“I know. Lower speed as we approach. From their six, altitude 15,000 feet.”
《Roger.》
The large craft drew closer and closer in his vision, as the turbulence from its wake began to rock the Arbalest violently. He wasn’t getting any closer; the wings of the emergency deployment booster weren’t designed for this.
But then, he wasn’t in a fighter jet anyway. Sousuke was in a humanoid weapon, an arm slave, and its uses were limited only by imagination. There was no need to get hung up on standard procedure.
“Let’s go!” he yelled.
《Roger.》 As they closed to a mere 50 meters behind the craft, the Arbalest thrust its arms forward.
“What are you doing?! Shake them off. Their cruising range is only—” Just as Harris ran into the cockpit, something happened; a metal scraping sound screamed out from the back of the plane. The craft bucked hard, and Harris nearly went toppling.
Alarms began blaring in the cockpit, announcing a rapid depressurization. Red lights flashed, and the pilot and copilot screamed at each other. “What happened?!” Harris cried.
“We seem to have taken several hits. Cabin pressure is dropping fast. We need to drop altitude before things get worse.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! Just shake them off!” He grabbed the captain’s shoulder, but the man knocked his hand away.
“That’s ridiculous!” the captain objected vehemently. “Get them to call off their attacks, then!”
“Just ignore them and keep flying,” Harris insisted. “You think they really have the guts to shoot us down?” That’s right, he thought. It’s all a bluff. If they wanted to shoot us down, they would have fired a missile much earlier. They just want to force us into a water landing.
By the same token, that means they can’t do much as long as we’re in the air. Plus, the enemy STOVLs have a short cruising range; if we just keep going a little while longer, they’ll have to give up the chase.
“Mr. Harris,” the captain said. “Bring the girl here. I’ll play her tortured screams over the radio; that’ll make them think twice about firing again.”
“But she’s— No, you’re right,” Harris decided. “That’s for the best. Maybe I’ll take a finger off of her.” On the pilot’s instructions, he attempted to return to the cabin to find Tessa, but...
This time, they were rocked by the biggest jolt yet. The craft plunged several meters, as if something had pushed down on it from above. Harris’s body rocketed into the air, slamming first against the cockpit ceiling, and then against the floor. Banishing all thought about the tremendous pain in his shoulders and back, he sat up. “Wh-What now?!”
But the captain didn’t even hear Harris’s question. His eyes were locked on the multifunctional display in the corner of the cockpit as he turned pale and moaned, “What... in the name of God... are they doing?”
The display showed a video feed from the camera affixed to the top of the plane’s tail. It looked down from its high vantage point, across the main fuselage and the wings.
There was someone standing there, on the roof just behind the wings.
No, not someone. Something. It was much larger than a person—a humanoid machine.
It’s an AS, Harris realized. A white AS.
The hostile white AS was clinging to the back of the plane. It fired off its wire gun, used it to draw closer, then stabbed its monomolecular cutter down into the roof.
“Shake it off!”
“Are you stupid?! I’d snap our wings off!” the pilot shouted, and then gasped. While the two of them were panicking, struggling to figure out what the enemy was after, the AS did something even more unbelievable: it opened its cockpit hatch.
The operator emerged, wearing a helmet and oxygen mask, and jumped from the back of the white AS onto the roof of the plane. There was a wire attached to his hips, likely anchored to the cockpit, to keep him from being blown away by the incredible air currents.
Though the AS was largely shielding him from the wind, it still seemed as though he could lose his balance and be swept off of the roof at any time. Yet the AS pilot dexterously leaped back ten meters, as if rappelling down the wall of a building, and brought something to hand.
“What is that?” The pilot asked. “What’s he planning to do?”
“That’s... a directed explosive,” Harris answered. All the color drained from his face, and he ran out towards the plane’s rear cabin. Was the AS pilot planning to blow a hole in the roof and come inside?!
Sousuke got a few meters from the directed explosive and pressed the trigger, buffeted all the while by powerful winds. A sharp ripping sound met his ears. Fragments went flying, but were gone in an instant. Mist streamed out of the one-meter hole. He adjusted his grip on his wire and kicked lightly off the roof, letting gravity drop him into the newly-made opening. The brittle interior wall broke below his feet, and he dropped straight into the cabin.
Sousuke released the wire holding him to the Arbalest, and then took the submachine gun hanging off of his shoulder in hand. The sudden depressurization of the cabin was producing a white mist, which was being sucked out of the hole that Sousuke had just made.
“It’s just one guy! Kill him!” someone screamed from the tornado of cloth and paper scraps that flew wildly around the cabin. He saw two men with guns pointed at him, their intent to kill. Sousuke fixed his own aim, fired, and then fired again; both of the men collapsed in an instant.
Ignoring both the plane’s shaking and the wind whipping around the cabin, Sousuke made his way to the front in a run. He passed through several doors and passages, and met several more enemies on the way. Bullets rained down; gunshots assaulted his ears. Sousuke would dip down to dodge or fly behind something before immediately returning fire.
Bullets ricocheted with sparks and roars as his enemies fell, one
