Can't Find the Target
The concept of perfection does not exist in this world.
Though technology and evolution have always pressed forward in pursuit of it, perfection remains something one can only approach — never truly reach.
And with that in mind…
The Abysses' anti-air fire was formidable, no question. But I was certain even that had a weakness, and I set about studying it.
Unlike ordinary anti-aircraft barrages, their accuracy was so precise it bordered on the unnatural. The fundamental reason was this: every projectile streaking toward an aircraft was itself a living miniature Abyss. Once launched from the bodies of the Middle-class Abysses that served as anti-air batteries, they generated their own thrust by expelling gas, hurtling toward their targets under their own power. Along the way, they adjusted their angle by flexing the wing-like — or fin-like — structures on their bodies, moving for all the world like guided missiles.
That was how the Abysses achieved their near-fraudulent anti-air hit rates — through these living guided rounds. And that was why the air force had always suffered catastrophic losses, pouring every ounce of effort into somehow outmaneuvering those organic projectiles.
Fly a little faster. Aim a little more precisely. Weave a little more erratically. Pilots and engineers trained and researched without end, desperate to evade the enemy's fire by any means available.
But even so…
Despite all that effort, with humanity's current technology, dodging Abyss anti-air fire that could climb all the way into the stratosphere and shoot down aircraft was no easy feat.
Once Hunters were integrated into the air force, casualty rates had at least been brought down to a barely tolerable level, and corresponding upgrades to aerial combat performance had chipped away at the shoot-down rate. But the losses remained staggering.
That was the air force's greatest dilemma — and the single biggest reason every deployment of air power had to be weighed with extreme caution.
Once you scrambled, you had to be prepared to lose more than half your birds.
Unmanned drones had at least solved the pilot problem, but the sheer drain on resources still left everyone involved grinding their teeth.
And it was while digging into that very problem — one I had taken a deep personal interest in — that I uncovered something critical.
The Abysses' movement patterns. The principles governing their behavior. And one fleeting detail I had caught in a split second of aerial combat footage.
From that, I had something worth testing.
So when a suitable opportunity presented itself, I decided to put it to the trial of actual combat.
Countless miniature Abysses streaked toward the fighter.
Living rounds with the power, speed, and precision to bring down even aircraft cruising through the stratosphere locked onto the target before their eyes and surged forward.
A target moving at Mach speeds.
But the Abysses were every bit as fast — and once the distance closed, they actually outpaced that hurtling hunk of metal, driving their bodies in for the kill.
And then—
"Kiririk?"
A strange cry of confusion rose from the miniature Abysses.
They could not comprehend what had just happened in front of them.
Mere moments ago, the fighter had been clearly, unmistakably visible in their field of view. But now, in this instant, that massive metal bulk had vanished as if it had simply ceased to exist. They could not find it anywhere.
There had been no sign of a course change. No acceleration, either. No matter how fast something moved, it should have been impossible to completely shake free of creatures flying at Mach speeds.
And yet the target had disappeared from their sight.
For living rounds that relied entirely on vision for every sense they possessed, an object vanishing from view meant it had been erased from the world entirely.
And for miniature Abysses that, once locked on, simply charged on pure instinct — losing a target without a trace was more than enough to trigger a catastrophic mental error.
Worse still, they were already flying at Mach speeds.
The fate of countless supersonic rounds that had lost their target and fallen into chaos was all too predictable.
"Kieeeeeek!!!"
— KRASH-CRASH-CRACK!!!
Objects hurtling at tremendous velocity suddenly lost all sense of direction and went berserk. The inevitable result was collision with everything nearby. The miniature Abysses that had been living anti-air rounds thrashing through the sky like flies caught in a storm, slamming into each other, spinning wildly, until they finally lost thrust and began plummeting toward the ground.
And a moment later…
A fighter reappeared from somewhere, gliding serenely over the organic projectiles as they fell, thrust spent, in helpless freefall.
The miniature Abysses tumbling earthward met their end still wondering at a situation their instincts could never explain.
"C'est incroyable…"
Glass stared blankly at the scene unfolding before her eyes.
Even though she had executed it with her own hands, she could scarcely believe what she was seeing. Watching Abyss rounds that had been moments from shooting down the fighter suddenly wander, then fall away in pathetic freefall, she felt a deep, growing bewilderment.
And then, in her ear, came the voice of the man who could answer that bewilderment.
"Just as I expected."
"A… Aide! Wh-what on earth just happened? What I did just now was truly simple — the simplest thing imaginable. So how did the Abysses…?"
She was right. What she had done was nothing special — and at the same time, it was something almost never done in the middle of a dogfight.
In the instant before the Abyss rounds closed in, she had done one thing: engaged full reverse thrust — the same system used for landing — and slammed the aircraft's speed down hard.
In short, she had stomped the emergency brake on a car at full speed. Perfect stops were impossible in flight, but the sudden deceleration was close enough.
If a pilot had been aboard, the instantaneous g-force would have been brutal. But from the seat of an unmanned drone, it was little more than a mild strain on the airframe.
The result, however, had been far more dramatic than she could have imagined.
That absurdly simple maneuver had sent the Abysses reeling as if their systems had glitched — losing direction, falling into chaos, and plummeting from the sky. Watching anti-air fire once considered near-perfect collapse so completely left her thoroughly shaken.
And the man who had ordered it — Adjutant Lee Jinhyun — answered her confusion in a voice thick with quiet satisfaction.
"Once you understand the principle, it's quite simple. Glass — have you ever watched footage of skydiving?"
"Parachutisme, you mean? Yes, of course I've seen it, but what does that have to do with— ah!"
Something clicked behind her eyes. Jinhyun confirmed it in a clear, steady voice.
"Exactly. In those videos, the moment the parachute deploys, the person seems to vanish from the frame — as if they suddenly shot upward out of sight. In reality, they've simply slowed down. The camera just can't track such an abrupt change in speed. What just happened used that same principle, combined with a particular trait of the miniature Abysses."
Like a camera locked onto a skydiver within a narrow frame, the miniature Abysses fixed their visual angle on a fast-moving target and charged after it. But Jinhyun's characteristic powers of observation and analysis had uncovered a fatal flaw in that design.
Namely: when an object's speed dropped suddenly, they became almost incapable of tracking it.
Acceleration and course changes left enough of a temporal gap for them to follow. But the concept of matching a sudden hard brake simply did not exist for them. And given that they themselves were already operating in the Mach range, locking back onto a target that had abruptly slowed was all but impossible.
Once those fired rounds lost visual contact, they wandered without purpose — and in that fleeting instant, they squandered the chance to spend their lives efficiently, tumbling helplessly toward the earth.
"I still hadn't tested it in actual combat, so I couldn't be completely certain — but this is more than enough of a success. Thank you for your cooperation, Glass."
"Aide…"
At Jinhyun's words of gratitude, a beautiful, quiet smile touched Glass's lips.
And in that same moment, having confirmed yet another simple but lethal weakness in the Abysses, a deep smile of victory settled across Jinhyun's own.