine make up the space between your planes. Yes, he had almost forty horsepower on you, but your plane weighed a lot less than his, and his was all wires and wings while yours was smooth and streamlined, like a bullet. The distance between you started vanishing even as black smoke poured from his exhaust in an attempt to get away. You had him. You had him so much room to spare that you had time to clear your guns again before you leveled and prepared to pitch up. Just for a moment, just long enough to shoot.

As you were setting into the maneuver, Lightning was desperately sideslipping to bleed speed, trying to force you to pitch up as far as possible. The bastard was good, you'd give him that. It wasn't enough, not a big enough difference to prevent you from hitting him and sinking more shots through the rear of the plane, tearing into the tail assembly, his drag skid splintering and rents tearing through the canvas before you were forced to level out to avoid avoid a sudden stall. The bastard had cost you a lot of speed...

But you were still going too fast, because as you were adjusting yourself, Lightning entered a perfect hammerhead, twisted around, and came down behind you as you were still trying to get your nose straight, fighting the torque of the engine. He was right behind you now, flying skewed from his crippled elevator but still right on you, close enough you could see him in the cockpit, white coat with a huge fur-lined collar, bug-eyed reflective goggles, pulling the long charging handles of his overhead guns.

What do you do?

Your panel. You are running low on ammo and don't have a lot of speed margin.

Lightning's plane is starting to feel the strain.​