Clank. Clank. Clank.
The sound of metal rang out without pause.
The Space Marine Corps base felt like living quarters had been wedged in beside a hangar.
Crude was the right word for it, but it wasn’t so bad that it deserved scorn.
It was closer to having crammed the maximum number of Titans into the minimum amount of space.
Keeeeing.
A blue Titan decorated in gold raised its hand.
“Welcome to Lazulum of the Space Marine Corps.”
“Lazulum?”
“Means sky.”
Sky.
It probably meant a blue sky.
The ceiling of the hangar was painted blue too, and the Titan was a vivid blue.
“Hey! This here’s our guest! Hurry up and take care of it, repair it!”
“Yes, sir!”
I set my Titan in place with the anchors and climbed out.
Several people who looked like engineers hurried over to my Titan.
I couldn’t dodge every single round either, so there were a few scratches.
If they were going to repair it, that was good for me.
I wasn’t sure whether Ian would like it.
He wouldn’t hit me for letting engineers worse than him lay hands on the Titan, right?
Or maybe he wouldn’t care, since it was already a Titan outside his interest.
“Come this way. Let’s go to the commander’s office.”
“Ah, yes.”
I kept receiving greetings even as we walked.
Were they the kind of people who made sure to remember favors received?
More importantly, how on earth had a clan built a hangar this large?
“Ya probably don’t know, but there’re abandoned buildings like this all over the South.”
“Pardon?”
“You had a look like you were wonderin’. Didn’t ya?”
He was right.
The man flung open the door to the commander’s office.
When I followed him inside, he held out his hand.
“You’re that guy?”
“That… guy?”
“You know, that top one. What was it. Are you that Reuban?”
“No?”
“Ah, that guy’s that guy? Then you’re that guy?”
What the hell was “that guy” supposed to mean?
“Uh, well, yes.”
“Knew it.”
I had no idea what was going on, but somehow, it seemed the conversation had worked.
I shook his hand.
“I’m Robert. I’m not from around here, so the name’s a bit different, yeah?”
Wow, hearing someone with that accent say his name was Robert was really not easy.
Unexpectedly, there was no power struggle where he squeezed my hand hard or anything.
Robert sat down first, then rummaged through a small refrigerator behind him.
“Sit. You drink?”
“No.”
“Damn, you’re dim.”
What was dim supposed to mean now?
It sounded like an insult.
“Drink this.”
Robert held out a small bottle about the size of a handspan.
The outside was clean, but the bottle looked like it had been made a long time ago.
The moment I popped the cap, the smell of alcohol hit me.
I just closed it again.
“Do you have water?”
“I don’t keep that unclean stuff in my room.”
Was he insane?
I gave up on water and sat down.
I only moved my eyes slightly, looking around.
This probably hadn’t originally been used as a commander’s office.
It had likely been one of the hangar’s break rooms, or something like a supervisor’s office.
“Musty, unlike the Empire’s stuff, yeah? See, there used to be a big country here in the South. Ya know that?”
“No, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Of course. Like the Imperial bastards would tell anyone there was something with a longer history than them.”
Robert clicked his tongue and opened the bottle.
Even though I wasn’t the one drinking it, the smell of liquor wafted strongly.
“There used to be a big country in the South. The Empire that came later fought that country, won, and took it.”
So it had its own history.
I’d never even thought about history.
“That’s how the country in the South got cut off. The larger side was pushed down south, and the smaller remnants went up north. The ones carryin’ on that line now are probably the Allied Forces.”
“Why did the remnants go north?”
“Because there were already other countries to the west and east. Well, what’s the point of talkin’ history now? Doesn’t mean anything. Anyway, this building was also made by the South back in those old days.”
The first Titan was created in the South.
Then for what war, from what era, had this old hangar been made?
Robert slammed the liquor bottle down.
The liquor splashed all the way onto his face.
“That’s that, and this is this. So why did ya really help us?”
Ah.
That was why we’d come here in the first place.
Robert’s story had been more interesting than I expected, so I’d forgotten for a moment.
“I’m looking for Banshee’s pilot.”
Robert’s expression hardened instantly.
“…Why’s the Liberation Army lookin’ for Banshee?”
Robert’s hand lowered beneath the table.
My spatial perception traced what lay under it.
A fixed holster, with a handgun sitting in it.
“To be more precise.”
“Precise how?”
“The Southern Front is looking for Banshee, so—”
Clack!
Robert drew the handgun and aimed it at me.
My body froze for a moment.
It didn’t seem like he would shoot right away.
“Look at that. So you are an Imperial lackey?”
It was better to speak plainly.
“Not the Empire. The Southern Front.”
“That’s the same damn thing!”
“I need to find Banshee’s pilot, Dolores. If we can find common ground with Banshee, there won’t be any need to kill her. I think the Southern Front has a misunderstanding about Banshee.”
“A misunderstanding?”
I had to go at this boldly.
“They’re mistaken in thinking Banshee is the clans’ rallying point, and the one causing conflicts between the clans.”
Robert’s face twisted oddly.
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
I thought this might happen.
***
“Do ya know who Banshee’s original pilot was?”
“I heard it was Dolores.”
“Put some respect on her name, you rude little bastard.”
Why was he so concerned about respect? She wasn’t even his mother.
“Lady Dolores.”
“That’s right. She’s my mother.”
I’m sorry.
Robert let out a deep sigh and took a few more gulps of liquor.
“And she’s the mother of those Blood Crow bastards over there, too, and over here and over there—anyway, most folks would probably call her mother.”
Wait a minute.
Dolores wasn’t a cockroach. How could she have that many children?
“Um, excuse me. I don’t really understand what you mean.”
“Not our birth mother. We were children she picked up. Do ya roughly know what Mother did in the past?”
There was only one thing I’d heard about Dolores’s past.
“I heard she helped the Empire clean up the clans in the South.”
A mercenary Daniel had trusted enough to hire.
“That’s right. Back then, Mother wiped out the clans, but instead, she took in all the children from those clans and raised them herself. If not for Mother, all of us would’ve died back then.”
Either starved to death, or been killed.
The South was a jungle.
It looked like there was plenty to eat, but that was only true when you had the weapons and stamina to hunt.
For young children, it was an even more miserable place.
Because there were things to challenge and hope to cling to, even more of them must have died.
“Then the current clans are…”
“I ain’t done talkin’ yet. We grew up fine under Mother, so now we had to earn money and pay her back, didn’t we? But they say in the East, even if ya go with nothin’ but the clothes on your back, if ya call yourself a mercenary, you can make do somehow. So we went.”
Tap, tap.
Robert took a cigarette from his coat and offered it to me.
“But do ya know what kind of place the East is? Stand with the Empire and you die, stand with the Allied Forces and you croak. It’s always back and forth there. So we came back.”
I had been tempted a little earlier.
I shook my head in refusal.
“You really live a boring life. Got a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t get married. It’s the grave of life.”
“Have you been married?”
“Buried it in the East and came back. I only slept with her once, but she got pregnant, so I tried to take responsibility.”
Chk. Chk.
Cigarette smoke rose.
Robert opened the window and exhaled hard outside.
“As you can tell from what I’ve told ya so far, Mother ain’t that kind of person. The clans started fighting each other not because of Mother, but because Mother disappeared.”
“What? Banshee disappeared?”
“Not Banshee. I’m sayin’ Mother disappeared.”
Dolores had disappeared?
No wonder she returned fire.
“The doctor said it was cancer. By the time we found out, it was already too late, so we just left it be. Mother told us not to save her either.”
“But with the Empire’s current technology…”
“The Empire, the Empire. Do ya think of everything by Imperial standards? Can the Empire just snap its fingers and cure terminal cancer? Are medical facilities cheap there?”
No.
Even in the Empire, terminal cancer was a difficult disease to treat, and treating such an illness required large medical facilities and money.
Only at the Academy could one easily use medical facilities whenever they wanted. Not everyone had that opportunity.
These people were mercenaries.
They weren’t proper Imperial citizens, and if one were to be precise, they belonged among the Empire’s commoners or lower classes.
On top of that, while they hadn’t rebelled against the Empire, they weren’t on the Empire’s side either.
“We don’t have that kind of thing. Mother said she didn’t want to be in more pain either, but when I came back from mercenary work, she was gone. So we just didn’t look.”
They were people who couldn’t receive the Empire’s protection.
When the person who had protected them disappeared, what choice had they had?
To plunder others in order to survive on their own.
“When we came back, we were more competitors than siblings. It wouldn’t have been strange if we stabbed each other in the back.”
The leaders of each mercenary group had people to support.
They must have had no choice but to plunder one another.
That was why they had been fighting until now.
“…Then what about Banshee?”
I understood their circumstances.
I understood.
At some point, without even Daniel, Count Sinis, knowing, Dolores had died.
The reason they came to fight was not Dolores’s existence, but her absence.
I understood all of that, but.
“Who’s piloting Banshee?”
So, Banshee.
Just who was inside Banshee?
“Wish I knew.”
That was an answer more troublesome than “I don’t know.”
If he said he didn’t know, I might think he was hiding something, but if he said he wished he knew, then he truly knew nothing.
“I’ve got a guess, but honestly, I can’t say I’m sure. I’m tellin’ ya because you helped us, but we ain’t certain either.”
“That’s fine too. I’ll look into it.”
“Ha…”
Robert ground his cigarette into the ashtray.
“Since we were young, there was one sister who’d beat the siblings up to stop them whenever they fought.”
Someone who, whenever the siblings fought, would stop them even if she had to beat them up.
“Does that remind ya of anything?”
It matched Banshee’s actions.
“But well, it ain’t like I can say that’s definitely her. When all the kids went east as mercenaries, she was the only one who stayed by Mother’s side. And I’m sure Mother wouldn’t have taught her how to pilot a Titan.”
There was no way someone who had never been properly taught could achieve that level of shooting accuracy.
That seemed to be what he was thinking, but I wasn’t sure.
I had fought well even before learning properly at the Academy too.
“Where can I meet her?”
“That’s the thing, I don’t know. Uh, I can give ya Mother’s house, just in case. Would that do?”
“I’ll go there.”
“Thought you were dim, but maybe not?”
I’d been a little curious since earlier.
“Um, what does ‘dim’ mean?”
“What kind of question is that?”
Robert looked dumbfounded.
“Dim is dim.”
Good.
I’d just get the coordinates and leave.