Chapter 52 – Arden, Welcome Home!

The next day, a voice livelier than usual rang through Seldia's civilian shared hangar.

"Arden, welcome home!"

After several days of detailed inspections at Syn-Fibra, her beloved machine had finally been returned to her. Letaria greeted it with her whole face alight. She pressed herself gently against the armor plating, and the cool metallic touch particular to Makinas transmitted comfortingly through her palms.

"Hehehe, you're polished to an even brighter shine than before! Milea and the others truly are something - I am in a thoroughly excellent mood!"

"We did some maintenance on each system while we had it in, not just the inspection."

From the elevated research lab overlooking the hangar, Milea leaned through the open window and called down with a tone that was half exasperated, half fond.

Letaria needed no further invitation. She took the access ramp at a near-run, pulled the hatch open, and slid herself into the cockpit. She settled into the seat and let it take her weight.

"Yes. This is it. This fits me perfectly."

Milea watched Letaria rejoice over her reunion with her machine with all the uncomplicated delight of a child, smiled quietly to herself, and drew the window shut. She turned her attention to a personal effects container that had arrived at the lab only minutes earlier, still sealed.

She opened it to find a small, unfamiliar object sitting beside her terminal. She picked it up.

"This is... a data chip? Quite old. The format standard is ancient..."

Across its surface, in blunt handwritten characters, a single word: Grain.

A cold unease moved through her chest. Milea pushed the chip into the main console without another moment's hesitation. The read indicator flickered. Data expanded across the screen. And at the same time, an encrypted message set on a time delay popped up over the display.

"This is - !"

What the chip had been carrying was a detailed three-dimensional structural survey of a certain structure buried deep in the debris field - and a precise set of coordinates pointing to a single location at its deepest point. In the corner of the screen, a string of characters that could only be a cipher burned itself into Milea's eyes.

-- Lunect Protocol.

She didn't have time to think about what it meant. Grain's short text message began playing automatically and she read it hungrily, every word.

"I'm heading out for a while. If I'm not back in five hours, get the corps and the odd-jobbers moving and protect Seldia with everything you've got. I'm counting on you."

"Grain - the last time, this data wasn't there, you were still keeping it back - !?"

Milea's arms shook. The fingers clenched around her terminal went white at the knuckles. The sector he had gone to was the same one where Blang's crew had been hiding - where those unmanned machines had appeared.

"Going off alone, without a word to anyone, of all things, why would you leave something like this with me... I'm a researcher at Syn-Fibra, I'm not part of the corps...!? Did you deliberately route this through me so that getting through the official channels would take longer...!?"

A single head researcher at Syn-Fibra appealing to the Administration Bureau could never deploy the vigilante corps or freelancers at a moment's notice. She understood exactly what he'd done with that.

"Milea, what is it? You look alarmed."

The communications monitor in the research lab lit up with Letaria's face - she'd noticed something wrong from the cockpit.

"Letaria...! Grain has gone off on his own. The debris field ruins, most likely - where you and the others rescued Blang."

"Why?! There may still be those dreadful unmanned machines out there - and he went alone?! I'm going after him immediately - !"

"Wait - don't act before you think! We need to contact the corps first, organize our forces... but I don't have any direct lines I can pull on besides Grain's..."

Milea was losing her composure, anxiety mounting by the second. But Letaria, as though the sight of someone else's urgency had the opposite effect on her, was growing steadily calmer.

"Milea, breathe. Now then - this is an emergency with the captain, Grain, absent. If we need to make contact... Steshia-san - no, not her. Retta-san, neither... In that case, it has to be Merry-san! Going directly to Merry-san is the fastest and most certain route!"

The plainly correct suggestion snapped Milea back to herself.

"...You're right. Absolutely right. I'll contact Merry-san from here! Letaria - sorry, but I need you to get Arden prepped and ready to launch at once!"

"Understood! I can go right now! Well - I am going to change into the Noble Lotus first!"