That was how I’d gotten stuck with it.
Why me? Because I wasn’t tied to any faction.
Most cadets were connected to one military clique or another, which meant giving a questionable prototype to them was a nonstarter. I, however, was a nobody. There was no powerful family to complain if I got handed a death trap, no one to raise hell if I died using it. Naturally, I’d been given the guinea pig assignment.
The way Mogami saw it, the sooner they tested the hybrid unit in actual combat, the better. If it performed well, the military might officially adopt it. It made sense that they were in a hurry.
From a business standpoint, I could understand where they were coming from.
What I didn’t get was why I had to be the one dragged into it.
I hadn’t signed up to become a war hero. All I wanted was a quiet post away from the front lines, a safe job that wouldn’t get me demoted or punished.
Ideally, I would get assigned to the Sixth Division in the Kinki region or the Eighth down in Shikoku. That would be a dream come true.
Yet here I was in Kyushu, working with the frontline, elite Second Division. Isotani had mentioned this would no doubt be my fate, but still!
Why were they sending students to the front?! Why couldn’t they use their own damn pilots?!
I was sure the Second Division didn’t want some newbie student playing around with a new model during actual combat, either!
I’d made all those points time and time again, but unfortunately, I hadn’t understood just how terrifying adults could be when they were serious.
“Relax,” Mogami said. “I don’t intend to bring a student onto the battlefield.”
“…Huh?”
Uh… I’m literally standing on a battlefield right now.
“You’re not a student. At least, not while you’re here.”
“Huh?”
What the hell was he talking about?
“You look confused. Check your student ID. That should clear things up.”
“My student ID?”
Student IDs—one of the standard forms of identification for students since forever.
That said, as of the year 2056, they didn’t come in the form of a physical card like they used to. These days, they existed purely as data, accessed via military-issued smartphone.
I didn’t have the faintest idea what Mogami was getting at, but if he said I would understand once I checked, then fine—that’s what I’d do.
“What am I looking for…? Wait, what?”
Half expecting nothing, I pulled it up anyway. First came my photo, my name, and my date of birth, followed by my unit and rank.
The first three were all correct, as expected. The problem was the final two.
“…Second Division, Special Ensign?”
“Congrats, Ensign.”
“Huh?”
Forget waiting till graduation, I’d been promoted a month into enrollment.
Well, maybe promotion wasn’t quite the right word.
I wasn’t just an ensign—but a special ensign.
A “special” status meant that under normal circumstances, I would be treated according to my base rank. For a student like me, that was equivalent to being a warrant officer. But when I was assigned to special operations, I would receive all the privileges of an ensign.
In essence, I was an ensign with strings attached. And of course, those strings were…
“You haven’t completed officer training yet, so you can’t be officially commissioned. But if you prove yourself as a test pilot here, once you graduate from the academy, you’ll be commissioned as a full ensign—or maybe even as a lieutenant. So allow me to congratulate you again. Well done, Kawakami.”
Ah yes, a classic fait accompli. Ugh!
Dammit. I’d underestimated this old geezer and Mogami Heavy Industries.
Of course a company powerful enough to muscle into the defense industry would have money and connections. And with those, it would be child’s play to promote a no-name student to special ensign and toss him onto the battlefield.
Even if I was classed as “special,” I was still officially an ensign. In the military, ranks were absolute.
Simply put, insisting I was just a student wouldn’t cut it anymore.
“…So what exactly am I supposed to be testing out here?”
“Good. That ability to adapt quickly is what I like about you. We’ll start with mobility and deployment training. Head to the hangar, retrieve your unit, and move to the designated location.”
“…Understood.”
That was how I learned just how terrifying an obsessive with money and power could be. And how I ended up training on an actual battlefield, even if it was in the back lines.
✦ ✦ ✦
The test site for the new prototype was a stretch of coastline near Itoshima, Fukuoka.
Center on the target, fire.
“Splorch!”
Center on another target, fire.
“Splat!”
And again. Center, fire.
“Skreee!”
Switch weapon type, fire.
“Chvah!”
No friendlies in the blast zone. Good. Fire an incendiary round into the group of swarming small-class monsters.
“Gyaaaah!”
Keep shooting and shooting and shooting at the monsters making landfall from the Sea of Japan.
If they shoot back, dodge. Or better yet, dodge before they shoot at all.
They might have been monsters, but that didn’t mean they were going to just sit there and take fire from a distance. They hurled rocks and shot beams of light like lasers.
Naturally, they aimed for wherever the fire was coming from. Which meant me.
“Rooooar!”
“Oopsy-daisy!”
But I wasn’t there anymore. I was hardly going to be sleeping on the job here.
Shoot and run. Basic sniper doctrine.
Though to be fair, jumping was easier than running.
The trick was to learn how to land without jarring the actuators.
Would installing some kind of wire-anchor system help control my airtime? I’d have to ask about that later.
Things like that, you could only learn from active combat. I’d make sure to include it in my report.
But back to business.
“Take that.”
As soon as you spot an opening, blast away. And don’t let up.
“Hrooo!”
I nailed one monster with a counter just as it was about to attack. Even at a distance, there was no missing something that big. A mid-class, it was six meters tall, give or take.
This was all playing out just like the simulations predicted. Still…
✦ ✦ ✦
…wasn’t this already way outside the bounds of field training?
This was actual combat. I was basically participating in a coastal defense operation.
Wasn’t my training supposed to be away from the front?
Technically, I was keeping my distance, so maybe this still counted as the back lines.
But I mean, usually back meant behind our own forces, not behind the enemy.
Ah. Target locked.
“Haaah!”
“Ugeh!”
I couldn’t say everything I was doing out loud, but I took notes in my head.
Was it my imagination, or were the Second Division people watching behind me starting to feel put off by my performance?
“They’re going to reach you if you keep fighting on your own like that. Let’s leave it to the Second Division from here. Launch an incendiary spread and fall back… Can you fire with both hands?”
“Yes, sir.”
Seriously, what did they expect would happen? You send a long-range combat mech into battle solo, and of course it would be overwhelmed.
I was grateful they were pulling me back before things got too dangerous, but still…
Could we honestly call this training?
In any event, things would get ugly fast if I let enemies get too close, so I wasn’t holding back.
“Take this!”
No precision this time, just scatter shots everywhere. Talk about exciting!
“Graaaah!”
Good. They were burning.
“Confirmed hit. Falling back.”
Technically, I’d started retreating before all my attacks had made impact. I had my orders, though, so it was fine.
Full-speed retreat, straight to the rear!
…Running on all fours sure is rough.
When I broke into an all-out sprint, I essentially had to give up on controlling the upper body.
Yeah. That was going in the report as well.