Chapter 369: Blazing Flames of the Battlefield[R-18] (86)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 369: Blazing Flames of the Battlefield[R-18] (86)
I returned to the colony where Adele was.
But strangely, the main Arsenos fleet was nowhere to be seen.
‘Did they withdraw?’
Without a word, I took a transport pod straight to the operations headquarters where Adele was.
I walked down the corridor and opened the door to the office where Adele was staying.
She was standing by the window. Her neatly tied hair shone translucently in the sunlight streaming through the glass.
“Adele.”
“You’re here.”
I got straight to the point.
“The main Arsenos fleet. I heard they were headed this way, but I don’t see them.”
“They stayed for about a day and then left.”
“They brought a force that large and left without doing anything?”
“Yes. But… the Supreme Chairman was aboard personally. And…”
At that moment, Adele’s expression became vaguely clouded. She hesitated, as if unsure whether to speak, then said in a quiet voice,
“…He proposed to me.”
“He proposed?”
“Yes…”
Adele looked away, flustered. Her eyes showed she was worried I might have a strong reaction.
“That old man, the Supreme Chairman of Arsenos?”
When I looked up and asked, Adele quietly nodded.
“He said he wanted peace with us, not war. And as the price for that peace… he proposed a political marriage.”
My brow furrowed on its own.
“So what did you do?”
“I rejected him firmly before he could even finish.”
I let out a short breath and touched my forehead.
“…Don’t tell me he brought all those troops here just to propose… and then simply turned back?”
“Yes. And this is just my opinion, but their priority right now is likely finishing off the Federation. They probably decided they couldn’t afford to waste their forces here.”
I nodded silently.
“It seems… the leader of Arsenos is more unhinged than I thought.”
At my words, Adele smiled slightly and looked at me.
“…Were you upset?”
I quietly took a step toward Adele. Then I said firmly,
“Of course. The very fact that some other bastard is eyeing my woman pisses me off.”
Hearing that, the corners of Adele’s lips slowly curved upward.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this angry, darling.”
She slowly leaned her shoulder against me and whispered softly,
“For some reason… it feels nice.”
I pulled Adele’s waist firmly toward me.
“I have no interest in sharing my woman with another man.”
With those words, I looked her straight in the eyes.
“So if something like this ever happens again, do what you did this time. Reject them. Firmly.”
“Of course. I’m… your woman, darling.”
With my arm around Adele’s waist, I muttered coldly,
“Anyway… I’ll have to make sure that old man can never utter the word ‘proposal’ again.”
*
After that, time passed, and the war took a sharp turn.
Sheryl’s group, which had headed to Earth, helped Walter Eisenhardt lead a successful coup d'état within the Federation.
The existing Federation command was ousted, and the Federation Council was dissolved. The former Federation Chairman was arrested and immediately sent to a court-martial.
And that authority was naturally transferred to Walter Eisenhardt.
The ground defense system was swiftly reorganized. The chaos was great, but it was brought under control just as quickly.
But in the meantime, blood was still being shed on another front.
The Arsenos military had captured the Federation’s key orbital bases and was in a direct standoff at the border with Earth’s orbital command.
Small skirmishes repeated, and the damage was snowballing.
Walter tried to avoid an all-out war.
Expanding the front lines again would mean sending the civilians of the Earth Sphere to their deaths once more.
He tried to find a diplomatic solution until the very end, but none of the conditions proposed by Arsenos were acceptable.
In the end, war was once again becoming a reality.
And in the midst of it all, a new piece of information came our way.
Leon Risensia. It was a crucial clue about him.
According to information provided by the Federation, the last vessel Leon boarded was an experimental mothership built with technology he himself had provided.
It was now captured by Arsenos, but there was a video transmitted to Federation headquarters just before an escape from that mothership.
“This man came out of the room where Leon Risensia was staying.”
The lights in the conference room dimmed, and the screen lit up.
In the video, a man walks down a corridor under the heavy guard of soldiers in black military uniforms.
Just as he walked into the hangar bay where an escape craft was waiting, his face brushed past the front of the camera.
“Aaron Blake?!”
Three people in the conference room shot up from their seats at the same time.
It was Oh Hyun, Mason, and Lisa.
“Do you know him?”
Mason answered, gritting his teeth.
“…Of course we do. That bastard was the former captain of the Equinox and a lieutenant colonel in the Arsenos military.”
Lisa stared at the screen as if to burn a hole through it and muttered,
“But why… why is that son of a bitch coming out of a Federation mothership? And from Leon Risensia’s room, of all places…”
When Lisa finished muttering, the air in the conference room had grown completely cold.
Leon Risensia had disappeared, and in his place was a man of unknown identity.
That could only mean one thing.
“…I believe there’s a high probability that man was impersonating Leon Risensia.”
The one who spoke up quietly from her seat was Elena.
All eyes turned to her.
“If that’s the case, it would mean that man was also at the mansion. And… it’s possible he had some kind of relationship with Leon Risensia.”
Mason gritted his teeth.
“Tsk… That bastard, I had a bad feeling about him from the moment I first saw him… I can’t believe it was true. Dammit.”
I looked at the man on the screen and said,
“Right now, neither Arsenos nor the Federation is important.”
At my words, everyone’s gaze turned to me.
“In my opinion… figuring out that man’s objective is the top priority.”
I stared intently at the front view of Aaron Blake’s face on the screen and muttered to myself,
‘In the usual clichés… a guy like that is almost always the mastermind.’
“In that case… the conclusion is that finding out that man’s objective is our priority.”
Adele said, summarizing, and the people in the conference room nodded in agreement.
“I’ll investigate him myself.”
At that, Lisa frowned and asked,
“If you leave, what about the front lines? We could clash with Arsenos at any moment.”
I quietly raised a hand, cutting her off.
“It’ll be fine even if I’m gone.”
I continued quietly,
“Besides, your new units are complete. And the Colonel can more than fill my role.”
Just then, Sheryl spoke up quietly.
“If someone has to take on the investigation, I believe the Lieutenant is the right person for the job.”
Everyone nodded at her words. Adele added a final, concluding remark.
“In that case… we’ll leave the pursuit of Aaron Blake to you, darling.”
With Adele’s words, the meeting came to a close, and we began to quickly gather information on Aaron Blake.
The mercenary and pirate networks Brol knew. The secret intelligence network Lillian personally managed. And even the intelligence networks of the Federation and the allied neutral nations, mobilized by Walter Eisenhardt.
Nearly every available intelligence network was mobilized to track the traces of one man.
Information on Aaron Blake began to pile up quickly.
I sat in Adele’s office, reading through the organized reports one page at a time.
“This is data from hacking the Arsenos military’s internal network. But there’s something strange. Everything was locked under a classification that only the Chairman could access. So… we couldn’t get the core information.”
“For a mere lieutenant colonel to have that level of security clearance… sounds like he has some connection to the Chairman.”
“I think so too. Could he be a spy working directly for the Chairman?”
“That’s possible. But… I think it could be more than that.”
I paused as I was turning a page.
“Interesting.”
Adele shifted her gaze.
“Is something wrong?”
“It seems the pirates and mercenaries do a better job than the official intelligence networks.”
That page didn’t contain Aaron Blake’s identity, but it did record an unexpected clue.
『Unidentified ship sighted near Redevelopment Planet X-197, closed off 29 years ago. Ship presumed to be the Equinox. Planet was ruined by a collapse accident at the time. Government covered up the incident.』
“A ship presumed to be the Equinox was sighted on a planet that was completely sealed off due to a collapse accident.”
I muttered nonchalantly, my eyes fixed on the document.
According to Lisa and the others, the last captain of the Equinox was Aaron Blake, and the information written here states he was declared missing in action during a mission at Calliope Station.
Adele, who was standing beside me, spoke.
“Darling. Are you going to pursue him right away?”
“I have to.”
I closed the document and stood up.
“X-197. How long will it take to get there from here?”
Adele answered immediately.
“By standard routes, it takes about three days.”
“Not as far as I thought. Prepare my unit and the fastest transport ship you have.”
“Yes. I’ll contact them to prepare it immediately.”
A short while later, word came that the preparations were complete. I headed to the hangar without delay.
“Departure preparations complete. Beginning countdown for orbital departure.”
The helmsman’s voice came over the comms. I leaned back in my chair without a word.
“Estimated time of arrival at X-197: 2 days, 16 hours. Entering express route.”
*
Aaron Blake walked slowly through the collapsed structures.
Ruins. A dead city. And a land to which no one would ever return.
He stopped atop the debris and quietly brushed the dirt from an old metal plate.
Beneath the rusted and time-worn surface, small, sharp names were revealed.
Lise Blake & Ian Blake
The surface was already corroded, and the traces of someone having roughly retraced the letters by hand remained.
He knelt, caressed the names with his fingertips, then stood up and began walking again.
He entered the wreckage of a concrete building that looked completely destroyed. Between the broken pillars was a section no one would ever notice. When he knocked on the floor, a buried metal plate responded, and a door opened.
He descended a deep staircase, passed through a corridor, and stepped through a metal door. The people waiting for him all looked up at once.
“Lord Aaron, you’ve returned.”
“Yes. What’s the current situation?”
A man answered his question immediately.
“Contrary to expectations, Arsenos is merely maintaining its standoff with the Federation forces. They’re dragging things out without a direct confrontation.”
Aaron nodded silently. He then shifted his gaze to the massive monitor in front of him.
The troop deployments of both the Federation and Arsenos, their movement routes, and even internal trends gathered from civilian intelligence networks—the entire flow of the battlefield was converging here, in his underground bunker.
“…Good.”
Aaron took a slow breath.
“While they are distracted, we will prepare for the end.”