CHAPTER 7
SOMETHING TO DIE FOR
“Activating first and second Flywheels. No abnormal transformer substations detected.”
“Commencing cooldown of catapult rails. Coolant device operating at twenty-three percent and rising—”
“Canopy disengaged. Deploying catapult rail.”
Shin, resting in Undertaker’s cockpit with his eyes closed as it remained on standby, raised his head at the sound of a heavy, rumbling roar reverberating from above. His three optical screens were currently synced with his mothercraft’s external cameras, granting him a slanted view from the nose of the plane. At the edge of his vision, he could see the camouflaged canopy of the underground catapult opening, exposing the surface.
The dark-indigo glow of dawn filled the cockpit, spilling in from the rectangular window to the sky. The sun still hadn’t risen from below the horizon, its rays mingling with the darkness of night, granting the heavens a peculiar transparent shade of indigo blue. Autumn stars, the names of which Shin didn’t know, silently faded away.
With its slide stretching out, the catapult’s extension rails stabbed into the daybreak’s sky as if to challenge the stars themselves, and a metallic screech tore through the night air as machinery locked into place.
“First to final joint locks—complete. Nachzehrer, ready to launch.”
The first time it was shown to him was a month ago, a week after the strike operation into the Legion’s territories was decided.
“Some people have called it the forbidden shutter.”
Come to think of it, they never had seen this shutter at the back of the 1,028th Trial Unit’s hangar in the division’s HQ base open before. Beyond this bulky anti-bombardment shutter was a slant with a width of over one hundred meters.
Grethe spoke as she stood before the control panel of the elevator filling the space, looking down into the darkness below it. Even though fifteen Processors and all the maintenance crew, control personnel, and researchers were standing on it, they occupied less than half the open space on this abnormally large elevator.
“This hangar was originally used to store experimental weapons during the Empire’s reign. Then the war broke out, and we had to abandon this base for a time. But her rollout and test flights were already complete, and we left her shortly before we began mass production.”
“I imagine it was placed in an underground facility to keep things confidential, but this base was close to the border at the time. How did you perform the test flights?”
“Unlike fighter and bomber planes, its performance wasn’t something to keep a secret, and the greatest thing that was expected of this little one was the fact that she couldn’t be seen. We needed a large, empty place to perform her test flights, and the only place that fit the bill was the western Vargus territories, the Wolfsland. In other words, here. Her hangar was underground to protect her from air strikes, and it was better to have all her related control and construction facilities underground, too. Thanks to that, the Tausendfüßler never managed to find her and pick her apart.”
With the exception of the Ameise, the Legion’s sensors and perception ability were inferior. They may detect a Feldreß or a fighter jet lying around, but an “experimental craft” hidden behind shutters meant to protect against bombardment escaped their attention for the decade they had control over these territories.
“Related facilities?”
“Basically, her runway… Or more precisely, the catapult attached to it. If she was to work the way the military intended, she would be too heavy to take off on her own and would require an electric catapult to go airborne.”
The subtle vibrations of the elevator came to a stop. Grethe entered the darkness with familiar steps, the clicking of her military shoes echoing far and deep. It was a large, open space, in terms of width, depth, and height. Suddenly, every light bulb in the room switched on, and white LEDs blinded their corneas for a moment.
Grethe turned around, with her back to that. One of the Processors, or perhaps someone from the maintenance crew, swallowed nervously. None could recognize the full scope of the thing crouching before them. It was simply that large. Its full length was likely almost one hundred meters, dwarfing even the C-5 Hræsvelgr, the largest transport plane in the world and pride of the old Empire’s air force. Its dull metallic fuselage had a planar composition typical of stealth crafts. It had the shape of a massive boomerang that somehow gave the impression of a dragon spreading its wings.
“I present to you the prototype Landkraft, the XC-1 Nachzehrer.”
The unfamiliar model name seemed to have been based off a legend from the Federacy’s southeast, of a vampire that rises from its grave, drags its shadow along cemeteries, and rings church bells. The name felt somewhat unfitting for a military aircraft soaring through the skies, but Grethe answered everyone’s apprehensions with her follow-up statement.
“She’s an unusual aircraft that employs the massive dynamic lift she gains near the surface to fly while barely grazing the ground. She has a cruising speed and payload equal to that of a normal airplane and flies lower than a cruise missile, at an extremely low-altitude flight of only several meters above ground level. That makes her extremely unsusceptible to detection by cruise missiles and radars… She was originally created for large-scale, high-speed transport exclusively along the Wolfsland front. Her official payload is two hundred and fifty tons, but if you ignore margin, this baby is capable of packing three hundred. She was designed to carry squads of four Vánagandrs at a time.”
Grethe then paused and grinned fiendishly.
“But if it’s Reginleifs, she can carry fifteen at a time… This baby can carry you all the way to the Morpho faster and a little more safely than a transport helicopter.”
Its cruising speed was high, and it flew at low altitudes, slipping through the radar web. It was also a much quieter alternative to the loud noise a formation of transport helicopters would produce. If nothing else, it would lower the risk of their journey to the target.
However…
Theo listened and spoke with his eyes half-closed.
“Can that thing actually fly that close to the ground? If it’s just a few meters above ground level, it’ll collide with a building or a house.”
It presented a whole new set of risks.
“The area this operation takes place in might be Legion territory right now, but it used to be Empire territory. We’ve got maps of the area and its topographic data all lined up. If we were up against people, it would be one thing, but the Legion don’t build houses or erect towns, so the terrain should have remained mostly the same.”
If surface weapons like the Legion would become incapable of fighting just because of exposure to the elements, the war wouldn’t have lasted this long.
“The Weisel and Admiral are as large as buildings, but they wouldn’t be this close to the front line, and First Lieutenant Nouzen has a grasp on their positions. We can evade them if need be.”
“…I might know where they are, but I can’t tell what type of Legion they’ll be for sure.”
“That’s all we need. We’ll just fly through places where there are no Legion.”
It might be hard to intercept its low-altitude flight infiltration, but if there were any Legion in its path, it would still be shot down. If it was only several meters above the ground, even a Löwe, which struggled with swerving its turret in angles of elevation, would be able to take aim at it from below.
“Besides, if it needs a catapult to take off, how are we supposed to use it to get back home? This thing won’t be able to fly us back.”
“As originally planned in the operation’s first draft, the Nordlicht squadron will be recovered by the main force. It’ll be the same in this regard. It’s still better than having transport helicopters on standby to carry spare Reginleifs.”
The old maintenance-squad leader cocked an eyebrow at her words.
“Missy, I’m almost afraid to ask, but…who’s gonna be piloting this thing?”
Grethe splayed her arms out in a grandiose, if not comical, manner.
“Yours truly.”
“I really don’t think there’s any need for you to come, Lieutenant Colonel.”
Shin spoke dispassionately, but Grethe, who was sitting in the Nachzehrer’s cockpit, only smiled with greater delight on the other end of the Resonance.
“Do you think anyone but me will be able to get this baby to budge? Most of the old Empire’s pilots are dead by now, and no one has experience piloting the Nachzehrer during her test flights except for me… It’s a good thing we still had a flight simulator left at the main office.”
Several people groaned at her ominous soliloquy, but Grethe didn’t seem to pay it any mind, and neither did Shin.
“Right, you used to be a pilot in the air force, Lieutenant Colonel.”
“…When you put it like that, it sounds like you’ve only just remembered that, First Lieutenant.”
Shin honestly wasn’t interested in the matter at all, so Grethe was right on the money.
“Well, if you forgot that, I figure you don’t remember this, either. I’m opposed to sending children like you to the battlefield, after all… Fighting to the very end may be your pride and identity as Eighty-Six, but this is one hill I’m willing to die on. If you insist on fighting to the very end, fighting by your side until that final moment is my duty.”
“…”
“This country you risked life and limb to reach was a far cry from paradise. But I do want you to remember one thing. No one in this country wishes for you to die. On the contrary, we all wish for you to live. Me, the division commander…and him.”
“It’s been a while, everyone.”
Shin blinked in surprise at that calm, unexpected voice. It didn’t come via Para-RAID, but from a wired communication line outside the Nachzehrer.
“What are you doing here, Ernst?”
“Uh, hey, I’m the Federacy’s supreme commander, y’know? This is a decisive battle with the lives and territory of the Federacy and its neighbors on the line. It’s only natural for me to come to urge my soldiers to battle, isn’t it? Especially when you’re the ones who’ll be the linchpin of this mission. Right?”
Ernst took a deep breath, and his tone switched to that of a leader, a man who’d directed the Federacy for many years.
“The fate of the Federacy, its neighbors, and indeed humanity itself hinges on the Nordlicht squadron’s success. Destroy the Morpho, no matter what… We’re counting on you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And… I have another mission of the utmost importance for you.”
Lifting his head, Ernst nodded earnestly.
“Come back to us. All of you.”
Something about the request felt oddly hypocritical. As if he wasn’t so much worried for them as he was concerned for himself.
“…We’ll try.”
“That´s not good enough. Come back, no matter what.”
That uncomfortable feeling remained all the same, but by contrast, the Federacy’s temporary president and the man who was, on paper, their adoptive father, spoke earnestly.
“You wanted to fight to the very end, didn´t you? For this Federacy, fighting until the very end doesn´t mean death. It means living to see what lies beyond the war. So come back to us, no matter what… As many times as it takes.”
“Yes. Return to me, no matter what…”
Ernst whispered after closing the intercom. He was in the commander’s seat of the western front’s integrated headquarters. He had taken off the mass-produced blue business suit that had become his trademark as president over the past decade, now donning the Federacy military’s steel-blue uniform in its stead.
He’d met them for the first time here, on the western front, although the exact place was a bit off. He’d come to the battlefield to encourage the troops and received a report that they’d recovered child soldiers from a foreign country as they’d defeated a Tank type that was out on a headhunt. He’d taken pity on them at first and wanted to give them the joy he could never grant to his unborn child. But more than anything…
The temporary president narrowed his ash-colored eyes as he felt a cold, cruel, empty smile play over his lips.
A country that wouldn’t save wounded children… A country where children aren’t allowed to be happy… A world that doesn’t hesitate to send children to their deaths just to meet its own ends…is as distant as can be from the vision of humankind she believed in…
Ernst gave a long sigh. Like a firedrake exhaling flames after having grown weary of the world, as if wishing to reduce anything and everything to ash…
“…Or else, I will destroy this world.”
A countdown to the beginning of the operation was displayed on the headquarters’ main screen, currently clocking at five minutes. The chief of staff, who stood at the information center at the bottom of the room, cast a glance at Ernst, who gave him a small nod.
October 9, 2144. First light.
The temporary president, sitting on the commander’s seat, nodded to the lieutenant general occupying the vice commander’s seat. The chief of staff began to speak. He was clad in the Federacy’s steel-blue uniform and cap. His hands rested on the hilt of a thin saber, still in its scabbard and bound in leather straps, with its tip against the floor, acting as an impromptu conductor’s baton.
“All soldiers, at attention.”
The chief of staff’s voice was broadcast to all units in the western front’s army through a secured line.
“The western front´s army will now begin its march into the Legion´s territories.”
Everyone held their breath as they listened to the cold voice, their tension strained to its maximum. Each unit had the operation’s objective explained to them as well as their role in it during a briefing prior to their sortie. There was no need to go into any further details.
The western front’s army, the United Kingdom’s military, and the Alliance’s forces’ objective was the retaking of the Highway Corridor. And the strike force would act as the spearhead that would penetrate the depths of the Legion’s territory and destroy the Morpho lurking there. This operation was tantamount to facing the full bulk of the Legion’s forces; neither failure nor retreat could be considered.
“This operation is not just for the sake of the Federal Republic of Giad, the United Kingdom of Roa Gracia, or the Alliance of Wald. This is the largest operation in the history of humankind and will influence the fates of our neighboring countries that may have survived the Legion´s onslaught, as well as the fate of the human race. You will act as the stalwart shield that guards our allied neighbors and the mighty sword that will cut open a path for humankind´s future. Never forget that the god of war never favors the cowards, but gives his blessings to the valiant! Go forth and defend the flag of the two-headed eagle with your lives!”
“Attention!”
Ten kilometers east of the front line, an artillery unit was deployed, lining up the muzzles of its cannons. The 155 mm traction howitzers stood majestically, their turrets extending like spears poised against the heavens, and 155 mm self-propelled artillery cannons of the same type were loaded onto trucks. Only a few old-type 105 mm howitzers and discontinued 203 mm howitzers were deployed along the battery. Multi-launch rocket systems aimed their magazines of forty toward the dark western sky.
“Our mission is to provide covering fire for our allies’ advance! While they’re crawling through the mud, let’s help ’em out by blowing those shitty scrap heaps straight to hell!”
The stressed artillery soldiers cracked a strained smile at those words that ridiculed the armored infantry and Feldreß who fought with their heads down in the quagmires of the battlefield. The artillery forces’ commander looked around and nodded. The long black hair under her cap was proof of her youth, and her soft, pale face was accented by black-rimmed glasses.
“For our comrades on the front lines and those warriors going even farther beyond, keep shooting, no matter what! Even if the gun barrels burst and angels rain down from heaven to claim us all, never stop shooting! All hands, prepare for bombardment!”
Meanwhile, on the front lines, at the camp of a certain armored unit…
“We sortie after the support fire! Don’cha chicken out and hold us back, y’hear?! Anyone who falls behind’s gonna have the letters they wrote for their girlfriend read out loud! Any virgins who don’t have a girl back home will have the letters they wrote to their mommies read out loud instead!”
As the armored unit’s commander’s coarse voice echoed loudly, amplified by a speaker, Vánagandrs awoke from standby one after another, and accompanying combat trucks loaded with armored infantry revved their engines.
As their power packs began picking up their RPM, the high-pitched screeching of the Vánagandrs blended with the staccato of diesel engines. This grating harmony pierced into the azure sky, still rich with traces of night.
They didn’t bother connecting the data link in the first place. It would be useless in the Legion’s territories, under the Eintagsfliege’s influence, anyway. Gazing at the ranks of his consort planes through his unit’s three optical sensors, a young officer—hardly in his mid-twenties—brought the external speaker’s receiver to his mouth.
“Don’t sit idly by and let the Republic’s monsters protect you… Show those crazy berserkers what the pride of the Federacy is all about!”
Hearing the cry of the armored unit’s commander echo into the dark-purple morning air from his external speaker, the armored infantry commander smirked inside his vehicle.
“I swear, if nothing else, these youngsters sure know how to get fired up…”
He was clad in an armored exoskeleton and shouldered his favored 12.7 mm rifle. The helmet covering his face was now turned up, revealing the rectangular, aged face of a man in his forties. He feigned ignorance, out of some sort of tired listlessness, as his subordinates joked that he looked less like a veteran armored infantry soldier and more like an exhausted office worker in a crowded train.
He looked around at the clumsy, bulky silhouettes of his subordinates seated on sheets in the darkened cargo hold, closed by an armored pane, and he parted his lips without a hint of enthusiasm.
“Well then, boys. I’ll leave all the grand speeches about pride and glory to those who know how to make ’em, but let’s just focus on getting back alive for today… That said—”
He sneaked a glance at a photograph of his wife and children, attached to the interior of his armored exoskeleton, while maintaining his poker face as the other soldiers shrugged.
“We’re gonna need to have somewhere to return to if we’re planning on coming back at all. So let’s give our all to defending! For our sakes, and…”
…for the sake of the youngsters in the armored units, who lead the charge while fully aware they’ll likely be the first to be crushed by the Legion. And for the young soldiers who are even farther away, who went on to spearhead the operation even though they knew it might be a one-way trip, who dived headfirst into the heart of Legion territory in spite of it all.
The uncharacteristic sentimentality he was feeling right now forced a smile onto his lips, and the armored infantry captain lowered his helmet to hide it. The optical feed projected directly to his retina overlapped with his sight, and at its edge, the countdown to the operation’s beginning ticked down.
Ten more seconds…
Three, two—
“For our brothers-in-arms and the homeland we’ll return to.”
…zero.
The western front’s commander in chief nodded back at the chief of staff, and Ernst parted his lips coldly. He was clad in a steel-blue uniform and a regulation cap and wore his overcoat like a cloak across his shoulders.
“Commence operation.”
“Fiiiiiire!”
As ordered, the entire artillery formation’s howitzers and multi-launch rocket systems, as well as the infantry unit’s mortars, roared in unison. The shock waves kicked up clouds of dust behind them. Shells flew into the heavens in a parabola like flaming arrows, leaving only tremors in their wake.
They covered the eastern skies like a wall of steel, blocking the faint morning starlight before reaching their zenith and descending with shrill screeches as they pierced the Legion’s defenses.
“Orders to charge are in! C’mon, boys, go, go, go!”
“Don’t let the morons in the strike force cut ahead of us, men! Anyone who needs a pick-me-up is entitled to one swift kick in the ass from yours truly!”
The rear artillery unit’s support fire was still going strong. Not giving any mind to the barrel’s overheating, the bombardment raged on even as they changed positions. Between the incessant, earthshaking cacophony of the high-aperture shells, an armored unit of Vánagandrs got into a wedge formation and began their advance. They reached maximum speed in the blink of an eye. Combat cars filled with infantry followed swiftly behind.
With their engines and power packs roaring a ferocious battle cry, the deluge of steel rushed over the battlefield awash with dawn’s light.
The contested zones lay in the boundary between the territories of the Legion and humankind. There, as the silhouettes of autonomous machines standing at attention intermingled with the darkness of dawn’s hour, a single Scout type turned its bearing up to the eastern sky. Suddenly, its highly efficient optical sensors picked up a flash.
In the next moment, a violent bombardment rained down upon it.
A swarm of self-forging warheads dispersed into the skies above, each with its radar activated and locking onto a target. They soared over the armored weapon at two thousand meters per second, crashing onto the Legion unit like a sledgehammer.
The impact repeated in quick succession, powerful enough to skewer even the Dinosauria. The ground trembled as sediment soared into the heavens, forming a brown curtain over the horizon. But that veil was soon torn to pieces as a unit of Vánagandrs rushed in, pursuing any remaining Legion with the ferocity of a pack of starving wolves.
The integrated headquarters’ main screen displayed each unit’s desperate struggle as icons shifted and clashed. The Legion’s forces outnumbered those of the three countries participating in the operation. And yet, their forces’ blue icons progressed into the autonomous machines’ lines, cutting through their forces, drawing them in and crushing them.
“They moved… We lured them out…!”
A Legion armored force began descending from the enemy territory to intercept them. Turning around to confirm that the chief of staff gave them the go-ahead, a member of the control personnel spoke into an intercom with a sharp voice.
“We’ve successfully lured the Legion’s frontline forces. Shifting to Phase Two. Integrated headquarters to 1,028th control room. The Nachzehrer is permitted to take off!”
“Let´s go!”
As the high-pitched screech of the four jet engines on both the Nachzehrer’s wings reached Shin’s ears, the electric catapult kicked the four-hundred-ton fuselage into the air.
“…!”
The intense acceleration was unfamiliar for his body, which was used to both a transport plane’s takeoff and the Juggernaut’s high-speed maneuvering. The electromagnetic waves scrambled white noise over his main screen, and the next moment, a faint-blue dawn sky spread out before him. Traversing the underground runway in less than an instant, the Nachzehrer leaned as it flew out above the surface, soaring with the force of its acceleration.
His screen’s view of the chilly azure skies of autumn switched to one of the sleeping plains, which then drifted away behind them in the blink of an eye. The Nachzehrer’s speed was blinding. To think a low-altitude flight could be rapid enough to allow for the possibility of such a sight…
“Th-this is scarier than I thought…”
“Wh-what lunatic thought of making this thing?!”
Grethe cackled from the cockpit, a shrill laughter that was unlike her usual demeanor. As if she was high on adrenaline, like her blood was pumping from being in a gambling hall for the first time in ages.
“Having fearless soldiers like you say that is an honor! This baby can fly at eight hundred kilometers per hour, by the way, and we have one hundred kilometers and some change until the target… Enjoy your nine-minute ride while it lasts!”
In the sky, two thousand meters above the Legion’s territories, a single Legion unit hovered, gluttonously receiving countless reports of clashes and skirmishes with the three countries. The Eintagsfliege’s parent unit, the Observation Control type—Rabe.
Commanding the Eintagsfliege and the Stachelschwein, this airborne early-warning system kept a vigilant, all-seeing eye over the state of humankind’s military movements. Its 122-meter-long wingspan was equipped with solar power–generated panels. This gigantic silver raven would remain airborne until it was shot down or until its lifespan as an autonomous machine came to an end.
Linking up with the Eintagsfliege as its extensions, it also integrated and analyzed communications between the Legion and relayed orders it received to their appropriate recipients, serving the double role of the Legion’s delegation unit.
As it received a constant deluge of information, it instantly analyzed and judged it. Concluding that the network under its jurisdiction had insufficient forces to withstand the assault, it launched an appeal to the wide area network. As it launched that report to the Supreme Commander unit that supervised the wide area network, the Rabe kept a vigilant eye on the enemy forces’ invasion and swiveled its wings as it continued its lax, high-altitude flight.
<Acknowledged. No Face to all units linked to first area network. Invasions from the Federacy, United Kingdom, and Alliance confirmed.>
The Supreme Commander unit’s directive circulated through the first area network consisting of the military forces divided between the Federacy, the Republic, the United Kingdom, and the Alliance like an electronic tone traveling through the air. A voiceless, wordless whisper from one machine to another.
The Supreme Commander unit was a Shepherd whose call sign was No Face. It had lost the ability to even discern the faces of its wife and beloved daughter, but its human conviction alone remained intact. The fact that this ghost was capable of enjoying such cruel irony was proof of the education it had been graced with during its lifetime.
The Supreme Commander unit judged that this situation was within their predictions. If guided weapons were insufficient, and they lacked long-range artillery weapons to match the Legion’s, their only remaining option was to stage a direct assault. It seemed the three countries chose not to adhere to their defenses and await the conclusion where the Railgun reduced them to ash.
They were different from his old motherland, which chose to shut itself away inside its walls, only to eventually be crushed under their weight. If nothing else, their offensive against the Republic was going according to schedule.
Their efforts having been hampered for the past two months, they launched that attack after biding their time during the four-sided offensive. The Federacy’s forces deployed immediately, as if they had foreseen everything down to the moment the operation would begin.
This was a phenomenon No Face had encountered before. It received repeated reports from one of the fronts of its old motherland, the Republic of San Magnolia. It was one unique sector, where every ambush or surprise attack seemed to have failed. And perhaps the fact that the Federacy was capable of pinpointing and retaliating against the Railgun, despite it being deployed over one hundred kilometers away and under the Eintagsfliege’s jamming, could be attributed to this.
Today, they would have to compensate for those multiple setbacks. Their enemy must be annihilated, at all costs.
<All units, standby mode disengaged. Tactical algorithms set to extermination combat mode.>
The murderous instincts programmed into them—the combat protocols set by the now-ruined Empire—spurred them to battle without any need for reason or justification. A simple impulse to slaughter all those classified as the enemy that would be transmitted forever, so long as they were not destroyed.
The Supreme Commander unit had long since stopped thinking it was fruitless. It had lost its words years ago, when it died on the Eighty-Sixth Sector’s battlefield.
<Commence extermination.>
“The frontline units have begun charging in. Command car to all vehicles, we’re moving in, too. Hurry up your preparations!”
As the mobile strike force engaged the enemy, it was the artillery unit’s role to strike not at the enemy their comrades were facing, but at their reinforcements coming from farther into enemy territory. As the mobile strike force pressed into enemy territory, they would inevitably have to bring their heavy artillery forward as well, advancing along scorched earth.
“We’re moving our bombardment zone forward! Let’s blow the mugs off those shitty scrap heaps—”
Leaning out of the open-top armored command car’s window, the young woman serving as the artillery unit’s commander shouted orders into the wireless receiver in her hand but soon raised her eyes as a sense of dread washed over her.
At that moment, the blue skies darkened as a metallic gray rocket soundlessly descended from the western sky. It was the Skorpion types’ anti-artillery fire. Ameise equipped with superior anti-artillery radar calculated their location within two minutes and linked their data with the Skorpion types, allowing them to fire at them with terrifying accuracy.
“T-take coverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—!”
But her shout only made her own reactions more sluggish. The artillery commander could only spend that final, elongated moment gazing at the 155 mm beacon of death descending toward her.
“Captain!”
The command car’s driver lunged toward her, pushing her away from the car with his large frame and sending her tumbling to the ground.
Impact.
It was a barrage consisting of multipurpose, anti-armor, antipersonnel shells. The high-speed projectiles unleashed shock waves, explosions of flames, and barrages of shrapnel traveling at eight thousand meters per second, which scattered the artillery formation to the winds.
After taking a direct hit from a 155 mm shell—capable of even destroying a Vánagandr at point-blank—the command car was blown apart. The artillery captain’s now-cracked black-rimmed glasses were knocked off by the blast and went flying through the air. She watched from under the driver’s body, which hung over her.
In case of bombardment, facing toward the blast and docking minimizes injuries to some extent, and compared to open air, a human body is much thicker and serves as a far better shield against shrapnel. Thanks to the driver guarding her with his own body, the artillery captain escaped any fatal damage. The driver, however…
Feeling the driver’s body suddenly become heavier, the officer struggled to crawl out from beneath him as his weight bore down on her, and then she felt her breath catch in her throat.
“…Corporal—”
In all likelihood…the thing lying before her was what remained of the driver. Retrieving her glasses from the ground nearby, the artillery captain got to her feet. Looking around, she couldn’t find a single trace of the artillery formation anymore. Her unit had been reduced to mounds of flesh and steel, decorating the vision of hell that descended upon the battlefield without warning. Without a microphone in her hand, she shouted from the pit of her stomach, a crazed look in her eyes as she filled her lungs with the stench of blood and burnt flesh.
“—Damage report! This battle isn’t over yet!”
In the faint predawn darkness, the grassy fields wavered like the waves of a stormy sea. Morning dew and sparks splashed into the air as metallic silver and gray metal clashed, cutting through the night air. The armored unit, consisting of Vánagandrs, armored infantry, and combat trucks, faced off against a mixed force of Dinosauria, Löwe, and Ameise in a melting pot of strife and battle.
The Dinosauria and Löwe were unmatched on open plains, where there were no obstructions to hamper their high mobility and firepower. Having no choice but to step onto this battlefield despite their inferiority, the Federacy engaged every opponent with multiple units, each relying on their consort units to create a distraction that would allow them to turn the situation in their favor. It was an inevitably savage battle, with their attempts to circle the Legion successful at times, and at other times hampered.
And in the many blind spots formed during such a battle, those lay in wait.
Sitting in his Vánagandr’s rear seat, the armored unit’s commander noticed it in the optical sensor’s feed. At the edge of a multilegged tank’s angular turret, a small shadow grabbed onto the rims of his unit’s armor and climbed up. It was the figure of a child around three years old—an unusual sight on the battlefield.
He stood dumbfounded as he realized a moment too late. It crept up over his turret, and he noticed its lower half was severed and missing. A human would not be able to move in this condition. This was, without a shadow of a doubt, a fatal wound. Which meant this wasn’t human.
An anti-tank self-propelled mine. They were weapons used in the early stages of the war, when there were still civilians on the front lines. They caught the attention of soldiers by appearing under the guise of children.
His Vánagandr’s heavy machine guns were equipped behind its turret, and as such, the mine dipped in an angle out of their range. As soon as it clung to him, there was nothing to be done. The infantile human-shaped explosive crept over the turret. He stared at its large, faceless head through his optical sensor. The synthetic voice of a child being emitted from it was oddly clear, despite it not having a mouth.
“ … Ma … ma.”
“…Oh, you motherfuckers.”
“Sorry, not letting that happen.”
A light impact shook the Vánagandr. An armored exoskeleton—a mere one hundred kilograms compared to the Feldreß’s weight of fifty tons—climbed on top of it. An aged, joking voice spoke to him via a direct line.
“You kids can´t die before we do. Your parents´ll never stop crying.”
There was no time to shoot the 12.7 mm heavy assault rifle in his hands or to rush over and kick it away. So the armored infantry captain jumped at the self-propelled mine. The gross weight of his body within the exoskeleton was much lighter than the Vánagandr, but it still wasn’t a weight the child-size self-propelled mine could support. Its hands let go of the armor, and they rolled off the Vánagandr’s gun turret together.
Then, there was a flash of light.
“Captain…?!”
The mine carried an explosive designed to penetrate a Vánagandr’s armor. Not a scrap remained of the thin, flimsy armor of the exoskeleton or the frail body it had protected. Something fluttered about, grazing his optical sensor. A burning photograph… A family photo of two parents and their three children.
God dammit…!
Before he could even bite his lip in frustration, he punched the interior of his cockpit in a blind rage. Now that they had lost their commander, he had to get everyone in the armored infantry unit—everyone who was still alive—home safely.
“Units two and three, on my mark! Infantry unit, stay on our six! …Shit!”
He swore and shut off the intercom. He then shot a glare at the black sky—just behind the Dinosauria towering over him.
Have you made it yet, you damn Eighty-Six …?!
The fierce fighting of the Federacy army reached the Nachzehrer by way of a wireless transmission that traveled across the blockade. The RAID Device was still in experimental stages and hadn’t been mass-produced yet, with only the Nordlicht squadron currently using it. The wireless transmission, thick with static and garbled noise from the jamming of the Eintagsfliege, deployed through the battlefield, reaching Shin’s ears as he sat inside his Juggernaut.
“The 225th Armored Battalion has reached phase line Zinc. Consolidating our sphere of influence until allied reinforcements arrive. The 417th Infantry Company and the 139th Relief Platoon, headed your way. Preparations underway to send all injured troops back. Commander of the 32nd Armored Battalion, KIA. 775th Infantry Company to 828th Artillery Formation, requesting covering fire. Yeah, no problem, drop it on top of us.”
Each of the transmissions was said in the midst of wild, tumultuous battle and delivered in shouts and bellows. On the other sides of those transmissions, one could hear screams, wails, cursing, and battle cries, all competing to drown the others out. It was valiant courage that straddled the line to madness—and frantic desperation.
Raiden muttered in a whisper:
“—The Federacy isn’t retreating.”
The swarm of Legion washed over them time and time again, shaving off more and more and more of their forces, but the Federacy wouldn’t retreat even a single step. On the contrary, with their armored units serving as a wedge in the Legion’s defenses, the following units pushed forward, paying no heed to their vanguards that wrenched open the gap and got obliterated behind them.
No retreat. They pushed and pushed, as if to say that should they stumble even a step back, something precious would be taken from them. In practice, that was exactly what would have happened; should the front fall apart, should the Morpho be allowed to advance to this position, all that lay behind them would be exposed to its hellish onslaught. For the Eighty-Six, the Republic wasn’t their homeland, and the Alba who did call it home would never think to fight for it.
“To defend…”
…one’s family. One’s home. One’s comrades. The values of one’s country. And at the base of it all…the place where one belongs.
The voice of the Alba boy he’d once heard but would never hear again echoed in his mind.
My sister. The sea.
He’d fought with that wish in his heart…and died holding on to it.
Why do you…?
He couldn’t answer that question. And that was because he had nothing to fight for… Nothing to defend.
Another communication reached them. The radio brought to life the voice of a unit defending some important position that was isolated, surrounded, and under attack. Defend to the death. Defend to the death, they said. Hold on just a little longer, and if you do, our trump card—those annoying Eighty-Six kids—will destroy it for us. And then we’ll win.
Someone’s elated chuckle came in through the Resonance.
“If we destroy the Morpho. Right, and then…”
“Guess we’ve got to live up to some expectations, huh…? I mean. Look at how hard they’re trying.”
His comrades exchanged words jovially, but Shin didn’t answer… Because he sensed a new change in the movement of the Legion force deployed ahead of them.
“Lieutenant Colonel.”
“Yeah, they’re on to us… They’re trying to block our route.”
“Can’t we evade them?”
“It’ll be difficult. This girl’s bad at making turns.”
“Can’t we evade them?”
“Since Landkräfte fly so close to the ground, they’re incapable of inclining the fuselage to make turns. I could change bearing by moving the rudder, but that would take too long.” As Grethe spoke, she was probably pulling up the control stick, increasing elevation to raise the Nachzehrer’s nose. Landkräfte were aircrafts optimized to fly while skimming the ground, but they were still capable of gaining altitude.
Gaining elevation at the cost of speed, the Nachzehrer reached a height that could be considered midair in the blink of an eye. They were finally in the sky that was stolen away from humankind by the Eintagsfliege and the Stachelschwein, at an altitude that made them susceptible to antiair fire.
“What are you…?”
“If you touch down here, you’ll just end up fighting the bastards trying to block our path. It’d defeat the purpose of taking her out in the first place.”
Shin could hear a siren blaring on the other side of the Resonance: lock-on alerts. The radiation detection alarm warning of exposure to the Stachelschwein’s laser sights. And that very moment, the rear cargo made a heavy, bulky sound as its hatch opened slowly.
“I was right to have the research team prepare these just in case. They’re a rush job, so they might look a bit flimsy, but they should function just fine.”
The Processors suddenly realized the Reginleifs were fixed not to the floor of the cargo space but to odd, tough-looking pallets blanketing it all the way to the cargo hatch and even its guardrails.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me. I wouldn’t do something as embarrassing as crash this baby, and I brought a spare unit just in case… I told you before, didn’t I? I used to be an Operator, too. You Eighty-Six aren’t the only ones who don’t like those clumsy Vánagandrs.”
There were fifteen Processors but sixteen rigs on board. A single Reginleif stood deep inside the cargo hold, fixed directly to the floor.
“…Lieutenant Colonel, there are two companies ahead, probably armored companies consisting mostly of Löwe. If you want to serve as a distraction, there’s no need to actually engage them. Take cover in the forest after you make contact with them.”
“Well, thanks for the advice, but…don’t underestimate me, you brat.”
Shin fell silent, obviously dumbfounded, and Grethe laughed loudly, a hint of affection to her voice.
“I’ll be seeing you then— Godspeed!”
Leaving that old-fashioned word of prayer behind, she shut down the Resonance, and simultaneously, the lock on the guardrails was released. Fifteen Reginleifs slid down the rails, a shrill voice ringing out and sparks flying as metal skidded against metal, and in the next moment, they were free-falling.
Being a ground weapon, the Reginleif naturally had no means of reducing its gravity. As they crashed, they caught sight of the Nachzehrer’s silhouette against the golden sky, lurching forward as it tried to turn. The silver background of the city below reflected against its wings as antiair autocannon fire grazed the skies, trying to mow it down. They plummeted toward a group of skyscrapers, falling between them. And just beyond there, the sound of repeated moans and cries of resentment filled Shin’s consciousness.
Is this it?
Immediately afterward, the parachutes set in their pallets spread open, and they began decelerating rapidly. The sudden deceleration pushing them from behind made the pilots lurch forward, but the four-point seatbelts yanked them back. When they next raised their heads, the descent pallet touched down on the ground.
The Nachzehrer’s ascent and subsequent loss of speed softened the descent of the parachutes, but it was a hard landing at a speed that couldn’t be called safe under any circumstances. Even with the pallet’s buffering system, the powerful vibrations rattled even the Processors, who, despite being used to the Reginleif’s high-mobility movements, had to hold back from biting their tongues.
Gouging into the green fields and dying them black, the airdrop pallets stood still. Their locks releasing automatically, fifteen Reginleifs staggered unsteadily onto Legion territory. Fido’s optical sensor was also unfocused as it descended. (Was it even possible for an AI to get dizzy?) They shook their heads to drive away the nausea and then raised their heads—on the other side of the forest cutting into these uninhabited plains, a pillar of black smoke generated by jet fuel billowed into the sky, as if serving as testimony for the force of the flames that created it.
“N-Nachzehrer, signal lost! The Nachzehrer’s signal has been cut off!”
The 1,028th Trial Unit’s control personnel practically screamed this report, and a confirmation immediately followed from the integrated headquarters. The chief of staff asked promptly, trying to ascertain the situation:
“What´s the Nordlicht squadron´s status?”
“They were airdropped before we lost the Nachzehrer’s signal, and they landed five kilometers away from the target area… But…”
As they made the report, the control officer bit their lip. The Reginleifs were fast. While the Legion swarmed the Nachzehrer, they should be able to advance into Kreutzbeck City.
“First Lieutenant Nouzen reported they’ve encountered the enemy! They’re currently engaging the Legion unit in the vicinity of the Morpho!”
A heavy, skillfully fired barrage of four 155 mm tank turrets, a 76 mm coaxial secondary cannon, and a 14 mm revolving machine gun swept through the streets. As they infiltrated the city, Shin squinted at the sight of a platoon of Dinosauria lying in wait for them. For the Legion, the Morpho was a strategic weapon that served as their anti-Federacy, anti-humanity trump card. It was only natural they would tighten their defenses around it, but it was still a nuisance.
While it may be better than the Republic’s aluminum coffin, the Reginleif’s armor couldn’t guard against the ludicrous strength of a 155 mm tank shell. Tracking the white shadows of their evading opponents, the Dinosauria swerved their turrets. Relying on their high-fidelity automatic recharge devices, they viciously continued their rapid-firing cycle as they pursued the Juggernauts.
Walls were pierced, pillars were gouged, and buildings collapsed as rows of bullet holes ripped through them. On the other side of the crumbling rubble, eight turrets locked onto Bernholdt’s platoon as it tried to sneak around their enemies.
Undertaker landed behind the Legion’s backs. As it did, the high-frequency blade it swung down slashed through the rear armor of a Dinosauria and then fired at a second one. A moment later, Laughing Fox jumped down from another collapsing building and fired mid-somersault in a stunt-like maneuver, downing the other two enemies.
“—Shin! The next one’s coming!”
Shin didn’t need to be told. Undertaker and Laughing Fox jumped to the left and right, evading a barrage of machine-gun fire that grazed the ground where they’d stood not a second prior. The Federacy armored even its infantry, so normal 7.62 mm bullets were inefficient against them. As such, the Ameise that attacked them were instead equipped with anti-light-armor 14 mm heavy machine guns.
In the next moment, the line of fire the two had just vacated was filled with a barrage from the rear-guard Juggernauts. Wehrwolf was nestled between the remains of two Dinosauria, Snow Witch fired from behind rubble, and Gunslinger scaled the surface of a building to shoot. Their grappling arms were equipped with heavy machine guns that roared ruthlessly as they fired a spray of bullets. The lightly armored Ameise were torn to bits by the concentrated fire, and the Nordlicht squadron used that gap to advance deeper into the enemy’s territory, with Shin taking the lead.
Fido, who had hung behind during combat until needed, linked up with them, and after a short while, Bernholdt and his platoon joined the row as well.
“Are you all right, Sergeant?”
“I could ask you the same thing. What the hell were those insane stunts you pulled…? Yeah, no casualties so far, First Lieutenant. But when they’ve tightened their defenses this much, even those sharp ears of yours won’t help us get through without a fight.”
Even though Shin could perceive the Legion’s movements, with the enemy lying in wait for them, their only choice was a frontal assault.
Being a highway to the neighboring countries and a place where the railroad network converged, old Kreutzbeck City placed more emphasis on its appearance than most other old Imperial cities. High-rises made of glass and metal stood close together, and the multiple overhead structures that were linked in a nearly organic manner made the city look like it had been pulled out of the near future.
And in those many hiding places, the Legion lurked. The Grauwolf stampeded across the walls of glass-paned buildings, crushing them as they sped through. Löwe dashed across the overhead highway. The Ameise crawled in the gaps between buildings, their sensitive sensor units glistening faintly, and the Skorpion types’ anti-armor projectiles soared over the skyscrapers.
Through the intervals of the Legion’s movements, fifteen Juggernauts sped through the city ruins, taking the shortest route they could to the high-speed-railway terminal in the city center, where Frederica’s knight lay in wait, his lamentations being their guide.
“I´ll kill them all.”
The blind, hollow murderous intent Shin had grown used to hearing was directed at them.
“Kill them all.”
They were getting closer. The Morpho’s moans roared over them like a thunderclap or cannon fire, its intensity penetrating their bodies like a shock wave. The bloodcurdling screams rumbled all the way to the pits of their stomachs, freezing them in terror and making them clench their teeth.
Does ceaselessly, mindlessly raging like this ever give you peace…?
Does being reduced to a killing machine consumed by bloodlust and madness mean you don’t have to think about anything else? Does it help distract you from the fact that you no longer have anything to live for…? Perhaps Rei was like that, too…
A single doubt. A single question skidded across the surface of his mind like a thrown rock.
If I had died before reaching him… If, on that final battlefield on the Eighty-Sixth Sector, I had gotten killed… If my body had been destroyed in such a way that the Legion couldn’t take me… Would Rei have lost his purpose and become like this ghost just ahead? A monster that’s only capable of spewing hatred against the world itself?
And if I had lost my brother before I gunned him down… If I had been unable to achieve my goal, would I…?
In the next moment, the Eighty-Six—the most battle hardened and accustomed to horror—held their breath and froze in fear.
“…Whoa.”
“What is this…? It’s massive…”
It stood in a traffic circle bathed in inorganic colors, the concrete pavement lined with streetlights. Dawn should have already broken by now, but the deployed Eintagsfliege darkened the sky, painting everything in an eerie silver gloom.
And beneath the silver sky, there it sat, its elongated form stretched out in defiance. Crouching, encased in a crystalline cocoon formed by the station’s overhead frosted glass dome, its abnormal size capable of toppling a building. A normal residential building could easily fit in its stomach, with its cannon’s barrel—large enough for a person to comfortably walk on top of it—now perpendicular to the ground.
It was like bearing witness to the seven-headed dragon of Revelation. Looking at it threw their sense of scale completely out of whack. Just being near it made them feel threatened under the sheer weight of its menace. It made Shin recall a sensation he’d since forgotten from his childhood.
It reminded him of a sight he’d seen in a museum once, probably before they were sent to the internment camps. A specimen of some primordial whale’s skeleton, large enough to fill up the entire hall. The sheer size of it had made young Shin doubt he was looking at the bones of a creature that had once been alive.
He couldn’t imagine something of that size living and moving about. He couldn’t believe a creature of that size existed in the same place he was. It was a creature on an entirely different scale. All he could do was hold his breath and stare. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been awestruck.
He opened his mouth, trying to shake off the fear.
“1,028th control room, we’ve got visual on the target atop the Kreutzbeck high-speed-railway terminal. Preparing to engage.”
“Læra?r HQ, roger that… The United Kingdom’s recon drones have arrived nearby, as well. It really is a Railgun… That size…!”
“First Lieutenant!”
Bernholdt cut into the conversation, his voice thick with tension. Above the probably newly erected double rails, on the other side of the frosted glass dome, a blue optical sensor lit up, glaring at them like a will-o’-the-wisp. A creaking reached their ears even from hundreds of meters away, as the massive turret on its rear began swiveling, the rumbling of its interior mechanisms rattling the silvery sky.
“It’s moving already?! Are its repairs complete…?!”
“I know the Legion don’t operate on the same logic we do, but still, this is insane…!”
…No. The lower part of the Morpho’s hull had multiple leglike appendages folded into it. It wasn’t moving. The Legion put its mobility as a railway gun on the back burner and prioritized restoring its firing functionality… Shin felt a sense of unease settle in the back of his mind. When fixing it, would they really exchange the heavy barrel before the legs that supported it…?
Suddenly, the voices of the Legion around them receded like a retreating wave. Before Shin could even question why, the answer became evident. The Morpho looking down at them, on the other side of their locked gazes. Its voice was…
The voices of the Shepherds who served as the Legion’s commanders rang especially clearly, standing out even among a large group. That was how Shin perceived them. And the cries and curses of the Morpho, which drowned out the countless moans of the Legion… Its countless screams of resentment…
…all disappeared.
And at the same time, the same screams swelled up somewhere in the distance. Roars of hatred and murderous intent toward all humankind, toward the world itself. The blind, enraged voice of his blood relative. The knight he’d never met in his lifetime.
A new RAID user joined their Sensory Resonance. The desperate scream of the girl who had not joined them for this mission echoed in his ears.
“Get down, Shinei!”
It was Frederica, whom they had left behind at the base.
“That thing you’re looking at right now isn’t Kiri anymore!”
The moment he understood, a shiver ran up Shin’s spine.
We’ve been tricked.
Shin turned his gaze, feeling a pair of frozen black eyes open slowly and fix on them. Tracing that stare, Shin zoomed his main screen onto a single point: a thin gap between two buildings. An elongated shadow leaned against a steel pylon bending under its weight, far in the horizon. It raised its head like some ancient serpent god from the myths of the Far East, aiming the muzzle of its massive gun in their direction.
“All units! Retreat, right n—!”
What appeared to be a muzzle flash—but was, in fact, the flash of an arc discharge—blinded them. The Railgun’s bombardment, fired at a flat trajectory, then leveled an entire section of the city.
<Pale Rider to No Face. Fixed firing schedule complete.>
Kiriya transmitted his report to the Supreme Commander unit from within the new body he’d been transferred to.
<Luring of special hostile element, call sign: Báleygr, successful. Estimate: target eliminated.>
For years, the Shepherds had taken note of this special hostile element capable of sensing their incoming raids, discerning their assault routes, and identifying commander units. At first, it appeared in the Republic’s eastern front, but over the past year, it crossed their territories and moved to the Federacy’s western front.
There were no multiple instances of this element detected; in other words, it didn’t employ any technology or knowledge that could be replicated or transmitted. In all likelihood, it was the unique ability of a lone individual. Its threat level was extremely high, and its removal was set as a priority of maximum level.
Fortunately, Kiriya had faced a mobile unit piloted by this hostile element twice in battle. While he hadn’t gathered sufficient data to make a perfect analysis, it did know enough to make a simple one… Enough to discern a weakness in that hostile element.
<The results of the analysis were correct. Báleygr cannot detect spare units in a state of stasis.>
The hostile element was observed to have a unique fixation with a certain Heavy Tank class. However, it did not react in any way to another unit carrying the same dead person’s data until it activated.
It didn’t notice the Shepherd’s spare unit when it was in a state of stasis, before the destroyed Dinosauria’s brain structure data was loaded onto it.
A command from the Supreme Commander unit returned.
<No Face to Pale Rider. Requesting confirmation of Báleygr´s elimination.>
Kiriya almost felt like scoffing. Yes, it had been a most painful thorn in their sides for the last few months. According to the wide area network kernel’s decision, the large-scale offensive earlier and the resulting extermination would have taken seven days. Kiriya recalled noting the ironic similarity to the story of Genesis. But even that plan was foiled.
The Federacy’s western front saw through what should have been a perfect surprise attack, and the three countries successfully repelled them. The Gran Mur had been penetrated, but just as Kiriya prepared to assist in the conquest of the Republic, he was counterattacked by the Federacy’s cruiser missiles and took severe damage. The fact that they’d seen through his position meant his consciousness couldn’t be transferred to this spare unit, and he’d been forced to tow his damaged body along for a month.
All because this hostile element, with its ability to track their condition, was present within the Federacy.
<Pale Rider to No Face. Request deemed unnecessary. Báleygr has been irrefutably destroyed.>
<…Acknowledged, No Face. Withdraw from firing position immediately and return to assigned sector.>
<Acknowledged.>
His gaze suddenly fell on what remained of the metal pylon he was leaning against. The sturdy pylon was snapped at its base under his weight of over one thousand tons, its remains lying on the ground beneath him.
Kiri.
The now-distant voice of his young mistress surfaced in his mind. He could no longer recall the face of his one and only empress. She would cry when her handkerchief would get caught in the courtyard’s trees, badger him about wanting to see the bird nests resting on their branches, and sneak past the watchful eyes of her attendants to climb the tree, only for her dress to get snagged by the twigs, leaving her stuck up there. Every time, climbing to get her down was his duty.
But he would never do so again.
Not with this mechanical body.
Not in this world without her.
As he turned around to leave, he stopped and turned his back to his former homeland.
He had to hurry and raze this accursed world once and for all…
“Ah…”
They were all speechless for a moment.
“Impact detected near the Kreutzbeck City terminal! It’s presumed to be a bombardment by the Morpho…!”
An uproar that bordered on a scream dominated the information center.
“Impossible!”
“It shouldn’t have been repaired yet! How did it fire?!”
“…No…”
Everyone’s eyes gathered on the chief of staff, who whispered suddenly. He spoke, his sharp chin propped on his arms and his gaze fixed on the main screen, which was currently covered with alert messages.
“If it wasn’t repaired, but exchanged… If they prepared a spare unit from the very beginning, it’s possible. Given its size, transferring its core to a spare unit would be faster than exchanging its damaged parts one by one.”
One would have to disregard the tremendous cost it would take to manufacture two railguns and two railway guns. But the Legion weren’t human, and weighed against their prime directive to eliminate their enemy, this was a trifling matter.
“How absurd can these scrap-metal bastards get…?!”
“What’s the Nordlicht squadron’s status?”
“Unknown. The United Kingdom’s observation drones were all destroyed in the bombardment just now.”
Observational data from Kreutzbeck City’s vicinity arrived in delay, rife with noise and peppered with SIGNAL LOST notifications.
“We have to deploy the cruiser missiles—”
“There’s no point.”
Everyone’s eyes converged on Ernst.
“Where are we supposed to fire the missiles? Do we even know what position the Morpho fired from?”
The officers who realized the reason behind that question grimaced. When the bases were attacked, surrounding radar sites perceived the bombardments’ trajectories and calculated them backward to discern the firing position. But this bombardment was in the middle of enemy territory, and there were no radar sites nearby. They didn’t know the enemy’s position, so counterattacking was pointless.
“B-but, Your Excellency, the enemy is a railway gunner! If we destroy its rails, we’ll at least be able to restrict its movements—”
“But it’ll still be capable of shooting down the majority of the bases on the western front, won’t it? And besides, those are just rails; they’d be repaired in no time. There’s no point in firing the missiles.”
“But now that the Nordlicht squadron failed, we don’t have any other plans! The entire western front’s exposed right now; we have to break this deadlock somehow…!”
“What would enduring a bit longer this time give us? What will we do, send another unit at it? This time without any chance of opening a way back for them?”
“Tch…”
The handful of cruiser missiles they’d scraped together was meant as both a fail-safe in case the operation fell through and a way out for the strike force in case the Federacy’s army failed to reach Kreutzbeck City. So that even if they didn’t get there in time to help the strike force, they could at least whittle down the number of Legion standing in their escape route. To at least not tell these child soldiers they’d sent to their deaths that they weren’t allowed to return…
Looking around the information center, Ernst smiled.
“Did you think I would allow you to do something as shameful as abandoning soldiers we’ve sent out to enemy territory and trash our plan just for fear of your own lives? That I, the Federacy’s stand-in president and supreme commander of its military, would allow that? That doesn’t coincide with the Federacy’s ideals. And if we can’t protect and abide by that, we may as well be destroyed here and now.”
Silence settled over the information center. The president’s words rang true. Yes, those were the ideals a person should live by. Justice at its finest. But sticking by them…to execute the orders as they were was far too…
The firedrake smiled, seated on the commander’s seat. This irrational monster, capable of trampling human life in the name of those slogans, of ideals that should be nothing but lip service, laughed as it made a show of the madness inhabiting it.
“That’s your responsibility, since you’re the ones who chose me as your president time and again. If you say we have no other way but to go against humane values…you will have to die, embracing my ideals.”
The intercom’s message notification rang out. The chief of staff took the call in place of the communications personnel, who sat there stupefied.
“…Looks like we won’t have to do that after all. We just got a report from the 1,028th control room. All of the Nordlicht squadron’s units are intact. They’re proceeding with the Morpho’s elimination operation.”
The warning arriving just barely on time, them being in the city center, and there being plenty of relatively sturdy buildings to shield the Juggernauts were all deciding factors in their survival. The shock waves still sent Undertaker flying and landing on its back. Shin shook his head dizzily as he got the unit to its feet. He was in the ruins of the city, with the white of concrete filling his field of vision; the buildings caved in, and the pavement was blown to pieces.
Having been exposed to concentrated fire, the old high-speed-railway terminal was quite literally gone without a trace. A piece of metallic wreckage lay at the corner of the crater, spouting silver micromachine blood.
A decoy…
And it wasn’t one of the Legion’s stupid wooden dolls, either. Using their advanced artificial intelligence and learning capabilities, they constantly adapted to humankind’s weaponry and tactics. And then there were the Shepherds, who carried copies of undamaged human brain structures and possessed an intelligence and knowledge equal to what they’d had when they were still alive.
Still, this was the first time Shin’s ability to hear the ghosts’ voices was used against him like this.
Shin narrowed his eyes, glaring at the massive shadow that had just bombarded them from atop the pylon.
“What the hell is that buggy bastard…?!”
“If anything, it’s a centipede. It’s got long legs, and they’re kind of wiggly.”
“I don’t care what it is… It’s creepy.”
Yes, it did resemble some carnivorous arthropod. It had a black, serpentine frame. Its countless segmented legs were now folded into its torso. The barrel of its staggeringly large 800 mm caliber turret was long, so as to grant its shells their initial velocity of eight thousand meters per second. It had the disgusting, eerie artificiality of a slaughter bug driven not by intelligence or will, but by murderous instinct alone. The physical manifestation of the cruel heartlessness inherent to artillery—the weapon that claimed the greatest number of lives despite never bearing witness to anyone’s death.
Under the silver-stained sky, beneath the darkened dawn’s light, this ebony giant towered over the ruins. The unrealistic, foreign majesty of its single blue eye truly did invoke the image of an evil dragon capable of challenging the gods.
The blue optical sensor scanned over the ruins slowly, seeming not to notice them as they hid between the buildings. It haughtily surveyed the destruction it wrought, confident that it had annihilated its targets.
“…All units.”
All fifteen squad members were still connected to the Para-RAID. Some units had taken damage from the scattered shards of rock and the shock waves, but no one had died. All were still capable of fighting.
“Change of target. Direction 280, distance 5,000. High-explosive anti-tank warheads—fire.”
At that moment, a line of fire concentrated on the Morpho from between the buildings tilting toward the crater’s bedrock. Ignoring all rules of artillery theory that dictated one must move after firing to avoid counterattack, the Morpho remained seated on its throne atop the pylon as the 88 mm rounds blanketed it. They were slower than high-speed anti-tank rounds but still achieved a speed several times faster than the speed of sound—it took the HEATs only mere seconds to traverse the five kilometers to their target.
Something lit up on the Morpho’s rear, and simultaneously its close-range defense systems kicked into action, its machine guns roaring as they mowed down the 88 mm rounds. Anju fired her missiles a moment later, but the Morpho calmly allowed its upper armor to absorb the blast of their smaller bombs, without a single one penetrating it…
Shin calmly noted to himself that it was tougher than he’d thought as he squeezed the trigger. The rest of the squad slowly closed in on its front, from the brink of the city ruins. Using the smoke screen generated from the HEATs and the anti-tank rounds, more high-speed piercing rounds soared through the sky, impacting near the base of the Morpho’s turret. As the flames of the explosion blinded its sensors, the massive dragon seemed to stagger back lightly.
“…Too shallow.”
It still wasn’t enough to penetrate its armor. Most of a high-speed armor-piercing round’s power stemmed from its velocity, so the closer it fired from, the greater its penetrating power became. That was why they drew closer to it, but even this distance wasn’t enough. And if they moved in any closer, there wouldn’t be any cover to shield them from its line of fire. Shin’s eyes sharpened as he wondered how to diminish the distance any farther.
…?!
Just as he thought he had shrugged off the peashooter rounds the surviving insects pelted him with, the sudden impact rattled Kiriya’s body, startling him. He swerved his optical sensor, his gaze landing on a pearly-white shadow approaching him with surprising speed. The blurry shadow of a pure-white, four-legged, headless skeletal spider, creeping in search of its lost head, bearing an 88 mm cannon on its back.
Both of its grappling arms were equipped with high-frequency blades. Even Kiriya realized how unusual of a weapon that was for a Feldreß. On a battlefield where firearms reigned supreme, brandishing a sword and wielding close-range equipment bordered on suicidal madness.
It was Báleygr, the special hostile element with the ability to observe all of the Legion’s movements.
And when he saw its personal mark, Kiriya felt his nonexistent breath catch in the throat he didn’t have. A headless skeleton carrying a shovel. A headless skeletal knight was the crest of the Nouzen line’s founder. And the family head had once sent the picture book themed after his story…to his grandchildren, born in the Republic.
It can’t be.
Is he…?
Ah.
A dark elation the likes of which he never knew surged up from within Kiriya.
He was alive… No…
He had somehow survived in that state.
A communication arrived from the Supreme Commander unit.
<No Face to Pale Rider. Entrust handling of the enemy unit to your assigned forces and retreat immediately.>
Kiriya was filled with disappointment at this hindering order.
What is he saying…?!
<Pale Rider to No Face. Cannot comply with given order. Hostile element must be dealt with immediately.>
<No Face to Pale Rider. I repeat. Entrust handling of the enemy unit to your assigned forces and retreat immediately. Your presence in this combat sector cannot be approved.>
How stupid…!
But contrary to Kiriya’s flaring anger, order-violation warning alerts flickered in his liquid micromachine mind. The programming hardwired into him strictly prohibited him from arguing any further. Even Shepherds, who carried the minds and personalities of the war victims, couldn’t refuse an order from a Superior Commander unit.
<At your current relative distance to them, you are at a disadvantage against their tank turrets: their main armament. In addition, with your current equipment, there is a high probability you will kill Báleygr. Due to the aforementioned reasons, further combat in this area cannot be approved.>
<…>
<Return to appointed sector is mandatory. Fall back and attack the designated sector.>
<………Acknowledged.>
His Legion instincts forbade him from giving any other response. But…even that may have been a good omen for his desire to burn the world to the ground. He spared a final glance toward the rubble, to his kin whose face he never knew. He had lost his homeland, had it steal away his family, and yet he lived on, pathetically.
Even though you’re the same.
The same as me. Even though you have nowhere to go but to the field of battle.
…I’ll show you.
Unwinding his body, he leaped off the pylon. Landing on the rails, which creaked under his massive weight, he paid one final glance to his kin, whose face and name he had never known in his lifetime.
Come after me.
I’ll burn it all to the ground. The comrades who follow you, the land you mean to return to, everything that makes you human.
Let your solitude consume you.
It turned a glance toward him, and Shin, his senses sharpened from the adrenaline, could feel the cold smile contained in that gesture.
Come after me.
Tearing its gaze from him, the Morpho writhed its many segmented legs and drove its massive form forward with the sudden acceleration unique to the Legion. The bizarre metallic sounds of its segmented legs moving along the eight-track railway spread out like the pattering of rain, and it rapidly widened the distance from Shin, quickly gaining the speed of a falcon pursuing its prey. Moving at a speed unmatched even by the Löwe and the Dinosauria, like the high-speed train itself, the sinister shadow slithered away from the city ruins.
You’re not getting away.
But at the moment he narrowed his eyes and prepared to push down the control sticks…
“—Shin!”
…Raiden’s voice burst in, bringing him to his senses as if his consciousness had been yanked back by the collar. The noises that had disappeared suddenly returned to him. The Legion’s moans and lamentations. The growling of his Juggernaut’s power pack and actuator. The reports and instructions exchanged by his squad mates over the Sensory Resonance. The familiar tumult of the battlefield.
The guarding Legion forces who scattered off to avoid the Morpho’s bombardment returned, and Shin could hear the voices of the other Legion nearby beginning to approach the area as well. He suddenly realized that if they didn’t respond somehow, they’d be surrounded.
“What do we do? Do we go after it?”
The Nordlicht squadron’s specified objective was to eliminate the Morpho occupying Kreutzbeck City. Neither the squadron nor the western front’s army predicted they would have to advance any deeper into Legion territory.
“…Yeah, we keep going.”
“What, are you insane?!”
Raiden nodded silently, but in his stead, Bernholdt—Shin’s aide and the most senior sergeant in the squad—cut into Shin’s words, abiding by his role and position.
“The operation’s objective is eliminating the Morpho, not to suppress this city.”
A momentary silence fell between them, disturbed only by the sound of Bernholdt punching his console, which Shin heard through the Resonance.
“God dammit! Everyone’s been holding out because they were expecting the main force to arrive! Why are you Eighty-Six so keen on throwing your damn lives away for a country that isn’t even your homeland?!”
That wasn’t really it. They weren’t doing it for this country or for its army.
The only reason we fight…is for ourselves.
“Fucking hell, the moment I started working under you is the moment I ran out of luck! Talk about pulling the short straw… All right, boys, all units, turn around!”
Under Bernholdt’s order, the mercenaries turned their ten units’ course, facing the direction the ghosts’ voices were approaching from straight on.
“Rejoice, boys! The hell you all love so much is headed our way!”
Even the Eighty-Six, who made the battlefield their home just like the Vargus did, had trouble understanding this roundabout method of encouragement. It was equal parts despair, but their war cries did indeed echo loudly as they disappeared beyond the high-rises.
Bernholdt’s unit alone stayed behind, its optical sensor turned their way.
“We’ll take over here. You guys go on ahead! It pisses me off to admit it, but we can’t keep up with your crazy mobility.”
The majority may have been in their late teens, just like the Eighty-Six. They may have had ten more years of military experience, but the mercenaries spent most of their service piloting heavily armored Vánagandrs. They lacked the experience in high-speed battle and intuition the Eighty-Six had gained from overusing an ultra-light Feldreß.
“I’d rather die than end up slowing a bunch of brats down… Good luck out there!”
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