“Got it,” his first officer agreed. “Let’s teach them a lesson.”
“The enemy’s out of cards. Let’s do it!”
That was an unexpected setback, but I’ll show you. One Leviathan is still enough to destroy de Danaan...Tuatha de Danaan
“Mike-13, contact reacquired! Bearing 0-3-1! Acceleration started on course 2-0-5!” the sonar tech reported, unable to hide his agitation.
“The... the final enemy is approaching from the north, XO. The MAGROCs won’t work again,” Captain Goddard, still recovering from the first near-death experience, said to Mardukas as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
Despite having seen the heroic way he’d dealt with the enemy torpedoes seconds before they hit, Goddard really thought they were done for this time.
“Course 2-0-5, you said?” But Mardukas remained calm.
“Affirmative!”
“Speed?”
“Estimated 50 knots!”
“Hmm...” A corner of Mardukas’s mouth quirked up a bit at that. It was the smile of a professor getting the answer he wanted from a promising student. “That’s right, Mike-13. If you wanted to keep up the fight, that’s the only course you could take. Sad to say...”
“XO? What...”
“Captain,” Mardukas asked patiently. “Why do you think I had you send out those ADSLMMs in advance?”
“Ah...!” Goddard remembered the locations of the ADSLMMs—the autonomous mines he’d had them secretly fire earlier—and slapped his own forehead. The final enemy was heading right for the mines.Shark-1
Shark-1, burning with vengeance, hadn’t expected the path to the enemy to be blocked by smart mines. If he’d been thinking calmly and clearly, he might have realized that the enemy could have fired one while they were running loud earlier. If he’d been thinking, maybe he could have avoided his fate.
But he hadn’t. Back in his Royal Navy days, it had been his domestic violence issues that had kept him out of his superiors’ good graces. To the very end, he had never come to terms with that brutal, impulsive aspect of his character.
Suddenly, two automatic mines appeared in his path, heading straight for him. “What the—” Shark-1 started to say. Even with the Leviathan’s maneuverability, he wouldn’t be able to change course in time. Mere seconds remained. He tried firing his decoy, but it was useless this close. The crewman behind him screamed.
With alarms blaring in the cockpit, Shark-1 swore, spitting out a curse to his former superior. “Mardukas, you son of a—”
Those were his last words. The de Danaan’s smart mine detonated at close range and tore the Shark-1 to pieces.Tuatha de Danaan
“Contact, ADSLMM explosion. Mike-13 is down!” The sonar tech’s report inspired a sigh of relief among the crew. They were too deflated to let out a cheer of the kind typically seen in the movies.
Goddard himself could hardly believe it. A strained smile appeared on his face, and he peered over at Mardukas. “XO... s-sir...”
“The enemy should have known,” Mardukas opined coldly. “Sending three mere ‘underwater fighters’ to defeat a vessel I command is like sending three infantrymen against a fortress.”
From the very start, he had known just how the battle would go, and just what the enemy would do. It was almost like a chess game. The boldness, the calm of it... This realization of his superior’s true abilities had Goddard at a loss for words.
“If the captain had been here, we’d have likely seen the same outcome. And perhaps if she’d been giving the orders, you wouldn’t have been so terrified, Goddard,” Mardukas said with his usual biting sarcasm.
“Oh, well... forgive me, sir.”
“Hmm. You are forgiven. More importantly...” The Duke turned his hat back to its original position. The commanding officer, who had shown a presence to rival Major Kalinin or the other impressive members of the ground forces, now resumed his usual appearance as a slightly world-weary middle-aged man. “That’s the match. Open a channel to the ground forces immediately; they’re in more danger than we are. A torpedo is headed for the cruise ship.”
Pacific Chrysalis
Disasters tend to come in waves. Not minutes after Sousuke and the other ground force members had finished off the Alastor horde, they received word from the de Danaan of another incoming threat:
Enemy high-speed torpedo approaching. Estimated arrival, less than one minute. Evasive maneuvers and evacuation recommended.
“You could at least try to sound freaked out about this!” Kurz shouted to the heavens as the word came down, but it was drowned out by the evacuation alarm blaring throughout the ship.
《All passengers and crew evacuate to the starboard side. Repeat, evacuate to the starboard side. We apologize for the inconvenience on this fine Christmas Eve, but just in case, please head for the starboard—》
“Drop the damned apologies! Just repeat the order!” Clouseau shouted over the radio to his subordinate on the bridge.
《But Lieutenant Clouseau. We are the ones who started this trouble, so I think we owe them— ah, damn. The speaker button...》
“Incompetent!!” Clouseau shouted as he heard his real name broadcast ship-wide. He clenched a fist as a vein throbbed on his forehead.
“Ah, hey, Lieutenant... I know you’re in a tough position, but we should probably evacuate. If that torpedo hits us, this whole area goes up in smoke,” Kurz said, coaxing him from behind, and Clouseau clicked his tongue.
Per Mardukas’s instruction, the de Danaan had all its helicopters on standby for the rescue. Another transport helicopter, which had taken off before this all started, was spreading countermeasures across the sea surface to interfere with the torpedo’s targeting, trying to protect the passengers in any way they could.
Still, it was almost impossible for a cruise ship of this size to avoid a torpedo.
“Everyone evacuate,” Clouseau finally sighed. “We’re out of options.”
“No, we’re not,” Sousuke said over the external speakers and radio at once. Clouseau turned to see the Arbalest, positioned in the middle of the tennis court, begin to rise to its feet, now occupied by its operator.
“What are you doing, Sousuke? Hey!” Kurz called, as Sousuke walked the Arbalest to the ship’s port side and stared down at the black water that the torpedo would soon be tearing through.
Sousuke pressed
