However... Kalinin couldn’t help but think that Chidori Kaname had a relaxation about her that almost seemed unnatural. She was a mere seventeen-year-old girl, yet walked as though she were queen of the world...
No, he reflected, perhaps she is the queen of the world. He and Fowler and the others were simply her unworthy retainers, taking the smallest scraps from the power they represented.
Out loud, Kalinin told them, “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Likewise to you all,” Leonard said with a shrug.
“Sagara and the others will try to escape through the northern emergency exit,” Kalinin said next. “We should have them surrounded soon.”
“Sagara?” Chidori Kaname said, sounding out the word with scowling uncertainty. “That can’t be right, Kalinin-san. I already killed Sousuke and Tessa.”
“What?”
“I killed them,” she insisted. “I shot them both in the head.”
“But my team’s report said—” Kalinin began. He was more surprised by how casually she said it than by the thought of his subordinate’s report being wrong.
Leonard interrupted, holding up a hand to stop Kalinin mid-sentence. “Never mind,” he told him. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But—”
“Never mind, Mr. Kalium.”
If ordered to be silent, Kalinin knew he had no choice but to comply. “Three unidentified enemies are escaping, then,” he said. “But we’ll have them neutralized soon.”
“I see. I leave it to you, then.”
“Sir.”
“We have no more business in these gloomy old ruins,” Leonard announced. “Prepare to withdraw at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
“See you later, Kalinin-san.”
Kalinin watched the two leave as leisurely as could be, and felt unsettled in a way that was difficult to describe. No, it wasn’t just that... He felt a sense of loss, as well. Then he contacted Kaspar, who was on standby on the surface. “Mr. Tin,” he ordered. “Status.”
“I’m in position,” said Kaspar. “Still no sign of Weber.”
“I expect he’ll be coming to the aid of Sagara and the others soon enough. The minute you see him, eliminate him.”
“Oh, of course,” said Kaspar, laughing through the transceiver. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
《Rifle shots detected. Eleven o’clock. Assigning designation: Echo-4.》
After receiving his AI’s report, Kurz whispered in the cockpit, “So they’re on the move.”
His M9 was currently laying low three kilometers to the northeast of Yamsk-11. He’d been crawling his way down for over two hours, moving slowly so that the enemy wouldn’t detect him. Using ECS and regular camouflage as appropriate, he’d kept his data link usage to the minimum and maintained maximum caution. Once he’d arrived at the closest possible point, Kurz had stopped his machine, placed his M9’s hands on a nearby exposed rock, and used his high-sensitivity vibration detectors to get a handle on the situation.
He got a hit. There were repeated gunshots coming from under the plant. He couldn’t pick up footsteps, but he could tell that it was different forces fighting each other. He isolated a certain rifle sound—the aforementioned Echo-4—enhanced, and then replayed it. The reverb makes it hard to be sure, he thought, but it sounds like Sousuke’s carbine. The rifle had a rhythm to it... Maybe most people couldn’t pick it up, but Kurz could. That was Sousuke’s rhythm.
“That bastard, he really did survive.” He said with a smirk, and turned on voice input. “Estimate E4’s specific bearing, distance, and vector.”
《Understood. Processing complete. Estimated bearing: 261. Distance: 1800. Vector: 73-10.》
Kurz brought up the digital map data on his screen and zoomed in. He didn’t know how far down Sousuke was, but he knew he was moving in his own direction while under fire by pursuers. He’d be moving faster than this if he was alone, so he was probably with a wounded person, or perhaps a woman, or a child. It could be safely assumed that Tessa was with him, as well.
Sousuke was trying to escape out the back of the plant, but the situation was grim. It seemed there was already an enemy squad fanned out near the Yamsk-11 plant’s back entrance in the mountains, which meant that he wouldn’t be able to escape without Kurz’s support. The enemy had probably anticipated this eventuality and would have stationed Kaspar out there, waiting for Kurz to act.
From outside, Kurz was able to pick up a faint allied signal. “Uru... to... ruz-6. ...ruz-7... 6.” The signal was choppy with a lot of digital static, but it was definitely Sousuke’s voice.
“Uruz-7 here. Do you read me?”
“Uruz-6. Status report,” Kurz responded urgently, without wasting time on banter. He was using an encrypted channel, but still wanted to keep his output to a minimum.
“Currently esca—ant underground. Current lo—asement corridor near 32a-71a. Currently enga—enemy heading west-northwest. I’m with Ansaz and Lemon. Lemon is wounded. How are things above?”
Sousuke must have been on the move while they were talking, because the signal was getting stronger and stronger.
“There’s an enemy ambush around 33c-70a,” Kurz replied. “Just one squad, I think.”
“Can you support?” Sousuke asked immediately. He’d probably assumed that if Kurz was observing, he could give them cover fire.
“I can, but there’s a lambda driver-mounted AS hiding somewhere nearby,” Kurz told him. “The sniper. I’ll need to take him out first.” If he provided sniper cover for Sousuke’s escape first, Kaspar would learn his location and destroy him immediately.
In other words, Sousuke couldn’t escape until Kurz took out Kaspar. “It’s not just the sniper,” he told Kurz. “There’s a chance we’ll see Leonard’s machine, as well.”
That incredible machine—the one that had destroyed the Arbalest in Tokyo—was here as well, which meant Tessa’s brother had survived. It was a difficult situation by any measure.
“Got it,” Kurz replied shortly. “But the imminent threat is still the sniper. If we can destroy it, we can probably get the Laevatein to you.”
That meant putting Gebo-6 at risk. After he finished off Kaspar’s AS, Kurz would take out the enemies waiting in ambush as quickly as possible. And while he did that, he’d have to send a non-invisible Gebo-6 to drop the Laevatein to Sousuke, all before Leonard could react.
Kurz didn’t know if the Laevatein could beat Leonard’s machine, but having it in action would at least open a path to escape.
“Got it,” Sousuke told him. “I’ll wait at the exit for as long as I can. Good luck.”
“Yeah. Just hang on,” Kurz responded while feeling his own heart racing. Me? Take out Kaspar? Is that even possible? But Sousuke is dead if I fail...
Sousuke couldn’t even count how many stairs he’d been up and down that day. Returning fire at his pursuers while lending a shoulder for the struggling Lemon, reaching another landing and firing again... It was that, over and over.
“Kurz and the others are fine for now,” he reported.
“Right,” Tessa nodded, opening a digital map on her portable terminal. “I just received the data from his machine,” she told them. “I have the layout of the enemies waiting above us. From what he can see, it’s one squad.”
Tessa showed them the digital map at maximum magnification, which showed the location of the eleven enemies picked up by Kurz’s passive sensor scans.
Sousuke made an objective judgment: if they kept climbing the stairs, they’d come out of an emergency exit in the mountain slope. There would be several buildings just outside, and the enemy seemed to be scattered around those in a semicircle formation. They’d probably want to keep their own losses to a minimum and take them alive, if possible, which would explain why they weren’t just charging in to pincer them.
Either way, it was clear that if Sousuke and the others surfaced, they’d wind up at the center of a ten-man crossfire. Even poking their heads out would be risky. On top of that, the men they were up against were Kalinin’s subordinates. They probably had excellent aim and restraint.
“We’re trapped,” he announced solemnly.
Tessa and Lemon weren’t amateurs, so they didn’t lose their heads at Sousuke’s report.
If they had the support of an M9 on the surface, they might be able to escape. Kurz could fire into the surrounding houses and neutralize half the enemies at once. Then the smoke from the explosions would obscure vision enough so that a Pave Mare could rush in and drop the Laevatein. Sousuke could board it in twenty seconds, and with the Laevatein at his side, he might be able to buy time against Leonard...
But Kurz was the key to all of it, and he was currently locked down. The enemy sniper’s AS would take him out the minute he began firing. That made defeating the enemy sniper their priority. Leonard could wait.
“So, what’s the plan?” Lemon asked despondently. He seemed to have reached the limit of what his exhaustion and injuries would allow.
“We’ll have to hold them off at the exit until Kurz works something out,” Sousuke answered.
“So it’s all up to him, huh? How are his skills?”
“Beyond anything you can imagine. But... it’ll still be difficult.” Sousuke knew that the only way for a normal M9 to take out a lambda driver-mounted AS was to catch it unawares. If he failed to down it with his first shot, he’d be dead. And given how Kurz had been talking, that lambda driver-mounted machine was a powerful enemy...
“How much ammunition do you have left?” Tessa asked, her voice tinged with exhaustion.
“I could hold out for about five more minutes, if I’m careful,” Sousuke responded, switching his carbine’s selector from burst to single-round. Then he pulled his handgun out of its holster and spun it around before giving it to Lemon, who might be exhausted, but was still probably a better shot than Tessa. “This is a faithful companion of mine,” he told Lemon. “Treat it with care.”
“Got it.”
“Colonel, handle surveillance and communications.”
“Very well,” Tessa said without any hint of complaint.
They continued up the sloping and narrow tunnel until there seemed to be no more stairs ahead of them. Limping and helping each other as they went, the three kept going through the darkness. Sousuke sometimes sent out a shot behind him, and in that moment, Tessa would help Lemon to hurry forward.