Drop Operation on Galantid 4
"Commence the drop operation! Watch for enemy anti-air fire!"
With her forces fully reorganized, Eirin's unit began the drop operation to seize Galantid 4.
Marquis Diherot's fleet advanced and engaged the enemy ships, and Eirin's unit seized that opening, swinging wide to the side and cutting around them.
An operator at the command post linked to Eirin's unit issued the warning and marked the projected impact zones of the enemy attack.
"All units, disperse!"
With no way of knowing who would be hit, Eirin gave the scatter order.
Twaaaaaah—
Moments later, a colossal laser lanced up from the surface toward space.
KWA-BOOM!
One unlucky cruiser and a destroyer caught in its path erupted in explosions and dissolved into cosmic debris.
"Once we're inside the gravity well, their resistance weakens! Dive as fast as you can!"
It was only because the ground forces had struck first that they had gotten off this lightly. Without that, the enemy military installations would have unleashed five or six consecutive volleys of anti-air fire just like this one.
The enemy fleet, pinned down by Marquis Diherot's ships, could do nothing but watch as Eirin's fleet began its descent.
Having taken only a single anti-air hit, Eirin's unit split into five prongs and fanned out toward their respective objectives.
"We're about to catch gravity!"
"All hands, brace for impact!"
Grrrrrrrrrr!
The moment they entered the atmosphere, a violent shaking began — something no one ever felt in the void of space. But the Rastold Silverion, a top-of-the-line battleship, dampened the turbulence so thoroughly that the impact barely registered.
Friction between the dense air of the mesosphere and the massive warship painted the hull a glowing red, yet the vibration was no worse than a 2.5-magnitude tremor. Everyone was already strapped in and locked down, so they punched into the stratosphere without serious trouble — but the faces of Eirin and the CIC crew remained tight.
"Mecha units, launch! Intercept the enemy missiles!"
The enemy's counterattack was far from over.
"All right — our turn!"
Waiting aboard the transport ship that clung to the Rastold Silverion like an accessory, Jincheon and his group cracked the hatches open and launched at Eirin's sortie order.
What set this sortie apart from the usual was that they were packing 95mm machine guns instead of lance guns — and that Heliane was piloting a four-armed Gareld rather than the Saisalas.
As the mechas spilled out of the Rastold and the transport, an operator broadcast a warning to every pilot.
Intercontinental ballistic missiles had existed even on twenty-first-century Earth. Naturally, this world had missiles far more advanced than those.
The rebels on the planet had fired anti-ship missiles, hoping to inflict at least some damage on the descending force.
Moments later, massive missiles came streaking in, trailing fire. Then their bodies split in half — lids peeling open — and swarms of guided submunitions erupted from inside.
Tukakakakakakakang!
No one needed an order. Machine guns opened up at once, throwing up curtains of fire to intercept the missiles.
"Hahahaha! Never thought I'd live to see the day I had to adapt to gravity!"
Facing his first real combat inside a gravity well, Jincheon couldn't stop laughing. He had spent his entire previous life under Earth's gravity — the idea that he would ever need to "adapt to gravity" had never once crossed his mind.
"It's a gravity-adaptation training program the enemy thoughtfully prepared for us! We ought to make full use of it!"
"You're having way too much fun."
"Jincheon, once we hit the ground, can we pretend we don't know you for a while?"
In a world where interplanetary travel was routine, never having been to space was the equivalent of living in some backwater village outside cell coverage in the twenty-first century. Watching Jincheon act like that exact kind of country bumpkin, Calsira was mortified enough to propose ignoring him for a stretch.
At first, the gravity forced him to abandon the shooting sense he had developed in space and find a new one. The two women already had ample combat experience in both space and ground warfare, so they adapted quickly — but Jincheon, with his characteristic speed of adjustment, locked onto the planet's gravity in moments and was back to landing shots at over ninety percent accuracy.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-BOOM!
While they were intercepting missiles pouring in from every direction alongside the Imperial Guard, they spotted a mecha unit flying toward them. Ground-combat mechas with booster packs bolted to their shoulders, by the look of it.
Tukakakakang!
The newcomers joined the friendly fire and helped shoot down the remaining missiles. Together, they intercepted every last one without taking damage.
"Tch. I was having a good time, and these bastards had to go and interrupt."
Most people in this situation would have been grateful for the help. To Jincheon, they were nothing more than traitors who had stolen his toys.
Shortly after, the newcomers established contact with the Rastold Silverion and began guiding them toward the military facility currently under allied occupation.
It was a military installation several hundred kilometers from an empty city that looked as though its civilians had already evacuated. Hangars and repair bays for mechas, launch facilities for sending warships into space, and vehicles bustling every which way were the first things that caught the eye.
"Heh heh. Look at them all scrambling around for the main character's entrance."
Jincheon snickered at the vehicles converging on the Rastold's landing zone. Having their transport take the space reserved for the Rastold would have been hilarious — but it was still too early to flaunt the true chain of command in public.
"Yes, ma'am. Understood."
Once the Rastold's operator assigned them a separate landing site, Jincheon's group peeled off and returned to the transport. The message was clear: no hangers-on would be allowed to crash the glorious reception reserved for the Imperial Guard and the Empress Dowager.
"Ugh. We worked hard too, you know."
Confirming that the fighting was over, Calsira climbed out of her Gareld the moment they were back aboard the transport and started grumbling.
"It's a noble society — appearances matter even more."
"I know that. But feeling that same filthy emotion I used to get in Zabalcan again is just irritating."
Calsira shot back at Heliane's principled answer with a sulky edge. The unpleasant memory had surfaced — of always having her cheers and honors stolen by her eldest sister because her own existence could never be revealed, of being forced to fade quietly into a corner where no one would notice her.
"Still, the military achievements we earned with our own hands will be evaluated fairly. Let's show them. Who the real protagonists of this relief force actually were."
"Yes!"
Jincheon took the transport's controls, smiling as he delivered the confident declaration. Calsira nodded in agreement. Heliane shared the same thought, so she gave Calsira a gentle pat on the head before they each headed to their stations.
"Whew. That's something else. A warship that practically sparkles silver-white."
"Is that His Majesty the Emperor's personal vessel, the Rastold Silverion? It looks like a work of art."
"I hear the Empress Dowager is using it temporarily for now."
The knights who had fought to clear the way for the allied drop, then returned, were watching the commanders greet Eirin's party. They couldn't stop gasping at the beauty of the Rastold Silverion.
You could look at crystal-clear photos and footage anytime you wanted — but seeing it with your own eyes was an entirely different experience from watching it on a screen.
"But why is the relief force just the Rastold Silverion alone? No matter how powerful it is, numbers still count for something, don't they?"
One knight tilted his head in puzzlement. The answer came from the type of person every group has — the information broker who always seemed to know things.
"I heard the Empress Dowager said that she and the mercenaries led by the Red Gareld would be enough as a single unit."
"The Red Gareld that supposedly tore through an enemy fleet by itself?"
"What? That was real?"
Some of the knights had written off the Red Gareld as something out of a wartime hero-maker — a fictional construct. A B-class mecha that, on pilot skill alone, had sunk two warships and strolled casually through an enemy fleet's anti-air net? Someone like that should have been famous long ago.
"Come on. The Empress Dowager's being reckless. Fighting on the ground is nothing like fighting in space."
"Still — claiming she can win this theater with that few people means she has the confidence to back it up, right?"
The knights were split between half-belief and skepticism: either the Empress Dowager didn't understand ground warfare, or the Red Gareld truly possessed one-man-army combat power that made such confidence possible.
Around the time Eirin disappeared with Beatrix and her officers to receive a situation briefing from the local commanders—
"That's him."
"That's the pilot of the Red Gareld?"
The knights chatting in the outdoor lounge spotted, through the window, a Terran, an Orobece, and a Zabalcan walking toward them with a guide. Jincheon's face had already been circulated to every military official in the Giranlek Empire, so the knights — all of them surgically enhanced — recognized the group even at a distance where someone with 20/20 vision would have been squinting.
The guide transmitted a map app showing the layout of the military facility and seemed to have been tasked with smoothly introducing them to the knights they would be working with. He approached the outdoor lounge. With only about thirty pilots on this side, and the planet still under enemy control, there was no need for a grand formal introduction.
"Hmph. Let's see what kind of guy he is."
A knight with a massive two-meter frame twisted his face into a mean-spirited expression.
"You picking a fight?"
"Relax. I'll just needle him a little."
"If you want to know what kind of person someone is, this is the simplest way."
"You sure this won't cause problems?"
"His nose is going to be sky-high. Better press it down now so things go smoother later."
"Yeah, yeah."
Soldiers who had ground it out in the field long before they became knights, they assumed Jincheon would be enormously arrogant and intended to put him in his place early. Otherwise he would treat them like subordinates from then on.
"These are the pilots stationed here. Their full profiles will be sent to your Bio Devices later, but for now, a brief introduction—"
The soldier serving as Jincheon's guide tried to arrange the meeting with the pilots, but the massive knight planted himself squarely in Jincheon's path. Still having time to spare, the guide tried to step politely around — only for the knight to shift and block them again.
Haa. A dominance game, is it?
The guide was a field-hardened infantryman himself, so he knew exactly what these men were thinking.
As Jincheon's group drew near, the knight looked down in silence and flexed his muscles. There was an Orobece woman and a Zabalcan woman behind Jincheon, but the knight paid them no attention — his glare was locked solely on Jincheon.
"Uh… excuse me…"
The guide tried to say something, but Jincheon's group did not stop. They kept walking straight forward.
The knight furrowed his brow and scowled at Jincheon—
Whoosh!
"Urgh?!"
Jincheon suddenly shot a leg out, hooked the man's heel, and yanked. The knight's balance shattered and he staggered.
Thud! KWAANG!
"Ghk!"
Jincheon shoved the body. The denser muscle from bio-enhancement made the man heavy enough that the impact rang out with a rough, solid crash.
Puhk!
"Guh—!"
Then Jincheon stepped up onto the fallen knight's stomach — a little harder than necessary.
"You son of a— khk!"
The knight tried to speak, but Jincheon hopped lightly and stomped his face flat, then walked right over him.
"……"
"……"
The knights all wore expressions of pure disbelief — and then Jincheon dragged over the outdoor lounge chair the big knight had been occupying and sat down in it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Beep—
"Hm?"
At the same moment, a notification arrived on every knight's Bio Device: a business card had been received.
1. Any fight with Jincheon must be conducted in mechas.
2. If Jincheon loses, he will serve the victor free of charge for ten years.
3. During free service, only Jincheon's abilities may be freely used.
4. If free service is abused to extort Jincheon's property, the contract is void.
5. Anyone who ignores the above warning and starts a fight outside of mechas will definitely regret it.
"What the hell is this…"
"I'm Jincheon. Questions welcome."
While everyone stared at the card's contents in blank astonishment, Jincheon smoothed his collar, crossed his legs, and looked out at them with an arrogant gleam in his eyes.