“Miki, it’s time,” Elise said quietly as she placed a cup of tea down on the table.
I nodded and then gave a signal to the member of staff waiting at the right side of my desk.
“Connecting...” appeared on the screen in front of me.
After a short amount of time, a pale-faced man appeared.
“Long time no see, President Shumsky.”
“Long time no see, Mrs. Arakawa.”
It had been approximately one hour since Kouki’s return to the Hakone base.
As always, the Russian president was looking unwell and sounding tired.
“The incident involving Captain Yulia and the submarine they’ve been secretly keeping must have caused you a lot of trouble.”
“Not at all.” The president looked troubled as he expressed his gratitude. “Despite the incident involving your son, we’ve benefited greatly from the free broadcasting rights and the diamond mine.”
Personally, I’d wanted to call everything off after the Russians had failed to uphold Kouki’s deal with them. But Kouki had insisted I honor the original agreement.
“We’ll definitely profit from this!” he’d told the political department. “There’s no risk to us!”
I hadn’t been able to understand his reasoning.
Perhaps it worked out well in one of his previous lives...
“The topic of today’s discussion...” President Shumsky said.
“Yes, I’d like to finalize the agreement regarding our attack on New World’s main base in Antarctica,” I said.
“Very well. You will have our full support.”
“I’m grateful for that. Please take a look at these documents.”
I used my terminal to show him the reinforcements coming from the world of G-88.
We’ve thought of good explanations for all of this, so sharing the information shouldn’t cause problems.
“This... I’m sorry, but... is this an image of a squid?”
“That’s right. It’s a life form created using squid genetics. Its formal name is the G-88 series, type-kraken. Noa’s weapons development department... Actually, we’re friends, so I’ll tell you everything. It’s a biological weapon that my son created.”
“Th-This is a weapon?!”
“Yes. This life form is 185 meters long, or more than 200 meters long if you include the tentacles. We estimate that they can move through the water at a speed of 480 knots. Their bodies are covered with a special mucus that makes them impossible to detect using sonar or heat sensors. And as you can see from the next photograph, they’re extremely obedient.”
As I spoke, I brought up the photograph of Kouki playing with a member of the kraken race. If I remembered correctly, this was the kraken named Muu. I’d been there at the time, but Muu had been incredibly friendly towards Kouki and Shingo and had picked them both up in its tentacles while speeding through the water. I would probably have thrown up if I’d traveled at that speed.
“The next thing I’d like to show you is the G-88 series, type-dragon. This is a biological weapon created using dinosaur and monitor lizard genetics. It has a length of 30 meters and some of its internal body parts are mechanical, so it can emit plasma flames from its mouth. It can also fly at a top speed of Mach 6.7. These creatures are equally obedient.”
The photograph showed Alice and Aikawa riding on Lirin’s back while laughing. This white dragon wasn’t just obedient, she was a refined and cultured woman. But I could hardly tell the president that I’d enlisted creatures from another world to support us.
“Did Kouki create all of these creatures...?” he asked faintly.
“That’s right. I should mention that the outer skin of the dragon is extremely tough, so to stop it, you’d have to fire a barrage of railgun shells with a caliber of over 200 millimeters or overwhelm it with powered suit armor piercing shells.”
“It sounds like a monster.”
“These are all of our large-scale biological weapons. Now I’d like to introduce our biological weapons for use in land operations. This land biological weapon from the same series is known as the type-arachne. This creature was created by combining human and spider genetics. This is top secret, but we used my generics, so it can speak human language. It can speak some Japanese.”
The president looked at me in disbelief when I mentioned human genetics. But there was no other way to explain the arachne race, because the top half of their bodies looked like a human female.
Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I was glad that the human-looking part of each arachne was beautiful-looking, because it meant I wasn’t embarrassed to say they’d been created using my genetics.
I originally wanted a pure-spider type such as the queen of the arachne race to fight with us, but it turns out they can’t handle cold environments, I thought regretfully.
“Forgive me for asking... but are there any more such creatures?” President Shumsky asked.
“Of course. Though the type-arachne is the only creature that we tried creating with human genetics.”
“But doesn’t the incorporation of human genetics raise concerns?”
“Yes... That’s why we only created one such type. If I had to justify this decision, I would tell you that only my genetics were used, so I didn’t violate the United Nations regulation forbidding the use of genetics of ‘a fellow human.’ You could argue that some of my genetics are shared by my son, but the experiment itself didn’t take place on Earth. This all took place on an orbital platform launched by Noa several days ago.”
This would all be considered very gray area. I had no doubt that the United Nations regulations would have to be rewritten, but that was a worry for another day. Experiments on this level would likely be pardoned once a strict set of conditions had been put in place and agreed on by both parties. Of course, this would be after agreeing to an inspection and clearly stating how we planned to use these new weapons.
“Similar experiments were conducted by my country, but they took us more than a decade to complete,” President Shumsky said. “I’m surprised that Noa had the technological capabilities to succeed in just a few months.”
“Oho. It’s no use hinting for more information. This project is considered highly classified even within my own research department. Only a handful of my researchers were in any way involved. So I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more.”
I deliberately showed him an attractive smile to drive the point home. A frown would have worked just as well, but I had to remain friendly for the sake of the operation we were planning.