Sousuke let out a grunt as he felt a hit land; one of the enemy machine gun shots had hit his booster, and the outside of his right engine had caught fire. Its output fell, and it began to produce a strange sound and vibrate. The XL-3 was in bad shape, and it risked exploding mid-air. The blaring alarms were annoying. Al’s warnings were annoying, too.
Three thousand meters to Merida Island, thought Sousuke. Almost there. But if I detach the booster now, I’ll fall into the sea. Even if I use the emergency balloons to float, I’ll be torn to holes by the Behemoths...
Two thousand meters to a safe drop point.
The fire expanded. The right second engine burst into flame. The right wing was an inferno.
One thousand meters.
He took more hits, still to the right. A hole opened in the wing. His altitude dropped. His speed dropped. The flames spread to the Laevatein’s right shoulder...
Eight hundred meters left, but he couldn’t wait any longer.
“Cut us free!” Sousuke yelled.
There was no time to argue. Al immediately released the Laevatein’s lock bolts to release them from the XL-3, and the machine entered free fall. The burning XL-3 flew into the distance above them, went into a tailspin, and then exploded. The resulting fireball illuminated the Laevatein’s white armor in the dark.
Sousuke waited for as long as he could before releasing his first parachute. He felt a sudden brake in their descent and deployed his second parachute. Without waiting for a full drop in speed, he cut this one loose, and went back into free fall from an altitude of a hundred meters.
He could see the sandy beach. It was the west coast of Merida Island, where he’d coached Tessa in how to control an M9 a long time ago...
Two hundred meters off that beach, the Laevatein splashed down... No, it landed. The water was less than two meters deep here, only coming up to his AS’s shins. Kicking up a massive sea spray, Sousuke immediately knelt his machine down and turned his demolition gun to the northwest, straight at the black horizon. Maximum zoom again. One of the remaining Behemoths must have noticed him, and it could be seen six kilometers past the island. While slowly turning, it began to point all of its equipped firearms toward the beach.
“Too late,” Sousuke told it. He aimed and fired. He felt a powerful recoil, but he didn’t go flying backward this time as the demolition gun’s shot flew at the Behemoth and hit the target’s shoulder. The giant staggered as an explosion caused bits of its armor to fall.
Sousuke reloaded, adjusted his aim, and fired, planting his feet to restrain the recoil. This time, he hit the Behemoth in the head. It wasn’t hard to hit something that big from this distance, and the second Behemoth was soon down.
《Targeting signal detected. Lock-on from the Behemoth C... Incoming!》 warned Al.
The final Behemoth had attacked from the ocean to the southwest, firing not just its main cannon but all of its guns in a barrage from six kilometers away. Sousuke jumped several times to dodge the shots, and landed his machine on the rocks near the beach, which was full of anti-AS mines, after all. He’d practiced here so many times in the past, he could navigate even the rocks with his eyes closed.
A large number of shells and rockets rained down on the point where he’d landed before.
Don’t they know whose backyard this is? Sousuke wondered, reequipping the demolition gun. While enjoying the feeling of being back in his old stomping grounds, Sousuke turned to the final Behemoth and returned fire.
When his third shot took down the final Behemoth, he immediately turned around and raced into the jungle of Merida Island. “Entering phase two,” Sousuke announced. “Switch sensors to passive and GPL to idle. Let’s plant a few seeds.”
《Roger.》
Sousuke pulled out a simple decoy shaped like a drum canister from the grenade locker on his hip, threw it on the ground, and then immediately turned south. He had eight of these decoys in total. They all broadcast the same communication waves as the Laevatein, and were designed to put out an infrared signature with similar characteristics. They couldn’t mimic its appearance, but would be suitably effective in delaying the enemy.
The decoys were mounted with vibration sensors, so he could expect them to pick up enemy footsteps approaching. If he used that in combination with the jungle terrain, he could reduce the enemy’s chances of finding him to some degree, but that alone wasn’t enough. Sousuke needed an actively broadcasting encrypted signal to draw attention to the decoys.
But just one machine putting out a signal would seem too suspicious. Extended use of communications—which he’d be expected to keep limited—would just raise the enemy’s suspicions, especially Leonard and Kalinin. If he wasn’t careful, they might actually outmaneuver and corner him.
In that case...
“Al, cancel encryption on channel E2,” Sousuke ordered. “Get us broadcasting openly on all frequencies, and have the decoys do the same.”
《You want the enemy to hear your communications?》
“Make sure they do,” Sousuke instructed him. “This machine is a radio station, and I’m the DJ.”
The doubts and uncertainties that had been tormenting him before he deployed... What to say to Kaname, how to face the enemies waiting on Merida Island, the rightness of his actions...
What does she want? What do I want? I feel like this battle has made it all clear... who I am.
Leonard’s words, Mira’s letter... none of that gives me my answer. Because I’m not a preacher or a politician, or a counselor or a teacher.
Who am I, then?
That’s obvious. The battle is telling me.
I am a soldier.