The shot fired, and it all went as he’d imagined it. The firing pin fell as expected, the powder ignited as estimated. The bullet expanded as anticipated, and proceeded, spinning, down the barrel of the gun.
This enchanted bullet cut through the air as it flew, tracing an arc that showed Kurz’s perfect reading of the wind as if were being drawn to the designated location.
1650 meters: he knew that it would hit. Kurz Weber’s last thought was, Take that, asshole, and then, with his rifle in his arms, he let the empty darkness have him.
He’s going to hit me, thought Sousuke at the exact moment he saw the blood spurt from his enemy’s chest. The bullet came from out of nowhere, entering through Kaspar’s back and out his front. It had gone straight through his heart.
“What...” Kaspar spluttered, his eyes widening in shock. He wasn’t looking at Sousuke. He’d managed to use his last bit of remaining strength to look in the direction, far in the distance, from which Kurz had made his final shot. Kaspar said nothing more, but his lips mouthed the words, There’s no way he could have hit...
And yet, he had. Kurz’s shot was right on target, and Kaspar’s legs went limp as he plummeted from his AS’s shoulder.
Kurz... Sousuke moved in that same instant, throwing his last weapon—his one smoke grenade—and yanking Tessa by the collar. He shouted out, “Gebo-6, the sniper’s neutralized! Bring in Al!”
“Roger!” Fischer, pilot of the Gebo-6, responded on the comm. He must have also realized what the situation was, because he’d kept his ECS in silent mode while he waited just past the ridge, just far enough away not to be seen. Now that the sniper was neutralized, he could fly in, drop the Laevatein, and then take shelter using the terrain.
This was, of course, assuming that Leonard’s own AS wouldn’t be making an appearance in that ten second interval...
“Tessa,” Sousuke shouted, “the beacon!”
“Right!” she replied, recognizing that they needed to let their allies know where in the swirling smoke they were located. Crawling over to her tablet, Tessa tapped at it and put out a radio beacon with their location.
Once they’d recovered from the shock of Kaspar’s death, the enemy soldiers had resumed firing. Sousuke heard bullets whiz over his head.
While firing back down the tunnel they’d come from, Lemon shouted, “They’re coming from behind, too! I’m almost out of bullets!”
“Figure something out!” yelled Sousuke, creeping forward to pick up the carbine he’d dropped earlier. Fifteen shots left, he thought, firing at an enemy who’d come charging at them through the smoke. The first shot missed, but the second took him down. He fired again at the enemies coming up behind him...
“Gebo-6, where are you?!” Tessa screamed.
A mechanical voice came over the radio before Gebo-6 could actually respond. 《Almost there, Colonel: ETA five seconds.》
“What? The cargo hatch just—”
《Descending now.》
The sound of rotors, engine noise, and an AS being released from its hydraulic bolts could be heard all at once. Gebo-6 arrived from the sky above to drop the Laevatein at just the right time, and it landed right in front of Sousuke, with its head-mounted machine guns on full automatic.
《Hurry, Sarge.》
“Al!” Sousuke shouted, tossing his carbine aside as he ran towards the roar of the guns, knowing there wasn’t a second to lose. The Laevatein held out its right hand while opening its cockpit hatch. Once he was in its palm, it swung it as if to throw him onto the back of its head.
Sousuke managed to keep his balance midair and slide into the cockpit. The hatch closed before he could even give the order, and Al went through the startup sequence on his own. They were on full speed ahead, abbreviating every checklist item. The usual settings, the usual master mode, the usual search mode... It was like the machine was hurrying him along.
《Targeting detected! Two, one...》
Sousuke grunted as they made a leap, just barely dodging the 40mm shot coming from the southwest. A 40mm shot powered by the lambda driver... Sousuke thought belatedly. Leonard! He’s shooting at us from somewhere in the ruins. If Al hadn’t expedited the startup procedure, they would’ve been hit for sure.
《Enemy AS, two o’clock, distance eight. It’s that rat bastard.》
“Yeah,” Sousuke agreed, “it’s Leonard.” Twisting his machine in midair, he used the Laevatein’s head-mounted machine guns swiftly to fire down on the enemy soldiers. Tessa and Lemon are still down there, he thought. I have to protect them. A rain of .50-caliber bullets kicked smoke up all over the area.
As he landed, Sousuke realized that Gebo-6 had already retreated behind the ridge, and that it wouldn’t have time to call him back to get the others on board. “Pick them up,” Sousuke ordered.
《Roger.》
The Laevatein squatted down before the room in which Tessa and Lemon were hiding, its auxiliary arms extending from either side to grab the weary Lemon and panicking Tessa. Another attack was incoming—multiple 40mm shots. As expected, Leonard was serious, and he wasn’t holding back one bit.
Sousuke dodged the first shot with his two charges in hand, then blocked the second with the lambda driver. But the force field didn’t fully hold, and he dodged just in the nick of time.
He wouldn’t be able to block Leonard’s shots once he got close enough, and he didn’t have an anti-ECS sensor. His opponent was probably invisible already, which meant he had no way of locating him...
“Can we use the fairy wing?!” Sousuke shouted to Al.
《Charging in without tests again?》
“Just do it!”
《Roger!》
The massive amplifiers attached to each of the Laevatein’s shoulders, dubbed the fairy wing, slid open and expanded. The machine’s generator let out a roar as it revved up to maximum output, with electricity flooding into the shoulder units as the air around them warped with exhaust.
《All power lines secured. LDC, electric charge rising. LBS, contact. One, activation successful. Two, activation successful. Interference radius increasing. 50, 100, 200...》
Despite its name, the fairy wing wasn’t for flying; rather, this was an amplifier which Mira and the others had built based upon the hard drive which Kaname had left behind in the mansion at Niquelo. They’d initially called it “the lambda driver canceler,” because it temporarily negated the functions of any lambda driver nearby.
Sousuke didn’t understand at all how it worked, but he’d been told that the fairy wing expended vastly more power than the lambda driver alone, so it would render the Laevatein’s own lambda driver unusable for a time, as well.
There was one other factor in play: for the fairy wing to work, its operator—i.e., Sousuke—would have to be in the right mindset. Just as he had to visualize a shield to block bullets, or an arrow to pierce through force fields, he had to form the image in his mind that “paranormal phenomena doesn’t exist.”
Sousuke hadn’t been able to imagine that at all the first time he’d heard about it, but now he could. He just had to go back to his old mindset. In other words, he had to tell himself, “It’s all a fraud; it can’t possibly exist.”