The Red Gareld's Charge
"The employer said to bring them back as intact as possible, right? We want an easy job too, so how about surrendering?"
Five days had passed since the request was revised. Eirin's group continued their journey toward loyalist territory without any major assaults. Their own side had taken heavy losses, yet the enemy, equally starved of proper resupply, had been ground down by constant attrition until they too reached their limit. No further battles had broken out.
What finally barred Eirin's path were mercenaries hired by the enemy.
"It's not too late! If you help us, we can reach loyalist space far more easily! We'll pay several times the original fee—!"
"Heh heh. This side's several times easier than that."
"Kh…!"
Words were useless.
This was Eirin's blunder. Born a high noble of the Giranlek Empire and raised with a high noble's values, she had remained ignorant of other cultures and of the way mercenaries truly lived. Mercenaries put survival first, money second.
The new emperor, Harcon Galdorn—who had murdered his half-brother and driven out even that brother's son—had either investigated this fact in advance or received shrewd advice. He struck precisely there.
Mercenaries were not fools who saw a glittering sum and immediately charged. Precisely because they were not, they first investigated whether the money was even safe to take. Through the galactic network they learned that civil war had erupted in the Giranlek Empire and that the legitimate emperor had been driven out, now fleeing toward loyalist space.
Using pursuit reports, Galdorn laid out exactly how desperate Eirin's situation had become. Revealing her location to the loyalists as well was a risk, yet the mercenaries, already hooked by the high reward, realized her plight was far worse than they had imagined. They therefore began accepting contracts to hunt Eirin's group instead. A battered prey that needed only to be finished off for a handsome sum looked far easier.
And so the mercenaries who had taken Galdorn's request now blocked the path of Eirin's half-destroyed fleet.
Was trusting those barbarian mercenaries of other races a mistake…!
Born of Giranlek nobility, Eirin berated herself for ever placing faith in uncultured races that possessed neither aristocratic pride nor dignity. For reference, monarchical states with rigid class systems called cultures like Terra's—where all humanity was presumed equal—"uncivilized nations" or "non-civilized states." Technology had only made such monarchies more perfect at "managing" their commoners; with bio-modification, talent itself could be purchased with money, so competent tyrants existed while incompetent dark lords could not.
In any case, with those uncivilized mercenaries now surrounding them on a traitor's contract, Eirin desperately racked her brains. The sole mercy was that Galdorn had not hired endlessly: only a small force of one cruiser and two destroyers. Their mechas were mostly low-grade E- to D-class units, twenty to twenty-five at most. The problem was that even those were more than her battered forces could repel. Galdorn had almost certainly calculated exactly that when he hired so few.
I have no choice but to steel myself…
"I will never forget your loyalty, even in death."
Eirin's resolute voice, already resigned to dying, darkened every crew member's face. They understood this was the end.
"Tch. Making things troublesome. Hey—keep that woman and the brat alive if you can. Handle them carefully."
The mercenary who commanded the largest contingent, and thus served as temporary leader, gave the attack order.
"Beatrix!"
"Preparations complete!"
"Sortie at once!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
In the formal setting of the bridge, Beatrix answered her sister's command with the perfect bearing of a model soldier and launched immediately. The mecha that emerged from the battleship looked as though a knight had been forged into machine form. Long cavalry lance and shield gave it a distinctly anachronistic silhouette, yet this was the machine only the Giranlek Imperial Guard were permitted to pilot. Mid-tier B-class Orcalen Flugels streaked out toward the mercenaries assaulting the Rastold Silverion.
"You uncivilized savages who don't even know right from wrong! I'll cut every last one of you down!"
Beatrix snapped irritably at the mercenaries blocking their path and thrust her lance forward. The weapon was oddly blunt toward the grip; other armaments had been mounted along its length.
Click!
Four ports opened along the lance's midsection. Crimson lasers lanced out toward the mercenaries.
Boom!
Watching mechas that failed to dodge erupt in fireballs, Beatrix confirmed the enemy's low caliber. The rest of the Guard likewise picked off their targets with ease, seizing clear superiority in the firefight. Pilot skill, raw ability, and machine performance—all overwhelmingly superior.
Yet there were situations even pilot excellence could not cover.
Tick! Tick-tick!
"Power pack is—!"
"This is L-3! Ammo completely dry!"
"L-5! Same here…!"
The worst possible situation: every round expended. The Imperial Guard's sole remaining means of attack was to close in and thrust with the lance.
"Hahaha! Those bastards are out of ammo!"
"Just like we heard!"
"Leave the battleship alone! Kill everything else!"
Tutatatatata—
Kakakakakang!
At first cowed by the Guard's precise shooting, the mercenaries now relaxed the moment fire ceased.
"Kh! Against trash like this…!"
They were the sort that could be finished in moments. But the mercenaries who had found the weakness refused to close; they simply kept their distance and poured fire from afar.
"L-7! Need rescue—Kyaaaak!"
Boom!
One Guard mecha already in poor condition exploded.
"Damn it… shit…!"
Beatrix bit her lip hard enough to split it, furious at being hammered one-sidedly by such low-grade enemies. After all the blood and sweat of brutal training, to fall to these was maddening.
Meanwhile Eirin poured main and secondary batteries into the enemy ships, desperate to punch a hole through.
"Secondary guns! Number one! Number three! Fire!"
Weaker than the main battery yet possessing better rate of fire, the secondaries hammered away. The mercenary vessels, however, had opened the range and devoted every scrap of power to evasion, offering no return fire at all.
"Missed!"
"Don't stop—keep firing!"
Only by destroying those ships could any escape route open. Eirin therefore continued the barrage, urging her crew on. The bitter truth was that ever since the invention of the machine gun, wars could no longer be won by grit and will alone.
If that traitor gets his hands on my son, what torments will the boy suffer? Better than that…!
In the darkest corner of her mind she had already begun considering the extreme: kill her own son before he could be subjected to every possible horror, then take her own life.
Just as the situation continued its slide toward absolute catastrophe, the radar operator shouted a report.
"Three mechas approaching on this vector! Identification codes confirmed—they belong to the mercenaries who accepted our request!"
She had been told by the request handler that only a single three-person team had taken the job: two Garelds and one Saisalas. The machines were excellent, yet the fact that this was their first contract still sat uneasily in her chest. Right now, however, they were the only hope left; she could not afford to be choosy.
"Contact the mercenaries! For the moment—!"
"Huh!?"
The instant Eirin tried to use them to secure an escape route, the operator cried out in shock.
"One of the mercenaries is closing at tremendous speed!"
He threw the approaching unit's data onto a corner of the main monitor. A single mecha was streaking toward them at an almost unbelievable velocity.
"What is that Gareld? Three times faster than a standard unit?"
The identification code confirmed it was a Gareld, yet Eirin could not hide her astonishment at a speed that utterly surpassed any ordinary Gareld. The velocity itself was shocking; the pilot capable of enduring it was even more so.
The enemy mercenaries must have caught the same blip on their rear radars. A portion of the mechas that had been freely pounding the Guard turned to intercept.
Neither side imagined that a mere three machines could overturn the entire battle. In a cosmos where information traveled freely, true talent became famous almost overnight.
When the newcomer finally entered visual range, Eirin zoomed the feed to see what kind of Gareld could fly at nearly triple normal speed.
"…What is that idiot…!"
The enlarged image drew a groan from her. The entire machine was painted a blazing, eye-searing red. In war, such conspicuous colors invited fire; unless the machine was a deliberate morale symbol, flashy paint was simply not done.
"Hahaha! Is that bastard a retard?"
"Kid who thinks speed is everything!"
The mercenaries openly mocked the red Gareld. Anyone who painted themselves that color was one of two things: the greatest fool in the galaxy, or a pilot skilled enough to survive the attention. Naturally assuming the former, they laid down a dense fire net and sprayed laser rifles at the red machine.
The red Gareld simply drew a sharp Z through space at blistering speed, weaving through every shot. The mercenaries' faces hardened.
"C-coincidence, right?"
"Of course! Hell—before that, the pilot inside would already be mush from that maneuver!"
Even a heavily bio-modified pilot attempting the same moves would have blood forced from the brain under crushing G-forces, going blind or blacking out entirely.
"Shoot! Kill him!"
Tukakakang! Pitching!
They brought railguns into the barrage as well, pouring everything at the red Gareld. Once more the machine zigzagged with impossible agility, casually slipping every attack.
Chichijik! Kwaang!
No—while dodging it returned fire and dropped one of them.
"D-damn! Scatter!"
"Keep shooting! He can't hold that speed forever!"
With a comrade gone, the mercenaries hastily dispersed into evasive patterns and continued pouring fire at the red Gareld.
Kwaang! Kwang!
Yet the red machine's own fire, delivered amid those insane evasion maneuvers, blew their mechas apart like fireworks.
"U-uaaaa! Stay away! Stay the hell away!"
In an instant the red Gareld closed on its next target. The doomed mercenary sprayed wildly at the approaching machine.
Whoosh!
The red Gareld, already dancing left and right to slip the bullets, vanished upward on a violent booster flare.
"Where!? Where is he!?"
The targeted pilot scanned the space above, screaming for the enemy's location.
"Below you!"
"Huh?"
It had gone up—yet the warning said below? Failing to grasp the other mercenary's shout, he stupidly echoed the question—
Chichijik!
—and the red Gareld, rising from beneath while sweeping a laser sword, reduced him to a handful of ash.
Shirik!
The assault did not end there. The machine that had been climbing snapped its trajectory into a sharp L, thrust out its right arm, and fired a wire tipped like an arrowhead.
Kaang! Pachichichichik!
"Kueeeuk!"
High voltage surged through the wire tip. The struck mecha's main monitor and sensors glitched; every warning light flared at once.
Tukakakakang!
The red Gareld reeled the wire back in and raked the cockpit with its 95 mm machine gun until nothing remained but scrap. Having cut the force hunting it by half, the red machine lit its engines in a brilliant flare and rocketed away to aid the Imperial Guard.
"W-what the hell is that bastard!?"
The mercenaries knew full well that any of them attempting the same maneuvers would have blacked out or red-out and fainted. They could only stare in shock.
Their real ordeal, however, had only just begun.
Pueong! Kwaaang!
"You idiot bastards! What are you spacing out for!? The ones coming from behind are hitting the engines!"
A furious man on the cruiser raged at the top of his lungs. Exactly as he shouted, a blue-violet Saisalas and a navy-blue Gareld—arriving from the same vector the red machine had used—were already hammering the engines of the ships blocking the Rastold Silverion's path with laser rifles.
In space, lose the ships that serve as your only bases and you become a permanent castaway.
"Damn it!"
"Everyone charge!"
The mercenaries therefore hurled themselves at the red Gareld's comrades, desperate to protect the vessels that had brought them here.