86 - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.5

INTERLUDE

THE KING OF SPADES AND QUEEN OF HEARTS’S INTERMINABLE, ALL TOO TRIVIAL DISPUTE

<<Why are you here, Serpent? Hasn’t your next operation begun?>>

“That’s quite the greeting, Zelene.”

Zelene had been returned to the Federacy. Sitting in her container within the laboratory, she posed her query to Vika, to which he replied with an indifferent shrug. He offered no real answer, simply regarding her with the thin, venomous smile of a snake.

“Isn’t it about time you started talking to Nouzen the same way you speak to me? That’s your true nature as a Legion unit, after all. Just a few days ago, you were laughing—and he still hadn’t realized exactly how much strain that put on you…”

<< >>

The Legion were killing machines and nothing more. And killing machines wouldn’t normally need to be capable of human speech or emotion. Being a Shepherd, Zelene could remember those things, but the Legion weren’t equipped with the means to replicate those functions.

In truth, even idle chatter put a strain on her that threatened to fry her Liquid Micromachine brain. And still, she didn’t want to interact with Shin using her normal mechanical lexicon. In spite of everything, Shin tried to treat Zelene not as a Legion unit, but as a person. And she didn’t want to meet Shin’s emotions with behavior that proved she was nothing more than another mindless killing machine.

Because that fact would likely cause that sweet, troubled child great pain.

<<…What do you require of me?>>

Vika shrugged again, electing not to pursue the topic further.

“You mentioned a ‘Morpho unit number four,’ which was to serve as the vanguard of the second large-scale offensive. We’ve encountered a model that corresponds to that description in the Fleet Countries. A unit for naval combat, equipped with a railgun. A battleship, or rather, an amphibious assault ship.”

For a moment, Zelene remained silent. She’d posited that mass-produced Morpho units could be under construction, but…a battleship? In the Fleet Countries?

<<Unknown. Beyond the bounds of this unit’s jurisdiction. Data regarding each area’s command bases and the construction of experimental prototype units is only known to the commander units of each combat area.>>

“That makes sense, yes. In order to keep confidential information under wraps, the information isn’t relayed to any unit except for the ones in charge of it.”

<<Moreover…it is baffling.>>

“I agree.”

The external camera reflected the faint glow in Vika’s Imperial violet eyes.

“What I wanted to confirm with you is that this battleship Legion’s control core had the neural networks of other people added to its Shepherd, as an external database. Even as a method of improving the Legion, this is indeed an unusual choice. They could have simply exchanged the old Shepherd for a new one.”

The Legion were killing machines. A unit’s central processor was nothing more than a component. There was no way that exchanging it, if need be, wasn’t an option.

“On top of that, there’s the High Mobility type. You said that it’d been developed as part of the research on artificial intelligence. And you also said…that we’d given it an interesting name.”

Phönix. The immortal bird that immolated its body when on the verge of death, only to be reborn from its own ashes.

“Eternal life is the Phönix’s primary feature. It was a product of research on the immortalization of artificial intelligence. The Legion can be mass-produced, but there are units that cannot be replaced. The purpose of the research was to find a way for those units to stay alive in perpetuity. In other words, this is a draft for the immortalization of Shepherds.”

And the fact that the Shepherds seek immortality over substitution… The fact that they insist on connecting new neural networks instead of replacing them altogether means…

“The current Shepherds are doggedly pursuing the preservation of their personalities or—if I’m allowed to be so uncharacteristically poetic—their own survival, aren’t they? It’s almost as if they…”

…feared death—just like the frail, weak humans the Shepherds had been in life.

“Mass-producing the Phönix and bringing the Noctiluca into the fold. It makes no sense in the scope of reinforcing the Shepherds.”

That was the consensus among the western front’s officers following the Strike Package’s report. As Major General Altner stated this, Willem—the chief of staff—and Grethe, who had returned to base to command the three-pronged operation, each nodded. They were all in the western front’s integrated headquarters, in the chief of staff’s room.

“Using the Phönix to gather the heads of commanders is one thing. But loading them onto an amphibious assault ship as infantry units? That kind of application makes no sense. Grauwolf would have been enough— No, Grauwolf would have actually been the better choice.”

The Phönix focused on speed to the point where it discarded live weaponry and heavy armor, which was a fatal flaw from Richard’s perspective. Modern warfare featured cannons with effective ranges as short as several dozen kilometers and as far as a hundred kilometers.

The Phönix, which only had melee weapons, was helpless in the face of an artillery barrage unless it crossed great distances under lethal fire. Its relative agility and optical camouflage were entirely meaningless when confronting the range and effective radius of high explosives.

Even when it had successfully drawn closer to the Strike Package and their Queen, they were capable of establishing effective countermeasures to defeating it. And as a matter of fact, it had repeatedly lost to Undertaker, which was optimized for melee combat but, unlike it, was a manned unit.

The Phönix didn’t produce any results that should encourage the Legion to mass-produce it. And yet they still chose to do it.

“For starters, the Noctiluca is a strange concept in and of itself. They’d likely intended to introduce it against the Fleet Countries or in their fight against the United Kingdom. But the former wasn’t an opponent they’d need the element of surprise to defeat. They could have just suffocated them with their existing forces until they died out.”

As Grethe spoke, she rested her cheek against her hand and waved the other one dismissively. She didn’t like the ruthlessness of this topic, but she wouldn’t have reached the rank of colonel if she didn’t realize that such unfeeling pragmatism was necessary at times.

“And the United Kingdom doesn’t make sense as an opponent, either. They’re a northern country, their climate is too cold, and their population is relatively small. Most of all, their terrain is full of cliffs that should be impossible for the Noctiluca to cross. All this would mean is that if the Legion brought the Noctiluca there, it’d only end up on battlefields where it wouldn’t be useful.”

“But the fact remains that it has a level of firepower we can’t ignore. It reeks of a diversion. We should probably assume they have some kind of angle. Still, as obvious of a decoy as it is, we have to handle it. Irritating though it may be,” Willem continued, clearly frustrated.

This was surprisingly candid coming from him. He hated nothing more than to have his emotions read, and he only ever showed this kind of honesty in the face of people like Richard and Grethe, who had known him for many years.

“I think the Legion’s true objective was in the Mirage Spire base,” Richard said. “There was no real reason to build it over the sea. Be it a production plant or a command post, they could have built it on land. As Prince Viktor aptly put, it’s a waste of resources. And that’s exactly why—”

“The Legion must have had some reason that forced them to build a sea base, you say… What do you think, Grethe?” Willem directed the conversation to her.

“We don’t have enough information to form a hypothesis, sir. Except… Well. I think they placed a significant amount of importance on making a base that was hard to find. We’re keeping a watchful eye over their land territories. But since they hadn’t developed any known naval units, coupled with the fact that there were no known Legion battles that took place underwater, we would have never thought to look for them out at sea.”

Richard regarded her words with a “hmm.” The reasoning checked out and matched the additional information they’d received from the Holy Theocracy during the expedition there—of the clearly unnatural trends among the Legion in their territory. The Legion’s behavior, and perhaps even their objective, seemed to be a perfect match.

It was as if they were trying to divert humanity’s attention away from something until the right time—perhaps from some kind of facility being constructed or its purpose.

“Willem, is it possible to analyze and accurately reproduce the Mirage Spire’s structure using the Reginleif’s mission recorder?” Grethe asked.

“It’s being worked on, but we don’t have enough image data to create a perfect reproduction,” he replied. “And since the Noctiluca went the extra mile and destroyed its own damn base, we can’t investigate it any further… Though, I think the fact that the Noctiluca decided to wreck the place lends credence to the idea that the Mirage Spire itself was the main goal here.”

“So in the next operation, we’ll have to try gaining the information from their base. And that’s why you’re finally doing what you’ve been avoiding all this time and organizing the old nobility’s private armies into free army regiments.”

During the Age of the Empire, each noble possessed a military force made up of their subordinates and blood relatives. When the Federacy came to be, the influential nobles retained their positions as the top brass. Meanwhile, the revolution had earned the middle class the right to join the military and expand their numbers and influence over the army.

Due to both of these groups’ ulterior motives, the private armies that the high-ranking nobles retained for the sake of protecting their private property had never been organized into the Federacy’s army—despite eleven years of war and countless casualties.

The fact that this private organization was being introduced meant that the Federacy’s army was finally and truly losing its composure. Even though the nobles’ elite unit, which had been incorporated within the Federacy’s military, had yet to do anything of note.

“I’ll say it for the record, but the Free Regiments aren’t regarded favorably…,” Grethe noted. “No matter how many commoner soldiers had to die, the nobles only cared for their power struggles. And so their soldiers learned to pursue merit by any means possible.”

Despite her scathing remark, Willem—who was one such noble—didn’t seem to mind.

“The commoners’ complaints ring hollow. They’re the ones who rejected organizing the private armies into the military because they didn’t want the nobles to have any more martial influence.”

That said, the real reason the private armies’ introduction was put off was because they were waiting for the commoners’ numbers to naturally decrease following their combat against the Legion. A coldhearted reason, Richard pondered, and certainly not one that could be said aloud. The nobles would watch over the Legion War unconcerned as most of the civilian soldiers died in the conflict. And then as the war naturally approached its conclusion, they would provide their private armies to the Federacy’s military as strong, healthy forces, allowing the old nobility to seize control.

This was the nobles’ true goal. They were preparing for conflict among the aristocracy, which would surely break out when the war intensified. During the final days of the Empire, the Imperial court had splintered off into factions, with most people being none the wiser. The Imperial faction, which had the protection of the Imperial royal family as its declared purpose, had been reduced to a disorderly mob with the extinction of the Imperial line.

But there was one faction that sought to install itself as the new Imperial line. A faction that retained its power and influence even now and conspired to overturn the government.

“Archduchess Brantolote thinks herself the queen of the new Imperial line, and indeed, she doesn’t care if any of the commoners die. That’s why they sent out that regiment, Myrmecoleo.”

That was the regiment that had been dispatched to the Holy Theocracy with the Strike Package. Antlion—a monster with the head of a lion and the body of an ant. A pathetic crossbreed of a creature that could hunt its prey down but would never be able to digest it, inevitably starving to death.

…Indeed, a pitiful thing.

“Honestly, you nobles won’t let go of your ancient infighting even with the Empire in ruins.” As Richard squinted in self-deprecation and a hint of melancholy, Grethe’s voice cut into his thoughts. “The long-running antagonism and rivalry between the Onyxes and the Pyropes that’s been going on since the dawn of the Empire… The enemy unit in the Holy Theocracy is suspected to both help the Noctiluca with its repairs and be some kind of new model that’s somehow related to it. You don’t need to gain any information from the Noctiluca, so you’ll probably use that new weapon prototype to destroy it. You can’t let the Pyropes—the Myrmecoleo Regiment—get their hands on any crucial information, can you?”

Richard shrugged. Grethe was right, to an extent. The Noctiluca was of no use for collecting intelligence. Shin had confirmed that much. The Shepherd possessing it wasn’t an Imperial officer. It didn’t have the information they needed the most.

“The Pyropes have their own ulterior motives, just like we do. After all, the 1st Armored Division has Captain Nouzen. He’s under the protection of the temporary president, Ernst Zimmerman. And most importantly, he’s a Nouzen.”

Ernst served as president because he’d led the revolution and was backed by the citizens, but the revolution’s success couldn’t be attributed solely to him. He was a Jet—which was considered a subrace of the Aquila—and a serf. He was backed by the Onyx families, who, under the instructions of their leader, pushed for democracy. That faction included House Altner, Richard’s family; and Willem’s house, Ehrenfried.

And there was the greatest Onyx faction, which, after the war, would likely clash with House Brantolote and the Pyrope families under it in their bid to coronate its archduchess.

The leader of that Onyx faction was House Nouzen.

The Empire’s cursed sword, the black generals. Guardians of House Adel-Adler and offspring of the destroyers.

“They’re the ones who don’t want him to snatch away the credit for brilliantly sinking the Legion’s most powerful unit to date. They wish to impede his and the Eighty-Six’s ability to show the masses any more feats of heroism. This is what the Brantolotes’ vixen and her new dynastic faction are trying to achieve.”