Chapter 49
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 49
...The Empire's technology is top-tier. It was a moment that made me proud to be an Imperial soldier. Even amidst the crash and explosion of the aerial vehicle, I had survived. A few bruises on my biological parts and some scrapes on my artificial skin were the extent of my injuries.
An unforgettable experience, truly.
Thanks to the shock-absorbing gel, we came out completely fine—not a single broken bone. The gel had fully absorbed both the impact and the blast.
The spent gel had separated into three distinct layers. The outermost layer, which had directly borne the brunt of the impact and explosion, was rock-hard. The middle layer remained soft and squishy. The innermost layer, the one in contact with our skin, had hardened to a rubbery consistency.
I pushed my creaking body up. Drawing my knife, I sliced through the gel blocking the door and cleared it away.
Squish!
Then I kicked the crumpled, jammed door as if lashing out with a forepaw. The door flew off, revealing the outside. Acrid smoke drifted into my nose.
I stepped out first to secure the perimeter. So far, no enemies in sight.
"The attackers will swarm us the moment they see we've crashed," Heilas said calmly as he climbed out of the aerial vehicle. Unease surged through me as I watched the flames on the wreck grow larger.
It's going to explode soon.
If it were up to me, I'd get as far away from the thing as possible. In fact, I'd already put a considerable distance between it and myself.
Boom!
Unable to withstand the raging flames, the crashed aerial vehicle detonated. The shockwave washed over Heilas's back.
As if merely catching a sea breeze, Heilas simply tugged at his collar to keep his coat from fluttering. The embers clinging to his hem glowed with residual heat before quickly dying out.
Whir!
Heilas reached inside his coat and pulled out a forearm-length rod. With one forceful swing of his arm, the rod extended from both ends, and a spearhead popped out of the top.
The spear was as tall as Heilas himself—a length that would be nothing but a burden for anyone short of an expert.
Whoosh!
Heilas spun the spear, lightly warming up his hands. In his left, he held a pistol he'd drawn at some point. Judging by its electronic double-barrel structure, it looked like a small railgun.
Small railguns packed a punch, but they came with a firing delay. Since they didn't fire instantly, they demanded predictive shooting—a hassle that made them tricky to use as personal firearms. For various reasons, they were never mass-produced, and could only be found as custom-made weapons.
True to his status as the head of the Imperial Guard, his loadout was a classic pairing of melee weapon and firearm.
The combat of an Imperial Guard Captain.
It was a rare sight. Once you reached that rank, you rarely fought on the front lines. They only took the field for truly critical battles.
Hum.
Heilas turned his head and fixed his gaze to the west. The rims of his pupils glowed red.
Thump!
Heilas fired. A beat after he pulled the trigger, a projectile streaked toward the west, leaving a trail in its wake.
I couldn't even tell what Heilas was shooting at. But he wouldn't fire for no reason. He was fighting a battle in a realm beyond my sight.
"Luka, you'll be able to identify the enemy in twelve seconds too," Heilas said, firing again. It wasn't a matter of his cybernetic eye's performance. He was shooting at targets far beyond his line of sight.
How?
I glanced up. I saw the setting sky. Clear, without a single cloud.
"I'm glad the weather's nice today. Excellent visibility," Heilas said, reloading the railgun.
"You're firing off satellite coordinates?"
"Well, I am the Imperial Guard Captain, after all. I can get at least one military satellite allocated for my personal use."
Heilas spoke as casually as ever, firing again. Now the faint sounds of explosions and screams reached my ears.
This was a level of sniping that even the most gifted individual could scarcely replicate. It required not only a military satellite but massive auxiliary computing support. Simple as it looked, this was support on the scale of a tactical weapon.
Over the horizon of the wasteland, a group of attackers came into view. Three old-model full-armor prosthetics, flanked by thirty-two armed rebels. There had probably been more originally—a good number of them must have been picked off by Heilas's sniping.
Bang!
I jerked my head to the side. A bullet grazed the exact spot where the space between my brows had been a split second earlier. If I'd been spacing out, I'd be dead. A precise sniper shot, despite the considerable range.
These people had come to kill the Imperial Guard Captain. They'd come thoroughly prepared.
Clang! Clink!
Heilas was deflecting projectiles, spinning his spear one-handed. The attackers' firepower was concentrated on him.
"I'll handle the full-armor prosthetics. As for you... well, just survive as best you can."
"Vague instructions and vaguer orders are a sign of a superior's lack of virtue, you know," I grumbled.
Heilas shrugged and let his spear drop low. The heavy tip scraped against the ground.
"Luka! If you want to get ahead, you have to interpret even the shittiest orders perfectly. Because the world is full of unvirtuous people."
An undeniable truth, that.
The attackers closed in fast, pouring down gunfire. Soon, close-quarters combat began. Both sides wove through the hail of bullets while swinging spears and blades.
The attackers are highly skilled. And reckless.
They fired without caring whether they hit their own allies. They placed no value on their own lives, fighting like a suicide squad. For terrorists, they were surprisingly decent warriors.
"Cracia's hounds!"
They meant us. Well, they weren't wrong. But the Imperial Guard took pride in being the Emperor's hounds. They were trying to weaponize a non-derogatory term as an insult.
Four attackers lunged at me. They must have figured this many would be enough to handle me. I wasn't offended.
Imperial Guard Captain Heilas was one of the strongest soldiers in the Empire. Even without his Legion full-armor prosthetic, he was a monster. Most of the attackers rushed him.
And the four warriors who came for me were, as I said, highly skilled. Not some random rabble I could put down in a single blow.
Akies Combat Style?
My eyes narrowed as I watched one of them move. There was a strange sense of dissonance in the movements of an Akies Combat Style user.
An Akies Combat Style user leverages expanded senses to pre-perceive their surroundings as a 3D map, optimizing their movements to execute maneuvers in live combat that would normally demand countless rehearsals and drills.
My eyes met those of the combat style user. He was looking at me too. He must have realized I was also an Akies Combat Style user, just as I'd recognized him.
The Akies Victima really does run deep with the terrorists.
With the talent and skill needed to master the Akies Combat Style, he could easily have made a name for himself in the Imperial Army. What a pity. He was going to die by my hand.
Bang!
I fired my pistol, swinging it wildly as I did. The bullet's trajectory warped erratically.
Shooting that wildly, I couldn't aim with any precision. But if I fired straight, he'd never get hit. I had to gamble on luck.
"Gah!"
The Akies Combat Style user coughed up blood. My bullet had pierced his chest, of all places. Even I hadn't expected it to land. Pure luck.
Still, if the guy had been just a little more proficient with the Akies Combat Style, he wouldn't have been hit at all. Someone like Kinuan would never have fallen for such crude improvisation.
The most skilled of my attackers had gone down. With their core collapsed, the rest scattered like a leaderless rabble. It seemed they always operated as a four-man cell.
"You bastard!"
Overcome at his comrade's death, one of them lunged at me. A shotgun capable of blowing my head off in a single blast was aimed straight at me.
Clang!
I swung my blade, knocking the shotgun's barrel aside.
Bang!
The gun went off—and the blast tore through his comrade's chest instead of mine.
Even when you let emotion take the wheel, you must never stop thinking in combat. I was an elite soldier trained for exactly this. They were not.
As a result, they failed to leave so much as a scratch on me. My only injuries were from the impact of the crash.
I glanced to the side. Corpses littered the ground around Heilas. While I'd been busy with my four, he had wiped out most of the remaining attackers.
Squish!
The last full-armor prosthetic was impaled on his spearhead from jaw to crown, sparks of electricity crackling through it.
A pity.
I'd been too busy keeping myself alive to properly watch Heilas fight. Hadn't had the luxury to spare a single glance.
Thud!
As Heilas ripped his spearhead free, the full-armor prosthetic pitched forward onto its knees.
"Rather sloppy, for an attempt on the Imperial Guard Captain's life."
"Rick Kaiser was waiting at a distance. If I'd been wounded during the crash or the battle, he'd have swept in to finish me off. But since they couldn't take me down in time, he just watched—knowing he'd only get himself captured if he stepped in."
Rick Kaiser, of the terrorist group Nemesis.
I stared in the direction the Captain was looking. Lacking satellite vision, I naturally couldn't see Rick at all.
This had been a crucial opportunity for Nemesis—but the same went for us. Killing or capturing a big shot like Rick Kaiser would have been a massive achievement.
"Then wouldn't it have been better for us to lay a counter-trap and catch Rick?"
Heilas shook his head.
"To the upper command, both Rick and I are nothing more than replaceable parts. Capturing Rick would have dealt them a blow, but it wouldn't have destroyed Nemesis. Above all, elevating Barbara's standing was the single most critical objective of this operation. If we'd set a trap for Rick, Barbara—whom we planted—would have died. All the long-standing efforts of the upper command would have gone down the drain."
An aerial vehicle was belatedly approaching from the direction of Capital Akbaran.
A replaceable part, even the Imperial Guard Captain.
A sudden curiosity struck me.
"Is there anyone in the Empire who's truly irreplaceable...?"
I trailed off and shut my mouth. It felt sacrilegious to even ask. But Heilas had already caught my drift. He pointed upward with his index finger.
"There is exactly one."
People like Heilas and me could die by the dozens, and it wouldn't matter. At most, it would be a brick or two falling out of the fortress wall that is the Empire. But if the Emperor dies, the Empire falls.
If that was the case, then for terrorists dreaming of overthrowing the Empire, their goal would converge on a single point.
The Emperor's life.
A chill ran down my spine for no reason at all. Obvious, once I thought about it. But this was the first time it had felt so real.
In the end, you have to go for the head. Sever the head, and it doesn't matter how many limbs you lose.
Whirrrr!
The support unit's aerial vehicle hovered above us. Soldiers quickly rappelled down, securing the perimeter and escorting Heilas and me. They were bracing for a possible second ambush. A little comical, seeing them scramble like this when it was all already over—but they were just doing their duty.
Under their escort, Heilas and I returned safely to the Imperial Guard.
I also needed to focus on personal maintenance for a while. I had to upgrade and tune my prosthetic body, and I still needed to collect the custom weapon I'd ordered.
Between one thing and another, I figured I'd be spending some quiet time. But even when I stood still, the world kept changing at a breakneck pace. And so did the people in it.
...Ilay, who had gone on a long vacation to the Kartika family's main estate, returned to the Imperial Guard.