He made the decision in a split-second: Sousuke didn’t dodge, but faced down the charging missile. There was a flash and a roar, and the anti-tank missile struck the Arbalest’s upper half.
“Dammit!” Instantly, Kurz’s M9 let loose with its 12.7mm head-mounted machine guns on full automatic. Bullets the size of Tabasco sauce bottles rained down in an instant, shredding the man who’d fired the missile, along with the rock he’d been standing on. “Sousuke?!” Kurz whipped around.
As the smoke cleared, the Arbalest could be seen, completely intact. It hadn’t moved from its arms-crossed position, but there wasn’t a single dent in the armor. Normally, a direct hit from a missile like that would have blown it to pieces.
“Not an issue,” Sousuke said at length. An invisible wall that had formed in front of the Arbalest had blocked the missile’s explosion—and the missile itself—dispersing the shockwave harmlessly.
“Uruz-2 here. What happened?! Status report!” Mao spoke nervously.
“Uruz-7 here,” Sousuke replied. “I was attacked by a remaining enemy soldier, but Uruz-6 took him out. No damage on our side.”
A small sigh of relief came out over the radio. “Uruz-2, roger. Be careful, okay?”
The transmission ended, and Sousuke stood his machine up. Kurz’s M9 was staring at him and the Arbalest. “Sousuke. Did you just...”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Did you register it?”
“I... I think so?” Kurz answered, flummoxed as he fiddled with the unfamiliar device.
“Al. It worked, didn’t it?”
《Affirmative. No damage to machine detected. Main capacitor voltage is stable, as well.》
“Good. Store the 120 seconds’ worth of data before and after into high-compression file Zulu-1.”
《Roger.》
Sousuke felt like he was starting to get the hang of this; together, he and the Arbalest were learning how to use the lambda driver.
“It’s a hell of a thing, though,” Kurz breathed. “Seeing it up close... You know that was a direct hit from an ATM, right? And you freaking brushed it off. That device scares the crap out of me.”
“I thought the same thing the first time I saw the ECS’s full invisibility mode,” Sousuke responded. “Don’t think too hard about it. It’ll seem completely natural, soon enough.”
“Well... maybe, I guess,” Kurz said over the radio in a thoughtful tone. “But I feel like when we brush this stuff off, we’re forgetting something important... when we start to think of the most out-there tech as being ‘completely natural,’ I mean. Even these things we’re in now... the ASes. There’s something really off about ’em, when you think about it.”
Sousuke just looked at him, non-comprehending.
“Ah, I’m just rambling. Anyway...” Kurz began, then changed his tone. “Uruz-6 here. You said you hadn’t found the base commander, right? Round him up quick and get him questioned. I’m ready to head back and get some shuteye.”
“Uruz-9 here... Um, according to the hostages, the commander is—” Corporal Yang spoke into the radio from where he was standing in front of the hostages. A few of them had gotten his attention, and were pointing in the direction that the missile had come from minutes earlier.
“What the hell is it? Spit it out already.”
“The commander was the guy with the missile that Kurz just gunned down.”
“Huh?” There was a long pause, and then, “Ah... I see,” Kurz said awkwardly.
Mao burst in. “What did you say? Gunned him down? You killed him? Why didn’t you use your taser?!”
“Use my taser?!” Kurz protested. “I was kind of in a hurry, y’know!”
“Shut up!” she screamed back. “How could you do this? We were just talking about having to take the commander in alive! You’ve completely ruined my debut sortie as a lieutenant!”
“Sh-Shut up! He’s an asshole who’s killed countless defenseless crews! He deserved that .50-caliber justice!”
“That’s not the damned point! We can’t interrogate a corpse!”
“He fired a missile at Sousuke!”
“Oh?!” Mao cried out, with mock concern. “And how’d that go for you, Sousuke?”
“Not an issue,” Sousuke told her.
“Ah, you asshole!” Kurz put in.
“See? This is your fault!” Mao lectured at Kurz. “You’d better write up one hell of a report! God dammit, Ben is gonna give me hell for this when we get back... Why’d I bother busting my ass to become an officer if I still have to deal with this crap?! I’ve made up my mind: next time we go out drinking, everything’s on you! Because of your short-sighted, simple-minded—”
“Shut up! Quit yelling at me!” Kurz yelled back. “You’re the one who blew away a hostage target-board with a 40mm shell last week at practice! That was—”
“Yeah, well, that was practice! This is real life!”
Sousuke interrupted the tedious exchange. “Excuse me. I would appreciate it if we could set questions of responsibility aside and begin making preparations to leave. If we head back now, I could still make it in time for my classic literature makeup exam. Mr. Fujisaki is very strict, and I’m in danger of failing—”
“Stay out of this, part-timer!” The two screamed in tandem over the radio.
Sousuke fell quiet.
《I agree, Sergeant. It would be wise to keep our silence in this case.》
“Al, I told you—”
《Forgive me. I’ll stop talking.》
For just a moment, Sousuke gave serious consideration to killing the AI while he could.21 December, 0351 Hours (Local Time)250 Meter Depth, West Pacific Ocean1st Briefing Room, Tuatha de Danaan
“So, well...” They were finishing up the debriefing for the pirate stronghold mission, and Melissa Mao was awkwardly explaining how the Arbalest had gotten into a game of chicken with a missile. “In that instant, something bad and something good... basically happened all at once, I guess.”
“Start with the good,” First Lieutenant Belfangan Clouseau, leader of the SRT ground forces, requested. Up to this point, he’d been listening silently. He was a tall black man in his thirties, dressed in fatigues, with tense eyebrows and a masculine face.
Mao responded, “The Arbalest’s lambda driver activated, and blocked the ATM’s explosion. Gave us tons of data, too.”
“That’s excellent. Well
