Chapter 5: Cries “Take Aim”

86--Eighty-Six — lnori.com · All chapters

Chapter 5: Cries “Take Aim”

CHAPTER 5

CRIES “TAKE AIM”

Riding on the electronic waves, a machine’s words ran through the airwaves of the battlefield.

<Targets: eastern battlefront, the Federal Republic of Giad>

On that same day, at the same time…

…to the west of the Federal Republic of Giad, in the 177th Armored Division’s Nordlicht squadron’s barracks…

…a single officer jumped out of bed.

Raiden dreamed he was falling off a cliff.

“Get up.”

His head smacked against the mattress just as he heard those words. Rubbing his neck, which hurt somewhat, as he’d slept in an awkward position, Raiden clambered off the hard bed. His small room in the barracks was dark, illuminated only by moonlight, and Shin stood there, holding the pillow he’d snatched off the bed in one hand.

“Listen… Would it kill you to say something before you—?”

“Now’s not the time.”

He responded curtly, his voice steeped with tension. And judging from how he was dressed in the Federacy’s steel-blue flight suit in the middle of the night… Raiden’s eyes narrowed.

“…They’re coming.”

“Yeah.”

Looking outside the window, they could see the Eintagsfliege’s silver clouds brewing on the horizon, snuffing out even the darkness of the night.

“How many hostiles?”

“I don’t want to calculate it. It’s like the seven seals of Revelation have been broken.”

“…Did you expect me to get that reference?”

Shin using any kind of humor was proof of how bad things were. His red eyes were still fixed on the other side of the battlefield in cold scrutiny.

“…I predicted this, but it’s pretty much the worst possible scenario. Part of the forces I thought would get assigned to attacking the other three countries are headed for the Federacy instead. Looks like the western front is a point of maximum importance for the Legion.”

“Gee, what an honor.”

Raiden rose to his feet as he grumbled sarcastically but frowned again when he saw Shin’s profile illuminated by the moonlight.

“…Are you okay, man?”

“…I wouldn’t increase the Para-RAID’s sync rate above the bare minimum today if I were you.”

He didn’t try to pretend nothing was wrong. Even this stone-faced Reaper realized there was no hiding it. His red eyes laughed bitterly. His face was pallid, and not just because of the moonlight’s illumination. He was pale, and his face was contorted as if he was enduring immense and constant pain.

“Don’t Resonate with me unless you have to… I thought I was used to this, but tonight really is a bit too much.”

The Reaper, who hadn’t even batted an eye at the thunderous bellow of his brother’s long-pursued ghost, was shaken.

“…Roger.”

“I need you to handle preparations for our departure. Go wake the others up.”

“What about you?”

Shin turned a backward glance to him and tapped the handgun on his side holster gently. It wasn’t the small pistol Feldreß pilots were given for self-termination purposes. It was a larger caliber, the automatic pistol he’d used in the Republic.

“Now’s not the time to stay silent. I’ll go wake up the rest of the army.”

While abnormal circumstances were to be expected in the army, the Processors were still fairly irritated at being woken up from their sleep. And it wasn’t an official order, either, but an arbitrary decision by their captain. Even if his skills matched his title of Reaper, his coming to this decision without any alarms blaring or the area radar giving a notice left them annoyed.

“Shit, if this is a drill…I swear to God—next battle, my gun might accidentally fire at that stone-faced Reaper…”

“You won’t have to; I’ll shoot him on the spot if that’s the case. Stray bullet, of course.”

After the maintenance crew were ordered to prepare the Juggernauts for takeoff as quickly as possible, the hangar was filled with their thick voices and the roar of the gantry crane’s engine and the heavy machinery carrying energy packs and shells. Passing near the disgruntled Processors who voiced their complaints behind the curtain of noise, Bernholdt scoffed at them.

“You can try, but he’ll just turn the tables on ya. Which one of you was it that picked a fight with the captain and got beaten to a pulp instead?”

That was before everyone knew Shin was an Eighty-Six. His appearance told of his thick, noble Imperial blood, so quite a few of them took him lightly as a dainty noble and were beaten up badly when they tried to raise a hand to him.

“But, Sergeant.”

“Besides, you lot were never under his direct command, so you don’t realize it yet, but when it comes to the movements of those damn hunks of metal, the captain knows better than the radar ever does.”

A siren began blaring. The shouting and noise died out for one long moment, and an ominous alarm rang. The alarm that warned of the Legion’s invasion.

Bernholdt shrugged at the other Processors’ astonished expressions.

“…See?”

In one corner of the first defensive line, the armored troops swallowed spit nervously in their trenches and pillboxes as they awaited the enemy’s arrival. It was a sector that sadly wasn’t blessed with the forests and ruins that made up the majority of the western front’s battlefields. Still, this was a well-fortified position for pushing back the Legion’s advance, and it was calculated to be within range for covering artillery fire.

In order to dampen the bombardment’s deadly shock waves, the trenches were dug in precise right angles, with a thick anti-tank minefield and an 88 mm anti-tank gun set in the formation’s rear. Fortunately, the alarm blaring earlier than it should have allowed an armored unit that was set up nearby to rush to the site, and its presence relieved some of the fear that the looming threat of death inflicted on the soldiers.

“…Sir.”

A soldier clad in a full-body reinforced-armor exoskeleton pointed ahead. Something plowed through the night, a surrealistic, inorganic, ferocious silhouette the color of steel, pushing away even the darkness in its path. And in the next moment, their field of vision, the entire mountain range that made up the horizon, turned the color of cold steel.

“Wha—?!”

It was like witnessing the moment a tidal wave rose. The countless shadows crossed the ridges, like the instant the sea parted and the destructive wave rushed down upon them, washing the dark fields over with the color of metal. Just like a surge of water crashing down, like fire consuming a field, this proverbial sea roared with the faint, distinctive sound of that engine—of bones rubbing against one another. And even as more and more Legion formed the vanguard, their numbers continued streaming in without end, standing as bloodcurdling evidence of how vast their forces were.

The shadow spilled around them, as far as the eye could see, without a battle cry, as if the darkness itself threatened to consume them.

These were all…

“Legion…”

I am Legion, for we are many.

A thunderous roar. The shrill sound of bombardment whistled from above, signaling the descent of an iron blow from the heavens. Few present probably recognized that this bombardment of a Long-Range Gunner type served as the opening shot of this battle. That was how unbelievable this sight was—awe-inspiring to the point of being a near-religious spectacle, like the judgment day described in holy scripture.

The first bombardment greatly missed the Federacy’s defensive line, landing far behind them. The second one landed far closer, this time in front of them. Those weren’t accidental shots. The standard Skorpion tactic was to remain hidden several kilometers away, beyond the horizon, and shoot them from afar. The first few shells were fired to adjust their sights, and once that was done, the obvious next step was—

“Heavy bombardment incomiiiing!”

A deafening noise roared in their ears. A volley of highly explosive rounds painted the silver sky black and then rained down onto the trenches, bursting on impact. Propelled by the 155 mm shells’ shock waves, the bombardment’s fragments turned into high-speed bullets of incredible mass, ripping through the trenches and the flesh of the armored soldiers within them.

And then another impact came. And another. And yet another. The explosives rained down by the dozens—nay, by the hundreds—injuring or killing half the people within a forty-five-meter radius. The bombardment fell endlessly like a shower, drowning out the screams and death throes of the soldiers.

And as the soldiers remained pinned down, the steel-colored surge drew ever closer. Standing muzzle to muzzle in an orderly fashion, a massive army of Dinosauria maintained an armored wedge formation. Knowing no fear, they rushed in even under the Skorpion fire, crushing any and all obstacles under the weight of their one-hundred-ton armor.

Noticing a party of Ameise was deployed at the vanguard, the armored soldiers shivered in terror as they realized what came next. The bombardment was meant to sweep away the minefield and open the way for the Legion vanguard. The Ameise crossed into the charred earth that was blown to pieces along with the mines. A few untriggered mines were set off, blowing several units away, but the Dinosauria advanced, stepping over the wreckage.

The strategically inferior Ameise sacrificed themselves to the mines to defend the tactically valuable Dinosauria. It was the heartlessly logical kind of sacrifice only a machine would ever commit to and a human would rarely be able to go through with. And having crossed the minefield unscathed, the metallic beasts had finally made it to the trenches where what few armored infantry who’d survived the bombardment hid.

“Dammit… Defend! Defend to your last breath! Don’t let them through even if it’s the last thing you doooooooooooo!”

The siren woke up not only the common soldiers, noncommissioned, and low-ranking officers but also the field officers and generals in charge of command. They were all at their posts, at the very least dressed in their uniforms.

Despite the electronic jamming killing their radar, a reconnaissance probe that had, oddly enough, strayed far from its normal range detected the Legion’s approach, but none of the officers had the leisure to investigate why it had gone as far as it had. The probe was destroyed soon after discovering the enemy, but they launched other units in its place, and when they received the transmission regarding the observed number of troops and the calculated total sum and formation of the enemy force, everyone went pale.

“Impossible… The western front is under a large-scale attack…?!”

Grethe moaned, looking up at the Legion’s estimated distribution projected on the 1,028th Trial Unit’s headquarters’ main screen. The 177th Armored Division’s sector was on display, and on top of it was the 8th Army Corps’s zone, and above them was the entire western front; they were all colored in red. The enemy units, presented in red blips, filled the monitor with such numbers that it made her weak in the knees, and by contrast, the blue blips signifying the first defensive line’s friendly units were despairingly few and far between.

They had predicted a large-scale offensive would happen. They had prepared for it. But this scale and these numbers were far beyond anything they could have predicted. Considering the current state of the first defensive line, they wouldn’t be able to push the Legion back, no matter how frantically they tried.

Of course, the mobile defense unit stationed at the back was preparing to sortie, but it was doubtful the front lines would be able to buy the time needed for them to complete their preparations. The fact that all aspects of their functionality were crippled by their immense weight and required the use of special machinery was the armored corps’s biggest flaw. And if they couldn’t maintain the front lines, their immediate response unit, which was still in the middle of preparations, would not have the time to sortie…!

A voice crackled from her commander’s headset, informing her of a message from military command to all high-ranking commanders. The United Kingdom of Roa Gracia and the Alliance of Wald were also being hit by a large-scale offensive. They seemed to be doing what they could to push back, but it was unknown whether they would be capable of resisting for long.

Could this possibly be the day of humankind’s reckoning…?!

“ Lieutenant Colonel. ”

“Second Lieutenant Nouzen. What’s your status? When can you sortie?”

“ Ready whenever you are. The Nordlicht squadron is prepped and ready to head out. ”

Grethe looked into the holo-screen’s inscription of SOUND ONLY with stunned silence. The control crew was equally shocked.

“ We received no order to do so but made preparations anyway. I´ll accept any form of rebuke later. ”

Taking this kind of independent action called for punishment, not rebuking, but Shin spoke in an exceedingly composed tone. He either was confident he wouldn’t be punished for this or didn’t care. Grethe’s red lips curled upward. She never neglected to paint them with lipstick, lest her subordinates see her without it. But it seemed that time wasn’t upon her yet.

“I’ll cover for you no matter how much those stubborn geezers complain, Second Lieutenant… I’ll have the other units launch as soon as they’re ready. Hold the line until then, at all costs.”

“ Roger. ”

The Empire having been a militant country before it became the Federacy, many of the cities built during the old Empire’s time were designed like fortresses to halt enemy invasions. The roads were designed to prevent an enemy from easily reaching the city center and to allow only a certain degree of width. Cities were built over rivers to divide them into areas. Houses were built in such a way that their masonry linked up with old, dilapidated walls to impede progress.

Those were, however, tactics meant for war against fellow men.

“Take cover, quickly! The tanks are coming!”

A group of armored infantry scattered the streets, making their way through the bends and turns of the paved road. The troops lagging behind could make out the gentle engine noise—like bones grinding against one another—just behind the corner. Ignoring the existence of the building in front of it, a Legion fired its 120 mm cannon at them.

When faced with a shell capable of shattering a two-hundred-millimeter-thick steel plate, a stone wall was as effective as papier-mâché in the way of defense. It shattered like cracked glass at the impact, with the blast killing the straggling soldiers, and the debris of the stone wall ricocheting and cutting the surrounding soldiers to pieces, armor and all.

“Captaaaaaaain!”

“Stop—don’t go back! There’s no saving him anymore!”

A tank turret appeared from behind the toppled stone wall. Covered in heat haze, the Löwe’s massive steel-colored frame swerved in their direction, its multiple legs not even regarding the mountain of rubble filling the street. There was no time to flee anymore. The Löwe confidently turned its muzzle toward the soldiers, who were left with only the freedom to glare at the opponent that would snuff out their lives…

There was the sound of heavy metal stabbing the pavement as it rushed in their direction. And then there was the sound of flagstones being cracked as something leaped into the air, whipping up a gale due to its immense speed.

A white shadow soared over the armored infantry’s heads.

Landing on the wall of an apartment building on the left of the street and using it as a foothold, the white mech soared through the air, readjusting its direction in midleap. The Löwe failed to keep up with its opponent’s irregular maneuvering, lifting its turret upward like a horse rearing up before the top of its armor was shot through.

Penetration. Internal explosion.

Blown up by its own ammunition’s induced explosion, the Löwe burst into flames as its armor module flew off. The white-armored Feldreß landed before the soldiers’ eyes, shielding them from the shock waves and the heat of the blast.

That white armor. That four-legged silhouette reminiscent of a decapitated skeletal corpse. And the Personal Mark of a headless skeleton carrying a shovel drawn beneath its canopy.

“A Regin…leif…”

The Reginleif’s red optical sensor turned toward them.

“ Are there any other squads out here? ”

The infantry squad’s vice captain noticed the white forms of several machines standing on the flat roofs of the apartments on both sides of the street. And the loud, clattering footsteps from behind the building couldn’t have been the Legion’s, who were equipped with powerful shock absorbers. They were lighter than a Vánagandr’s, so there were probably more Reginleifs like this one deployed around them.

Finally noticing he was the one being asked here, the vice captain replied in a flustered manner. Depending on how many soldiers remained on the battlefield, if any, the strategies they could adopt were different. Even if they failed their duties and were forced to fall back, the least they could do was provide the allies who came to save them with what information they could.

“No one’s left—we’re the last ones! The other squads were all…all killed by those damned metal monsters.”

“ Right. ”

That reply came in a blunt, simple voice bereft of concern or grief. The Personal Mark of the rumored Reaper was that of a headless skeleton, meaning the one speaking to them now was…an Eighty-Six.

“ Fall back and regroup. We´ll buy you the time you need. ”

“All right, then. Let’s begin.”

Having been only recently deployed for test purposes, the XM2 Reginleif or “Juggernaut” was a Feldreß with a mobility that was unheard of in the Federacy’s development history. In order to capitalize on its speed, it allowed for the changing of its weaponry—such as its main battery and grappling arms—for optional weapons depending on the strategy selected.

Anju’s Snow Witch did away with the traditional 88 mm main bore gun, exchanging it for a multiple-launch rocket pad, making it a unit meant for area suppression. She’d heard the Legion’s deployment positions from Shin before they launched into battle, and even though some time had passed, and they had moved significantly far from their positions at the time, she could imagine how they would move.

The ability to predict the enemy forces’ position and hit that group for the maximum possible damage with one blow. That was the weapon Anju had cultivated over four years of deadly battle with the Legion and was the reason she’d survived to this day.

She inputted the enemy coordinates into the support computer and pulled the trigger. The missiles left a trail of smoke behind, and they each flew in different trajectories to minimize the risk of being intercepted, eventually reaching their designated targets.

The shells’ fuses ignited, and the missiles scattered their smaller bombs. The Legion scattered as if in a panic, assailed by a rain of explosives.

Her tone was sweet, and she broke into a serene smile. But no one could know how terribly cruel Anju’s smile was when she was alone in the cockpit.

“There they are. Scurrying around like ants after someone kicked their nest.”

She observed the movements of the Legion moving across the ruins, through the head-mounted display she had on for precision aiming. They dispersed in a wide formation, cautious of the missiles’ smaller bombs.

Kurena sat within Gunslinger, which was hidden in an old-fashioned church’s belfry, setting her sights on one of the Legion. Gunslinger, which was specified for sniping, was equipped with a long-barreled 88 mm cannon designed to optimize ballistic stability and velocity. Its firearm-control and posture-control systems were also customized accordingly. All of that, coupled with Kurena’s own talent for predictive sniping even in the face of the Legion’s swift movements, left the research division struck with admiration for her accuracy ratio.

The head-mounted display projected data like wind velocity and temperature, as well as a cross-shaped reticle. Kurena squinted, listening to the sound of the Legion’s wails coming from the Sensory Resonance. She didn’t find these screams of suffering to be terrifying, and so long as these weren’t the Black Sheep of her dead comrades, she didn’t feel pity for them like Shin did.

To Kurena, the Legion were nothing more than a dangerous enemy that threatened her precious comrades—that threatened Shin, who led them across the battlefield.

And all enemies…

…must be eliminated.

As she held her breath, Kurena’s golden eyes grew mercilessly cold. And naturally, almost casually, she squeezed the trigger, her bullet piercing and annihilating a Löwe in the distance.

“I took out their commanding unit. Changing position. Cover me.”

“Roger that, Kurena! Leave these scrubs to me!”

Raiden’s Wehrwolf had heavy machine guns in its grappling arms and had its main armament switched for an autocannon. Suppressive fire—a role that used barrages to halt the enemy’s advance and support his consorts’ advance.

After fighting alongside Shin—a vanguard who excelled at close-quarters combat—for three years, Raiden inevitably found himself in this role, which required adopting this kind of equipment and tactics. And at the same time, a role that amounted to supporting the rest of his unit was perfectly suited for a kind busybody like Raiden, who always kept an eye out for his comrades’ well-being.

Not that he would ever admit that.

Each of the heavy machine guns and the autocannon were capable of locking on and firing at different targets. The heavy machine guns’ dense barrage reduced the Ameise and Grauwolf who attempted to advance on him to scrap, and the autocannon’s hail of bullets pinned down a team of two Löwe.

Two Juggernauts rushed in from Wehrwolf’s sides. Undertaker cut down one of the Löwe as it passed beside it. Laughing Fox leaped up and bombarded the other one from above. Undertaker then rushed in and disappeared down a nearby street, while Laughing Fox launched a wire anchor to the top of a building and reeled itself up, heading down another street.

Kurena would provide cover fire for Shin. Anju had descended from the rear guard and was in the middle of reloading her missile launcher. Promptly analyzing the situation, Raiden decided to cover for Laughing Fox and changed Wehrwolf’s bearing.

Theo’s Juggernaut—Laughing Fox—was left as is with the standard configuration. He had an 88 mm smooth-bore gun, a heavy machine gun on one grappling arm, four pile drivers, and two wire anchors.

But his unique strategy was anything but standard.

“Up we go!”

Evading a Löwe’s shot, Laughing Fox used an abandoned automobile as footing to jump up and fired an anchor into a building wall in midair, reeling it back to climb even higher. As the Grauwolf tried to scale up the wall to get to him, he mockingly shot an anchor into the building opposite them while releasing the first anchor. Reeling the anchor back, he zipped away, soaring directly above and behind the Löwe, pulling the trigger as he did. Taking an accurate shot right through its weak spot—the top rear section of its armor—the Löwe exploded.

Laughing Fox utilized wire anchors to achieve three-dimensional maneuvering. Even despite having to fight with a meager 57 mm cannon in the Republic’s abandoned land, the Eighty-Six made urban fighting their expertise. And they were often pitted against Löwe and Dinosauria—whose only weak point required firing on them from above. These conditions, coupled with Theo’s superior spatial perception, led him to this optimal answer. He knew he didn’t have Shin’s grappling skills to fight against the Legion in close-quarters combat and survive.

A lock-on alert blared.

Detecting that a Grauwolf had scaled the building up to the roof and aimed its rocket launcher in his direction from the corner of his eye, Theo fired another anchor. It latched onto another wall several buildings away. Using the anchor to run across the wall, he changed the bearing just as the explosion rang behind him, firing his machine gun at the Grauwolf and silencing it.

But in that moment, the fleeting glimpse he caught of the city below wiped the smile off his face.

In the front rows of the Nordlicht squadron’s combat, the blur of a single pearly white Juggernaut was beset on all sides by the Legion flocking toward it. Shin truly was loved by the Reaper. Or maybe he really was the Reaper himself.

“God dammit… How can Shin keep pulling off these crazy-ass stunts and still manage to stay alive…?”

As those on the front lines risked life and limb, the personnel in the rear fought their own war.

“ —Use every shell and energy pack we have! Roll out every truck that´s ready! ”

“ Sergeant, the spare units are ready! ”

“ Have them ready to launch for whenever we get a request! C´mon, boys, don´t rely on Fido! He´s focused on supporting the captain and his team! It´s our job to deliver these pizzas, you hear?! ”

Having to worry about running out of ammo or energy while fighting the massive Legion would only make the soldiers on the front line that much closer to death. Those in the rear knew that a constant stream of supplies was the greatest form of reinforcements they could give right now and worked all the more diligently for it.

Realizing she would be heard better if there wasn’t any noise around them, Frederica listened in on the goings-on in the hangar through the Para-RAID in her room in the barracks. Sitting with the RAID Device turned on, the girl restrained her emotions, which beckoned her to break into a run and do something. Her emotions screamed, telling her there had to be something, anything she could do to help. But she realized those thoughts only stemmed from self-satisfaction and suppressed her feelings with common sense.

In the hangar, heavy machinery zipped to and fro, carrying weighted energy packs and shells. The control room had Grethe and her crew of command specialists, who kept the situation under control with expert knowledge Frederica had no access to.

The least she could do was open her eyes and seek out her knight’s whereabouts. Shin was fighting on the battlefield and likely didn’t have the leisure to be occupied with Kiriya alone. But if he was to know his position, his actions, if she could even so much as warn him…

But when her eyes saw her knight, saw the battlefield he was on, the girl froze.

She fumbled over her RAID Device, hurriedly changing its target data. She urgently called out his name, half-dumbfounded.

“Shinei.”

No response.

Shin was connected to the Resonance, though. As proof, she could hear the boisterous moans of the ghosts one would constantly hear when Resonating with Shin. She could hear his voice giving coolheaded orders even in the midst of frenzied battle. To his fellow Eighty-Six, to the Nordlicht squadron’s other Processors, sometimes even using the wireless and his external speakers to talk to soldiers from other squadrons. He himself was probably running through enemy lines, cutting down countless foes as he did.

“Shinei… Kiri is absent.”

No response.

Not wanting to believe he didn’t hear her, she found herself repeating those words.

“Kiri is absent from the battlefield.”

No response.

Frederica felt all the blood rush to her head. Not out of anger…but out of unfamiliar terror.

“Can you not hear me, Shinei?! Kiri is currently—”

At that moment, the target of her eyes changed to the person she was thinking of right then, the one she called out to again and again. She could see a four-legged spider rushing through city ruins in the dark of night. Its white fuselage had lost its pearly sheen. Dirtied in uneven strokes of silver and metallic gray by gunpowder smoke, dust, and spurts of liquid micromachines—the blood of the Legion he slew—the machine’s color was corrupted.

A sight she had seen once before flashed in her mind’s eye. A Feldreß splashed with the red of slaughtered soldiers, and next to it a person smiling pleasantly—with their black eyes frozen solid.

Princess.

And even as he spoke to her, those cold eyes never once looked at her. And the two red eyes she could see within that white armor had the same gaze.

He forcefully drove his blade, which had already lost its capacity to vibrate, into the enemy, rushing to face his next foe without even regarding the fact that it had shattered. His gaze didn’t waver even as a shell’s short-range fuse burst, sending debris tearing into his cockpit and smashing one of his sub-screens. He directed all his consciousness into the enemy before him and nothing more, his red eyes frozen sharply.

Frederica finally realized why he reminded her so much of Kiri.

It wasn’t a matter of resemblance. They were the same. The two of them resembled each other so much because they were identical to their core.

You fool. The words spilled from her mouth noiselessly.

You are such a fool, Shinei. Even you do not understand.

Please stop.

“You mustn’t fight when you get like this…!”

A crescent moon shone behind the thin silvery clouds, casting a gray-white shadow over the dim night ruins. Shin paused his heavy gait, holding his breath in an attempt to listen and confirm the Legion’s distribution status. He had since shut down his Juggernaut’s radar, as it was useless at identifying friend from foe under the Eintagsfliege’s closed skies.