Gado snorted. “To think that the hero who defeated the Zodiac Gastrea Scorpion and saved the country is now on death row. Fate is ironic to the bitter end, isn’t it?”
“Commander. There is no need to have pity on him. Let us execute this man here and now!” demanded one of Gado’s subordinates.
Gado rejected his subordinate’s suggestion with a wave of his hand and looked straight at Rentaro with a sigh. Then, he said, “Leader Satomi, are you ready to die once more?”
“Huh?” said Rentaro, startled.
“Commander!” said Gado’s subordinate.
“Now, wait a minute,” said Gado. “Leader Satomi, as you know, the battle we are fighting right now is a defensive battle to hold out until the construction of the replacement Monolith. However, there are also people who think we should not just be defending. If we were able to eliminate the symbol of the civil officers’ current fears, the Gastrea Pleiades, then I believe we can find a way out of this blockade. However, we do not have enough troops that I can deploy elite troops to do the job.” Gado stopped talking for a moment and gave a bold smile. “So I have a request to ask of you.”
Gado stood with one hand on his cane, schooled his gaze, and spoke from his belly. “What I ask is for you to infiltrate enemy territory by yourself and exterminate the unknown long-distance sniper Gastrea Pleiades.”
Rentaro felt like he had been hit hard on the side of the head. He couldn’t react for a good while.
“What I really want to say is to go and defeat Aldebaran, but it would be rash to go up against an immortal Gastrea without a plan.
“Asaka.” Gado gave her an order, and she calmly operated the PDA device next to her. When she did, a giant 3-D image that seemed to bury the whole room appeared. In front of them spread the expanse of flat plains connected to the ruins that Rentaro and the others had requisitioned, and through the forest behind that was the memorial monument, the Flame of Return.
It looked to be a scale model of District 40, where Rentaro and the others were. There was something similar in Miori Shiba’s student council room, but the accuracy and color of this was nowhere near as good as the one owned by the daughter of a multimillionaire.
From where Rentaro was, he could see the small mountain of powder in the back that was what remained of the Monolith.
“Currently, the civil officer and Gastrea troops are positioned equidistant from the Monolith with the Monolith between them,” said Gado.
As if their hearts were beating as one, as Gado spoke, Asaka turned the model and drew a line. The line disappeared into an oval-shaped forest quite far away and outside the city wall. The forest was expansive, and there was a river that seemed to pierce its center. With a tree canopy that high, even a Stage Four Gastrea could hide in it.
Gado continued. “Because of the Gastrea virus, this forest has seen abnormal growth and diverse ecosystems. Somewhere in this forest, the twenty-seven hundred-plus Gastrea we were discussing are resting.”
“Do you know what part of the forest Aldebaran and Pleiades are in?” Rentaro hedged.
“Unfortunately, no. Not even the highest resolution artificial satellite could tell us this. We do also have sixth-generation unmanned reconnaissance crafts, but the JNSC cabinet ministers are extremely unmotivated to send them.”
“Pleiades, huh…?”
“That’s right. A being that the JNSC higher-ups are afraid to shoot down even with cruise missiles and support fighter aircraft. They had guaranteed us mastery of the air, but they have not brought that promise to fruition yet. Thanks to that, the flying Gastrea dealt us a lot of damage, and it was all we could do to defend ourselves. They really gave us a beating.”
The joke that even one powerful Gastrea could change the tide of a war was happening in real life. And the still unseen Pleiades that shot compressed mercury… According to Tina, it measured about ten meters on all sides. Since it was on land, its archerfish genes must have mixed with those of a land-dwelling animal, so Rentaro wondered what form it would take.
“Leader Satomi… No, Former Leader. Destroy it. You have no right to refuse. You only have a small chance of succeeding, but since you were supposed to die anyway, it will be no great loss if you go. Dead heroes are very easy to use, after all.”
Fury pierced Rentaro’s spinal cord, and he brushed off the men at his sides who were holding him down, pushed away the other subordinates trying to stop him, and pressed on determinedly toward Gado. Slamming the palms of his hands on Gado’s steel desk, Rentaro got so close to the man that he practically head-butted his nose. “You’ve finally shown your true nature, huh? You old weasel…!”
Gado smiled without changing the cool expression on his face. “But Satomi, these are also my honest, true feelings. Among the civil officers, there are those who mistakenly believe that we don’t need to fight Aldebaran anymore and can sit pretty for another three days. Unfortunately, once Aldebaran completely heals the injury I gave it, it will definitely attack again. This is the only chance we have to attack. Satomi, if you accept this mission, I promise that I will not charge your adjuvant for this crime. But if you refuse, I will punish you all together. It looks like you have an Initiator who adores you as if you were her father and a lovely childhood friend in your adjuvant. I’m sure you could not bring yourself to let them undergo such severe punishment.”
“Just try laying even a finger on Enju or Kisara… I’ll kill you!”
“Then, it’s decided. We will prepare the equipment for you. Go say your good-byes to your friends today.”
Rentaro closed his eyes and exhaled, then slowly opened them again. “There’s one last thing I want to ask. You all saw Aldebaran with your own eyes, right? What did it look like?”
The moment he asked, a startled expression crossed over everyone in the room. Gado had a frighteningly stern expression on his face and looked like he was about to shoot fire from his angrily narrowed eyes. “Satomi, unfortunately, I cannot answer your question. No, I do not want to answer your question. Last night, because of our encounter with the repulsive monster, none of us slept one wink. We will probably not be able to sleep well tonight, either. Do your best. I pray from the bottom of my heart that you will be able to complete your mission without running into Aldebaran.”
5
“Oh, Rentaro!” Enju welcomed him back cheerfully as she bounced out of the abandoned hotel, her pigtails swinging.
Enju’s voice started off a chorus of flurried others.
“What, Satomi?”
“He’s back?”
—And other such calls. All of Rentaro’s friends gathered around the door, noisily welcoming him back. Thinking they were overreacting, he checked the clock and was a little surprised. Apparently, he had been talking with Gado and the others for over three hours.
Kisara looked at him uneasily. “Did you get a talking-to for what we did yesterday after all?”
Rentaro said, “Let’s talk inside,” and they returned to the dining room en masse. He waited until everyone had sat down and calmed; he didn’t know where to start, but thinking that everything was important, he falteringly gave a full account of what happened with Gado. It was a shock, as expected, and the part about Aldebaran’s immortality and its attack after it healed its wound resulted in an air of silent despair among his team.
And then, Rentaro deliberately hid the fact that he had been ordered on a mission to subjugate Pleiades. “Sorry, everyone. It looks like our adjuvant will be disbanded after all. It doesn’t look like we can avoid it.”
“N-no… Wait a minute!” It was Yuzuki. Her gaze wavered, and she was obviously shaken. “I was finally able to make friends with Tina and everyone… R-Rentaro Satomi! Do something about it!”
“No, what bothers me is how light the punishment is.” It was Shoma, who had been silent until now, murmuring with a hand on his chin. “The commander said from the very beginning that disobeying orders would be punished severely. Don’t you think just getting ou
r adjuvant disbanded is letting us off too easy, Satomi?”
As expected of Shoma, Rentaro thought admiringly, without letting it show on his face.
“Shoma, I’m sure that is because the commander also took into consideration the results of our battle and made the punishment lighter,” Midori interjected with a smile.
Shoma did not look convinced but accepted her opinion. Midori’s kindhearted reasoning was completely off the mark, but Rentaro was at least grateful that it kept Shoma from asking him more questions.
“Then, what’ll happen to us?” Tina asked, her face clouding over.
Rentaro chose his words carefully to keep from upsetting her. “Maybe we’ll be sent to support those adjuvants that have lost members? I don’t really know, either.”
“I-I see…,” said Tina.
As if she had sensed the mood growing melancholy, Enju suddenly stuck her fist in the air above her head and snorted as she stood. “But even if we get separated, it’s not as if we’ll never meet again!”
“That’s…true, too.” Kisara nodded a beat later.
Beneath his sunglasses, Tamaki rubbed his eyes and sniffed. “It’s just as that bunny girl over there says. It’s a little sad to be sayin’ good-bye tonight, but that’s why I’ll turn this into a grand good-bye party!”
Everyone else looked at each other, grinning.
The time after that passed like a dream. They lavishly used up the rest of the food they had been rationed for the three days and recooked it desperately, filling their half-empty bellies to bursting. Inside the room, large candles burned brightly and turned everyone’s faces red. It put the room in a festive, birthday party-esque mood, and the dimly burning flames reflected in the eyes of Enju, Tina, and the other girls, shining lovely.
Among them, the irises of Kisara’s slightly smaller, cat-shaped eyes took in the light and reflected it in a bewitchingly beautiful way. Before he knew it, Rentaro was driven by the impulse to stare at it, but he didn’t want to seem impolite, so he quickly turned his head to the side just when it seemed like their eyes were about to meet.
Most of the time was taken by the girls complaining about wanting to take hot showers. On the other hand, the boys’ conversation was extremely pragmatic as they tried to calculate how much of the emergency stores were left after the fire at headquarters. Rentaro joked that at this rate, they would run out of provisions and have to hunt lizards and snails to eat, and Kisara, who had been raised a proper lady, said with her eyes half-closed, “You’re the worst.”
Tamaki brought some wine stolen from the wine cellar in the basement, and he had a cup with Shoma, who was also old enough to drink. Rentaro didn’t think that the boisterous Tamaki and reticent Shoma would get along, but he seemed to be wrong. Shoma was nodding quietly as he listened to Tamaki’s nonstop talking.
The gloomy, defeated mood had been blown away, and it made them forget for a while that they were in the middle of a war. Rentaro also started to feel better and had fun without worrying about the time. The party broke up in the wee hours of the night, and everyone went to their respective hotel rooms.
The hotel was small, with just three floors, and the windows were mostly still intact. Rentaro even tried going onto the roof, but it was submerged, possibly from a clogged pipe.
The third-floor room Rentaro and Enju were assigned had two beds with a side table sandwiched between them. Part of the ceiling was broken, and insulation material was sticking out. The floor was covered with a thick coating of dust, but Rentaro saw that the dust on the bed had been brushed off. Tina probably cleaned here, he thought. The smell of mold that had been the room’s inhabitant for the last ten years seemed to be a little like incense.
Rentaro lay on the bed and talked with Enju until the lights went out. She went on about various topics unchecked, adding exaggerated gestures as she spoke, and Rentaro nodded in response.
For some reason, Rentaro felt that he had to treasure this time.
Finally, Enju got tired of talking and fell asleep, and the sound of her breath echoed into the darkness. Rentaro’s heart gradually grew colder.
And so, Rentaro Satomi realized that the last hours he had spent with his friends signaled the end.
Staring at the darkness in the ceiling, he waited a while longer, just in case, and then got up slowly. For some reason, the air that hit his body seemed much colder than earlier, but still he put on his shoes and his jacket.
Just as he quietly walked to the door and put his hand on the doorknob, a voice called his name, and he startled.
Looking back, he calmed his pounding heart. Enju seemed to be talking in her sleep. Rentaro didn’t know what kind of dream she was having, but there was a part of her voice that seemed sad. Enju’s expression was hidden by the covers, so he couldn’t see it.
“Sorry, Enju.” Looking downcast as he said this, Rentaro left the room. He went down to the dining room without encountering anyone else, and there, Gado’s messenger was waiting by the fireplace. When Rentaro saw that the messenger had come into their temporary residence without taking off his shoes, he felt disgusted but was careful not to let it show on his face.
The messenger casually threw Rentaro a backpack. Taking it silently, Rentaro upended it on the table, and the contents fell out. The first thing he saw was a heavy, rectangular mass. Feeling it over its wrapper, he saw that it was soft and pliable like clay. It was a C-4 plastic explosive.
In a former age, when nitroglycerine was first discovered, scientists of the time were troubled by how even the slightest shock could make it explode, but current explosives were so stable that they would only burn down when thrown into a bonfire and did not explode accidentally. Instead, they were detonated through the fuse and combusted with a large blast. They combusted at over eight thousand meters per second and could cause an astounding number of casualties. This was probably custom-made to work against Gastrea, with powdered Varanium and the like mixed in.
Besides that, there were portable rations, a canteen, a compass, a beta light, and various other survival goods.
Rentaro took off his jacket and hung his pouch and back holster from his belt and made a small adjustment so he could attach the silencer onto the XD gun at his hip. After pulling back the slide so it could fire, he stored it in the carbon-fiber holster made by Blackhawk! He checked the fit of the holster by practicing a few quick draws. He also hung the combat knife from his belt with the scabbard still on, then refitted his jacket over it all and grabbed a strap of the backpack.
Leaving behind Gado’s lackey’s indifferent look, Rentaro departed the hotel. He looked at the sky, pitch-black and starless, and heaved a sigh. The air outside had gotten even colder, too. In fact, it was cold enough that he would have believed it if someone had told him that it was late fall. He had not expected the Varanium ash to make the surface temperature of the earth lower this much. They were lucky, at least, that it was summer right now.
Rentaro looked straight at the fallen Monolith and started quietly toward it. The regular crunching sound of his footsteps on the ground sent Rentaro into the depths of his thoughts. In the end, he’d left without finding the right time to tell Enju and the others what was going on. Of course, he had thought about the option of telling at least Enju the truth and having her go with him. But after thinking it over, Rentaro had decided that it was his responsibility alone to take care of this and had chosen to go alone.
He had his reasons, of course—
“Satomi…”
Rentaro hid his backpack quickly and turned timidly toward the voice. He hadn’t been hearing things.
Shoulders hunched, standing stock-still and crestfallen with a shocked look on her face, was Kisara Tendo.
“Kisara, how…?” he asked.
“When I woke up to use the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of you leaving your room, and when I followed you, I saw your exchange with the messenger, and…” Kisara lifted her face and continued. “Where are you going?”
Rentaro quieted his heart and tried to put on an air of nonchalance. “I was going to the bathroom, too. What, Kisara, do you want to come with me?”
“S-stupid! Of course not!”
“Then don’t follow me. I’m just taking a walk after taking a leak.”
“Toward the Monolith?”
A freezing summer wind blew between Rentaro and Kisara. It sent Rentaro’s hair and Kisara’s skirt fluttering.
Kisara shook her head hard. “I can’t believe you. Haven’t you noticed, Satomi? I’m sure you’ve been given a crazy mission, but going alone is like going to your death.”
That was something he slowly understood after hearing the details of the mission. Ostensibly, this was a secret mission Gado entrusted to Rentaro, but in actuality, it was different. Rentaro’s name at least was known in the world as that of the hero who defeated the Zodiac Scorpion, so if Gado had punished Rentaro in any way, Gado probably would have faced internal criticism. For Gado, who wanted to unify the civil officers because they were at a disadvantage, that could possibly work against him. In other words, Gado was in the difficult position of losing unity whether or not he punished Rentaro.
That was probably why Gado came up with the plan to give Rentaro amnesty in exchange for defeating Pleiades. Of course, it was a mission that he was unlikely to return alive from. Rentaro would be finished off by the Gastrea in the forest, so Gado wouldn’t have to dirty his own hands, and Gado would be able to keep up appearances in front of the other civil officers.
In other words, Rentaro’s mission was none other than a prettily decorated trip to the gallows. That was also the reason why he had not brought Enju. There was no way he could bring Enju along on a journey that would lead to her death.
“Why just you, Satomi? Don’t we all share the blame for following you?” said Kisara.
It became hard for Rentaro to look at her face, so he turned his back to her. “Someone had to take responsibility. That’s why I’ll go.”
“Let’s run away.”
Vengeance Is Mine Page 7