5: Sleepless Christmas Eve

24 December, 2335 Hours (Japan Standard Time)

Shark-1, Near Izu Islands

Shark-1, having collected information about the enemy from the sonobuoys he’d dispersed in advance, observed the pathetic attempts at evasive maneuvers being taken by the Tuatha de Danaan. They’d probably be changing heading and speed frequently to try to scramble their target motion analysis.

Stupid, he scoffed to himself. Do they really think those textbook submarine tactics will work against Leviathans?

Shark-1 opened his encrypted channel for shallow depths and issued orders to his wingmen: “B240, D300, Code 13. Heading 240. Navigate to depth 300 and attack target from three directions. You have permission to use ultrafast torpedoes.” Ten seconds later, he received a signal of acknowledgment from both machines, and the ‘first officer’ sitting behind him activated their fire control system.

The Leviathan’s arsenal included Soviet-made ultrafast torpedoes known as Buryas. Their top speed was 120 knots, over twice the speed of the standard torpedoes used in the West. They were effectively missiles, and not even the Tuatha de Danaan could shake them off.

His AI revealed via on-screen display that the enemy had entered firing range. His two comrades were almost there, too. The de Danaan might be agile for a submarine, but it would still be helpless against attacks from multiple Buryas, coming from three directions at once.

Shark-1 removed the final safety and pulled the trigger. He felt a jolt as the ultrafast torpedo took off out of the firing tube in the Leviathan’s belly, on a collision course with the de Danaan. Easy. It’s too easy... he thought with a thin smile.

Next, he started preparing another weapon for the area the Pacific Chrysalis was in; a standard torpedo would be more than enough for that one. He had no idea who was on board that ship, and he didn’t especially care. He’d been ordered to destroy it, so he would.

Tuatha de Danaan

The de Danaan’s officer of the deck, Captain Goddard, could feel his heart pounding in his chest, even as he remained superficially calm. He couldn’t stop feeling that they were facing hopeless odds. Just minutes ago, he’d been sure that nothing in the ocean could tangle with this vessel when it was in top condition. And yet, now...!

The enemies were running at over fifty knots, and it was three against one. Their top speed was probably greater than the Tuatha de Danaan’s. And worst of all, they were flaunting the ironclad law of combat. He’d never expected them to sneak up in secret and attack them from behind.

They want to take us down fast, huh? he thought with resignation. To approach at unthinkable speeds, slam them with all the power they had, then rush away from the area of engagement, all in mere minutes... This enemy could do things that normal submarines couldn’t. Goddard would find it implausible, if he hadn’t experienced the capabilities of the de Danaan first-hand.

Any way you looked at it, they were at an overwhelming disadvantage. Against small boats with the maneuverability of torpedoes, the de Danaan felt impossibly large and unwieldy. If this situation was presented as a training exercise, everyone would agree it was a no-win scenario. It was utterly unprecedented.

Goddard peered over at his XO, Lieutenant Colonel Mardukas. The other man stood ramrod straight at the center of the control room, silent, with a melancholic expression. He was probably using the data they’d acquired to extrapolate the capabilities of the enemy vessels.

That grave expression of his was making Goddard feel more and more anxious. What’s going on here? he wondered. The enemy’s movements were straightforward, boasting absolute confidence in their victory. How could they be so haughty? Did the weapons they carried also defy common sense?

The sonar tech spoke, as if to respond to Goddard’s unasked question. “Con, sonar! Torpedo in the water! Bearing 0-4-9! From Mike-13!”

“Can you give me the type? And the speed?” Mardukas prompted, seemingly unfazed by the threat of enemy attack.

“Wait a minute... no way! It’s too fast! Over 100 knots?! This torpedo is impossible! What in the world...”

“A Burya,” Mardukas decided.

“Burya?” Goddard questioned, and scowled at the XO’s words.

“An ultrafast torpedo made in the USSR,” Mardukas clarified. “It creates a bubble of gas around itself and is propelled with a rocket motor. It’s likely wire-guided. I suppose the intelligence division does their jobs right from time to time.”

“B-But XO, even if we know what it is, we can’t shake it off at that speed.”

“It would be stranger if we could shake off a torpedo. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“But...!”

Mardukas glared at Goddard. “Calm down, Captain. Your panic is annoying me, and if I get annoyed, we all go down. I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain every element of my plan, so stop thinking and follow my commands, quickly and to the letter.”

“Y-Yes sir,” Goddard responded.

“Good. Now, make our course 1-3-6, and gradually increase to sixty knots. Don’t worry about cavitation. Open the door for the third torpedo tube and release all safeties.”

“Ah... Aye, sir.” Each position repeated the orders.

《Estimated sixty seconds to impact.》 The Mother AI, undergoing complicated TMA calculations, began the countdown to their doom.

As if to punctuate her words, the sonar tech screamed, “More torpedoes! One each from Mike-14 and Mike-15! They’re both ultrafast as well! Bearings 0-6-8 and 0-8-9!”

The enemy torpedoes currently bearing down on the de Danaan were on another level from the ones that the US Navy submarine had fired at them near the Perio Islands. It would be hard enough to dodge just one... and now they had three incoming from all different directions.

Time was short. They had only about fifty seconds left. But as far as Goddard could see, Mardukas wasn’t panicked in the slightest. He just glared at the multipurpose screen, like a cryptologist deciphering a line of code. All the data available suggested no way out. But, Goddard thought, is the XO seeing something we aren’t?

“Up to fifty knots.”

“What’s the course of the torpedo from Mike-13?” Mardukas wanted to know.

“2-2-1.”

Right now, the de Danaan was running perpendicular to the enemy torpedo. The enemy weapon was gradually adjusting its course to better home in on them.

“Forty seconds left!”

Then Mardukas said, with the nonchalance of someone ordering off a restaurant lunch menu, “It’s time. All stop. Left full rudder, course 0-4-5.”

“Aye, sir! All stop! Left full rudder! Course 0-4-5! ...Wait, what?!”

Despite following the orders to the letter, nearly everyone in the control room went pale at the command. Mardukas had turned them on a course straight at the oncoming torpedo. “Fire control,” he continued calmly. “When we reach 0-4-5, fire torpedo three.”

“But at this range, the safeties—”

“Five degrees more.”

“Aye, sir! Fire three!”

The torpedo launched from the tube, and Mardukas continued to give orders out swiftly. “All start, full reverse. Activate EMFC.”

“Full reverse!”

“EMFC, contact!”

The large vessel abruptly slowed. As the torpedo they’d shot screamed away from it, the submarine stopped, and began to move backwards. But the enemy’s ultrafast torpedo was already on their doorstep.

Is he trying to shoot down an ultrafast torpedo? Goddard turned pale at that thought. It was impossible to use one torpedo to intercept another one moving that quickly. Water pressure limited the radius wherein a torpedo’s explosion was effective, so while fragments and shockwaves could make anti-air missiles effective over several meters, a torpedo had to score a direct hit to do any damage at all. It was like a batter trying to hit a 150 kilometer-per-hour fastball, blindfolded, using sound alone. The XO must know that. But then, why—

“All hands, brace for impact,” Mardukas said calmly over the ship phone, and then gripped the armrest of the captain’s chair beside him. Goddard quickly did the same.

On the front screen, the marks showing the approaching enemy torpedo and the one they had just launched closed distance. They were now just a few seconds apart.

“FCO. Are you calm?” Mardukas asked.

“Y-Yes sir!” the fire control officer replied in falsetto.

“Good. Detonate torpedo three,” Mardukas ordered. “Now.”

“Aye, sir!”

Their torpedo detonated right in front of the enemy’s... and right in front of their own vessel, causing the explosion’s roar and shockwave to rip through the Danaan. It bucked as if taking a few hundred jabs from a boxer, jostling the already tensed crew. Goddard felt his heart nearly leap from his chest. As he gripped his own chair tightly, his eyes flicked searchingly around the front screen.

The counterattack had failed. It hadn’t reached the enemy torpedo when it exploded. White noise from the foam created by the explosion meant they couldn’t confirm its presence, but it had to be out there, and still speeding towards their ship...

By their calculations, one second left—

“Next, halt reverse course. Forward, two-thirds speed. Course 0-6-7. Move to periscope depth,” Mardukas said through the commotion, as if he’d already moved on to the next phase of combat.

“What?” The whole crew, including Goddard, couldn’t believe their eyes. The ultrafast torpedo was gone; all the data on hand made that clear. Their torpedo hadn’t hit it, and yet...

“We’ve cleared the first. The second and third are still coming. We’ll deal with them in the same manner,” Mardukas instructed. “Then, just as you counter, fire MAGROCs to the surface from all MVLSes. Set the coordinates just as I tell you. Understand?”

Shark-1

Shark-1’s captain was shocked. An explosion from an enemy torpedo had caused the Burya he’d launched to self-destruct. “Impossible... they knew about that?” he asked incredulously.

It was one of the Burya’s few weaknesses: to move a torpedo at such tremendous speeds, it needed to negate drag from the water around it. This was accomplished through supercavitation—wreathing itself in a membrane of foam. The result was a delicate balance; at certain distances, the impulse currents from an explosion could throw it off course and render it unable to fly straight, like a plane going into a tailspin.

Once that balance was lost, the Burya would lose its resistance to water pressure, and its own speed would break it in half. And the commander of the Tuatha de Danaan had known...

Before Shark-1 could even react, the enemy vessel moved, and took out their other two Buryas the same way. He could hear the explosions play out from afar, like a deafening underwater capriccio. The discord of millions and millions of bubbles made it impossible to hear anything the de Danaan was doing.

Not good... They were basically blind. First, they had to slow down to eliminate their own noise generation, then listen carefully. Shark-1 called for an all stop. Once the noise from the currents had faded, and everything returned to silent darkness around them, he could resume gathering data from the sonobuoys.

He didn’t know exactly where it was, but he knew the de Danaan must still be out there. It had to be hiding somewhere near where the explosions had occurred. But the minute it attacked, they’d know where it was.

“Be careful. If we find them first, we win.” The ocean, echoing with cacophony just seconds ago, was a dark, silent void once more. His two wingmen slowed down with him and switched to silent running.

“The foam around the enemy ship has cleared. Let’s turn the sonobuoys to active and find their location,” his first officer suggested from behind.

“Right,” Shark-1 agreed. “It’s not as if they can hurt us. Hunt them calmly.” They’d gotten past the Buryas commendably, but the same trick wouldn’t work twice. If the enemy tried to attack, that would give away their location, and this time, they’d fire a shot they couldn’t dodge. They could even fight them in melee range, if they had to. Either way, the enemy boat would end up as sea scrap.

“Wasting our time... heh.” Shark-1 let out a brief chuckle, then picked up a new sound. It was five loud splashes, coming from all around his two allies, Shark-2 and Shark-3.

Something was descending from above.

“MAGROCs?! When did they—”

MAGROCs were anti-submarine missiles. They could be fired from beneath the water like Tomahawks or Harpoon missiles, and after flying swiftly out of the sea, they’d plunge back into it, activate sonar, and track and destroy enemy submarines.

The de Danaan must have fired a large number of MAGROCs at some point. Normally, they’d have been able to pick up on the sound of the enemy firing a flurry of missiles like that out of the water—the sound would be deafening, after all—and they’d be able to wait and easily dodge them before they hit, forcing the enemy into a stalemate.

But Shark-1 hadn’t detected the sound of the de Danaan firing the missiles. The enemy must have masked it behind the explosion of the Buryas. They’d used those few seconds when the shockwave was still rocketing outward and the sea was filled with chaotic noise—

“Impossible...” A shiver went through Shark-1’s captain as he realized the cool-headed audacity of the enemy commander. His allies, caught unawares, never stood a chance. The torpedoes caught them in a net. The targeting, landing just a few meters away, had an almost godlike precision to it.

Shark-2 and Shark-3 didn’t even get to make use of their prodigious maneuverability as the de Danaan’s MAGROCs blew them to pieces. That much was clear from the merciless sounds of explosions and noise echoing from behind him.

“A-All ahead full. Course 2-7-5. If we stay here, the MAGROCs will hit us, too!” he declared to the first officer behind him. He had to force his mind to a different topic, so as not to be distracted by his frustration.

It was fine either way, he decided. He’d already launched an ADCAP at the cruise ship. It was a normal torpedo and not a Burya, but it would be enough for a civilian passenger vessel. That would have less than five minutes until impact, and his primary mission was as good as achieved. The Pacific Chrysalis would sink, taking its hundreds of passengers with it.

So will the de Danaan, he promised himself. I’ll have my revenge.

“We’ll approach from the north and hit it with our remaining torpedo,” Shark-1 suggested. “If it dodges that, we’ll close in at high speed and seal the deal with the melee arms.”

“Got it,” his first officer agreed. “Let’s teach them a lesson.”

“The enemy’s out of cards. Let’s do it!”

That was an unexpected setback, but I’ll show you. One Leviathan is still enough to destroy de Danaan...

Tuatha de Danaan

“Mike-13, contact reacquired! Bearing 0-3-1! Acceleration started on course 2-0-5!” the sonar tech reported, unable to hide his agitation.

“The... the final enemy is approaching from the north, XO. The MAGROCs won’t work again,” Captain Goddard, still recovering from the first near-death experience, said to Mardukas as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

Despite having seen the heroic way he’d dealt with the enemy torpedoes seconds before they hit, Goddard really thought they were done for this time.

“Course 2-0-5, you said?” But Mardukas remained calm.

“Affirmative!”

“Speed?”

“Estimated 50 knots!”

“Hmm...” A corner of Mardukas’s mouth quirked up a bit at that. It was the smile of a professor getting the answer he wanted from a promising student. “That’s right, Mike-13. If you wanted to keep up the fight, that’s the only course you could take. Sad to say...”

“XO? What...”

“Captain,” Mardukas asked patiently. “Why do you think I had you send out those ADSLMMs in advance?”

“Ah...!” Goddard remembered the locations of the ADSLMMs—the autonomous mines he’d had them secretly fire earlier—and slapped his own forehead. The final enemy was heading right for the mines.

Shark-1

Shark-1, burning with vengeance, hadn’t expected the path to the enemy to be blocked by smart mines. If he’d been thinking calmly and clearly, he might have realized that the enemy could have fired one while they were running loud earlier. If he’d been thinking, maybe he could have avoided his fate.

But he hadn’t. Back in his Royal Navy days, it had been his domestic violence issues that had kept him out of his superiors’ good graces. To the very end, he had never come to terms with that brutal, impulsive aspect of his character.

Suddenly, two automatic mines appeared in his path, heading straight for him. “What the—” Shark-1 started to say. Even with the Leviathan’s maneuverability, he wouldn’t be able to change course in time. Mere seconds remained. He tried firing his decoy, but it was useless this close. The crewman behind him screamed.

With alarms blaring in the cockpit, Shark-1 swore, spitting out a curse to his former superior. “Mardukas, you son of a—”

Those were his last words. The de Danaan’s smart mine detonated at close range and tore the Shark-1 to pieces.

Tuatha de Danaan

“Contact, ADSLMM explosion. Mike-13 is down!” The sonar tech’s report inspired a sigh of relief among the crew. They were too deflated to let out a cheer of the kind typically seen in the movies.

Goddard himself could hardly believe it. A strained smile appeared on his face, and he peered over at Mardukas. “XO... s-sir...”

“The enemy should have known,” Mardukas opined coldly. “Sending three mere ‘underwater fighters’ to defeat a vessel I command is like sending three infantrymen against a fortress.”

From the very start, he had known just how the battle would go, and just what the enemy would do. It was almost like a chess game. The boldness, the calm of it... This realization of his superior’s true abilities had Goddard at a loss for words.

“If the captain had been here, we’d have likely seen the same outcome. And perhaps if she’d been giving the orders, you wouldn’t have been so terrified, Goddard,” Mardukas said with his usual biting sarcasm.

“Oh, well... forgive me, sir.”

“Hmm. You are forgiven. More importantly...” The Duke turned his hat back to its original position. The commanding officer, who had shown a presence to rival Major Kalinin or the other impressive members of the ground forces, now resumed his usual appearance as a slightly world-weary middle-aged man. “That’s the match. Open a channel to the ground forces immediately; they’re in more danger than we are. A torpedo is headed for the cruise ship.”

Pacific Chrysalis

Disasters tend to come in waves. Not minutes after Sousuke and the other ground force members had finished off the Alastor horde, they received word from the de Danaan of another incoming threat:

Enemy high-speed torpedo approaching. Estimated arrival, less than one minute. Evasive maneuvers and evacuation recommended.

“You could at least try to sound freaked out about this!” Kurz shouted to the heavens as the word came down, but it was drowned out by the evacuation alarm blaring throughout the ship.

《All passengers and crew evacuate to the starboard side. Repeat, evacuate to the starboard side. We apologize for the inconvenience on this fine Christmas Eve, but just in case, please head for the starboard—》

“Drop the damned apologies! Just repeat the order!” Clouseau shouted over the radio to his subordinate on the bridge.

《But Lieutenant Clouseau. We are the ones who started this trouble, so I think we owe them— ah, damn. The speaker button...》

“Incompetent!!” Clouseau shouted as he heard his real name broadcast ship-wide. He clenched a fist as a vein throbbed on his forehead.

“Ah, hey, Lieutenant... I know you’re in a tough position, but we should probably evacuate. If that torpedo hits us, this whole area goes up in smoke,” Kurz said, coaxing him from behind, and Clouseau clicked his tongue.

Per Mardukas’s instruction, the de Danaan had all its helicopters on standby for the rescue. Another transport helicopter, which had taken off before this all started, was spreading countermeasures across the sea surface to interfere with the torpedo’s targeting, trying to protect the passengers in any way they could.

Still, it was almost impossible for a cruise ship of this size to avoid a torpedo.

“Everyone evacuate,” Clouseau finally sighed. “We’re out of options.”

“No, we’re not,” Sousuke said over the external speakers and radio at once. Clouseau turned to see the Arbalest, positioned in the middle of the tennis court, begin to rise to its feet, now occupied by its operator.

“What are you doing, Sousuke? Hey!” Kurz called, as Sousuke walked the Arbalest to the ship’s port side and stared down at the black water that the torpedo would soon be tearing through.

Sousuke pressed the voice order switch in his cockpit, and said, “Al. Set all your sensors to maximum. Search the area. Find heat sources located up to thirty feet under the surface.”

《Roger. The torpedo?》 responded the machine’s AI, Al.

“Yes.”

《Located. Designating target Alpha-12. Eleven o’clock, range 1000. Estimated speed: Ninety kilometers per hour. Approaching. Collision in thirty seconds.》

“Precision fire mode. We’re going to hit it with all we’ve got. Variable adjustments?”

《I have no reliable targeting adjustment data for underwater objects.》

“No choice. Concentrate.”

《Roger. Precision fire mode.》

Surrounded by the green water of his night vision screen, Sousuke could see the heat source, shimmering white, as it approached. The thought of sparing ammunition didn’t enter his mind; the moment it was in the crosshairs, he pulled both triggers. Sprays from both his 40mm rifle and 12.7mm head-mounted chain guns hit the water with a roar. At his feet, Kurz and the others covered their ears and retreated to the ship’s starboard side.

Chain guns were originally 30mm machine guns developed for use by combat helicopters. The Arbalest and M9s came with a modified version of them, smaller but with greater firing speed, mounted on their heads. It was these chain guns—firing at a rate of 1800 shots per minute, or thirty high-caliber shots per second—that he had just used to clear up the Alastor horde. These chain guns joined the Arbalest’s 1200-shot-per-minute 40mm rifle in raining fire down on the ocean.

But even all of this failed to stop the torpedo. None of the shots even landed; the minute the bullets hit the water, they went wildly off course, and they only maintained momentum for a couple of meters, anyway.

The high-speed torpedo continued towards the Pacific Chrysalis.

《Torpedo interception failed. Evasive maneuvers recommended,》 urged his machine, likely thinking of its own safety.

But Sousuke, still scowling at the target on his screen, was working his rarely-employed imagination. There are no options left. The ship is going to sink. My comrades, my schoolmates, Chidori... they’ll all be blown away. Cast into the cold winter sea. I won’t let it happen!

That determination, combined with unshakable confidence, proved to be the perfect formula to activate the system sleeping inside his machine.

《We have it. It will work. Orders, Sarge,》 Al said briefly, as if to encourage him.

“Jump in!”

《Roger.》

Sousuke and Al threw themselves from the cruise ship’s deck into the ocean. A feeling of weightlessness lasted for just a second, before the impact came. Bubbles foamed up around him and then promptly burst into nothing as he sank through the water’s surface. After shooting a line into the ship from his wire gun to anchor him, Sousuke fought against the currents created by the ship to carefully fine-tune his position.

《Torpedo incoming. Okay, hold position. Ready? Count five. Three... two...》 Reading Sousuke’s rhythm and mood perfectly, Al began the countdown at just the right moment. It was the kind of thing that a normal AI wouldn’t be capable of. He could see the torpedo approaching, right at the center of his night-vision screen. 《Now!》

Sousuke gripped the stick and wrenched the right master arm back. Mimicking his movements perfectly, the machine thrust an unwavering fist at the torpedo that had come to encompass his vision.

The ocean frothed and the air warped. The Arbalest’s lambda driver activated, and an invisible force field slammed the torpedo from the front. The target shattered and exploded on impact, and the entirety of the torpedo’s explosive energy was channeled out behind it. A geyser of water burst out of the sea, and rocked the ship with its force. The Arbalest was sent tumbling, clinging desperately to the wire extending from its left arm, and Sousuke let out a noise of strain.

《Success,》 Al reported. 《The lambda driver has activated. Enemy torpedo eliminated. Let’s rev ourselves up again quickly, in case another one appears. Get revved up. The revving up is important.》

“I know! Shut up!” Sousuke shouted, struggling to regain his machine’s balance as raging waves buffeted him from all sides. He had to be careful: if the wire gun’s anchor came loose, he’d end up spinning free of the ship. But soon enough, the turbulence from the explosion died down, and the threat of a follow-up torpedo seemed nil. Sousuke let out a sigh of relief, carefully retracted the wire, and managed to crawl back onto the deck.

But their troubles weren’t over.

While the Arbalest was off stopping the torpedo, Kaname was running toward the starboard side of the deck with Yang and a few other Mithril soldiers. After hearing Tessa’s voice in her mind, she had called out to a few nearby men, and they’d rushed together to the corner where the lifeboats were located.

Suddenly, they were hit by a roar and an impact. The ship lurched hard to the right. Kaname almost went tumbling, but she clung to the wall desperately and shouted, “What was that?!”

“I guess the torpedo hit us. It’s strange, though. It didn’t feel as bad as all that...”

Did Sousuke and the Arbalest stop the torpedo? Kaname wondered as she picked herself up. “We’re probably okay. Hurry!”

Yang looked at her quizzically, but responded, “R-Right...” and they started running again. “But are you sure the colonel was kidnap—”

“I’m sure. The captain here was gonna take her in a lifeboat— There!” Kaname pointed beyond the part of the deck used for a jogging track, to the broadside that housed the lifeboats.

Yang got ahead of her and readied his gun. “Keep back,” he ordered. “Stay behind me. The enemy could still be hiding out here.” According to the nearby diagram, there should be five boats hanging off the side of the ship. But as Kaname and Yang ran up, they found only four.

“One’s missing,” Kaname whispered. “Tessa...”

“Dammit,” a soldier shouted. “One o’clock, 500 meters out!” In the vague illumination provided by the cruise’s ship’s lighting, Kaname could see a boat speeding away.

“We’re too late,” Yang growled.

“Don’t give up!” Kaname cried out. “There has to be a—”

“I know. Uruz-9 to Gebo 9, do you read me?” Yang called into his radio, to the helicopter flying nearby.

The transport helicopter, Gebo-9, replied immediately. “Gebo-9, I read you.”

“You see the lifeboat that just left the cruise ship? 800 meters north-northeast from here. It’s got Ansuz on it! Stop them!” Even as he spoke, the boat carrying Tessa continued to move further and further away, until it was fully swallowed up by the darkness.

Call Sign Gebo-9, MH-67 Utility Helicopter “Pave Mare”

“Stop them? How?” shouted First Lieutenant Eva Santos. She was the pilot of a Mithril utility helicopter, a MH-67 Pave Mare, which was currently circling from a position four kilometers south of the Pacific Chrysalis. “Tessa’s on board, right? We can’t fire on them. What if we hit her?”

“Can’t you target the engine or something?!” Yang shouted over the radio.

“Oh, as easy as that, huh? I’ll try, but... dammit, have you got them yet?!” Santos shouted to the electronic warfare technician in the back seat, who was scanning the area with their infrared sensors.

“Hang on... just got them. Bearing 3-4-0, distance 4000. Speed, thirty knots.”

“Okay, circle around to their port side and approach.” Lieutenant Santos tilted the stick forward to speed them after the boat. The engine’s turbines roared, and the Pave Mare approached its target. Since they had previously been carrying the enormous payload of the Arbalest, the chopper now felt as agile as a fighter jet.

In less than a minute, the escaping boat came into view of her night vision goggles. “Got it in sight. Minigun two on standby. Don’t hit the cabin by mistake.”

“Roger, Captain!” the gunner responded enthusiastically.

Once they were about 200 meters from the left side of the speeding boat, Santos gave the order. “Fire!”

The 7.62mm machine gun attached to the Pave Mare’s starboard side fired. A rain of a hundred bullets per second grazed the back of the boat, sending up pillars of water. Unfortunately, none hit their target.

“Get your aim right!”

“The waves are rocking it all over the place!” the gunner protested. “Dammit, the thing’s too fast; we’ll hit the colonel. I can’t pinpoint-target the engine. Can’t we get closer?!”

“I’ll try—” Santos was just about to pitch them forward again when something strange happened. From an empty patch of sea, a few hundred meters ahead of the lifeboat’s current course, came a peal of light.

“Anti-air missile!” someone shouted. It had appeared abruptly from the sea surface and was tearing through the air straight at Santos’s helicopter.

“Ngh!” She moved the stick and cyclic violently, ejected decoy flares and chaff into the air around them, and sent the Pave Mare into a spin. It was an extreme maneuver, practically diving them right for the ocean.

It was going to be close. Two seconds left—

The missile exploded at close range, and a hard jolt from the side sent them pitching to the right. Lieutenant Santos’s instruments went haywire, and strange metallic squeals erupted from the engine and drive shaft. Alarms rang out all around them. She could hear her copilot and the electronic warfare tech shouting:

“Fire in the second engine! Output down! Losing fuel pressure!”

“Port-side ECS damaged! We lost our left stub wing!”

Though dizzy from banging her head on the seat, Santos calmly checked the stick’s responsiveness. “Stay calm,” she ordered. “Shut off the second engine. Switch to auxiliary power and fuel lines. Fuel supply, too. We’ve still got the tail rotor, right? Do you have visual?”

“Affirmative!” the crew member in the cargo room responded.

“And the automatic fire suppression systems?”

“Working.”

Great, Lieutenant Santos thought. We can still fly. If she’d acted even a few seconds later, they’d all have been blown to kingdom come. It had been a very close call. While dishing out precise directions on how to minimize the damage, she used her active ECCS to search the area the missile had come from for ECS activity.

“Dammit...” she swore as she found what she was looking for. There was a large aircraft floating on the water, camouflaged with ECS, and an infantryman had shot the anti-air missile from one of the wings. It must be an Amalgam ship that had slunk into the area to serve as backup at some point.

If a second shot came, they wouldn’t be able to avoid it. Santos desperately wanted to save Tessa, but she knew that getting herself shot down wouldn’t help anyone. Gritting her teeth, Santos ordered, “W-Withdraw...” and turned the helicopter back in the direction they’d come from. All she could do now was to make a frustrated report to her colleagues.

As the boat continued racing through the night, Tessa sat in its cabin, handcuffed and powerless. She could only watch silently as the allied helicopter pursuing them took a hit from a missile and withdrew. It was probably Lieutenant Santos’s Gebo-9—She just hoped nobody had been injured.

“Hmhmhm, hmmhmhmm, hmm, hmm, hmm...” Harris sat in the boat’s driver seat, humming Beethoven’s 9th against the salt air. “It’s Christmas. Enjoy it!” the man proclaimed joyously as he spun to face her. “The truth is, you’re a much more valuable VIP than Chidori Kaname. Normally, you stay hidden and unreachable under the sea. I consider myself truly lucky. If I still had access to my ship’s facility, I could have pried into every part of your mind... but I guess we can’t have everything.”

Tessa just glared death at him.

“Ooh, scary,” Harris said, taunting her with a shrug. “Sad to say, I’ll probably be denied the chance to investigate you directly. I wanted to strip your mind naked and prod its deepest depths. I wanted to see that proud, beautiful face of yours twisted, and screaming in humiliation. Exposing all your ugliest hatreds and fears, your most obscene desires... I wanted to watch your dull eyes fill with tears as drool dripped down your chin.”

Tessa met his lecherous gaze with steel. “The facility that investigated Kaname-san in Sunan was on that ship?”

“That’s right,” Harris confirmed. “It’s a cruise ship that travels around the world, you see. Very convenient for abducting ‘candidates’—identified in the usual way—from various countries, and smuggling them past national borders.”

“Very inefficient,” Tessa said with a frown. “I would never—”

“You would never do things that way, right?” Harris asked, cutting her off. “But that’s the key; it’s exactly why you never suspected. Cruises may be more for the masses than ever before, but they’re still associated with the elite. Local customs, governments, and intelligence agencies all relax their standards for them. They think the very idea is absurd. And I know why you finally caught on, too—Mr. Iron ratted us out, didn’t he?”

Tessa made no reply, and the boat’s motor fell silent.

“Here we are,” he announced. “A luxurious flight awaits.” Through the cabin window, she could see the wing of a large aircraft, visible now that it had disengaged its ECS. Their boat slowly turned and docked on its starboard side.

“Get up.” Harris forced Tessa to her feet.

The craft they’d transferred to was the size of a jumbo jet, and large enough for several 50-ton tanks. It was far larger than the C-17 Globemaster II transports used by Mithril.

“Eyes forward! Walk!” A member of the aircraft’s armed crew prodded Tessa forward.

Soviet-made... Tessa realized. She’d seen a report about this from the intelligence division recently. It was the best plane in the world at water landings and takeoffs. A glimpse around the equipment loaded in the cargo room made it clear that it was designed for transporting smaller seacraft, too.

Once boarding was complete, the aircraft immediately picked up speed. It rocked as the waves licked the base of its hull.

The large aircraft lifted off from the ocean’s surface and rose into the night sky. There was nobody to stop them.

Pacific Chrysalis

“They got away,” Clouseau said gloomily after he turned off the radio. “The enemy... took the colonel.”

“Hey, there’s gotta be something we can do!” Kurz began, agitated. “It’s still there, right? Just use an anti-air missile, or—”

Clouseau cut him off. “You want me to shoot them? With her on board?”

“Ugh...” Kurz hesitated.

The enemy craft was already airborne. It would be easy for the de Danaan’s anti-air missiles to shoot it down, but then Tessa would die as well.

Their failure was in not noticing the aircraft parked in the water close to the Pacific Chrysalis. But what else could they have done? The de Danaan had been engaged with the enemy submarines, and Lieutenant Santos’s helicopter had been focused on the support and transport of the Arbalest. No soldier, no matter how elite, could have spotted the lurking ECS-equipped craft any earlier.

Sousuke had taken out the robots and the torpedoes; Mao nearly had the safe open. Mardukas had neutralized the undersea threat. Santos’s helicopter had apparently survived the hit, and the hostage group was nearly unharmed. The worst off among them was the American that had kidnapped Tessa... but according to the medic who’d been sent to treat him, he would pull through as well.

They’d worked their tails off, and they’d be able to withdraw safely soon. Yet Tessa was still out there, their mission’s sole casualty.

“Dammit!” one of the soldiers cursed. “How could this happen? And on her birthday, too...”

“She never mentioned that to me,” Sousuke said through the Arbalest’s external speakers, as Clouseau and the others stood by helplessly, in the tennis court, among the remains of the Alastors. “So it’s her birthday...” he mused. “There’s a lot going on today. A lot...”

“Um, Sousuke?” Kaname, who was slumping despondently with the rest of the group, looked up. “I mean... understatement, much? They took Tessa! How can you act like—”

“Oh, I recognize the seriousness of the situation,” he reassured her. “But I’ve heard it said that Christmas is a night when anything can happen.”

“Huh?” The group scowled at him, and the Arbalest’s AI spoke in Sousuke’s place.

《He is correct. My comrades, today is Christmas. According to information I have been receiving via radio broadcasts for the last few days, it is indeed a night in which anything can happen. Dedication is the key. Let us sing lovely songs. Let us celebrate God’s blessings—》

“How many dozen times do I have to tell you?!” Sousuke hissed at Al. “Shut up!”

《I beg your pardon. Please explain our proposal, Sarge.》

Sousuke clicked his tongue disapprovingly at Al’s casual tone. Then he cleared his throat and addressed the group. “Lieutenant Clouseau. Contact the de Danaan. Tell it to surface and sortie the FAV-8s. Have them buy us time. Then prepare the equipment I’m about to list off. It’s important that the maintenance crew be on top of their game. First...”

Clouseau’s eyes went wide as Sousuke listed off the equipment. “Are you mad?”

“No,” Sousuke denied. “Al ran the calculations and said that it was possible. The only question is if we can pull it off in time.”

“It’s dangerous,” Clouseau pointed out, one hand on his jaw as he weighed their chances.

“Agreed.”

“All right,” Clouseau finally said, looking up at the Arbalest. We’ll try it.” He switched on his radio, opening a channel to the de Danaan—which was already nearby and heading their way—to explain the plan in detail.

Kaname, who was quietly listening in from nearby, looked up nervously at Sousuke. “Are... Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“But then...!”

“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“What—”

“I only realized it tonight. Don’t worry. It’s good news, I think. But I don’t want to say it while she’s still trapped out there.” The Arbalest’s eyes looked down on her. The machine’s right hand made a gesture; a thumbs up. “When I return, please hear me out.”

25 December, 0013 Hours (Japan Standard Time)

Over Pacific Ocean

She could see the moon from her window seat. Their plane seemed to be turning to the southwest... but confined as she was, Tessa could infer no more than that. What was their precise course? How fast were they going? What was their destination? She had no idea. Were her vessel and the cruise ship safe? Was the stubborn, yet kind-hearted, Sailor receiving first aid? Were Mao and the others making progress on the safe? Her mind swarmed with questions, and her own fate was the least among them.

After the plane had left the ground, Tessa had tried to resonate with Kaname again, but found that she couldn’t. For some reason, it wouldn’t work if they were too far away. Perhaps there were some kind of “mind waves” that grew weaker and more distorted as they traveled through air?

“Something to drink, honey?” Apparently having finished his conversation with the pilot, Harris returned to the cabin. “I’m sorry, we’re out of champagne... but we do have ginger ale. I don’t suppose you’d toast to our departure, would you?”

“Why don’t you toast with yourself?” Tessa suggested bitterly.

“Be nice,” Harris chided her. “I’m the reason you won’t be going down with that ship. You could show a little gratitude.”

Just then, the whole plane rocked. The roaring of turbines pierced the walls, and the ceiling of the cabin trembled.

“What?” Harris cried out, clinging to his seat.

“Mithril STOVLs in pursuit!” the captain shouted over the intercom. Tessa looked out the window and saw an FAV-8 Super Harrier, one of the fighters stocked by the de Danaan, flying startlingly close.

Harris went pale. “Impossible. The girl is on board. They would never try to—”

Outside the window, she could see the red glow of a tracer round. It was a warning shot; this one also grazed the plane’s primary wing.

Harris cringed in his seat, and Tessa shot him a cold smile. “It’s only natural,” she said. “I possess a great deal of confidential Mithril information. They knew you might try to administer truth serum, so they’ve made the smart decision—to blow up the plane, and me with it.”

25 December, 0020 Hours (Japan Standard Time)

Flight Deck, Tuatha de Danaan

Sitting in the cockpit of the Arbalest, Sousuke adjusted his oxygen mask. Status reports from the submarine’s air traffic control officer flowed in. The large transport that took Tessa was flying at 350 knots, on course 1-9-6. Their FAV-8s’ threat had achieved the desired effect, causing it to drop altitude and speed.

“Still in range. But this is crazy, Sergeant Sagara. Just because it’s theoretically possible—”

“Not an issue,” said Sousuke, interrupting the officer. “Just support me.”

“All right. I’ll get you there safe and sound.”

“Thank you.” After having made that short response, Sousuke ran his eyes over the screen display, which was in shooting mode. He checked the rocket motors on each flight control surface. Fuel, check. Fuel pressure, check. The data link between his robot and the sub was working fine.

《Final checks complete,》 Al announced. 《Awaiting control room directives.》

The Arbalest was currently being fitted into a steam catapult on the de Danaan’s flight deck. An emergency deployment booster known as the XL-2 was strapped to its back; it was the same kind Mao and the other M9s had used during the Sunan rescue operation.

ASes were typically ground weapons, but these huge wings propelled them through the air on rockets, to send them to distant battlefields in relatively short periods of time. You were supposed to decouple before you reached your destination, so it was a one-way trip: you returned on foot, or by transport helicopter.

The roar from the booster grew louder, and pale flame began to stream from the nozzles. Superheated exhaust escaped upwards, directed by the large blast deflector behind it.

“Air traffic control room. Preparations complete.”

“Roger. Initiate final procedure. Uruz-7, you have permission to launch. Good luck.”

“Uruz-7, roger,” Sousuke responded.

《Sergeant. Final departure authorization received. Beginning countdown. Five...》 said Al’s voice, resounding through the cockpit as it shuddered with the booster’s power. 《Four. Three. Two—》

The nozzles contracted and roared with flame, and the AS began to pitch forward.

《Go.》

The locks came free. The catapult, which possessed enough power to throw a one-ton truck more than a kilometer, accelerated the Arbalest instantaneously. Powerful G-forces, ear-rending roars; Sousuke could feel his body sinking into the seat behind him as the edge of the flight deck rushed closer. The firing blocks released the Arbalest automatically, and he leaped.

The liftoff was successful. The digital altimeter’s numbers grew higher and higher. The de Danaan, seen on the Arbalest’s rear sensors, became a distant dot in the blink of an eye as he ascended to five thousand feet. In a normal firing sequence, this would be where the machine’s ascent would cease, and it would begin to cruise towards its target destination.

Yet the Arbalest’s ascent continued, higher and higher: its altitude reached seven thousand; eight thousand. The machine’s vibrating continued. The booster wings, generally meant for fine-tuning one’s course on lower altitude flights, began to feel unstable. The altimeter showed ascent, yet Sousuke felt like he was sinking. If not for the rockets running at maximum output, he would likely enter a tailspin and plummet.

Alarms and Al’s warnings blared around him.

《Boosters running abnormally hot due to prolonged max output,》 Al warned.

“Pray, then,” Sousuke said. “You knew this was a gamble.”

《I interpret that order to be a joke. But jokes are not useful at this time. What is the purpose—》

“Are you saying it’s nonsense?”

《Affirmative.》

“There’s something I’ve come to realize of late...” Sousuke whispered, nearly biting his tongue from the vibrations around him. “Jokes should only be said when they’re not useful at all.”

《A profound concept, worthy of consideration.》

“Save that for later,” Sousuke lectured sternly. “Focus on control.”

《Roger.》

Sousuke felt cold. The cockpit wasn’t pressurized for things like this. He’d done drop missions from high altitudes many times before, so he knew what his body was like in low pressure, but...

Eighteen thousand. Nineteen thousand.

Elevation: twenty thousand feet.

《Designated altitude achieved. Adjusting course based on air traffic control guidance.》 The Arbalest’s ascent stopped, and it began flying straight for its target. A few seconds later, Al announced, 《Target acquired!》

Sousuke’s night vision display showed him the exhaust heat from three aircraft: two were Mithril’s super harriers, and the other was his target. About the size of a jumbo jet, it could easily hold six M9-style ASes.

Tessa’s in there, Sousuke reminded himself. What he was about to do was exceedingly dangerous, and yet, he felt strangely confident. Not an issue, he thought again. I’ll finish this off and return straight home.

《Fuel reserves are low,》 Al reminded him.

“I know. Lower speed as we approach. From their six, altitude 15,000 feet.”

《Roger.》

The large craft drew closer and closer in his vision, as the turbulence from its wake began to rock the Arbalest violently. He wasn’t getting any closer; the wings of the emergency deployment booster weren’t designed for this.

But then, he wasn’t in a fighter jet anyway. Sousuke was in a humanoid weapon, an arm slave, and its uses were limited only by imagination. There was no need to get hung up on standard procedure.

“Let’s go!” he yelled.

《Roger.》 As they closed to a mere 50 meters behind the craft, the Arbalest thrust its arms forward.

“What are you doing?! Shake them off. Their cruising range is only—” Just as Harris ran into the cockpit, something happened; a metal scraping sound screamed out from the back of the plane. The craft bucked hard, and Harris nearly went toppling.

Alarms began blaring in the cockpit, announcing a rapid depressurization. Red lights flashed, and the pilot and copilot screamed at each other. “What happened?!” Harris cried.

“We seem to have taken several hits. Cabin pressure is dropping fast. We need to drop altitude before things get worse.”

“You’ve got to be kidding! Just shake them off!” He grabbed the captain’s shoulder, but the man knocked his hand away.

“That’s ridiculous!” the captain objected vehemently. “Get them to call off their attacks, then!”

“Just ignore them and keep flying,” Harris insisted. “You think they really have the guts to shoot us down?” That’s right, he thought. It’s all a bluff. If they wanted to shoot us down, they would have fired a missile much earlier. They just want to force us into a water landing.

By the same token, that means they can’t do much as long as we’re in the air. Plus, the enemy STOVLs have a short cruising range; if we just keep going a little while longer, they’ll have to give up the chase.

“Mr. Harris,” the captain said. “Bring the girl here. I’ll play her tortured screams over the radio; that’ll make them think twice about firing again.”

“But she’s— No, you’re right,” Harris decided. “That’s for the best. Maybe I’ll take a finger off of her.” On the pilot’s instructions, he attempted to return to the cabin to find Tessa, but...

This time, they were rocked by the biggest jolt yet. The craft plunged several meters, as if something had pushed down on it from above. Harris’s body rocketed into the air, slamming first against the cockpit ceiling, and then against the floor. Banishing all thought about the tremendous pain in his shoulders and back, he sat up. “Wh-What now?!”

But the captain didn’t even hear Harris’s question. His eyes were locked on the multifunctional display in the corner of the cockpit as he turned pale and moaned, “What... in the name of God... are they doing?”

The display showed a video feed from the camera affixed to the top of the plane’s tail. It looked down from its high vantage point, across the main fuselage and the wings.

There was someone standing there, on the roof just behind the wings.

No, not someone. Something. It was much larger than a person—a humanoid machine.

It’s an AS, Harris realized. A white AS.

The hostile white AS was clinging to the back of the plane. It fired off its wire gun, used it to draw closer, then stabbed its monomolecular cutter down into the roof.

“Shake it off!”

“Are you stupid?! I’d snap our wings off!” the pilot shouted, and then gasped. While the two of them were panicking, struggling to figure out what the enemy was after, the AS did something even more unbelievable: it opened its cockpit hatch.

The operator emerged, wearing a helmet and oxygen mask, and jumped from the back of the white AS onto the roof of the plane. There was a wire attached to his hips, likely anchored to the cockpit, to keep him from being blown away by the incredible air currents.

Though the AS was largely shielding him from the wind, it still seemed as though he could lose his balance and be swept off of the roof at any time. Yet the AS pilot dexterously leaped back ten meters, as if rappelling down the wall of a building, and brought something to hand.

“What is that?” The pilot asked. “What’s he planning to do?”

“That’s... a directed explosive,” Harris answered. All the color drained from his face, and he ran out towards the plane’s rear cabin. Was the AS pilot planning to blow a hole in the roof and come inside?!

Sousuke got a few meters from the directed explosive and pressed the trigger, buffeted all the while by powerful winds. A sharp ripping sound met his ears. Fragments went flying, but were gone in an instant. Mist streamed out of the one-meter hole. He adjusted his grip on his wire and kicked lightly off the roof, letting gravity drop him into the newly-made opening. The brittle interior wall broke below his feet, and he dropped straight into the cabin.

Sousuke released the wire holding him to the Arbalest, and then took the submachine gun hanging off of his shoulder in hand. The sudden depressurization of the cabin was producing a white mist, which was being sucked out of the hole that Sousuke had just made.

“It’s just one guy! Kill him!” someone screamed from the tornado of cloth and paper scraps that flew wildly around the cabin. He saw two men with guns pointed at him, their intent to kill. Sousuke fixed his own aim, fired, and then fired again; both of the men collapsed in an instant.

Ignoring both the plane’s shaking and the wind whipping around the cabin, Sousuke made his way to the front in a run. He passed through several doors and passages, and met several more enemies on the way. Bullets rained down; gunshots assaulted his ears. Sousuke would dip down to dodge or fly behind something before immediately returning fire.

Bullets ricocheted with sparks and roars as his enemies fell, one after another. After having to deal with the Alastors on the cruise ship, it all felt incredibly easy. Unlike robots, human opponents could succumb to intimidation, panic, and rage. Of course, that came with its own problems; their reckless fire was putting holes in the cabin walls, blasting away important cables, fuel pressure tubes, and circuit boards. It was like they’d forgotten that they were in an airplane.

That’s not good... he thought uneasily as the plane began to violently rock in mid-air. The lights flickered, and fires burst into being here and there. He could hear a strange tone coming from the engine, too.

Their altitude continued to drop.

After felling the last man in the cabin, Sousuke looked around him. Tessa was nowhere in sight, and the cockpit was the last place ahead of him. Did they take her to the cargo hold below? he wondered. Or...

A shot hit Sousuke in the back. He gasped from the sudden shock, but could tell that his bulletproof vest had stopped it. He turned around unsteadily, and pointed his gun at the person who had fired at him.

“Whoa, there! Hold your fire, soldier!” Harris was standing at the cabin’s entrance, a high-caliber pistol in one hand. He had Tessa in an arm lock, and was using her skillfully as a shield.

“Sagara-san?!” She looked more surprised than relieved. She must have never expected that he would burst into a plane in flight like this.

“Colonel. I’ve come to get you,” Sousuke said, pointing his gun straight at her. Turbulent winds swirled the open flames in the cabin. The noise and vibrations were getting worse. He could see fire burning outside the windows, too; the engine must have broken down and ignited.

“It’s over,” he said. “Give her to me. The plane is going down; we still have time to evacuate.”

“No.” Harris grinned, beads of sweat forming on his haggard face. “I’m finished either way, so I might as well take her with me.”

“Have you completely lost your mind?”

“I’m perfectly rational!” the man shouted hysterically. “If I return empty-handed, the organization will kill me. If you take me hostage, I’ll end up the same way. You’ll pump me for information, then throw me out, and then the organization will kill me.”

Sousuke scowled, saying nothing.

“But I can at least deny you what you want,” Harris went on. “I can still kill both of you. I just have to run out the clock.”

A bead of sweat rolled down Sousuke’s forehead. This man was serious; he’d made his peace with dying here. Furthermore, the rocking of the plane and the whipping of the wind all around them made it hard to get a clean line on Harris as he used Tessa as a shield.

“Ironic, isn’t it? A sea captain like me, about to die in the air...” There was a hint of black humor in Harris’s tone, behind the anger and despair. “Your Mithril may think they’ve regained the momentum, but that’s all about to end. Amalgam is large and decentralized. They can’t be crushed with force alone. And even in terms of force, they’ve just finished a radical expansion.”

“What did you say?” Sousuke asked.

“Professionals, Sagara Sousuke; not those well-armed small-timers you’ve been facing so far,” Harris taunted. “Amalgam hires mercenaries, too. If not for Mr. Iron’s—Gauron’s—cancer, he would have been their leader. His substitute, Mr. Kalium, was distinctly inferior in ability... but for better or worse, you killed him back in Hong Kong.”

Gauron had cancer? Though surprised by the revelation, Sousuke remained keenly aware of the time. He could hear the tense voice of the de Danaan’s flight control officer in his earpiece:

No time left. This is your last chance. Escape.

“They’re calm and cunning,” Harris said. “They’ll stamp out every one of you. Why don’t you join me in the next world early, so we can watch it play out together?”

“You’re lying,” Sousuke said scornfully.

“Going to shoot me, then?! You might hit her!” Harris continued to mock Sousuke, who was focused on his aim. “You won’t fire because of the fear of what might happen. That’s who you people are—just a sad bunch of wannabe superheroes. You’ve got that annoying air about you.

“But reality is harsh, and the world is cruel. The people on that ship will learn that, too, some day. To reverse fate, to conquer it, you need to take that cruelty for yourself. It’s my organization that can do that! Only Amalgam can end everything!” Harris shouted, spurred on by madness. The fuselage of the plane was starting to make a strange creaking noise. There was a movement in Harris’s right hand. The pistol was pointed at Tessa’s neck.

“Stop—”

That fraction of a second felt like an eternity. Still, the targeting was difficult. The shaking of the plane threw his aim off. And yet, Sousuke fired. With exceeding calm, he fired. The shot hit the wall, sparking as it broke through. Harris, shot in the chest through the wall, pulled the trigger even as he stumbled. Tessa toppled forward. Sousuke couldn’t see from his position if she’d been hit or not.

“Tessa?!” he shouted.

“I... I’m fine!” Tessa’s voice was more vibrant than he expected. She was safe, it seemed. Harris was lying face-down, and completely still.

There was no time left. Sousuke ran up to her, took her by the arm, and hurried immediately to the closest hatch. He turned the emergency lever and yanked it open. Tessa’s hair and skirt went flapping in the wind. “Sagara-san, the parachutes—”

“Don’t have any,” he said, cutting her off. “Sorry.” It would have been impossible for him to jump into the cabin and have a firefight with a heavy parachute on. His options had been to steal one from the plane, or retrace his steps and return to the Arbalest—he’d intended to decide what to do based on the situation. But they didn’t have time for either option now, and the plane would probably break to pieces before it hit the water.

“Do you mean we’re finished?” Tessa wanted to know.

“I have one last card to play,” Sousuke told her. “Listen, hold tight to—”

Just then, the plane’s wing snapped in half. The plane began to roll, and seconds later, it was in pieces. Sousuke and Tessa were blown out the open hatch, into the void. Tessa tried to hold tight to his arm, but the buffeting winds and centripetal force proved too much for her, and she ended up letting go.

“Tessa!!” The sound of the explosion and the roaring wind consumed even Sousuke’s own cry. Her small body, batted around by the air currents, grew further and further away in his vision.

The shattered fuselage, the snapped wings. Tessa was falling amidst the fragments. Things were burning all around her, but the wind remained terribly cold. The faint light of the moon illuminated the place where the ocean met the horizon in the darkness. How long would it be until she hit the water? Her consciousness grew hazy as gravity pulled her relentlessly downward. Yet, she was able to notice a figure approaching; he was gliding through the night air, carefully manipulating the wind with his limbs.

It was a skydiving technique.

Sagara Sousuke’s body slammed into Tessa’s. The two tumbled through open space, clinging to each other. It surely didn’t change the fact that they were doomed, but he seemed determined to struggle to the end. He moved his mouth close to her ear, and screamed something to her. The touch of his lips against her earlobe... it was a sweet sensation. Yet the words themselves were anything but: “Hold on to me, tightly!” he yelled. “Don’t let go!”

“What?” Tessa cried back.

“Brace for impact!” Sousuke told her.

It was then that she noticed the form of the white AS approaching, consuming her vision to the right. The Arbalest, having detached its wing pack and gone into freefall, was slowly growing closer. Just as she grabbed Sousuke’s chest, they slammed into the giant’s hands. The AS had caught up with them and scooped them up from the side.

The impact forced the air from Tessa’s lungs in a groan. Her head was swimming, and she couldn’t tell which way was up.

Sousuke shouted again. “Open!”

There was one final jolt. With Tessa and Sousuke held tight in its hands, the Arbalest deployed the parachute sack on its back. As she watched a parachute many times larger than a human-sized one unfurl into the sky, Tessa reflected that it was a miracle she hadn’t bit her tongue.

The wind died down instantly, and the area around them grew silent. The wreckage of the burning plane had passed over them, to plunge into the sea hundreds of meters away. The Arbalest, holding them both in its hands, slowly descended.

《It’s a night of close shaves,》 the AS remarked through external speakers. 《I performed a few rough calculations, and the chance of success for your nonsense mission was one in 256. Even with the Christmas miracle effect on our side—》

“Shut up,” Sousuke demanded curtly.

《Roger.》 The AI fell silent again, and the only sound became an intermittent flapping noise as their parachute fluttered in the wind.

“Colonel. Were you hurt?” Sousuke asked Tessa eventually.

She had been staring into space, but the words broke her out of her trance. “What? Ah... a few bruises, most likely... but I think I’m all right.”

“Good,” Sousuke said with a sigh of relief. “The squad would kill me if anything happened to you.”

“I wonder about that...” Tessa said, a bit sulky now that the initial relief had passed. “I’m sure they’ll act very concerned, but they don’t really care about what happens to a useless half-wit like me.”

“Colonel...”

“Yes, yes. I know. I don’t really mean it. I just...” Tessa swallowed her words. She felt two inches tall. Why is it always Sousuke who comes to save me like this? she wondered. If it were anyone else—Clouseau, or Mao—I wouldn’t have to feel this way...

Is it really all right for you to put yourself in danger for someone like me? Do I really have that much value to you? I can’t, can I? Because you wouldn’t do anything that would make her sad... Is it comradeship? Duty? Confidence that you’ll return alive? It was probably a combination of all of them, but that fact just made her even more depressed. He wasn’t here for the reasons she wanted him to be: out of an earnest love for her.

When Harris had taken her hostage, in the end, he’d taken the shot. If it had been Kaname instead of her there, he probably wouldn’t have been able to, even if it meant that she died as a result. There was a difference at play here. A definitive one.

There’s nothing to be done, Tessa thought, remembering Captain Sailor’s words. He’s right; the longing is entirely on my end, not his. It’s not me who has an instinctive grip on his heart, but her. The world she’s a part of. I understand, because I find that world dazzling and alluring, as well...

Can what I feel truly be called love? Can anyone testify that I’m not simply looking for somebody to escape into? Can anyone testify that I truly love this man, right here, right now? Unable to bear the silence any longer, she asked him, “Sagara-san.”

“Yes?”

“Do you love Kaname-san?”

After a pause, he said, “I think so.”

“More than me?” she specified.

Sousuke’s face tensed. But after some consideration, he answered clearly: “Yes.”

Tessa had known it was coming, but his words still hit her like a physical blow. It was perfectly natural that he would say so, though. Sagara Sousuke wasn’t the kind of man to dissemble when the truth was clear. That was part of his appeal; it was a cruel fact of the world.

Tessa turned her eyes down and whispered, “You said it so easily.”

“I’m sorry,” Sousuke simply told her.

She’d had a silly fantasy she’d been clinging to these past few days. She’d dreamed that they’d have the party with everyone at the base, and after the feast was over, she’d find a way to be alone with him. He’d say, “Happy birthday, Tessa,” and then...

She tried hard not to cry, but she couldn’t help it, and the tears flowed from her eyes. She wanted to run away, but she couldn’t. Not while she was in the hands of the descending AS.

“I’m sorry. I’m... fine. I just... I’m a bit disappointed, I suppose,” she said, forcing a smile onto her face. Seeing Sousuke so tortured by her reactions just tightened the icy grip on her heart. “Ahh, this was supposed to be an easy mission, and I let it go completely off the rails. I was useless from start to finish... What an awful birthday.”

Sousuke didn’t say anything, likely forcing back an instinct to make excuses or offer words of encouragement.

He’s faithful. Truly faithful. That’s why I love him, of course... It’s why I want to be with him. But I suppose wanting something to be so doesn’t mean that God will listen, even on Christmas Eve...

Fate. Harris’s final words lingered in her mind. Perhaps this is fate, and my attempts to reject that are what’s throwing everything off inside of me. She felt like she understood, for the first time, the feelings of the people they’d been conveniently dismissing under the label of “terrorists” for so long.

The Arbalest carrying them both neared the ocean surface. They could see the faint lights of an allied helicopter arriving to save them.

Pacific Chrysalis

“Uruz-1 to Uruz-2. How are things going? Any progress?”

Mao wasn’t sure how many times Clouseau had asked her that now. A dozen, for sure, at least. I’m working my ass off, you know, she thought resentfully. If I screw up with the vault lock, I could trigger an internal detonator and ruin everything. I need to be careful, but fast. Why can’t he understand how hard this is?

“Dammit. I’m starting to feel like a writer with a looming deadline...” she whispered, then wiped some sweat from her forehead, and resumed tapping on the keyboard.

“What was that?” Clouseau asked.

“Nothing,” she said innocently. “Just executing a virtual protocol QRD. Almost there.”

“You’ve said ‘almost there’ a dozen times tonight,” Clouseau accused her. “The Japanese Coast Guard and SDF have caught on that something’s wrong. We’re out of time. I need precise figures, not ‘almost there’—”

“When I say almost, that’s what I mean!” said Mao, finally losing her temper. “Ten seconds at best! A hundred minutes at worst! Stop jabbering on and buy me time, dammit! You’ve become a real wet blanket since you got your commission, you know!”

“Who wouldn’t, with people so irresponsible serving under them?! I pity Colonel Mardukas and Major Kalinin. And you just—”

“Finally!” Mao proclaimed as something on the display suddenly caught her attention. It was asking whether to send the final signal to disarm the lock, with a “Yes/No/Cancel” prompt. After a moment’s consideration, she selected “Yes” and pressed the enter key.

With a muffled sound, the tightly locked vault door ahead of her slid open, as if it had never been locked at all.

“What is it?” Clouseau wanted to know.

“It’s open.”

There was a moment of silence before he responded, “Understood. I’ll buy you fifteen minutes, so get documenting already.”

Just then, Mao remembered the other person who was supposed to be with them. “How’s Tessa?” she asked. “Is she safe?”

“Sagara got it done,” he responded briefly. “Now hurry.”

“Roger. Out. Okay, you heard the man! It’s a fire sale! Get going!” Mao shouted to the PRT soldiers waiting nearby, before running into the vault herself. She ignored the works of art and jewels housed there and made a beeline straight to the back. In the middle of an otherwise unextraordinary wall, there sat a door; the room they were after lay beyond it. Fortunately, her work on the main door had disarmed the lock here, too.

Mao stepped into the room behind the vault. The space there was as large as a school classroom, full of electronics and medical equipment; examination tables the size of large coffins, with a multitude of sensors surrounding them. Mao knew a lot about electronics herself, but even she couldn’t tell what it was all for. How am I supposed to investigate this? Mao wondered. If Tessa were here, she’d probably be doling out orders by now...

“Lieutenant. Where should we start?” one of the soldiers asked.

After struggling for an answer, Mao just shook her head, and said, “Anywhere! Take as many pictures as you can and carry out everything that’s not nailed down. No need to be gentle. Hack into the casing and yank out the hard drives!”

Even so, she reflected, this was clearly a major score. They could investigate later at their leisure, and what they found should tell them a little about what the enemy was doing... and why they were so determined to find people like Kaname.

After all... Mao thought. Tessa’s birthday was December 24th. Kaname’s birthday was also December 24th. Nationality, history, personality, physical attributes... The two were polar opposites in every respect, yet they had this one thing in common. Was it truly a coincidence that these two people, both possessing powers that defied human knowledge, should be born on the same day?

25 December, 0130 Hours (Local Time)

Sydney, Australia

The bar was packed with Christmas revelers. Run-DMC’s Christmas in Hollis was playing, and drunk men and women sang, drank, and shouted. A man was sitting in the darkness near the back of the bar, illuminated only by a faint blue light. He was young and attractive, with ash blond hair and bluish gray eyes.

He was listening to a report about the operation in the Sea of Japan through his earpiece receiver. After brushing off a drunk woman’s attempt at making a pass, he took a drink from his glass, and then a large man in a suit sat down across the table from him. The man had long gray hair tied back in a tail, and a quiet way about him. He was said to be in his mid-forties, but he seemed to have prematurely aged, perhaps due to the harsh life he had lived.

“Did you wait long?” the man asked.

“Not especially,” the younger man replied. “What happened?”

“Admiral Borda’s secretary, Jackson—Mr. Zinc, as your people call him—has been captured. I didn’t tell him what my squad was doing, so he got sloppy.”

“Excellent work.”

“Was it? You could have helped him escape, if you had wanted to.”

“If I had, we’d be trying to kill each other right now,” the young man said jokingly, then sipped from his glass. “Still, I am tremendously honored that you agreed to meet me, Major Andrey Kalinin.”

“Leonard Testarossa-kun,” Kalinin observed thoughtfully, “I’ve heard all about you.”

The waiter brought vodka, and the two men raised a ceremonial glass.