Chapter 4: Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, What Do Ordinary Mirrors Show?

Chapter 4: Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, What Do Ordinary Mirrors Show?

CHAPTER 4

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL, WHAT DO ORDINARY MIRRORS SHOW?

In front of the smoking remains of a Weisel, a human voice—an unusual presence in the Legion’s territories—sounded in a triumphant shout.

“Hell yeah, it’s done for! We won! Whoooo!”

That shout came from Siri, who sat in his unit’s, Baldanders’s, cockpit. Transmitted through the Para-RAID, the radio, and his unit’s external speaker, his victory cry echoed throughout the battlefield.

They were in the northernmost tip of the Federacy’s western front, at the foot of a mountain that was part of the Dragon Corpse mountain range, which also served as the old Empire’s border with the United Kingdom. It was the designated operation zone of the Strike Package’s 2nd Armored Division.

A Free Regiment commander, who was currently seizing a nearby base, replied with a sardonic smile. Since they were in adjacent combat zones, Siri and he were Resonated so as to prevent friendly fire.

“Nice voice, First Lieutenant. A splendid baritone—reminds me of an opera singer I heard once.”

“Why, thank you. And, uh… sorry. I forgot I was still Resonating with you.”

He’d forgotten, indeed. Scratching his cheek awkwardly, he cut off the Resonance. Still, this battle had been chaotic enough that winning would cause him to whoop at the top of his voice. It had been annoying and exhausting.

Before the enemy could prepare for combat, the Reginleifs were to raid it by leaping in with the Armée Furieuse and seizing control of the situation. The Federacy’s plan was right on the money; they’d only run into a small number of Legion units, which were likely set to guard the Weisel directly.

Siri’s strategy for dealing with large Legion types like the Noctiluca—bombarding their heat sinks—proved to be successful. However, the Weisel’s heat sinks were larger and appropriately thick and durable, and it had multiple layers of them. It even had a few spare heat sinks inside its body, and after seemingly having broken down, it’d come back to life again. That was something they didn’t plan for.

A new Resonance target connected to Siri. This time, it was Canaan, who was in the northern border of the old Republic regions.

“Good work. The 3rd Armored Division neutralized its target thirty minutes ago, by the way.”

The report was delivered in a voice that was all business, but it was definitely a boast. Siri clicked his tongue at the nonchalant tone.

“That’s within the acceptable margin of error, you ass.”

“Well, the fastest ones to clear their objective were some Free Regiment soldiers on the northern front, so you’re right. It also made clear the limitations of my method. If we can’t accurately predict where the control core is, we need to start shooting blindly. Besides, the deployment openings and shafts are all full of mines and armored bulkheads. It takes too long to bust through them.”

“Yeah…”

Going inside through a deployment opening was usually seen as something to be avoided, but in the Weisel’s case, it proved effective.

“This time, we gathered information on their internal structure with this simultaneous attack, so we’ll probably be more accurate with our predictions next time. But I think we should give up on trying to get in through the deployment openings.”

“Our method was effective as well, sort of, but busting all the heat sinks takes too long. They’re harder than you’d think, and the enemy’s too big. Aiming at it with a tank turret at that elevation is hard. This time, it was fine, because we were fighting on land, but if it’s a battle at sea like with the Noctiluca, I don’t think it’ll have any problems cooling off anyway.”

He then mentioned that it was probably worth learning how those systems worked, even if strictly out of curiosity.

“The 1st Armored Division’s folk are using knives to cut through the armor and shoot missiles into their insides. That’s the kind of crazy idea that Nouzen and his merry band would come up with, I guess. But that plan might have been the most effective one after all.”

“So long as you can tear a hole into their armor, at worst, you don’t even have to shut down their cooling systems. It’s possible to destroy their control core or their power reactor… That said, Nouzen and his group are still fighting.”

Mm? Siri raised an eyebrow.

“Wait, they’re working with the Myrmecoleo Free Regiment, that railgun prototype, and Nouzen, who can detect the enemy’s core…and they’re not done yet?”

“Well, they’re up against that Halcyon unit. The Weisel that has railguns on it. They have to march on that monster bird while taking out its railguns. I’d imagine that’d take them a while.”

“…No, actually, from the looks of it, it seems like everything went smoothly up to the part where they stalled the Halcyon,” Suiu, who was in training in the Federacy, suddenly cut into the conversation.

Her voice sounded quite strained.

“—What’s wrong?” Siri asked.

“Did something happen?” Canaan seemed concerned.

“Yeah. Colonel Grethe’s already on the move, and all the 4th Armored Division’s members—deputy officers and below—and the staff officers are supposed to record it. Listen to what she has to say if you can, too.”

The Halcyon crashed into the ground, resulting in a quake that made even the ten-tonne Reginleifs hop, and blew a thick layer of ash into the air like some kind of exhausted sigh. Shin heaved a breath of his own, and while still remaining cautious, he spoke.

Burning it from the inside for a moment wasn’t enough to take it out after all. Every one of the control cores, with the exception of the railguns, were intact. He could still hear their howls.

“Vanadis. Temporary incapacitation of the Halcyon successful. Proceeding to keep the combat area secured until the Trauerschwan and the brigade’s main force assume firing positions.”

“Roger that. Good work, all airborne units,” Lena replied, hearing the Processors of the airborne battalion cheer from over the Resonance. “Cyclops, don’t do anything reckless, please.”

In contrast to their operation in the Fleet Countries, where they were rather backed against the wall, the countermeasure they came up with on their own proved effective and produced results. That made them feel all the more accomplished.

Shiden, whom she scolded, simply gave a vague response and immediately lunged at Shin.

“Yeah, ma’am… Oh, and by the way, Li’l Reaper? Hey, Li’l Reeeeaper. I’m talking to ya, Reaper!”

“Ugh, what do you want?” Shin replied with blatant annoyance in his voice.

“You know damn well what I want. I risked my neck to keep the railgun’s sights off ya—don’t you have somethin’ to say?”

“You volunteered for this. I don’t need to hear your complaints.”

“I wasn’t complainin’, was I? I just said you’ve got somethin’ ya need to tell me.”

Shin responded with an exasperated clicking of the tongue.

Bernholdt and the Nordlicht squadron seemed astonished, while Anju held back a chuckle. Raiden, Claude, and Tohru all laughed out loud. Lena couldn’t help but smile as she gave her next orders; it felt like it had been too long since she heard Shin and Shiden bicker like that.

“Undertaker, Cyclops, that’s enough of that. Airborne battalion, keep a careful watch over the combat area. Main force, we need to get the Trauerschwan in position as quickly as possible…”

It was then that Hilnå said something. It wasn’t in the Republic’s or the Federacy’s common language, but in the Theocracy’s tongue, which neither Lena nor the Eighty-Six could understand.

And then within the giant holo-screen projected into the command center…

…every soldier with the unit symbol of a swift, dapple-gray horse—the soldiers of Shiga Toura, the Theocracy’s 3rd Army Corps under her direct command—suddenly stopped in their tracks.

Lena, the staff officers, and the control personnel like Marcel were all taken aback. The diversion unit wasn’t scheduled to stop marching at this point in time, of course.

“…Hilnå, what are you—?” Lena turned to face her.

This time, Hilnå spoke in the Republic’s and the Federacy’s common language. With a cherubic smile, and a voice as soft and supple as lush silica sand.

“Bloody Reina. Eighty-Six. Will you defect to our country?”

“…?!”

Rito swallowed nervously as countless dots suddenly filled his radar screen. It was directly ahead in the direction they were traveling, in an area cleared of the Legion’s advance force. The IFF didn’t respond to those units; their heat signatures were unknown. And they were spread out in a fan formation—positioned for an ambush.

“Spread out!”

By the time, he’d shouted that order to his consorts, he had already moved to make Milan jump away. Rito was an Eighty-Six and had his warrior’s senses whetted by the hardships of war. He was by no means optimistic enough to adopt a wait-and-see approach when faced with unidentified units in an ambush.

The thundering rumble of high-caliber cannon fire roared from ahead of them. As Rito withstood the severe acceleration that resulted from his evasive maneuver, he glared at the optical screen with his agate eyes. An aerodynamic shell had just barely skimmed across Milan’s flank. A large cloud of ashes rose from the source of that shot.

Its firing speed was quick. And what’s more, it’d unleashed a powerful blast behind it that was unique to that weapon .

A gun without recoil.

“Shit, that means another shot’s coming! Keep dodging!”

The cannon roared loudly again, and HEAT shells once again rained down on them. More clouds of dust bloomed up, filling the air and blinding their field of vision.

A recoilless gun was an anti-armor gun that negated the recoil of firing large shells by unleashing it as a shock wave behind it. With this method, even a lightweight Feldreß could carry a large-caliber gun, but it had major flaws.

Most of the gunpowder’s kinetic energy was devoted to reducing the recoil, making the shells slower, and the intense backward blast kicked up sand and sediment, exposing the shooter’s position. For this reason, units that used recoilless guns didn’t carry one barrel, but six of them. The first shot would expose one’s position, but in the event that it failed to destroy the enemy, one could fire a second or third shot immediately.

This was something that Rito had been taught immediately before this operation. Which was to say, neither Reginleifs nor Juggernauts—nor the Legion that opposed them—used this recoilless gun. Which meant…

The wind blew past, carrying with it some of the ash that hung over the battlefield like a curtain. And on the other side of it appeared a group of small, pearl-gray shadows.

Pearl-gray.

These were units that sacrificed pure mobility to prioritize remaining above the ash that covered this land. They had four wide mechanical-looking legs. They maintained large contact surface with the ground and were reminiscent of a bird’s wings. Even when accounting for the shape of those legs, which seemed to be crawling across the ground, they had short torsos, no taller than Frederica. Stretching from each of its flanks was a set of three gigantic 106 mm recoilless guns, spread out like wings.

They very much looked like they’d been built hurriedly in the middle of a war. They were hard to look at. The sight of them almost felt brutal, like watching small, injured birds dragging their broken wings along the ground.

The armored type 7, Lyano-Shu.

The unmanned drone that accompanied the Theocracy military’s official Feldreß, the armored type 5 Fah-Maras. Many Fah-Maras had been destroyed during the decade of fighting, and so the type 7 drones were produced in large numbers to compensate.

“…Why?”

Fah-Maras units appeared behind the Lyano-Shu. They moved in a manner typical to the Theocracy’s Feldreß, in something reminiscent to an infant crawling, like an animal dragging along its broken limbs. It, too, had eight winglike legs, but since it was a manned unit, and the stressed situation of the war meant the pilot’s life had to be prioritized, its thick, heavy frontal armor was covered with extra armor plates. Even the engine and cartridge of its 120 mm rifle cannon were placed ahead of the cockpit to shield the pilot, making for a rather distinctive design.

There could be no doubting it anymore. The Theocracy military—which had been their allies up until now—had turned their guns on the Eighty-Six and the Federacy’s Eighty-Sixth Strike Package, as enemies.

Faced with Lena’s stunned gaze, Hilnå grinned.

As she turned around with her back to the main screen, the Theocracy control and staff officers remained with their eyes fixed on their consoles, as if none of this was out of the ordinary. They didn’t regard the corps abruptly stopping in their tracks and the corps commanders’ sudden words with doubt or confusion. They remained silent and unresponsive, as if everything was going according to plan.