“Sa... gara?” Sachs said, in a weak voice Sousuke had never heard from him before. “I messed up. I couldn’t be arsed to tie down the generator... Ha ha... So much blood...” Blood trickled from his mouth and down his ample beard.
“Don’t look at it, and don’t talk,” Sousuke advised him. “I’ll call Captain Goldberry.” He ran up to a nearby phone and called Goldberry, the ship’s doctor. Despite apparently looking after injured men there, too, she responded that she’d be there right away. Sousuke ran back up to Sachs, took out the first aid kit he had on hand, and began examining the injury.
“I don’t think it’ll... do any good...” Sachs choked out.
“Don’t give up, Lieutenant.” Sousuke reached over to begin treating him, but Sachs knocked his hand away with surprising force.
“Just... listen! Sagara... the adjustments are... finished. But... because the external power source was severed... Al can’t boot up.”
“Lieutenant.” Sousuke treated him while he listened.
“The plug on the... right hip. Remove the broken attachment and reconnect it to the third cable in the locker,” Sachs told him urgently. “Use the socket next to it... to activate the... APU. Okay? Make sure to get it right...” What he was saying was very important, and Sousuke would have been left helpless without that explanation.
Meanwhile, Sousuke wiped at the massively bleeding wound with gauze. Within seconds he could make out the shape of the wound, but it was immediately covered with spilling blood again.
The blow probably pierced an artery close to Sachs’s heart, Sousuke realized. I won’t be able to stop the bleeding with what I have on hand. The puddle around Sachs gave him a rough idea of how much blood he’d already lost. Even taking his size into account, it seemed unreal that he was even still talking. Sousuke stuck him with an IV and gave him a saline drip, but he knew it was a losing battle.
Sousuke estimated that even if Goldberry got there within three minutes, in this chaos... Sachs wouldn’t make it. “The IME cable is still connected,” he said. “How much work have you done?”
“Don’t touch anything,” Sachs demanded. “Remove it... leave the rest to Al.”
“What about the SAL tank? Does it need depressurization?”
“Yeah. Be careful... when you take it out.”
Sousuke would have liked to be asking, “Are you in pain? Have you lost any feeling?” but he had to ask about his machine, instead.
“And... I increased the motion manager’s data bus. I haven’t tested if Al will boot up or not. If he doesn’t... disengage the amplifier line from the control panel,” Sachs advised him. “You’ll lose the XL-3, but the machine itself... should work.”
“Understood,” Sousuke told him succinctly. “I’ll do it.”
The moment his explanation was over, Sachs’s tense limbs went limp. “Sagara,” he choked out. “I... don’t blame anyone for this.”
“Yeah, you’re a good man,” Sousuke told him. “Everyone knows it, so you need to hang in there. Goldberry will be here soon.”
“I don’t want CPR from that old hag.”
“Don’t say that to her. She’ll—” Sousuke’s words cut off, because Sachs wasn’t listening anymore. His eyes remained slightly open, fixed on some point in the distance.
“Dammit!” Despite knowing that the effort was pointless, Sousuke tried to resuscitate him using a nearby defibrillator and CPR.
Goldberry arrived and looked Sachs over. She must have come running at full tilt, because she was out of breath, shoulders heaving. At last, the only words she said to Sousuke were, “He was a good man.”
Sousuke just clenched his teeth and screwed up his face, and didn’t curse any more than he’d already done. He wiped Sachs’s blood from his face and hands and allowed himself a deep sigh. “I’m going to prepare to sortie,” he said wearily. Then he stood up and went about activating the Laevatein, just as Sachs had instructed with his dying breath.
The ARX-8 Laevatein was fully stocked, with shotcannon, assault rifle, massive demolition gun, two Gatling cannons affixed to its hips... Then there was the lambda driver canceler known as the fairy wing, and the special emergency deployment booster known as the XL-3. There were also twelve Black Mamba anti-air missiles mounted in its main wings. With that whole arsenal hooked up, the Laevatein’s silhouette was so busy and bulky that, when seen from afar, it wouldn’t even look humanoid.
But even with this many weapons, Sousuke wondered if it would be enough; such was the difference in power between him and his enemies. Pulling out the spare external generator unit, Sousuke attached it to the socket in the machine’s hip. The generator unit activated, and he repeated the boot-up sequence from the external control panel.
“What did he... say in the end?” Goldberry asked from behind him. She was usually a very cheerful middle-aged woman, but there was no vigor in her voice now.
“That he didn’t want your CPR,” Sousuke told her.
“He was awful. An awful man.” While the doctor laughed through her tears, Sousuke continued his work.
He tried booting up Al. There was a long silence, and then the indicator lit up. Sachs had said he wasn’t sure if the Laevatein would boot up, but it had. The data bus amplifier seemed to be working just fine. Voice output wasn’t functioning yet, but the report appeared on the screen in clear text.
Connection confirmed. Checking status. APU engaged. Initiating all vetronics.
“He also said he didn’t blame anyone,” said Sousuke.
“Yeah. Actually... I feel the same way.”
“Towards the captain?”
“If she says it’s necessary,” Goldberry insisted, “then it’s necessary.”
Sousuke said nothing.
“You of all people need to have faith in her, Sousuke,” Goldberry chided.