The missing leg had healed completely.
Wearing the prosthetic Locke had made for me left one hand free, which made things far more convenient.
It looked similar to the metal prosthetic leg Darka Sinis used.
The Northern Allied Forces received their technology from the Southern Allied Forces.
Then had Darka Sinis’s prosthetic not been made by the Empire, but brought in from the Allied Forces?
The Southern Front might have a much deeper relationship with the Southern Allied Forces than I’d thought.
That wasn’t important to me right now.
Unlike the south, the Northern Front had completely cut off the Allied Forces’ communications network.
Thanks to that, electromagnetic sensors didn’t work, and wireless communication range between Titans was limited.
In other words, Simon had wrecked Lucia without using electromagnetic sensors, while using wireless communications only in a limited capacity, and without an AI.
“How did you do it?”
It made no sense.
Simon hadn’t been born with a special bloodline like a member of the Imperial Family.
Nor did he seem to have undergone long-term military training like the Empire’s academy cadets.
Then it was one of two things.
He was a born genius.
“I did it until I could.”
Or he was a born genius who also worked hard.
It was impossible to receive instruction from the former.
From the latter, on the other hand, there was more than enough to learn.
I was the latter too.
After I put on the prosthetic, I got into a Titan and sparred with Simon.
It would have been convenient if we had a simulator, but the Allied Forces had no such convenient device.
They said that if they had a computing device capable of making a simulator, they would use it somewhere else first.
“Ailee!”
“There’s no AI.”
“Ah!”
In an emergency, I called for Ailee, and took a direct hit from Simon’s White Reaper.
Then we repaired it, over and over again.
A Titan that used neither Imperial technology nor House Luna’s frame was sluggish.
That was an excuse.
In truth, the performance difference wasn’t overwhelmingly large.
I was the sluggish one without Ailee.
The Princess ranked second and third while operating something with even more functions than this, performing complex controls like swordsmanship.
All of a sudden, the difference in talent hit me painfully hard.
“Urgh.”
“Open the hatch and puke.”
Ailee wasn’t there.
Without Ailee, there was nothing I could do.
Every time that thought surfaced, I felt nauseous and had to open the hatch.
Eating was painful, so I tried to get through most meals with nutritional supplements.
After two days, I realized I couldn’t do that.
This core didn’t have the gravity-acceleration mitigation device Ian had made.
Of course, it wasn’t that there was no mitigation device at all, but its level of mitigation was far weaker.
To withstand acceleration, I had to force myself to eat and exercise.
After I threw up, I shoved in that much more protein bar.
It was kind of funny because it reminded me of when I’d first come to this world.
Back then, I’d eaten protein bars every morning and run to build muscle.
At that time, I’d been able to endure thanks to Ailee.
Even now, I could endure thanks to Ailee.
If I hadn’t even had the thought of getting Ailee back, I might have simply died.
A death report with suicide written as the cause of death.
Sometimes I woke up after seeing that in my dreams.
Maybe because I was a normal person with emotions, seeing something like that made me tremble.
The predicted cause of death wasn’t a weapon or disease, but my own will.
Not to survive, but to keep myself from thinking about dying, I kept moving.
I kept getting into the Titan.
My hands gradually grew used to the uncustomized sticks.
I became able to press the pedals with my prosthetic leg without slipping.
“That’s all I can teach you.”
I kept at it until Simon acknowledged me.
The last thing Simon handed me was tobacco.
And not just ordinary tobacco, but hand-rolled tobacco.
You could tell the difference at a glance.
It looked different from what I’d smoked in my previous world, and different from the cigarettes Joshua had thrown away too.
“You’ll need this last.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“It’s not tobacco.”
Simon slightly opened the rolled cigarette.
Inside, there was something like powdered medicine mixed in.
“This is…”
“A stimulant.”
I almost smacked the cigarette away.
When I stared at him, Simon gave a faint chuckle.
“You said you did it until you could.”
He had definitely said he was the hardworking type.
And now, suddenly, doping.
“What, did you think it was easy for someone like me, who isn’t Imperial Family, to pilot a Titan without an AI?”
Tap, tap.
Simon rolled the cigarette back up and held it out to me.
“We don’t know the exact composition of the stimulant either, but we use it after mitigating the side effects to some extent. Since it’s inhaled instead of injected, the effects appear faster, and less of it gets absorbed into the body.”
“You’re not even using a filter.”
“Don’t inhale.”
“How is that a solution…”
“You know the difference between puffing and inhaling? Then that means you’re quitting right now, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not the point.”
“No. The point is how many more people we can save by using something like this.”
The stimulant cigarette ended up in my hand.
I forced my fingers to close tightly around it.
“The core of a weapon is one thing: moving according to the intent of the person handling it.”
I realized belatedly that Simon’s eyes were in the blue family.
They weren’t as vivid a blue as the Imperial Family’s, nor were they close to silver-blue like mine.
If I had to say, they were similar to the eyes of House Luna.
Navy blue.
“Don’t be deceived by the word weapon. Everything depends on the intent of the person using it. There have been cases where things made for peace were used as weapons.”
The dynamite Nobel created.
It was a famous story that Nobel’s own younger brother died in an explosives accident, and that he created dynamite in the hope that no one would ever die in an explosives accident again.
That dynamite became a weapon once more.
A famous story.
It seemed there was a similar anecdote here too.
“If so, then conversely, you can also use a weapon to save people.”
After meeting Simon’s eyes, I put the cigarette in my pocket.
House Luna’s stimulant caused short-term memory loss in humans and wore down personality and emotions.
If it was used through inhalation, both the exposure time and the effect would be reduced, so it wasn’t a bad idea.
“Still, it’s kind of bad if smoke comes billowing out every time you open the hatch.”
I still remembered.
When Ailee saved me, Simon’s hatch had opened and cigarette smoke had come billowing out.
Maybe Simon had nothing to say to that, because he didn’t bother replying.
Eight weeks, two months, had passed since I joined the Allied Forces.
According to Ran, tomorrow was the day House Luna’s offensive was scheduled.
***
The Allied Forces had prepared their defenses thoroughly.
They reinforced the base’s outer wall and buried all kinds of explosive traps outside.
There was no way the enemy would come from the sky.
Blizzards often swept through the north, and even on days without blizzards, there were usually strong winds.
It wasn’t that flight drones weren’t operated on the Northern Front, but a small airborne unit could easily be stopped by sniping or anti-air fire.
“Ha, I really hate this kind of thing.”
Locke exhaled sharply.
Even inside the Titan, his breath formed white mist.
It was cold, we were hungry, and we were thirsty.
Even if I pushed the seat as far back as possible, it still wasn’t a lying posture.
My back hurt.
Standing watch while not knowing when the enemy would come was exhausting.
“Jin, I’m telling you, I hate this.”
“What do you want me to do about it? Look ahead.”
TB9. Jin and Locke had never gotten along well.
They did have good sync, but I had never once felt that they were close.
Even though he had been given suppressants instead of stimulants, he tried to appear more rational than Locke.
That might have been the influence of his personality.
Jin was someone who innately wanted to seem rational.
“But realistically, would they attack at this hour?”
1 p.m.
The sun was high for anything to happen, visibility was wide open, and it was an advantageous time for defense.
“We attacked at dawn last time too.”
We detected something hot with the thermal sensor, then stayed on standby until dawn, waiting for the enemy to get tired.
When their concentration wavered, we aimed for a time when visibility was moderately poor and the wind was strong, then launched a surprise attack.
It was a reasonable, obvious tactic.
The basics of offense were to aim for the moment when defense was difficult.
At the very least, there was no rule that you attacked at 1 p.m.
This wasn’t the Eastern Desert.
“Even in the Eastern Desert, they wouldn’t attack at 1 p.m.! If it’s a desert, isn’t that the perfect time for the generator to overload?”
“I told you to shut up and focus.”
“No, I’d focus if anything in my field of view changed or I heard something.”
Rrrrrrrmble.
Locke shot upright at the waist.
“What’s that sound?”
A reasonable, obvious tactic.
You couldn’t expect common sense from bastards who kidnapped people, locked them up, and went, Now then, yer name’s Artificial Intelligence.
Radar, lidar, optics, thermal detection.
None of them picked up anything, yet the ground was shaking.
“What about the sky?”
“We got communications from the other sentries, but they couldn’t find anything either.”
I grabbed the mounted gun and moved the barrel this way and that, but sure enough, I still couldn’t see anything.
That couldn’t be right.
The enemy was definitely somewhere.
If they weren’t above, and they weren’t on the ground, then where the hell were they?
“…There’s only one place left.”
“Where?”
“Below.”
KABOOOOM!
A massive tunnel boring machine burst up through the ground.
“Wow, this is bullshit…”
All the traps we’d laid out became useless.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
No matter how many times I pressed the button, communications wouldn’t go through.
“Looks like the boring machine itself has some kind of comms jammer?”
“Do you see anything like an antenna?”
“No. Even if I did, if it’s inside the armor, there’s nothing we can do.”
I didn’t think shooting at something like that would change the situation, but that didn’t necessarily mean things were bad.
If it had dug just a little farther, it would have passed right through the Allied Forces’ defensive wall too.
But if it had come out right in front of it, then it was obvious they had judged the drill to be too worn down to dig any farther.
As long as the defensive wall was intact, we could defend.
There had been a loud noise, so if we held out just a little, other Allied Forces would soon arrive.
Clank!
As expected.
The drill fell away from the front of the boring machine.
Just as I’d predicted, the drill had become badly worn, so they were either replacing it in a hurry or planning to disembark here.
Then something like a sealed entrance opened.
I thought Titans would come out.
“What is that?”
A gun barrel.
It made no sense.
There was no way they’d decide to breach the defensive wall with a shell from here.
It would be more reasonable to have the Titans disembark and fire simultaneously, or break through the wall.
The moment I thought that, the armor on the boring machine opened and exposed a generator.
From inside the barrel, a red light slowly brightened.
“Wow, fuck. Is that for real?”
“I think it is.”
Vwoom. Vwoom. Vwoom. Vwoooooom.
“Shut off all optical-type sensors and thermal sensors!”
“Already did!”
The barrel spewed out crimson light.
KRAAAAAAANG!
“A charged-particle cannon? Fuck!”
The beam ended, and the sensors we’d shut off came back online.
“That’s too much!”
The defensive wall had melted.
A gaping hole had been punched through it.
Only then did the side hatch of the boring machine open, and Titans began to disembark.
Locke opened fire downward with the mounted gun.