July 2 afternoon, Immola
The 24 had just returned from yet another harassment sortie over the Orussian lines & was preparing for the next one when Häkkinen's staff car entered the runway & Häkkinen almost ran to the hangar.
>"Change of plans, the rest of today's sorties have been cancelled, all witches are ordered to eat and rest, no-one leaves the base without a written permission from me, sortie at 05:30 tomorrow morning, prepare for bomber interception. Kuhlmey is ordered to prepare for a ground attack mission against armoured formations and artillery at the same time."
>"What's going on?" Illu asks, puzzled.
>"All I know is that these orders came directly from Mikkeli after "The Opera" got an urgent message from the "statistics office"" Häkkinen almost whispers to her audience.
>"Oh" is all the witches can say in response, everyone had for long suspected the name "statistics office" was just a cover for something else, and if "The Opera", the operations department of the Defence force HQ in Mikkeli, was behind these orders, that meant the entire Isthmus front must be getting ready for something big at dawn, colonel Nihtilä of "The Opera" is famous for two things: his terrible home-made wine and his ability to step on all the generals' toes & get a way with it because he can work miracles.
>"You heard the commandant, tomorrow's going to be busy, drinking is forbidden until further notice!" Hasse collects herself before anyone else after the revelation.
Everyone knew the next day would be special in some way, but no-one could have guessed that at 4AM in Ihantala an Orussian guard's division supported by an armoured brigade would get a taste of what Suomus Army had been on the receiving end of for three weeks now. As the witches went to bed 21 Suomusian artillery battalions started receiving thousands of extra shells in preparation for the next morning, the bomber squadrons started planning their schedule for the July 3rd, and at nightfall an inexperienced unit in Tali got quietly replaced by a veteran unit that had only recently been relieved from that same position for R&R.
At 03:58AM just as the Orussians were to launch an attack, 250 Suomusian guns and mortars started to barrage the starting positions of the 63rd Guard's Rifle Division and 30th Armoured Brigade, followed by a combined force of 80 Suomusian and Karlsländer bombers finishing what the artillery had started. At 6AM just as an Orussian aerial force of 200 aircraft and witches was to support an infantry attack on the the Suomus' defensive positions they found themselves being ambushed by the 24, 31 and 34 squadrons of Ilmavoimat while Kuhlmey focused on ground targets, by 7PM the Orussians had been pushed back to where they had started in the morning. The battle would go down in history as "the Miracle of Ihantala" as it was the first time Suomus forces were able to blunt an Orussian attack during the summer offensive of 1944, after a series of follow-up defensive victories a ceasefire was signed on 4 September, and as per the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Ilmavoimat discharged all of its witches under the age of 18 the following day. Illu, once again homeless & without employment, was offered a job as a test pilot for SAAB in Trollhättan, Baltland, which she accepted.
She didn't speak a word of Baltish, but she was assured that English and Karlsländisch would suffice until she has learned the local language. If only she had someone to talk to who knew what she had been through. She almost laughed when she saw the “Baltish strikers” she had been hired to test, the one she tested first even had Suomusian roundels still painted on it FFS. The striker development ban imposed on Valtion lentokonetehdas hadn’t lasted even a month, though should Orussians ask about the obvious VL striker units in SAAB’s hands they’d no doubt make up some BS about a pre-existing co-operation agreement that left these Myrsky (“Storm”) and Pyörremyrsky (“Whirlwind”) units in SAAB’s ownership. The mischievous grin on Illu’s face would be the last smile she’d make for some time.
EPILOGUE
May 1 1945, Gothenburg, Baltland
Illu took a sip of her beer as she watched the university students' lively partying in the streets of Göteborg. A year earlier, had she not been fighting in a war, she would have been the loudest, wildest partier in that crowd, but as she was now she rarely felt like celebrating. Even after half a year in Skåne she was still essentially alone, only two of her colleagues had ever seen any action, and neither one of them had been on the Isthmus in '44, she simply couldn't find anything in common with those girls, and little by little they had stopped trying to include her in their off-work activities. Just as she started considering going back to Suomus to find a career that didn’t involve flying experimental striker units, her thoughts were interrupted by an unexpected sight, the girl from when Illu and her friends had gotten lost over the Gulf of Suomus. Illu rubbed her eyes before looking again, but couldn't find the girl anymore. She couldn't be here, could she? Convinced she had imagined seeing that girl, she heard a soft voice to her left.
>"Leutnant Juutilainen?" asked the voice in accented Karlsländisch, surprising Illu. She turned her head towards the voice & saw the girl standing right next to her.
>"I am not really a lieutenant when I was discharged before the promotion came to effect, am I?" she responded in Orussian, she had learned it as a child in Viipuri.
>"But what are YOU doing here? I figured you'd be busy patrolling the skies in Prussia or Silesia."
>"I defected in August after I heard from your propagandists that my parents had been arrested by NKGB & after learning from my own sources that they had died on a train to the Gulag, what about you?" said (former-) Orussian Air force First Lieutenant Sanya Litvyak.
>"Got scouted by SAAB immediately after the ceasefire, Baltlands Flygvapnet is building up its strength even as the war in Europe is winding down, and in SAAB's own words, they want the best to test their newest striker designs, were you scouted as well?" Illu responded.
>"No, I just got my asylum seeker status approved & come Autumn I will be starting music studies in Gothenburg University" Sanya replies with a sweet smile.
>"At your age? That's amazing!"
>"Thank you Ill-oh sorry, I forgot to ask whether I can call you Illu first!" Sanya panics.
>"Please call me Eila" Illu says, smiling for the first time in a long time.
>"May I join you?" Sanya asks.
>"B-by all means, please sit down, now, what should I call YOU?" Illu stutters, wondering why only after a few minutes this girl has such an effect on her.
>"Please call me Sanya."
END
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