Solo Charge Into the Enemy Fleet
"This isn't what we talked about!"
Heliane stared in dismay at enemy forces twice their own.
"So that's it. The surge in killing intent was because they called for reinforcements."
Jincheon congratulated himself that, when it came to sensing killing intent, his instincts had never once been wrong —
"This is hardly the time to be so relaxed!"
Heliane shot back, looking at him as if he had lost his mind.
"Heh. This is about the right level to make it fun. Honestly, a one-to-one ratio would've been a war we couldn't lose — boring as hell."
"Right? At this level, we just need to focus a bit harder."
"Hahahaha! Spoken like a true veteran!"
"……."
Faced with Jincheon's anticipation and Calsira's brazen confidence, Heliane was left speechless.
"Don't worry, sis. If things get bad, we can always switch."
"I'm not worried about our side. If the pirates set us up as sacrificial lambs and run without a word, we're finished."
Jincheon was a monster who displayed absurd abilities. Calsira was an ace who had carved her way through brutal battlefields on talent alone. Heliane herself was a veteran who had fought in major engagements even before joining the resistance, and had piled up countless experiences as a resistance fighter since.
The problem was their allied pirates. If those cowards got scared, planted them as bait without a word, and fled, sheer numbers would crush them. Even a regular army employer would have been cause for concern — pirates made it infinitely worse.
"We've got Gebel on our side, so that won't be a problem."
"Why's that?"
"Because that guy knows when his own life is on the line. The pirate boss Jotala seems to trust Gebel quite a bit, so it doesn't matter."
Jincheon turned his gaze out the window.
"Besides, this place is packed with defensive installations — we've got the defensive advantage locked down. If they abandon that and run, the Jotala Family is finished one way or another."
In war, a soldier's skill mattered — but so did seizing geographic advantage.
Before long, the allied fleet's main cannons fired, thick laser beams lancing out into the void. The enemy fleet answered with an even denser barrage; the beams either skimmed past ships already in evasive maneuvers or vanished against their shields. Both sides spent the opening exchange dodging and tanking hits on their shields, and the first artillery duel ended without major damage.
"Alright. We've confirmed the enemy's scale — everyone, mount up."
"I'll guard the ship as planned."
"Haa… I'm nervous, but with Gareld's performance…"
Confirming the situation, the three of them boarded their units and launched from the ship.
"Ohh. Ohhhhhh!"
In sci-fi anime, the start of a war always came with lasers streaking back and forth across the screen. Seeing that same spectacle from a pilot's cockpit, Jincheon couldn't help the awed exclamation that slipped out — and a thrilled smile spread across his face all over again.
Enemy mechas are launching too. For now, let's link up with our allies and—
"Hwahahahahaha! GOGOGO!"
Heliane had suggested advancing together with the allied pirates — but the moment mecha combat began, Jincheon's tension spiked. With an excited laugh he slammed the thrusters.
KRAAAAA—!
The boosters along Gareld's spine flared with violent light, and Jincheon's machine shot away into the distance.
"Haa."
Heliane knew her own limits well enough not to chase him. She matched speed with the other pirates and moved to join the battle.
Meanwhile, on the Confedon–Crymal coalition side, they spotted the lone Gareld that had broken formation.
"So that's the Gareld that killed Jezer? Interesting."
The commander of Crymal's 26th Squad smiled at the sight of a Gareld that had ignored formation and charged out alone. Garelds carried no personal markings or emblems, making them hard to tell apart — but when one put on a high-speed display this brazen, there was no mistaking it. According to the intel the surviving cruiser had brought back, the Gareld that killed Jezer had also fought with high-speed maneuver combat.
"The 26th Squad will take him down! Move out!"
The 26th Squad commander declared the kill over allied frequencies, and the three mechas under his command — a squad typically ran three to five units — broke formation and shot after him. No one else followed. Tearing the entire line apart to swarm a single mecha would have been absurd.
"Let's see what you've got! Fire!"
At the commander's order, his trailing subordinates opened up with laser rifles. Beams of light streaked toward Gareld.
Fwooom!
Jincheon vented thrusters, rocking Gareld up and down in a rolling evasion that slipped every beam.
"Fast, I'll give you that! But I expected as much!"
The reason the commander had come out so confidently was that his squad had been assembled from the start specifically to handle the Gareld that killed Jezer — which also meant they were a squad built to handle Jezer himself. Unfazed by the casual rifle evasion, the 26th Squad commander and his men drew bazookas.
Psshhht!
Dangerous!
Four mechas fired their bazookas in a curtain of shells. Sensing the threat, Jincheon drew a 95mm machine gun in one hand and a laser rifle in the other.
PKEEEENG! TUKAKAKAKANG!
Bracing the stocks against both hips to kill the recoil, he shot the two shells dead ahead out of the air. In the same instant he slammed the thrusters even harder —
TUHWaaak!
— and the bazookas on either flank detonated, spraying their internal submunitions outward like shotgun pellets. The plan to box him in with scatter-bazooka fire nets evaporated into nothing.
Watching Jincheon slip the net so cleanly, the 26th Squad commander screamed.
"What the fuck is that guy?!"
Intercepting shells from a hip-fire stance — with two completely different weapons at once? What kind of targeting system was that thing running?!
"Scatter!"
PKEEEENG! KWAANG!
He barked the disperse order in a panic, but before the word even finished a laser beam punched through the mecha beside him and blew it apart.
"Scatter! Scatter!"
The 26th Squad commander threw himself into evasive maneuvers and repeated the order.
Puh-ung!
Another subordinate, mid-scatter and mid-evasion, went up in a fireball.
Jezer had been an ace-class pilot — rich experience, cybernetic enhancements, and raw talent fused into one, enough to put even Jincheon in genuine danger. These men were neither as fast as Jezer nor half as gifted. On top of that they were piloting D-class mechas. Their desperate evasions looked like slow motion to Jincheon.
D-Don't look! Don't look at me! Aaaah—!
Puh-ung!
The last subordinate, frozen in shock as his comrades died one after another, took a laser through the cockpit and was reduced to ash along with his machine.
"You son of a bitch!"
An ordinary man would have been terrified. But this one had tempered his nerve through years of piracy. Judging the enemy's marksmanship overwhelmingly superior, the squad commander raised his shield, lit his thrusters, and charged Gareld head-on.
"You want a close-quarters fight? Now you're talking."
Anyone else would have poured laser-rifle fire into the shield until it cracked. But Jincheon had just acquired a laser sword and was itching to use it in real combat. He locked his guns to his back and closed his hand around the sword hilt.
Wuum!
In the vacuum of space there should have been no sound at all — but in Jincheon's ears, the laser's ignition crackled on automatic playback.
"Die!"
Closing with his shield up, the 26th Squad commander swung a heat sword in a diagonal slash meant to carve Gareld open.
KRAAAA—!
Jincheon twisted thrusters and frame mid-sprint, vanishing upward in an instant. The moment the squad commander lifted his head, what he saw was the light of a laser sword descending toward him.
Chijijijik!
How the hell…?!
Still reeling at a Gareld that moved at impossible speeds as if inertia meant nothing, he vanished under the searing heat that punched straight through into the cockpit.
Having erased an entire squad in moments, Jincheon spun Gareld's frame in a wide turn and dove straight at the coalition fleet. Every ship in the formation saw it.
"So that's the mercenary who killed Jezer. His skill is the real thing, no question."
Crymal tensed at the sight of a Gareld that moved as if its pilot were completely free of inertia.
"But his head doesn't seem nearly as sharp."
A pilot of that caliber running wild in a chaotic melee would have made even Crymal break a cold sweat. Charging a fleet alone, though, was pure moth-to-flame stupidity.
"Build a fire net and open fire."
He ordered his subordinates to form a fire net, fully intending to enjoy the sight of the ace who had felled Jezer burning out in pointless glory. Shields or no shields, speed or no speed — nothing walked out of a net like this intact.
At Crymal's command, hundreds of mechas locked onto Jincheon and built the net. Every one of them was an older model, but every one carried a laser rifle.
PKEEEEEENG!
The moment the net closed, they fired almost as one, weaving a vast web of light. Even an outstanding ace couldn't slip a net like this completely—
"Huh?"
Then the impossible unfolded, and Crymal's tentacles went slack.
Without shedding a scrap of speed, Gareld spun, twisted, and changed vectors again and again — and never took a single hit. Crymal doubted his own eyes.
KWAANG!
Worse: mid-breakthrough, Jincheon fired his laser rifle in counterattack and destroyed one of the mechas holding the net.
"KRAHAHAHAHAHA! Out of my fucking way!"
Every sense pushed to the limit, Jincheon slipped the storm of lasers by margins of a single centimeter and tore through the fire net.
"I was born for this goddamn day!"
KWAKWAKWANG!
He shredded the mechas directly ahead of him with the laser rifle, then slammed the booster engines harder still and punched into the open space beyond.
"He's broken through!"
"What the hell is that guy?!"
Chaos erupted on Crymal's flagship. Something that should never have happened had just happened.
"W-What do we do?! The intercept autocannons—"
"Wasting ammo on a single unit is a waste! Tell the reserves to handle him!"
"Y-Yes, sir!"
Moments earlier, while speaking with Jotala, Crymal had been perfectly composed. He didn't even notice that the unexpected turn of events had stripped that composure away.
While everyone else reeled, Jincheon — now deep in the heart of the enemy fleet — was enjoying the hard-driving BGM auto-playing in his skull.
"WAHAHAHAHAHA!"
The sheer achievement of driving alone into the enemy center, the tension of it, climbed his spine. That tension. That pulse. That rush. Emotions and sensations he had thought long dead dumped adrenaline straight into his brain.
Picheeng! Tukakakakang!
From the rear of the fleet, reserve mechas opened fire and revealed themselves.
"You want to play tag? Fine! Going back to childhood sounds good to me!"
The battle-hungry young man he used to be had fully resurfaced. Jincheon swapped the laser rifle for the 95mm machine gun and threaded Gareld between the ships — because even at the peak of his high, he was coldly calculating how to win this war.
I need as many of them as possible focused on me.
At a glance, the enemy outnumbered them more than two to one. In that situation, a single mecha harassing dozens of units and an entire fleet had strategic value beyond imagination.
Then let's begin.
Jincheon wove through the spaced-out fleet and started a game of tag with the reserves hunting him.
"Die!"
Tukakakakang!
The reserves fired — Jincheon dodged, then vanished behind a nearby destroyer.
Kikikiking!
Hey! Aim properly!
"Damn it! Get out of the way!"
A destroyer with armor scored by friendly fire opened a channel, and a petty argument was about to start —
Wha—?! H-Help! Get this bastard off me, now!!
— until Jincheon drove his laser sword into the destroyer's engine room, using the ship itself as a shield. The voice on the other end turned frantic. They tried to bring defensive autocannons to bear too late; at point-blank range the angles simply wouldn't work.
Having punched his hole, Jincheon kicked off the destroyer for recoil, put distance between them, and fired the machine gun and a single seven-tube missile from his shoulder rack.
Tukakakakakang! KWAANG!
N-No! Aaaah—!
KUKWAAAAANG!
The overheated reactor, already compromised by the attack, went critical and exploded.
"Urgh?!"
"Damn it!"
The pirates closing on Jincheon flinched from the destroyer's blast-glare and turned their heads away.
Tung-tung-tung-tung-tung-tung!
"Aaaagh?!"
"Guhk!"
Through the explosion, 95mm rounds punched into the cockpits of the lead mechas. Through pure combat sense, he had aimed precisely through the blast-light at the machines beyond it.
When the light faded, five mechas hung limp with rounds buried in their cockpits — and far ahead, all they could see was Gareld's retreating back as it fled into the distance.
Crymal's decision to refuse the intercept autocannons for a single mecha had begun to return as a butterfly effect beyond anything he had imagined.