Chapter 12
"K-agh...!"
As the golden waves subsided, Ranpazyakan, swept away by the torrent, lay sprawled, their entire body charred black.
Crack.
Ramirez stomped on the limp left arm, and it crumbled like foam.
"Tough bastard. You survived that?"
Nkhilakarn are naturally highly resistant to plasma and extreme heat.
As a result, when war broke out between humanity and the Nkhilakarn, the thermal-energy weapons humanity had developed up to that point became almost useless.
But just as a sponge can't absorb and erase the sea, the Nkhilakarn would still die if they fell into a planet's core or a star.
"You're no mere underling acting on your own, are you?"
When Ramirez ran his fingers over Citrinitas, it soon returned to the form of an ordinary prosthetic.
"An Elder... No, you don't seem to be one. Capitano-class, perhaps?"
Ramirez lifted Ranpazyakan, carefully controlling his strength so the badly charred body wouldn't break, and pressed a Philosopher's Stone into them.
The Nkhilakarn's superior body greedily consumed the Philosopher's Stone to keep from dying, slowly recovering.
Soon restored to full health, Ranpazyakan regained consciousness and struggled to break free of Ramirez's grasp, but...
"Kack!"
Ramirez's hand came down.
Gripped by the collar, Ranpazyakan was driven headfirst into the ground.
The Furnace's collusion with the hostile Nkhilakarn.
Situation resolved.
Capitano-class warrior Ranpazyakan.
Captured alive.
……
……
……
"Yes, Director. Yes, yes. As you requested, we've captured an elf alive."
It was an exceedingly rare sight to see Ramirez, commander of Task Force 42 and a brigadier general in the Federation, groveling before someone.
Especially when the other person was on the other end of a call.
It wasn't a video call, so no matter who the other person was, no one would have blamed him for standing tall and proud. And yet he literally bent at the waist, holding the communicator respectfully in both hands.
"……Yes. I'm relieved to hear you'll honor our agreement, old man. Yes. Then please get some rest."
"Who was that?"
Rubedo wondered who could make Brigadier General Ramirez show such deference.
The president of the Senate? No, if it had been the Senate president, Ramirez would have shown respect on the surface while spitting insults under his breath.
Someone of a higher rank? That was possible.
Ramirez had definitely called him Director.
She was incredibly curious which organization he was the director of.
"The Director of the Human Security Bureau."
"……What?"
The Human Security Bureau.
The largest organization under the central government of the Human Federation, it commanded the entire Federal military and was commonly known as the military establishment.
It was responsible for winning over or erasing from the universe anything that threatened humanity's future.
Under the Bureau were the Suppression Force, which put down anti-human factions; the more hard-line Strike Teams, which dealt with those factions; and the Intelligence Bureau, which gathered information on anything that could harm humanity.
It was also the Bureau that had formed Task Force 42 to handle every kind of dirty job and clean up after the Federation, then appointed Ramirez as its commander.
"Don't tell me all that talk about politics was..."
"Yeah."
The fact that the Bureau had formed Task Force 42 meant, in other words, that securing Rubedo in accordance with the Earth Emperor's orders had been the Bureau's own intention.
One of only two people capable of standing against the powerful Martian Senate.
To her, the Director of the Human Security Bureau was practically her savior.
"As you know, our means is the sword. In that sense, Federation soldiers are very sharp blades."
"But they break just as easily."
"That's right."
A soldier was a sword.
A knife for killing chickens.
Soldiers had strong bodies and great strength, but they were no match for spaceships or decisive weapons.
They could think for themselves and adapt their orders to suit the situation, but when it came to simple calculations, they were inferior to supercomputers and superintelligences.
Small hexagons, all-rounders.
Though a soldier could shove a macaron from the table into a Nkhilakarn's maw, they couldn't destroy a planet or wage an intense electronic war.
Conversely, that meant soldiers could perform delicate tasks that spaceships and AIs couldn't.
That was why human soldiers were still needed.
But when it came to hunting a tiger, there was a blade better suited to the job than a soldier.
"When the Emperor's orders came down, the Director made a deal with me. The space elves would surely resume their activities, targeting the Mijeong in your brain, so the Director told me to secure even an elf's corpse while carrying out the Emperor's orders. In return, the Director would confront the Martian Senate head-on and protect me completely from its pressure."
"Um... why? What would the Director gain from that...?"
Oh.
Ramirez lifted Rubedo, looking as though he was in a bind, and brought her up to eye level.
"It seems the memories you lost as payment this time were part of the Human Federation's history."
"……Mm. I definitely have a big blank when I try to remember history. It makes me nauseous."
"Then I'll explain it simply. Humanity drove the Mijeong to extinction, and the elves officially ceased hostilities toward humanity and holed up on their homeworld, the World Tree."
On the surface, that is.
"In reality, they kept secretly encroaching on human territory, and there were numerous small-scale clashes."
"Could it be...?"
"That's right. The Director decided he couldn't sit by and watch the elves' petty guerrilla warfare. He wanted solid proof that the elves were still attacking humanity."
He looked back at the Razangriff, which carried Ranpazyakan.
"That would give humanity a pretext to strike the elves."
But...
"I never expected to capture a Capitano-class warrior so quickly, or in this way."
"Quite an unexpected big catch."
"Exactly. We caught not only the elves but the filthy insurgents, too."
The Nkhilakarn, humanity's sworn enemy, had declared a ceasefire while continuing their covert operations.
The marshal of Fettuccine had accommodated the multi-species space pirates of Sigma and supplied them with provisions.
The marshal of the Furnace had joined forces with the Nkhilakarn.
They were undeniably big catches.
"As I told you before, the Martian Senate had agreed to kill you and resolve this without a clash with the elves, right?"
"That's right."
"Honestly, that's not a decision anyone representing the Federation should make."
Anyone could understand why by looking at history.
"The war between humanity and the elves began when the elves launched a preemptive attack on the Earth Empire, which had only just entered space. The Empire was stunned to learn that other life existed in space, but it wanted to know why it was being attacked, so it risked asking the elves: Why are you attacking us? We only came into space because we couldn't support our growing population."
"Did they have some noble cause?"
"No."
Ramirez shook his head firmly.
"They didn't answer. They brutally massacred those who had bravely stepped forward on the Empire's behalf. The Empire grew furious and counterattacked, and that's how the space war began."
He set Rubedo down on the ground and placed a hand on her head.
"The elves' technology was superior to the Empire's, but their combat sense was awful. They were like fighters who relied on size alone, without any technique. The Empire should have slowly worn them down with varied tactics, but for some reason, it kept losing ground. I don't know how the Empire treated them, but many people betrayed it and sided with the elves when they saw that. After a long war, the Empire realized the reason was Mijeong, that space bug. The elves had learned to wield Mijeong's power one step ahead of the Empire. It was obvious what would happen if their superior technology was combined with the ability to manipulate reality."
"So that's why Mijeong went extinct."
"That's right. Once we completely erased Mijeong from this universe before they could fully master it, humanity gradually began to overwhelm the elves."
She didn't resist the rough hand ruffling her hair.
"In the end, we advanced all the way to their homeworld, Heap of Scrap, where the World Tree was located."
Fortunately, the history after that remained in her memory.
"The Empire immediately rammed its most powerful weapon, an artificial star, into it."
"It didn't work at all. The World Tree was completely immune to thermal-energy weapons. But it must've been a considerable shock to the elves. A civilization that had only just entered space had imitated a star."
"The elves proposed that they stop fighting..."
"The Empire accepted. Once it saw the artificial star had no effect, it realized the war to come would be a tedious war of attrition."
"Those elves are so damn shameless."
"Right? So damn shameless. Anyway, humanity was enraged by the audacity of them attacking first and then asking to stop. We purged the traitors and issued a warning: Set foot in human territory one more time, and next time we'll see it through to the bitter end."
Hmm...
With her memories incomplete, questions sprouted one after another in Rubedo's mind.
"You said there were frequent small-scale clashes even after the ceasefire, right?"
"That's right."
"Then why didn't you use those clashes as a pretext? Why wait until you captured elves who'd entered human territory?"
"As you know, they leave no traces. They appear without warning and disappear faster than anyone. And free jumps without a superintelligence are a huge pain. Though just now, I... Hmm... never mind. Come to think of it, that Epsilon guy's short-range jumps were similar to the elves'. It's possible the elves were the ones who hired Sigma."
From the way he stopped mid-sentence, Rubedo decided that asking more wouldn't get her an answer.
Leaving Ramirez lost in thought, she walked over to Yangyang and Kang Chanwoo as they emerged from the Razangriff.
"Big sis, Sergeant. How's that elf?"
"We cut off their limbs and locked them in a sealed room. We plan to transport them to Mars like this."
"We took their weapon and cut off all their limbs, so they can't thrash around. No risk of plasma spraying everywhere and riddling the ship with holes."
"Since we captured an elf, the Bureau's protection means the Senate won't shoot us down as we approach Mars, either."
"What, the Brigadier General told you?"
Nod, nod.
"Then this will go quickly. Rubedo, from now on we're going after the marshals of the Furnace and Fettuccine."
"This is a golden opportunity to root out the cancer cells eating away at the Federation. The marshals of colony planets must know a lot, too."
"I understand what you're trying to say."
Rubedo was an unmodified human who'd never even had a scalpel taken to her body.
Without using Mijeong's power, she was just an ordinary person, and this would be a dangerous mission for her to join.
To put it harshly, she was deadweight.
"I'll wait aboard the Razangriff."
"Thanks for understanding."
"Don't mention it, big sis."
Yangyang hugged Rubedo tightly.
Rubedo hesitated a moment, then closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around Yangyang's waist, and patted her.
Watching them, Kang Chanwoo...
"By the way, Miss Rubedo."
He placed a hand on Rubedo's shoulder.
Kang Chanwoo always had a face that gave nothing away.
But for some reason, this time his seriousness was written all over his face, and Rubedo swallowed nervously.
"Could it be...?"
"Could it be what?"
"You call the lieutenant 'big sis,' so why do you still call me 'Sergeant'?"
……?
"I'd like you to call me big brother, too."
"……."
Yangyang's fist slammed into Kang Chanwoo's face.