Genius Versus Instinct
"I only allocate ten percent of my memory to male bastards! Consider it an honor to get even that much! It used to be two percent!"
That bullshit—! So it really is you, Jincheon!
The instant Poltein heard Jincheon's voice and that ridiculous nonsense, he knew with absolute certainty who he was dealing with.
"I'll take this guy. The rest of you, go!"
"Got it! Let's go, Calsira!"
"Yes, Sis!"
"Jincheon, you better win! Everyone—ignore the Nightmare of Galantid!"
Beatrix still carried a grudge against Poltein for dropping her onto a planet, but unlike before, she was no longer locked in stubborn pride. She led the Imperial Guard and fell in behind Heliane and Calsira.
Leaving Jincheon and Poltein behind, the reinforcements plunged into the deteriorating battle to turn the tide.
"You sure about letting those reinforcements go? Handing that many a free pass is going to bite you later."
"You want me to keep them close and split my focus with you right here? Do I look that stupid to you?"
Even after becoming a body that could pilot a mecha by thought alone, Poltein remembered fighting Jincheon to a near draw.
If I can just kill you, nothing else matters!
And for reasons he could no longer name, knighthood and loyalty had lost all value to him. He was obsessed solely with the fight against Jincheon.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!
Bits burst from Poltein's shoulders, spreading out and firing beams as they moved in erratic patterns.
"Hup!"
With a focused shout, Jincheon dropped back and blasted his thrusters, weaving clear of the bits' attacks.
Kiiiiiiiiing—!!
He followed up with head-vulcan fire for interception, but unlike before, Poltein's bits held a greater distance, slipping past the low-accuracy head vulcans with ease.
Pew-pew-ping!
They even counterattacked while dodging. Jincheon clicked his tongue at the bits' changed movement.
Their movement's different. Has he gotten used to the machine through real combat?
At first it had felt like the mecha's raw performance was dragging him around. Now it looked like he had thoroughly tamed that performance.
That was how he had earned the name Nightmare of Galantid.
Clunk!
In an instant, Grancion locked a laser-sword hilt at its hip, transformed into fighter form, and charged.
Jincheon dodged the bits while thrusting out his laser shotgun in a surprise shot—but Grancion blasted thrusters in a U-shaped evasive maneuver and seized position behind Jincheon's Gareld.
Fast!
He could move like that himself, but Grancion in fighter form was far more agile and faster than his Gareld.
Having taken the rear, Grancion transformed back into mecha form and swung the folding monomolecular blade attached to its right arm instead of the laser sword.
Crack-crack-crack!
The monomolecular blade and laser sword clashed, but the Calsorn-made monomolecular blade withstood the laser sword's extreme heat without a mark.
Even among Calsorn weapons, the tech packed into that one seemed superior.
Fwoooom!
Jincheon blasted his engines and barely slipped past the monomolecular blade—but the bits, already reading his expected path, fired lasers and wove a kill net.
"Hmph!"
He slammed Gareld to a hard stop and dodged the lasers, enduring pressure that would have cracked a normal pilot's ribs.
I'm tanking the G-forces with martial arts. But how the hell is that bastard handling that pressure?
Jincheon ground his teeth at Poltein while dodging the annoyingly swarming bits.
But Poltein was just as frustrated.
Damn it! No matter how I attack, nothing lands!
As pilots, their skill was nearly equal.
If he'd had something like Cabiod's Queyride System, he might have put Jincheon in real danger—but both had long since shown every card they held.
True, Jincheon had reinforcement parts attached, but they amounted to a close-range chainsaw and a short-to-mid-range shotgun.
To Poltein, who had fought Jincheon and survived, the attack patterns were no different from before.
Evasion is maxed out on both sides.
A shooting match at range has no answer.
Then—
Close combat. At maximum speed!
Crush the opponent in close combat at top speed.
Jincheon and Poltein reached the same conclusion and drew their close-combat weapons.
Here, Poltein tried to break Jincheon's concentration.
"Those women you care about will be calling for your help before long. Think you'll still be this relaxed when that happens?"
"Puhah!"
Jincheon burst out laughing at Poltein's trash talk.
"That was supposed to be my line. Before long your boss is going to be screaming about where the hell you are and what you're doing."
"You've never fought Count Mills Gaden. That man doesn't just understand the battlefield with his head—he feels the flow and takes it in."
There wasn't a shred of bluff in his words.
Everywhere he had fought under Mills Gaden's command, they had crushed the enemy with minimal losses. From the flagship's CIC far away, the man issued timely orders as if the flow of war itself lived inside his mind. In fact, most of the loyalist forces that had faced Mills Gaden's troops had been toyed with by that brain, floundered, and lost.
"Oh, is that so? Funny how things line up."
"…?"
"I know someone with that kind of ability too. We'll find out soon enough which one is better."
Jincheon swapped to Cabiod's head unit, glanced toward Calsira's mecha—now even better at locking onto enemies—and smiled.
"Enemy reinforcements have entered the battlefield."
"Friendly mecha units are being pushed back around the insertion zone."
Sherdon reacted as if it were only natural.
"Temporarily pull back friendlies near the enemy entry point. Companies DI-1 through 7, move to those points and hold until further orders."
While withdrawing part of his forces and ordering several companies to seal the critical points of the formation, Sherdon's mind raced. Inside his head, enemy movements and friendly responses unfolded in real time, and the status board added detail to that imagination.
The enemy will push with the temporary surge of force from the reinforcements. If we meet that force with force, our losses will climb.
"Enemy mecha units are pressing from all directions!"
They're all concentrating on the front to push us back. In that case—
"Company FO-4, flank around, hit that point a few times, then fall back to original position."
He had a company of speed-type mechas, generally positioned in the rear, loop around and strike the enemy. Naturally the enemy's attention would split, and from that he would raise ripples to drain their focus and strength, blunting their momentum. This was one of the groundwork steps for raising those ripples. Pilots of speed-type mechas would have excellent evasion, so there was little to worry about.
"Company FO-4—signals lost!"
"…What?"
But when that company came under attack and its signals vanished in an instant, Sherdon's face twisted, then smoothed out.
It would be nice if everything went as planned, but occasionally incompetents tripped him up like this. Yet the judgment he held of other people was what kept him coldly composed. As long as the underlings properly carried out his orders, that was enough. After all, no one could match the grand strategies and tactics living in his brain.
Expecting nothing, he felt no disappointment either. Sherdon began the foundational work of blunting the enemy's momentum by another method.
"Company GS-3 to—"
"Signals lost!"
"Company UR-4 to—"
"Signals lost!"
But each time, the only reply was the operator reporting that the company he had sent had been attacked and its signals extinguished. The problem was that beyond that, the overall battle situation barely changed.
Only the ones I send are being attacked.
Sherdon turned over who could be interfering with his tactics.
The Dowager Empress? No—she's called a great commander, but not to this degree.
Beatrix? If she had this level of judgment, she'd have had plenty of chances to show it already.
At first he thought of the sisters Eirin and Beatrix, but having confirmed their abilities through reports and footage, he judged this impossible for them.
"Send Company EH-3 to that point. Expect enemy attack—focus entirely on identifying the attackers. If no enemy response, strike the point."
Having once more committed a point strike to break the flow, Sherdon soon heard the operator's report.
"Report from Company EH-3! The Red Reaper's squad members are attacking! Data transmitting! Signals lost!"
The Red Reaper and his squad members Heliane and Calsira were reasonably well known. More precisely, they were known as side branches of the fame of Jincheon, who had become known as the Red Reaper.
Shortly after, the footage sent by EH-3's company commander transmitted to the flagship, and Sherdon—despite being in a position that required him to command—focused on the video.
The footage opened on countless lasers firing in chaos, explosions of friend and foe filling the screen like fireworks. Receiving the order, EH-3's company commander moved to the point Sherdon had designated, scanning the surroundings.
Then a thick mass of laser swept through the company's center, and one mecha exploded.
"Sniper!"
Naturally the company reacted and checked the direction the beam cannon had come from—but the second attack came from below.
Fwoooom—!
Heliane's Gareld, equipped with the Burserker Package, surged up swinging a high-output laser sword.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Heliane poured machine-gun fire while using the auxiliary boosters on the reinforcement parts to carve through the company members.
"Scatter for now! First platoon—!"
Boom!
"Commander!"
The moment the company commander tried to give orders, another sniper beam cannon shot from somewhere, punched through his mecha, and detonated it.
Heliane's Gareld cleaned up the company members, and sniper fire from somewhere rapidly destroyed the rest. They had regular-soldier-level skill and performed basic evasive maneuvers, but the sniper anticipated those movements and landed every shot without a single miss.
After that he sent several more companies, but each time the same pattern repeated: beam cannons firing, Heliane's heavily armed Gareld bursting out and tearing through the company.
No other enemy support. One charging unit, one sniping from range. Those two have been disrupting my plans?
There Sherdon's mind grew tangled.
Mere mercenaries? Side branches of the Red Reaper, at that?
A man who called himself one of the rare geniuses even by galactic standards did not want to admit that nameless mercenaries were stopping his plans.
No—I've been making my plans too simple until now.
Starting to craft more complex tactics, Sherdon's mind spun faster than usual as he watched the status board and issued orders.
Meanwhile, Calsira—who had swapped heads and now possessed sensors, lock-on, and assisted firing systems superior to Gareld's—
Again.
"Sis! Over there!"
"Got it! Cover fire!"
Every time Sherdon moved his forces, she instinctively felt danger and, together with Heliane, sabotaged his tactical objectives before they could be achieved.
Calsira, who had always been shoved into dangerous battlefields, could judge and feel the flow of battle by pure instinct. On top of that, learning martial arts had developed that sense even further, so that without being able to explain it rationally herself, she naturally caught enemy movements that would put allies in danger.
And Heliane followed those plans—dependent only on instinct and gut, which even Calsira herself couldn't explain—without a word of complaint. Sherdon's tactics kept being blocked by Calsira.
Sherdon Mills Gaden, the genius commander who had always won with rational, brilliant intellect.
He found himself face to face with a being who had reached the ultimate in a field completely opposite to his own—and stepped onto the testing ground of his own limits.