Ancient Starship (3)
The Precursor soldier was strong—no question about it.
On par with that trash ninja uncle who was so good at copying, or maybe even a cut above him.
Back when I was still just playing this game instead of being isekai’d into it, if you were dumb enough to launch a ground assault on a Precursor Empire planet without first glassing it from orbit…
A defensive force of maybe a few tens of thousands would reverse-massacre an assault legion of millions that included mobile fortresses and entire armored corps. That should tell you everything.
Hell, even without going that far, this Precursor soldier had already proven her strength more than enough.
She moved like a Saiyan against the ship’s defense systems. And as if to prove she was a psionic, she layered her own telekinetic barrier on top of the one her combat suit provided—double-stacked defense that made her look utterly confident in close-quarters combat.
She didn’t just rely on the energy swords mounted on both wrists, either. Mid-fight she snatched gear from our troops and used it like she’d been born with it. She met our chainswords and energy blades with some unknown martial art, parrying and blocking with ease.
Our attacks barely scratched her, while a single swing of her energy sword carved through power-armor plating like tofu. The bullets she fired from stolen guns were laced with telekinetic force. The gap in combat power was simply overwhelming.
But.
“Keep the pressure on. Anyone getting tired, rotate out with the next man.”
“She’s going down—she’s going doooown!!”
“You little… Gihyeol!”
Equipment and training aside, she was still just one person.
We were a group.
And unlike a regular unit, the Purge Squad already had a solid number of psionics in the ranks.
“Gihyeooooool!!!!”
“Kyaaaaah!!”
On top of that, the Prosnak Marines on the feed had their eyes blazing as they piled onto the Precursor soldier—another variable, since they fielded a surprising number of psionics themselves.
So the woman who’d been thrashing around like a wild animal got slammed flat by a coordinated telekinetic crush from far more psionics than expected.
“Now! Open fire!”
The moment her psionic barrier dropped, the rest of the troops poured concentrated fire into her combat suit’s shields until those went down too.
“Looks just like stomping a cockroach, yeah.”
“…Do you really have to put it that way?”
Exactly as Riel assessed, the Precursor soldier never even got a proper fight. She was pinned to the deck like a bug and rendered combat-incapable.
And her humiliation didn’t end there.
“We have to neutralize her combat ability before she wakes up!”
Following that intent, the troops on site forcibly dismantled her combat suit…
“What kind of shameless woman is this?”
“You mustn’t look, Minister.”
…only to discover she wasn’t wearing a single scrap of clothing underneath.
Putting the suit back on her was out of the question—not just because of its dangerous performance.
“Huh? Why’s this thing disassembling itself?”
“Oh my.”
Whether it was a failsafe against capture or not, the forcibly dismantled combat suit crumbled into powder on its own and vanished, making re-dressing impossible.
“Y-You bastards! Even if you are inferior beings, do you think this kind of act will be tolerated?!”
Just like that, the Purge Squad and Prosnak Marines found themselves looking like a pack of perverts restraining a naked beauty.
“What are you planning to do to me?! No—I already know! You’re going to do those kinds of things, aren’t you?!”
“Shut your mouth. A Gihyeol-gendered freak like you dares slander comrades bound by the bonds of war?”
When the Precursor soldier’s insults finally pissed off the Prosnak Marines, their heartfelt “playfulness” was directed her way…
“Just spare my life! I’ll tell you everything—intel, tech, objectives, all of it!”
…and now she was reduced to this: sobbing and begging for her life from the very “inferiors” she’d looked down on.
Thanks to that she became quite cooperative, and we managed to extract how many Precursors were aboard the ship and a rough idea of their dispositions.
“No matter how much you torture or humiliate me, you will never learn our true purpose!”
Apparently she still wanted to cling to one last shred of pride, because she refused to the end to reveal why they had come to this ship.
I found the whole display so absurd that I ordered Meteorn to run an additional operation on the terminal.
Whoosh!
The moment my hologram formed in front of her through the terminal, the Precursor soldier—who had already shown every ugly side of herself—glared at me with venomous eyes and shouted,
“So it’s you! You’re the one controlling these inferior creatures!”
“….”
“Even if you come in person, I will never reveal our purpose! Tremble in fear without ever knowing it, inferior race!”
Faced with her spirited defiance, I let out a long sigh, scratched my cheek, and said,
“Well… I suppose you think you’ve managed to protect the one piece of information that mattered most.”
“What do you mean?”
Suspicion flickered through the venom in her eyes.
“I already knew your purpose from the very beginning.”
“…Typical of an inferior race—trying to mock me with lies.”
She shook her head in pure disbelief.
“What was it again…? Something about scuttling—no, destroying—this ship so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of other races?”
“…!”
At those words her venomous eyes flew wide with pure shock.
“H-How do you know that…?!”
“All that effort protecting information I already had. Must’ve been exhausting.”
The taunt set her off completely. She erupted into a full-blown screaming fit of every curse she knew.
“Gyaaaaaaah!!!”
No gear, nothing left, and still reeling from the Prosnak Marines’ little “games,” she was in a pitiful state—yet she glared at me with pure hatred, completely unbothered by her own nakedness, and tried to lunge.
“Inferior races like you have no right to possess a ship like this—none!!”
“Stay still, damn it!”
She was so far gone she even forgot I was only a hologram.
I shook my head at the sight of her screaming that we had no right to the ship, then decided it was time to give Meteorn and the others their orders.
“Meteorn. And Colonel Gran?”
“Yes, Minister.”
“What is it, sir?”
“There’s no need to rush securing the ship’s interior until every Precursor force that infiltrated has been eliminated. Keep that firmly in mind.”
“Understood, Minister.”
“Confirmed.”
Orders given, I was about to drop the hologram and get back to my actual work.
But right before I did—
“One moment, Minister Virtorius?”
“Hm?”
Colonel Gran called out just as I was about to end the transmission.
“What is it?”
“What should we do with this Precursor?”
I assumed he was asking about prisoner treatment and handling, so I nodded and answered,
“Mmm. Unless she formally surrenders, I’ll leave it to your judgment on the front line.”
Having a clueless civil servant like me micromanage every detail of something like this would have been pure insanity.
Better to set the bare minimum of rules and then pursue thorough autonomy—what they call mission-type command, or something like that. Perfect for this kind of situation.
Of course I’m no expert, so the real doctrine is probably different in a dozen ways.
At my reply, Colonel Gran nodded.
“Understood.”
And immediately after—
Slash!
“…Huh?”
Whoosh!
I heard a sickening sound behind me and watched something shoot straight through the chest of my holographic body.
That something was none other than the head of the Precursor soldier who, until a second ago, had been spewing every curse she knew.
“….”
“You little… Gihyeol!”
“With the Gihyeol soldier beheaded, our fighting spirit is fully charged! How fortunate!”
“I never expected the Minister to answer quite so… decisively. Now I understand why Ambassador Samiya holds you in such high regard.”
I let every word around me wash past, stared for a moment at the Precursor soldier’s head lying on the deck like discarded trash, then said,
“…Well then. Good work, everyone.”
— Transmission ended —
I cut the hologram, planted both hands on the desk in my office, and let out a long, heavy sigh.
“Huuuuuuh…”