Murat grabbed her arms and pinned them behind her. “You think you can escape into the ocean?” he demanded. “Think again.”
“Oh, that’s not why I asked... Also, you’re hurting me.”
“Let me tell you, then: the closest island is a little over a kilometer away,” he continued. “That’s a long swim in a pitch-black ocean like this. There’s small sharks here, too, and the current is strong. A little girl like you would drown for sure. A big, strong man might barely make it. So don’t do anything stupid.”
“Aha. Yes, I see.” Tessa nodded docilely. “Good luck with your swim, then.”
“What?”
The next instant, an arm burst out of the crate containing the “industrial refrigerator”—a thick, mechanical arm.
“Erk?!” choked Murat, who couldn’t escape its grip.
The whatever-it-was grabbed his throat with terrifying strength before revealing itself, ripping out of the crate as if it were made of tissue paper. The thing looked like a large man in a trench coat, with two red lights shining out from beneath the hood pulled low over its eyes.
This was Plan 1055, an Alastor. Formerly employed by Tessa’s rival organization, they were the world’s smallest autonomous arm slaves.
As it lifted the struggling Murat higher, the Alastor said, 《Colonel. Orders, please.》
“I’m not a colonel anymore,” Tessa informed it.
《Well... orders anyway, please.》
“Countermeasure D1, then,” Tessa decided.
《Roger.》
“Yeek?!” screamed Murat, who hit the ocean with a splash as the Alastor threw him overboard.
The other men stood there dumbstruck for a moment before they quickly snapped back to themselves, drawing their concealed handguns. By the time one was taking shots at the Alastor, though, two of the four were already in the ocean alongside Murat. Simple handgun rounds couldn’t hurt an Alastor, so the remaining two were immediately grabbed by the mechanical arms and thrown into the sea as well.
“What the hell is that thing?! What is it? Dammit!”
“Help me! Help me!”
Murat and his men struggled and screamed while splashing around in the sea. Tessa ignored them, instead taking up the helm to restart the engine.
《Countermeasure D1 complete. Please issue your subsequent order,》 the Alastor demanded.
“There are life rings in the back, right?” said Tessa. “Throw them. And stop talking like a normal AI, Al.”
《Excuse me. I’m just trying to respect this body’s procedures.》
“Your satellite link is working, right? Just do whatever you want.”
《If you insist.》 The Alastor dropped its intimidatingly mechanical body language with a shrug, before languidly grabbing the two life rings in the back of the cabin and throwing them to the men. It even made a motion like dusting off its hands afterwards. 《There are two life rings for five men,》 Al observed.《A fight may ensue.》
“I don’t care,” Tessa told him. “They’re bad people.”
《Roger. If they’re bad people, it is what it is.》
That’s all it took to convince you? Tessa wondered to herself, even as she re-initiated the boat’s forward movement. The engine roared, the propeller kicked up sea spray, and the boat—now five people lighter—began to pick up speed.
Tessa hadn’t been at a helm in over a year, but this definitely felt more relaxing than a multi-thousand-ton submarine. Even though, in my early teens, I’d dreamed of piloting the giant submarine that I designed... I really have changed, she realized.
“Al,” she said, “we’re traveling at thirty knots. How’s your link?”
《There is a lag time of 0.45, but it shouldn’t be an issue outside of combat.》
Al, the core unit of the AI once installed inside Mithril’s lambda driver-mounted AS, the Laevatein, was about the size of a mini-fridge. It was far too big to load into an Alastor, so Al’s real body was currently hidden elsewhere in the world. Tessa hadn’t asked where, but Al was remotely controlling the Alastor (which had been modified to act as a receiver) from that location via satellite link. In a remote region like this, even the latest high-speed satellite relays still had a massive time lag, but things were clearly working well enough for him to serve as a bodyguard against local hooligans.
The Alastor had been a weapon employed by Mithril’s enemy organization. But every time Mithril had destroyed one in battle, they’d recovered whatever parts they could. They’d originally done this for the purpose of analyzing those components and working out who’d made them, but the other day, Tessa’s friend—a girl named Mira—had successfully combined the intact parts they’d had on hand to replicate a completed Alastor.
“It really would be a waste otherwise,” Mira had said. “Still, I couldn’t replicate the most important part, the autonomous functionality. It was seemingly designed to make very flexible decisions with very limited memory, but I haven’t been able to figure out how that was accomplished. Maybe it’s something only your brother could have done.”
She was talking about Tessa’s brother, Leonard, who was unfortunately dead now. In other words, it was like having a body without the brain. And so, even after having restored the Alastor, there was no way of getting it to work... Or so she’d been thinking, when suddenly...
《Can I have that?》 Al had said over his internet connection. 《I can make good use of it.》
And so, Al had acquired a new body with which to accompany Tessa on her journey.
“How does the body feel?” she asked him now, gauging their general heading from the stars as she adjusted their course here and there.
《I can’t quite get the hang of it,》 he had to admit.
“That’s a pity. Do you know why?”
《It’s partly the lag, but it’s mostly a size issue. This body is built roughly on a human scale, so it functions differently than my previous bodies in many ways.》
He was referring to ASes like the Arbalest and the Laevatein, which were giants that stood eight meters tall and weighed ten tons; they were obviously quite different from the two-meter-tall, 150-kilogram Alastor. There was the rate of inertia when moving, the friction when interacting with objects, the angular velocity of joint manipulation, et cetera. The fact that he could no longer control those things on instinct was probably what Al meant by saying that he couldn’t “get the hang of it.”
“I’m sure you’ll get used to it sooner or later,” Tessa reassured him.
《Most likely. But I can’t be certain I can protect you if things go very wrong.》
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. I think that will be the last attack we see.”
《Yes, Colonel.》
“I told you,” she reminded him, “I’m not a colonel anymore.”
《Under most military precedents, it’s not unusual to call an officer by their rank even after retirement. Besides, I still refer to Mr. Sagara as Sarge.》
Tessa was a bit annoyed to hear that name come up. After she’d learned he was safe, they’d exchanged a few phone calls and emails, but never again met face-to-face.