New World had begun their offensive. Each time a mortar shell hit the old Moscow Station area around me, I could hear the explosion and feel the building shake.
If the report we received from the communications team is correct, there must be a good number of powered suits surrounding us. Will we be able to hold out? Now that there’s no communication between squads, how are we going to fight back?
My concern must have been visible on my face.
“Volga, your father’s a colonel,” Captain Yulia said. “Did he teach you how modern battles are fought?”
“Well... the thing is... I’ve experienced a modern battle firsthand. a while ago, I took part in battles that used powered suits as the main weapons.”
“Before you were born, 150 years ago when there were no powered suits, do you know what kind of battles the people of this world fought?”
I don’t know what reference to use when it comes to talking about “this world” 150 years ago. I suppose there weren’t so many differences back when there were no powered suits. I’ll use the world where I spent my previous life as a reference...
“I think an air force would be used to gain air supremacy, and then ground forces would occupy crucial sites while receiving air support.”
“I’ll give you 7 out of 10 for that answer. In general, you have to consider the entire military, including the navy, but we’ll forget about that for now. The next question is: How does a nation fight when they are defending themselves against a nation with overwhelming power?”
I didn’t know where the captain was going with this.
A nation with overwhelming power? In that case, they can only use guerrilla warfare like we’re doing. But I don’t want to hear about military tactics and strategy; I want to know how we’ll contact squads on the ground. Wait. There were more things that weren’t around 150 years ago. The personal terminal I’m holding, for one thing... Those didn’t exist in my previous world. Instead of modern terminals, everyone used cellular phones. That’s it! I’ve got it.
“Telephone lines...”
“Now you get a 10 out of 10. You geniuses really are something else. Most people wouldn’t even think of the telephone. I’m surprised that a researcher like you would know about devices from the past like telephones.”
I didn’t know how many years it had been since people stopped using telephone lines. According to an article I’d seen in my mom’s room, all civilian voice-based communications had transitioned to using satellite networks by the year 2020, with the exception of a very small number of emergency lines. Roughly 80 years had gone by since then, and now it was unusual for anyone my age to know anything about telephones.
“I was going to ask you a lot more questions, but you’ve reached the answer already, so I don’t have to,” she said. “The people in our communications team are trying to put our squads in communication with each other using the telephone lines that run throughout the old city. Everything is going as we expected, so don’t look so worried. Now, there’s something else I’d like to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“You said something a while ago. Noa was part of an inter-racial war?”
“I can’t share the details without permission from my mom, but it all starts with Noa’s formation...”
I explained the true nature of Noa to the captain. I gave her a long-winded description of how the search for a safe place had increased in scale, and how the Hakone base wasn’t Noa’s main headquarters, but was actually a fortress built to protect a gate connecting to another world. If she was going to join Noa, she’d eventually learn everything anyway, so I saw no reason to hold back.
I went on to tell her about our dealings with non-human races in the world of G-88 and about the multi-race coalition.
The captain listened, frowning the whole time.
Talking while ignoring the sounds of the mortar shells striking nearby helped me to feel better about this bizarre situation I’d found myself in. I gradually became calm once more.
The captain probably started asking me questions because she knew talking would help me calm down. And here I thought I was the one saving her...
✦ ✦ ✦
“This is a little hard to believe...” I couldn’t help saying as soon as Arakawa was finished with his story.
Even so, the boy in front of me smiled warmly without showing any sign of irritation.
It was likely that everything he had just said was true. If he’d been lying, he would have come up with something more believable, and the fact that he was now calm was further proof.
Someone who’d never been on a battlefield would never be able to speak calmly while shells were raining down around them. I was forced to conclude that it was all true.
Just as I closed my eyes to think, one of my subordinates placed a nostalgic-looking telephone on the desk in front of me.
“Captain, we’ve established a wired connection.”
This is no good. I have to concentrate on the battle in front of me...
To regain my focus, I ordered the communications team to give me an update on the status of each squad.
“Squad 1 and Squad 2 have not sighted the enemy. They are on standby.”
“We have contact from the sniper outpost squad. They have sighted an enemy company of powered suits and are moving into offensive positions.”
So the sniper squad is about to engage? I noted. If we can just keep their attention away from this place, we can move to the next stage of the operation. But what happened to Squad 3? Why haven’t they contacted us?
“Give me the status of Squad 3!” I called.
“Please wait a moment, I’m establishing a connection,” the com officer said. “Squad 3 is engaging enemy powered suits! The enemy unit is on the scale of a platoon, so Squad 3 is feigning retreat while moving to detonation point 1-3 as scheduled.”
The idiots are really falling for it... Keep chasing them, and it’ll be the end of the line for you.
Powered suits couldn’t be destroyed using ordinary explosives, but detonating explosives in a subway tunnel would leave the powered suits buried under the rubble and unable to move.
We would have to reduce the enemy’s power as much as possible before they saw through our plans, otherwise our situation would rapidly worsen.
It’s about time I give orders regarding the helicopter...
“Prepare the helicopter! Make sure it looks like a good prize. It’s completely useless to us, but it should look like a valuable target. Naturally, it should be surrounded by explosives.”
“Understood!”
All right... Looks like we’re still in control of the battlefield. Now we need to find the right timing to dispatch Arakawa. Come to think of it, he’s been quiet for a while now.
Feeling worried, I began to look around for him, and saw him concentrating on a pamphlet that must have been dropped in the station.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
“...Operation Highjump. The German Third Reich,” he murmured. “No, it can’t be...”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked at me, and I saw the fear on his face. “Captain, did the United States of this world send their military to Antarctica sometime after 1940? It doesn’t matter whether it was done in public or in secret!”
“Antarctica? If I remember rightly, they went there in 1948 and 1951. The expedition made in 1951 was kept secret, I believe.”
“On what scale?”
“I don’t know the details, but there are records of a large force including several aircraft carriers being sent out. Why does it matter?”
“Give me a moment. I’m thinking it through. I have one more question... My mom will probably ask the United Nations Army to rescue us. I suspect several nations will participate in the rescue to earn favor with Noa. In that case the main force will be—”
“The United States Army.”
Arakawa closed his eyes and seemed to be thinking hard about something.
Meanwhile, we continued to receive constant updates from each squad.
We’ve just barely got the upper hand here, I thought. Putting up such a good fight against powered suits could easily land us in the military history books.
After about five minutes, Arakawa spoke. “Captain, there’s no escape for us,” he said, sounding quite certain. “I think— no, I’m sure— we’ll all be killed.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, glaring at him.
My glare didn’t scare him. The genius calmly told me the reason.
And that was when I finally learned the truth.
That was how I came to realize why they called this boy a monster.