Binding an Entire Fleet Alone
Objectively speaking, Crymal's judgment was not wrong.
Against A- through S-class machines, the correct answer was to stop them with everything you had — ammunition be damned.
But Gareld was only a C-class unit. No matter how wildly it rampaged, there were hard limits.
Those limits had been laid bare when Jincheon, Heliane, and Calsira had hammered Jezer's high-speed cruiser with three Garelds and still failed to destroy it.
So Crymal left Jincheon's disposal to the reserves and focused on the battle unfolding in front of him.
While Jincheon tore around the rear, mechas painted in matching unit colors slammed into each other, trading fire. Countless warships poured main and secondary batteries without pause, targeting concentrations of enemy mechas or enemy hulls. From a distance it looked like a beautiful fireworks display — but every explosion snuffed out at least one life.
In the middle of that fireworks show, Heliane showed exactly what a veteran looked like.
"Hup!"
Tukakakakang!
Through her targeting system she stitched a burst from the 95mm machine gun into the torso of the mecha that had fired on her. The machine went limp and sagged.
In the brief moment she had eased off the throttle to shoot, a pirate's rounds came streaking in — and slammed into her shield, ricocheting away.
"You little bastard!"
Hot-tempered as ever, she answered the mecha that had attacked her with her machine gun.
Kakakakang! Fwoom!
Whether she had hit the power plant or not, the mecha that had been wobbling under the impacts detonated outright.
Beep-beep-beep!
"Tch!"
A heat-source warning lit up. She stomped the boosters and threw herself clear just as a single laser lance scythed through the space she had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
She wanted nothing more than to pay back the pirate who had fired on her, but she did not fight the inertia. She kept driving forward and drew her heat axe.
Kwajijik!
A mecha that had been busy attacking someone else finally noticed her and flailed in panic. Heliane drove the axe through its flank all the way into the cockpit. Once she confirmed the machine had gone dead, she seized the wreck and hauled it across her front as a shield.
Kakakakakang!
The pirate mecha took the storm of rounds meant for her. Heliane released the makeshift shield, kicked it away, and fell back.
Can't let them surround me!
She had already made one charge into the enemy. Now she shifted rearward to cut off any chance of being boxed in before it happened.
Fwhaaak!
Using her thrusters, she bobbed up and down in a textbook evasion pattern, then flicked her eyes down to check the remaining shield charge.
Shield's down thirty percent.
Shields generally came in two flavors: ones that recharged from an energy feed, and ones that self-repaired. Gareld might be a trainer, but it was still a Calsorn Empire machine — so given time, the shield would recover. Being a trainer, though, a full charge from zero to one hundred percent took an entire day.
Of course, she had brought a physical shield for the moment her energy shield ran dry.
Still manageable. Their training and their machines are worse than the Zabalcan bastards in every way!
Compared to the Zabalcan soldiers who had spent so long trying to take her life, this was nothing. She had fought through situations far uglier than this at her worst. Even outnumbered more than two to one, she did not flinch — she simply methodically dismantled the enemies in front of her, one by one.
By the time a little over ten minutes had passed since the fighting began, wreckage of enemy mechas drifted all around her.
Kakakakang — tick! Tick!
"Tch!"
She had been careful, aiming properly, trying to conserve — and the machine gun was empty anyway. She locked the gun onto her back, drew her laser rifle, and turned toward the friendly fleet.
Picking off enemies who were not looking her way, she detonated a few more mechas on the way, then swung toward a ship to rearm.
Kwaaaah!
Just then, an enemy mecha that had been locked in close combat with a friendly pirate smashed that ally's cockpit and came charging straight at Heliane.
Damn—!
The pilot was skilled. A laser-sword mecha came screaming in from the side, and she raised her shield a beat too late.
Too slow! The shield— if it gets cut down completely—
Pikiiing!
Out of nowhere, a single laser lance punched through the charging mecha's torso and blew it apart.
Temporary low-light mode kicked in. Heliane magnified the direction the shot had come from.
There was Calsira, lowering her rifle.
Stationed on ship defense, Calsira waved an arm, making sure Heliane saw her. Heliane smiled and headed for the ship again to rearm.
"Thanks!"
"Don't mention it."
After that brief exchange, Heliane hit the hatch-release switch and slipped inside. She reached into a pre-opened crate set out for easy access, swapped her empty magazines first, then grabbed spares.
"You need magazines too?"
"Just one, please."
Calsira had emptied a magazine spraying enemies before the two sides fully mixed, so she asked for one. Once resupply was finished, Calsira proposed a role swap.
"I'll go this time. You rest, Unnie."
"I'm still fine."
"If this turns into a long fight, conserving stamina matters. Let's rotate."
"…Alright. I'll rest a bit, then."
Faced with Calsira's genuine concern, Heliane let go of her stubbornness and settled into ship defense, trying to recover even a little strength. Piloting was a profession that chewed through stamina on its own — and in three-dimensional space, where attacks could come from any direction at any time, the drain was even faster.
Calsira, who had swapped with Heliane out of concern for a prolonged battle, headed out toward the battlefield.
Sorry, Unnie. Honestly? I was itching so badly I couldn't stand it.
Win the war, and the pay comes in. That simple truth delighted her so much that fighting itself had become pure fun.
Heliane, knowing none of that, assumed Calsira had only been worrying about her. She recovered her stamina while picking off enemies she could cleanly hit with the laser rifle.
"Orororororohii~!"
Letting out some unidentifiable, joyful battle cry, Jincheon jinked the machine left and right without even looking at the radar, slipping every round.
"Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck—!"
"What the hell is that bastard?! Why won't anything hit him?!"
The reserves chasing him started snapping as not a single one of their attacks connected. Whenever they almost had an angle, he vanished behind one of the allied fleet's ships — using it as cover, more precisely.
Tukakakakang!
Kangkangkangkangkang!
"Aaaagh—!"
"Ghk—!"
Whatever targeting program he was running, the rounds punched into mechas with uncanny precision. The pursuing machines returned fire, of course — but most of their shots buried themselves in the hull of the allied ship he was using as cover.
Finally, the highest-ranking pirate among the reserves opened a channel to Crymal.
"Boss! That merc is too damn slippery! Let us use the intercept autocannons!"
"You stupid bastards! You can't even bag one mercenary and you're asking for that?!"
Crymal, who had spent serious money training them only to hear this garbage, exploded instead.
"And you're weaving through the fleet! You start spraying half-assed and you'll get friendly fire!"
If the enemy force had been massive, maybe. Dumping autocannon fire just to kill one man risked the worst-case scenario of allies trading shots with each other. The ammunition was a waste, and a single mistake could throw the whole formation into chaos.
But while Crymal answered with common sense, Confedon — who had already thrown everything away for revenge — was a different story.
Jincheon weaved through the fleet and turned toward Confedon's side. Crymal and Confedon had split left and right beforehand so their command structures would not tangle; Jincheon, dodging this way and that, had drifted right onto the boundary line between them.
"Boss! The merc who killed Vice-Boss Jezer just came our way!"
"Krrrrk! Order every ship in range to intercept! Use every means you've got and kill that bastard!"
"Yes, sir!"
There was the problem of having no way back — but the hunger for Jezer's revenge also drove the decision. Blind with bloodlust, Confedon gave the intercept order.
Tututatatatatata——!
At Confedon's command, every ship in range opened up with intercept autocannons, laying a curtain of fire off the port side.
"This side's got way better water! Hahahahaha!"
High on adrenaline, Jincheon delighted in Confedon's fleet reacting so violently. He slipped the autocannon fire and drove deeper into their formation.
"W-wait—! Aaaaagh—!"
"You useless bastards! Aim properly!"
Caught in sudden intercept fire from allies who were not even under the same command chain, part of the pursuing reserves took hits and the chase collapsed into a mess.
That side didn't open intercept fire. This side did. Proof the command structures are split.
While dodging intercept rounds from every direction, Jincheon kept thinking.
And the moment I entered this fleet, the killing intent aimed at me spiked hard.
Not ordinary combat bloodlust — the kind reserved for a hated enemy. That was enough for him to know, on pure instinct, that he had entered Confedon's fleet. He licked his lips.
If I play this right, I can pin this whole fleet by myself.
Anything would do, as long as it stoked their thirst for revenge. With that thought, he sprayed machine-gun fire in every direction while hunting for ships without shields.
About a third of the ships have shields. So…
Jincheon kept the mecha dancing and started answering the intercept autocannons with his machine gun.
Kwajijik! Fwoom!
He shattered barrels clean or punched deeper and wrecked the mounts, silencing the guns one after another.
"Hahahahahaha! This tension never gets old!"
One wrong move and Gareld would detonate and leave him drifting in the void. That razor edge of danger sharpened his senses even further, producing hit rates that should not have been possible.
He sent Gareld skating in wide circles, then suddenly kicked boosters and thrusters to snap the trajectory and slip free. The brutal inertial crush slammed into his body — and he ignored it with Tushinryeok, casually weaving through the autocannon fire.
He never once hesitated or slowed. The reserves chasing him were too busy scrambling after his tail to think.
"Hyat-ha!"
With a war cry that sounded like it belonged to some mohawked mook from an apocalypse world, Jincheon poured on high-speed maneuvering and shredded another intercept autocannon with the machine gun.
Tick! Tick!
Damn. Already down to this.
Between killing enemies and wrecking guns, he was already down to a single magazine.
Not enough. The killing intent still isn't growing.
He had already racked up a kill count hard to believe from a single mecha — and he still found it insufficient.
I need one big hit. Something fucking enormous to blow up.
A destroyer? No. There were already dozens of those.
Then his eye caught a cruiser that looked suitably worn.
That one. They'll obsess over me whether they want to or not.
Unfortunately, this world had no convenient substances like Minovsky particles — the particles from the Gundam universe that rendered radar, communications, and other radio gear useless — so most warships directed combat from a secure CIC.
No choice. I didn't want to bother with this, but…
Tututatatatatata——!
Jincheon slipped the curtain of autocannon fire still trying to kill him and streaked toward the unshielded cruiser.
"Hup!"
Once he closed the distance, he let out a sharp breath and flared his sensory field several times stronger than usual.
There!
He locked onto the strongest energy source — the engine room — and brought the laser sword down hard.
Fzzzzzzzzzt!
Laser met the cruiser's heavy armor. Weapons had grades, and laser swords were no exception. The laser sword he had taken from Jezer began melting through the cruiser's plating faster and harder than any ordinary blade.
Jezer's speed-focused machine had been short on raw power, so he had equipped a high-grade close-combat laser sword with exceptional output. Jincheon had seen that when he chased Jezer's high-speed cruiser before — but back then he had not been resolved to finish the kill, and he had let it go.
Tututata——!
Autocannons he had not yet destroyed opened up on Gareld. This time Jincheon trusted his shield and did not dodge, carving several more strokes until he had opened a massive wound.
"Let's see if you can keep your cool after this!"
Pikiiing! Pikiing!
He put two final shots from the laser rifle into the gash, felt through his senses that the power plant was going critical, and kicked the boosters to put serious distance between them.
Kukwaaaang——!
Old or not, a cruiser-class warship died to a single mecha and became a colossal sphere of light.
Not an A- or S-class machine — a C-class Gareld had done this. The result was more than enough to stun friend and foe alike.