86 - Volume 9 - Chapter Pr

A source of pride. A wish. A bond. A prayer. Or perhaps…a curse.

—FREDERICA ROSENFORT, 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE BATTLEFIELD

PROLOGUE

THE BEAST OF GLUTTONY

<<Plan Schwertwal to all blank sector garrison units.>>

Despite the size of the massive iron shadow, the sound it made as it crawled out of hiding resembled nothing more than the dull clack of bones scraping against one another. It stood at a staggering three hundred meters tall and was easily capable of knocking down entire buildings. Its radar mast pointed proudly at the heavens, its shape reminiscent of a dragon boat’s hornlike figurehead.

With its many legs, it traversed the waves lapping at the shore and the jagged pebbles littering the sand, but the gaping hole in its flank left a blemish on its imposing majesty. Its two 800 mm turrets had their barrels blown off, and its two pairs of silver wings were scorched and tattered.

This was what humanity called the Electromagnetic Gunboat type, the Noctiluca—the Legion’s amphibious assault ship.

With the unsteady gait of a wounded marine mammal, the massive vessel crept out of the waves and dragged itself onto the water’s edge. The Legion had just experienced its first-ever true naval battle, and they challenged humanity’s largest naval power, as weakened as that country may have been. The battle was intense, and the Noctiluca’s body was now severely damaged.

It tottered unevenly over the land, leaving crooked footsteps in its wake, before its legs finally gave way, and it keeled over.

<<Landed on point 087. Further self-propulsion deemed impossible. Requesting assistance.>>

The machine’s howls crossed the gray, hazy air. This land had been discarded and abandoned by humanity long before the Legion War. As such, the enemies of humanity—the Legion—had deployed some forces in very small numbers to this region as well.

And so the Noctiluca’s appeal for assistance was relayed to the Admiral and Weisel units dotting the land.

<<Rescue signal from Plan Schwertwal received. Acknowledged. Deploying forces.>>

One unit answered its call. Like the Noctiluca, it was a prototype unit—an improved, developed form of the existing Legion forces. A model that would remain hidden here in the abandoned region, away from the eyes of humanity, until the day it would be rolled out to combat.

<<Plan Ferdinand to Plan Schwertwal. There is a query that is pending confirmation. —Requesting response.>>

Following that, a question reached it over the airwaves in the mechanical language of the Legion. It was a transmission that had been encrypted several times over—one that would never reach humanity. On the other side of that ashen curtain wavered a massive city-size shadow, large enough to dwarf even the three-hundred-meter-tall amphibious assault ship. And this shadow, too, stirred with the quiet, bone-like rustling unique to the Legion.

<<—Are you capable of integration?>>