Published at 6th of December 2025 7:15 am

Chapter 772: Godspeed

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The orders arrived the next morning, sealed with red wax and stamped with the heraldic eagle of the Luftstreitkräfte.

They were slid beneath Heinrich’s door before dawn, as was tradition, no trumpets, no ceremony, just the quiet inevitability of duty.

Heinrich awoke before the sun, as he always did. A habit Erwin had taught him years ago:

Wake with the world, not behind it.

He knelt, picked up the envelope, broke the seal, and read.

ASSIGNMENT: 3rd Air Wing, Jagdgruppe 11

LOCATION: SICILY

REPORT: IMMEDIATELY

He held the paper between his fingertips for a long moment, letting the weight settle.

It wasn’t fear that crept into him, it was the sense of crossing a threshold.

Berlin was safe, even flight school, for all its rigor, had been safe. Sicily was not.

He rose, dressed in his flight leathers, buckled his harness, and strapped on his sidearm with a practiced motion. Every piece of equipment suddenly felt heavier than it had the day before.

He left his dormitory with quiet steps, carrying only his duffel and his wings.

The morning air over the capital carried a chill that seeped through Heinrich’s gloves.

The city was waking, bakeries opening early, policemen patrolling fog-glazed streets, trains echoing through tunnels.

A normal morning in a world that had forgotten the distant thunder of artillery. Heinrich walked through the courtyard of the academy, passing other graduates heading to their own assignments.

Some were bound for France, others for Scandinavia, others still for training squadrons.

Heinrich received nods, salutes, brief smiles, but no one stopped him.

No one dared interrupt a man walking toward war for the first time.

At the gate, an old groundskeeper paused sweeping to stare at him.

"Young Zehntner?" the man asked, voice rough like gravel.

Heinrich nodded.

The groundskeeper swallowed once, then touched his cap.

"Godspeed son... Godspeed...."

Heinrich felt something cold twist in his chest, and yet he forced himself to return the salute silently, with a look of conviction plastered across his face.

The man nodded, satisfied, then went back to fulfilling his own duties.

---

The train to the airbase cut across Germany like a steel vein. Heinrich sat alone in his compartment, watching the landscape slide by.

Pine forests, rivers swollen with spring runoff, villages that looked so peaceful they felt unreal.

He kept his orders on his lap, unfolded, as if the ink might change if he looked away.

Sicily.

Erich had bled in Manila. And their distant cousin Konrad had suffered in the heat and fire of Palawan.

Now Heinrich would bleed in the Mediterranean defending the forces on the ground, where his cousin, and the future Kaiser stood holding the line with blood, sweat, and tears.

At the next stop, a group of infantry boarded and passed Heinrich’s compartment.

They stared at his flight insignia with something between admiration and envy.

One paused and saluted.

"Good luck up there, sir."

Heinrich returned the gesture sharply.

"And you down there."

The soldier grinned. "We’ll try not to let the Italians shoot us before you get the chance to shoot back."

Heinrich almost smiled.

Almost.

The flight south took hours, weaving through refueling stops and couriers carrying sealed dispatches.

As Heinrich’s transport plane crossed the Mediterranean, the sea stretched below like a sheet of hammered copper.

He saw Sicily before he felt it.

A rugged island of cliffs and dust and jagged mountains, crowned with smoke plumes where artillery and naval batteries exchanged pleasantries with American positions.

The airfield came into view, a scar carved into the high ground, ringed with bunkers, flak towers, and SAM sites.

Wrecked aircraft lay at the far edge of the runway, skeletal remains of dogfights that had happened only hours ago.

The tires hit the tarmac with a jolt.

The moment the plane rolled to a stop, the hatch opened, heat slammed into Heinrich’s face like a furnace blast. The smell of aviation fuel mixed with burned earth and sea-wind.

A man in a sand-stained officer’s uniform strode toward him, clipboard under his arm.

"Leutnant Heinrich von Zehntner?"

"Yes."

"I’m Oberleutnant Krüger, executive officer of Jagdgruppe 11. Welcome to Sicily.

Your gear goes to barracks row three. Your aircraft is in hangar seven. Briefing starts in thirty minutes."

Heinrich saluted.

Krüger looked him over with a veteran’s practiced eye, assessing not rank, but steel.

"You fly well?" he asked plainly.

Heinrich’s jaw tightened.

"If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here."

A subtle grin flickered across Krüger’s face.

"Good answer."

The heat inside the hangar was worse than outside, trapped beneath sheet metal and diesel fumes. Mechanics swarmed like ants over a line of aircraft being rearmed and re-fueled.

Heinrich approached his assigned machine, a sleek, angular fighter with a reinforced nose and swept wings.

The fighter was unlike anything he had ever seen before, as he called out to the Oberleutnant in shock.

"How does this thing even fly? It doesn’t have a propellor on it!"

The Oberleutnant chuckled, and as he ran a hand along the fuselage. The metal was warm from the sun, the paint scorched in places from recent engagements.

"You’re damn right it doesn’t. This thing is powered by what you would call a turbojet. It’s official Designation if the Me. P-110, but we call it the Hündin. Because she rides hard, and fast, and you don’t want to see her when she’s all fired up....

A mechanic looked up from calibrating the cannon feed.

"You must be the new replacement..."

"That is correct...." Heinrich nodded slightly.

The mechanic smirked. "Right... Let me make something clear to you before you take this out for its first flight. You’re going to be hitting a rate of speed on this thing that the eggheads back in Berlin who created it all ’transonic.’ Translation the top speed on this bitch is about 1,000 kilometers per hour. So keep that in mind before you hurl yourself into the earth. Because I’m not cleaning up your wreckage. Got it?"

Heinrich’s pulse stilled.

1,000 kilometers per hour? That was nearly double the speed of a standard PTL-8. And it would appear there were other advantages being given to the platform as he climbed into the cockpit settling into the leather seat.

The controls felt heavier than the training models. The instruments buzzed slightly, alive with static energy. This was a machine built for killing, and for surviving attempts to kill it.

And there were other things he noticed instantly. Avionics, built in radar, and of course the newly issued infrared homing missiles that could be fired from the push of a button on the flight stick.

He rested his hands on the yoke, exhausted by the weight of responsibility, the ongoing developments of the battlefield, and the sheer awe of what he was witnessing.

This was where he would live now.

Or die.

He inhaled slowly and climbed back out.

He did not have any more time to get acquainted with his new airframe, because a briefing awaited him.

Inside the command hut, a map of Sicily dominated the wall. Lines of red and blue arrows clashed like opposing waves. American landing zones. German counterattack corridors. Airspace zones marked with thick black marker.

The squadron commander, Hauptmann Friedrich Albrecht, stood at the front with the presence of a man who had long ago accepted death and decided to outrun it.

He addressed the assembled pilots without flourish.

"Gentlemen," he said, "the situation is simple."

He pointed to the coast.

"The Americans have landed here and here. Their goal is to establish an airhead and push inland. Ours is to see to it that this doesn’t happen, and they continue to bleed themselves dry on the shores. You will fly interdiction, interception, and air superiority missions. Expect heavy flak and fighter resistance."

He swept his gaze over the room.

"If you are shot down, pray you crash on our side. The Americans do not take prisoners lightly."

A murmur rippled through the room.

Heinrich didn’t flinch.

Hauptmann Albrecht’s eyes settled on him.

"You are the new replacement?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good," Albrecht said. "We need all the boys we can get up in the air. Do you job, and do it well, and you might find yourself living long enough to see an iron cross. If not... Well, godspeed...."

Heinrich kept his face still, but the words carved something sharp into his chest.

The briefing continued, call signs, radio frequencies, emergency procedures, fuel limits. The mechanics distributed maps and mission logs.

When it ended, Albrecht spoke again, softer.

"Some of you will not survive your first week. Some will not survive tomorrow. But if you hold this island... the Reich holds the Mediterranean. And if we hold the Mediterranean... we decide the fate of Europe."

His voice rose.

"You are warriors of the sky. Act like it."

Heinrich stood, saluted, and the room echoed with the sound of boots snapping to attention.

Night fell quickly over Sicily, warm and humid, carrying the distant rumble of artillery.

Heinrich sat on the edge of his bunk, cleaning the P35 service pistol he had been issued. The metal clicked softly, steady, rhythmic, the sound of preparation.

Tomorrow he would fly.

Tomorrow he would enter the sky over the battlefield. Where the rest of his family had fought on the ground in the thick of trenches and armored columns. He would be the first knight of the sky to bear the surname von Zehntner.

He stared at the golden wings on his uniform blouse.

God with us.

He exhaled.

"And if God won’t come," he whispered, "then I’ll go without Him."

He holstered the pistol.

Sicily would learn his name soon enough.

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