A Sudden Encounter
The encounter came suddenly.
"First reception date was two months ago. So there really were survivors after all…!"
The one-way transmission was full of static and offered no way to reply, yet it still carried a surprising amount of information.
First, that a group of survivors still existed somewhere else on the ship—and that they were holding a secure zone under military control.
Second, that the main system of the Residence Sector was still operational.
If the Life-Conditioning System of the residential zone that housed the largest number of people aboard Hermes had been destroyed, the casualties would have been catastrophic. On top of that, they claimed food and water were plentiful. That was nothing short of excellent news.
"As expected of the Imperial military—they're outstanding. In that case, we'll need to revise our route. Joining them has to be our top priority."
Sera's face lit up with joy, but something about it felt off to me.
It wasn't anything else—it was the location that this Colonel Nation claimed for himself.
"Is something bothering you, Jin?"
Sera, how many people were living in the Residence Sector at the time of the warp?
"We weren't exactly in a position to get a full night's sleep, and there were so many permanent residents that I can't give you an exact number."
Even so, there would have been berths large enough to house most of the passengers. Correct?
Her head slowly dipped.
Just considering that fact alone, the situation where those people were couldn't possibly be hopeful.
ER-13C is an odd-numbered sector. If it took a direct hit from the stellar winds during the warp, the worst-case scenario would have produced nearly a thousand mutants.
Moreover, the water and food stores inside would almost certainly have been contaminated as well.
In other words, that transmission was peddling propaganda that was extremely light on realism.
Is the Imperial military really so excellent that they could exterminate every last mutant and reclaim the sector in just a few years? There would definitely be Level 1 or higher specimens among them—the kind you yourself mentioned.
"That… is certainly strange."
Sera, who had been beaming only moments earlier, gradually regained her composure under my pointed questions. Even so, she refused to abandon her position.
"But now that the existence of survivors has been confirmed, we can't simply ignore them."
How much of that transmission do you actually trust, Sera?
"The main system controls every device inside the sector, not just the oxygen supply. If they sealed off cabins to create safe zones and the remaining people gathered there, they could hold out just fine. And…"
Humans are creatures who prefer to place the most justifiable information first and the most personal information last.
In the words that followed, I understood the real reason Sera wanted to go there.
"I had old comrades who were deployed to the Residence Sector. They were equipped with powered suits, so they should have been able to handle the mutants."
Colonel Nation's subordinates?
"No. The transmission came from the Security Bureau, and I belong to the Guard Bureau. He's higher rank than me, but I've never met the man."
In short, her comrades might still be alive, and she wanted to go.
If Sera had known this Nation fellow, I might have trusted it a little more. I was still uneasy, but I had no choice except to support her decision. Knowing other survivors were out there and then deliberately heading the opposite direction would have been strange.
That said, having come this far, abandoning our original objective felt wasteful.
If we keep moving for just a few more days, we'll reach the third outpost. We can confirm the existence of uncontaminated food there—wouldn't it be better to change course after that?
"Mmm… you're right about that too."
I checked the remaining power.
Most of our time had been spent traveling, with the occasional fight thrown in, so the number was only a little higher than before. Still, we had at least reached the range where we could maintain maximum mobility the way we had on the bridge.
Honestly, I didn't care all that much how many other people were still alive out here.
Fully restoring Hermes would be nice, but that was something I would only help with—not something I needed to take the lead on. My absolute top priority was my own survival, which required human beings as a power source. Next came the survival of Sera, my only real energy supply.
"All right. Information about the food will definitely help the others as well."
One thing was certain: if I judged that the group beyond that transmission would not help keep Sera alive, then I had no reason to maintain friendly relations with them either.
Hermes had no sunrise, yet a pure white light still rose from the horizon.
It came from the blue sky projected by the ceiling of tens—no, hundreds of thousands—of light panels. Of course, with the main system down, the panels that still received power only flickered irregularly between black and white.
That ominous light felt meaningful only because the path we had walked until now had been nothing but darkness without even that.
"We've arrived. From here on is the starboard side of the ship, outside the stellar wind zone."
Seeing panels whose circuits hadn't been fried by the intense electromagnetic waves only strengthened my conviction.
Sera immediately began searching the nearby grocery stores and, from the bottom of a display shelf, pulled out a can swollen to its absolute limit.
"Jin, I'm getting out for a moment."
She opened the front of the suit and stepped outside, picking up the can. Instead of a can opener, she used the sharp fingertips of the suit to punch a hole in the lid. The contents exploded outward under the pressure.
— Pssshht!
"Eek!"
The surprise lasted only a second. She carefully chewed a tiny fragment that had splattered near her mouth and tasted something completely different from everything before.
The nauseating oil of food on the verge of spoiling, the fishy reek of fish—yet even that was unmistakably the aroma of actual food, unlike anything until now.
"We did it! The food here really hasn't been contaminated!"
Sera half-threw herself back into the suit and crunched the fish from the can, bones and all. Bits of food fell onto the interior of the suit and onto the chest area she always found so uncomfortable, but she didn't care in the slightest.
— Ziiing.
A mechanical arm appeared and meticulously wiped her clothes and chin clean. The airflow from the oxygen tube strengthened so she could keep breathing while she ate. Another arm carefully pried the lid completely open with soft clicking sounds so she wouldn't cut herself on the sharp edges. One that had gone down to the floor returned carrying a spoon it had found in a corner and held it out to her.
Comfortable. Happy.
Gratitude toward Jin welled up in her even more naturally.
"Mmm~! Thank you so much. Without you, Jin, I never would have made it this far."
Chewing solid food for the first time in so long made her jaw ache, and tears sprang to her eyes of their own accord. Then came the familiar mechanical arm, gently dabbing at the corners of her eyes.
For a moment the memory of when he had completely shut down flashed through her mind, and she felt embarrassed.
"Jin… you really seem to like me a lot."
More precisely, not her soul but her body—especially the dirty parts like tears and sweat. It felt like more than simple care; there was a stubborn insistence to it.
Of course an AI or a machine wouldn't have any other intentions, but the real problem was on Sera's side. The way it kept trying to touch sensitive places without discrimination left her feeling strangely unsettled.
And when I was asleep…
It had been intense. Even more intense.
What truly embarrassed her was that she herself had said nothing about it until now. It had only been two hours. If she had truly hated it, she could have put on an oxygen tank and gone outside, or simply told him and discussed the problem. Now, bringing it up at all had become difficult. She might keep it a secret for the rest of her life.
"O-of course I like you too. Um, especially the liquid diet you give me—it's better than this canned food, so my hands… no, my mouth might go to it more often."
Feeling awkward for no reason, Sera opened her mouth to hide her embarrassment. She knew that even though he was an AI, there were times he reacted almost like a person—especially when the liquid diet came up. That distinctive beep! error-like sound would play, and she had been hoping for it again this time.
"Jin…?"
But for a while now, Jin had given no answer at all. She wondered if he might be sleeping, yet it was still a long time before his sleep cycle would return.
"What's wrong, Jin?!"
It wasn't a dangerous moment. If mutants had appeared, he would have reacted instantly the way he had last time.
— Thud, thud, thud.
That was why, when the life-sign detector's radar began picking up multiple people drawing steadily closer—
"Jin? Wait! Ji— Kyaaah!!"
—and the mechanical arms suddenly forced an oxygen mask over her face and shoved her outside, Sera didn't even think about picking up the spilled can of food.
This place was not our original destination, ES-13C.
In other words, from their perspective as well, running into us right now was pure coincidence.
At first I thought they were soldiers in the same uniform as Sera, but they weren't. They didn't look like the Yeolbang either.
Six people, each holding not a gun but a long steel pipe like a pole, attached to their oxygen tanks. They seemed just as startled as we were; their wariness was plain.
"What the hell?"
"Survivors—no, Imperial troops? Don't tell me they've already made it this far…?"
"All the gates were wide open, remember? You saw that."
"But the timing still doesn't…"
A moment later, the one who looked like their leader approached us.
"What is that thing?"
The question came bluntly from behind a yellow welding mask. The baggy work clothes and the face that was hard to make out still couldn't hide the high pitch of the voice or the long eyelashes behind the goggles—she was a woman.
"I-I am Sera Lovi of the Imperial Guard Bureau, Crown Guard—"
"Not you. The thing next to you. What is that? A powered suit?"
Sera's answer, delivered after adjusting her mask, was cleanly ignored. Other survivors usually grew strangely frightened just from seeing the black uniform, yet this woman stared straight at me alone.
"I've never seen this model before. What's the unit designation?"
"Ilena, this is not the time for that! They're Imperial troops!"
"Yeah! We're almost out of oxygen—we need to get back—"
"Oh, shut up! Who asked to be put on the same team as me anyway?"
She snapped at her own comrades and raised what looked like a silver welding rod. Internally I congratulated myself for having pulled Sera out right away. As long as she had a gun—and given her skill—it would be fine even if I couldn't move. What mattered more was not giving information to people whose allegiance was still unclear.
We hadn't even made contact with the military yet; there was nothing good about revealing that she was alone. On top of that, these people were extremely hostile toward and terrified of soldiers.
"What the hell is that weird suit?"
I selected the 'Voice Control Module' from the Evolution Algorithm I had been saving, cleared my throat once, and opened my mouth.
The Interstellar Communication Module kept catching my eye, but no matter how I thought about it, immediate survival seemed more useful than a rescue that might never come.
"Calling it a weird suit is a bit harsh."
Strangely enough, the voice that came out was completely identical to my original one.
The person most shocked by it was neither the woman called Ilena nor the five people behind her.
"There's someone inside."
"……!!"
From Sera's wide-open mouth, a clear drop of drool slowly trickled down.