A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 21

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “This is a lot worse than awful…If they fire a nuclear weapon at a target so high up…!!”

  “Based on the Nu-AD1967’s explosion magnitude, there is an extremely high probability that the fallout produced by attacking the floating fortress will not end in the skies, but rather be engulfed into layers of airflow, thus polluting the entire planet, says Misaka, reporting on the network’s simulated result. It is predicted that the radioactive matter will adversely affect life, and the fallout will block out the sunlight, drastically altering Earth’s environment and causing intense food shortages due to poor plant growth conditions, says Misaka with concern.”

  The risk of fallout always existed, even for nuclear explosions that carried over the surface.

  If one to ten thousand meters were added onto that, the level of resulting fallout would be immeasurable.

  “You said they were preparing a mobile launcher, right? Do you know exactly where it is?”

  “A rough position, yes. But in order to avoid damage from the nuclear explosion, they are trying to fire the missile from a spot over seventy kilometers from our current location, adds Misaka.”

  “Hmm.”

  Mikoto looked around, then gestured with her jaw to one place.

  It was a group of Academy City vehicles. Many tanks and armored cars, transporting several powered suits, were even now on the move and firing their artillery.

  “…Let’s just steal one of them or something. You know how to drive a car?”

  St. George’s Cathedral.

  Stiyl Magnus was running through its basement. Not through a room somewhere—through a long passage made of stone. St. George’s Cathedral had escape routes that went on for miles, centered on the building, like a spiderweb. Real ones, fake ones, trapped ones, detours for getting surrounded in the passages, and so on—their uses and importance were many and varied.

  Footsteps were approaching from behind.

  Strange footsteps. The number of them didn’t match the distance.

  I can’t afford to keep running forever.

  Stiyl ground his teeth.

  If I give her calculation abilities any room to breathe, that by itself gives Fiamma an easy way to use her!!

  A moment later.

  “Chapter fifteen, verse four. Cutting off hostile’s escape route and commencing certain disposition.”

  Wh-whmm!! The entire space around them shook.

  By the time he’d noticed it, the underground passage in front of Stiyl collapsed as though crushed by the hand of a giant.

  Stiyl whipped back around.

  Two eyes, shining, deep in the darkness.

  Three more white lights hovered near Index as well.

  “Chapter seventeen, verse thirty-three. Confirmed distinctive Norse mythology features from hostile. Replicating the sword of the god of fertility as a countermeasure. Immediately executing.”

  Vwoom!! The three white lights shot forth.

  “Gah!!”

  Stiyl produced a sword of flames right away, but the three lights suddenly switched from their straight-line trajectories to moving like slippery, living creatures, worming their way around Stiyl’s sword of flames.

  Freyr’s sword…?!

  Weapons that freely danced in the air and ended enemies’ lives without fail appeared often in many myths around the world, not just Norse mythology. The sword of Freyr, god of fertility, was a perfect example. The legend went that if someone wise possessed it, it would fight on its own, bringing absolute victory to its owner.

  In ancient Norse religion, both gods and humans could possibly be defeated or die. Nevertheless, in all the legends, not one had ever depicted Freyr’s sword losing.

  It was that level of myth.

  That level of destructive power.

  They went through the gaps in his defense—his sword of flames—and Stiyl, with the swords’ tips now pointed at his throat, shouted:

  “Innocentius!!”

  He no longer cared about the damage to himself.

  A fiery titan appeared a moment later, parrying the three floating swords even as the burst of hot wind blew Stiyl, its user, directly backward.

  His back collided with the collapsed wall blocking the passage.

  A tiny bit of spare time.

  But that wouldn’t be enough to turn it around.

  “Chapter twenty, verse nine. Distorted Crossist motif confirmed. Beginning construction of optimal spell for use against the aforementioned spell. Activation preparations complete for spell name Eli Eli Lema Sabachthani. Executing at once.”

  A giant magic circle appeared in midair, centered on Index’s face, and from it fired dark-red rays of light.

  They easily tore Innocentius apart, dispersed it, shot right past Stiyl, and gouged a huge hole in the mountain of debris.

  “…I see,” said Stiyl, putting a hand on the wall and barely managing to stand up on his own two feet. “I’m up against the 103,000 grimoires. It only makes sense a mere single Innocentius couldn’t compete with it.

  “However,” he added.

  “I never said I only had one trump card.”

  Boom!! came an explosion.

  Next to Stiyl was a fiery titan.

  But not just on one side of him.

  One Innocentius now reigned at both his right and left.

  “Double.”

  For a short time, Index closely observed the phenomenon.

  Eventually, eyes still emotionless, she spoke.

  “Chapter twenty-one, verse forty-four. Commencing construction of countermeasure against multiple targets. Executing—”

  And then it happened.

  “Triple.”

  Boom!! Another burst went off.

  Index’s words stopped abruptly. It seemed to be considering whether the command she was about to execute would obstruct her.

  Stiyl knew he had expended a large amount of mana—and thus the life force it was created from. But even as the greasy sweat broke out, he grinned.

  “You didn’t think…that I’d leave my abilities to rot after feeling so powerless back then, did you?”

  Of course, Stiyl couldn’t always use three Innocentiuses with his power alone. No matter how new the spell designs, there was a line that you couldn’t cross on just your own strength. And Stiyl hadn’t yet overcome that wall.

  Instead, he made up for what he lacked with the Soul Arms in St. George’s Cathedral.

  He’d been running away this entire time so he could find the items he needed, retrieve them, and use them.

  But the library of grimoires didn’t stop.

  She continued her purely methodical analysis.

  “Chapter twenty-three, verse eleven. Confirmed three-in-one structure. Identified target spell as serving a single role as three, aiming to conserve mana expenditure by circulating mana between three bodies.”

  Voom!! Served by her three swords of the fertility god around her, backed by her protruding bloodred wings, and eyes glittering with the eerie light of magic circles within them, Index said:

  “There is but one countermeasure. Concluding that a focused attack on one of the three will cause the three-in-one structure to collapse.”

  They’d found it.

  After parting with Acqua and going farther through the snowfield, Hamazura and Takitsubo were now hidden behind some conifer trunks, only their heads poking out so they could keep watch on a spot a short distance away. About fifty meters from them was a slightly moving figure. It was a soldier, dressed in a white combat uniform, slightly different in design from normal military uniforms, and armed with an assault rifle.

  He seemed to be a lookout.

  Farther ahead was the foot of a small mountain. Three large tanker trucks were parked there. Several other smaller vehicles were gathered there, too. Nearby, several men were carrying out some sort of work, even now.

  There was an object that looked like a pole, about five meters high.

  More than one, in fact. The men had
put over ten poles in the ground, evenly separated, and now they were about to connect big hoses coming from the tankers to them.

  “Is that the Steam Dispenser…?” murmured Hamazura, still hidden.

  Next to him, Takitsubo nodded. “The tankers might be for the heat-retaining gel. I wonder if those poles are atomizers.”

  The soldier on lookout turned his head their way; Hamazura and Takitsubo quickly pulled their heads back behind the trees.

  Hamazura took out his cell phone and contacted Grickin.

  If they could just figure out the conditions regarding the settlement, the Steam Dispenser, and the wind direction, he could calculate where they should flee.

  However.

  If this unit actually sprayed the stuff, nothing guaranteed that he’d be able to keep casualties to zero.

  After hanging up and observing what was in front of them, he saw that almost ten lookouts had spread out, essentially in a giant circle with the work site at the foot of the mountain in the center. They seemed to be slowly patrolling a certain area rather than standing still in one place. Even so, Hamazura and Takitsubo wouldn’t be able to slip past them to get close to the tankers in the middle. If they did worm through a blind spot and move in, the lookouts were sure to spot their footprints in the snow after circling back on their patrol routes.

  Hamazura became ever more conscious of the assault rifle, now cold, in his hands.

  …Can’t win with this much of a numbers difference. And besides, they’re pro soldiers. I couldn’t even do anything in a one-on-one shoot-out. Once the first gunshot goes off, it’s all over.

  But they didn’t have time to stand here watching in silence. Preparations to spray the bacteriological weapon were continuing, sure and steady, even now. The end of those preparations would come with them going with the absolute worst choice. He had to finish things before that happened.

  Despite the freezing blizzard, Hamazura was sweating nervously—but then Takitsubo said something unexpected.

  “…Hamazura, we should wait for them to leave.”

  “What?”

  Hamazura frowned. At this rate, the Russian agents would use the bioweapon. And if that happened, the settlement where Digurv and the others were was done for…

  “Hamazura, the report said something. The bacteria wall used by the Kremlin Report is the kind that spreads through the air. It can get into your body not only through your lungs, but your skin, too. It also breaks down oils, and since it will create holes in the filters used for masks and ducts for biochemical weapons, no standard defensive measures will work.”

  “So what? Isn’t that exactly why we have to prevent them from spraying something that dangerous?” asked Hamazura.

  Takitsubo pointed to the team of agents still doing their work on the white snowfield. “How are they going to escape the bacteria?”

  “Huh…?”

  “Masks and thick suits won’t work. Even if they climb inside a cutting-edge tank, it’s no use. So as soon as the soldiers deploy the curtain of bacteria, it’ll get them, too.”

  Now that she mentioned it, that was true.

  And when he looked at them again, he saw that the lookout soldiers weren’t wearing any kind of crazy masks—despite handling a dangerous bioweapon.

  “Hamazura. I think they’ll set it on a timer. Once they set up the Steam Dispenser and the bacteria, they’ll hurry to get somewhere safe. They have to, since you can’t rely on masks or suits. But if they do…”

  “I get it. We don’t have to fight them recklessly. There will be some time after the team leaves but before the timer hits zero. If we use that time to get near the Steam Dispenser and disable it, we can stop the weapon from activating!!”

  “But the window to make our attempt probably won’t be that long. The team will probably set the time limit to deploy the bacteria wall as quickly as possible while still assuring their own safety. And with a machine that large, I doubt we have time to destroy the whole thing. We should probably look for a weak spot.”

  Their on-hand weapons consisted of a handgun and an assault rifle. Not suitable for blowing anything up. The fuel tanks of the tankers and other vehicles were probably filled with gasoline, so if they were going to use anything, it would probably need to be that.

  The device’s broad construction comprised almost ten Steam Dispenser poles and three tank trucks. Several of the slender vehicles apart from that would be for the work as well.

  Frankly speaking, it would be easy to use those fuel tanks to blow up one or two of them.

  But the flames, smoke, and heat produced from that would hinder them from doing any further work. The heated winds would be like a wall; even if they didn’t enter the fire zone directly, one shift in the wind direction, and they’d be burned to a crisp, from skin to lungs. To make sure they blew up all the vehicles serving as part of the mechanism, they would need calculations on the level of building deconstruction work. Obviously, they didn’t have that sort of free time right now.

  A weak point, then.

  If they could find one weak point, like Takitsubo said, something that would stop the entire device when destroyed by itself, they’d be able to avoid this sort of problem.

  Hamazura narrowed his eyes, staring past the blizzard, then eventually murmured, “…There’s a generator car.”

  “?”

  “The armored car to the right of the tankers. See those thick power cables going to it? There’s gotta be a generator inside there. Kinuhata once made me watch a military C movie, and in one part of it, they were saying how they were making progress on getting recent military supplies to run on electricity, starting with targeting devices. It’d apparently be useful for a lot of stuff, like night vision or getting help from UAVs, but they said the problem was that the battery would drain really frequently. So then they needed to set up charging stations in the desert, or jungle, or wherever the battlefield was.”

  “But it’s an armored car on the outside. We won’t be able to blow it up so easily. It might be a different story if we can get inside it, but if the team locks the hatch before they leave, we won’t be able to pry it open, will we…?”

  “We don’t need to blow it up.”

  Hamazura lowered himself to Takitsubo’s height, then directed her gaze to the armored car’s rear.

  “You see those three exhaust pipes sticking out right above the generator car’s rear end? That’s too many just for an armored car engine. I think maybe its core is a diesel generator. Our goal is to stop electricity from getting sent to the entire Steam Dispenser setup from the generator car. All we have to do is stop that generator.”

  “?”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s gasoline or diesel, or a car engine or a generator—they basically all work the same on the inside. If you stuff dirt or something into an internal combustion engine’s exhaust pipe, it’ll break down. Anti-Skill was starting to use these gel bazooka things so they could force runaway cars’ engines to stall.”

  “What if it’s all a giant lithium-ion battery?”

  “Then we’ll cut through all the cables coming from the generator car. I’d be afraid of getting electrocuted, though, so I’d want to avoid that if possible.”

  Then Takitsubo’s small hand tugged on his clothes.

  There was movement among the working team through the blizzard. They’d been hurriedly running back and forth through the installment before, but now, after contacting someone else on a radio, they were getting into small vehicles, one after another.

  “Hamazura.”

  “I got it.”

  Once the team left the site, they’d quickly approach the Steam Dispenser devices and launch an attack on the generator car’s exhaust pipes. There was little time. In the worst case, the time limit might be over within minutes. Not knowing precisely how much time was left exacerbated their impatience.

  But that didn’t mean they could afford to mess up now.

  They couldn’t beat those soldiers
in a fight. Which meant they couldn’t afford to be spotted. They had to prevent them from getting even a glimpse until they’d completely left the area.

  Hamazura and Takitsubo kept themselves low in the trees and held their breath.

  …Will this work? thought Hamazura, aware of his own pulse more than he needed to be.

  They already knew the lengths to which these soldiers would go. He couldn’t discount the possibility they’d set up land mines or something around here, either. He’d learned they’d use cowardly traps like that openly back in Digurv’s settlement.

  The sounds of several engines starting up overlapped.

  The team was about to leave.

  He would know if there were traps if he followed the cars’ movements. At the very least, they wouldn’t be dumb enough to set up land mines along the route they took. Still hunched over, Hamazura peeled his eyes and focused his mind. He didn’t know how long the car tracks would remain in this blizzard. He would have to fully memorize the safe route.

  And then.

  Something happened that he hadn’t expected.

  Baaaang!! A gunshot rang out.

  The snow right next to Hamazura leaped. When he realized a rifle bullet had struck that spot, he crouched down in a panic. But he didn’t make it. He knew far too well what situation they were in now.

  “Shit. They noticed us!!”

  The vehicles about to leave the area suddenly hit the brakes. Several doors opened, and heavily armed soldiers came pouring out. He knew from the start he couldn’t pull off a win against them. In a straight-up shoot-out, both in quantity and quality, Hamazura and Takitsubo were at a severe disadvantage.

  In that instant, the only plan he could immediately come up with was this:

  No matter what, he had to get Takitsubo out of here.

  Removing the safety on the assault rifle in his hands, trying desperately to control his unconsciously shallow breathing, he steeled his resolve.

  But what exactly would he do?

  Sweat crept down the hand holding the grip. An awful blank came into his head. And as he stood there in incredible tension, he heard a high-pitched whistling.

  He looked straight up.

  In the sky—something slowly flying.

  An Academy City…supersonic bomber?!