by Shouji Gatou
“I did what you said back at the apartment,” she said flatly, “but our circumstances have changed.”
“Colonel!”
While they argued, Kaname and Takuma passed each other at the center of the field. Sousuke could sense a new wave of hostility coming from the snipers positioned on the school and the gym. He was out of time. They were in danger. He had to—
He released the grenade’s lever, shouted “Run!” then threw the grenade toward the gym, right into the sniper’s sight line. It detonated in midair; the explosion would hide him from the sniper on the roof.
By the time the explosion came, Sousuke had already turned his submachine gun toward the second sniper on the school building. He could see the man through his sight, aiming back at him. The sniper was faster. If he pulled the trigger—
Just then, light flooded over the field; the old custodian had flipped the switch. Sousuke could now see the sniper very clearly. The man fired desperately, blinded by the light; his bullet hit the ground thirty centimeters to Sousuke’s right.
Sousuke steadied his aim and let out a burst; three casings spat out from his gun, falling to the ground. The sniper reeled back and fell out of sight. Now, the one on the gym— he thought, turning around. That’s when he saw it. His jaw dropped.
Out on the brightly illuminated field, Kaname was doing the unbelievable. She hadn’t run to safety; she had turned to grapple with Takuma! Was she trying to use him as a shield? He’d been right to believe that she would take the initiative, but he never dreamed that she would go this far. What in the world was she—
“I’ll help!” Tessa cried, and ran directly toward the fray. He had no time to stop her. She made a beeline to Kaname, who was tangled up with Takuma on the ground.
“Colonel!” Sousuke bellowed. He didn’t have time to stop her. The sniper on the gym, having recovered from the initial explosion, was taking aim again. Sousuke threw himself forward as a bullet’s impact raised a cloud of dust behind him.
He came out of his roll and returned fire, but the motion compromised his aim, and the man was too far away; his bullets sparked futilely against the gym’s curved roof. A rifle had a range and power far superior to that of a submachine gun; the enemy sniper must have realized this advantage, because he stayed right where he was and kept firing.
Two shots, three shots, four—herded along by the close-range assault, Sousuke ran past a flowerbed. Chips of brick, clumps of soil, and vines from morning glories burst around him. He managed to make it to a concrete drinking fountain and hid behind the waist-high basin to check on Kaname and Tessa.
Kaname was still grappling with Takuma at the center of the field; Tessa had run up and was trying to separate them. Their former captor was also on his way, pistol in hand.
With a feeling of dread, Sousuke aimed his submachine gun at the man running toward the girls. His attempt was checked, though, by another shot from the gym; it chipped a shard off the basin that cut his cheek. The sniper seemed to have no interest in the girls—because they were tangled up with Takuma, most likely—his focus was on keeping Sousuke down while his comrade secured their target.
There’s nothing I can do... Sousuke thought. He’d made two serious miscalculations: one was about Kaname; the other was about Tessa. Neither had tried to run away. If they had, he might have been able to escape while keeping the sniper in check. He’d never expected his plan to backfire like this.
Sousuke looked up to check the conditions at the gym, and his heart sank. The sniper was readying a new weapon: a disposable MPATS. It was a weapon that could put a hole in a steel wall or a pillbox; the basin wouldn’t stand a chance.
The rocket fired. Trailing smoke, the shaped charge flew toward Sousuke. There was an explosion, and the sink was blasted to smithereens.
A few seconds before...
“Get away!” Tessa yelled. “Get to safety!”
“Wh-Why did you come back?!” Kaname shouted in surprise as she yanked on Takuma’s cheek and ear.
“I’ll be the decoy. You go and—” Tessa was interrupted by a massive explosion. She felt the shockwave in her stomach first, just before the wall of heat slammed into them. She looked over in shock.
Black smoke was rising from a corner of the field where there had once been a water fountain. Shredded concrete rained down. Water geysered from the broken pipe, giving rise to a thick mist. Sousuke was gone. There was no sign of him anywhere. Could he have been... could the blast have...?
“Ah...” Kaname and Tessa were dumbstruck.
While they stood there, the man in black caught up to them. He had a large automatic pistol in his hand. At this range, there could be no escape. “He’s dead,” the man declared. Tessa said nothing.
“Run, if you want,” the man in black suggested, “or don’t. All that it’ll change is if the bullet goes in your front or your back.”
Then Takuma got up and said, “Wait. You can’t kill them yet.”
“Why the hell not?” the man in black demanded to know.
“She’s... no, never mind.” Takuma lowered his eyes again.
The man tilted his head, then spoke into his headset. “Target secured. I’m killing the others.” He listened for a response, then snorted dubiously. “What? But, Seina... Well, if you insist.” The man sighed and threw a set of handcuffs to each of them. “Put those on. You’ll be coming with me. Don’t run, or you’re dead.”
26 June, 2327 Hours (Japan Standard Time)
Akami Pier, Koto Ward, Tokyo
Andrey Kalinin lay in bed, staring up at the reddish-brown ceiling. There was no clock in the room, but he could tell it wasn’t midnight yet. Straining his ears, he heard the sounds of factory machines: the roar of motor tools and condensers, the operation of cranes, the scraping of metal against metal.
A cargo hold, Kalinin deduced. From time to time came the faint whir of turbines. There must be a generator—a big one—undergoing tests nearby.
They were building something in the cargo hold. Or... maybe they’d already built it, and they were running final checks? An AS, most likely; a special one. A machine they would use to wreak havoc in the city.
The metal door opened and Seina stepped in. “How are you feeling?”
“Do you really have to ask?” Kalinin asked, with a glance at his blood-darkened bandages.
“You’re not dead yet,” Seina shrugged. “Gentleman though you may be, you can clearly take some punishment.”
“True,” Kalinin agreed. “I’m tough enough not to hang myself, at least.”
The reference to her teacher didn’t alter Seina’s expression. She just walked up to him, and put her left hand onto his arm—his bandaged left arm. She pressed a fingertip into his wound, and pain shot down his left side. “Are you calling him a coward?” she asked.
“That’s entirely up to you,” Kalinin responded, enduring the pain with a will of iron.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“Your teacher, Takechi Seiji, exists nowhere now except inside of you. Your behavior determines what’s true about him. That’s all,” Kalinin returned. When a line like that hit a nerve, it suggested it was on the person’s mind. If Seina truly believed that he wasn’t a coward, she’d have brushed the comment off with a scornful laugh.
Seeming to realize that he was right, Seina relaxed her grip and turned away. “You’re a curious one. Less of a soldier and more of a clergyman.”
“You’re the first one who’s ever said that. But I can’t say I find it unappealing,” Kalinin responded.
Then, surprisingly... Seina smiled. It was a real smile, not the cold, derisive smile she flashed him from time to time. “A priest’s garb and a Bible... It really might suit you,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he allowed.
“It would.” She put a hand on his chest, this time, gently. “It’s a shame...”
“What is?”
“If only you and I had... no.” She took a step back before t
he fatal words came out.
“It’s not too late,” he told her.
“No, it is too late.” Her voice was its usual ice again. Seina turned back to the door and told him, “You were my enemy from the start, spared only by a moment’s caprice. Once you tell me what you know about the lambda driver, I’ll have no further need for you.”
“I won’t tell you anything,” Kalinin disagreed.
“Won’t you?” Seina stopped. “Sagara Sousuke—your man is dead. The girls accompanying him are headed here now, with Takuma. Perhaps I’ll get it out of them, while you watch.”
Kalinin said nothing.
“Takuma is going to pilot that devil,” she announced. “He’ll use its power to rebel against the world that rejected that man. It’s very clear, isn’t it? I am your enemy.”
26 June, 2334 Hours (Japan Standard Time)
Fushimidai Academy High School, Chofu
How long have I been out? Sousuke wondered. He was lying face down, his back peppered with glass and concrete fragments. He picked himself up and took stock of his injuries: some mild scrapes and bruises, no more. His body armor had stopped most of it.
Sousuke knelt there silently. He’d been lying on the floor of the ground level nurse’s office. It was right behind the water fountain, and he’d thrown himself through the window just before the rocket went off. Though he’d managed to get clear, the blast and the shockwave had still knocked him unconscious. Chidori... and the colonel. Where are they? He stood up, shaky on his feet.
He peered through the soot-stained window frame. The field lights were already out again, the girls nowhere to be seen. They must have been taken away with Takuma. That was better than seeing them both laid out dead, but...
Damn. What a mess. There was no excuse for the degree to which he’d failed. He’d shamed the name Uruz-7, the call sign given only to Mithril’s most elite SRT combatants. (In reality, a less-brilliant soldier would have been killed during the initial shootout, but Sousuke wasn’t going to think of that just now.)
“What in the world is going on here?” the custodian, who’d just arrived, asked.
“It’s just what it looks like,” Sousuke told him grimly. “They got me.”
“How am I going to explain this to the principal?” the custodian wondered.
“Make something up,” Sousuke suggested. “We’ll reimburse you.”
“Hmm...”
Just then, the long-awaited arrival came. He heard the roar of rotors and turbine blades spinning at high speeds. A gentle wind brushed the field, which quickly became a punishing gale.
A CH-67 transport helicopter, rendered invisible via ECS, was descending on the school grounds. It was too late. If it had only come ten minutes earlier...
“Gebo-9 to Uruz-7. The package has arrived,” he heard through his earphone radio. It was from the helicopter’s pilot.
“Uruz-7 here. Roger. I’m on my way,” Sousuke responded sullenly, climbing out of the window and into the yard. It had been invisible the entire time, but the helicopter had apparently landed. It quickly dropped its cargo, then flew away again. Silence returned to the schoolyard.
Once the dust had settled, Sousuke could make out a large silhouette crouching in the dark. Standing straight, it would be roughly eight meters tall; it was one of Mithril’s cutting edge arm slaves, the M9 Gernsback. It was dark gray, with a complex array of armored plates that combined both curved and straight lines. It had a slender silhouette, with a pinched waist, and its head—mounted with dual machine guns and copious sensors—resembled a person in a fighter pilot’s helmet. The hardpoint on its back held a short-barreled rifle and a capacitor pack to store excess energy.
At the M9’s feet stood Sousuke’s colleagues, Master Sergeant Melissa Mao and Sergeant Kurz Weber. Mithril typically worked in teams of three, and these two were frequently paired with Sousuke: she was an East Asian with black hair and dark eyes, and he was a young, blond, blue-eyed German. Both were dressed in their Mithril AS operator uniforms; ninja-like outfits which doubled as combat uniforms. Each had rich pops of color on the collar and shoulders; Mao’s were violet, and Kurz’s were cobalt blue.
Kurz Weber was the first to speak. “So, where are my cute girls?”
Silently, Melissa Mao kicked him in the rump.
27 June, 0021 Hours (Japan Standard Time)
Tama Riverbank, Kokuryocho, Chofu, Tokyo
They had decided to get away from the battle site before getting into details.
The sniper that Sousuke had shot had no longer been on the roof—Maybe he was dead and his friends had carried him off, or maybe he had only been injured; there was no way of knowing.
The M9 had an invisibility-capable ECS, so if they moved carefully, they could get around unnoticed. As always, of course, there were missteps—they’d come just short of kicking a drunkard, for instance, and gotten tangled up in some power lines.
They’d stopped by Sousuke’s apartment on the way and picked up their kei truck—purchased secondhand, in the name of a Mithril intelligence agent—in the parking lot. Once they’d made it to the Tama River, they gathered around the vehicle on the bank.
The M9 remained invisible; the burning ozone smell of the ECS hung in the air around them. It was dark around the river terrace, but they could see young people playing with fireworks in the distance. The constant bang, bang, bang, kept Sousuke on edge.
He completed his explanation, and Mao let out a sigh. “If only we’d gotten here just a little sooner. I could’ve had the M9 trace them back...”
“Any chance of more reinforcements?” Sousuke asked.
“Not for a while,” she told him gloomily. “It’s been a madhouse for the de Danaan, these last few days. And we don’t have the major...”
Major Kalinin was missing, which meant that Mao was in de facto command. Normally, one of the captains that served as Kalinin’s aides would step in, but they were all in the south of China on a top secret operation, as were the other Uruz codename combatants. It was unusual for the Tuatha de Danaan to have so much to do at once, and that was before you even got to the fact that its operational commander was MIA, and its commander-in-chief was in mortal danger.
“We just don’t have enough people...” she lamented.
Not enough people. Sousuke lowered his eyes, taking her words as a criticism of his inability to protect the girls. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Sousuke. I know there’s only so much you could have done,” she disagreed. “You had three people in tow, fighting alone against a heavily armed enemy organization. Nobody could have done better, outside of maybe James Bond.” Mao stretched out on the hood of the truck.
Sousuke was stunned by her take on the situation. He didn’t know a lot about Melissa Mao; she was in her mid-twenties, but she looked a little younger, and had large, vaguely feline, almond-shaped eyes. Though her short black hair gave her a brisk, lively air, she typically moved with a kind of leisurely grace; maybe she’d been more rugged as a child.
Mao was a New York-born Chinese-American, and before Mithril, she’d been in the US Marines. Most armed forces wouldn’t let women on the front lines, but she must have gained combat experience somehow—Mithril wouldn’t have scouted her for their active forces, otherwise. She clearly had some kind of complicated past. She was every bit the combatant Sousuke was, and on top of that, had a specialist’s knowledge of electronics and AS tech.
Mao’s solid judgment and ability to foster amicable relations with others was what made her an effective team leader. She was always finding offhand ways—as now—of being considerate of Sousuke; there were probably even times she did it and he didn’t even notice. Of course, there was probably no more to it than a general sense of responsibility she felt as their team leader.
That more or less summed up Mao.
“We can’t count on much support,” she continued, “so we’ll have to work this out by ourselves. First, we’ll pursue. Then, we’ll
monitor. Then, we’ll... take them down, probably.”
“I guess that’s our only choice...” Kurz broke off in a yawn.
Mao glared at him. “You want to maybe take this seriously?”
“Hey,” he protested, “I am taking it seriously.”
“Kaname’s in trouble too, remember? The girl who saved your life?”
“I know that. ’S why I’m fighting so hard to stay awake. If it was anyone other than Kaname and Tessa, I’d be home, in bed, with a drink by now,” Kurz grumbled. “I’m serious.”
“You little...” Mao growled.
“What’s the deal with this Takuma brat, anyway?” Kurz asked, attempting to move on. “Has he got superpowers? Can he pour vodka up his ass and fart fire, or fit a stack of coins up his nose?”
“Not sure I’d want to fight a terrorist organization that fought to retrieve someone like that...” she sighed.
“I was kidding.”
“I’d take you off the team if you weren’t.”
Kurz folded his arms, as if ignoring her. “Anyway, getting serious. I wonder if Takuma’s... you know, like Kaname. One of those ‘Whispered’ types.”
“Hmm, it’s a thought...” Mao considered for a bit, but Sousuke spoke first.
“The colonel seemed to know, but I don’t think Takuma is like Kaname. He’s something even more unusual.”
“What are you basing that on, Sousuke?” Mao asked curiously.
“Well... instinct.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about instinct before,” she frowned. “It’s refreshing, yet unsettling.”
“Leave me alone,” Sousuke sulked.
Just then, they each got a call on their radio headsets. It was coming from the M9 right beside them.
“There we go. What’s the word, Friday?” Mao said, licking her lips. “Friday” was the call sign for the machine’s AI.
《Master Sergeant. Information on subject B-3, received by Tuatha de Danaan: the Metropolitan Police’s monitoring system sighted the car in question fifty seconds ago.》 Acting under the assumption that the girls had been taken by the black van Sousuke had seen on the way out of the apartment, the de Danaan had hacked the local speed cameras to look for it. Mithril had the tech to infiltrate most police and army computer systems.