Chapter 42 – Ahhhh, This Is Wonderful…

Syn-Fibra's most classified area--Milea Ichinose's laboratory--was wrapped in the blue-white glow of dozens of monitors and the low, continuous drone of large server units bleeding heat.

At the center of the room, suspended from a heavy overhead crane, hung the remains of Blang's beloved machine--the Dien, stripped of armor, its internal structure laid bare. It looked like a monster opened on a dissection table.

"--Well? Anything, Milea?"

The low voice came from behind her. Milea kept her eyes on the monitor and pushed her tangled hair back with one hand. Grain. Off-duty, but there wasn't a trace of rest in his face.

"...I want to give you the answer you're hoping for, so let me lead with the misses. I went through the comm logs. What's recorded is--noise. An irregular electronic storm with no pattern. Identifying the content is impossible. Tracing the source is impossible. It's less likely that someone erased the data deliberately, and more likely that the exchange was conducted in a format that simply cannot be logged at all."

She exhaled, pulled up a detailed diagram on the main monitor, and expanded it.

"That said, I didn't come away empty-handed. Here--the chest cavity of this Dien. Where the spec sheet says there should be a backup cooling unit, there's a device. One that doesn't exist in any design document."

Grain leaned in, reading the diagram with the intensity of a man looking for something he doesn't want to find. His brow shifted slightly.

"Is it... the same as what's in Letaria's Arden?"

"...I can't say that definitively. But the underlying design philosophy is strikingly similar. It's a black box--there's no way to interface with it from the outside at this point. But I have no doubt that this is the reason a raider at Blang's level was able to hold his own against your Schuelle. Whatever this device does, it was augmenting the machine's response speed and output by directly interfacing with the pilot's nervous system."

"...That's as far as we've gotten."

His words were not frustrated--they were measured. Analytical. The enemy was using unknown technology, and that technology was closely related to what was in Arden. The weight of that fact settled in the room.

"...What about the other two machines? Letaria was certain they were unmanned, but they were too heavily damaged for me to confirm on-site."

Milea brought up a second monitor. The analysis data from the two mid-weight units destroyed by Letaria, the corps, and Zein's group was arrayed across the screen.

"That's where it gets genuinely unsettling. She was right. Both machines were fully unmanned. There were no traces of a pilot--more precisely, there was no cockpit block at all. The space was occupied instead by a high-precision autonomous computation unit, and... a miniaturized version of that same black box."

She pointed to the wreckage of the high-mobility type that Letaria had destroyed alone.

"The part that surprised me most: the base frame of this high-mobility unit is an old Escado model. Specifically, the 'Crafid'--the same base as Arden. The modifications are absurd in their extent. Aside from the skeleton, it's an entirely different machine."

"I was told it was nearly a match for Arden's speed... Perhaps it was a sister unit, in some sense."

Grain murmured it. Milea nodded once, heavily.

"The heavy-armed type is a different story--frankly, the original form is so thoroughly buried under modification that I haven't even been able to identify the base model. It was definitely built on an older frame, but its targeting accuracy was exceptional. It's no surprise Retta's machine took that much damage. ...If the heavy unit had focused its fire on Steshia instead, the outcome might have been very different."

Grain folded his arms. A silence followed.

The corps' latest-model Rude frames, nearly overwhelmed by heavily modified antiques. That was the reality of the engagement, and it pressed down on him.

"...Then that makes Zein-san's performance all the more remarkable. He was flying an inferior machine--and he held the line."

"Yes. I looked at his logs. He's a serious veteran. The fighting is second nature to him, but more than that--his positioning and tactical management are excellent. ...Grain, if you can, you should hold onto a way to contact those two. We don't know what's coming."

"...Understood. I'll see to it."

He turned toward the exit--and stopped. He looked back at her.

"Milea. ...Don't push yourself too hard. You're the linchpin of this city. Of all of us."

The directness of it made her pause--a half-second where her fingers went still on the keys. She didn't turn around. But the corner of her mouth lifted very slightly.

"...Same goes for you, Captain. If you go down, who's going to protect this city? And that insufferable young lady of ours?"

"...Noted."

He left on that single word.

Milea turned her gaze back to the Dien.

(...Why did Letaria know those two machines were unmanned?)

◆◆◆

Meanwhile, in the corps rest lounge:

"Ahhhh, this is wonderful..."

"Hehe... so you can make sounds like that too, Letaria-san..."

"There is nothing wrong with indulging, from time to time..."

Two ladies were making the absolute most of the massage chairs.