After Locke’s call, a crane and a truck arrived.
“You’re that southern woman’s nephew?”
Simon had come in person, too.
While the crane loaded the generator and railgun onto the truck, Simon walked over.
Cigarette smoke billowed around him.
“Correct.”
Ian nodded.
Southern woman.
He seemed to mean Kaya.
When I’d met Kaya at the club fair, she hadn’t told me exactly what relation she had to Ian.
Still, I’d vaguely figured she was something like his aunt, and it looked like I’d been right.
“And you’re of imperial blood, too?”
“Correct.”
“Figures. Your behavior and the way you talk are both shitty enough that it’s easy to tell you’re imperial.”
Ah.
Every time I saw someone from the imperial family, I’d felt some strange sense of déjà vu.
The princess went without saying, and the chairwoman was the same; even Ian’s way of speaking wasn’t normal.
Rather than not normal, as Simon said, it was kind of shitty.
“Imperial family trait.”
“Imperial family trait, all right.”
Simon spat out his cigarette butt and roughly covered it with snow.
“You do know you nearly caused an avalanche, right?”
“I did not nearly cause one.”
“You were planning to, if it came down to it? Hitting them with a railgun is hard, but an avalanche would damage the Allied Forces one way or another over a wide area?”
“Persuasion is boring and pedantic. You just have to make it so they have no choice but to respond.”
“An avalanche would affect the Luna County, too.”
“Do I care?”
“That’s seriously chilling…”
What was certain was that things had gone according to Ian’s intentions.
“And I achieved my secondary objective as well.”
“What objective was that?”
“Primary objective: make contact with the Allied Forces and find Deep. Secondary objective: make contact with the commander of the Allied Forces.”
Simon looked disgusted.
“Why me?”
“Give Deep a Titan. I’ll customize it.”
“Why should I?”
“If you don’t want to, I can go back as is, load bombs into an armored vehicle, bury them around this area, and set them all off.”
This crazy bastard.
“Then the avalanche…”
“Do I care?”
Simon and Ran met each other’s eyes.
Ran hesitated a little, then carefully nodded.
He really is the kind of person who’d do that.
The meaning came across far too clearly, and Simon squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again.
“I’m seriously considering just killing you instead.”
“Good idea if you want to make an enemy of the Southern Allied Forces. Though you’ll be receiving technical support from them regarding Titan customization.”
Blood ties.
Firepower.
And the madness to use everything he had as material for negotiation.
“Just get in the car for now.”
“Give me the Titan.”
Persuasion is boring and pedantic.
Then die.
With this, the probability of losing an argument converged to zero.
“I said fine, so get in.”
So this was why malicious complainants never disappeared from the world.
***
A week had passed since Ian and Ran joined us.
My urges to self-harm had lessened somewhat, and the frequency of my nightmares had dropped sharply, too.
Having people I knew nearby was a big part of it.
On top of that, I could talk about Titan customization as much as I wanted, without holding back.
The pain I felt from the leg that was no longer there had also decreased a lot.
It was thanks to the drugs Ian had brought.
Specifically, the affected area was healing at twice the normal speed.
With an amputation, you normally had to expect at least a month.
But at this recovery rate, the wound would probably heal completely and the swelling would go down within three weeks—within another week from now.
That wasn’t my judgment, but the doctor’s, so it was probably accurate.
From what I heard, it was a drug that enhanced the body’s regenerative ability.
When I asked if injecting stuff like this wouldn’t give me leukemia, Ian laughed at me.
I might not know, damn it.
According to Ian, the Empire was originally a country that had advanced in biotechnology, not mechanical engineering.
Come to think of it, the origin of Titan technology wasn’t the Empire either, but the South.
What the Empire created wasn’t Titans, but the core technology that went into Titans.
And even that was manned artificial intelligence technology, and even that had been made by the Luna County rather than the Empire.
There was no way drugs from the Luna County, which had become the source of those technologies, would give someone leukemia just from being injected a little.
“How do you know so much about that?”
“My mother is from the South.”
Ian had been in constant contact with the South since before.
It was possible because the Sinis Duchy, which guarded the South, was not hostile to the Southern Allied Forces.
Of course, on the surface, they were definitely hostile, but just looking at Darka Sinis made it obvious.
“The Sinis Duchy feels the same reluctance toward artificial intelligence technology.”
“Why?”
“It isn’t technology that can’t be interpreted. It’s technology that doesn’t allow itself to be interpreted. If you don’t feel repulsed by that, you’re an idiot.”
He had a point.
If it were honorable and aboveboard, they would have revealed it freely for the advancement of technology.
“All the nobles guarding the front feel some degree of repulsion toward artificial intelligence technology. They think it’s probably one of the Empire’s dark sides, but they just accept it and use it.”
Because it was strong and convenient.
That was the case with the West, where the war situation had been difficult until recently, or the East, where fierce battles were being fought because of Fafnir’s existence.
They couldn’t not use it.
Besides, if a family refused to use the cores provided by the Luna family, that family would have to go through the trouble of developing its own cores separately.
It wasn’t easy to reject technology whose performance was guaranteed and which had already secured its position.
No, it was impossible.
It was the same principle as how everyone in Korea used Kakaotalk even though there were all kinds of messengers.
The Sinis Duchy in the South was an extremely unusual case.
Only because the Southern Allied Forces were fairly mild could they afford to harbor doubts about the cores and hesitate to use them.
“Then does that have something to do with why the alliances aren’t split with the allied armies next to each other, but divided north-south and east-west?”
“The Northern Allied Forces, close to the Luna family, and the Southern Allied Forces, which were the first to show resistance to artificial intelligence technology, joined forces.”
“Then what about the East and West?”
“Don’t know.”
I hadn’t expected an “I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“How would I know when I’m not with the Allied Forces?”
That was true.
He had been talking so smoothly that I’d mistaken him for a moment.
Ian was, to the end, a cadet of the Empire’s Academy.
That fact didn’t change even if he was customizing a Titan in an Allied Forces hangar.
Could he really be considered an Academy cadet?
“Ian.”
“What.”
“If we get caught, we’re fucked, right?”
If I really, really, really went out of my way to think about it—
Right now, we were rebelling against the Empire.
No matter how much of a human garbage fire the Luna County was, they were still members of the Empire in the end.
If I wanted to get Ailee back, I had no choice but to antagonize the Luna County.
That, in turn, was an act of antagonizing the Empire.
Of course, the Luna County had no way of recognizing me.
I wasn’t going to pilot Ailee, and I was using a mass-produced Titan used by the Allied Forces after customizing it, so how would they know?
But I couldn’t say it was safe, or that we’d absolutely never get caught.
If we did get caught, the name Deep would vanish from the Academy just like that, and I had no idea how the Empire dealt with traitors like me.
In the truly unlikely event, the imperial family might cut off the Luna County, but the possibility was slim.
Would they really cut off the Luna County for the sake of a single commoner?
No way.
“If we get caught, we’re fucked.”
Clank!
The crane separated from the generator.
“But isn’t the frame a little too familiar for us to worry about that?”
“That’s true.”
A small dual hydrogen-fuel generator on the thighs, and railguns connected to the sub-arms.
There were no sub-legs or built-in equipment.
Still, it had definitely become similar to Ailee.
If someone was even a little sharp, its appearance was enough to make them suspect I was piloting it.
The mass-produced Titans used by the Northern Allied Forces were sixteen meters tall.
Ailee was also on the smaller side at seventeen meters, but the Titans here were even smaller and had better power efficiency.
Since resources were scarce, their technological development must have concentrated on power efficiency.
On top of that, the weather was cold, so the generators could be pushed harder than usual.
It was an environment where even dual generators could withstand the railguns’ power consumption to some degree.
An avalanche?
Did I care?
“Core?”
“Make it solo, please.”
“It’ll be slower.”
“I know.”
Ian nodded, then lowered his head.
“Locke!”
“Isn’t my turn way too late?”
The crane moved the core.
Clank!
The core was fitted into the empty chest.
It was an unmanned core without artificial intelligence.
Apparently, it had originally been one of the spares for Simon to use, but we’d received permission to use anything in the hangar as we pleased.
We really had received permission.
This time, it wasn’t relocation, and it wasn’t pilfering either.
The reason for using an unmanned core was clear.
The sync difference whenever I piloted with Ailee was so great that there was a high chance I’d struggle from the reverse sense of adjustment.
That was the excuse I gave to others.
The clear, true reason was something else.
I couldn’t even think of using any artificial intelligence other than Ailee.
It was physiologically impossible.
After learning that artificial intelligence was a person, it became even more physiologically impossible.
Of course, I knew.
The Ailee I would meet on the battlefield would not be an easy opponent.
The chances of winning with a Titan that didn’t have artificial intelligence installed were almost nonexistent.
When the Luna County repurposed Ailee, there was no way they’d use her as an unmanned unit.
Ailee’s strength lay in her active support ability.
It wasn’t that her calculation ability was outstanding, or that her predictive ability was excellent.
She judged quickly in moments of reaction, and she excelled at assisting the pilot’s actions.
She was good as artificial intelligence that supported a pilot, but she couldn’t be used as the main artificial intelligence of an unmanned unit.
That didn’t mean her sync would be high with any pilot other than me, either.
It was strange.
“Why’d you suddenly go quiet?”
“Count Luna is more emotional than I thought, isn’t he?”
Count Luna had said he would send Ailee out and use her as military strength.
If she was such a precious test subject, he could simply lock her away in the laboratory.
There was only one reason I could imagine.
“Correct.”
To throw me into confusion.
Because he thought that if he cast out the bait called Ailee, I would bite without fail.
Most importantly, because if he threw Ailee onto the battlefield, he could screw me over.
I was a mere test subject who had ruined his laboratory and succeeded in escaping twice.
Could Count Luna, who looked every inch the perfectionist, tolerate my existence?
There was no way.
If he was the Count Luna I imagined, he absolutely couldn’t.
I clenched my fist tightly, then opened it.
For a while, Ian and I looked up at the mass-produced unit in silence.
Whatever its performance, whatever its functions, whatever its core.
From now on, this was the Titan that would be responsible for my life.
Footsteps sounded from below.
It was Ran.
“What are you two staring up at like that? What is there to see in a hangar like this, with nothing but mass-produced units…”
Crash!
“Mass-produced units have their own charm!”
“W-what was that sound just now?!”
“The sound of ice breaking. Nothing important.”
Shiiit.
So there really was no one who appreciated the charm of mass-produced units.
“What’s wrong with mass-produced models?! They’re way better than those weird-looking custom units!”
Only Locke understood the coolness of mass-produced units.
Locke and I met each other’s eyes and nodded.
We were able to find a little common ground.
“…I really don’t understand machine freaks.”
Only Ran shook her head from side to side.