A Young Girl’s Outer Heaven
02
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Commissioned by Sneakydevil.
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My eyes opened and I stared up at the dark ceiling above. From the rocking of the bed and the smell of the air, and the sounds carrying around me, I could tell that I was back onboard the Ingrid, somehow. I mentally took stock of myself and found everything to be as it should be with Tanya’s body.
…My body.
I clearly remembered those last few, panicked moments of consciousness after the flash of the Type 95 exploding and incinerating my body, burning away my flesh, blood, and bones and leaving behind a mess of magic in the shape of my nerves, eyes, and brain. That moment when healing formulas failed… but I wanted to live so badly, so desperately, that I grabbed my mana still floating in the air, lingering from the explosion, and pulled it in. Where I made a conscious choice to remake myself.
And in the end, when I had the choice to be anything, I had reflexively remade myself not as the Salaryman I had been in Japan, but as Tanya.
Sighing quietly, I lifted my arm out from under the sheets and blanket. Held out my hand. Flexed my fingers, before turning the hand over and studying my palm.
I am Tanya, and Tanya is me.
It was… surprisingly easy to accept, in the end. Everything Tanya had done, every choice made, every battle lost, every victory won—they had all been my doing.
Being-X had forced me into this body, in an attempt to humble me. But I had, time and time again, proven him wrong at every turn. That the human spirit is indomitable and a change in circumstances wouldn’t be enough to make me beg him for help, for relief.
He cursed me with this form originally, but it was my choice that saw me back in this body. Even if it was a choice made under duress, in the heat of the moment, in the span of a heartbeat and barely able to think—I had still made it. It was my choice.
I didn’t like it, but I could accept it. Live with it.
With that decision made, I studied my hand. The feeling of my mana that suffused and made up my entire body. If I looked hard enough, I could see through the skin to the golden wireframe tracery that was my nerves, veins, muscles, and sinews carved of magic. See the pumping of golden blood through my veins, full of mana. See my bones, glowing brightly. Looking around, I could see and feel mana floating on the air, all around me. From everyone on the boat, soaked into the hull, radiating out faintly from the water outside.
Reaching inwards, I pulled for my mana to cast a basic cleaning formula. It came easily. Effortlessly. With so minuscule a draw on my mana that I didn’t notice and with no attention required to do the math as I just shaped it into being.
Sighing, I let my hand fall to my side. A snort from nearby drew my attention to the dirty blonde form of Visha sitting up and blinking. Looking around, she spotted me looking at her, and a moment later I had my arms full of a bawling second lieutenant.
I can’t claim to have too much experience with dealing with crying girls, outside of those who thought tears would stay my hand when it came time to let them go (they did not). But I wasn’t completely socially inept. I knew the socially expected thing to do here was to offer comfort, even if I wasn’t entirely certain why she was crying to begin with. Reaching out, I wrapped my arms around the form of my subordinate and hugged her.
Visha whined and hugged me harder as her crying got louder. I decided I could wait her out.
Eventually, Visha settled down and pulled away. Getting up, she made her way over and turned on the cabin light, illuminating the cabin we shared—offered to us out of the kindness of a couple of the Ingrid’s officers’ hearts. I raised an eyebrow when Visha turned and planted her hands on her hips, glaring at me.
“Lieutenant?”
Visha’s lips pulled into a frown as her eyes narrowed. Reaching up, she plucked her rank insignia off of her uniform and tucked it into her pocket. “I don’t see any lieutenants here.” Looking me up and down, she added, “Nor do I see my commanding officer anywhere. That’s strange. All I see is some little idiot who thought it was a good idea to throw herself at the enemy instead of waiting for the rest of her unit to scramble!”
Huh. That’s… clever, actually. I’m not in uniform and I’m not wearing rank insignia. I probably shouldn’t allow her to talk to me like this, but sometimes it helps if employees can vent their stress at and air their grievances with upper management in a way they can get away with it…
That, and Visha had been with me through thick and thin. We had seen each other at our worst, all the way back to our time on the Rhine front. If anyone had earned the right to talk to me without the barrier of rank between us, it was my adjutant and… friend.
Deciding to hear her out, I sat up and made myself comfortable, or as comfortable as I could with my back exposed to the cool air of the room and clutching the blankets to my chest. “Would you at least hand me a shirt?”
“No.” I raised an eyebrow at the denial and she asked, “Do you feel vulnerable? Exposed?”
“A little,” I admitted. Although, I wasn’t going to admit what else I was beginning to feel. Alone with Visha. Nude. Her looking at me with those angry eyes… Damn hormones! Damn puberty!
“Good! Then maybe you understand just a little how I, how we all feel!” Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly. “The others feel it’s not their place to say these things, but they want to say them. They respect you, but they also fear you. They understand that what happened was a miracle, but they speak of you like some kind of angel or saint now, and not… Not a person.” Oh, that was a special kind of worrying. “So, it was decided that since I’ve known you the longest, I was to be the one to say them.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
Visha nodded. “We understand why you did what you did. You tried to leave the men behind in the Empire, because you didn’t want to risk drawing them into the crossfire. Sticking them on a submarine, marking time and waiting for death. Why you told us to disengage and what you told the enemy. How you sacrificed yourself for us. But commander… No.”
Visha shook her head, before moving over and sitting on the bed beside me, taking both of my hands in hers. “Tanya. I’d like to think that after everything we’ve seen, and done, and been through together that I can call you my friend, and I yours.” I swallowed on a suddenly dry throat and nodded once. Visha smiled and my heart skipped a beat. “I say this with all of my love as your friend… You are an idiot. A massive, blind, idiot.” I opened my mouth and Visha put her finger against my lips. “No. The time for idiots talking is over. Listen to me now.”
When I nodded, she continued. “We would follow you into hell. We are following you into hell, even now. Every single one of us is willing to lay down our lives for you. So please, stop doing things like this on your own! Stop trying to shield us with your own body—it’s much too small for that! Let us do our jobs! It’s your job to command, to plan, and plot, to lead, and sometimes to fight. It’s our job to carry out those commands, to follow your plans, and to fight and, if necessary, to die in your place. We almost lost you…”
Visha paused, reaching up and wiping at her tears. “I think, for a moment, you really were gone. But you,” she looked at Tanya and chuckled quietly, “you’re just so stubborn you refused to stay gone, and you came back somehow. But we don’t want to count on another miracle. We can’t! So from now on, no more reckless actions.”
I considered what she was saying for a moment. When I had first been given command of the 203rd, I had seen them not as valuable comrades, but as little more than meat shields. Valuable and useful meat shields, but ultimately their purpose was for me to put them between myself and danger. Now… the idea of doing that turned my stomach. So what she was saying, that I should just use them at meat shields, it chaffed.
“No.”
“Tanya—”
“Listen to me now.” I paused, waiting. Visha nodded. “I’ll be more careful, but I won’t needlessly spend your lives or order you to your deaths. I won’t send you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.”
Visha studied me for a moment before she smiled happily. “Alright.”
Gesturing down at myself, I asked, “May I get dressed now?”
“The ship’s doctor wasn’t really sure what to do with you,” Visha admitted as she stood and made her way to my bag, where she began pulling out clothes. “He said you were healthy as far as he could tell. Physically fine, though you appeared drained of mana, so you’ve been asleep for a while… But he had no established doctrine for treating a patient who had returned from the dead.”
“No, I imagine not,” I murmured. “Just an under shirt and pants. I feel like stretching my legs and going for a run.”
I climbed out of bed and pulled on my undergarments, followed by the rest of my clothes. As I sat down to pull on my boots, I asked, “What’s our status?”
“You’ve been asleep for a little over three days now. We’ve been carefully running patrols and so far, it seems that no one is pursuing us. The captain says we’re about two days out from our destination. Otherwise, things have been quiet since the battle against the carrier group.”
“Good,” I murmured, tightening my boot laces. I was about to ask Visha the time when the information popped into my head. Blinking, I wondered how I had known that. Closing my eyes, I tried to run down the feeling. After a moment, I realized what it was. Visha’s Type 97, and my own backup tucked away in my bag, both reported time as a basic function. Being able to keep time was kind of a requirement for what amounted to a mechanical magi-computer. I had reached out with my mana as I would have to ping my computation orb for the time and then just… kept reaching.
Across the room.
“Commander?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, a bit distracted. We’re running on the surface?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m going up for some fresh air and sun, then.” Heading back to my bag, I pulled out my patrol cap and tucked my hair under it.
“I’ll come with you!” Visha hurriedly shrugged off her own uniform jacket and pulled on her own patrol cap before following at my heel.
Climbing up to the top of the conning tower, I opened the hatch and stepped out into the crisp sea air, finding Captain Fischer already outside, enjoying a cup of coffee. He looked over his shoulder as I came up, followed by Visha. “Ah, Lt. Colonel Degurechaff, it’s good to see you up and about. You gave us a fright.”
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“It’s good to be up,” I nodded, taking in deep breaths of the salty sea air. Warm air—or at least warmer than most of the Atlantic at this time of year. The sun reflected brightly off the dark water around us and beat down on me, but to me it just felt… invigorating. Smiling, I asked, “Lt. Serebryakov says we’re only a few days out?”
“Aye. We should arrive at the mouth of the Para River some time in the afternoon, then it’s another ten or so hours up river to Bellum,” Captain Fischer confirmed.
“Mm. Let’s keep a low profile coming in, hm?”
Fischer grinned. “We’re already taking care of it. Have a look,” he gestured up and back behind them.
I turned and looked up, towards the pole that would carry our flag when we were running on the surface. Instead of the familiar flag of the Reich, I saw the red, white, and blue Union Jack expy that was the Commonwealth flag—the Allied Kingdom of Albion—with its rampant griffin with a shield and sword in the center. My eye twitched. “You haven’t painted that on the ship, have you?”
Sighing, the man nodded. “That we have—much as it pains my to mar the Ingrid’s hull with it. She is now the HMS Ingrid, to any who would ask. I’ve already had my people begin altering their uniforms and removing the Imperial flag, and I suggest you do the same.”
I cast a glance at Visha and she nodded. “I’ll let the others know, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“Aside from that,” Fischer continued, “we’ll drag our heels a bit on this last leg of the journey and move out of the shipping lanes, then stay over the horizon from the coast until nightfall. Once we enter the river, we won’t be able to dive. Our charts for the area are not up to date or detailed. I’ll need a couple of your men flying ahead, keeping a watch for other ships, obstacles, and the like. Once we’re near Brasa, they’ll need to scout somewhere for us to park the Ingrid while we go ashore. Preferably with tree cover from the sky and shielded from view of the river. We’re going to stand out no matter what, the key is to stand out in a way that doesn’t draw the wrong sort of attention. Our goal is to look like a Commonwealth Navy vessel here on official business, while we’re on the river. That is obviously not going to stand up to scrutiny. And if someone finds us hiding in a little estuary…”
“We need a way to hide the ship on a more permanent basis, then. A covered dock. That should be our first goal in Bellum—finding a berth for the ship.”
Fischer nodded. “I’ve heard tales of Bellum—and the Republic of Brasa as a whole. A lawless den of thieves, murderers, and drug lords. Corrupt to the core. Bellum is especially bad.”
“As have I. And that is precisely what we need right now. A lawless, corrupt land who aren’t going to care who we are as long as we can pay. People who would love to have a submarine and a battalion of aerial mages on hand, along with the rest of our soldiers, on hand for… extra-judicial operations.”
Sipping his coffee, Fischer frowned. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. We play the hand we are dealt.” When the man grunted noncommittally, I asked, “Do any of your men speak Ispagna?”
“A few. Lt. Pfeiffer, our communications specialist. Ensign Koch, our cook. Our first mate, Cmdr. Fuchs. And of course myself. And yours?”
“I speak a bit,” I confirmed, before looking at Visha.
“Major Weiss, ma’am. I’m not sure about any of the others. I’ll ask.”
“Alright. So, at a minimum, six people. We should begin teaching the others immediately. Ispagna and English both.”
Fischer hummed quietly and after a moment of thought, said, “I have a platoon of marine infantry aboard who have been itching for a chance to stretch their legs. What I propose is for one of your men to secure us a skiff or two. I’ll take some marines into Bellum and negotiate for a berth, refueling, and resupply.”
“And in the meantime, I’ll take some of my men ashore. Two teams, at least—depending on how many can speak Ispagna. We’ll start gathering information and getting the lay of the land. Do some aerial recon and make some maps of the city and surrounding area. Then reconvene in the morning with our findings and go over what we’ve learned and determine where we need to go from there.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Capt. Fischer grinned. “Well, I should head below and check in. Let me know if you need anything, Colonel.”
“Of course. Thank you, Captain.” I watched the man leave before turning to Visha. “Go talk to Weiss. Have the men modify their uniforms. Find out who else speaks Ispagna and organize classes.”
“Commander?” Visha began, and I raised an eyebrow. “Should I ask the civilians?”
“Good idea.” I grinned as an idea came to me. We were going to be here a while, so it couldn’t hurt to know what our people knew. You never knew what might come in handy, after all. “In fact, I want you to put together a census. Question everyone aboard the ship and make a list of who knows what languages, including the civilians. The more we have, the better. While you’re at it, I want to know their level of education and where they were educated, along with any trades or skills they have experience with, outside of military training. Include operating vehicles. Tractors, boats, planes, trains—if it’s not a car or mechanized infantry, I want to know who can use what.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Visha saluted and turned for the hatch. She was halfway down when she paused and sent me a happy smile. “It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” I murmured as she continued her descent and closed the hatch behind her.
Moving to the ladder on the side of the conning tower, I made my way down onto the deck and settled in to a set of stretches, then a run. A few of the ship’s crew, my men, and a couple of civilians had gathered at the back of the ship with fishing rods and a couple of buckets, and looked to have caught a decent mess of fish already. I gave them a nod and a smile, but otherwise didn’t disturb their fishing as I fell into the groove of running and let my mind wander.
I wanted to focus on what needed to be done in the near future, but at the moment, I was more concerned with the changes I had experienced from my brush with death and reconstituting my body. There were some noticable differences in my physiology that I picked up on as I ran.
For starters, I seemed to have far more stamina than I’d had before the accident. I knew my body, knew what it could and couldn’t do, its strengths and weaknesses—it was my greatest asset, after all. So when I hit four miles and barely felt winded, and didn’t really feel much in the way of muscle strain, I knew something was going on.
I appear to be losing a bit of mana, the more I run, I realized some time later, on mile eight.
Deciding to test myself further, I headed down into the ship to the U-boat’s small fitness room. Setting up a set of weights with my normal limit, I tested them only to find that they felt lighter than they should… and that I felt a trickle of mana spent as I worked myself.
It’s almost like using mana reinforcement full time. Mana reinforcement was a basic technique taught to all mages, using magic to strengthen our bodies and make them more durable. It wasn’t even a spell, really—just a matter of exercising mental control over our own mana. It was how I had survived half the things I had, honestly.
So, what if I stop using it?
I focused on my mana and forced myself stop using it to reinforce my body. As I had suspected, I was back to my normal limit on the next lift.
Am I using it subconsciously now? It was the only explanation I had at the moment, until I could test and formulate a better hypothesis. Like when I had wanted to know the time, I had just done it and not put any thought to it—which was, by definition, a subconscious action. Reflex, muscle memory, habit—that sort of thing.
My stomach rumbled and I finished out my exercises, before heading to the mess for lunch, where I was met by Maj. Weiss as soon as I sat down. “Maj. Weiss,” I greeted him as he took the seat across from me.
“Lt. Colonel,” he smiled, picking up his fork and beginning to eat. After a moment to chew and swallow, he asked, “When should we begin operations to secure a skiff, and how do you want it done?”
“As soon as we enter the mouth of the river, have the lookouts start looking for one. And I’d like it done quietly. We want two motorboats. See if you can just buy them off of their owners. And make sure they don’t leak!”
Weiss chuckled and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Visha said you were looking for Ispagna speakers. There are two among the men. PFC Weber and Corporal Braun.”
“Excellent,” I murmured, before pointing my fork at him. “I want three teams. Put Weber and Braun with Grantz and someone to fill in the fourth spot. Take whoever else you want on your team. I’ll be going out with Visha and doing aerial recon. While we’re doing that, get the lay of the land. Find out who runs Bellum—and who really runs the city. Any hot spots or problems in the city we should avoid. I want to know if there is any civil unrest, any fighting going on nearby—specifically, anywhere we can ply our trade. In the morning, send Weber and Braun with some escorts and start collecting market data. I want to know the price of fuel, bullets, food. Where we can resupply. Where we can secure guns, vehicles, heavy equipment—either by paying for them, or someone we can safely tactically acquire supplies from. Anything we can exploit to gather money and resources.”
“I understand. We’ll try to put together a report as soon as we know something.”
Nodding, I tucked into my meal and started eating with gusto. It was just rations, but the moment I put food in my mouth I realized how hungry I was. Like I hadn’t eaten in… Like I hadn’t eaten at all. Because I had constructed my body from mana.
I felt it as the food slid down my throat and into my stomach, where it began to break down—not by chemical processes but by magic. Frowning, I turned my focus inwards and studied what was happening as I ate.
Am I even human anymore?
I looked human. I felt… mostly human. I still thought like a human, at least in my own experience.
Ah, to be a living ship of Theseus—even more so than people normally are. Continuity of consciousness is intact, at least, so there is no question over whether I am myself or not. No, the question here is, is this a permanent change and if so, what does it mean for me?
Unfortunately, I had no answers at the moment and no way of getting them, save the ‘wait and see’ approach. So for now, I mostly put it out of my mind, save for studying myself and logging the changes.
I’ll need to test my magic later.
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The city of Bellum, on the river Para, in the country of Brasa… was a cesspit. A stinking, filthy, crime-ridden cesspit and I had needed a shower the moment I returned to the ship.
After successfully entering the Para river, the Ingrid had traveled inland in the dead of night at ten knots. Weiss managed to secure a couple of skiffs for us at what I felt was probably an outrageous sum, practically highway robbery. Or piracy, given we were on the water. But it was a seller’s market—supply was low and our demand was high.
Aside from passing a few ships in the night on their way out into the Atlantic, we didn’t run into any trouble. Everything was quiet.
We found a small cove just upstream from Bellum and anchored the Ingrid out of view of the river, after which Captain Fischer and I ordered some of our men to cut down limbs and make temporary camouflage for the ship. After getting that sorted, Weiss and his party departed in one skiff and Fischer and his men in another—though, on Weiss’s suggestion, one of our aerial mages went with them, so they could keep in contact by short range magical transmission. Visha and I took to the sky and split up to begin our reconnaissance.
This is where I learned just how much had changed with me, after the explosion.
I brought along a Type 97, but I quickly found that I didn’t need it. Keeping up a flight formula came naturally to me. I knew all the variables by heart and I could have done the math in my sleep before. Now? My mana knew the pattern, like it was etched into my soul. Running through all of the other formulas I knew turned up the same result—I had no need of a computation orb, even when using multiple formulas at the same time, because I had absolute control over my mana and I intrinsically understood each like it had been carved into me. Even the basic functions of the Type 95, of any modern computation orb really, were burned into my mana—allowing me to record audio and video, take pictures, know the time and date, listen to and broadcast on the magical short and long range…
Most importantly, I could still produce and store mana, fixing it in place within myself. I’d learned that, after eating my first meal since waking up, my body appeared to process food and generate mana from calories much more efficiently. I could even feel my magical body using the food to create squishy biological parts with little real input on my part—as though I was doing it out of memory of my body.
I had reigned in my desire to cut loose and really experiment and stuck to the mission. Once I had the photos taken, I radioed in with everyone before meeting up with Visha and heading into the city to check out the nightlife.
Spinning up a sniping formula, I surveyed the city and looked around for an easy mark. Upon finding it, I hid a malicious grin as I led Visha to a restaurant where a bunch of men were playing cards. After a bit of negotiation, and explaining that my friend didn’t speak the language but would very much like to try a few hands of cards, I set the shark loose amongst the koi while I ordered for Visha and I and enjoyed eating something that wasn’t K-Brot and drinking a cup of fresh, real coffee.
Visha cleaned them out, but even the language barrier wasn’t an problem for her when she could just flash that apologetic smile, laugh, and stick out her tongue. And just like that, the power of moe won over the hearts of what were likely gangsters, dispelling most of the hard feelings over the loss. The rest went away when Visha asked me to buy them a round of drinks.
Once the men got a little liquor in them, I got down to business. While I trusted Weiss and his teams to get the information I wanted, it wouldn’t hurt to get my own hands dirty.
“So, tell me… where can an enterprising soldier of fortune and her mercenary company find some honest work in Brasa? Or not so honest. We aren’t picky,” I asked, in Ispagna.
“Ah, senora,” the oldest of the men there grinned as he chewed on his cigar. I had been using my NBC formula most of the night to filter the nasty stuff out. “For someone looking to get their hands dirty, you could throw a stone and find someone willing to pay.”
“Oh, I’m sure. However, we’re looking for something that pays well. Someone who would appreciate the value of our labor and see that we are properly compensated for our time—preferably on a regular basis.”
“Ah, well, there are a few in the city…”
I listened, making mental notes of who we needed to approach later. Finally, with the city’s night life winding down, Visha and I left the bar and started walking towards the docks. Keying up on our encrypted short range, I ordered, “Away teams, report.”
Weiss came back first. “Bravo team, finished and waiting at the skiff.”
“Charlie team, we uh, I think we have some trouble. We’re heading back, but a bunch of guys are following us. They look like they want to start a fight,” Grantz reported in.
“Roger that, Charlie Lead. We’ll come back you up and discourage them,” Weiss immediately made the call himself. I knew they had brought weapons in the skiff and my men could handle themselves, so I wasn’t worried about them.
“Understood. Good hunting, Bravo team. Ingrid team, report.”
“Ingrid Two, Alpha Lead. We’ve secured a berth and supplies for the Ingrid and we’ve sent men back to retrieve the ship.”
“Excellent news, Ingrid Two! Where are our new lodgings? We’ll move our rendezvous point there.”
“Berth eight. It’s the large covered building on the far north eastern side of the docks. We’ll meet you there, Alpha Lead.”
“Roger that. You heard them, everyone report to the docks.” I signed off and Visha and I hurried to the dock area. I was eager to get a shower and climb into bed. We had a busy day tomorrow, starting bright and early.
After all, we had a lot of ground to cover, and very quickly, if we were going to secure the future of the Salamander Kampfgruppe.
We’re going to have to change our name. Cut all ties to our homeland. Until such a time as the Empire truly does rise again… or the men lose hope of it happening and shift their focus fully onto ourselves.