“…You heard me. If you want the info, you’ll have to wait until after I get it, okay?”
“Well, as long as I do get it eventually, I have no issue with that.”
“Besides, once Isotani talks to him, his walls will probably come down a bit.”
“Good point.”
“I would prefer just a proper introduction, you know?”
“Hmm? Can’t you do that yourself? It would feel kind of weird introducing classmates at this point. Still, if you hang around with me, you should have plenty of chances to get to know him.”
“True.”
“…Women sure are scary.”
“You’re just figuring that out now?”
✦ ✦ ✦
In the end, I was careful to only provide Isotani with intel that was either already public knowledge or soon would be, and on topics that Mogami had explicitly told me were okay to talk about.
“Sure, you can tell people,” he’d said when I asked. “In fact, tell anyone you can.”
That meant I told Isotani that I had ended up on the battlefield because the military wanted data from the new model I was piloting, and that Mogami wanted to market his company’s technology to them. Their interests happened to align, and I was the only test pilot available, so I’d been dragged along.
As for me being made a special ensign, that was purely because they couldn’t legally send a student into combat. For that reason alone, they had to slap a title on me to make it official.
I’d managed to pull off such astonishing results simply because the machine was overpowered and the preparations had been flawless. That said, the military’s current assessment of the mech was that it didn’t have the endurance required for longer engagements, so they were running tests to improve its staying power.
All this was to say that my classmates, equipped with standard or beast-type models, probably weren’t going to be deployed anytime soon.
Lastly, I handed over data on the 120mm smoothbore cannon’s firepower, the effect of the incendiary rounds, and the monsters I’d taken down.
Whether or not all that was worth the five hundred thousand yen Isotani had paid was up for debate, but according to her, records of battles with large-class enemies were rare in the Sixth Division. Getting the latest data from the Second Division always took ages, so even just the monster intel was more than worth the price tag, or so she’d said.
From a certain perspective, this might have looked like I was leaking classified information, but apparently, that wasn’t the case.
It turned out that the Second Division wanted to release this data, but they were required to compile it into official reports before circulating it to other divisions. And from what I’d heard, they were too swamped with work to actually get around to doing that.
As long as the people on the receiving end didn’t mind getting the raw data, my superiors were more than happy to pass it along. In fact, they wanted it distributed as soon as possible and actively encouraged me to share it.
Charging money for it still felt kind of sketchy, but if the Second Division’s goal was to share intelligence across faction lines—and if Mogami was eager to show off his company’s fancy new machine and Isotani was happy with the data she got—then who was I to complain?
So when all was said and done, it turned into an unexpected payday for me. Honestly, if I could make a little extra cash through combat deployments, maybe being on the battlefield wasn’t all that bad. I was more than happy to keep this up.