On Second Thought, Maybe the Terrorism Plan Was a Bit Much;; (2)
"Betelgeuse might have slipped something to Koenig — who doesn't know a thing — just to throw off your cross-verification."
"Hmmm."
They'd made their decision, but the moment they realized it made no practical sense, the Humanity Clan leadership changed course. The plan hadn't even properly started yet.
To the deployed personnel asking So what are we doing then?, they presented a truly bizarre revised plan.
Naturally, the sudden plan change sparked pushback from some of the original supporters — but things were different now. Back when Antares had been grinding through everything alone, teeth clenched, his IQ had dropped to roughly a third of normal. With his closest aides returned, the intellectual burden had lightened considerably, and Antares himself had begun taking real command of the situation.
"If we approach them first in a friendly manner and smooth things over, Icarus's side at least won't turn hostile on us, will they?"
"Yeah, but we caused that incident last time…"
"They don't know we were the ones who did it."
"Ah. Fair point."
"From Icarus's perspective, it'll look like we've been friendly from the start."
"Exactly. And setting Arcadia's interest in him aside… honestly, we barely had any contact with him before the event, right?"
"If we take the initiative now — offer resources, compensation, the works — and pull him in…"
"Worst case, friendly neutrality. Best case, we birth an external mercenary who surpasses even Indefatigable."
"Hell yeah. Bartender, round of drinks!"
Having logically steamrolled the former supporters-turned-opponents, they finally rebranded the infiltration team as a "peaceful goodwill delegation"… or rather, after endless political wrangling among themselves that splintered opinions every which way, the mission was ultimately labeled a "communications envoy" and dispatched as such.
Of course, some of the commanders who'd contributed superhumans to this so-called "communications envoy" found the whole thing absurd.
Veterans who'd raised their superhumans well enough to function as a suicide squad with a fighting chance of coming back alive reacted exactly that way. So they swapped out some of the assembled superhumans, let anyone who didn't want to go drop out entirely, and burned another full day on personnel reshuffling.
It wasn't until the second day of Icarus's leveling sessions with Tiamat that their "delegation" finally overcame every last political discord within the clan and, just barely, raised the departure flag toward Icarus's base.
The problem was that they'd forgotten their vessel was a Chiral-class ultra-high-performance stealth destroyer. Even after entering the sector, nothing registered on radar, so no welcoming fleet came out to meet them. They simply sailed straight in — and while Tiamat was running carrier aircraft maneuver drills, one of the fighters happened to kamikaze right into them. A minor incident, really.
I'd finished my dailies and was about to settle in for a leisurely nap when a comms call and a chat message popped up at the same time. Wondering what the hell was going on, I opened both windows at once to check.
Remarkably, they said the exact same thing.
What is this?
Completely out of nowhere. And yet, astonishingly, the Humanity Clan — the one with Antares as clan leader — was suddenly asking to meet with me.
"What for?"
"No need to be tense. You've placed third three times through this event, after all…"
"Which effectively makes you the representative of the Central Zone. We simply want to talk as representatives — that sort of thing."
"Hmm."
I didn't particularly have a grudge against Humanity. More importantly, their military power now exceeded a fifth of the Pirate Coalition's total strength — even with Marianne's protection, they weren't someone you could casually mess with. So I accepted their proposal and sent the OK for them to enter my base.
The problem was what happened mere minutes after I gave that permission.
"Wait, hold on… a Humanity Clan stealth destroyer collided with a carrier aircraft during Tiamat's leveling session?"
"Yes. And not just one — it got hammered by a tight formation of fighters running maneuver drills. We've salvaged it and docked it at our berthing facilities."
"…Oh."
Holy moly.
Maybe they hadn't intended a direct attack, but were they trying to give me a surprise experience and project some kind of intimidation? I had no idea what they'd been thinking. They'd boarded a state-of-the-art stealth destroyer invisible even to graviton radar — expensive stuff — approached without contacting us, slid right into the carrier aircraft training route, and taken a bird strike… or rather, a fighter-craft strike. The back of my neck throbbed with intensity.
Naturally, the Humanity Clan personnel didn't come at me over this. The whole incident was so cut-and-dry that even if you posted it on one of those reincarnation-life traffic-accident lawyer YouTube channels, the comments would be full of "yeah, this one's rough;;" — I'd become the perpetrator by accident, but they'd also just waltzed in without a word and gotten wrecked for it.
"Well… given the circumstances, it couldn't be helped, right?"
"Yeah, let's just let it go amicably."
"Alright, but the ship's still wrecked, so we'll handle the repairs."
"Then we'll cover the repair costs for the spent carrier aircraft on our end."
We settled it cleanly and quickly, then agreed to have a peaceful, pleasant conversation.
But that peace was short-lived. The moment the comms ended and the other side's "personnel" all disembarked—
"Wait a second, why are there ten superhumans?"
"…Indeed."
Trailing behind the Humanity representative — who wore a thoroughly exhausted expression, accident aside — came a gaggle of ten superhumans filing out one after another. My brain short-circuited. At least three of them were close-combat PvP specialists, and the thought that they might be using talks as bait to take me out bloomed fresh and vivid in my mind.
That suspicion didn't last long, though. Once we sat down in the base reception room and had a frank, honest conversation with Humanity's representative — whose name I learned was Tiara, thanks to a proper introduction — I cut through all the complicated, tedious details and arrived at the following conclusion.
"So, to summarize: the Humanity Clan wants to sign an external mercenary contract with me?"
"I wouldn't say that's wrong."
Of course, Tiara — who, despite the nickname, was a hulking, rough-hewn giant of a man — shook his head firmly and pushed back.
"That's not it. For now, we just want to establish friendly relations with your side."
"Correct. Please do not misrepresent our commander's and the clan's intentions."
"M-Maria, then what am I even—"
Watching Maria, the adjutant they'd brought along, cut him down without mercy while Commander Tiara stammered and flailed — I actually felt sincerity in that dynamic. I nodded thoughtfully.
Doesn't sound bad, at least from what I'm hearing.