017. Parts Replacement (3)
017. Parts Replacement (3)
"Heuhik...!"
The moment the word "report" left my mouth, Sumire let out a breathless scream.
Before the scream had even ended, Sumire threw herself down flat in front of me.
"P-please...! Please spare me...! If I get reported for this, I'll be immediately disposed of...!"
"Then why did someone who knows that perfectly well desert?"
To my thoughtless sneer, Sumire suddenly fired off a shocking confession.
"Th-the truth is... I was abused by my Commander..."
"Excuse me?"
"I-I'm begging you...! I don't want to go back...!"
Uh-oh.
Somehow the situation had suddenly turned me into the human trash here.
To be clear, I wasn't such a crazed, cold-blooded bastard that I'd force an abused soldier back to her original unit. If I'd known there were circumstances like that, I wouldn't have tried to report her.
No, I did still need to report something.
Just not her as a deserter. I needed to report that commander for biodroid abuse.
But for that, I would need specific details and evidence.
"How were you abused? Tell me."
"Heugeuk..."
Maybe the memory of her unhappy past had resurfaced. Sumire looked pained.
When she finally revealed what the abuse was, it was shocking.
"She made me... f-fight..."
It was shocking in a slightly different sense.
"Laika, just report her as a deserter. And don't forget to note that she's a particularly vicious case."
"Euheng. Okay—"
"W-wait, please...!"
Wait for what?
Completely dumbfounded, I started challenging Sumire on it.
"You're a military biodroid."
"Y-yes, I am. Military..."
"How is making a military biodroid fight abuse?"
"But, but still..."
Sumire answered as if deeply aggrieved.
"I'm not a combat type, I'm a Production Specialist Type...!"
"What?"
"A Production Specialist Type, with zero combat ability... and my C-Commander forced me to participate in combat... th-that's more than enough to be called abuse..."
Huh.
A Production Specialist Type's body was manufactured solely with production work in mind.
Making a Production Specialist Type like her fight a Legion was little different from ordering her to die.
So if Sumire's claim was true, it was certainly enough to be considered abuse.
But I couldn't take Sumire's words at face value just like that.
Why the hell would anyone shove a unit with no combat ability onto a battlefield?
Especially when Sumire was a Production Specialist Type that any base could put to good use.
An ordinary Commander would keep her from even wandering near a combat zone for fear she might get hurt.
Which meant.
"......Let's hear the whole story first."
How she had ended up here.
What had happened.
Every last detail, without leaving a single thing out.
***
Sumire's story went back about three years.
Originally manufactured to become a Production Specialist Type, she was a 'Reject Individual' whose production skill modules had failed to develop.
Of course, being a Reject Individual was not the same as being defective.
Even Level 1 production skills held minimal value, and the other parts of her body were still specialized in processing and stabilizing materials.
On top of that, Sumire herself had a deep passion for biodroid manufacturing, and during the preliminary education period, she never missed first place in the written exams.
In the end, Sumire's abilities were recognized, and she was supplied to the military, earning a chance to manage the manufactory at a field base.
The problem was that field base's Commander.
Her commander was still serving at a prominent large base, and she had abused Sumire.
She assigned Sumire tasks she had no realistic chance of completing and, whenever Sumire failed, berated her with profanity in front of everyone.
She shoved Sumire into a warehouse instead of a proper barracks room, and when she was in a bad mood, she would kick Sumire or slap her across the face.
The reasons for the violence were preposterous.
Apparently, Sumire's commander had originally been promised an A-rank Production Specialist Type biodroid, not a Reject Individual like Sumire.
But right before the assignment, the Commander herself had caused a drunk driving accident, and the military, as a disciplinary measure, assigned Sumire, whose performance was lower than what had been planned, to her unit.
Under those circumstances, the Commander, harboring discontent with the higher-ups, vented her anger by harassing the innocent Sumire.
Despite having such an awful commander, Sumire did her best.
After all, managing the manufactory and crafting parts was her dream and her calling.
She worked without a shred of doubt, believing that if she worked hard, she too would grow, and that the Commander would come to recognize her for it.
Then, one day.
One day, her commander transferred Sumire into a combat role.
There had been no discussion.
No warning, either.
Nor did the commander seek her opinion even after making the decision.
The commander began sending Sumire, whose body had never been designed for battlefield conditions, into combat.
And every time, Sumire was horribly wrecked and smashed to pieces.
Even as she was smashed to pieces, Sumire kept heading for the battlefield.
—If I just keep working hard, she'll recognize me eventually.
—She'll recognize me, and she'll believe in me.
Sumire soothed herself and endured.
Then one day, after Sumire's body had been wrecked twenty times and restored just as many,
a fellow biodroid in her unit took pity on her and came to tell Sumire the truth.
The Commander had no intention of repairing and using her.
The Commander was planning to return Sumire.
She planned to return Sumire and obtain a new Production Specialist Type biodroid.
But in order to return her, she needed a reason.
Like insubordination, or a complete failure to carry out assigned missions. There had to be at least that minimal amount of trouble to submit a return request.
Sumire, however, had never once disobeyed her Commander's orders, and her abilities as a manufacturer weren't so lacking as to warrant being returned.
And so, the Commander had forcibly shoved Sumire onto the battlefield in order to create a reason for return.
Because if she was given an impossible task, no matter how loyal Sumire was, she would have no choice but to disobey orders.
Or, it would be fine if she just died out on the battlefield altogether.
As if to corroborate that ulterior motive, the Commander deployed Sumire into an absurd operation to seize an island off the northwestern coast.
The probability of success: zero.
The probability of survival: less than 3 percent.
Even so, Sumire followed the order without complaint, and before long, she was caught in the Legion's wave assaults and lost consciousness.
When she opened her eyes again, it was the middle of the night, on Trash Island.
There was no time for relief. A group of Legions that had washed up there just as she had were nearby.
Sumire started running, and in the process, she crawled into an air vent.
The facility she reached at the end of that air vent was this place.
A neglected manufactory at some forward base.
Around the time she realized that fact, Sumire's consciousness began to blur again.
Just what on earth was the reason?
After belatedly turning on the manufactory's lights, Sumire soon found her answer.
Her body had been wrecked so badly that 'tattered' was hardly an exaggeration.
She had barely managed to escape in that condition, and that was as far as she could go.
She was dying and probably had only a few dozen minutes left.
"That was the first time..."
Sumire chewed on her lower lip as she spoke.
She said that was the first time she'd thought it was unfair.
Up until then, she had been faithful to every order.
Because she believed that if she worked hard, someone would recognize her.
It was because she never abandoned that belief until the very end that she had thrown herself into that final operation even after learning the whole truth.
And this was how it ended.
To end rotting away slowly in some unknown manufactory.
She thought it was unacceptable.
Wronged, furious, and in agony, she wanted desperately to survive somehow.
She thought she wanted to fix her broken self.
Or at the very least.
In her next life, she wished from her heart to live doing only the things she loved.
It was right at that moment.
The stalled 'Material Stabilization' and 'Process Efficiency' skill levels grew simultaneously.
From Level 1, all at once to Level 5.
With a Level 5 Material Stabilization skill, she could make even a body on the brink of death hold on, if only for a short while.
Realizing that fact, Sumire used all of her remaining energy to stabilize her body.
Then, using the abandoned manufactory and the various leftover parts and materials still there, she repaired her own body.
The process was not easy.
As mentioned before, the manufactory had been abandoned. Hardly any of its equipment still worked.
So first, with what little time she had, she got her body's power unit running again.
Using that barely revived body, she repaired the equipment.
And using the fixed facilities, she continued to repair her own body again—a cycle she repeated for nearly a month.
And even after that.
Even after her body was completely restored, instead of returning to her original unit, Sumire continued living in the abandoned manufactory.
She had no particular sense of what she should do next.
Because she had obtained the next life she had wished for.
This time, all she could do was live freely, doing what she loved.
And what she loved was 'manufacturing.'
In that sense, Krädel's manufactory was almost like paradise.
Trash Island nearby was littered with materials for making parts, and the black market where she could sell her finished parts was also located not far from Krädel.
Above all, the Commanders assigned to Krädel had never shown any interest in the facility called the manufactory.
More importantly, the entire research wing had been sealed off and was completely deserted.
There weren't even any soldiers on patrol duty.
Thanks to that, Sumire could comfortably craft parts during the day,
At night, she slipped out through the air vents to sell her homemade parts on the black market and support herself.
It had already been a full year of living like that.
Before she knew it, Sumire had even developed a sense of ownership over this space.
That was how she had carried on her happy life as a deserter—cleaning diligently even though it had nothing to do with manufacturing—until—
"I suddenly showed up, right? And so you hid in the cabinet for the time being?"
"Yeees..."
Sumire answered sheepishly, then dropped to her knees again.
And then she clung to my trouser leg and began to wail.
"I-I'm begging you, please...! Please don't report me...! If you report me, I'll be returned to my original unit and used by that Commander all over again...! I'd rather die than be used by that Commander...! If you're going to report me, just deactivate me right here instead...!"
What the hell...
I stared at Laika, wordlessly telling her to step up and do something about this.
But Laika already seemed to sympathize with the other side's circumstances.
Laika had been looking at Sumire like a cat lady gazing at a stray kitten, and now she pleaded with me instead.
"Commander, her situation is pitiful. Let's just let this slide. Yeah? Yeah?"
Hmm.
This was getting tricky.
......No, it was still too early to give up.
"Wait a second. She might just be making this whole story up."
As if clinging to my last hope, I contacted Alicia and asked her to verify Sumire's testimony.
In addition to that, I myself checked her personnel information based on Sumire's identification number and military serial number.
And so, to state the conclusion first: regrettably, Sumire's story appeared to be entirely true.
Her Commander did indeed have a prior record of causing a drunk driving accident and had a history of being disciplined for using violence against unit members.
The other parts of her testimony also matched the facts, at least as far as they could be verified.
Therefore, this one really had been abused by her Commander, and later had been outright discarded.
After barely reviving herself in Krädel's manufactory, she had ultimately ended up freeloading there.
Reporting Sumire for desertion would have been utterly unfair.
Strictly speaking, I didn't even think she qualified as a deserter in the first place.
But that was only from a standpoint of 'sympathizing' with her circumstances.
Regardless, since she had refused to return to her main unit, Sumire was legally a deserter.
Let's say we don't report that deserter and just let her go free.
If she lives on without getting caught, that would be a relief, but if she ever gets caught by the military police, we would clearly be implicated in abetting desertion as well.
......Nor could I just deactivate her because she'd asked me to.
My head was tangled with conflicting thoughts.
What was I supposed to do?
What would be the best choice?
What could I do that would maximize the benefit without leaving a bad taste in my mouth?
I must have spent several minutes agonizing over it.
Suddenly, an idea came to mind.
"You. Why don't you just work here?"