Old Testament: The Book of Evaristo (5)

It was not out of a father's indulgence toward his adopted daughter that Han Seoyeon Margarita had been posted comparatively ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠far to the rear. On a battlefield so perverse that the slightest graze meant eternal death, hers was the only presence that made anything even resembling a fight possible; without her, they could not so much as have stood at the starting line. In chess, she was the king—and a king, naturally, is kept as deep in safety as one can manage, and guarded.

"Changing course!"

"Yes. Confirmed."

Of course, that safety was only ever relative. The instant word came that a muzzle had swung their way, the pilot shouted and threw the helicopter into a hard bank, and Seoyeon let go of her rifle and rolled, tucking herself swiftly into the shelter of the cabin.

The range to Evaristo was roughly eight hundred meters. Depending on the gun, that might or might not fall inside effective range, but maximum range covered it with room to spare. And effective range itself was usually defined as the distance at which a round could still punch through a helmet, which meant a hit well beyond it could kill you easily enough—and once one considered what sort of ammunition the enemy was using, the impact of the bullet itself hardly mattered at all.

At a distance where an ordinary round would have done no more than sting, being struck by these meant instant death. Every single shot had to be treated as a mortal threat.

The other side was hardly ignorant of that, and was watching just as keenly for any opening to put Seoyeon down. The two fighting out ahead were doing all they could to keep fire from swinging her way, so if she stayed wary of the occasional round that slipped through a gap, it was not an unmanageable problem.

She sat with her back against the bulkhead and drew a measured breath. Not for an instant could she afford to loosen her hold on the tension, and yet it felt easier than she had expected. If they could only keep on like this, it no longer seemed wholly without hope.

...Why?

And that, to her, was the greater question. To take the unexpected margin as a simple blessing left her with a feeling she could not shake—a sensation for which she had no better word than wrong. There was no particular evidence for it. Even so, her instincts kept shouting, over and over, that this was not a feeling she was permitted to ignore.

The one she faced was no ordinary foe. It was the Necromancer. A being more gifted than anyone Han Seoyeon had ever known at sowing malice into others—there was no world in which what it had prepared amounted to only this.

"...Of course it was never going to end with this."

At the report coming over the radio, Seoyeon let out a small sigh. News of an attacker no one had accounted for did not rattle her in the least; if anything, she felt—only a little—something like relief. Of course.

Having gone so far as to flay away every scrap of hide, it was never going to stop at manufacturing a handful of bullets. Had all of that flesh been spent on ammunition, Evaristo would already have been crushed flat beneath a mountain of magazines.

She leaned out toward the open door and looked in the direction of the report. Across the empty sky, something blacked out beneath a bar of censorship was racing in. The beat of its wings, up and down, called a bird to mind, but it was plainly far too large to be called one, and the silhouette had a ragged, tattered quality, like scraps of cloth.

Consider what that monstrosity must have been made from, and how grotesque and revolting its true shape would be, and the censorship was, if anything, a mercy.

"What are your orders, Lady Margarita?"

"I'll engage it myself. Helicopter heading—the nose... the flank. Bring it around until the approach is dead ahead of me, and hold."

She reached an arm into the cockpit, took up a radio that had been set there, switched it on, and clipped it to her belt. Then she slung the rifle she had been sniping with across her back, glanced around the cabin, and picked up an object laid to one side.

Beyond the doorway, a black shadow was winging toward them with a loathsome cry. In the meantime the helicopter had come about, so the thing beat those grotesque wings dead ahead of her.

Seoyeon dropped to one knee and settled what she had lifted lightly across her shoulder. It was a pitch-black cylinder with the sheen of metal—what people commonly call a recoilless rifle.

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The last of it she did not speak aloud. She only turned it over inwardly. They were already aboard a helicopter, so she judged the error would not be great—but even so, she meant to keep the weapon from wavering, however slightly.

She pulled the trigger, and with a thunderous report a silver round—no, at that size it demanded to be called a silver shell—blasted free.

Fired in a space this cramped, a weapon of that kind ought to have shredded its gunner in the backblast. Yet for some reason not so much as a tongue of flame stirred behind the tube. There was only a single gleam of golden light, carrying a strangely gentle warmth.

Hurled at tremendous speed, the silver shell smashed the head of the oncoming monstrous bird in a single blow. At the moment of impact a dull boom rolled and echoed.

But even with what she took for its head destroyed, the thing did not stop. It only kept beating those tattered wings and charging the helicopter. Worse, the gobbets of flesh that had sprayed in every direction took flight on their own, wheeling back through the sky to slap themselves into their former places. Seeing it, Seoyeon narrowed her eyes a fraction.

So this was not enough. The judgment made, she chose her next move quickly. There was no time to hesitate.

If that enormous bird struck them, the helicopter would not hold. She would be flung into the open air, and even she had no confidence she could survive a monstrous bird attacking her in midair without so much as a graze.

She pulled off her coat, knotted it into a deep pouch, and slung it across her body. Then she lifted the case of consecrated rounds, dumped them in with a rattle, and snatched up the sword that lay nearby.

Its crossguard stretched to an uncanny length, forming the shape of a cross—the foundational weapon of the Aosdung sword art.

"Maintain hover on autopilot, if you would."

"Autopilot hover. Confirm?"

"...Yes."

At the pilot's question, Seoyeon nodded, her voice sunk a little lower than before.

The helicopter did carry such a function, but whether to use it had never been hers to decide. Whether a situation called for automatic flight was, surely, a judgment better left to the expert.

Seoyeon had experience of her own in these matters, but set beside a pilot the Church had deliberately sought out, vetted, and assigned to her, it fell far ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠short. Both people in that cabin knew it.

And so the order Seoyeon had just given carried another command inside it.

"...Amen."

Bang! A moment later a gunshot rang from the cockpit, and the number of living souls aboard the helicopter became one.

Seoyeon only kept her eyes on the world outside and drew a long breath.

The monstrous bird came on hard, shedding not a bit of speed, as if it fully meant to ram them. She stared it down and raised her sword. Then she gave ground a few steps, sprinted forward again, and leapt with all her strength. A biting edge of wind cut in beneath her collar.

An instant later the bird struck the helicopter. Meeting a bulk nearly twice its size head-on, the aircraft crumpled at once and began to fall.

The bird was not unscathed either, and yet, just as when the silver shell had hit it, it regenerated almost immediately. Seoyeon put the weight of her leap behind the blade and drove it into the back that had already begun to knit itself together.

She had confirmed as much earlier: for all its power to regenerate, its durability did not seem exceptional. The edge sank in with a soft, yielding give.

But it could not end there. Clamping down on the hilt and the crossguard, she put strength into her arms and hauled her body up over the sword by main force, as if rising into a handstand.

She never once entertained the notion that wearing shoes would make it safe to simply mount the monster's back. Had the woman afflicted with an issue of blood not been saved precisely because the garment of Christ was made of his own flesh? And had the Ark of the Covenant not been given to the sons of Kohath alone to bear, because the remains rested within it? If a single thickness of cloth had been enough to render contact harmless, they might simply have sent in a company of Holy Knights in spacesuits from the very beginning.

And so, careful not to let any part of her touch the bird's body, Seoyeon climbed onto the sword where it stood planted. She drew herself up, crouched atop it, and raised the sniper rifle from her back once more.

"This is Margarita. Position adjusted. Requesting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠computation of the next point of aim."

"I would rather not hear that from someone who is, in real time, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠committing suicide dozens of times a second. So. Can you run the computation?"

The monstrous bird began to thrash in a frenzy. Even crouched in that cramped space, Seoyeon held her balance with unsettling ease as she spoke across the radio. Enduring the shaking herself was well within her. What crossed her mind, briefly, was whether computing a sniper's point of aim and calling the timing was truly possible in the middle of this.

"No—an AI Christian was only ever you to begin with, Abraham—"

"Right this second? What does that—ah. I see."

For an instant the exchange left her puzzled, and then she understood. Chimera-like though the bird was—something that belonged in a video game—it possessed at least a bare minimum of intelligence, and it rolled over in an attempt to shake her off.

Han Seoyeon, for her part, simply hooked her instep over the crossguard and hung there, dangling, as if it were nothing at all.

"Go to a park in Korea and you'll find plenty of elderly people doing it. I believe they usually call it hanging upside down, or something of that sort..."

Seoyeon let out a light breath, then went still, seating the butt of the rifle hard against her shoulder.

Above the Siachen Glacier, gunfire went on rolling through the empty air without cease.