What Can You Do (4)
Two Titans launched at the same time. The communication link for launch confirmation was definitely there. It was just that no conversation passed between them.
“How insolent.”
Karina muttered under her breath.
The battlefield was the exact same outdoor sparring ground inside the academy where Deep and the princess had clashed during the entrance exam. It was a wilderness-like environment. Unlike the simulation against Aaron, the sand didn’t interfere with the sensors enough to cause real problems. The wind did kick up a bit of visual obstruction, though.
The two pilots began sprinting toward each other. Deep didn’t use any thrusters or hovering devices—he simply ran on two legs. Because he’d had to relocate the core in a hurry, the inertia control and impact dampening systems weren’t fully calibrated. Meanwhile, Karina Luna advanced by firing wires at the rocks scattered across the wasteland. The Luna family’s custom machine was a high-mobility model. It even used an original frame. Reverse-jointed legs, twin oversized sensors mounted on the head to detect enemies in desert and wilderness conditions, and a movement style that relied on bouncing around with wire anchors. Its overall size was smaller than a typical high-mobility Titan. In a word, it looked like a rabbit.
Karina’s White Bunny was a Titan that pushed the mobility of the standard Luna family machine even further. Fuel capacity, generator efficiency, center of gravity—everything had been dramatically optimized. The weight had increased, but in exchange it could sustain longer, faster maneuvers. The engineering and calculations behind it existed on an entirely different level from Deep’s clumsy, makeshift Titan customization.
Karina’s operator alerted her to the enemy contact. White Bunny used its wires to seize a high-altitude position. Deep’s Titan remained on the ground. At the same time, Deep’s machine turned its head in the exact opposite direction of White Bunny. It meant the enemy hadn’t been detected yet.
At that moment, Bunny leaped toward the Titan. A high-altitude diving ambush that would be impossible to imagine with meager combat experience. There was no way that lowly commoner could respond to it.
“What?”
It shouldn’t have happened. Deep’s Titan suddenly leaped backward. Its head was still facing away from White Bunny. Even after detecting her, it had deliberately pretended not to notice.
“How dare you?”
She couldn’t allow it. Even if the opponent wanted to dodge, she had to hammer in the fact that dodging was absolutely impossible.
The wire fired from the left hand embedded itself beneath Deep’s Titan. In an instant White Bunny’s body accelerated, orbiting around the enemy machine. If you couldn’t overcome the inertial load transmitted directly into the cockpit, you had no business piloting a high-mobility Titan in the first place.
“With reflexes that sluggish, once someone gets behind you it’s over.”
The Titan belatedly rose into the air. It was probably trying to create distance with hovering, but it was already too late. Escape was impossible.
“Just get crushed.”
White Bunny’s right elbow ignited. The machine, now accelerating even harder, charged straight at its target. The pile bunker mounted on its forearm loaded with a heavy clack.
The moment it drew close, Karina’s eyes flew wide open.
“A high-mobility Titan…? No?”
White Bunny’s one weakness was its smaller stature compared to other Titans, which made it difficult to visually identify enemies. That problem was even worse in a sand-swept wilderness. Similar streamlined frame. Similar black coloring. Similar silhouette—but that machine wasn’t high-mobility. It was a medium-heavy armor type. It looked completely different from the start.
No.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Even if it was a medium-heavy armor Titan, the rear armor was weaker than the frontal plating. One clean stab with the pile bunker would end it instantly. Hovering was actually a fatal mistake. Moving in that state might be possible, but turning its back should have been impossible.
It should have been.
“What the—”
At the same time as the hover, Deep’s Titan spun backward.
Titans that weren’t high-mobility models couldn’t turn quickly from front to back. The problem was even worse for medium-heavy armor or bombardment types. That was why a specific technique existed.
While hovering, you extended both legs in opposite directions and fired the side thrusters. Then you cut the hover and landed, executing an exact half-rotation. It was dozens of times faster than trying to turn using only the legs or waist. It was an essential technique if you wanted to pilot a sluggish machine.
In the game, at least.
Moving both feet in different directions while the hover thrusters were active? The sync between the two outputs could break, and instead of front-to-back you might flip upside down.
“Ahaha! Otakus really do love this kind of crazy stunt!”
There was only one reason it could be done.
“Thanks, Ailee!”
“No way, Deep’s the one who’s seriously amazing!”
I trusted Ailee’s control. And I believed that somehow, by sheer luck, I could pull it off. I never thought about it logically. Every logical thought only led to the conclusion that I couldn’t do it, so I stopped thinking and simply acted. Beast behavior. Let’s do beast behavior. I am the heart of a wild animal.
The moment I finished the spin, I thrust my right arm forward. Because the shield was mounted on my right arm.
“Pile bunker.”
The weapon Karina’s Titan was extending was indeed a pile bunker—a weapon that fired a massive iron stake to pierce the opponent in a single blow. Similar to a rock drill. I had used them heavily back when I piloted high-mobility Titans. Close in instantly, get behind them, and stab. After all, even a Titan would die to one good thrust.
Ailee shouted with a laugh.
“How did you know? It really is a pile bunker!”
“Revan told me.”
The shield on my right arm belonged to Revan. It was small. It had been a folding shield from the start. When deployed, it expanded both upward and downward to grow larger. Normally I should have unfolded it the moment I faced the enemy, but I had held it back because I was certain she would use a pile bunker.
The equipment attached to both Titans’ forearms flew toward each other.
Clang!
The shield slammed into White Bunny’s wrist as the pile bunker struck the shield’s surface.
“Hit.”
“Hit!”
Clank!
The shield expanded. The launched shield segments scraped between Bunny’s forearm and the pile bunker, instantly separating them.
Clang!
The pile bunker floating in midair fired its stake and flew backward. White Bunny’s head tracked the weapon.
Well, what are you going to do by staring at it like that?
What can you do?
With a grinding screech, White Bunny leaped backward. Its bouncing movements were impossibly fast. It was clearly using the wires to assist its motion. At that reaction speed, it was impossible to respond properly. If you didn’t know what was coming—
“Just like Revan said, she really does use wires, huh?”
“I have no idea how he knows all this.”
The source of the information didn’t matter. Only the fact that it was true mattered. Once you knew what device the enemy was using, all that remained was prediction. And predicting movement fell squarely in the realm of spatial awareness.
“She’s circling!”
Ratatatatata!
White Bunny sprayed bullets in a barrage while orbiting around me. Most of the shots slammed into the shield. Even the ones that didn’t were easily absorbed by the frontal armor.
Klang!
The empty magazine flew straight at me. I swatted it away with my arm. More important than the suppressing fire was the fact that White Bunny had rolled across the ground once instead of reloading.
“She’s coming again.”
“W-when?”
“Now!”
The basic principle for winning this fight was to move faster than the opponent, and to move first. The enemy still thought of me as a pilot who barely knew how to control a Titan. Thanks to my speed-reading specialty, she had no idea I had read the piloting manual more than ten times. She assumed I moved while looking through the main camera. She didn’t know I could detect movement outside my field of view using spatial awareness. She thought I wouldn’t realize the pile bunker that had fallen to the ground had disappeared. She didn’t know I had already accounted for everything and could respond accordingly.
“Revan, sorry. I’m going to burn through your shield a little.”
This was ten minutes after the battle had begun.
Deep’s Titan thrust its right arm forward. The folding shield deployed once more, expanding until it was large enough to cover the Titan’s entire body. At the same time, heavy thumping gunshots rang out. Sand exploded beneath Deep’s Titan like a bursting cloud, completely obscuring the view. Not a single round had struck White Bunny directly. In fact, the muzzle flash hadn’t even been visible. He had fired at the ground, not at White Bunny. The plan was clearly to hide behind the shield, blind the opponent with sand, and then attack.
Karina’s assessment was simple.
“An outdated tactic.”
She would use that very method against him.
So far, the only counterattack he had managed was the accidental strike that knocked the pile bunker from White Bunny’s forearm. The gun in his hand had only been fired at the ground. It was proof that, just as she had initially thought, he was nothing more than a pilot who didn’t even know how to fight properly.
She fired a wire from her left arm to catch the shield. Using the instant acceleration, she would orbit around the enemy Titan and collapse his center of gravity, then yank on the wire to accelerate and drive the pile bunker through him.
The moment she began accelerating, the shield—pulled by the wire—came flying straight at her.
“Huh?”
He let go of the shield?
Clang!
The flying shield slammed directly into White Bunny. The unbalanced machine tumbled across the ground before planting its hands and stopping.
It had been bothering her for a while now.
“Why? Just why? How?”
Why was he so experienced? No—she had to consider the possibility that dropping the shield had been a mistake.
Karina moved her Titan, lifting its head. The enemy machine was closing in with hovering acceleration. That would have been impossible unless it had planned to accelerate from the very beginning. But even then, the sandstorm kicked up by the hover should have given it away. A gunshot. He had used the gun as a feint. Instead of hovering, he had scattered the sand with gunfire to blind her.
Boom!
The Titan’s hand seized White Bunny’s core section. The inertia sent White Bunny’s frame rolling backward across the ground.
“Not yet!”
If she didn’t control it properly, the heavy Titan could end up pinning White Bunny beneath it. If she used that opening to drive the pile bunker in—
The moment she thought that, the enemy Titan’s thrusters erupted with flame. It wasn’t some clumsy automatic adjustment by the AI. The pilot was manually compensating for the inertia in real time. Just like the princess had done.
White Bunny was driven into the sand. Its left arm was crushed beneath a massive foot. The pile bunker remounted on its right arm was pierced by a standard-issue greatsword. The core was seized.
Amid the swirling sand, only the crackling sound of close-range communication echoed in her ears.
“If we keep going… if we do any more than this… it’ll cause problems for the joint training.”
As if the reason he hadn’t fired a single bullet was to avoid damaging Karina’s Titan. His tone sounded like he had been holding back the entire time.