The supply support the Southern Liberation Army sends to the Northern Liberation Army comes once per quarter.
Roughly once every three months, in other words.
They said the last supply run was two months ago.
That would have been right before I joined the allied forces, or not long after I did.
Then there was one month left until the next supply run.
“Do we absolutely have to go south?”
A question occurred to me.
Couldn’t we just wait a month?
“Or we could somehow contact them and ask them to send supplies a little sooner.”
Crossing from the north to the south right now was too dangerous.
There was no telling what kind of move the northern front would make.
If contact was possible, there was no need to take the risk.
“We’d like to contact them too. The problem is, we can’t.”
Simon clicked his tongue.
“Not at all?”
“Our enemies aren’t limited to Count Luna’s house. Duke Dis Pater’s house must have been grinding their teeth and setting up traps properly, because communications are blocked right now.”
It was certain the north had prepared thoroughly while sharpening their knives.
There was the boring machine to bypass the traps, and even the charged particle cannon to neutralize the defensive wall.
On top of that, there was the communications interference operating around the boring machine.
It seemed the range of that interference had now expanded far beyond what we expected.
“Only encrypted high-output communications go through properly, and even those reach about five hundred meters at best.”
There was no way to inform the south of the situation in the north.
“There are definitely traps laid all over the place. If the south comes to deliver supplies as things are, they’ll be taken down by the Imperial Army for sure.”
The base that had received the supplies before had been destroyed.
And they hadn’t been able to transmit the coordinates of the new base.
“The supplies that came all the way north could just get blown up in their entirety.”
Then we’d be fucked.
There was only one way to solve it.
“So someone has to go south and inform them of our situation.”
“They won’t be in any position to help, either.”
“We’re busy trying to pull ourselves together too.”
The Northern Allied Forces needed someone to go south.
I needed suppressants that could only be obtained from the south anyway.
We could each fill exactly what the other needed.
If I could do it, there was no reason not to.
More than anything, I wanted to wake Ailee.
If there was something I wanted to do, I had to do it.
Even a life born as a lowborn and toyed with by someone else could escape its curse.
If there was something I wanted to do, I had to do it.
I just had to do my best.
“You know it’s dangerous. Will you do it?”
“I will.”
When I answered immediately, Simon looked briefly surprised.
Then he rose from his seat and reached out his hand.
Just as I was about to take it and shake, I heard running footsteps outside.
The door burst open, and one member of the allied forces came in.
A woman.
I felt like I’d seen her before. Was she Simon’s aide?
In any case, she was a soldier who was often at Simon’s side.
“There are two pieces of news!”
“Two? Tell me the good one first.”
“They’re both good!”
“It wasn’t good news and bad news?”
At Simon’s nod, the allied soldier immediately opened her mouth.
“Locke has returned.”
“Locke? He came back on his own?”
“More precisely, six people including Locke. They say they escaped together under Locke’s lead.”
What a relief.
A sigh slipped out of me before I knew it.
“And?”
“Well, we extracted the person from the core the visitor brought.”
Already?
“Already? I told you to organize the hangar first.”
Simon looked momentarily flustered too.
The allied soldier waved her hands as if to say that wasn’t it.
“That was what we intended to do. But the existing damage to the core worsened after we checked the stimulant concentration, so we had no choice. Still, the separation procedure itself was successful.”
Thank fucking god.
“Then, what’s Ailee’s condition?”
“She has not regained consciousness yet. The stimulant concentration is quite high, so she cannot maintain consciousness without electrical stimulation. If she had remained inside the core, it would actually have been easier to maintain her life, but now…”
What?
“There are life-support devices in this facility too!”
“There are, but only a small number, and the critically wounded are using them right now! We managed to make some spare doses from our limited suppressants and administer them, but the time she can endure is about one month.”
One month.
“How long would it take to go from here to the south through the western front?”
“It should take about two weeks. But you are currently affiliated with the allied forces, so passing through the western front would be dangerous as well. It would be better to take a detour that takes around three weeks.”
“No!”
I could pass through the western front.
I was the hero of the west, and I was also a benefactor of House Keria.
Even if I couldn’t expect them to support me, they would at least look the other way and let me pass.
“I’ll go meet Ian and Ran first and come back. No, can I see Ailee now?”
“Ah, that. If you go to the infirmary, she should be on a bed there.”
I ran at once.
In the room where Deep had disappeared from, two people met each other’s eyes.
The allied soldier, who had been silent, opened her mouth.
“He runs well enough on a prosthetic leg.”
“He does.”
“I think that was a little harsh.”
“I think so too, but I only told him the truth.”
“There was also the option of taking her out of the core a little later.”
“I know. I thought he’d only make up his mind if I pressured him this much, but I didn’t expect him to say he’d go even before that.”
Simon put a cigarette in his mouth.
The allied soldier immediately lit it for him with a lighter.
“But it’s right to make outside personnel move for us. Where do we have any spare troops right now? It’s something he needs anyway.”
“I think he would have set out as soon as possible even if you hadn’t done this.”
“I knew he was desperate, but I didn’t know he was that desperate. Still, using him is the best option.”
“Captain, that makes you look fucking awful.”
Simon exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“…Fuck, what do you want me to do?”
“That was, uh, a joke. Captain, your expression, I mean, I knew you were feeling guilty, but, uh, I was wrong.”
***
Blues was playing in the infirmary.
Ailee was lying on a bed.
At first, when I followed the doctor in, I thought I had come to the wrong room.
Her arms and legs were too thin.
They looked like they were almost nothing but bone.
“No, uh, this, this person is…”
I couldn’t say it wasn’t her, because her face was far too identical.
She looked exactly like the hologram Ailee had ordered, and exactly like the mechanical body I had last seen.
Pretty and cute.
It was unmistakably the Ailee I had seen every day.
Just as I felt the strength leave my legs, something rolled in beneath my backside.
It was a chair.
I didn’t end up falling on my ass.
“We’ve done the best we can for now.”
It was the doctor.
The person whose face I had seen first after coming to the allied forces.
So this person had survived too.
When I thought about it, someone as important as a doctor wouldn’t also be serving as a pilot.
The dead and the missing had all been pilots.
“It’s probably because her limbs are thin. People usually get shocked when they see that. It’s nothing much. Her muscles have just atrophied because she hasn’t used her arms and legs.”
“There’s… no problem?”
“Mm, the longer she stays like this, the longer the recovery period will be? Even if I explain it with all kinds of medical terminology, you won’t understand anyway. I didn’t teach you that.”
“That’s…”
Didn’t teach me?
I was still not used to looking at people’s faces.
I had never properly looked at the doctor’s face either.
Only belatedly did I raise my head and look at the doctor’s face.
To be honest, it was a face difficult to pull out of my memories.
“Well, don’t worry.”
Even so, it wasn’t a face I couldn’t remember.
Only now did I belatedly look down at that person’s name tag.
Clemens Luna.
“I’m sick of people dying. If we had the medicine, I could have had her standing up right away.”
“Mr. Clemens.”
“What?”
“You were… a researcher of the Luna family, weren’t you?”
Silver-blue hair and deep blue eyes.
“I was wondering when you’d recognize me.”
Clemens raised his hand.
Thwack!
He struck my head with it.
“Huh?”
“I nearly died because of you, you bastard.”
Thwack!
“I let it slide when you went to the hangar and even turned off the cameras for you, but if you smash the hangar wall, wouldn’t that put me in the control room in danger?”
“I couldn’t afford to worry about that!”
Clemens raised his hand again.
When I covered my head with both hands, Clemens’s hand twitched, then he sighed and lowered it.
“Thank you for surviving.”
It was the first time I had ever heard those words.
Thank you for surviving.
They were words I had never heard even once in my previous world.
“I know your personality, but remember that I’m one of the perpetrators too. Just because I helped you escape at the end doesn’t mean the people I killed come back to life.”
Clemens looked around, then flopped down on the empty bed beside him.
“You’re going south, right?”
Did he hear?
No, it hadn’t even been a few minutes since I’d talked with Simon.
I doubted they had exchanged messages in that time.
“Yes.”
He said he knew my personality, so he must have naturally assumed I would go south.
“Then I’ll go too.”
“What?”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Think of it as a pilgrimage, or atonement. Something like that. In any case, on the way, this girl—what’s her name?”
“Ailee.”
“Ailee will need medical support to care for her. I’m saying I’ll go in that role.”
It would be good if he did, but.
Clemens was a doctor belonging to the Liberation Army.
“What about the Northern Liberation Army?”
“Well, there are about three more doctors here. And I’m the one who does the least work among them.”
“Why?”
“If you were them, would you want to be treated by a doctor from the Luna family?”
He had a point.
The moment Luna was attached to the word doctor, it felt like he would suddenly become a mad scientist.
He’d probably write something strange somewhere, then say, Hello, I’m Doctor Clemens.
“Did you get permission?”
“I’ll handle it myself. When are you leaving?”
“I haven’t talked to my teammates yet.”
“Make it tomorrow. Call your friends over and talk with Ailee. She hasn’t regained consciousness, but there’s a chance her ears are awake.”
Clemens rose from his seat and went outside.
I caught my breath for a moment, then looked at Ailee again.
Maybe it was because I’d suddenly been hit on the head, but the shock was less than before.
This was not the time to despair or be stunned.
I had to get myself together from now on if I wanted to save Ailee.
“I should call those two too.”
I raised my left hand to contact Ian and Ran, then realized.
I didn’t have my smartwatch.
I had to run around and find Ian and Ran.
Ah, I should have asked for a smartphone.