Frederica had decided—she would be her own sovereign, master of her own fate. And such a sovereign wasn’t allowed to look grim. If she was too occupied with her own troubles, she wouldn’t be able to save others.
And so—
“First, I must endeavor to resolve my own issues,” she whispered firmly.
“We kept you waiting, lads! A freshly baked pumpkin pie, piping hot and fresh out of the oven!”
“Mm-hmm, I have been kept waiting, indeed! I, too, want a piece!”
The supply squad captain, a first lieutenant, walked in with a large plate of pumpkin pie and was instantly swarmed by the Processors. Frederica gleefully charged into the group of hungry boys and girls for her piece of the pie.
✦ ✦ ✦
When they’d parted ways, Lieutenant Colonel Mialona brought in all sorts of books about nuclear power and nuclear weapons, her deputy looking on at his commander with a strained smile.
“This is all way over my head.”
Shiden could understand the contents of the books, but she didn’t see any beauty in it. Lieutenant Colonel Mialona had asked her to taste-test all sorts of subjects, but sadly, this one didn’t suit Shiden’s palate. However, she had the feeling that if she did discover something she’d have fun looking into, the lieutenant colonel would be just as pleased.
She’d placed the books in their study room in the base, which resulted in some of the others reading them and one or two of them reading everything before asking the teaching staff for more, so perhaps Lieutenant Colonel Mialona’s efforts did bear fruit.
“Beauty, eh…?”
Shiden felt like maybe, just maybe, she did understand the lieutenant colonel’s words. Looking up at the faint clouds that hid the moon, shining brighter than the other clouds around them, Shiden found herself reaching out to the sky.
✦ ✦ ✦
As the prince of a large country, Vika handled most of his personal necessities on his own. And while Raiden knew that, he never would have expected him to know how to cut apple peels into uniform ribbons or how to carve apples into rabbits. Raiden thought this as he watched Vika carefully cut an apple into the shape of rabbit ears.
And despite many having something like it on the front lines, he didn’t expect the prince to carry his own multi-tool knife.
“Aren’t you going to make rabbit apples, too, Lerche?” Rito asked.
“Hmm, well, Sir Milan, I’m afraid fashioning fruit is too tall an order for me…”
“I didn’t make her to be that dexterous. Same as how you wouldn’t ask your Scavenger over there to peel apples.”
Fido, which had been gazing up at the moon elegantly outside, approached the open window. Michihi handed it a fruit knife in amused curiosity, but…it seemed even the otherwise talented Fido, which was good at towing Juggernauts and plowing snow, had tasks it couldn’t perform. It tried picking up the knife several times but kept dropping it.
Raiden looked on as Fido dropped its shoulders in disappointment and Lerche placed a sympathetic hand over its optical sensor.
“Vika, we get it, you know how to do it, so stop peeling already. No one’s going to eat all of those.”
Vika’s Imperial violet eyes turned to Raiden in surprise.
“What?” Raiden asked.
“Nothing. I did tell you to call me that, but…I just thought it was unusual coming from you.”
“Well, you know,” Raiden said as he peeled another apple. “I figured calling you ‘prince’ is kind of heavy.”
A prince was one charged with the responsibility to save everyone and was required to take responsibility for it if they couldn’t. It was an endlessly heavy burden that one had to be ready to shoulder if they were to take on the title.
Vika remembered what he told Frederica, and the words the Republic citizens and the Hail Mary Regiment survivors shouted. Help us. Protect us. Save us. They clung, made demands, and followed blindly—a flock of sheep, driving both themselves and the governor girl who led them off the edge of a cliff.
So being a king—not one’s own king, but the king of many, of countless sheep, who both followed and drove one on—meant…
“I’m not one of your subjects…so you don’t need people like me, people who don’t follow you, to call you prince, too,” said Raiden. “At least, that’s what I figured.”
Even if it was a nickname with no loyalty or worship attached to it.
“I never thought it was heavy…” Vika tilted his head.
One’s social station was something one was born into, and it was as much a natural part of a person as their limbs, eyes, and ears. No one felt that their limbs were heavy, and in much the same way, Vika didn’t think his royal station was a burden.
He didn’t, and yet—
“…But yes,” Vika said with an amused smile. “You are not one of my subjects. And if you’re not going to speak to me with respect either way, I would prefer it if you called me by my name.”
Everyone else present exchanged looks, and Kurena was the first to nod.
“Then we’ll call you Vika from now on!”
“Yeah, thanks, Vika.”
“And honestly, you could be more laid-back with us, too, Vika. Call us by our names, for once.”
“Yes! Plus, Vika is kinda long, so how about we just call you Vi?!” Tohru raised his hand, getting carried away.
“Do you want to quite literally be placed on the chopping block, fool?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“…Stop it, you seven-year-old. It was a joke.”
“Yes, I, too, was joking, Your Highness. I truly was, Sir Jabberwock, so please don’t be so frightened.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Upon visiting Zelene’s crypt for the first time in a month, Yatrai raised an eyebrow.
“You’re in quite the pitiful state, Zelene Birkenbaum.”
As a Legion, Zelene had mechanisms in place that forbade her from leaking intelligence regardless of her will. Both the Federacy military and Yatrai were aware of that. And they also knew that there was no way of confirming if she was only pretending to be limited by those restrictions.
And that was why Yatrai ordered the intelligence personnel to have her tell them everything. They asked her whatever she might want to say, and all the questions the Federacy wanted answers to.
If she said she couldn’t answer a question, that, too, was a kind of information. It told them what the Legion were prevented from sharing, what the mechanical threat was trying to hide. All those things, when stacked together, served as hints.
Of course, the Legion were never meant to speak in human language, so doing it for too long strained her. And being subjected to questioning for days was a great burden. Set inside her restraining container, Zelene was no longer capable of sarcasm.
<<What do you want?>> her electronic voice asked tiredly.
“Oh, I just came to give you a small reward. I can’t elaborate on the details, but we did discover evidence to support how rigid your prohibitions are. It was worth the effort of checking, because we’ve regained some speck of trust in you.”
The upheaval in the second northern front did allow them to formulate a hypothesis. The Legion didn’t attempt to recover the nuclear fuel. That meant that, if nothing else, the prohibition forbidding them from using nuclear weaponry was incredibly strict and firm.
This prohibition included dirty bombs. Perhaps the use of nuclear reactors and depleted uranium, as well as armor plates with depleted uranium included in them, were the sole exceptions. It was much like the funny story of how the restriction on their use of biological weaponry became so strict, they were no longer able to work alongside regular soldiers.
The Legion were made to replace rank-and-file soldiers, noncommissioned officers, or low-ranking officers on the battlefield. Such ordinary roles weren’t permitted tactical weaponry. In that case, perhaps, like nukes, the prohibition extended to the use of ballistic missiles, too.
“One more thing—and this is strictly out of curiosity. If you don’t want to answer this question, you don’t have to.”
He felt her gaze fix on him from the paper bag placed on top of her container, which had a face drawn on it. Yatrai spoke while gazing into the one cheap camera that allowed Zelene to peer into the world outside her container.
“Your ‘throne’ had a passage that leads into a lake of lava.”
In the depths of the Dragon Fang Mountain in the United Kingdom, at the throne of the Legion commander unit called the Merciless Queen, there was indeed a passage that led into a lake of lava. It was an unnatural place to have in a commander unit’s residence.
“You dug a path underground that didn’t serve as an escape tunnel. Did you do it to have a means of ending yourself? In case no one defeated the Phönix and came for you?”
In case humankind’s defeat was set in stone and they never gained the key to shut the Legion down. Yatrai, a member of a warrior bloodline that had defended the Empire for a thousand years, cocked his head ever so slightly at the undying ghost of another warrior house.
“It doesn’t have to be now. But if you can no longer bear the shame of staying alive, we’re willing to dispose of you—the last descendant of the Imperial warrior house of Birkenbaum.”
This was a modest mercy he would extend her as a member of another waning warrior house, who had to feel the shame of clinging to life.