86 - Volume 10 - Chapter 3.2

2

Scavengers were unmanned support units that escorted squadrons to battle. They were loaded with ammunition and energy packs, which they used to resupply units in the heat of battle. Shin didn’t know what their official name was. But since they patrolled the battlefield after fights were over to restock on supplies and picked reusable parts out of wrecked Juggernauts, these blocky, awkward transport units were colloquially called Scavengers.

Shin’s squadron had multiple Scavengers escorting them, which had apparently all been destroyed in the battle. Fortunately for Shin, though, that unit still had its container attached to it.

With his ammo depleted and his energy pack almost empty, he doubted he could return to base from the contested zones. He knew there were no Legion around at the moment, but the enemy was swift, and if he was pursued by them, he wouldn’t have the means to fight them off.

He was prepared to gather the supplies he needed from his squad mates’ ruined Juggernauts, but this was a much easier alternative.

Shin stopped his Juggernaut next to the mountain of rubble, disembarked his unit, and approached the Scavenger. It was an old model, the kind that’d been introduced early on in the war. Models like this one were hard to come by. It was sooty and stained from the dust of the battlefield. Its body was squarish and angular, while its four legs were rounded. It was a clumsy, unshapely drone with two crane arms and a lenslike optical sensor.

It was completely silent and sunken diagonally into the rubble, like a dying hound crouched on the ground. Apparently, it’d been shot in the legs. On top of its container being intact, its crane arms and its internal burner and cutters were all whole. But with the Scavenger itself being dead, they couldn’t move.

The container’s lock was simple, so it could be disengaged without much effort. Looking around its sooty surface, Shin held back a sigh. Much like the Juggernaut’s canopy, the doors to all the Republic’s “drones” weren’t closed by electronic locks that required passcodes. All one needed to open them was to pull a bar.

Now that Shin needed to get supplies from this Juggernaut, this worked in his favor, but the Legion had the self-propelled mines and the Tausendfüßler, which had armlike manipulators. He’d seen comrades of his who’d gotten stranded in the middle of battle run into them, only for the Legion to open their canopies and drag them out.

The Republic only saw the Eighty-Six as disposable processing units, so they never considered adding features that would protect them. Their technology was too lacking to develop a successful AI or a powerful Feldreß, but they could at least make an electronic lock.

Suddenly, Shin completely stiffened. Maybe it was his exhaustion from the battle. Pushing away that sarcastic thought, which had surfaced to the front of his mind with cruel clarity, Shin reached for the container’s opening bar. The pebbles of the rubble under his feet spilled from beneath his boots and tumbled down.

The lock disengaged with ease. But the problem presented itself as soon as he opened it. Namely, it was the supplies the Scavenger was carrying. After all, the Juggernaut was an exceedingly weak, poorly cobbled together death trap, and every one of the supplies it required was large and cumbersome. As weak as its 57 mm cannon turret might have been, the magazines containing its shells weighed well over 100 kilograms.

Shin was still short and small, and so this weight was well beyond his capacity to move. The ammo weighed twice as much as he did. Nonetheless, he could extract the shells from the cartridge and carry them out one by one…

…even though doing so wouldn’t change the fact that he’d eventually die a meaningless death on the battlefield.

That cold, dark, and intrusive thought once again reared its ugly head. Sighing, Shin shrugged it off. When did this odd sense of exhaustion and emptiness start occupying a corner of his mind? He’d first noticed it when his last squadron was wiped out, but it had probably been there even earlier, and he just hadn’t realized it.

No matter how much he fought on and remained the last man standing, in the end, he’d never really gain anything. There was no meaning to fighting or surviving, and yet—

Just then, the Scavenger’s optical sensor flickered. One of its crane arms, which was resting in an uncomfortable position, suddenly jerked. The manipulator at its tip opened and closed with a loud metallic crunching sound, as if testing its operability.

“Whoa—”

Shin pulled back with a start. He was already used to the battlefield, but he still couldn’t help but let his voice slip. He looked at it with shocked curiosity like he was seeing someone rise from the grave—after all, from what he could tell, this machine was basically dead—as its two crane arms dragged the magazine out of the container. It remained loyal to its programming…or rather, it almost seemed like the drone wasn’t even aware of its own death, sticking to its supply duties even when it was half ruined.

“…You’re still alive?” Shin asked in surprise.

It felt like the Scavenger’s optical sensor suddenly swerved to look at him. Shin unconsciously reached out to it, touching its sooty body. It had a thin metallic surface that was both unarmed and unarmored.

The fact that he’d asked a cold, lifeless garbage-collecting device a question like that was probably a product of Shin’s heart being as weak as it was in that moment. Scavengers had no personalities. The Republic could only produce an artificial intelligence that was too feeble to handle autonomous combat. Instead, they cast the Eighty-Six out into the field of battle to act like disposable parts.

So no matter what he said, this machine—this thing couldn’t really understand. The only thing it could do was obey simple verbal commands. And even knowing this, he kept on speaking.

“There’s no one left. The squadron, all your friends, they’re all dead. Will you go back with me anyway…?”

Shin had to experience walking back to base completely on his own over and over. But even so… No, for that exact reason, he didn’t want to go through it again. Shin’s weak heart spurred him to cling to this connection.