“Shall we be speaking informally, or formally?” The commander of the warship, which Se Chang Chang had rented, questioned Hou Fei through the Pandamonium Team Chat.
“Do you really want to do it this way now?” Hou Fei asked as he had already arrived at the Outer Wall Camp via train and saw a number of his subordinates saluting him as well when he got off the platform. “Nevermind I get what you mean.”
“Partially formal. Ranks play a part in this current situation but we are all here to learn as well.” Hou Fei said and the commander snickered. He was none other than the overall tech officer in charge of the Royal Zodiac Snake Army, Colonel Chen Lai.
“But overall, this is not an official exercise so I really could not care that much with formalities.” Chen Lai said and Hou Fei gave a passing sigh through the voice chat. “Still, I am impressed with Pandamonium Team Chat. To be able to segregate and fuse the communications channels when needed. Why can’t we have this kind of technology, General?”
“Don’t ask me when you are practically the Chief Technical Officer for the entire Royal Zodiac Snake Army.” Hou Fei replied. “When are my guns ready? I thought you said that you can power up that old school warship whenever you want since you and your boys were previously from the navy and the air force.”
“Well, it’s true that using this warship in the raid instance had significantly reduced the number of controls. But that does not mean I can singlehandedly operate this ship myself! Have you heard of quality checks before departing?! We barely touched this ship yesterday and you want me to steer it like I had known her intimately for years!” Chen Lai said while the soldiers under him started to chuckle a little. Hou Fei felt that he had touched a nerve on something but it was meant to be a mean comment to disturb his fellow junior in rank.
“Anyways, be quick about it. We need you to support the troops as soon as possible.” Hou Fei said and Chen Lai sighed, asking if he wanted to at least have the planes to sortie out.
“The planes are operationally ready according to the Pandamonium App and the pilots said that everything seems to look fine despite not having a checklist… Well, the App itself had a checklist but once the pilot placed his phone to synchronise the plane, the app instantly cleared almost all the boxes on the list. The rest were the manual interlocks which need to be done physically to make sure that the plane is all good.”
“Erm, then sortie the planes as soon as possible? I think it’s a pretty good time to do that, especially when I start to see a few boogies at the enemies’ end.” Hou Fei reported and Chen Lai quickly picked up his binoculars and checked the direction of the Northern Capital. His General was not replying with tongue in cheek and spoke the truth about a few aerial threats hovering from the spire at the northernmost tip of the capital city.
“Get Chryso 1, Chryso 2 in the skies immediately. General’s orders!” Chen Lai spoke through the specific channel of the Pandamonium Team Chat that connected to the aircraft team that was on the warship. (Fun fact: Chryso came from the word Chrysopelea which meant flying snake.)
When the aircraft team received the command, the stern (the back) of the ships started to open up like a garage door, allowing Chryso 1 and Chryso 2, two specially modified warthog variant planes to sortie out. In terms of size, it is smaller to fit the dimensions of the warship and its engine boosters were magical rather than fuel consuming. All of the soldiers thought that it was because it was a raid instance, there were some fantasy elements to it as they knew mana engines were terribly unstable even with modern technology. (But they never knew they were in a real multiverse flying a real high tech magically powered aircraft.)
“Chryso 1, Launching!”
“Chryso 2, Launching!”
Both warthog variants went to the skies in a matter of seconds, especially with the plane’s navigation guidance system. It was mostly autopilot when it came to taking off and landing down with some human input if things were to go wary during the process. The pilots were amazed by the brilliant realism of high grade technology implemented into the raid instance (duh…) and quickly picked up the joystick to fly toward the enemies.
“Six boogies detected. They are mostly shaped like helicopters but I do not wish to assume they were. Permission to fire, sir?” Chryso 1 Pilot reported as they got the information through visual confirmation and radar presence.
“Granted. Take them down and do a firing run to support the guys.” Chen Lai said and instantly switched channels to tell the General so that the frontlines could be warned. Hou Fei relayed the message to his subordinates and the chain of command did their job. As the warthog variants flew closer to the city, the two pilots noticed that anti air defences were being put up. Bolts of lightning were shot from the anti air turrets while a few homing magic bolts were coming their way.
To their fortune, there was a magic barrier protecting the aircraft but like every barrier, it has a limit so the pilots tried not to get it as much as possible while closing into their target. The moment Chryso 1 managed to target one of the helicopters, he instinctively fired two missiles right toward it.
The helicopter saw the incoming missiles but its manoeuvre was the third rate, causing it to burst into flames. And that alone gave the second pilot confidence that they were akin to the real world helicopters and thus attempted to shoot the second one the same way as his senior did.
As the second heli crashed into the city, the subsequent aerial threats were not an issue even though they had Demon Rats at the side of each heli door, shooting out lightning bolts indiscriminately to bring down the warthog variants.
However, like a snake gliding through the water, Chryso 1 and 2 slipped around the skies to bring the rest down.
