Just before Keita deployed.
“Impossible! There are too many of them!”
Yeah… I knew it, Takafumi thought in the maintenance hangar set up a short distance from HQ.
He’d been on the battlefield before—that came with the job—but this was his first time taking part in such a massive defense operation. For that reason, he’d assumed battles of this scale were routine for the Second Division.
But when he heard a voice over comms from inside HQ that sounded like something between a scream and a furious shout, he realized he’d been dead wrong.
And of course he was. The enemy numbers had more than doubled from the original estimates—ten large class, one hundred and thirty-three mediums, and over five hundred smalls. There was no way this could be considered normal.
Meanwhile, the defenders only made up about 70 percent of the Second Division’s full strength. Thinking they could win against that horde with a force like this was delusional.
Had the enemy landed in the numbers they’d been expecting, the amassed forces might have been enough. But that hadn’t turned out to be the case.
No one had expected the enemy numbers to increase after initial observations. Nobody had accounted for that.
In a situation like this, unprecedented in every way, only someone with either blind faith or no grip on reality could still say, “We can win this!”
Takafumi wasn’t a dreamer. He might have had his fair share of romantic ideals, but he still accepted reality.
And the reality staring him in the face was total annihilation.
…Where did I go wrong?
He began mentally retracing his decisions over the past few years.
Was it when he accepted the military’s request for technical assistance? Even though testing wasn’t complete, he’d jumped at the chance. With the military’s backing, we’ll finally get to deploy our combat mechs—the culmination of our company’s future—and maybe even get to chase some of our nerdy fantasies, too! That was what he’d thought.
Was it when they’d built a mech that couldn’t even be properly tested without someone like Keita Kawakami, meaning they’d had to drag a student onto the battlefield?
Maybe the real mistake was getting into combat-mech development in the first place. They had only been weapons manufacturers. Had trying to break into this space been an act of hubris?
I don’t want to believe we were wrong from the start, but looking at this…
Seeing the situation in front of him, there was no denying it. He’d messed up.
This is what I get for ignoring my wife and daughter’s objections…
He was filled half with resignation and half regret. Whether it was acceptance or surrender, Takafumi had already made peace with it.
Retreat, or stand and fight—either way, the Second Division was going to suffer massive losses.
Of course, the division had its pride. They wouldn’t leave Keita, who was a student, or himself, a contractor, dangling on the front lines. If anything, they would be given priority in the retreat.
I don’t doubt that. But still…
Even if they tried to pull out, there was no guarantee they would make it to safety in one piece. And even if he survived, he—or rather, Mogami Heavy Industries—would have no future.
The Second Division will have to focus all their resources on rebuilding. They won’t have the time or interest to keep running tests on Mikage.
No matter how good it performed in simulations, without real-world battle data, Mikage would never be officially adopted. And the big players—Yotsubishi and Mito—had no reason to let a newcomer like him get any of the limited combat opportunities.
After all, the last two battles had been exceptions to the rule.
And even those flukes gave us results that made the others wary.
They had only been able to sneak Mikage into a practical combat scenario because nobody had taken them seriously—but not anymore. Now that people knew what the hybrid unit could do, no one was giving Mogami Heavy Industries another chance. After this battle, he would be left with nothing more than a weird, lopsided machine with no usable data.
If that happened, the military would pull the plug on any further tests.
As for Keita, the only pilot who could handle Mikage, the military would no doubt assign him a new mech. Background aside, he had actual combat experience now, so there was no chance they would let him sit idle.
He’s a top candidate. The only reason he wasn’t given a standard Kusanagi model was because I begged the military to let him test Mikage.
When Keita had successfully piloted Mikage in the first test, Takafumi had thought, We did it! This was our last chance, and we nailed it! But that was then. Now he knew the military would never lend Keita out to him again.
And that would be the end.
Crap. What am I gonna do now…?
He had a wife, a daughter, and employees to feed.
Yes, they could go back to making conventional weapons, maybe expand on their powered exoskeleton line, but they weren’t flush with funding. If they couldn’t recoup at least a fraction of what they’d sunk into Mikage’s development, bankruptcy was basically guaranteed.
It was a mistake turning that mech on. I got cocky—kept adding weapons, mods… Now everything’s wasted. Dammit. The banks aren’t gonna keep supporting a company that the military cut loose.
When you were on the rise, bankers were all smiles, begging you to take their money. But stumble just once, and they were as ruthless as any monster. That was how it was.
Yes, it was cold, but they had their own survival to worry about. Takafumi didn’t blame them. He blamed himself for not having planned better.
If we managed to take out one or two large-class monsters like last time, the deal would’ve been settled, and Mikage would have been officially adopted. We were this close, dammit.
He had regrets, more than he could count. He would have to apologize to his wife, his daughter, and his workers. He felt sick just thinking about it. Part of him felt like dying would be easier.
Heck, he even started to wonder, If I died here, would the insurance cover it? They might get a payout… But he shook off the thought. It was too morbid.
He would have been willing to die if it only affected him, but he’d dragged his team into this. And more than that, there was a kid out there, fighting in the mech they had built.
Keita Kawakami was just a teenager. He was talented, yes, but Takafumi had practically forced him into the cockpit. Into war. Keita had told him once how his parents were dead and how he’d joined the military for his little sister’s sake.
And I sent a kid like that into battle for my own selfish reasons… What right do I have to think, Hey, wanna die together so we can collect on insurance? What kind of asshole even jokes about that?