by Shouji Gatou
The Mithril man threw a Belgian-made next-generation submachine gun and a magazine of armor-piercing rounds at Kurz, then turned to go. He hurried along a handful of teachers and students still wandering aimlessly around in the ballroom, and also helped up a girl who had fallen.
As Kurz checked the clip with practiced hands and flicked the gun’s selector switch, he shouted into his radio, “Uruz-9, how are things where you are? ...Okay, hold that corridor for three minutes. ...Like I care! Figure it out!” He shut off the radio and barked at Kaname. “What are you doing? Get going already!”
“A-Are you sure?” she asked. “Those robots are super strong, and pretty agile, too...”
Kurz shot her a cynical smile. “I’ve faced them before. Your intel saved my butt, by the way. Now go.”
“Um... fine. Just don’t push it, okay?” Kaname didn’t hesitate a minute longer. She whipped around and ran in the other direction from the kitchen, towards the ballroom exit.
It happened very suddenly. Without any forewarning, the ceiling above her collapsed with a roar. Splinters and dust rained down as a huge object fell—no, landed—in the ballroom. One of the students who hadn’t made it out yet let out a high-pitched scream.
“What the...” Kaname wondered.
The thing straightened swiftly from where it had collapsed the floor beneath, then turned its red head-mounted sensor to scrutinize the face of a nearby girl. Kaname flashed back to that night in the rainy hotel district two months ago, and the scene played in her mind like it was yesterday: the sight of a robot, identical to this one, finishing off the assassin. It could snap a girl like that in half.
“Run! Hurry!” Kaname shouted as she took off in a dash, but the girl didn’t move, most likely paralyzed from shock and fear. She was a girl from the next class over, but Kaname couldn’t remember her name.
The Alastor was heading straight for her. At the same time, it didn’t seem overtly hostile. It looked the girl up and down as she crouched in fear—she was about the same height and build as Kaname—and peered into her face.
Kaname didn’t have time to interrogate the situation. Heedless of the danger, she rushed past the Alastor to knock the girl aside.
“Eek!” the girl squealed.
“I said, ‘run!’” Kaname yelled at her.
The enemy’s black coat rustled as it rotated its upper torso to face her. She could hear the servos buzzing behind its red sensor, suggesting a shift of focus. It was indeed the same kind of robot she had met before... but it looked much bigger now: the thick chest; the burly arms. It made the pro-wrestlers she’d seen up close in arenas look like children.
Intimidated, she took a shaky step back. The robot continued to approach, until its expressionless mask became all she could see. Behind her, Kaname could hear Kurz shouting something. He sounded about twenty meters away, and it occurred to her only a few seconds later that she was standing between him and the enemy. Her body was in the way.
“Kaname, don’t move!” Immediately, she heard a gunshot behind her, and felt a faint breeze pass between her thighs. The Alastor took three or four shots to the right leg and lost its balance. A moment later, she felt her skirt rustle.
Kaname went agape as she realized that Kurz had fired a shot between her legs. She was at once impressed by his aim and mortified by his choice. She wanted to turn around and scream at him, but there was no time for that—though less steady on its feet now, the Alastor was already reaching for her again. The shots to its leg didn’t seem to have done much damage.
She gasped as it grabbed the ribbon on her chest, realizing that it was going to pull her in. Kaname felt all the air wrest from her lungs in the form of a desperate scream.
“Chidori!!” Another gunshot; this time, the bullet hit the Alastor’s left side. She was released from its glare as its head turned sharply to the right.
The shot had come from Sousuke. He had run in from the bow-side entrance, trailed by two allies in fatigues. He fired again and again, one after another, and the bullets continued to hit the Alastor’s left side. Shredded fabric went flying as plastic fragments sparked off of it.
While Kaname yelped at the sight of the bullets hitting so nearby, the robot cast her aside and pointed its left arm straight at Sousuke. Then, it fired its internal rifle—the bullet missed and hit the pillar behind him. The shots it had taken seemed to have affected its targeting sensors, but no more.
The Alastor hunched over and began to move in a zig-zag fashion. Its movements were faster than its massive body seemed capable of.
“Sousuke?!” Kaname cried from where she’d fallen on her backside.
The Alastor closed in on Sousuke, and sliced its hand through the air in a powerful chop. While dodging the blow by a hair, Sousuke readied his gun at hip-level and let loose, at close range, on full automatic. The shots barked out, and the robot’s upper half trembled.
It wasn’t working. The Alastor’s movements were crude, yet nimble, and it was terrifyingly bulletproof. It took a light step with its right foot and then whipped around, causing its coat to unfurl like a whirling umbrella as it threw a back kick like a freight train at Sousuke.
Sousuke immediately brought up his gun to block, but the impact still sent him flying. Kurz charged on past him, unleashing more fury with his submachine gun. The shots hit their mark, but the Alastor rocketed off the floor, jumping higher than any human was capable of. It was almost like a third-generation AS—no, not almost: these things were miniature ASes in every respect. Their maneuverability and power simply weren’t subject to human limitations.
In standard AS terms, the power balance here was like fighting an M9 with four Rk-92 Savages. It would be hard to put it down without suffering heavy losses.
The enemy fired its internal gun. The shot rang out, and one of Sousuke’s allies fell back, having taken the blow square in the chest. He didn’t even manage a scream.
“Don’t rest! Keep firing!” Sousuke cried, casting aside his broken submachine gun and pulling out a pistol. Kurz and the others didn’t hesitate to bathe the Alastor in bullets. Fragments went flying as the bullets plinked off of it, the ricochets shattering tableware all around. Yet, the enemy kept moving, making it impossible to precision-target its joints.
“Dammit!” Sousuke went down on one knee and fired desperately with his pistol. Kurz swapped his submachine gun’s clip and kept shooting. Dodge the opponent’s charge, then strike it from close range—they were like bullfighters, patient and persistent.
Kaname could only hide behind a toppled table, cradling her head.
After taking at least a hundred rounds, at last, the Alastor finally began to slow. Then, a hard shot to a knee joint forced it to the floor. Sousuke and the others fanned out and began to unload mercilessly into their enemy, as if they were putting down a wild beast.
Kaname had seen her share of gunfights in the past, and this one was anything but elegant. The brute force at play here, the way they just soaked it in firepower—it was unsightly. But it wasn’t a sign of weakness, not by any means; the enemy was just so powerful that this was what it took to put it down.
Once the robot had finally stopped moving, Kaname was able to think again, and it was then that she realized that the ballroom had emptied. The students must have all evacuated, including the girl she’d shoved away before. She relaxed in relief—but she was the only one doing so.
“Get away!” Kurz shouted. “It’s going to explode!”
“E-Explode...?” she questioned nervously.
“Chidori! Why are you still here? Run!” Kaname was trying to stand up when Sousuke grabbed her hand and took off, his manner shockingly rough. Kurz and another soldier got on either side of the comrade who’d been shot earlier, helped him to his feet and took off in a panic.
“Get down!” Kurz screamed, and Sousuke pulled Kaname to the ground and covered her. A moment later, the Alastor exploded. Shrapnel blasted holes in the walls, the ceiling, and the light fixtures
, and Kaname felt a dull pain in her eardrums as the shockwave slammed through her skull. Smoke hung in the air afterwards; the sprinkler system activated and began to rain down on them.
“Were you hurt, Chidori?” Sousuke asked her anxiously.
“Mm,” she managed at last. “You’re crushing me.”
“Sorry.” Sousuke pulled himself off of Kaname and helped her into a sitting position. Water dripped from her bangs as the sprinklers showered down. “Can you stand?”
“Yeah... thanks,” Kaname affirmed. She made an attempt, but it was hard, with her knees trembling like this. As Sousuke silently helped her, she could smell his sweat. “Is Kurz okay?!”
“Yeah,” he told her. “Howard is alive, too. The body armor stopped the shot... though he might have some cracked ribs.”
“I... I’m fine, Sergeant,” said the ally who took the shot before. Beyond the clearing smoke, she could see someone standing up and coughing. From the kitchen came a sound of dishes crashing to the floor. It was followed by the faint stomp of heavy footsteps. Multiple sets of them. Two people, maybe three—
“Reinforcements, huh?” Kurz commented.
“No need to have a shootout in a wide-open space like this,” Sousuke urged. “Let’s get out of here. Contact the lieutenant. Chidori, can you run?”
“Y-Yeah...”
The group ran from the ballroom in a hurry, tearing down the corridor that led to the aft. There was no sign of enemy pursuit, but Sousuke and the others stayed alert in every direction—even up. The enemy could appear from literally anywhere.
They could hear the sound of continued gunfire in the distance; the other teams must be fighting. “They’re tough,” Sousuke said, continuing to walk swiftly.
“Right? Good thing I had a Hi-Power on me. My lucky day, I guess,” Kurz put in.
“You said there were about a dozen left, right? That’s trouble,” Sousuke said with a frown. “We can beat them, theoretically, but we don’t have the firepower available here. Our ammunition is lacking as well. Fighting them head-on will just get our men killed, and make it difficult to protect the hostages.”
“Ahh, dammit,” Kurz sighed. “So what’s their plan? Just to kill everyone?”
“I don’t think so,” Kaname said. “That’s not what those robots were after. It’s something else.”
“How do you know?” he replied. “The first one definitely didn’t think twice before it jumped me in the hold.”
“Well...” Kaname’s vague suspicion from earlier was starting to take a clearer form: the robot’s odd movements; the similarities and differences. What was everyone on the ship after from the start? The vault, of course—No, it wasn’t that. She stopped and looked up at a corner of the hall. “They’re looking for a certain physique,” she concluded.
Kurz watched her questioningly.
“They won’t attack girls around 165 centimeters tall, weighing about 50 kilograms,” Kaname observed. “If they find a girl who fits that category, the next thing they’ll do is scan her face—not just reading her external appearance, but patterns in bone structure, membranes, and blood vessels. If it matches the data they have for me on file, they’ll move to the next routine, which will be either to protect me and escape... or to kill everyone except for me.”
The out-of-her-depth high school girl from moments ago was gone without a trace. Sousuke, Kurz, and the others couldn’t help but be shocked by the sight of her explaining things so logically and coherently, even after everything she’d been through.
“You shot him after he grabbed me, right, Sousuke?” she asked. “Didn’t you think it was strange then?”
Sousuke, who had been distracted by the sudden change in Kaname’s demeanor, snapped back to reality and nodded his agreement. “It threw you out of the way, even though the standard tactic would be to use you as a shield.”
“Hey, hang on,” Kurz interrupted. “Are you saying they’re after Kaname-chan?”
“I think so... no, I’m sure of it,” Kaname told him. “That captain was after me from the start, remember?”
“Okay. So if that’s true, what do we do? Charge those dumb robots with you in the lead?”
Sousuke glared at Kurz. “We are not using Chidori as a shield.”
“I know, it was a joke,” Kurz protested. “Anyway, we can’t just stand here. For now, we just need to get away from them.”
“Wait.” Kurz and the others were about to hurry forward, but Kaname stopped them in their tracks. “You can’t use me as a shield, but I can act as a decoy,” she observed thoughtfully. “In fact, it might be our only way out of this.”
Sousuke’s brow wrinkled in response. “It’s too dangerous,” he protested. “Even if they won’t actually attack you, you might still be hit by stray fire, or a ricochet.”
“I don’t care if it’s dangerous!” Kaname shouted back. “I’m not the only one in trouble, remember?!”
She was right: it was a bad situation. There were still any number of those dangerous enemy robots on the ship, and while their schoolmates seemed to have gotten to safety for now, they were still on board. Without decisive action, sooner or later, a tragedy was going to take place. People were going to be hurt and killed, and it would be all her fault. Kaname couldn’t let that slide; she had to stop it, somehow.
“Please,” she begged. “If anything happens to my classmates, I could never show my face again. Is what I’m proposing really that unreasonable?”
Sousuke didn’t say anything at first, glaring hard at Kaname’s desperate expression. He really didn’t want to put her in danger, it seemed. He vacillated for a time, indecisive and questioning—and then, as if to clear it of all doubts, he at last shook his head and sighed. “Very well,” he conceded. “I’ll consult with the lieutenant. But for now, we need to get our distance.” Sousuke pressed the button of his radio.
Clouseau had just reached the starboard corridor on the second deck when the sound of unrelenting gunfire reached his ears. Team Echo, led by Sergeant Roger Sandraptor, was trading fire with the enemy. “Roger! What’s your status?” he called to the large Native American, who was kneeling behind a bend in the corridor and changing his clip.
“Two enemies. Two injured. Zero dead. Concentrated fire succeeds in holding it back, but we’ll be out of ammunition shortly,” Roger reported, sounding almost like an M9’s AI. The narrow, straight hallway appeared to be helping them to keep the things at bay; they were forced to take cover in a passenger cabin. If one peeked its head out even slightly, the soldiers would bathe it in fire.
“Lieutenant, these things are tough,” Roger continued. “They’re as aggressive as a pair of raging buffalo, but they’re smart enough to dodge bullets.”
“Can you beat them?” Clouseau wanted to know.
“If it’s just the two of them, probably. But we’re running low on ammo.”
Clouseau knew that this wasn’t sustainable. If someone as reliably objective as Roger was predicting doom, then it had to be so. They weren’t equipped to fight these things, and the ace in the hole he was keeping on standby in case of emergencies wasn’t compatible with the situation as it stood. We could lead the crew and passengers to the lifeboats, maybe? He pondered. But the front half of the ship is a danger zone... It would be difficult now to get everyone off safely.
To make matters worse, he had no idea where Colonel Testarossa was. If she was in the fore, she was in danger. And there were so many things he wanted to discuss with her right now... Clouseau caught himself looking for a way to defer responsibility, and shook his head. Stop it, he lectured himself. You’re the one in charge right now. It’s your job to be strong for the men.
“Buy us time,” he told Roger. “Pull back slowly.”
“Roger that.”
Just then, Clouseau got a transmission. It was from Sousuke. “What is it?”
“I have a proposal.” Sousuke explained Kaname’s idea in brief, and offered up a few plans.
“Make
her a decoy? It’s risky,” Clouseau said with a frown. “And they’re scattered all over the ship. How are you going to round them all up?”
“She says it’s likely that they have a data link function,” Sousuke told him. “If we bait them carefully enough, the enemy machines will all contact each other and gather in the same area.”
“The girl said that?” Clouseau blinked in surprise.
“You might only know her from my reports, but she’s extremely reliable at times like these,” Sousuke replied. “Please consider—” His plea was interrupted.
“What’s taking so long?!” came the voice of a young woman. It was Clouseau’s first time hearing the voice of Chidori Kaname, who must have snatched Sousuke’s radio away from him. “Grant permission or give an order or whatever! Right now! If something happens to anyone from my school, you’ll pay for it, you balding old jerk!”
What is she talking about? She can’t even see me... Clouseau wondered. Then he said, placatingly, “Okay, I’ll do it. Put him back on.”
“Are you sure you’ll do it?” Kaname demanded to know. “You better not be lying!”
“Just do it!” Clouseau bellowed back at her.
Sousuke returned. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. It’s one of her worst faults—”
“I don’t care. I shouldn’t have let my conscience distract me. We’ll do it her way,” Clouseau acknowledged, with a faint sense that he was grasping at straws. He and Sousuke shouted over the sounds of gunfire to work out the details of their plan.
Once the discussion was over and the transceiver was off, Clouseau whispered, too low to be heard, “Ugh. ‘Angel,’ my ass.”
24 December, 2324 Hours (Japan Standard Time)
One kilometer south of Pacific Chrysalis, Tuatha de Danaan
“Con, sonar. Towed array’s got a new contact on bearing 0-8-3,” Sergeant Dejirani said to Lieutenant Colonel Richard Mardukas from the sonar shack. “Ah, spherical array’s got it, too. Designate contact number Mike-13. Distance... what? Oh, huh, weird...”
