“So, did you take the request? Or didn’t you?”
“I did, but it seemed suspicious, so I said I’d need to verify the facts.”
After the conversation ended, we returned to the allied forces’ base.
Even so, I felt strangely more at ease than when I’d been in imperial territory.
“So you took it?”
“I said I did.”
Ian nodded.
“Good job.”
It wasn’t that Ian was only half-listening to me.
Since we were inside the hangar, it was noisy and hard to hear.
On top of that, Ian was in the middle of working, so his attention was elsewhere.
Hangars are nice.
The smell of metal and oil hits you all at once.
When you look at the Titans lined up there, your head cools down and your chest heats up.
Being with Ailey is nice too.
It is nice, but the problem is that when I’m beside Ailey, I can’t think about anything except Ailey.
If you pick the right spot in a hangar, there aren’t many people around, and it’s pretty good for thinking.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no one.
“That’s a good idea. No matter what it is, you need to doubt it and go through the process of checking again.”
It was Kaya.
Ian either didn’t hear her or didn’t answer.
He really probably hadn’t heard her.
When Ian is focused, he barely even turns his head toward anything else.
Kaya seemed to know that well too, because from the start, she had been speaking to me rather than Ian.
“Has he improved a lot?”
“Ian was in charge of Titan maintenance in the hangar even when he was staying with the imperial family. He would sometimes ask me about things he didn’t know regarding Titans.”
Kaya was Ian’s aunt, and apparently his teacher as well.
Ian not knowing something and asking someone else about it.
I couldn’t even imagine it.
“Even after he entered the Academy?”
“No.”
Kaya shook her head.
“After he entered the Academy, he stopped asking me questions. I don’t know whether he found someone else to ask, or whether he decided to build his own Titan.”
It was probably the latter.
All the information he’d learned about Titans so far must have been concentrated into the Titan Ailey.
More than anything, I’d never seen Ian receive a good evaluation from the professors.
Even Professor Sumeragi had only said that Ian’s skills were outstanding; he had never said Ian was extremely focused in class.
“But a Titan with such an unusual and biased form… I suppose he really is trying to build his own Titan. I do know the style Deep prefers, but a Titan like that would be difficult, wouldn’t it?”
Not at all.
“No. And it isn’t Ian’s Titan. It’s my Titan.”
Kaya’s eyes widened, then she smiled.
“Deep is much more assertive than he looks.”
Am I?
I’m not really sure.
It’s not like I’ve ever tried to assert myself much.
More than that, what Ian was continuing to build bothered me more.
When I turned my gaze, Kaya turned hers with me.
“That’s a frame, right?”
“That’s right.”
It’s rare to see a Titan frame with no armor attached at all.
Engineers can see them as much as they want.
But pilots almost never have any reason to see things like frames.
I, however, had seen them often.
When you start customizing a Titan in Titan Core, the first thing you see on the screen is the frame.
“It’s a lightweight frame.”
“You can tell just by looking?”
“I have some basic knowledge.”
It seemed he had kept the basic shape of a standard lightweight frame.
Honestly, any decent pilot could tell just by looking.
If you compared it to a person, the skeleton itself was different.
A lightweight frame looks thin and light to anyone.
“What is he using for the armor material? Titanium Delta?”
Titanium Delta.
Among lightweight armor materials, it was the most representative one.
Ailey used Titanium Delta too, and the maid robot Ian made was also made with Titanium Delta.
Now that I think about it, that guy is insane.
He attached Titan-grade armor material to something civilians can buy.
Kaya shook her head with a smile.
“He says he’ll use something lighter than Titanium Delta.”
“Lighter than Titanium Delta?”
Among armor materials currently in use, was there anything lighter and better than Titanium Delta?
“A composite material other than Ali alloy.”
Ian turned his head slightly toward us, then looked forward again.
It was nice that he answered, but I had no idea what he meant.
“What’s that?”
Ian did not turn his head again.
The answer came from Kaya instead.
“It’s an alloy made by mixing lithium with aluminum. In the distant past, it was used a lot in the space industry too. Its advantage is that it’s light, so it’s still used often in drones.”
“It’s used in drones?”
What happened when I shot drones again?
I feel like the bullets just punched right through them and they exploded.
“Its defensive power…”
“It’s probably the armor you’re thinking of. If a round hits it directly, it’s extremely dangerous. Still, according to Ian, you use sloped armor better than anyone.”
Suddenly, I had nothing to say.
He was using that kind of armor because he trusted me, so what could I even argue?
Besides, I did know a little about armor materials.
The name Ali alloy hadn’t jogged my memory, but back when I played Titan Core, there had also been a method of using the armor material drones used on a Titan.
It was much lighter, and sturdier than you’d think.
As long as you avoided direct hits, you could make shots ricochet, and the thing I was best at was avoiding direct hits.
“That’s true.”
“So it is?”
Kaya smiled.
I had nothing more to say.
“What about the cost of building that Titan?”
“We decided to settle it afterward.”
“Even so, won’t it take two months?”
“It will take two months. That’s why I took charge of repairing the existing mass-produced Titan.”
Thank goodness.
Honestly, that was the part I’d been more worried about.
“I separated the dual generators attached to the thighs because Ian said he needed them. In their place, I installed a medium generator. Since the mass-produced model is in a lower weight class, this should be enough.”
Uh, hmm.
Right. That could happen.
“For the legs, I used parts from one of our mass-produced Titans instead. They were used on a heavy-armored Titan, so you don’t need to worry about output issues.”
Hmm.
I didn’t like it, but it could happen.
The south might simply be short on high-mobility parts, so there might have been no helping it.
“With the surplus power reduced, I thought about using a sniper rifle instead of a railgun, but still, for a high-mobility type, close-range weapons are better than sniper rifles, right?”
So is it a pile bunker?
It has to be a pile bunker, right?
When it comes to close-range weapons, there’s nothing but a pile bunker.
“So I equipped it with a submachine gun.”
“No!!!”
Then at least it had to be armor-piercing grenade rounds, right?
“Uh, are high-explosive rounds not enough?”
“Blasphemy!!!”
This isn’t right, damn it.
***
I equipped the pile bunker too, and changed the submachine gun’s ammunition to armor-piercing grenade rounds.
I still had a few more complaints, but as the one receiving help, it was hard to complain any more than this.
“Beginning final function check.”
Before departing, I also went to see Ailey.
This was a more important recharge than charging the generator’s surplus power.
“Function check.”
At Ran’s signal, the generator installed on the back began to spin fiercely.
“Generator, no abnormalities.”
The thrusters released short bursts of gas.
The side thrusters adjusted their angles several times by minute degrees.
“The objective is not combat, but contact and confirmation.”
“The other party is a clan, so we have to keep the possibility of combat in mind.”
“I know. Still, I’ll talk first.”
The hover device ran briefly, then stopped.
“Output device, no abnormalities.”
Clank!
The stake of the pile bunker mounted on the left arm loaded, then returned.
“Weapons, no abnormalities.”
“Transferring to catapult power.”
Kiiiiiiing.
“Catapult ready.”
Clack.
The sound of the catapult being drawn back stopped.
The thrusters ignited.
Beep.
“Deep.”
Clank.
“Dive.”
Kiiiiiiiiing!
With the sudden acceleration, my body was thrown backward.
Without losing speed, I adjusted the thruster output appropriately.
There was no need to move at maximum acceleration.
This time, the objective was long-distance movement and contact.
The target was Banshee.
To be exact, not Banshee, but a clan that knew about Banshee.
As it happened, I knew one such clan.
A clan with a spirited name, whose armor was painted blue.
“Have you identified their current location?”
“The Space Marine Corps is a fairly large clan in this area, so there is no need to go out of our way to identify their location.”
The Space Marine Corps.
They were the clan that had pressured me the most when I entered the south.
I thought I would never run into them again, but now I was the one looking for the Space Marine Corps.
“Where are they?”
“Continue moving straight west from here. We’ll send you the locations of other clans in real time. If you encounter any other clans not detected during movement, visually confirm them and evade.”
“Confirmed.”
One good thing, at least, was that we had repainted the Titan this time.
Kaya’s other tastes were truly atrocious, the absolute worst.
Still, it was genuinely good that she had repainted it to suit the jungle environment.
It was even a three-color camouflage pattern.
As long as I didn’t move around too loudly, I wouldn’t stand out.
You might ask what use camouflage paint is on a Titan.
That’s something only someone who really doesn’t understand would say.
Even fighter jets use camouflage paint.
“Ah, ah. Deep. Can you hear me?”
It was Kaya’s voice.
“Yes, I hear you.”
“We conducted additional observation using drones. Right now, the Space Marine Corps is fighting another clan. According to observation, they’re Titans wearing red armor.”
Red.
I remembered them.
“They’re the first clan I ran into when I entered the south.”
I was starting to understand why they were fighting.
From the red clan’s perspective, the prey they had encountered first—us—had been snatched away by the Space Marine Corps.
From the Space Marine Corps’ perspective, they had merely interfered in a fight the red clan was going to lose from the start.
“What should we do?”
There was silence over the comms for a moment.
It seemed they had turned off the mic and were discussing it briefly.
While I waited for an answer, I arrived in front of the battlefield.
They were fighting pretty fiercely.
They swung chain swords at each other without pause, and fired oversized pistols that had been modified so much I couldn’t tell how much of the standard pistol remained.
It was a battle clearly meant to kill.
If possible, I didn’t want to get in the middle of that.
Beep.
The comms connected belatedly.
“There are two methods.”
“What are they?”
“One is to wait.”
Wait.
That was a decent method.
If left alone, this was a fight the Space Marine Corps would win anyway.
“I’ll go with the second.”
I didn’t need to hear what the second option was to know.
“Preparing combat operation.”
Fight.
It wasn’t an option I chose out of needless bravado.
How would the Space Marine Corps respond to the approach of an unfamiliar Titan after the battle ended?
I had to think not by my standards, but by the standards of a thug clan that had come down from the eastern front and settled in the south.
If it were me, the moment I saw an unfamiliar Titan, I’d shoot first and ask questions later.
“Kaya’s dramatic customization is going to help.”
My Titan now looked completely different from the way the Space Marine Corps remembered me.
Since they wouldn’t recognize me, I could cooperate as much as I wanted and earn some points.
Kiiing!
The thrusters ignited.