by Satoshi Hase
Based on her experience during her service in military intelligence, Collidenne had everyone from HOO that was participating in the operation remove the company insignias from their uniforms. It was better not to let anyone know who they were. As the scope of the conflict spread, they would get folks coming to spectate. There was too much of a chance that some anonymous “Good Samaritan” on the network would leak vital information about HOO to their target with malicious intent. It was entirely possible for Kouka to fire her laser cannon through the buildings between them and strike the command vehicle directly, if she found out its exact location.
“Deploy laser disruption particles,” the major ordered. “Maintain a radius of 100 meters from Kouka with level 6 laser disruption up.”
The drones she had deployed lifted their grenade launchers and, as one, fired off particle dispersion rounds. A silver cloud spread over the battlefield. There was enough metal floating in the air to damage human lungs if it was breathed in.
“All units, check your masks!” she ordered.
〈Repeat! All platoon members: mask check!〉 A subordinate relayed her command across their wireless network. As voices confirmed the conditions of their masks over the wireless, the system in the command vehicle picked up each response and a green light lit up for each unit on the monitor.
Only platoon commanders and above were aware of it, but the whole operation was a closely-guarded secret. In exchange for the Japanese government allowing them to remove their insignias for the night, they were not allowed to set foot outside of the designated battlefield, and the battlefield they had to work with was small.
Kouka was still sprinting along the walls of the buildings near the riverside, drawing the PMC’s heavy fire toward herself. The HOO bullets were turning building walls into beehives. On the network stream, it was clear that the major and her company were being portrayed as the villains. It was entirely possible that a civilian casualty might come out of a stray bullet, so the major couldn’t exactly deny the portrayal.
Still, they had to keep Kouka in check. Without backup, even the powerful tank they had deployed wouldn’t stand a chance against her.
〈Get your launchers ready! If she goes into a building, blow the whole thing away!〉an order went out over the wireless.
On Collidenne’s retinal display, an indicator showed that the company was ready to move into the second phase of the operation. The retrofitting of the armor on the 090 tank they had gotten shipped in from the Funabashi base was complete, and it was time for the real attack.
“Tighten the net on her, everyone,” the major ordered. “It’s time to show this thing that dolls shouldn’t play at war.”
Cries of 〈Yes, ma’am!〉 rang back over the wireless, and she could hear the rage of battle in their voices. To those who had spent their lives on the battlefield, no conflict was ordinary. No matter how routine, the battlefield would always consume the lives of soldiers. So, to have a machine telling them that conflict would become routine, something automated, something that no longer had the weight of life or death, was humiliating. If conflict was automated, what meaning would the lives they had spent on the battlefield and the lives their fallen comrades had laid down have?
Slowly but steadily, the soldiers advanced on Kouka, each one knowing that, even with the cloud of particles around them, a direct hit from that laser cannon would be instant death with the equipment they had.
〈I don’t plan on sharing the battlefield with a machine,〉growled a soldier from Bravo Team, the unit that had volunteered to guard the most dangerous part of the operation near the Edogawa river. Yet, in front of him, drones made up a vital part of their defensive vanguard. The battlefield was always a place of contradictions.
To Kouka, with her giant laser cannon, the advancing soldiers were sitting ducks. But, standing sideways on the face of a building made it hard to properly set herself up to aim her device, which weighed close to three hundred kilograms. With superhuman strength, she bounded off the wall and landed where she could get a better shot. The instant she landed, Kouka put her massive weapon to work. A huge blast erupted into the water, and the major’s monitor showed two red lights for heavily wounded soldiers, and two lights blinked out, signaling two deaths.
Only a machine or a monster was capable of seeing all the human life gathered there as being entirely equal in value.
Whenever Kouka swung her heavy device around, she shot anchors out of her heels to secure her footing; one of her main weaknesses was her need to stay in place in order to deal with the weight of her own weapon. A line of floating mines rushed in toward Kouka. Unable to blast them away with her laser in the silver cloud of interference, Kouka swung her red device to slice them apart, instead. Flames and dust roared into a three meter cloud from where she stood.
But it was the backline adding its attack to the frontal assault from the riverbed that was the real meat of the operation. A red-hot plasma bullet pierced the night, blowing away the pillar of dust and fire. It was a round from an 80 mm railgun, which was the 090’s main weapon.
When the dust, which had transformed into a ball of flame, cleared away, Kouka was still standing, although she was covered in burns. She had withstood the power of the tank, which was the HOO forces’ trump card.
Kouka was easily able to calculate the position of the tank, three hundred meters away from the front lines, based on the trajectory of the bullet. Before the tank could prepare a second volley, she had already brandished her device like a swordmaster taking a stance, and had gotten a bead on the tank.
“Eat this!” she howled, body black with ash. A path of shining silver formed between Kouka and the tank, marking the dispersion particles burning away as her laser pierced toward her target. As the laser impacted with the tank’s high-strength anti-beam coating, the whole vehicle started to glow white.
As she focused on the tank, Kouka was completely exposed to fire from the river. Her body, delicate and girlish, was pierced mercilessly by round after round. Even so, at that distance the tank was already starting to melt under the intensity of her laser beam. The tank’s final defensive mechanism—an explosion function—activated, scattering ultra-high concentrations of sand around the vehicle. If the heat caused even this function to fail, the laser would eventually ignite the tank itself.
But, just when the tank was about to collapse, a loud gunshot sounded, and the laser, guided by Kouka’s hands, slipped slightly from its mark.
〈Chief Sergeant Mirai Mallory—first shot is on target!〉 The sniper squad had landed a precision shot on Kouka. Another gunshot rang out, and the major heard the result over the wireless. 〈Second shot on target!〉
The shots from the sniper squad caused puffs of dirt to blow out from the embankment. Kouka’s second greatest weakness was the fact that she had to operate her massive, heavy device with the delicate, complex instruments that were her hands. The stance she used to aim the laser cannon put an especially large burden on her body. If she lost her right hand, it would easily erase half of her combat ability.
Any unarmored vehicle would have been pierced straight through by a single shot from the sniper rifles, but Kouka’s hand had managed to withstand the first shot. Even so, it tore her skin and revealed the machinery underneath. Kouka, realizing that her hand was being targeted, abandoned her shooting pose and quickly folded her device up so she could carry it more easily.
The tank she had almost melted quickly retreated on its treads, but Kouka wasn’t about to let it run. She pulled a black, bar-like object out of her leg parts. Then, throwing her whole body into it, she hurled the object at the tank, three hundred meters away. The bar pierced a hole in the tank’s armor, and fire erupted from within the vehicle. The whole thing exploded in moments, sending shrapnel flying everywhere.
The lifesign monitors for the commander and operator that had been in the tank flicked to black, and Collidenne roared a command on every channel the soldiers were using. “All units, tak
e aim!”
At an order from the command vehicle, all the floating mines swooped in on Kouka. The red box, who had been fending off attacks from the approaching soldiers, stopped as the mines closed in.
The shooting, which had paused for a moment, resumed as human soldiers, far more flexible than their drone comrades, began to fill the hole in the offense left by the tank. Surviving members of Bravo Squad pressed their line forward, stepping into the living hell of the dispersion particles that had absorbed the heat of the laser.
A yellow light blinked in the command vehicle, indicating an emergency call. 〈Major, have the helicopter pin her down!〉 It was from unit one of Alpha Squad, Ensign Ackerman’s unit, in the helicopter that had brought in the armory shipping container. The helicopter had just arrived in the air over the burning tank. On the opposite side of the river, a second 090 tank was rolling into place. Kouka was caught between the two vehicles.
Collidenne needed to fill the hole left by the tank that had fallen in ten seconds. If they had managed to get a tank on either side of Kouka, the battle would have been over. But, with one tank down, she had to be ready to make a tough decision.
“Sest, focus the tank fire and the smart grenades from the platoon on her. We need to stop that doll from moving!” she ordered.
At that moment, the situation analysis from Io, HOO’s combat computer, flashed onto her artificial retina display. The weapon Kouka had pulled from her leg holster and used to destroy the tank was an anti-tank grenade. Its tip was made of heavy metal and it was shaped like a throwing knife, so when the tip pierced the heavy armor of the vehicle, a jet booster attached to the back would propel it deep inside. In other words, it was harmless unless it could pierce the tank’s armor. Sest, in the helicopter, should have been seeing the same information.
A moment later, an armored vehicle climbing the embankment to support the helicopter exploded. There was no way anything with that level of armor could withstand the exploding knives thrown with the power of a red box; it was a situation that required some adjustments to their strategy.
“Don’t get closer than fifty meters to the target! Concentrate your fire,” Collidenne ordered. “Our target is a little girl who can’t weigh more than 50 kg. She may be durable, but bullets can shake her.”
The anti-tank grenades were powerful, but large. Kouka only had two left in her leg holsters, and her top priority for her weapons of instant death at three hundred meters was the command vehicle where Collidenne sat.
She also prioritized high-mobility armored vehicles over the equally highly mobile helicopter. Meaning, Kouka was already searching for the position of the command vehicle from across the Edogawa river. She had probably devoted some of the cameras she was using for her network stream to rooting Collidenne out.
Kouka was crossing the river. That was why she prioritized destroying the armored vehicles that could fight her in the water.
〈Ma’am, the target has entered Edogawa river. She’s crossing over,〉 the report came over the wireless.
“All units, get out of her way!” Collidenne commanded. “Bravo unit, in the water, leave the drones behind and get out of there.” At her orders, the career soldiers ceased fire and began to move. They redeployed according to the strategy that had been put in place in case the battle was to be decided while Kouka was in the river.
According to the geographical data that HOO had gathered beforehand, the river was mostly shallow except for a deeper portion about fifteen meters wide in the middle. They had a lot of time to work with when Kouka would be exposed above the water.
Once she was in the waters of the Edogawa river, the wounded red box started crossing with superhuman speed, dexterously able to avoid the underwater mines that HOO had laid for her. Based on Io’s analysis, they only had ten seconds before Kouka dove into the deeper water; it was the last chance for the mercenaries to pin her down.
But Kouka wore a wide grin as she sprinted, kicking up water. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” she boasted. Using her wire anchor, she nimbly fished out a landmine that had been buried in the riverbed. Aiming carefully, she sent the disc-shaped mine flying through the air, right onto the upper armor of the remaining tank. The smart mine recognized the friend or foe signal from the tank and stopped its own fuse, only to explode over the tank. With a simple rock and her extreme throwing power, Kouka had physically set off the mine.
A second and third underwater mine followed the first. With her device thrust into the riverbed, Kouka used both hands to hurl the mines, followed by rocks aimed and thrown with the accuracy of a specialist.
Her head, from which her red hair was flying about wildly, was suddenly rocked as it took a sniper bullet. One of her red hair accessories shattered, vanishing into the night-dark water she stood in.
With its turret cover still burning, the tank aimed its main cannon directly at her. The round it fired transformed into a ball of pure plasma, throwing up a massive column of water when it struck the river. It was on target. But, as if the world was a nightmare under her control, Kouka caught the round on the blade of her device, slicing it out of the air. She sliced through the second and third round as well, the slashes of her device straight and true without a hint of faltering.
But, with the fourth and fifth round, a loud metallic creaking echoed across the water each time she swung. Though her device could take immense amounts of punishment, Kouka’s thin arms couldn’t hold out against the force of the tank’s main cannon for long.
Collidenne’s command rang out at the same instant Kouka’s right arm went flying high into the air. “All units, open fire!”
Just before entering the depths, with the water up to her waist, Kouka lost her footing in the current. She had a big smile on her face. And, after fifteen smart mine explosions, six rounds of main cannon fire from the tank, ninety seconds of sustained rifle fire as well as fire from the machine gun on the helicopter, Kouka finally ceased functioning.
The operation that had required two tanks, two helicopters, two armored vehicles, forty combat drones and fifty-five soldiers, including pilots and engineers, was over at last. They had lost one tank, one armored vehicle, thirteen combat drones, and their human casualties amounted to ten dead and four seriously wounded.
After confirming that all the camera units had been dealt with, Collidenne Lemaire stepped out of the command vehicle and lit up an e-cigarette. She couldn’t shake the sight of that smile Kouka had worn until the very last, like it was burned onto the backs of her eyelids.
All the soldiers under her command were cheering over the wireless, but Collidenne was frowning. She knew what the future would bring. This time, they had taken advantage of Kouka’s weakness—a device far too heavy for her body—and used it to win. It was a strategy that wouldn’t work on any of the other red boxes. According to the information they had received from the Japanese Army, Type-002, Snowdrop’s device, was just a necklace instead of something she carried. Higgins had hammered out all the weaknesses in the Lacia-types by the 2nd unit. Collidenne doubted HOO would win, if they were tasked with taking down Type-003 or higher.
On the night of the explosion, all five Lacia-class units had escaped into the sea. Type-001 and Type-002 had already appeared in public, and Collidenne seriously doubted that MemeFrame had actually lost the other three.
A report from the command vehicle told her that preparations to evacuate the seriously wounded soldiers were complete. But, just as the mercenaries were moving on to the final part of the operation—retrieving Kouka’s body—an explosion rocked the scene. A damage report came in through Collidenne’s intracranial receiver: their retrieval group was under attack.
〈There’s been an explosion on the Edogawa river! The enemy’s in the water, it must have dove in and come here without us seeing. It’s got a smoke screen up and we can’t see a thing down there!〉
Collidenne ran back to the command vehicle and checked the vital signs of her people. A view from the helico
pter camera was on the monitor. On one of the monitor screens, she could see a playback of the moment of the explosion. Just before the blast, she could make out a small wake cutting through the river. The explosion had been caused by a small torpedo.
She could hear the echoes of gunfire as her mercenaries laid down fire to give their comrades time to reform a defensive line. Her exhausted subordinates awaited her command. Her instructions were blunt. “No need to go chasing after them,” she said.
In the illumination from the helicopter’s searchlight on the river, she could see a wake in the water heading downstream. The device Kouka had been leaning on when she died had disappeared. Whatever had pulled that little trick, Collidenne had to hand it to them. “The enemy is probably using a special ship or drone,” she said. “If our company gives pursuit, we could run right into a trap.”
A device that could move that fast underwater while hauling a 300 kg device was something that would have taken quite a bit of preparation. The enemy may have already had it in place before Collidenne’s unit started setting up their own trap. More than that, though, the underwater enemy was already nearing the limits of the area where HOO was authorized to conduct their operation.
They had been contracted to destroy Kouka. There was no reason to take on any more risk on Ryo Kaidai’s behalf. At the very least, Collidenne had no confidence that the youth would be able to shoulder the burden of HOO losing any more lives in the chase.