Chapter 3
"Whoa, were our harpoons always this strong? Or is their ship just old?"
It was as if the harpoon had pried open the Razangriff's hatch.
"No. They're coming."
"Who's coming?"
An armored soldier walked out through the open hatch.
He looked around, then kicked off the floor as if he'd grasped the situation and raced along the harpoon chain toward the Matador.
"Cut the harpoon and retreat immediately."
Epsilon issued the order without hesitation.
"What?"
"Scatter the decoy Tokens, and abandon the Corsair if necessary."
"We shouldn't have started this in the first place if that's how it's going to be. You're running away just because one armored soldier came out?"
Bang!
Thud.
"Now."
The gunshot rang out, and silence fell.
The pirates aboard the Matador maneuvered the ship in perfect unison.
The harpoon launch ports repeatedly opened and closed, severing the chain.
Energy gathered in the jump engine drive as the ship prepared for an ultra-long-range spatial jump.
But it was too late.
"……Shit."
Thoom!
-External armor breach detected. Unidentified object has entered the ship. Sealing bulkheads throughout the interior corridors.
At the same time as the heavy impact, the AI operator sounded an alarm.
-2. 5. 11. 17.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.
-……23rd bulkhead breached.
Crash!
The command room door flew off with a deafening crash.
The armored soldier stepped inside and immediately approached Epsilon.
"……It's been a while, Lieutenant General…… Keh."
It happened in the blink of an eye.
Ramirez grabbed Epsilon, who was on guard, by the head and slammed him into the floor.
Wham. Wham. Wham.
Every time his hand came down, another red smear of blood spread across Epsilon's face.
"Damn it, why isn't anything working?!"
The pirates around them swung their weapons, but their attacks couldn't even reach Ramirez.
Bullets and knives alike bounced off the armored suit's barrier.
Wham. Wham. Wham.
Thump.
…….
Ramirez threw Epsilon to the floor.
-Don't pretend to be unconscious. A soldier like you wouldn't go down from something this minor.
"……You saw through me."
-You were a member of Task Force 42, too.
Epsilon got up as if he hadn't just been knocked down and wiped the blood from his face.
"You've still got that touch. Heh."
-That's all thanks to the armor. I'm past my prime now.
"Hah, that's a good one."
Laughing, he threw a punch.
Ramirez blocked it and swung in turn, trying to take control of the fight, but—
-……?
"What's wrong?"
Epsilon hadn't budged an inch.
The armored suit, capable of lifting weights measured in tons, couldn't even lift and throw one unarmed adult man.
That wasn't normal, even for someone who'd once been a Federation soldier.
"My turn."
He bent the arm Ramirez had grabbed, closed the distance, then seized Ramirez's leg with his other hand and lifted him up.
Crash!
Ramirez, slammed into the floor, couldn't get back up.
The armor had absorbed the impact.
He simply couldn't understand what was happening.
But his opponent didn't stop.
The metal club he pulled from his waist transformed into a plasma cutter as soon as it was in his hand, and he swung it at Ramirez.
"Hmm."
But the plasma cutter was stopped by the armored suit's barrier and couldn't advance any farther.
His well-timed attack, aimed at an opening, had failed. Epsilon dropped the plasma cutter and retreated.
The plasma sword, deflected by the barrier, plunged into a pirate's head, but no one paid it any mind.
-I almost got killed instantly. Good thing I had decent equipment.
"I won't deny it. I'd like to get my hands on an armored suit, too. Still, I never expected you to come out here yourself, Brigadier General."
-That's my line. The Epsilon I knew wasn't stupid enough to make trouble near the Sindalot Multistar System. And besides……
"You mean, why did I attack Task Force 42?"
He widened the distance between them and picked up the plasma sword.
"Someone hired me. They said if I attacked Task Force 42's ship, the Razangriff, they'd help me…… wake her up!"
-……!
He threw the plasma sword.
The strength of a former Federation soldier who'd undergone body-modification surgery made the plasma sword fly like a plasma cannon blast.
Ramirez trusted the armored suit's barrier to stop the incoming weapon and kept his eyes on Epsilon's movements instead, but—
"I'm not a soldier anymore."
The plasma sword suddenly exploding was beyond his expectations, and while his vision was obscured, Epsilon tackled him.
"I'm a pirate."
Again.
He couldn't shake him off.
The armor's output should have let him lift twenty adult men with ease.
Yet again, he couldn't shake off one unarmed adult man.
This was clearly…… an anomaly.
"Seeing how you keep failing to deal with unexpected situations, I guess it's been a while since you removed your combat OS and moved to the rear."
-You, on the other hand, have put on quite a bit of weight since I last saw you.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Short-range spatial jump.
Epsilon 'jumped' out of the Matador, carrying Ramirez in his arms.
For Ramirez, it was one surprise after another.
As far as he knew, humans couldn't jump through space unassisted.
And yet Epsilon had done it.
He wanted to bombard him with questions, but right now he was fighting in the middle of space.
In a fight, wondering how he'd done it was less useful than figuring out how to get out of this situation.
"Hup!"
Unlike Ramirez, who was wearing an armored suit, Epsilon was unarmored and felt as though his body might swell up and his eyeballs pop out at any moment, but—
thanks to his body-modification enhancements, no such disaster occurred.
The moment they became soldiers, Federation troops had their skeletons, muscles, brains, nervous systems, organs, and blood enhanced.
Their strengthened bones and muscles became even tougher, granting them superhuman strength and durability.
They could protect their comparatively vulnerable internal organs or, in the worst case, break down lower-priority organs to heal themselves.
The enhancements he'd received as a Federation soldier had kept him alive.
"Brigadier General."
On top of that, during his long life as a pirate, Epsilon had undergone enhancement surgeries that went far beyond the norm.
He destroyed his body to gain strength, and sacrificed himself to win.
Therefore.
"I hope we never meet again."
KWA-BOOM!!!
Epsilon's body began to glow, then exploded.
The shock from the point-blank blast set off the armored suit's alarms.
Ramirez was swept away by the shock wave and flung into space.
In his rapidly receding field of vision, he saw the Matador and Corsair making a jump to escape.
-I let him get away. Damn it.
The Razangriff, unwilling to let its commander become lost in space, launched a fighter.
…….
…….
…….
"Gasp!"
Epsilon opened his eyes.
His face was reflected in the glass of the hibernation pod.
Then the combat OS injected the spare's combat records into his mind.
As the pod opened, an unpleasant voice hit his ears.
"Yo-ho, Boss! The cloning tech your leader was researching worked! Congratulations, Boss!"
"Looks like your second heart transplant worked, too."
"Even though someone smashed it to pieces."
It was the subordinate he'd shot.
"Sigma's leader is whoever's strongest. The leader gets everything from those below him. That goes for your heart, too."
"Whoa, Boss, are you gay? I don't really mind."
"……."
Seeing his brow furrow, the subordinate cackled.
"What happened to the Razangriff?"
"How should I know? While the Boss's clone was making a glorious sacrifice, they bolted without looking back. Don't worry. It was a random-coordinate jump without using a jump gate, so they won't be able to follow us."
The subordinate's mouth showed no sign of stopping.
"Man, I never would've guessed that armored soldier was 'that' Brigadier General Ramirez! If you'd told me sooner, Boss wouldn't have had to blow up my heart, and I would've followed orders like a good boy. The thing I really can't get over is that you decided to attack the Razangriff all on your own without consulting your leader. Oh, right, she was in a coma, wasn't she? I know all about it, so put your fist down. I can't grow a second head."
Just as Epsilon was about to kill his subordinate again, a communication chime rang and stopped him.
"Well, I'm off. Get some good rest, my love."
The subordinate, having seized his chance to live, ran off without looking back.
Just like the Matador and Corsair, which had made an ultra-long-range jump to escape Brigadier General Ramirez.
"……Phew."
Epsilon sighed and accepted the call.
As he'd expected, it was John Doe.
-Well done, Epsilon.
"Keep your promise. If you don't, I'll crush you."
Pwahahaha!
Loud laughter erupted from the other end of the communication.
-You Smegma lot couldn't even beat Brigadier General Ramirez after he'd removed his combat OS?
"You were watching the whole time."
-Ah, ah, don't worry. I'll keep my promise. The answer is Mijeong.
"What? Wait a second."
The communication cut off.
John Doe's signal vanished.
Kzzzzzt.
Soon after, a torrent of data swept over the signal and erased all traces of it.
"Mijeong…… Mijeong, huh."
As far as he knew, there was only one thing in the universe called Mijeong.
The bug the Earth Empire had driven to extinction long ago.
A mysterious being that defied the laws of nature and rewrote reality.
If it was Mijeong, waking Lambda from her coma shouldn't be impossible.
The only problem was that Mijeong was an extinct species.
There was no way he could get one.
"……He played me completely."
Bang.
When he slammed his fist down, the hibernation pod dented and sparks flew.
…….
…….
…….
"So…… you removed your combat OS, then went charging in alone, recklessly trusting nothing but your armored suit……"
Ramirez was.
"And you couldn't even shake off a bare-handed Epsilon, so you let the pirates get away."
Extremely.
"You even nearly became lost in space after getting hit by a human bomb?"
Embarrassed.
Maybe humiliated was a better word.
Either way, it was certainly an emotion he hadn't felt in a very long time.
"Hahahaha! Hwehehehahaha! Did you hear that, Captain? The great Brigadier General Ramirez got himself into this mess over one lousy space pirate!"
To the point that he couldn't even flip off the subordinate laughing at him as much as he pleased.
"You should've gone with everyone else. Why'd you go alone and get yourself into such a mess?"
"……And you all just watched them jump away?"
"Of course we couldn't do anything in case you got caught up in it. Epsilon's a clever one—he jumped right into the line of fire. How did he calculate that? Short-range jumps aren't very precise. Well, more importantly, how did a human jump through space without a suit in the first place?"
Ramirez agreed.
Epsilon had grabbed him and jumped 'together,' so it had definitely been a jump.
But there'd been no sign of a jump gate.
It was a complete mystery.
"Well, enough teasing."
Lieutenant Yangyang, his subordinate, brushed off her hands and pointed toward the Gladiators' hibernation room.
"Shouldn't we wake her up soon?"
"We haven't even jumped yet."
"Come on, shouldn't a member of Task Force 42 be able to withstand a jump without a suit?"
"She's a civilian."
"I know."
"Yang."
A subtle tension passed between Lieutenant Yangyang and Brigadier General Ramirez, and—
"……Captain. Let's jump."
-Where to, Brigadier General?
…….
-Someone hired me. They said if I attacked Task Force 42's ship, the Razangriff, they'd help me…… wake her up!
'Her…… huh.'
Ramirez replayed Epsilon's voice, which had been recorded on his brain chip.
Her.
Lambda, the genius researcher who'd deserted alongside Epsilon during the fall of Taygeta.
Lambda, who was thought capable of ushering humanity into a second golden age of technology, after progress had stalled since the days of the Earth Empire.
'I won't be seeing him again anyway. With their leader dead, Sigma will fall apart, too.'
Before long, he erased from his memory the face of Epsilon, who had died as a human bomb.
-……Brigadier General?
"To the Seventh Sindalot Multistar System."
-Is that the Emperor's command?
"Yes."
The captain silently piloted the Razangriff.
The First Sindalot Multistar System received the Razangriff's signal and activated, and soon a blue jump gate opened.