3: Black and White (Continued)

20 October, 1905 Hours (West Pacific Standard Time)

Northern Training Grounds, Merida Island Base

The cockpit screen, in live combat mode, was a swirl of information and warnings. Digital representations of the scenery, picked up by the machine’s optical sensors, flew past in a dizzying array. The jungle sinking into night, the sheets of red-and-purple sky, the dark trees rustling in the wind the machine kicked up—all disappeared from sight just as quickly as they came, in a blur of afterimages.

Gauges displayed various readings: the wobbling G-meter, the whirling positioning grid, the melee mode’s variable reticle. The targeting box and motion indicators danced wildly, the power gauge continued to fluctuate, and the AI blared warning after warning.

《Proximity alert!》

It was coming from eight o’clock—behind him and to the left. Sousuke’s Arbalest was tearing through the jungle, but Lieutenant Clouseau’s M9 was closing in. The inky black machine streaked toward him, and its orange eyes appeared to burn.

Sousuke braced himself as it reached out to make contact. His Arbalest dodged in the nick of time; the black M9’s training knife just grazed its armor.

More flashes came—strikes, sweeps, and roundhouse kicks, one after another. They had a distinct rhythm, like a dance: at once provocative and serene; surging with energy, yet as deep and still as a lake.

These movements... how? Sousuke wondered. They were humanlike—extremely so. It was hard to believe he was really fighting an arm slave. He could almost see its muscles throb, smell its sweat, hear its heart beating, feel its bones creak. And more than anything, this black M9’s pilot was...

Good...! Yes, he was good. As good as Sousuke? Better, in fact—He could count on one hand the number of operators he’d met who could fight at this level in hand-to-hand combat. Lieutenant Belfangan Clouseau... he wondered, executing a diversionary strike before leaping away. Who are you?

Third generation ASes—like the Arbalest and the M9—were much better jumpers than their predecessors. Their legs utilized the structural principles of a grasshopper’s joints, which gave them explosive acceleration beyond anything a ground vehicle or aircraft could muster. The result was a jump in proportion to a human leaping effortlessly to the roof of a house.

But Clouseau continued to press the attack. The black M9 jumped just a moment later, hot on the Arbalest’s heels. As the two collided in midair, it violently seized the Arbalest’s ankles, and—

Sousuke took in a gasp of confusion. The next thing he knew, the world was upside-down; Clouseau had used the black M9’s momentum to throw the Arbalest off balance, and his machine grabbed on tight as Sousuke’s began to fall, back-first. The plan was clearly to come astride him and slam him to the ground.

Sousuke skillfully manipulated his machine, unleashing a combined elbow and knee strike that broke his enemy’s grip. Still, the ground was closing in—He wouldn’t make it in time. He twisted his machine’s body so that it landed shoulders-first. The Arbalest rolled along the ground, kicking up mud. Impacts that even the state-of-the-art shock absorbers couldn’t fully disperse rattled through Sousuke’s body, and he groaned.

The more sarcastic soldiers referred to ASes as “Cocktail Shakers”—a reference to the way an operator was jolted around during battle—and at the moment, Sousuke really did feel like the ice in a shaker, slung around by an overly-enthusiastic bartender. He quickly shook off the toll the landing had taken on his body, regained control of the Arbalest, and sprang it to its feet. He assessed his damage report, then turned to face the enemy again.

Clouseau’s M9 was just standing up. “Just as I thought,” he announced over the radio. “You’re a second-rate operator, Sergeant Sagara.”

“What?” Sousuke asked.

“You fight like it’s a skill, not an art. Do you understand what that means?”

Sousuke said nothing.

“I suppose you don’t... which just proves my point,” Lieutenant Clouseau told him. “A second-rate predecessor and second-rate subordinates... what a miserable team they’ve put me on.”

Predecessor—he’s talking about Captain McAllen, Sousuke realized. He still won’t show any respect for the dead...

As Sousuke watched, Clouseau’s machine slowly turned to face him, then threw its training knife away. The training knives had an edge made from urethane foam, which was infused with water-based paint, like a giant felt-tipped pen. Unlike the monomolecular cutters used in live combat, all these did was leave marks to simulate a “cut”—They all but eliminated the chances of anyone getting hurt or killed in training. Sousuke couldn’t understand what he was thinking.

“Throw that toy of yours away,” Lieutenant Clouseau demanded. “Let’s have a real bout.” The black M9 drew a large knife from the hardpoint on its hip. In truth, it was more like a dagger—It was almost twice as long and wide as a standard knife, and emitted an almost ominous aura.

This was a “Crimson Edge” monomolecular cutter, created by the Israeli arms manufacturer IMI. It was a sized-up version of the reliable and widely adopted “Dark Edge” series, and the AS squadrons of the Israeli army frequently used it to tear through the Rk-92s and Mistrals of Islamic nations. Its purpose was to cripple a heavily-armored opponent in close combat with one strike; it had been refined over countless battlefields for that very purpose, always with a focus on substance over style. A weapon like that could easily take the Arbalest’s arm off, or even tear its cockpit block in half.

“What, you’re not going to draw?” the lieutenant mocked. “You should have a GRAW-2.” The GRAW-2 was the Arbalest’s own monomolecular cutter.

Is he serious? Sousuke wondered incredulously. Clouseau was right in that the Arbalest did have a GRAW-2 in its weapons rack. But his proposal would take things past merely ‘stepping outside’ to settle a disagreement in a bar. Knocking each other around in valuable machinery was bad enough, but the addition of real blades was beyond the pale. What kind of officer takes a simple spar this seriously? Who is this man?

“Come on,” Lieutenant Clouseau demanded, and the black M9 dashed at him, kicking up sprays of mud.

Sousuke gasped. It was on him in a flash; the dark gray dagger arced in his direction. Immediately, he ducked his machine back to one knee, but a metallic screech howled in his ears. The swing had gone right through the blade of the training knife in the Arbalest’s hand, bisecting it. If Sousuke hadn’t moved just when he did, the blow would have gone through his cockpit.

But Clouseau’s attack was far from over. The swipes continued, mercilessly, from below, from the side, diagonally down from the shoulder—each one sent sparks flying and left nicks and cuts in the Arbalest’s armor. Each seemed to burn with icy, hostile intent.

He’s serious... Sousuke didn’t wait a moment longer. He drew a monomolecular cutter from his own weapons rack. He didn’t bother to beg him to stop, or to ask why he was doing this—If his opponent was going to try to kill him, then Sousuke didn’t have to hold back.

“That’s right,” Lieutenant Clouseau told him. “No need to hesitate.”

There was another splash of mud as the machines leaped away from each other. “Al! Maximize GPL! Switch motion manager to Delta-1, and remove all practice limiters!” Sousuke yelled.

《Roger. Maximizing GPL. Running Delta-1. Removing all PLD,》 the AI intoned. The generator’s output began to rise, and the motion manager software switched to live combat mode. 《Caution,》 the AI continued. 《Recommended motion manager setting is Charlie-1.》

“What?” Sousuke asked in confusion.

《Charlie-1 is recommended for lambda driver activation. Reasoning is based on six factors: One, statistics based on data from five previous sorties. Two, Charlie-1 was the default set by development lead Bani Morauta. Three, bilateral angle settings for Delta-1 are—》

“Explain later!!”

《Roger.》

Clouseau’s M9 charged, and the Arbalest readied to meet it. In the dimming light of the training grounds, the two machines collided.

The large screen in the base’s command center glowed with a wealth of information about the battling machines. Tessa barely remembered to breathe as she watched their silhouettes cut furiously through the darkening jungle. It was like two giants locked in a dance—first coming together, now lashing apart. Tree after tree fell, crushed beneath their metal limbs—

“I can’t say I approve of this,” said Lieutenant Colonel Richard Mardukas, who was standing beside her. “Even if it is for a purpose, I don’t like to give the impression that we support soldiers settling personal affairs with violence. It sets a bad precedent; rules must be applied consistently.” He pushed his glasses up his nose as he eyed the screen dubiously.

Tessa gave him a sidelong glance, then let out a small sigh. “We don’t have a choice,” she lamented. “It’s the only way to draw out the Arbalest’s power...”

“Captain, I fail to understand,” Mardukas observed pointedly. “Battlefield simulation training is done every day. Why the farce? Inciting that ridiculous barroom brawl, wasting the squad’s materiel resources, even allowing them the use of dangerous, live combat equipment...”

As Mardukas’s words implied, the brawl had been planned from the start: Clouseau had proposed it, and Tessa had approved. The idea was to provoke Sousuke, insult him, and force him into a personal brawl, thus pushing him to the brink. It seemed the best way to assess his ability to activate the Arbalest’s lambda driver—or at least, to let them gather data from its near-activation.

“I don’t intend to hold back. There’s a real chance that I’ll kill him,” Clouseau had told Tessa. She had wanted to argue, to say that killing him would defeat the point of it all, but the newly-appointed lieutenant cut her off with cold logic: “If that happens, it tells us all we need to know—that he didn’t have what it took, and that the machine is worthless. This knowledge will disincline the operations division towards further reliance on it.”

Tessa had found that she couldn’t object; to refuse would be like saying that she had no faith in Sousuke.

Mardukas was still talking, his eyes still locked on the command center screen. “It’s a bridge too far from a safety perspective, as well. Our men might make fighting their livelihood, but that doesn’t mean we should behave like a street gang. When we do engage in violence, it should be gentlemanly, tempered by deliberateness and regulation. This kind of barbaric duel is—”

“But war doesn’t discriminate between gentlemanly and barbaric, does it?” Tessa mused. She realized that her words had earned a show of surprise from Mardukas, and asked quickly, “Ah, was that impudent of me?”

“No,” Mardukas admitted at length. “You’re entirely correct, Captain.” As he responded, for just a second, his eyes took on a hint of pity.

A relay, affixed to the Arbalest, was sending them all kinds of data: the operator’s heart rate, brainwaves, neuro-magnetic waves, and NIR values; temperature and deformations in the machine’s skeleton; the status of the AI, Al; and all kinds of other things. It was all being recorded for review by their engineer, Second Lieutenant Lemming.

What would he think if he knew we were using him as a guinea pig? Tessa wondered. What would he think if he knew I’d corralled him into this? He would hate me, I’m sure... Everything that had happened today just seemed to take him further and further away from her—further away, even, than Tokyo was from Merida Island.

Bani... she thought. The face of the young man, no longer with them, surfaced in the back of her mind. Is this your way of getting back at me? For being so lost without you, and being drawn to him? That machine, your final testament, has saved us time and again; there are no words to thank you for it. But at the same time, having it here... it’s opened a gap between him and me, a gap that can never be closed again. Why did he have to pilot the Arbalest at Sunan? Why couldn’t it have been someone else?

These thoughts consumed her only for a few seconds. Then, noticing Mardukas’s disapproving expression once again, she said, “The stress of standard training is not sufficient to activate the lambda driver. There’s a significant difference in a soldier’s mental state between training and live combat. You’re more than aware of that, aren’t you, Mardukas-san?”

“Of course,” he replied briefly. “The Falklands taught me that.” Tessa was reminded of Mardukas’s service as XO on a Royal Navy nuclear submarine during the Falklands War in the early 80s. “Captain...” he went on. “When I express my doubts about this, it’s that I question whether the machine is worth all these machinations. A weapon that fails to work each time the trigger is pulled is no weapon at all. It’s my opinion that we should work out other strategies that are less dependent on it. What a weapons system needs is not destructive power, or the ability to disrupt the battlefield—it’s reliability, pure and simple.”

“Are you calling the Arbalest defective?” she questioned.

“Yes, ma’am. I don’t care for that machine at all.”

His words inspired a certain melancholy amusement in her. Tessa had gotten the vague impression that Mardukas wasn’t fond of Sousuke, yet he and Sousuke had the exact same opinion about that machine. “I believe that Sergeant Sagara agrees with you...” she murmured. “And that’s just the problem.”

Exchange followed exchange. The black and white silhouettes intertwined for an instant, then broke away, tearing through the jungle with roars and flashes of electric light. Their movements unleashed gales that whipped around the surrounding vines and leaves.

“Ugly... such an ugly way of fighting,” Clouseau said.

“Ugly?” Sousuke questioned.

“You move like a tin toy. So awkward—” A roundhouse kick came flying from the Arbalest’s blind spot; Sousuke stepped in to try to body check the opponent, which also softened the blow against him. “—reliant on brute force—” Yielding to the motion as its balance shifted, the M9 went into a spin in mid-air; the momentum carried its knife through the Arbalest’s left shoulder, taking off a heat sink and rupturing a shock absorbent tank. “—and inflexible!”

From there, the M9 moved into a one-handed handstand and unleashed a dazzling series of whirlwind-like kicks. First the right leg, then the left—they slammed into the Arbalest’s head from the side, throwing it off its balance.

Sousuke gritted his teeth. The M9 spun on its inertia like a top, then planted a foot and regained its upright posture. The Arbalest backed up, smoke rising from its shoulders.

“Well?” Lieutenant Clouseau taunted him. “Anyone piloting an M9-type machine should at least be capable of that.”

“Bragging about your acrobatics?” Sousuke asked sourly.

“Hmm?”

“If you were smart, you’d have finished me off then instead.”

“You still have the energy for trash-talk, at least... Then, I’ll take your advice!” Lieutenant Clouseau decided.

The machines collided immediately. The clash of explosive power, of strength against strength, echoed through the nearby jungle and shook the very air around them. The Arbalest took a light step and struck at its enemy, straight, clear, and fast. Clouseau dodged by leaning in and at the same time, took a slice at the Arbalest’s torso. Sousuke barely managed to dodge with a twist and a leap to the side.

Despite his flippancy moments ago, Sousuke was desperate. Clouseau was good. He wasn’t just strong—his every movement was harmonious, each one seeming to flow into the next like water. He never fell for Sousuke’s provocations, and saw through every feint. Conversely, any minor carelessness on Sousuke’s part earned him a torrential rain of attacks that overwhelmed his guard and sent him reeling.

Clouseau began to speak, even as he struck at the Arbalest. “Why don’t you show me what you really have already? Europe is packed to the gills with operators at your level. You’d barely be bottom-of-the-barrel on an SAS assault soldier team.”

“You’re former SAS?” Sousuke questioned. The SAS was a British special forces unit, considered to be one of the best in the world. From the name Clouseau, Sousuke had assumed the man was French of African descent, but—

“That’s not where your mind should be right now,” the lieutenant advised, as an especially powerful roar and vibration washed over Sousuke; Clouseau’s dagger had dug into the Arbalest’s abdomen. “Keep your focus on staying alive. That coward McAllen is waiting for you.”

Sousuke hissed to himself. The Arbalest’s AI reported the damage to him immediately: 《Warning! Damage to generator. Extent unknown. Main power cable severed. Second cooling unit disabled. Rectus abdominis muscle actuators damaged—》 The AI hadn’t mentioned it, but there seemed to be damage to the air conditioner, too; the smell of burning metal had begun to permeate the typically airtight cockpit.

“What’s wrong?” Another merciless strike. “Why won’t you focus?” Another unforgiving slash. “Are you here to fight or not?!” Lieutenant Clouseau slammed a knee into the staggered Arbalest’s side. The eight-ton machine went flying, and hit the ground back-first. The AI blared warnings; a shrill alarm rang out. The machine’s skeleton, muscles, and armor all creaked and groaned in protest.

At this rate... Sousuke was at a loss. He couldn’t begin to figure out how to deflect raging chains of attacks like these, let alone deal an effective counter.

“I told you to show me what you have!!” The M9 leaped high into the air, knife hefted in a backhand grip, then plunged down at the Arbalest, like a hungry eagle on grounded prey.

Sousuke rolled to the right and managed to dodge the stab. Clouseau’s dagger bore deeply into the place the Arbalest’s cockpit block had been moments ago. Sousuke swiped his blade at the other man’s dagger—and cut the Crimson Edge in two.

From its supine position, the Arbalest used the spontaneous power in its back muscles alone to snap into the air. It was a maneuver called a “jackknife”—with a motion similar to that of a click beetle, the AS could spring to its feet much faster than mere use of its limbs would ever allow. Utilizing an agility impossible for a human, it quickly recovered its balance, and in that same instant, brought its knife to the ready.

But the next thing Sousuke knew, the M9 was there, crouched right inside the Arbalest’s personal space. Dropping its hips low, it whipped around sharply, but before Sousuke could react to the unnatural motion—

He let out a shout of surprise. His machine was being drawn forward. It was as if gravity had, for an instant, shifted perpendicular to the ground. He felt a powerful impact, and then suddenly, he was being blown back by some overwhelming force.

The eight-ton Arbalest flew backwards through the jungle, knocking down every tree in its path and coating the area in a haze of mud. When the machine finally made contact with the ground, it skidded, digging a long trench and jetting white steam—before it came to a stop, on its back, exhausted and motionless.

“It...” It couldn’t be. That impact... Sousuke’s head was spinning, and his body was numb. It was that strike that had done it. It was far more than a simple physical strike—it felt almost otherworldly. Could that machine have—

The black M9’s eyes were surely glaring straight at him.

“Can’t be...” Sousuke choked through an unresponsive throat. It can’t be. That thing can’t have a lambda driver. The Arbalest is the only Mithril machine that has one—That’s why they’re putting me through all this, right? It’s why they shoved me into this unreliable weapon, gave me all this responsibility I never asked for—

“Get up, Sergeant,” Clouseau said. “Try to bring out everything that machine has. You hear me? Everything. Do it... or the next one kills you.”

The Arbalest stood up. Its knees were knocking and its shoulders were heaving, reflecting the toll the fight had taken on Sousuke himself.

I guess I don’t have a choice... he realized. He’d have to use the lambda driver, the machine’s mysterious function. It had toyed with him, time and time again—Would he be forced to rely on it, here and now? And... would it actually work for him, or would it betray him yet again? This is the stupidest fight I’ve ever been in... he told himself. Maybe it would be smarter to cut my losses and run...

“Get ready,” Clouseau warned him.

Sousuke said nothing, but took a deep breath. He planted both of his machine’s feet, lowered its hips, and faced Clouseau down.

The black M9 began running, closing in. In response, the Arbalest pulled back its fist, as if it were drawing a bow. Imagine power. Imagine destructive power, focused to a single point... “Go!” Sousuke whispered to himself.

He struck. Clouseau moved.

The next instant, the Arbalest was flying forward, its body buckled. The impact slammed through Sousuke’s cockpit again, and this time, his consciousness became dim. Up became down and then up again, as the jungle whirled like a kaleidoscope. He slammed into the ground, and stars appeared before his eyes.

The AI reported the damage, and more alarms blared, but Sousuke barely heard them.

“You’re fragile. Weak,” Clouseau said. “You were nothing but a pet dog from the start.”

Sousuke said nothing. It’s no use, he admitted it to himself. And then, he sank into the darkness.

“It appears to be over,” Mardukas said, removing his navy blue hat. He also slid off his black-rimmed glasses and rubbed his tired eyes with the back of his hand. The room felt hotter than usual. “Nothing happened, after all. The machine is useless to us.”

“We can’t be so certain that nothing happened,” Tessa responded coldly. “Lemming-san, what do the numbers say?” She was addressing the engineer, Second Lieutenant Nora Lemming.

The woman in the seat nearby, who had been monitoring data on the M9 and Arbalest with a laptop, spoke with detachment, her eyes still locked on the screen. “They’re not even as high as they were during the battle on Berildaob Island. The TAROS is registering the needed brainwaves—gamma waves—but at extremely low levels. The spectral distribution of the core module’s phase interference wave quantum particles is showing alteration. They’re moving from the north pole of the thalamus column... to around field 15 of E-layer. And to a little ways away from there, near ninety degrees of field 42 of P-layer.”

“The blue parts?” Tessa questioned.

“Yes, look,” Lemming replied. “These two places... they’re connected. It’s promising, if still a long way from activation.”

Tessa thought for a minute. “In the case of defensive reactions, it was N-layer zero degrees, plus or minus forty, I believe. I wonder if this has to do with Miller’s hypothesis.”

“We can’t be sure. What I’m wondering is—”

Mardukas could only watch, disheartened, while Tessa and Lemming argued before the array of colorful 3D images and graphs. He couldn’t follow their conversation at all; the best that he could grasp was that it concerned neurology and physics. Though he possessed several degrees himself, he couldn’t even begin to follow a debate about fields so different from his own.

Lemming was a brilliant MIT graduate. She had no military experience, but Tessa had found and recruited her to deal with the Arbalest when it lost its developer. She wasn’t as exceptional as Teletha Testarossa, but she certainly qualified as a prodigy—Nearly every engineer that Mardukas had met with significant knowledge of ASes and ECSes was young.

Mardukas had long felt a sense of discomfort regarding the new weapons these young people were developing. It wasn’t just that capricious lambda driver—arm slaves, electromagnetic camouflage systems, palladium fusion reactors, the de Danaan’s super AI, the TAROS, the superconductive drive, the electromagnetic flow control system... it all seemed equally wrong to him.

Just twenty years ago—back when Mardukas himself might have still been called young—no one could have even dreamed of devices like these. Those were the days when missiles and fighters were first getting mounted with true computers; talk of giant robots or invisibility screens would have gotten a man laughed out of the military. It was an era still captivated by the simple pixel graphics of Space Invaders, after all.

The nuclear submarine that Mardukas once commanded was still considered cutting-edge. But in reality, it had more in common with a diesel sub from the World War II era than it did with the Tuatha de Danaan. Teletha Testarossa is a good and fine girl, he told himself. But why does she—and the products of minds like hers—fill me with such trepidation? She and her submarine, her squadron... they’ve saved many people, to be sure. But why is it that some part of me wants to fundamentally question their existence?

The argument between Tessa and Lemming went on for about five minutes.

“Any data from the E-005?”

“None.”

“There’s nothing else on the electromagnetic spectrum it emitted?”

“There are limits to what I can measure in this environment, so I can’t be sure,” Lemming explained. “We’re using heavily improvised equipment, as well. I’d need more time and analysis to know more—”

“All right. Let’s go back to square one with the hypothesis, and start by rebuilding a simple model,” Tessa decided. “Maybe we can figure out a way to reduce the reliance on the operator, too... I’m counting on you, Lemming-san.”

“R-Right.” Mardukas didn’t miss Lemming’s momentary look of dismay. The idea of fully grasping a system like that probably seemed overwhelming, even for a genius like her. Perhaps Lemming, too, felt an inferiority complex next to that girl, a full ten years younger than her, who could say something like that so flippantly.

But Tessa, showing no signs of noticing Lemming’s distress, simply turned back to Mardukas. “I’m going to rest for a while,” she said. “If I’m needed for anything, please forward the message to the medical center.”

“The medical center?” Mardukas checked.

“It’s the perfect place for a short nap. I need a hot compress, as well,” Tessa said, before walking for the command center exit. Her strides seemed a bit longer than usual; she was in quite a hurry for someone who claimed to be heading out for some peace and quiet.

So she is worried. Heaven’s sake... So that was it. She was so eager to check in on the sergeant that it had driven her to distraction.

Once Tessa was out the automatic door, Lieutenant Lemming spoke up from behind. “Um... Colonel, sir?”

“What is it?”

“Will Major Kalinin be returning to the base today?”

“He said he would be,” Mardukas told her. “Why do you ask?”

“Well... I just need to speak to him, regarding the Arbalest,” Lemming admitted. “I wasn’t sure... whether to email him or to speak with him directly.”

“That’s up to you, but don’t trouble the major any more than is necessary. Rumors can affect troop morale.”

“O-Of course... But I should tell you, the rumors are aren’t true. I’m saying this partly to defend the major’s honor, but he and I are not—”

“Yes, yes. I know.” Mardukas waved his hand in annoyance and turned to head for his office.

This time, it was the sergeant in charge of communications who called to him. “Wait, Colonel.”

“What now?” he demanded.

“Er... well. There’s a message from the operations division in Sydney.”

“Come on. Wake up, you useless downer of a sergeant.” Sousuke opened his eyes and found a scowling Kurz Weber looking down at him.

Sousuke stared at him in silence. He was lying on a bed in the medical center. The ceiling was white, and buzzing with naked fluorescent lights. Sousuke vaguely remembered the maintenance crew pulling him out of his AS, but everything after that was a blur.

“You let him smack you down that easily? Talk about pathetic,” Kurz said, apparently forgetting his own sad performance back in the bar. He looked hale and hardy enough now, but at the same time, deeply dissatisfied.

“Where’s Lieutenant Clouseau?” Sousuke asked as he sat up, and Kurz gestured with his head. That was when Clouseau appeared from behind the curtain on the other side of the large room, which partitioned off the examination area. He was wearing a T-shirt, holding a balled-up shirt under his arm, and thanking the doctor for something. There was a brand new bandage neatly wrapped around his muscular left bicep.

Sousuke said nothing.

“That battle was an experiment cooked up by that bastard, some engineers, and the command types. They set me up, too. Dammit...” Kurz’s words just confirmed Sousuke’s suspicions; they’d fought for too long with live weapons, without command ever warning them to stop. It wasn’t hard for Sousuke to imagine their squad’s senior officers tacitly approving of—or even encouraging—the fight.

In other words, that AS and I are Mithril guinea pigs. What an absurd new assignment he’d found himself in. Why hadn’t they just ordered him to fight, instead of playing mind games? What was Teletha Testarossa thinking, treating him this way? At the least, she probably wasn’t enjoying it—he could give her that much credit.

The loss had been a bitter pill to swallow, and frustration swirled in his gut. That lieutenant hadn’t even employed any noteworthy tactics during the match; the result had come down to pure skill versus skill. If it had been a real battle, Sousuke would be dead now, rotting inside that white elephant of a machine.

I wish he’d gotten in a good hit and destroyed that AS. I wish he’d demolished it, so that it could never be used again, he thought. It wouldn’t be my fault, then, and maybe I could just—

No. That’s foolish... Even if the Arbalest were destroyed, they wouldn’t send me back to Tokyo. The top brass wouldn’t go back on their orders. But that AS is still the cause of all of my misfortune, isn’t it?

“Chidori...” he muttered. I’m sorry, but I’m not strong enough to do anything. I can’t protect you. I couldn’t even protect the honor of a dead man, or my own pride... I can’t protect anything.

Had he ever felt so powerless in his life?

“He’s coming.” Kurz’s whisper snapped Sousuke back to reality.

Belfangan Clouseau approached them. “I see you’re back with us, Sergeant,” he said, without a hint of appreciation for the fact. “Go to the hangar and sign the paperwork for the maintenance team. Write a report about that practice we just had, and submit it to me, Lieutenant Lemming, Major Kalinin, and Colonel Testarossa by 2500 hours. I want it flawless. Make one mistake in accuracy or formatting and you’ll do it over from scratch. Drills start tomorrow morning at 0600; you’ll gather in hangar one. That includes you, Weber—I need to retrain every one of this battle group’s AS operators personally.”

Sousuke said nothing.

“Don’t expect an easy ride like you had with McAllen,” Clouseau warned them. “When my own ignoble end comes, I don’t want my successor speaking ill of my competence. Be ready.”

Neither Sousuke nor Kurz responded. They had lost to him, after all—they had no grounds to object to his abuses of their former squad leader.

“If there are no questions, you’re dismissed.”

“I do have a question,” Sousuke said in a hushed voice.

“Proceed.”

“What was that attack you used to beat me?” he asked hesitantly. “Does that black machine... have a lambda driver?”

Clouseau snorted in response. “I wouldn’t need to use it to crush you and the Arbalest. The innate potential of a third generation AS like the M9 was enough.”

“Then what caused that feeling of shock?” Sousuke wanted to know.

“It’s a technique that combines the Eastern concepts of ‘tooshi’ and ‘fa jin,’” Clouseau told him. “You generate a powerful impact that permeates the enemy machine and its operator, and then sends them flying back—no lambda driver required.”

Sousuke remembered the fight back in the bar; he’d used the same move, then. From Sousuke’s point of view, it had looked like he’d just shoved Kurz in the jaw, but there was clearly more to it than that.

“The M9 is more than capable of pulling these things off,” Clouseau was saying. “Match your breathing to your opponent’s, and you can direct their power’s flow any way you want it. Like water—or like fire, as they say.”

“But an AS’s body isn’t anything like a human’s,” Sousuke objected.

“That was true, once, but not anymore,” Clouseau corrected him. “The M9 has over twice the parts in its skeleton as your average second-generation AS. That gives it a complexity and flexibility well on par with God’s greatest feat of engineering—that is to say, the human body.”

Sousuke made no reply.

“Earlier, I called the way you fight ‘ugly.’ I said that because, instead of trusting the Arbalest’s fundamental strengths, you treat it like a machine—no different than a truck, or a helicopter.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Sousuke asked. ASes were machines—artificial fusions of titanium alloy and high polymers that just happened to be arranged in a humanoid form. When they moved, it wasn’t because they were alive, but because their joints responded to input in accordance with their programming. Some people referred to them as an operator’s ‘avatar,’ but that was just a turn of phrase.

“I see you won’t get it unless I spell it out for you.” Clouseau put his hands on his hips with a sigh of disgust. Then he looked straight at Sousuke, and said, “You hate the Arbalest.”

Sousuke was too shocked to respond.

“Facing you made that very clear. The movements of your limbs, the flow of your punches, the swings of your blade... there’s uncertainty in all of them. I saw distrust, impatience, and hesitation there. Your movements appear logical and professional on the surface... but there’s no will behind them. Your heart isn’t in it. Your problem isn’t with the lambda driver; it’s something more fundamental.”

Every one of Clouseau’s words was like a knife in Sousuke’s heart. He was right: Sousuke did hate that machine. Other than the lambda driver, it had never betrayed him before in any way, but still... he couldn’t trust it. He hated putting his life in its hands in battle.

Was that feeling slowing him down? It shook him to think that a man he had been facing as an enemy—even if temporarily—could cut to the heart of the matter so quickly. He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. The lieutenant’s words were almost surely correct.

“Listen to me, Sergeant.” Clouseau leaned forward and peered into Sousuke’s face, close enough that he could feel the man’s breath.

With his eyes locked to Sousuke’s, he spoke, enunciating every word. “ASes are not just vehicles. They’re an extension of a soldier’s body. They embody the heart of their operator. In a high-level battle, it’s the smallest differences that determine who wins and who loses. A man who can’t trust his own body, his own power, can never defeat his enemy. I want you to know that. That’s all.” Without waiting for his response, Clouseau turned and left the medical center behind.

“Sheesh. The new boss is a real jerk, huh?” Kurz whispered, even knowing the man might still hear them.

“But what he said is worth considering. Clouseau is definitely a strong fighter,” Sousuke admitted.

“Well... in hand-to-hand, sure. Dunno how well he does in other areas.”

“He’s likely top-class in other fields, too,” Sousuke reasoned. “He insinuated that he was SAS.”

“Oh?” Kurz said skeptically. “Canadian SAS, maybe...”

The most widely-known SAS were the British Army’s 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, but Commonwealth nations like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia also had highly trained SASes. The rankings were the same in each country, and they frequently exchanged personnel, so it was hard to tell them apart from the outside.

“That reminds me,” Kurz went on. “McAllen’s dad was Australian SAS.”

“Oh, I remember—” Sousuke got that far, and then stopped.

Tessa was standing at a door to the medical center, opposite the one through which Clouseau had gone. Her right hand was on the door frame, her left hand was gripping her braid, and she was watching them as if desperate to speak. Sousuke had a fleeting impression that her legs were unsteady underneath her, as well.

She remained silent, so Sousuke and Kurz spoke up first.

“Colonel?”

“Tessa?”

She was just beginning to stammer out words when suddenly, the base’s physician, Captain Goldberry, called out from the back. “Oh, there you are. Tessa!”

“Y-Yes?”

“Dick sent you a message! He wants you back at the command center, ASAP!”

“Ah... very well. I’ll return at once.” Tessa hesitated for a moment, but disappeared quickly from the door frame without a proper word to them. Sousuke was utterly confounded.

“Huh,” Kurz said. “You think she came by ’cause she was worried?”

“Worried? About what?” Sousuke asked, his ignorance genuine.

Kurz glared at Sousuke for a moment, then shook his head exaggeratedly. “You know... if I ever had to script a romantic drama, you’re the last kind of protagonist I’d write. The story would never move forward. Viewership would tank.”

Sousuke just tilted his head in confusion.

Scowling at the map of the underground base, Belfangan Clouseau wandered through the officers’ quarters until he found the room assigned to him. The door wasn’t locked, and when he got inside, he found a pile of his personal belongings that the soldiers had brought for him. The officer quarters were about the size of a standard double hotel room; there was little in the way of decoration, and the lighting was bright and warm. There were only a few furnishings provided.

The first thing he did, before even touching his personal belongings, was to rifle through the empty lockers and cabinets; there was no trace of personal effects left by the person who’d used the room until two months before. He walked up to the wooden desk and searched through the drawers, where the scents of paper and cigars brushed at his nose. In the bottom drawer, he found a well-worn Bible.

Clouseau withdrew the small leather-bound tome and flipped through it. He was hoping he might find a picture of some kind slipped between the pages, but nothing came up. Then, he flipped to a certain verse in Ecclesiastes. The page’s right side was a little yellowed from regular use.

“A living dog is better than a dead lion,” read the verse. He’d use that phrase from time to time in training... I kept telling him I was Muslim, but it didn’t stop him. And I think that I—Allah, forgive me—came to like the phrase, too. “Senpai...” Clouseau whispered to himself, before closing the Bible again.

He turned back to the entrance to start moving his belongings in, but caught sight of an East Asian woman standing in the open door: it was Master Sergeant Melissa Mao.

“So it was you,” she said.

“It was.”

“It’s been a year and a half,” she observed.

“Technically,” he told her, “it’s only been six days.”

“True. You won’t find anything of his, though... It was all cleared out, ages ago.”

“I know.” Clouseau turned away from Mao and hefted up his large, olive-green bag. Then, he forced an air of indifference into his voice as he began to properly move his belongings into the room. “Did he... suffer?”

“Nobody knows,” she sighed. “Nobody was with him when it happened.”

“I see.” Clouseau stood still for a few seconds, and then nodded, as if convincing himself of something. He did several passes down the hall afterwards, clearing his luggage out of the entrance.

Rather than moving to help, Mao just asked, “That M9... it was a test-type for the D-series, wasn’t it? I remember seeing plans that got tabled... that were similar to the E-series I’ve been working with.”

“That’s right,” Clouseau agreed. “A Falke test-type; Geotron’s Dortmund factory only rolled out two. It can carry a little more payload, but it’s no different from the standard E-series, otherwise.”

“Does it have a version of the hardware that’s in the Arbalest?” she wanted to know.

Clouseau knew what she was getting at. “Does that concern you?”

“I was nearly killed twice by enemies who used it,” she told him bluntly.

“That’s right, I read the report,” Clouseau recalled. “My answer is... it doesn’t. There were plans to give it one, but the developer killed himself before it could go through.”

“So the Arbalest is still all Mithril has?”

“That’s right,” he agreed. “Which is why I’m going to train that sergeant and the rest of you... as thoroughly as I can.” On top of that, he had to think up countermeasures; tactics to let standard M9s stand a chance against a lambda driver. If the Arbalest could use its lambda driver freely, they could practice against it, then pass their results on to other battle groups—It was a method he hoped would keep them competitive for some time with their current equipment. Major Kalinin and Colonel Testarossa were counting on that, too.

“I understand, but it’s just not like you to go so hard...”

“I agree,” Clouseau told her, shrugging expressionlessly. Then, after a moment, he said, “That one—Sagara.”

“Yes?” Mao said.

“He’s just like I used to be,” Clouseau opined. “As stiff as a board, blind to everything around him, trying to force himself into this one single mold. He’s like a man trying to sit in a chair too small for him... even though he could easily widen it if he wanted to...”

“You really think he can?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know. But if he can’t, he’ll die.”

Mao fell silent.

“Or... he’ll buckle under,” Clouseau predicted.

“Buckle under?”

“Like the men we face in our daily operations,” he clarified. “There’s a kind of animosity that starts to foment inside of you. You start by putting on fronts about who you really are, then you begin to resent those around you, and in the end, you start to see the entire world with a kind of detached scorn. It happens slowly, but surely, like the little hand on a watch. That’s what makes it so frightening.”

“Sousuke?” Mao scoffed. “There’s no way.”

Clouseau didn’t respond to Mao’s words. “I’m tired,” he told her. “I’m going to rest a while. You should be going, too.” He opened the bag he’d tossed on the floor and pulled out a pristine towel and a bar of soap. But on his way to the shower room, he stopped for a moment. “Melissa.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell anyone about Senpai and me,” he ordered. “I can’t have the men going soft around me.”

Mao paused in the middle of shutting the door, and a pained smile appeared on her lips. “As you wish. Well... good night, Ben.”

“Good night.”

Mardukas’s expression was severe as he greeted Tessa in the command center. “Forgive me, Captain.”

“Is there an emergency?” she inquired.

“Well, it’s not quite clear yet,” Mardukas hedged. “Operations headquarters has ordered us to Standby D. There’s a B12a in progress in sector J5-CS; they’ve completed countermeasure procedure 3a and are currently proceeding through 3b.”

“Standby D” meant that the amphibious assault submarine Tuatha de Danaan had to be ready to deploy at any moment. More specifically, they were to keep it in a state where it could leave port within two hours of issuance of an order. Most of the time, that order never came; they were really just saying, “we might end up needing the TDD-1, so please be ready in case we do.” The standby order period could last for days or even weeks at a time, as well.

A B12a indicated, “Destructive action by one or multiple ASes.” The situation in Tokyo in June—though that had been a somewhat special case—fell into this category, for instance.

AS terrorism, then... Tessa had a bad feeling about this. “You mentioned sector J5-CS,” she said out loud. “Where is that?”

“Hong Kong, ma’am.”

Same Timeframe, Somewhere in Hong Kong

Police sirens could be heard passing down the main road. Cars honked at intersections. A hit song by Andy Hui rang out from a shop across the street.

A man stood inside a room, bathed faintly in red and green light from the windows. “I’ve returned, Sinsang,” the man said. “I used the Codarl-m to rile up the southern army’s sentries, as you requested. My little brother in Dung Ging reported in, as well. He says preparations are complete. He’s ready to kill the girl the moment you give the order.”

There was no response. The man was addressing the back of the room, but it was too dark to see who was there. It was a deep, fathomless darkness; the kind that seemed to drink in any light that touched it.

Within that darkness, something moved.

“Tomorrow evening, you say?” the man asked.

A husky, artificial voice echoed out from the darkness. It spoke.

“What manner of death do you request?” the man asked.

The voice spoke again.

“Very well,” said the man. “Then I’ll tell my little brother to kill that little Cinniu girl tomorrow. Is that acceptable?”

Silence from the darkness’s master implied the affirmative.