Who Dares Touch My Woman
Hmm-hmm-hmm~ Hmm-hmm-hmm~
Even charging in alone as a two-person strike force, Calsira hummed a little tune without a trace of tension—all while weaving through the storm of intercept fire screaming toward them.
Tutatatatatatatata——!
As they closed on the land battleship, mechas scrambled from its hangars exactly as expected. The battleship itself, together with the artillery mechas perched on its hull—each fitted with continuous tracks—opened fire on Jincheon and Calsira.
Because straying into the friendly anti-air kill zone would make everything a nightmare, the enemy's scrambled reserve mecha units were pouring out lasers and railguns in a continuous barrage.
"Calsira, take the left."
"Yes~"
She answered in a voice so utterly free of tension it might as well have been a stroll through the park, then slid sideways, dancing around every shot that came for her.
Jincheon and Calsira moved almost the same way—feeling with their bodies where the enemy fire would come from, and dodging with the bare minimum of motion.
Pikiiing! Puh-oong!
And the shots they loosed mid-evasion struck true, punching through enemy mechas and tearing them apart.
"Jincheon, we're hitting somewhere else."
Heliane had judged that throwing more friendlies into Jincheon and Calsira's sector would only amount to clumsy half-help, so she chose another land battleship as her target.
"Okay. Don't push it—just hold them."
"Hmph. Just hold them? Don't make me laugh."
She answered his permission and his worry with a snort of contempt, then used the command authority she'd been given to peel off westward with roughly twenty mechas.
Not long after, Heliane's unit clashed with the enemy, and fierce lights began to bloom across the night sky.
The knights who had spent long years fighting on the ground put in a respectable showing of their own—but Heliane's Gareld stood out even among them, a cut above the rest.
First, clear the enemies in front of me.
The enemy was attacking from every direction except the east, but as a single pilot, all Jincheon could do was kill what was in front of him and free up the rest of the battlefield.
Leaving the fireworks of the night behind him, Jincheon zigzagged through the barrage that sought him out, slipping past every shot.
Puhwaaak!
Then missiles came screaming in from the rear of a land battleship that looked like an ordinary warship with a flat rectangular plate bolted on top. The targets were, of course, Jincheon and Calsira—and every gun that could bear piled on at the same time.
Piking! Pikiiing!
But Jincheon and Calsira shot the missiles down mid-evasion and kept driving toward the land battleship.
"I'm first!"
Jincheon's way of talking had rubbed off on her. Calsira surged ahead of him and dove at a mecha that had been hanging outside the battleship's firing lanes, waiting to intercept.
Kwajik!
She drove her lance straight through the cockpit of a mecha that tried to dodge, then used the limp wreck as a shield while thrusting her gatling shield out to the side and opening fire.
Kakakakakang! Kwa-kwang!
Judging that gatling-shield fire at medium range and beyond wouldn't drop enemy mechas cleanly, Calsira instead shredded the weapons they were holding, stripping them of their arms. One solid hit into a weapon's body was enough to ruin it as a tool of war.
Armed with the Night Package—identical to Jincheon's loadout except for the Anti-Ship Sword, chosen over the Sniper Package—Calsira systematically wrecked every enemy weapon that caught her eye.
"Now!"
"Support appreciated!"
The moment enemy mechas discarded their ruined weapons and a gap opened in the fire net, Jincheon seized it—raising his lance and charging like a lancer at full tilt.
Kwajijik!
One unlucky mecha that happened to drift into his charge line got skewered and became an unwilling shield.
Using the impaled mecha as cover, Jincheon zigzagged toward the land battleship—until a shell came in on a perfect bead. He kicked the wreck free of his lance and opened the distance.
Kwakwakwang!
One of the artillery mechas riding the battleship's deck had put a shell exactly where he was going to be.
Tch. So that one actually has some skill.
Tracking a zigzagging target that cleanly put him at least at semi-ace level.
Either way, the instant Jincheon stopped mid-flight, fire poured in from every direction. He dropped lower, kicked his thrusters, and spun in a wide circle to slip through the incoming storm.
Kang! Kigik! Tung!
Railgun rounds hammered and scraped across his armor in a wild spray—vibrations and noise he couldn't simply will away, not even him. Wrapping the entire mecha in protective Inner Qi would solve it, but then there would be no point fighting in a mecha at all. Spreading his sensory awareness alone was already cheat-tier; going further would mean rewriting the machine's performance itself.
Pikiiing! Piking!
Kwakwang! Kuuung!
Jincheon picked off the most annoying threats among his interceptors one by one. But he couldn't fight the way he usually did—constant high-mobility combat without a single pause.
Tch. Gravity. The recoil on every move is heavier.
This was his first real fight inside a gravity well. Every violent maneuver left the mecha a half-beat late from the rebound, and he bit his lip.
This is going to take some getting used to.
"Pfft."
The thought of needing to adapt made him laugh out loud before he could stop himself. A man who had lived his whole life on Earth, talking about adapting to gravity—it was just too funny. He'd had the same thought before, but with the problem actually slamming into him, it hit differently.
"I'm first!"
"Wha—!"
While Jincheon was still wrestling with gravity and couldn't put on his usual show, Calsira punched straight through the enemy fire net.
"Hatcha!"
With a Jincheon-style battle cry, she smashed one of the tracked artillery mechas with her lance-gun, then shredded the anti-air batteries with her gatling shield.
"Tch! Calsira! Catch!"
Determined to win this sector as fast as possible, Jincheon purged his Anti-Ship Sword. The locking clamps released; as the massive blade began to fall, he kicked the hilt and sent it spinning toward her.
"You can be the protagonist for today!"
Pikikikiking! Tukakakakakakang!
Then he opened up with lance-gun and gatling shield, spraying the reserves diving at him so the fire aimed at Calsira would thin as much as possible.
"I don't want your leftovers!"
She drifted a little off the land battleship, stowed both weapons on her back, and caught the Anti-Ship Sword in both hands.
The sight of her gripping that blade only made the mechas on the battleship's deck fire harder.
Huuuung! Kwaa—!
But Calsira had plenty of ground-combat experience. She zigzagged while angling her torso and legs to bleed off the recoil.
"Calsira! Here!"
Through his sensory awareness, Jincheon marked the battleship's CIC as the target and kept hammering enemy mechas with wild fire.
"Haaaaaat!"
Calsira poured everything into her engines and screamed toward the point he'd marked, then swung both arms in a great arc and tore the battleship's hull open with the Anti-Ship Sword.
Kwajijijik! Kwakwang!
The hull peeled apart under the blade. Two rail-cannon rounds punched into the wound and detonated inside.
Pajijik! Chijijik! Kwaaaaang!
Unlike a spaceborne warship, a land battleship apparently had a soft spot here—a massive secondary explosion ripped through it.
Deudeudeudeudeuk——!
"Kh!"
"Khh…!"
In space, an explosion's shock was a brief slap and done. On the ground, the blast's reach was far greater and lasted far longer. They'd already pulled back because the situation felt wrong—lucky for them. Any closer and they would have been swallowed whole.
Riding out the shockwave, Jincheon and Calsira turned to cut down as many demoralized, retreating enemies as they could.
"Kyaaak—!"
"Heliane!?"
"Unnie! What's wrong!"
The moment Heliane opened a channel and screamed, both their faces changed.
"Th-there's an enemy ace pilot! We're outnumbered— [Kwaang] Khh—!"
An ace had been waiting in her sector. And once Jincheon and Calsira destroyed the land battleship and shattered that whole formation, the pressure on Heliane only grew fiercer.
"What bastard dares lay a hand on Unnie!"
The easy, laughing brightness vanished from Calsira's voice, replaced by raw, unfiltered rage. Without waiting for an order, she swung toward Heliane and accelerated hard enough to crack a sonic boom.
"What bastard dares touch my woman!"
At the same instant, Jincheon ignited his engines into full burster mode, fury locked on the enemy ace who had put his woman in danger.
Kwaaaaaaa!!
A sonic boom even larger than Calsira's tore the air. They had started almost together—yet in a heartbeat the gap between them yawned wide.
"You stubborn little shit!"
Toten—undisputed top ace of the Galantid 4 defense force—swung his lance in irritation. Heliane's Gareld caught the blow on the crumpled shield mounted to one of her rear arms and was driven backward by the impact.
But the moment she flared that shield open, the twin 95mm railguns in her hands fired, forcing Toten to raise his own shield.
Flash!
"Ugh!"
A searing light burst from his shield. Heliane squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the main camera to drop into low-luminance mode. Only after the light that felt strong enough to burn through her eyelids finally died did she open them again—
Kakakakakakang!
"Kyaaugh!"
—just in time for an enemy railgun to hammer her flank. The brutal shock sent her scrambling backward to open distance. Numerically superior enemies had pounced on the opening.
Her original plan had been simple: overrun them with her own skill, then let the remaining twenty friendlies fall on the disordered enemy. But the direction she had chosen to attack just happened to hold the defense force's finest ace—Toten. Worse, he was piloting a Calsorn Empire mecha unearthed on his family's estate and passed down through generations, making him vastly stronger than ordinary knights.
To keep the situation from collapsing into chaos, the enemy had thrown thirty mechas—including Toten—at Heliane's group.
Faster and stronger than my Gareld! And we're outnumbered on top of it…!
If Jincheon's party's Garelds sat at mid B-class, Toten's machine was top-tier B-class. Same rank, same Calsorn Empire origin—but the gulf between a training frame upgraded into B-class and a purpose-built combat machine was impossible to miss.
The one mercy was that most of the pilots who had come with Toten seemed to be riding his coattails; aside from a few, their skill was only equal to Heliane's side, or a little below.
I have to hold this man here!
This was war. Allies died. Obsess over every friendly loss and you couldn't fight a war at all. But being too weak to do anything but get trampled by a superior enemy—that, she would never accept.
"Ah!?"
Even as mechas crumpled and died all around her, Heliane had clung to Toten with stubborn tenacity—and now color flooded her face. She had felt Jincheon and Calsira's presence. No radio call. They were so furious they hadn't even managed the basic judgment of announcing support over comms.
Tukakakakakakang! Pikiking!
Jincheon arrived first and opened fire to pull Heliane free. Those who had already spotted him on radar tried to evade—but he read the evasion and stitched several of them into explosions with sustained fire.
That accuracy made Toten turn his head, wondering who the hell was landing hits that clean.
"A red Gareld? Perfect timing! The rest of you, handle those others! The red Gareld is mine!"
"Yes, sir!"
He had seen footage of the red Gareld in action and felt his competitive blood rise. Toten answered with lance-gun fire and charged the red machine.
Incredible speed! But I can't let it fool me!
The closing velocity was monstrous, yet Toten was an ace—he didn't bite on the speed alone. He tracked the flight path and fired his lance-gun into the predicted line.
Pikiking! Huuung!
Even at a velocity that should have been uncontrollable, Jincheon predicted the attack and slipped it with a Z-pattern weave.
Thud. Thud.
He's the real thing! This one is real!
Not some fake ace riding pure machine performance—judgment and reaction speed of a genuine top-tier pilot. An ace only grew by hunting other aces.
Toten cut across Jincheon's path.
"I am To—"
"Out of my way!"
But Jincheon's eyes held only one thought: Heliane, fighting desperately in a Gareld already crumpled and half-wrecked. He had to reach her.
Huuung!
"What!? You rude Terran who doesn't even know chivalry!"
Toten flared with anger as Jincheon slipped past him in an instant. Then he spotted the blue-violet Gareld coming in behind, Anti-Ship Sword in hand, and decided to deal with the enemy in front of him first.
I can't move with an enemy on my tail.
He raised his lance and barred the path of the blue-violet Gareld carrying the Anti-Ship Sword.
"Get lost! I don't have time to play with you!"
"Do you even know who I am?!"
Hearing a woman's voice over open channel from the blue-violet Gareld's pilot, Toten leveled his lance and fired lasers.
Piking! Pikikiking! Pajijik!
Calsira was flying fast—not Jincheon's speed, but fast enough. She batted the lasers aimed along her evasion path aside with the Anti-Ship Sword's blade, canceling them out.
"Ugh!?"
Toten flinched for a heartbeat—then smiled.
"You're excellent too! If I have to deal with you anyway, better to finish it early!"
He raised shield and lance for his specialty—close combat—and charged straight in.
Puhwaaaak!
In a flash he hurled the lance; thrusters at its tip ignited and it rocketed toward Calsira. In the same motion he drew a laser sword and followed right behind it—an open, blatant plan to punish whatever opening her reaction created.
But Toten's timing was terrible.
Right now, every cell in her body was locked on killing the enemy. Her face had become the face of the Horned Empress.
Kwakwang!
With focus that rivaled Jincheon's, she intercepted the Mach-speed lance without any targeting-system assist—rail cannon fire, pure instinct.
"Smoke—!"
The lance detonated into a sudden wall of smoke. Toten snapped upward and checked below.
Beep-beep-beep-beep!!
"Above?"
The warning lights screamed that the enemy was overhead. He jerked his gaze up.
There she was—Calsira's machine, already above him, having predicted his move and climbed the instant her shot hit.
Her left arm released the Anti-Ship Sword and aimed downward.
Cheolkeong! Pagagagagak!
The shotgun rounds built into her left arm turned the arm and shoulder holding his shield into a sieve of holes.
"…The universe is a wide place."
She had read every option he had and taken one step beyond them. Toten felt, anew, just how vast the universe was—and closed his eyes.
Kwajajajajak!
The Anti-Ship Sword split his machine clean down the middle. The two halves of the mecha fell, then exploded on the way down.
"Unnie! Wait for me!"
Without a spare thought for who she had just killed—only the need to reach Heliane—Calsira righted her machine and pushed her engines to absolute maximum.