Wyvern Bombers
What was the greatest problem facing the wyvern knights?
Kyle Leopold believed the answer lay in their weapons.
Their greatest strength was overwhelming mobility. Three-dimensional maneuvering free from the pull of gravity was a force that could dominate any battlefield.
The problem was that every one of those three-dimensional maneuvers ultimately ended in close combat.
The wyvern knights possessed almost no ranged armament.
Some individuals preferred bows over lances, but an arrow loosed by the human eye from the back of a wyvern performing three-dimensional aerobatics was never particularly accurate.
There had been attempts to seat mages on wyverns. The mages, however, could not endure the beasts’ violent maneuvers, nor could they properly weave their spells while strapped to one.
Teaching magic to the knights themselves was equally impossible. Aura and magic both drew upon mana, yet the methods of manifestation were so fundamentally different that the two disciplines refused to coexist in a single body.
“In the end, the wyvern knights’ weakness has always been that their overwhelming mobility is wasted the moment they are forced into melee.”
“Then how do you intend to solve it, Your Grace?”
“By putting ranged weapons in their hands.”
A wyvern was an enormous creature. With a body length of twenty-five to thirty-five meters, it was larger than a modern fighter jet. That sheer bulk meant a great deal could be mounted upon it.
“Something like an autocannon, for example.”
A twenty-millimeter autocannon was well within the size the beast could carry. On Kyle Leopold’s orders, the Design Bureau’s engineers began development of an aerial version of the 20 mm gun.
“First we have to decide where to put the damn thing.”
“What about hanging it under the belly? That would be the easiest to design.”
“Easiest to design, sure—until the wyvern dips its head and eats a faceful of its own shells.”
“Then mount it on the saddle so the rider can fire it himself?”
“You want a man to fly three-dimensional combat maneuvers while gripping a machine gun with both hands? Superhuman knights or not, that’s asking too much.”
“What about mounting them on the wings… yeah, no. Obviously not.”
Inside the Design Bureau the arguments flew back and forth. The 20 mm autocannon already existed as a system, and the wyvern’s sheer mass made miniaturization unnecessary. The real difficulty was finding a place to put it.
A 20 mm autocannon was a monster that ground everything in front of it into scrap. Mounting such a weapon on a living creature whose every motion a human could not perfectly control required careful study.
The solution they finally reached was to mount the guns on either side of the wyvern’s head.
“Alongside the head looks best. Nothing for the muzzles to snag on, and the riders can fire them the same way they trigger a breath attack. Should feel natural.”
“True… but won’t the weight on the skull be too much?”
“That’s why we keep the magazines in the body and feed through a link. Connect the head guns to the saddle so the recoil load is shared and reduced.”
“We’ll also need noise-dampening magic and ear protection. Wyverns are tough, but autocannon report is no joke.”
In the end the conclusion was simple: the engineers would have to work themselves ragged.
Roughly a week later—
“You say you’ve finished a new wyvern saddle?”
“Yes, sirs.”
The Design Bureau had succeeded in producing a new saddle fitted with a pair of 20 mm autocannons. The design sheathed the wyvern’s head, neck, and saddle area in steel armor thick enough to absorb the guns’ recoil and vibration.
Crimson eyes gleamed through the slits of the steel helm, and on either side of that helm sat the twin 20 mm guns.
“So this is the new saddle, is it?”
The knights fell in love with it at once. Humanity had always yearned for steel, after all. Every one of them had once dreamed of the charge of a full-plate knight. Even the wyvern riders who had sacrificed armor for mobility found their eyes drawn to the steel-clad beast.
“I’ll take it up right now.”
The added weight made the wyvern a little slower than usual; that much was unavoidable. The frustration vanished the instant the rider pressed the red button on the saddle grip. Twin 20 mm autocannons on either side of the wyvern’s head roared with a terrifying bark and simply erased everything in front of them.
The wyverns themselves liked the arrangement. As creatures that had once ruled the skies, their deepest instinct was destruction. Watching everything in their line of sight disintegrate was exactly to their taste.
“Haha! This thing is perfect. I can’t wait to try it in real combat—anything coming up soon?”
The restless knights were promptly thrown into pirate-hunting operations. To men who had spent their lives fighting barbarians, pirates and savages looked much the same.
“Wipe them all out!”
Without the slightest hesitation they mashed the firing buttons on their saddle grips.
Bwoooooom—!
A low, air-tearing vibration rolled across the sea. In the blink of an eye countless tiny fountains of spray erupted across the water.
“Ghk—!”
“W-wait! Spare—!”
The pirates clinging to floating planks after their ships had already sunk could do nothing. Weapons designed to shatter the thick aura of knights reduced human bodies to red mist in an instant.
A single low-altitude pass was all it took. Every pirate still afloat was annihilated. Where thirty wyvern knights had swept past, only a sea dyed red remained.
The knights then drew communication crystals from their pouches and contacted the submarine squadron, preparing to deal with the undersea monster units still approaching in ignorance of what had just happened on the surface.
“This is Roen, commander of the Twenty-Third Knight Order. Surface enemies have been cleared. Requesting position of approaching undersea monster force.”
“Ethan, captain of U-7. Magical-sonar contact bears three-three-zero relative north. Range approximately three kilometers.”
“Acknowledged.”
The seabed had never been humanity’s domain. Only mages who could control monsters ruled those depths, and even the finest wyvern knights had possessed no means of striking beneath the waves—until the depth charge, a simple anti-submarine weapon anyone could use, had appeared.
The knights flew to the coordinates the submarine had marked. For men accustomed to formation lance charges, orderly flight at a set distance was almost restful.
“Altitude fifty meters above the surface! Prepare depth charges!”
Maintaining steady speed and formation, the knights released the safety catches on the crates strapped behind their saddles. Pre-set depth charges slid one after another down the rails attached to the crates and fell away.
A half-beat later—
Kuuuuung—!
Within a three-hundred-meter radius the sea erupted in simultaneous geysers. Against a two-hundred-meter-class monster like a Tusoteuthis the charges might have been merely painful; against drowned corpses, merfolk, and other lesser creatures the overpressure was simply lethal.
Evasive maneuvers? Against carpet bombing that obliterated an entire plane rather than a single point, they were nothing more than futile thrashing.
When the successive fountains finally subsided and the churned sea grew quiet again, the corpses of the monsters bobbed gently to the surface. For pirates who had once ruled these waters, it was a thoroughly wretched end.
“Enemy sailing vessels destroyed. Undersea monster force annihilated. New-weapon performance test appears to have been a complete success.”
“Good. Then let’s go finish the battle.”
Ten kilometers from the engagement zone, the bridge of a massive battleship floating quietly on the calm sea suddenly came alive.
If the submarines and wyvern knights were responsible for undersea annihilation, the surface fleet’s role was the destruction of the eastern coastline and the securing of a landing zone. They had practiced landings countless times; there was no reason to waste so perfect and safe a live-fire opportunity.
“All hands, battle stations!”
The great ship’s engines pulsed and the sea heaved. Converted large freighters serving as landing ships cut through the water in the battleship’s wake. The sight of tens of thousands of tons of steel warships advancing in line was more than enough to shatter the pirates’ nerves.
“Sailing ships! Where are our sailing ships?!”
“Bring up the coastal guns!”
“We’ll fire if you come any closer! Stay back!”
The pirates laid muzzle-loading cannons along the outer walls of their stronghold and shouted desperately at the steadily approaching battleship. The warship answered with silence, as though it intended to crush the harbor itself beneath its hull.
Unable to endure the pressure of the closing dreadnought any longer, the pirates finally gave the order to fire.
“Fire—!”
Boom!
At six hundred meters, fifty muzzle-loading cannons belched flame as one. It was a barrage powerful enough to sink even a five-thousand-ton wooden ship-of-the-line of the Eastern Navy in a single volley.
There was one fact the pirates had failed to consider: the armor of a Dreadnought belonged to an entirely different era from medieval wooden battleships.
Ting—
The boldly fired cannonballs bounced harmlessly off hundreds of millimeters of armor plate. At the feeble sound that could hardly even be called a ricochet, the pirates’ faces went deathly pale.
Ting—
The sound of a cannonball rebounding from the forward armor plate stirred the officers on the bridge.
“They dare fire on the regular army?”
I had no intention of cooling the rising heat. Instead I turned to the captain.
“We’ve been fired upon. Return fire in kind.”
The two forward 305 mm main guns trained on the heart of the stronghold.
“Fire!”
A roar far beyond anything a muzzle-loading cannon could produce shook the sea. Twin orange lances of light smashed through the fortress gate, drove straight into the center of the stronghold, and pulverized everything along their path.
Watching the landing ships pour through the gap the battleship had torn open, I felt certainty settle in my chest. We were ready now to answer a naval blockade.
Several days later—
“Your Grace, an official missive has arrived from the Eastern Grand Duke’s residence.”
“Thank you, Lucilla.”
A single document had flown in from the east. Its lengthy contents could be summarized simply enough.
Should the attempt to annex the West not cease forthwith, maritime traffic sanctions shall be imposed.
Confrontation with the East had drawn near.