“Dive!”
The flight unit spewed out reinforced thrust.
The acceleration of the fuselage was beyond imagination. Clenching my teeth, I accelerated forward.
“W-with this much thrust, couldn’t we f-fly?”
“Don’t talk bullshit.”
Ian, who was near Ran, clicked his tongue.
“It’s only natural that a Titan maintaining a human form can’t fly. It’s only possible if it transforms, gives up its human form, or uses all four limbs for balance control.”
“But the thrust is high!”
“Okay. Since talking isn’t getting through to you, when you get back, I’ll just beat the shit out of you.”
“I-I was just saying!”
How could someone be that violent?
A hologram appeared on the omnidirectional monitor, and the arrows Ran had set guided the way like a navigation system.
“It’s not that f-far, is it?”
“It’s a mission to protect supplies, after all. In fact, it’s also within range of our allied anti-air guns reaching enemy drones.”
“Which means.”
“It’s not really a necessary mission, but they’re giving us a controllable one. There shouldn’t be any incidents or accidents. Well, they did tell us to brace ourselves.”
So that was it after all.
“Ah, they’re telling Ailee to stop for a moment. They said not to run ahead alone.”
When I pulled the handles back and spread the flaps, Ailee came to an abrupt stop in midair.
Looking back, I saw Titans approaching from far behind, slowly moving with their thrusters on.
No, it wasn’t that they were slow. Ailee was just far too fast.
“No one can keep up, right!”
“Seems so.”
Since Ailee sounded so triumphant, I agreed for now.
Still, it was clear we would be acting as a group more often than fighting individually from now on.
Since I’d immediately experienced just how fast Ailee was compared to others, we’d have to match our speed from here on out.
After waiting a few dozen seconds, the Titans behind us drew closer and naturally joined up.
Beep-beep.
“If this were an exam, you’d lose points. Got it?”
Aaron clicked his tongue irritably.
“I-it’s not an exam, though.”
Aaron’s voice abruptly cut off, and Icarus raised a clenched fist overhead.
When I made a gesture of blocking the fist with Ailee, Icarus lowered its fist and continued in the direction it had been going.
“He’s the slow one, and he’s blaming us!”
“W-well, no matter how you look at it, we’re the fast ones.”
“That’s true!”
Why was Ailee so excited?
It seemed to be because of the hologram. Since earlier, she had been glancing over at me again and again.
When she recognized me through the camera sensors, I hadn’t felt her gaze, but now that the hologram was glancing at me, strangely enough, I kept feeling her eyes on me.
This was probably what people called my imagination.
The moment Ran’s navigation ended, the Titans came to a stop in place.
It was the route the maglev train would pass through.
The surroundings were wide-open plains. There was almost no elevation difference, and nothing that could really be called an obstacle.
If suicide drones came swarming in and slammed down, there would be no way to avoid them. To be honest, from my perspective, where hovering was my main method of movement, it wasn’t much different from the sea.
“Ran?”
“Yes.”
“Even if this is a controllable m-mission, if we fail, this railway could be destroyed, r-right?”
“That’s right.”
It was certain Charlotte Keria wasn’t in her right mind.
“For now, the operators are formulating a plan among themselves. They’re arranging for the bombardment types to position themselves on high ground before the drones arrive, while the heavy-armored types defend the area near the railway.”
The plan itself was extremely conventional.
Catching drones with Titans was more about relying on the quantity of bullets than precise strikes.
Even in modern warfare, to take down fighter jets flying at low altitude, they used anti-air guns to spray fire and establish a net of fire.
The reason was simple.
There was no way bullets could accurately aim at and hit drones.
So the most basic method was for a large number of bombardment-type Titans to occupy the high ground and pour out a great many rounds to form a net of fire.
If enemy drones slipped outside it, the heavy-armored Titans would block the drones’ attacks, blow them up if they were lucky enough to hit, or simply have the Titans take the suicide drones’ attacks in their place.
That was the basic framework.
From far away came the sound of the maglev train.
It wasn’t a roar. Since maglev trains didn’t create friction, naturally they didn’t make much noise.
The roar came from the sky.
I could hear the sound of flying things piercing the sky as they came in.
Anti-air guns poured rounds toward them, and I heard the intense sound of air resistance as they broke through the barrage.
Something suddenly flashed through my mind.
“Ran.”
“Yes.”
“Just, just if, hypothetically.”
“Yes.”
“What if, unlike what we think, this battlefield isn’t under c-control?”
The other Titans were looking at the sky, but since I had an omnidirectional monitor, I could look down at the ground.
There were traces of repairs on the track. Many of them, and frequent ones. At a glance, it was clear that repair and maintenance had continued until recently.
“What if they really were sh-short on manpower and asked us for help?”
Drones began to appear in the distance.
One, two, three.
After that, they were impossible to count.
What if Charlotte Keria was sane?
In other words, what if the western front was already at a severe disadvantage, and they really, absolutely needed these supplies, and building an anti-air net of fire from the base was the best they could do right now?
What if they needed troops to defend this place anyway, and we just happened to have been deployed here?
“Then that would be a problem.”
Unfortunately, it was far more convincing than saying Charlotte Keria wasn’t in her right mind.
“Though what we have to do won’t change.”
I gripped the stick tightly.
The display on the omnidirectional monitor spun once, and the viewpoint shifted to Ailee’s forearm.
“Deep! Control priority transfer complete! From now on, I’m the main pilot, and Deep is the sub-pilot. Fighting!”
Control priority transfer.
From this point on, Ailee would pilot the Titan.
There was only one thing I would control.
“Don’t get hurt, Ailee.”
“Huh? I can be repaired anyway?”
“I mean it.”
An ultra-high-speed maneuver-type drone fitted with close-quarters combat equipment.
Because the name was too long, we had decided to call it this, after its long, spear-like shape.
“Spear, activate.”
The drone detached from Ailee’s forearm.
Spewing thrusters in every direction, it spun once in midair and adjusted its course.
I could feel it. My senses were crying out. My spatial perception was resonating at nearly the same level as when I piloted a Titan. It was thanks to the omnidirectional monitor.
Without any burden on my body, I could control it however I wanted.
Simply put, it felt like a game.
“Heat Spear beginning heating. Full termination of control by AI assistance.”
“All I can help with is the drone’s takeoff! Piloting a Titan alone is hard for me too!”
“It’s fine.”
Without any particular signal, the Titans simultaneously pulled their triggers at the drones.
Bullets surged upward, and the drones plunged downward. Not in a straightforward, mindless line, but performing evasive maneuvers to bypass the net of fire.
Of course they would. They weren’t being moved by an unmanned system; humans were directly controlling the drones.
Perhaps the drones in front were nothing more than a screen meant to take bullets, while the drones behind them were the real main firepower.
If it was a sea made of drones.
“I’m used to diving.”
It might not be difficult.
I pushed the stick.
Zeeeeeeeng!
The thrusters ignited, accelerating at a speed I normally couldn’t even imagine.
Its straight-line speed, not intended for turning, instantly sliced through a drone.
Spewing from its side thrusters, the drone’s own body rotated instead of banking, twisting its direction.
If I had to move freely away from our own net of fire and eliminate the enemy’s true firepower rather than its bullet sponges.
Accelerate.
Cutting through drones, I reached the rear of the drone swarm and immediately reversed thrust.
Using the front as an axis, I ignited the side thrusters, turned half a rotation, then ignited the opposite thrusters and stopped.
I was behind the enemy craft, holding its tail.
“Dead six.”
The moment I secured a stable position, I grabbed the smartwatch.
“Control priority transfer!”
Once again, the omnidirectional monitor’s display changed, and my viewpoint shifted.
I immediately raised the rifle and pulled the trigger. With a drdrdrdr sound, the drone in front of me passed by, then exploded with a boom.
“Ailee, you heard everything, right?”
“Of course! I’ll keep moving from dead six!”
Spear began tearing into the drones from behind.
The problem with a high-mobility support type was that it couldn’t make use of the strengths of both a high-mobility type and a support type at the same time.
Then I’d split the work with Ailee.
I would handle the breakthroughs that required detailed control, and in the meantime, Ailee would move the Titan to respond to enemy attacks.
After that, Ailee would control the drone in favorable engagements, while I would take over again to precisely identify and snipe the enemy.
Craaaack!
When a sudden huge explosion occurred, the drones were caught up in it and began exploding one after another.
I only glanced at it, but from that brief explosion alone, it was clear that close to ten drones had blown up.
But their response was fast too. The drones instantly broke formation and began moving in a scattered, every-one-for-themselves pattern.
They had given up on keeping their main suicide drones out of the net of fire, choosing instead to avoid the Spear Ailee was controlling.
A nearby bombardment-type Titan stopped firing and glanced at me.
I pressed the short-range communication button.
“S-shoot. What are you doing?”
“No, it’s just. How on earth…”
Above.
Clack.
Thoom!
A drone that had been dropping toward the bombardment-type Titan was struck by a bullet and embedded itself in the ground.
Maybe it was lucky; the drone stuck in the ground did not explode.
As I slowly lowered the rifle’s muzzle, the bombardment-type Titan belatedly looked up at the sky and began firing.
“How many drones do you think we got with that chain explosion earlier?”
“Wh-who knows! I’m busy, b-busy right now, so later! I’ll calculate! Later!”
“Okay.”
I picked up the drone that had fallen to the ground and threw it upward.
Boom!
I shot it and made it explode, then looked behind me.
The supply train that had been approaching us had already passed by, and I could no longer even properly see its tail end.