PROLOGUE

Skies Reeking of Gunpowder
Shooting_Game.

And so, World War III began.

The following day, October 19, would linger in memory as the day of destiny.

No matter how much whitewashing there was, no matter how well God’s Right Seat was secretly pulling the strings to keep various intentions secret, a war once begun does not end so easily.

Everyone looked to the skies over the Sea of Japan.

They were the final line of defense for Academy City. If hostile amphibious assault ships and strategic bombers from Russia ever broke through, the tiny archipelago city-state would be transformed into a sea of fire and blood.

And everyone thought that was exactly what would happen.

Academy City may have possessed science and technology twenty or thirty years more advanced, but it was no more than a city, its population, including both adults and children, only 2.3 million people. On the other side was Russia, one of the world’s top military powers along with China and the USA. Despite their technological prowess being somewhat lacking compared to Academy City, it should have only been a matter of time before their overwhelming numbers could destroy them.

However.

Currently, on October 30—

A female pilot named Ekalielya A. Pronskaya, part of the Russian Air Force, could feel the sweat staining the inside her gloves as she gripped her flight yoke. But the cause wasn’t excitement from her country’s supposedly crushing advantage. No—what she had was clearly a cold sweat.

With extreme mobility afforded by its canards, the brand-new, top-of-the-line fighter she piloted was said to be able to fly circles around American-made stealth planes in close combat. As Ekalielya flew hers, moving in tandem with dozens of others of the same model, she earnestly began to regret having entered this airspace.

Wars were always carried out at the whims of military leadership and politicians.

They weren’t things soldiers on the field could do anything about.

Sometimes, a soldier needed to be prepared to shoot opponents they never wanted to fight out of the sky.

This sudden, unexpected war made people especially guilty for attacking first, no matter what the reason was.

That being said, it had nothing to do with Ekalielya’s immediate predicament.

What she regretted was simply the current combat situation, one where she might die.

“What the hell are those?” came a voice over the radio from one of her wingmen, flying another fighter. The pilot didn’t even bother using military brevity codes. It sounded like a scared child.

“Are these even jets we’re fighting?! They’re freaking gigantic!!”

The name of their enemy was HsF-00, a supersonic fighter aircraft made in Academy City. They used the same frames as the HsB-02 supersonic bombers, which perhaps accounted for their enormous size—about eighty meters in total length. They tore through the skies at furious speeds of over seven thousand kilometers per hour.

But there was something strange about them.

Fighter craft were generally between fifteen and twenty meters long. Their speed usually topped out at around 2,500 kilometers per hour, too. Both the size and speed of these Academy City weapons were abnormal. The faster a heavy object is traveling, the more inertia works against it. If someone took something that large and tried to mimic a small jet’s sharp maneuvers, that alone would be enough to cause it to break apart. And even if it didn’t, the enormous pressure would crush the pilot’s organs.

“…Hard science, eh?” murmured Ekalielya bitterly to herself.

The Hs initials given to Academy City weapons were apparently a reference to how they used the power of rigorously tested science to completely dispel the darkness of impossibility and mystery.

“The power of science? Nihuya. They’ve clearly passed into occult territory here!!”

Just ten.

That was the total number of HsF-00s deployed to the entire Sea of Japan.

Their monstrous speed of seven-thousand-plus kilometers per hour and the monstrous range of their weapons allowed each individual craft to maintain air superiority over a massive area.

Countless smaller craft (smaller compared to the HsF-00, but the same size as the Sukhoi Ekalielya was piloting) flitted around the HsF-00s, which formed the core of the formations that were overpowering the Russian Air Force. The smaller craft’s canopies were jet-black, making it impossible to tell if anyone was inside.

“Did you know that apparently Academy City doesn’t have a military?” the wingman continued. “Seems like we’re fighting something called Anti-Skill, which is supposed to be a police force.”

“Are you trying to say they shouldn’t even have any offensive capabilities? How the hell is that thing a defensive weapon?! It’s a stealth craft that can fly to the other side of the world without refueling. It was obviously designed for attacking!!”

“Did you hear their official reply to the declaration of war? ‘We have no need for a bloodbath, but would it be right for someone who has the power to stop this war and tragedy to watch and do nothing?’— Yeah, right! They were more than ready for the killing to start!!”

They couldn’t assume this was the extent of the enemy’s strength.

And if they repurposed these weapons they were currently using for defense, they could certainly mount an invasion with them.

As it stood, it was hard to tell which side was being driven into a corner.

Whenever Ekalielya felt like she was ready to give up, strange, persistent images of Russian cities turning into seas of flames filled her mind.

As the irrational phenomenon made her burn with anger, the HsF-00’s massive body in front of her made its move.

The real dogfight was about to begin. Naturally, Ekalielya and her squadron had no way of keeping up with a plane moving over three times their top speed. They couldn’t even keep the enemy within attack range, much less safely get a lock from behind. After all, their opponent’s top speed was over seven thousand kilometers per hour. Even if she pulled out all the stops, the thing would easily get over one hundred kilometers away and then ready itself again.

…It can’t be using normal fuel.

Though she admitted to herself that they’d lost in terms of pure strength, she was still a professional soldier, so she continued desperately searching for a way out.

It must have an incredibly short flight time in exchange for that insane speed. If we can prolong this battle, we might have a chance.

But then, forgoing all encryption, the enemy contacted her:

“I’d give up on trying to make this a marathon. My craft is equipped with a system that uses the heat resulting from the friction of the armor’s surface as energy. In other words, the faster this thing goes, the more efficient it is. At maximum, fuel usage is diminished by around ninety percent, I think.”

“?!”

“And don’t assume it’ll work on the smaller craft, either…Come on. Our weapons were designed specifically for interception. Why wouldn’t we come up with ways to overcome short flight durations?”

As he was speaking, something strange happened in the corner of Ekalielya’s vision. She thought for a moment that one of the smaller planes had dropped a missile that failed to ignite, but another plane flew past from behind it, “catching” the missile with joints on its wings. It had just refueled.

Others were exchanging metal boxes packed with machine-gun ammunition or flying next to one another like trick flying and performing midair refueling through tentacle-like tubes. These maneuvers were supposed to be absolutely impossible during high-speed flight. It was almost like watching juggling on top of a speeding car.

They’d prepared special midair-refueling craft to eliminate the need to return to base.

By creating an aerial refueling network that stretched from their base to the battlefield, they could realize normally impossible flight duration and combat range.

Ugh…!! Then we have to start with their supply lines…!!

Ekalielya fixed her grip on the yoke, but her idea didn’t connect to a concrete plan. The smaller crafts’ inhumanly nimble movements were one thing, but the way the eighty-meter-long HsF-00 moved was uncanny.

Regular fighter craft had options for distracting an enemy with irregular maneuvers as well. The Split S, the barrel roll, the Russian-invented Pugachev Cobra—they were tactics to instantly turn the tables on an enemy coming in from behind. But in practice, pilots surprisingly disliked special maneuvers like these.

Actually using these unique and irregular maneuvers created intense g-forces that strained the soldiers’ bodies. They already had to deal with a lack of blood flowing to the brain, which impaired their judgment. If they started swinging the nose around and distorting their own vision on top of that…Even if the unorthodox moves did allow them to get behind the enemy, it ran the risk of a really stupid ending: giving their prey a chance to escape before they could mount any kind of counterattack.

However.

The HsF-00’s nose wasn’t pointed forward to begin with. It would move forward with its body turned ninety degrees and whirl in circles like a spinning top. The way it moved cast doubt on the very assumption that it was a plane at all. It was one thing that the plane didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces, but the fact that a living pilot was inside was even more startling.

And on top of all that, the enemy’s attacks were precise.

The missiles it fired could swerve many times harder than hers as it chased its target. The machine-gun bullets seemed to fly unerringly into her comrades’ wings. And to make matters worse, the craft was even using what appeared to be lasers. Her wingmen had been shot down, one after another, by attacks they had no idea how to evade.

Plus…

“Ahem, hello, can you hear me? This is Ryuuta Kameyama of the Academy City Air Defense Team. Technically, I’m with Anti-Skill—meaning I’m a schoolteacher—but I’m a soldier by trade, so there’s no need to feel much guilt about locking onto me or anything. Actually, in my case, I wanted to be an Air Defense pilot to begin with, but there was an issue with my position in Academy City, so I’m just using my teaching license for some necessary certification. That’s all.”

…She was receiving the enemy’s carefree transmissions.

“Now that I’ve introduced myself, I’ll get to the point. I set the missiles’ proximity fuse to detonate a fair distance away— Are you still okay? I thought it was a pretty imaginative idea myself, so that you could all eject with your parachutes.”

“Augh!! Are you making fools of us, you bastard…?!”

Ekalielya, missing the fact that their radio encryption had been very easily decoded, flew into a rage in spite of herself. The man over the radio, however, paused after a moment of confusion, until he said:

“Damn, is that a lady pilot? I mean, I’ve heard smaller people get knocked around less by the g-forces, but…Sheesh. Now I really can’t bring myself to shoot you down.”

Her opponent was basically declaring that he could kill her at any time if he wanted to.

It was a bully’s way of doing things: flaunt strange, unknown tech, then scorn those who didn’t understand it as primitive savages. The man’s bearing made it seem as though he was a refined gentleman, too, which made that overbearing attitude even more conspicuous.

But no matter how much rage seethed within her, it wouldn’t make up for the difference in power. Ekalielya’s plane couldn’t touch the Academy City HsF-00. It was like the Wright brothers’ biplane trying to chase down a modern jet fighter.

“Damn this giant-ass fly! I hope the g-forces grind you to dust already!! What kind of pilot doesn’t just up and die after all those insane moves?!”

“Well, it’s really nothing special. The important bit is that human flesh can’t withstand combat maneuvers above a certain speed, right? That’s a simple problem. If you can increase your body’s durability, that’ll let you handle way bigger and faster machines.”

“…?”

“My body is currently frozen at negative seventy degrees Celsius. There’s a life support device standing in for my internal organs. With this setup, the only thing rolling is my brain’s decision-making power. I’m even leaving part of the calculations to the machine; it detects subtle electric currents from my scalp and uses those to direct the plane…Get it? With my hardened body, I can overcome the natural limits dictated by inertia. Well, according to medical professionals, we have to be real careful about half-assing the freezing tech so that it freezes the pilot’s body but leaves their ability to think.”

A shudder ripped through Ekalielya.

It felt like she’d caught a glimpse of a fundamental difference between them.

“Anyway, now that my boring explanation is over, I’ll get to the point.”

A moment after the assertion, the HsF-00’s silhouette began to shift.

Ga-gong!!

The upper sections of its giant main wings detached and fell in behind it, flying like small birds. There were about ten in all. Thin wires or something seemed to be attached to them, and each flitted about independently like stunt kites.

“These are laser units, meant to penetrate an enemy from many directions at once,” said the pilot named Kameyama, turning the aircraft and swinging the tiny weapons around like morning stars.

Clear relaxation and contempt crept into his tone. “You can’t run from the speed of light. I’ll shoot you down real gentle, young lady, so get ready.”