Full Metal Panic! - Volume SS04 - Indifferent Four-Wind Scattering? - Chapter 5

Engage, Six, Seven

The incident occurred during AS drop training.

It wasn’t even a particularly difficult exercise. The B-team, led by call sign Uruz-2 (First Lieutenant Tanan Amathart) and consisting of three M6A2 Bushnells, was supposed to descend from an altitude of 12,000 meters and open their parachutes as low as possible to the ground—about 1,200 meters—in what was known as a HALO jump. Descending from the C-17 transport alongside Lieutenant Amathart’s M6 were Sergeant Melissa Mao and Corporal Jack Wayne, who held the call signs Uruz-6 and Uruz-7 respectively. All involved had plenty of AS drop experience.

However, immediately after the three machines opened their parachutes—around the 1,000 meter zone—they were hit with buffeting winds. Such gusts were anticipated to some degree, and Lieutenant Amathart (Uruz-2) and Sergeant Mao (Uruz-6) quickly manipulated their parachute toggles to regain their balance. Corporal Wayne (Uruz-7) tried to do the same and failed when a shearing wind struck his M6, sending it out of alignment and into the parachute of the nearby Lieutenant Amathart’s M6. Their wires became tangled and both parachutes collapsed as the two ASes plummeted hopelessly towards the ground, intertwined like the double helix of DNA.

Sergeant Mao, left behind in the air, radioed her HQ about the issue and reported the coordinates towards which her comrades were falling. Meanwhile, without even enough time to curse their bad luck, the two men cut free their parachutes and deployed their backups. By the time this happened, though, they were a mere 400 meters from the ground.

The instant the spare parachutes were deployed, their posture-stabilizing rocket motors (which were mounted on the M6’s torsos) activated automatically. Powerful flames burst out in a low diagonal on either side of the machines, slowing their descent, but not enough to keep the two M6s from plowing into a heavily jungled mountain slope on Merida Island.

Four minutes later, a rescue helicopter from the base arrived.

●

“I almost can’t believe they survived,” said Gail McAllen, skimming through an accident report at his Merida Island Base office. “I saw a similar accident befall another team when I was in the Australian military. Those two didn’t make it. The drive systems were crushed up, a fuel tank caught fire... Well, I don’t need to tell you it was bad.”

“Sir,” Sergeant Melissa Mao responded weakly. Mao was Chinese-American, with short black hair and large, almond-shaped eyes. She had the air of a graceful cat and a lithe and flexible body. She’d come out of the Marines, but was now a part of the transnational counter-terrorism force known as Mithril. More specifically, she was a member of the SRT, the ground strike team of their operations division’s amphibious battle group known as the Tuatha de Danaan.

Captain McAllen was the SRT’s leader, bearing the call sign of Uruz-1. He was a short Caucasian man of height about equal to Mao’s.

“I guess it helps that Amathart and Wayne are both such good pilots,” Mao added.

“Were such good pilots, you mean,” McAllen corrected, rapping his toe in agitation against an empty bucket near his feet. The roof of the island’s underground base frequently leaked during hard rains, and the SRT office was one of the many that had to requisition a bucket at all times. “Amathart was badly injured... his right leg and hip are unlikely to make a full recovery. It won’t interfere with his daily life, but he won’t be able to handle SRT missions anymore. I’m thinking of moving him to intelligence.”

“Really?” Mao whispered, finding it regrettable. Lieutenant Amathart was extremely talented and fair-minded, with a good grasp of human nature and a wealth of experience.

“Corporal Wayne got off with light injuries,” McAllen continued, “but I don’t think he’ll be any good to the SRT after this.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He said he saw the face of God when he hit the ground.” McAllen looked down, one eyebrow twitching. “A white light appeared before his eyes and proclaimed, ‘Thou art a lost lamb. Cast aside thy sword and take up the shrimp net.’ He says he’s going to pay the contract termination fee, leave the squad, and move to Florida.”

“I’m sure he’ll be a good fisherman,” Mao groaned, eyes glazing over.

McAllen spoke in annoyance. “Damned Wayne. Shrimp, my eye... What a waste of good talent.”

“I’ve never heard of that reaction to a near-death experience before...”

“Glad I found out early, at any rate. If I’d used him in combat without realizing it, it could’ve made real trouble for us.”

“No kidding.”

The two let out a shared sigh.

The man sitting in a dark corner of the office, who had been silently listening to their conversation up to this point, spoke. “It’s not unusual to lose personnel in training accidents.” His voice was deep and quietly sonorous, somehow evocative of a moss-covered rock. Tall, with broad shoulders and deeply carved features—this was Major Andrey Kalinin. He was McAllen’s direct superior, and operations commander of the entire amphibious battle group. “The issue is losing SRT personnel. We can swap in Sergeant Mao for Lieutenant Amathart as Uruz-2, but...”

“What?” Mao said unthinkingly.

McAllen explained. “I didn’t mention it? Starting tomorrow, your call sign is Uruz-2.”

Mao was left speechless by his casual declaration. The Uruz-2 call sign legitimately signified the SRT’s ‘number two’—in other words, she’d be second only to McAllen in authority. It was a shockingly sudden promotion.

The Tuatha de Danaan’s Special Response Team (SRT) were an elite force chosen from the best of the best. They conducted the kinds of dangerous and delicate missions that required great flexibility, and were effectively Mithril’s hand-picked top guns. Most SRT members weren’t just exceptional fighters, but were also top-class technicians in some field or other. In the Tuatha de Danaan’s case, that frequently meant AS specialists, and those that weren’t had skills in another field. For instance, Uruz-9—the Korean Corporal Yang Junkyu—had very little AS piloting experience, but made up for it with the skills of a professional race car driver behind the wheel.

Mao herself was an AS and electronic warfare specialist, and such things were generally her purview in SRT missions. She knew she had qualifications to match any of her colleagues, but despite all that, she couldn’t fully hide her reticence at the thought of taking up the role.

“What’s wrong? You seem confused,” McAllen said with a grin.

“Well, yeah, I am,” she confessed. “You have plenty of others who could do this, after all.”

“Untrue. Uruz-3, Castello, leads the PRT, and Uruz-4, Hammer, commands the helicopter squadron. Uruz-5, Sergeant Sandraptor, is good, but he’s not cut out for leadership. That leaves it to you, Uruz-6,” McAllen explained, listing off the names of the other SRT members. “They’re just numbers, of course, but I’ve been thinking this over for a while. You’re still young, but you’re even-handed, with a good head for cooperation. And...” McAllen went that far, then trailed off. “Well, there’s a lot of reasons.”

“Well, thanks.” Mao wondered if he was about to say something vaguely irritating, like ‘women are more attentive to the needs of those around them.’ Though, if that was his reasoning, he might not have been that far off the mark. Whether or not it had to do with her gender, Mao was a very attentive person. More so than most people thought.

Mao wasn’t one of the ‘macho’ type women typically seen in male-dominated workplaces. Experience had taught her that you couldn’t earn the men’s respect by putting that kind of attitude at the forefront. What mattered was flexibility, cooperation, and competence. Even if she got some bullying, she had to let it roll off her back, remember why she was there, put her head down and keep doing her work. It wasn’t easy, but it was visible to the people that mattered. And that could pay dividends.

It was shocking how useful that experience had turned out to be in Mithril. The organization sometimes gave absurd orders without any explanation. Three months ago, in fact, operations HQ had appointed a fifteen-year-old girl to serve as battle group commander. Even Mao was baffled by that one. Said new commander, Colonel Teletha Testarossa, was currently overseeing the finishing touches on their base’s new submarine, the TDD-1. As far as Mao had heard, the girl hadn’t made any real mistakes as of yet. In fact, she’d heard from several people that she was performing excellently.

“We’re promoting you to master sergeant,” Kalinin said. “But that still leaves the SRT two numbers short. We’ll need two new soldiers with appropriate skills.”

“You think we can find them on such short notice?”

“They’ll need to have depth. This is an important time for our battle group; we’re just about to receive some real fighting power. With the TDD-1’s maiden voyage completed successfully, the new ASes will be arriving at Merida Island by the end of the week.”

Hearing this, Mao’s expression brightened. “Wow! The XM9s?”

“As of two days ago, the official designation is ‘M9’,” Kalinin told her. “Codename Gernsback.”

“Yesss!” Mao did a little dance, like a child anticipating the arrival of a new toy. She’d actually been involved with the new AS’s design, and she knew them best out of everyone in the squad. So when the new models came, she’d be the first to get to fiddle with them, play with them, and tool around in them. She’d been planning a shopping trip to Guam that weekend, but could easily cancel those plans. She knew where her priorities lay.

But Kalinin quickly doused her enthusiasm. “Filling in the gaps in our squad is more important than testing out those dubious new models,” he said firmly. “You’ll be flying to Central America. The training camp in Belize.”

“Uh?” said Mao.

“First duty under your new rank,” he went on to explain. “Spend a week working with the head of the camp and pick out the two best prospects among the trainees. They’ll fill in the Uruz-6 and Uruz-7 roles.”

“But what about the XM— I mean, the M9 tests?”

“You can do those later,” Kalinin said flatly.

After Mao slumped her way out of the office, McAllen said to Kalinin, “What if she pulls a pair of duds?”

“She won’t,” Kalinin responded smoothly. “She’s picking her own team, after all.”

“True, that does make a person more discerning...” McAllen rapped his sheaf of documents on the table to get them lined up, then changed the subject. “By the way, the camp’s commander called me last week. He says there’s a strange new recruit there: a boy, fifteen or sixteen, East Asian.”

“Fifteen or sixteen?”

“Yes. Apparently, he’s a mercenary our scouts picked up in Southeast Asia. What were they thinking, bringing in a child like that?”

“Is he Japanese, perchance?” Kalinin asked.

It was a strange question, and McAllen looked at him suspiciously. “I didn’t ask. Why?”

“Oh... perhaps I’m overthinking it. Never mind.” Kalinin shook his head slightly and leaned back in his chair.

●

From Merida Island, Mao passed through Guam, California, and Mexico before arriving in Belize, a city that shared the name of the country it was in. From there, she spent two hours in a ratty old transport helicopter. Their training camp, the Mithril special combatant selection center, was located in the northern Maya Mountains, in the jungles close to the border with Guatemala.

When she finally arrived after a full day’s travel, dressed in her well-worn old olive-colored fatigues with Ray-Ban sunglasses, she found it wasn’t much different than it had been when she’d stayed there. “Has it been a whole year?” she whispered to herself, stepping out of the helicopter onto the damp ground below.

The training camp fanned out in the middle of the jungle. The sunlight was blaring and the heat was sweltering. Deep greenery and the smell of mud overwhelmed the eye and the nose. Gunshots stung her ears, accompanied by barking voices and the roar of old helicopters.

The camp was located in Belize, a small Central American nation on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The population was a mere 220,000, and it had only gained independence from England twenty years ago. Belize’s primary industries were farming and forestry, and most of its population was poor. Most of the land areas were comprised of tropical rainforest. It was September, in the middle of the country’s rainy season, meaning that the camp got at least one heavy downpour each day.

The camp’s buildings were mostly prefabricated and as bare-bones as could be. Almost all the weapons there were used, older generation things. There were ASes, too, but only four—two M6s and two Rk-92, all extremely well-worn first-generation machines. It was a big difference from the modern high-tech weapons Mao used on a daily basis at Merida Island.

There was a reason why the equipment in this training camp was so shoddy: the soldiers gathered here weren’t just training, but also being tested for suitability to their unit. They’d get run through a specific training course, and if they didn’t score highly enough, they’d eventually flunk out and be forced to leave the camp with a minor compensation. The dropouts would thus never learn the name of the company they’d been trying to join, nor that it employed high-tech weaponry ten years ahead of the rest of the world. When they returned to their home countries, all they’d be able to tell friends and acquaintances was, ‘It was a training camp full of veterans doing really harsh training,’ and the secret of Mithril’s existence would be preserved.

Immediately after Mao landed, she stopped by the office of Major Estes, the camp’s tanned Puerto Rican director who would have looked more like the curator for a museum of odds and ends were it not for the long, fine scars all over his body. Following the initial pleasantries, she handed over Kalinin’s documents.

“Now...” Major Estes said, waving around the documents he’d just received to swat at a fly buzzing around his head. “Go ahead and take back whoever you want, but you’re pretty much on your own, all right? I’ve got enough to do.”

For some reason, there was a radial crack in the window behind him. In front of it sat a trophy—apparently some kind of sharpshooting award—split in two.

“We’re host to broke mercenaries and retired military from all over, but only a few of them will do you any good,” he told her. “Not many as brilliant as you out there.”

“Right...” said Mao, trailing off uncertainly.

“Time passes fast,” he observed. “Has it been a year already? Originally I thought you’d drop out in a few days.”

“When people underestimate me like that, sir, I always use it against them.”

“One of your best points,” Estes told her with a happy smile.

Most of the people who came to the camp were veteran soldiers to whom the name ‘trainee’ didn’t seem particularly appropriate... Yet even then, more than half dropped out. The training itself was extremely taxing, with the soldiers forced to work their bodies to the max in a stressful environment. For instance, they’d have to trek alone through a mountainous region that was filled with instructors—who were role-playing the enemy—while running recon. The course itself covered about twenty kilometers, and they had a mere twenty hours to finish with twenty kilograms of equipment on their backs. They had to arrive at their destination on time and without being discovered by an instructor—with every piece of equipment intact, of course. The test was so hardcore that even men confident in their skills frequently dropped out. Some actually got lost in the jungle and had to be saved from the brink of death by others.

For those who managed to make it to the goal within the allotted time, another trial awaited: as they stood there, exhausted and sleep-deprived, the instructor would tell them, “Congratulations on making it, but I’m afraid our plans have changed. You’re going to have to keep hauling that twenty kilograms of equipment to Point Delta another twenty kilometers to the west. And do it within another twenty hours.” This part of the test was psychological in nature: having overcome so many hardships to reach their goal, with true R&R finally in sight, they’d have to buck up once more and resume their forced march of despair.

It was an extremely difficult thing to ask of someone. Most would give up again before they even made it one kilometer. But those with keen wills would dig down deep and keep walking. And once they’d made it about five kilometers, they’d find an instructor waiting for them, who’d proclaim, “Congratulations! This time, you really passed. There’s a jeep nearby. Take it back and have a rest.”

That was just one small example of the extremely sadistic trials that Mao had cleared to make it where she was.

Major Estes drew a beat-up cigarette from his pocket and said, “Even men in whom I see real potential will drop out for the strangest reasons. We had a real tough guy who came out of Delta Force...” Delta Force was a US Special Forces team. “...but he got stranded in the mountains one day.”

“Stranded, huh?” Mao remarked. “A Delta Force guy?”

“He had a little bad luck. Got pinned to a tree by an unexpected mudslide, and spent three days trapped there,” Estes explained. “It’s impressive that he managed to hang in there for so long without food or water, and his grades until then had been stellar, so I asked him if he wanted to stick with it... but he said he was quitting.”

“Why in the world?”

“He said that while he was stranded, he saw the face of God.”

Mao stared at Estes in silence.

“With a grand fanfare, an Elvis Presley clad in white appeared and proclaimed, ‘Cast aside thy sword and take up the microphone’,” Estes went on. “The day after being saved, he made a pilgrimage to Memphis.”

“I’m sure he’ll be an excellent singer,” Mao said, her eyes glazing over.

Major Estes whispered bitterly. “Damn the man. Elvis, my eye... What a waste of good talent.”

“I wonder if there’s something going around...” Mao muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, nothing... I think I’ll go look through the camp now, like you said. Is that all right?”

“Yeah, I’ve assigned you a trainee to act as your guide,” Estes told her. “He’ll be waiting for you outside, so you can ask him if you have any questions.”

“Thanks.” She saluted, then left Estes’s office behind.

As promised, there was indeed a trainee waiting outside in fatigues. He was a young Caucasian man, probably around twenty years old, with a shockingly handsome face that seemed out of place in these tropical hinterlands. He had deep blue eyes and silky blond hair, a perfectly proportioned nose and symmetrical jawline. Despite his quintessential Teutonic beauty, though, there was a strange melancholy in his eyes that seemed reminiscent of the East.

My goodness... Realizing she’d forgotten to breathe, Mao fixed her mouth into a hard line and adjusted her sunglasses. She’d come here to recruit, not to flirt. Still, she couldn’t deny the handsome boy’s appeal...

“Master Sergeant Melissa Mao?” the young man said. His voice was as elegant as she’d imagined.

“That’s me. Who are you?”

“I’m a trainee, Kurz Weber. Major Estes ordered me to show you around. It’s really a true pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, Weber,” said Mao, shaking Trainee Weber’s hand. His fingers were soft and lithe, reminiscent of a pianist. Ah, cut it out... she told herself, only just managing to keep herself from leering.

“Well, we should get started. Right this way, if you please,” said Weber, who began walking forward with Mao following after him. “The instructor mentioned you graduated from this camp.”

“That’s right,” she agreed. “About a year ago.”

“That’s amazing. It seems like all around me, people are dropping like flies...”

“What about you? Think you can make the grade?”

He gave her a bashful smile. “I’m doing my best, but I’m not sure... They haven’t let us know where we’ll be stationed if we graduate. And I can’t stop thinking everyone here is better than me.”

“No whining, now,” she lectured.

“Yes, ma’am. But I really don’t feel like I have much to offer... I’m especially bad with a rifle,” he confessed.

“Don’t talk like that. I’m a total mess, and even I made it. Have a little self-confidence.”

“Thank you, ma’am. You’ve cheered me up a bit.” Weber smiled again.

A good and honest boy, Mao thought. She honestly wondered how someone so innocent could possibly be making it in this camp, but then... you couldn’t judge a book by its cover. Perhaps, behind his handsome appearance, the boy had a will of iron.

As they walked along, they chatted a bit about memories and current events in the camp. At last, Mao said, “I’d like to know who’s the absolute best among the trainees.”

“I can tell you all about that, certainly. But first, come this way.” With this, Weber guided her to a small warehouse. It was beside a 300-yard shooting range a short distance away from the troop barracks. She could still hear the gunshots periodically going off from here.

“Hmm?” she said questioningly.

“Come on in,” he invited. “Watch your step. It’s dark inside.”

Despite finding his behavior suspicious, Mao entered the warehouse and Weber silently closed the door behind them. Inside was a selection of target boards, lumber, wires, and other miscellany.

“What’s this all about?” she asked.

“I didn’t want the other trainees or instructors to see,” Weber said in the dim light. A few beams of light streamed in through gaps in the walls and the door, but the backlighting made it impossible to make out his expression. “There was something I was hoping to discuss with you, ma’am.”

“What is it?” Mao asked, the strangeness of the situation making it hard for her to do otherwise.

Weber cleared his throat, then spoke up, seriously. “I’ve been in this camp for four weeks now.”

“Yeah?”

“Before then, I lived in the rural middle east, working as a mercenary. A city boy like me, living in the empty backwaters for over three years... then only getting a few days in real civilization before I came here...”

“Sure, that happens,” Mao said skeptically.

“Yes... Wiling my youth away fighting pointless battles, surrounded by sweaty, boorish males. Nary a single soft feminine form in sight, my days haunted by loneliness and sorrow... I don’t know about the other trainees, but I don’t think I can stand this kind of life much longer,” he said sorrowfully. “Frankly, I’ve been thinking of quitting the camp.”

“That’s a shame,” Mao told him, while thinking Ah, so he’s a wimp. He was feeling homesick, and the minute a sympathetic-seeming superior officer appeared, he took it for a shoulder to cry on. Quite frankly, it was a disappointment. But why’d he bring me in here to do it?

“But... but.” A little bit of heat entered Weber’s voice now. “If you, oh so beautiful and wise and reliable master sergeant... would allow me to bury my face in your ample bust, and cry... I might just graduate this camp with the best grades ever!”

“You—”

“It’s not training that I need, but love!” he cried passionately. “Love and warmth! Specifically, the warmth of human contact!”

“W-Wait a minute—” As Weber pressed closer, Mao drew back, arms folded protectively over her chest.

“Master Sergeant, I beg of you! Let me cry into your chest! Preferably naked!”

“You sicko pig!” she bellowed.

“Master Sergeeeeant!” Weber leaped at her, tears streaming from his eyes.

Mao drew back to dodge his charge, but tripped over a piece of wood on the floor and fell onto her backside instead.

Weber promptly threw himself onto her. “Wow, is that a yes? Is it?! You make me so happy!”

“Get off of me!” she told him angrily. “Hey! Ahh—”

“Don’t you worry. I’m very gentle. Yeah, no worries there...”

“S-Stop it...”

“C’mon, Melissa,” he implored her. “Let’s make love. I’ll make you happy, I swear. Yahoo!”

Weber rubbed his cheek needily against Mao’s chest. Strangely, she didn’t feel completely repulsed by it, but that was all the more reason she had to take this seriously. Returning to her senses, Mao narrowed her eyes dangerously. “That’s... enough!” she said, planting a knee into his lower abdomen.

“Erk!” Weber choked. Mao then grabbed him by the collar, lifted up his face, and gave him a swift chop with her open left hand. “Urk... urgh...”

“Was that all an act to get me in here?! You disgusting pervert!” Mao charged at Weber, who’d just gotten unsteadily onto his feet.

“H-Hey. Wait—”

Crash! Mao’s jump kick to the face sent Weber flying. Crashing back-first through the door behind him, he tumbled out of the warehouse. After going head-over-heels through the mud a few times, he finally came to a stop, arms and legs flopping motionlessly at his sides.

“Hahh... hahh...” Heaving for breath, Mao made her way back out into the bright sunlight. She stepped on the door as she went, now broken in two, and as she was straightening out her rumpled clothing, Weber slowly sat up.

“Ow, that hurts. Darn it...” said Weber, while wiping his mud-stained face off with a sleeve. It was a haughty voice now, with none of the humble civility he’d had on display when they’d first met. His expression was suddenly that of a sulking child as well. “Are you crazy?” he demanded. “Where’d that come from?”

“That’s my line!” she replied. “What were you thinking?!”

“Well, you know... You were being weirdly nice to me, so I thought you might be interested,” he said simply.

“The hell I would! Besides, you were tricking me from the start!”

“How so?”

“Putting on that super-polite, ‘wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly’ act!” Mao clarified.

“Hmm? Oh, that... That act really brings ’em in. Especially older women,” Weber told her. “I try it from time to time. Ha ha ha ha.”

“You...”

It was then that five or six men came running from the nearby shooting range.

“What’s all this?”

“Oh, it’s just Weber. Getting in trouble again?”

“Hey, a hottie.”

The rubberneckers all put in their two cents.

A black sergeant, who appeared to be an instructor, appeared a moment later. “What’s all this noise?! You, there! Woman! Explain this!” he called to her.

“I’ve got nothing to explain! If you want to yell at someone, yell at Major Estes, who stuck me with this idiot!” she shouted back.

The sergeant’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the brand new rank insignia on Mao’s arm. Then he looked at Weber, still crouched upon the ground, and back again at Mao. “Forgive me, ma’am,” he said at last, his tone suddenly extremely polite. “I think I see what happened here. I’m sorry for the trouble my trainee has caused you.” He paused. “Weber!”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t I order you to scrub the urinals and dig a trench? What are you doing here?!”

“Well, Lagavulin was ordered to show this lady around camp, but he said he suddenly wasn’t feeling well, so I took over for him,” Weber said innocently.

“I get it,” the sergeant said shortly. “In other words, Lagavulin’s insubordinate.”

“Looks like.”

“I’ll have to punish Lagavulin for this. But as he’s not feeling well, I’ll have to punish you in his place. Go clean the two M6s,” the sergeant told him. “You can do it after you scrub the urinals and do your digging.”

“Huh? But if it rains they’ll just get dirty again,” Weber protested.

“I don’t care. And no breaks until the work’s all done!”

“Yeah, yeah...” Weber stood up with a shrug, brushing the mud off his bottom as he walked off. But on his way out, he gave Mao a last glance and a grin. “But, Big Sis. I really was lonely. And I only go after the pretty ladies, I swear.”

“Oh, really?” Mao asked. The way he’d winked and said that line offhandedly... for some reason, she didn’t find it pretentious. In fact, she found it rather charming. It must have been some special talent of his.

“Now, get going!” came the shout, and Kurz Weber skedaddled.

After a quick call to Major Estes, the instructor who’d told Weber off was assigned to be Mao’s guide instead. The man in question, Sergeant Zimmer, had been appointed as an instructor here at camp ten months ago. Since Mao had graduated some time before that, this was their first time meeting. He was just under forty and not particularly tall, but had a solidly built, muscular frame. He wore his brimmed hat neatly and had a thick goatee.

“Honestly sorry about the mix-up,” Zimmer apologized again. “Things don’t work like an ordinary camp here. Lots of peculiar types around.”

“I know all about it,” Mao told him. “By the way, that guy... Weber, was he a trainee too?”

“Yeah. And our biggest problem child. He does fine enough in exercises, but it’s like he’s got no respect for the rules at all. He was already in the doghouse for some trouble he caused yesterday, and now he’s skipping out on his punishment to mess with you...”

“What was he in the doghouse for?”

“He shot the major’s trophy,” Zimmer said with a shrug. “There’s a shooting range for urban combat to the north. He fired a .308 caliber from the tower there while the major was out and hit it dead-on. Seems like he’d made a bet with the other trainees... The men all claimed it was just a stray shot, but the major was furious.”

“That tower?” Mao looked northward. Far beyond the jungle that bordered the leisurely sloping hill, just barely within the range of her vision, the tip of a simple steel tower was visible through the trees. She stared at it a moment, then looked back at Major Estes’s office, which was a small prefabricated building on the far south side of the camp cut out of the jungle. There had to be at least a kilometer between them... He’d hit that tiny little trophy from that distance?

“It was complete dumb luck, of course,” Zimmer added upon noting Mao’s reaction. “Most men couldn’t hit the ass-end of an elephant at a distance like that. There’s no way he did it on purpose.”

“Yeah, probably not...” Mao had heard more than her share of rumors about legendary snipers since she entered the business, but only a handful of people in the world could land a shot like that intentionally. And the sorts that could tended to be stoic and taciturn, with a mysterious air reminiscent of mountain sages. They weren’t obnoxious playboys like Weber.

“All right, let’s go. I don’t know what the major told you, but we’ve got plenty of good men here to go with the bad. And there are more currently out on exercises who might not be back today... but you can have a look through, at any rate.” At this, Zimmer started walking.

Mao spent all day looking at trainees. She scrutinized portfolios, watched the more interesting ones in action, met with them, talked with them, then asked Zimmer a few more questions... and at some point, while she was doing that, the sun had gone down.

A heavy squall hit the base around then, yet the men’s training continued. Beyond the endless hiss of the rain, she could hear the barking of the officers and the sounds of gunfire. In the western square of the camp, two ASes with training monomolecular cutters engaged in a mock battle.

Mao, who was understandably tired at this point, told Zimmer she’d see the rest tomorrow and headed back to the quarters they’d temporarily assigned her. The small private room had a simple bed, but no shower of its own, so she waited for a time when the communal shower would be empty, quickly stripped down and washed off the mud and sweat of the day. She returned to her room in only a bath towel, snatched up a beer she’d set to chill in advance, and was feeling human again at last.

“Now...” She lay down in bed to review the files of the trainees she’d met that day. Quite a few men, quite a few characters.

This is pretty fun, actually... There were lots of choices here. Some were handsome. Some had higher education. Some were rich. Some had kids. Some were hairy. Some looked like they had proclivities she didn’t want to know about. Then, just as Zimmer had promised, there were quite a few with unimpeachable records and incredible skills. Of the twenty-some she’d seen so far, she’d picked out three men with portfolios that were ahead of the pack.

First up was Yonatan Harrell, a former Israeli Air Force officer who was truly excellent. He had master’s degrees in economics and engineering, and his skills were as superlative as one might imagine given his career. He had tons of real-world combat experience, and had participated in several top-secret missions in southern Lebanon (though what these consisted of were not mentioned). He had long experience in an AS division and had taken three Syrian Rk-92s during his time there. He’d also received training with the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, and might still have connections there.

Next came Ricardo Prado, who had previously been with Peruvian special forces. He was excellent too, with tons of experience in parachuting, aquatic combat, and recon. He was also an explosives expert. He was licensed for turboprop planes and helicopters, and had logged 2000 flight hours between them. He had no AS piloting experience but was distinguished in all other fields. He’d also fought against the infamous far-left guerrillas, the Sendero Luminoso, multiple times.

Last was Daniele Buriassi, formerly of the counterterrorism unit of the Italian Armed Forces. He’d been hand-picked from the police to join the counterterror squad’s GIS and had significant experience with CQB. Despite his long career in SWAT, he also had a wealth of AS operating experience. During the AS terrorist attack in Rome in 1995, he’d managed to disable the enemy machine without a single civilian casualty. He was a karate master and, based on that hobby, he’d become reasonably conversant in Japanese. For the de Danaan, whose main sphere of activity was East Asia, squad members who could speak Japanese or Chinese were invaluable.

These men had all had incredible careers. She’d also talked to them and sensed nothing wrong with them, personality-wise. They were gentlemanly, confident, and seemed to view Mao as an equal.

I could probably work with any two of these guys, Mao whispered to herself as she flipped through the documents. But to be honest, she really just wanted to fill the two slots and get back to Merida Island. Those new ASes would be arriving at the base tomorrow around this time.

Still, she couldn’t stop waffling. There was nothing triggering her instinct, going “ding ding ding! This is the one!” Can I see myself going on operations with any of these three men? Would I be willing to take responsibility for their lives? And would they put their trust in me? If I get hurt because of one of them, could I forgive them? In other words, were they worthy of holding her life in their hands?

It felt a little like she was choosing a husband at a matchmaker’s service. After all, weren’t both situations about roughly the same thing? Choosing a life partner was an extremely important decision in any context.

Hmmm... Mao imagined herself in a wedding dress as she looked through the documents this time, but still nothing leaped out at her. She just couldn’t be sure. Are there no other decent men out there? she thought, looking back through the other trainees. The documentation for Kurz Weber, the “problem child” was in the bundle, but she’d only given it a cursory glance. She wasn’t stupid enough to put someone as shallow and flighty as him on her six.

Eh? While she was rechecking the documents, she realized she’d missed one rather curious entry. He didn’t have any particularly noteworthy achievements, and she’d been in such a hurry that day that she hadn’t paid it any mind in the documents Zimmer gave her.

“Sousky Seagal,” she said out loud.

Sousky Seagal was a strange name. A mercenary from Afghanistan, he’d come out of the guerrilla armies rather than a national military. Nevertheless, he’d somehow acquired AS piloting experience, and had a wealth of experience in recon missions. His birthdate column was blank, so she didn’t know his age. His combat experience column, too, simply had ‘yes’ written in it. The photo clipped to the packet seemed to have been removed at some point, so she didn’t have a visual.

Sousky Seagal’s accomplishments at camp were on the lower end of middle. He was below average in just about every regard, and looked like he was just barely maintaining passing grades.

But what interested her most was his performance in a mock AS battle. Sousky Seagal had taken down one of her three leading candidates from earlier, the Israeli Harrell, in an M6 while using an older model Rk-92. It wouldn’t seem like a particularly remarkable accomplishment to an amateur, but Mao found it extremely shocking. To take out a higher-spec machine with an experienced operator in a one-on-one fight took significant skill... Or tremendous luck.

Maybe Harrell let his guard down? If that were the case, she’d have to dock him a few points. But what if this Sousky Seagal really was that good? Slightly interested, Mao reached for the beat-up phone in her room. She dialed the number and waited until she got through to Sergeant Zimmer, who was in the instructors’ office doing desk work.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Hello. How can I help you, Sergeant?”

“Sorry,” said Mao. “There was something I forgot to ask. This trainee... Sousky Seagal. Do you know him?”

On the other end of the phone, Zimmer let out a slight groan. “Seagal, eh? Yeah, I know him. He’s competent enough, but I can’t recommend him. His heart isn’t in it. At least not to the standard of your squad. More importantly, he’s...”

“He’s...?”

“Ah, no. It wouldn’t be fair to say it. As you know, we need to consider ability divorced from sex, race, and age.”

“I see...”

“Anyway, I can’t recommend Seagal. There’s plenty of better candidates out there. Bye.”

“Thanks.” Mao hung up the phone and folded her arms. “Hmm,” she said to herself. Zimmer’s halting explanation had only made her more curious. What kind of man was this? What issues did he have? Even if she wasn’t going to put him on the Tuatha de Danaan’s SRT, at the very least, she wanted to know what he looked like. Why not just talk to him, ask him what happened in the AS mock battle, thank him and say goodbye?

Having had that thought, Mao moved swiftly into action. She put her fatigues on and left the room. Apparently Sousky Seagal’s team had just come back from training in the aforementioned urban combat grounds, so she asked a passing instructor for the location of the trainees’ barracks and made a beeline in that direction.

The barracks were just as spartan as the other buildings in the complex. The provisional structures, which had been sold off by the United States military, could be put up and taken down in just a few hours with the help of ASes. The floor squeaked loudly beneath her feet, and the walls and doors were thin. It wasn’t long after sunset, so the room was dark and empty, which suggested that the members of the team were in the mess hall. The rain was still pounding on the roof, but otherwise, it was quiet.

The room was made up mostly of rows of basic bunk beds and lockers. Unlike in a training camp for new recruits, it wasn’t perfectly neat and tidy; the trainees’ personal belongings and equipment were strewn randomly across the beds. There were lewd pinups and colorful decorations, all things that conjured up images of the personalities of the men who slept there.

That takes me back... Mao had shared quarters with men in this barracks when she was a trainee here. The first thing that came to mind were the curious eyes burning holes in her back when she changed. The Thai man in the bed above her was always very respectful, but the two Americans beside her had made openly snide, vulgar remarks. She’d been resentful about it at the time, but looking back now, it wasn’t that big a deal. She smiled as she remembered all the trouble she’d made for that Thai man.

Seeing nobody inside, Mao thought about coming back later, but then she noticed someone near the back of the room. He was sitting on the lower bunk with his back towards her, messing around noisily with something. She looked closer and saw that it was an old rifle.

Frowning, Mao silently moved towards the trainee. He had the lean frame commonly seen in soldiers for whom stamina was needed over brute strength. His movements were curiously precise.

“Can I join you?” she asked.

The trainee looked back at her. Mao was slightly surprised when she saw his face. He was East Asian, and couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen.

The boy furrowed his brow and looked up at her sullenly. He had dark eyes and disheveled black hair. His mouth was set in a tight frown, revealing little in the way of emotions. There was still a childlike quality to his face, but he had none of the shiftless air that usually accompanied boys of his age.

Bringing in a child like this... What are Mithril’s scouts coming to? Mao thought to herself, when...

“How can I help you?” the boy asked in slightly accented English.

She hesitated before replying, “Is your team off eating?”

“Affirmative.” With that word alone, the boy turned away again and went back to his work of dismantling the rifle.

She then noticed five or six more rifles laid out next to him on the bed. There were two types: rifles covered in mud, and shining clean ones.

“You’ve got a lot of those,” she observed. “Are they all your guns?”

“No,” he told her. “They’re my team’s guns.”

“Why are you cleaning them?”

“They asked me to. I saw no particular reason to refuse.” The boy pulled out the rifle’s BCG and began working the blackened metal with a beat-up old toothbrush.

“Shouldn’t they clean their own guns?” Mao wondered.

“They usually would, but the way they maintain them frequently results in misfires and accidental discharges. It’s safer if I perform the maintenance myself.” The boy spoke cleanly and swiftly. There was no hint of sarcasm in his tone.

“I see.” It sounded more to her like the men were foisting their busywork off on him... but Mao didn’t pry any further.

“So, hey. I have a question about a member of your team,” she continued.

“Proceed.”

“You’ve got a trainee who’s an excellent AS operator, right? Do you know him?”

“I have no memory of any such person.”

“Really? That’s strange,” she continued. “His name is Sousky Seagal, I believe.”

The boy paused in his work, but said nothing.

Mao urged him on. “He came up with Afghani guerrillas, and he’s experienced in reconnaissance missions. I don’t know how old he is, but... ringing any bells?”

“More or less,” the boy responded, rubbing at his temples.

Mao leaned forward. “I hear he used an Rk-92 to beat a veteran operating an M6 Bushnell. I know a thing or two about ASes myself, and that’s a pretty impressive achievement. If it wasn’t dumb luck, I’d like to ask this Seagal guy about exactly what went down.”

“I see.”

“Were you there at that mock battle?” she asked.

“More or less.”

“How did he move? Could you see it well?”

The boy paused before saying, “I saw it as clearly as one can, I believe.”

His deliberate choice of words inspired a suspicious squint from Mao. She moved around the bed, peered at his face from the side, and said quietly, “Do you mind if I ask... What’s your name?”

“Sousky Seagal,” he admitted. “Though the correct pronunciation is Sousuke Sagara.”

This boy is Sousky Seagal? Mao couldn’t hide her surprise. When she’d heard he’d come out of the Afghani guerrillas, she’d imagined a swarthy veteran with a thick beard and bulging muscles... but that had been her own prejudice speaking.

“Y-You are?” she asked.

“Affirmative,” Sousky Seagal—Sousuke Sagara—responded bluntly before he resumed cleaning his guns.

Mao finally realized why Sergeant Zimmer had said he couldn’t recommend him. He had wanted to say he was too young. In addition, his name was actually Sousuke Sagara—a Japanese name. Mao couldn’t read or write the language, but she could speak decent conversational Japanese, so this much was obvious to her.

“So... you beat Harrell’s M6?” she questioned.

“I did.”

“Could you tell me how the mock battle went down?”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“Don’t be like that,” she wheedled. “Just tell me a bit.”

“I got lucky.”

“Liar. You couldn’t do that with luck alone.”

“He made a mistake, then,” said Sagara, whose responses were brief and entirely uncooperative. He seemed unwilling to say more than the bare minimum in response to anything she asked, which made the conversation difficult to continue. He wasn’t argumentative, but neither was he forthcoming.

This isn’t working, Mao decided. The boy almost seemed to have an autistic disorder. At his age, he should be boasting about his accomplishment with shining eyes, yet this Sagara boy showed almost no interest in it at all. In fact, he seemed to reject all attempts at communication, simply continuing to clean his rifle in silence.

Mao found herself losing interest in him. The ASes in this base were cheap and old, after all. Maybe Harrell’s M6 had suffered a slight malfunction of some kind. “I see,” she finally said. “You’re probably right.” She shrugged and was about to leave, when another trainee came running into the barracks.

“Boy, that rain. Darn it... oh?” It was Kurz Weber, soaked from head to toe and carrying a large shovel in his hands. He noticed Mao’s presence and sauntered up to her, shedding water as he went. “Well, if it isn’t Melissa-chan,” he bantered. “What brings you here? Come to raid my panties?”

A disgustingly vulgar man, through and through. She’d never met anyone so polar opposite in his first impression and his true character. She fixed her eyes on him. “That’s Mao. Master Sergeant Mao, if you please.”

“Well, well. So sorry, Meli— erk!”

She stomped hard on his toe with the heel of her combat boot before pulling her .45-caliber automatic pistol from its holster and thrusting it against his jaw. “It’s time to start showing the proper respect,” Mao whispered icily. “I forgave your little act of assholery before, but you’d better cut the crap before I shove this down your throat and give you the lead shits. Now, if you want your cause of death to be massive rectal bleeding, just go ahead and call me ‘Melissa’ one more time.” Mao had come out of the marines and could trash talk with the best of them.

As mentioned before, Mao didn’t typically play the macho card, but restraint only got her so far. There was a certain breed of man who wouldn’t lay off until threats entered the equation, and Mao wasn’t such a pushover that she’d let someone of lower rank treat her disrespectfully forever.

Weber dropped the shovel and put his hands up. “Wow, scary. I give. Forgive me?”

“You don’t sound very sorry to me. I’m telling you to show me some respect,” said Mao, cocking the gun audibly with her thumb.

“I mean it. You win,” Weber said hastily. “How do I get back on your good side?”

“How about you get down on all fours and kiss the dirt? Then I might think about it.”

This suggestion brought a steely light into Weber’s blue eyes for the first time. A corner of his mouth quirked up, and he looked down at Mao in vague amusement. “Oh? And if I refuse?”

“I told you. You’re dead.” In fact, there was no bullet in the first chamber, so even if Mao pulled the trigger, he’d be fine. But at this point, she was half serious. She didn’t need a gun; she could send him to the hospital with her bare fists alone. And planting one into his smug pretty-boy face would feel pretty damn good right now.

Weber likewise seemed to be raring for a fight now. The minute she showed him an opening, he might knock her gun away and try to break her arm. A sense of ‘Then I won’t hold back either’ emanated from his body like an aura. “You might hurt yourself, girl.”

“Just try me, boy.”

It was an explosive situation. The stalemate lasted for several seconds, but just as one or the other was about to move...

The stock of a rifle cut suddenly between them.

“That’s enough.” The holder of the rifle was Seagal—or Sagara, as he called himself. He’d stood up and moved to intervene at some point, without sound, without presence. Neither Mao nor Weber had noticed his approach, despite the squeaky barracks floor beneath them.

Mao was openly shocked as Sagara looked at Weber indifferently. “Weber, was it? Stop annoying the NCO. You’ll make trouble for the rest of us.”

“R-Right.” Weber agreed, apparently too surprised to do anything else.

Next, Sagara turned his gaze to Mao. “Sergeant. I understand that he hurt your feelings, but this man serves under Major Estes. Any complaints you have should be made through him.”

“What? Uh, right...” Mao responded sluggishly, caught off her guard.

Then, as if nothing had happened, Sagara returned to his bed, floor squeaking as he walked. He sat down and began to dismantle the rifle he’d been holding.

Mao and Weber both stared at him for a few minutes, and at last turned back to each other.

“Hah!”

“Hmph!”

Then, with a mutual sound of disgust, they turned away again.

There’s no point in staying here any longer, Mao thought as she strode out of the barracks and left them behind. She marched through the pouring rain, prickling with irritation. Kurz Weber is an utterly infuriating man. I can’t believe I found him briefly charming. Sousuke Sagara is a complete mystery, too... and creepy to boot. I was a fool to have taken any interest in that total downer.

“Hmph. Well, whatever,” she whispered to herself. At the very least, neither would become Uruz-6 or Uruz-7. She’d never choose them.

And after I leave here, I’ll never see either of them again.

Once Melissa Mao was gone, Weber let out a curse and turned his eyes to their youngest trainee. “Hey, you,” he said curiously. The East Asian boy was on a different team than his and their beds were far apart, so they’d never really talked before. And Weber couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d mediated just now. Mao had seemed to notice it, too—the boy had nearly superhuman sneaking skills. “I’m Kurz Weber. You?”

“Sousky Seagal.”

“You Japanese or something?”

“More or less.”

“Then... is your name actually Sousuke Sagara?”

The boy looked at him in surprise. Perhaps he was shocked to hear a white man pronounce a Japanese name properly.

Weber grinned. “Heh heh. I was brought up in Tokyo. I think I’m better at Japanese than German.”

“Tokyo,” said the boy. “The capital of Japan, yes?”

“Well... yeah, of course,” Weber told him. “Where did you live there?”

“Actually, I didn’t.”

“What?”

“I might have lived there at one time,” said the boy, “but if I did, I don’t recall.”

“Hmm...” Kurz was momentarily stunned. It was rare enough to meet a Japanese person out here, and he’d had hopes for a nice chat about his old home. Sagara continued cleaning his rifle, practiced hands going through the motions. Weber whispered as he watched. “Sounds like you’ve been through a lot.”

“Affirmative.”

“Then we’ve got something in common. I’ve been through a lot, too.”

“I see,” the boy said briefly.

When the other boy failed to open up about his past, Weber looked back at the door to the barracks, then changed the subject. “But that master sergeant is one irritating broad. She just flipped her lid over nothing.”

“You’re the one who provoked her.”

“Did not,” Weber protested. “I was just being friendly. Besides... I’ve been in this sausage party way too long. I’ve at least gotta try. You’re a man. You understand, right?”

“No.”

“Okay, fine.” What a boring kid, Weber thought. “By the way, what did that girl want with you?”

“She wanted to know about an AS mock battle I participated in.”

“Huh. You can use ASes, too?”

“More or less.”

“How are your skills? Good?”

“No,” the boy told him. “Average.”

In that instant, Weber felt instinctively that the boy was lying—a sort of resonance of purpose, perhaps. He might be here for the same reason I am, Kurz thought, and now he asked Sagara a new question. “Hey, Sagara, was it? You’re not hiding anything from the instructors, are you?”

“I’m not. Purely your imagination,” Sagara said indifferently.

“I wonder about that,” Weber said thoughtfully. “Personally, I find the mercenaries that run this camp fishy as hell.”

Sagara fell silent.

Weber had heard that this Melissa Mao woman had come to the camp to find skilled recruits, but where had she come from? Where in the world were they sent after they ‘graduated’? And to do what? Weber had no idea what the larger organization looked like, and didn’t even know its name. What were they after? What was their scale? Their funding source? Why were they putting them through training this harsh? It was a mystery far beyond his comprehension.

Weber had been making his living as a mercenary in a certain Middle Eastern country, and when that had come to an end, the man who’d introduced the camp to him had said, “I can’t tell you all the details, but try it out. It’s amazing. It’ll knock your socks off, in the best way.”

Weber didn’t have another way to make money, so he’d come to Belize on a whim. But he hadn’t found a single thing in this bare-bones camp that would “knock his socks off.” He couldn’t fully give up his suspicion that this was a terrorist training camp sponsored by some country or other, either.

He’d decided it wouldn’t be wise to show his full skill when there were still so many unknowns in play, and Weber got the feeling that Sagara was thinking the exact same thing.

“It is quite opaque,” Sagara said. “But that’s the nature of our job. There’s no point in stewing over it. If things turn dangerous, I can just run away. And...”

“And?”

“You overestimate me. I’m an ordinary man for hire, just barely scraping by with a passing grade.”

Hearing that, Weber laughed. “Yeah, so am I. A regular hoodlum.”

Mao stayed at the camp for two more days, watching the trainees, but didn’t notice any that stood out more than the three elites she’d singled out that first day. There were some who were certainly superlative in a given field, but the SRT wanted an all-rounder. Someone with AS experience, too, if possible.

The cutting-edge M9s had surely arrived already at the Merida Island Base. Thinking about that fact filled her with impatience, but she couldn’t afford to cut corners when it came to choosing her new companions. She was still thinking the matter over as the sun began to set on another day. She’d once again washed off the sweat and mud that clung to her in the communal shower and had just made it back to her room when the phone there rang. It was Major Estes, asking her to come by on the double.

For the love of... Mao put on the underwear she’d just washed (which hadn’t yet had a chance to dry), put on her muddy fatigues one more time, and headed for Major Estes’s office.

Including Estes and Sergeant Zimmer, there were a dozen or so instructors present, enough to make even the relatively large room feel stuffy. They were joined by an older man wearing the uniform of a high-ranking officer. He was lean, with salt-and-pepper hair and silver-rimmed glasses.

“Master Sergeant Mao, this is Colonel Fernandez of the Belize Defense Guard,” Estes said of the elderly gent.

An officer from the local army? What could he want with this camp full of punks? Despite her suspicions, Mao hesitantly straightened up and saluted him. “A pleasure.”

Colonel Fernandez seemed unsettled as he looked around the room, tapping his foot nervously. He seemed almost jumpy, and was clearly conscious of the time.

“That should be everyone, then.” Estes sank deeply into his office chair and pulled a cigar out of the box on his desk. He offered one to Colonel Fernandez, but the other man shook his head rapidly in response. “Let’s get right to the subject,” Estes then began casually while he lit up his cigar. “The other day, the daughter of the President of Belize was abducted from the capital, Belmopan. She was out shopping with a school friend when a group armed with AK rifles, casting nets, and pantyhose attacked her. They wrapped her bodyguards up in the pantyhose and threw them in the river, and the police who pursued them ended up in a crash... and also fell in the river. It was apparently a big chase scene. Zero dead and thirty lightly injured, but the kidnappers got away.”

“Right...” said Mao, and the instructors nodded along with her, dumbstruck.

“The kidnappers are a left-wing guerrilla group hiding on the border with the Republic of Guatemala,” he continued. “They’re calling themselves the ‘Determined Revolutionaries’ and they’re trying to extort money from the government. They’re asking for 5,121,076.25 USD.”

“That’s a weird number,” she observed.

“I guess they’re ‘determined’ primarily in a detail-oriented sense,” said Estes, blowing out some tobacco smoke. “If we don’t pay it off by tomorrow, they say, the president’s daughter gets it. They sent a video tape to show they mean business. Colonel?”

“R-Right.” Colonel Fernandez, who’d said nothing up to that point, gingerly pulled a VHS tape from his attaché case and handed it to Sergeant Zimmer with trembling hands. Zimmer dubiously inserted the tape into the office tape deck and pressed play.

“I-It’s a shocking video. Painful to watch... But please watch it.” Fernandez preceded in a pained voice. He was the highest-ranked officer in the room, but he gave off the air of a timid old man.

The video that played showed a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder, the lower half of his face hidden by a scarf, standing in an unadorned stone room somewhere. “I am the provisional eternal leader of the Determined Revolutionaries, Council President Dijkstra,” the man said in strongly accented English. “In a recent daring blitzkrieg attack, we successfully abducted the daughter of the president of the puppet government. If you want her back, you must pay us the amount of 5,121,076.25 US dollars. This was the number decided upon by our council; not one cent of it is up for debate. If you refuse, the president’s daughter will pay the price. Let us warn you of the cruel fate that awaits her if you attempt to betray us or short us on our ransom. Behold!”

Here, the camera panned. In the center of the empty stone room stood a girl in her late teens, holding yesterday’s newspaper up to the camera. She had curly black hair and generous endowments, a slender waist and a bust close to 90 centimeters. The latter was easy to identify because she was dressed as a bunny girl. Yes, a bunny girl—her outfit consisted of a black bodice, fishnet stockings, stiletto heels and a bunny ear hairband. She was a bunny girl from head to toe.

An awkward silence fell over the watching instructors.

Clearly embarrassed, the girl on-camera blushed bright red and looked bashfully into the camera. “Papa. Save me,” she whispered.

The camera’s gaze then rushed back to their leader, President Dijkstra. “Well? You can see that we mean business, can’t you?”

One of the instructors had a skeptical comment about what kind of business that might be, but the man on the tape continued.

“If you delay in sending us our ransom, we’ll send you videos of her in different costumes each day. We have many, from coquettish geisha girl to Carnival samba dancer. If these videos were ever to be televised, it would deal a fatal blow to the current government. Be ready!”

Here, the video cut off to gray static... for just a few seconds, until it was abruptly replaced by a cartoon. A red tractor-trailer transformed into a robot. “You’ll pay, Megatron!” it shouted before firing pew-pew beam lasers at an army of enemy robots.

“Who reuses a tape for something like this?” Zimmer muttered.

Beside him, Colonel Fernandez spoke up in a trembling voice. “I... I’m an old friend of the president. I’ve known Miss Maria since she was a young girl. She grew up very beautifully... Oh, but never mind that. We just... we have to save her!” The colonel began weeping with emotion. “Much as I hate to admit it, our military doesn’t have the know-how when it comes to staging a hostage rescue. That’s why we’ve asked Mithril for help. Please... Please, save Miss Maria!”

Estes rubbed out his cigar and let out a sigh. “We’d love to help, Colonel, but this camp is not a Mithril battle group. It’s a facility for training and selecting future combatants. The only official Mithril staff are the people in this room. We’re grateful for your president’s generous offer to let us use this land, but still...”

“Please, can’t you find a way? There’s no time! As we speak, the terrorists may be finding other ways to humiliate her!”

“Well, you heard the man.” Estes looked out over those assembled. “I consulted with HQ, and the South Atlantic Battle Group Neimheadh is currently in West Africa with their hands full. Which means that if we’re going to save her, we’ll have to do it ourselves. All silliness aside, she’s still in a really bad situation. She might seem all right now, but we don’t want to risk an escalation to violence.” The word ‘violence’ caused Colonel Fernandez to faint right out of his chair with a moan, but Estes continued without missing a beat. “What it comes down to is that our landlord’s in trouble, and as tenants, we can’t exactly turn them down. Any volunteers?”

Nobody volunteered right away. None of them looked happy about the prospect in the slightest. But at last, hands began to rise trepidatiously. Mao stuck it out the longest, but as she felt all eyes on her, she finally gave in.

“All right,” Estes said, standing up and walking to a large map pinned to the wall. “Let’s figure out a plan and form teams. We can bulk up our manpower by recruiting volunteers from among the trainees...”

Eight hours later...

They were deep in the jungle, beneath a canopy so dense that not even the moonlight could penetrate it. Mao whispered as she squatted on the mountain path that overlooked the narrow road below. “Why are we doing this again?”

She was dressed in camouflage, with even her face painted black and dark green, and held her M16 rifle close as she squatted on the soaked ground. She could hear the calling of the insects, the leaves and grass rustling in the faint wind, but nothing more. The night was so quiet, she felt like her ears were ringing.

Her team, Team Topaz, was positioned in the mountains about five kilometers east of the Tzacol Ruins on the border with Guatemala. According to the recon performed by the Belize Army, the Determined Revolutionaries were holed up in said ruins, which was also where they were keeping the president’s daughter. After forging their plan, the rescue team (led by Estes) would approach the Tzacol Ruins on foot, mount a surprise raid before dawn, free the girl and lead her quietly to safety.

Mao’s team mission was to secure their escape route. Which, for now, meant waiting in an empty plot of jungle, far away from the rescue action. In baseball terms, they were stuck in right field: the ball rarely ended up there, but someone still had to cover the position.

Still, Mao could endure it—even thankless jobs were jobs. The real issue was her teammates. Sergeant Zimmer was fine enough, but the other two were a nightmare: Kurz Weber and Sousuke Sagara. Estes had tried to recruit help from the trainees, and unfortunately they’d been among the volunteers. They both had decent enough grades, but they were young and recalcitrant, and Mao and Zimmer had both objected to their use.

Estes’s response, though, had been to shake his head and say, “We’re already shorthanded and didn’t get many volunteers. I don’t like that we had to tell them about that weird kidnapping group, but I’m sure there’ll be nothing wrong with letting them handle Topaz’s mission. Still, they do need a babysitter—and a highly experienced NCO, not from this camp, is preferable. That means you, Mao.” That was how she’d ended up with this team.

The three excellent fighters Mao had been considering recruiting for the Tuatha de Danaan were also taking part in the mission, but all three were on the rescue team proper. She regretted that she wouldn’t be able to see them in action directly.

The operation was running on radio silence at the moment, so they didn’t know how the rescue team was doing. Timeline-wise, they would have already entered the Tzacol ruins, and should be sneaking the girl out right around now.

Meanwhile, ten-thousand-some kilometers away on Merida Island, McAllen and the others are happily testing the new model ASes, Mao thought grumpily. The M9 Gernsbacks, the next-generation cutting-edge machines, loaded with the revolutionary invisibility-enabled ECS, a nearly silent palladium reactor, the super-high-performance AI system... And here I am, stuck out here!

“It’s ridiculous,” she grumbled, but the silent, untamed jungle gave her no reply.

Instead, she heard an equally unsatisfied mutter from Weber three meters to her right. “Ah, I’m bored. So bored.” He spoke quietly, but the whole team could still hear him. “I got my hopes up because I heard we’d meet a bunny girl. But if I’d known it’d get us sent to a place like this, I’d have bowed out.”

“Shut up. Right now,” Mao hissed.

“Pssh,” he scoffed. “You were the one who started bitching first.”

“Don’t argue with me like a child,” she ordered. “Just shut your smart mouth already.”

“Well, someone’s in a bad mood. You still mad? Nobody likes a girl who holds a grudge.”

“I’m not mad,” said Mao, who was obviously mad. “I just hate shallow playboys like you.” She then cast a glance at Sagara, sitting silently to her left, and added, “I also hate unsociable brats.”

She got a sense of Sagara sagging slightly in the darkness.

“By the way, Sagara. Why did you volunteer?” Weber asked.

“Just in case,” Sagara responded briefly.

His words resonated curiously with Mao. “Just in case... what? In case I suddenly come down with appendicitis? No one asked you. It’s annoying.”

Sagara didn’t respond, but the mood around them was clearly growing more and more frayed.

“Hey, Big Sis,” Weber interjected. “No need to be so mean. You’re supposed to be our team leader, right?”

“Yeah, I sure am! Because you forced yourselves on me!”

“I didn’t force my way anywhere,” Sagara pointed out. “Don’t lump me in with Weber, please.”

“Hey, asshole! I was covering for you!”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Just shut up already!” Mao snarled at the both. “Shut up!”

“Shut up, bitch,” Weber snarked back. “I hate you too, by the way!”

“Please stop arguing,” said Sagara.

“You’re the one who egged him on!” Mao shrieked.

“Wait, is it that day of the month?” Weber asked speculatively. “That always makes women cranky—”

“Piss off!”

“To what does ‘that day of the month’ refer?” Sagara wanted to know.

“Just shut up!”

But there was no stopping them now. The three of them continued their bickering in the darkness.

“That’s enough!” The voice that silenced them came from the previously silent Sergeant Zimmer, who spoke with surprising intensity.

All three fell silent.

The sergeant, who was also the oldest of them, cleared his throat before launching into a lecture. “Sergeant Mao,” he began, “we’re still on a mission here. What if an enemy patrol were to spot us? What is it about these two that brings the worst out in you? I’m disappointed.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mao.

“Weber, Seagal, the same goes for you,” Zimmer continued. “If you’re here to sabotage our operation, go home now. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you where you stand!”

“Fine, sorry...” said Weber.

“I’m extremely sorry,” Sousuke said last.

“Honestly, what a rotten team...” Zimmer sighed before returning to his post.

It was just then that they got a radio message from Estes’s team, which they’d assumed to be in the middle of the rescue. “Team Sapphire here: we’re in trouble. Things have gotten very bad.”

They could hear the voice’s desperation through a rush of static.

“Team Ruby extracted the president’s daughter. No casualties. They’re en route to rendezvous with Team Diamond and Team Emerald at Point Echo, but they can’t shake off enemy pursuit. They have ASes. I repeat—they have ASes! At least three confirmed!”

Mao couldn’t believe her ears. Those ridiculous kidnappers have ASes? And three of them, at that?!

“Can’t outrun them on foot! Bring in the helicopters and ASes on standb— What?!” The static grew stronger, followed by a roar on the other side of the line. She could hear the keening of a gas turbine engine, the tha-thoom, tha-thoom of heavy footsteps, the cries of men and shrieks of a girl.

She could hear a member of the team shouting. “Don’t shoot! There’s no point! Split up and head for Point Foxtrot— agh! Dammit! Let me go, you asshole!”

“Resistance is futile! Drop your guns and submit! And return our dear girl!” came a voice that seemed to be filtered through an AS’s external speakers. Perhaps the person reporting in had been caught by an enemy AS.

“What the hell are you talking about, you pervert?! Ow, ow ow... I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Let that teach you a lesson!” Then the transmission suddenly cut off.

Once communications dropped, a grim silence fell over Team Topaz. Each whispered their thoughts in turn.

“Oh, hell.”

“How awful.”

“Good grief...”

“This is extremely serious.”

Mao didn’t know what specific model the enemy had in their possession, but as humanoid machines standing eight meters tall and capable of moving swiftly across any terrain, ASes were the strongest ground weapon in existence. On top of that, they carried heavy firearms that could even puncture tank armor. They were tough enough opponents even for attack helicopters, let alone regular infantry—surrender was the only way the rescue team could survive.

Still, it would be difficult to say Estes had made a tactical error when he’d decided to leave their own ASes at camp. The current generation of AS was powered by a noisy gas turbine engine, which could be heard from a kilometer away or more, after all. It was possible to shut down the engine and run off of battery power, but only for a very short time. In other words, they weren’t ideal for secret hostage rescue missions.

Besides, no one would have anticipated that the group requesting its five-million-dollar ransom to have ASes of their own; the Belize Defense Guard’s intelligence officials hadn’t seen any sign of them either, nor had the group that had initially scouted out the ruins. And yet, they had them now. Mao didn’t know where they’d gotten them or how they’d kept them hidden, but one way or another, the mission had failed. Estes and their other sixteen allies were almost certainly in enemy custody now. Her team of four were the only ones remaining.

“Let’s get back to camp,” Zimmer suggested. “There’s nothing the four of us can do alone. There are M6s and Rk-92s there. They’re old, but if we recruit pilots and come straight back—”

“Not happening. By the time we make it back, the enemy might have regrouped, or more likely, they’ll have moved on. And even if they haven’t, they’ll definitely hear the training camp ASes coming long before they arrive,” Mao pointed out. “They’ll have plenty of time to use the hostages against us, or even kill them if they want.”

“But we only have small anti-personnel weapons. We’ll be helpless against three ASes!” The situation was so hopeless that even the normally stoic Zimmer was losing his cool.

But Mao fixed her eyes on the older man. “Then we figure something out. We have to save Estes and the others.”

“B-But...”

“Every battle has a flow,” she reminded him. “The biggest losses happen when you lose sight of that flow. If we act now, we might yet succeed.”

It was true that their current situation seemed hopeless. But at the same time, with the enemy drunk on their victory and overconfident, now might just be the best time to strike. At the very least, it was the best chance they’d get.

“Let’s use our heads and work it out. There’s got to be a way,” Mao said plainly.

Weber and Sagara watched her in surprise. It was dark all around them, so she hadn’t noticed, but these two young mercenaries had rounded their lips in awed appreciation.

“What about you two? Any opinions?” Mao asked the younger men.

“What? Uh, I...”

“Sergeant. I agree with you,” Sagara said, causing Weber to swiftly nod in agreement.

But Mao didn’t bother to hide her irritation. “I don’t need your approval, I need constructive suggestions. What can you guys do in this situation? Name anything you can think of, no matter how trivial it seems. We’re going to make this happen. Go!” She spoke swiftly, stunning the other two into silence.

“Ah...” After a moment’s hesitation, Weber and Sagara began trepidatiously to explain their ideas. They also spoke honestly about the specialties they’d been hiding up until now. And based on these things, they offered up suggestions about what they could do. Their disclosures were shocking, but most people would hear them and decide it still wasn’t enough.

Mao wasn’t most people, though. “You’re a unique little pair,” she said appreciatively. “Very much so.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So here’s what we’ll do. Ready? To start with—” said Mao, who went on to outline her plan to the group. “So? Can you do it?” she asked in conclusion.

“It’ll be hard,” Kurz mused. “But... not impossible.”

“I can’t make any guarantees,” Sagara agreed, “but I think I can do it.”

“You will do it,” Mao told them bluntly. “Much as I hate to admit it, I’m counting on you two. So...”

“So?” they both asked.

She folded her arms and grinned at the two of them. “Man up and take responsibility.”

The Determined Revolutionaries (henceforth ‘Deterevs’ for short) were rejoicing over a victory like none they’d experienced before. Their group, which consisted of only thirty men, had captured every single one of the mercenaries who’d come to save the president’s daughter. It really was an impressive achievement.

“You see that, imperialist dogs?!” shouted the Deterevs’ provisional eternal leader, President Dijkstra.

They were camped out in a stadium in the Tzacol Ruins, at the center of a large, open space. It was light around them, the dawn having just arrived. The disarmed mercenaries had been made to sit in a circle, tied up, while the Deterevs’ guerrillas formed a ring around them and celebrated with song and drink. Beyond their ring stood three Soviet arm slaves, Rk-92 Savages—bulky machines with egg-shaped bodies—their right arms outstretched and waving.

“You cowards tried to steal the bride of our revolution, but you failed! You picked the wrong men to mess with,” Dijkstra crowed. “Wah ha ha ha!”

“When did she become the bride of your revolution?” Estes muttered, bound up in pantyhose with the word ‘IDIOT’ written on his forehead in magic marker.

The president’s daughter, now recaptured, was currently dressed in a cheongsam. Tears streamed down her face as she flitted between the men, bottles of beer in hand. They yelled at her if she didn’t pour it for them, and the experience was clearly very stressful for her.

“You said she was a hostage. Seems like you’re just treating her as a waitress,” Estes grumbled.

“Shut up!” Dijkstra shouted as he kicked Estes, a move that sent him toppling. “Plans have changed. You guys are the hostages now. Unlike Miss Maria, we can make a real show out of killing you people. There’s plenty of you, for one thing, and you’re men.”

“Well, that’s not nice.”

“Now I need to call a council meeting to decide each of your bounties,” Dijkstra gloated. “It’s a tough job, but it must be done. I think your bounty should be somewhere around 500,000 dollars.”

“One tenth of the girl?” said one of his men. “Seems a little low.”

Here, another guerrilla raised their hand. “Mr. President! I feel 300,000 dollars is more appropriate!”

“No, make it higher! 650,000 dollars!” said another.

“You’re so naive, comrades. A man like him is worth no more than 5,000!” added another.

“Fetch the calculator! We need to average out these values!” Dijkstra insisted.

“Aha...” said Estes, finally realizing why they’d given such an oddly precise number for the original ransom.

“This is bad, Major,” the instructor beside him whispered. “It’s really bad. I don’t think the Belize government or Mithril are going to pay to get us back. We’ve got to find a way to get out of here.”

“Still, they’ve got those things,” said Estes, indicating the three Savages with his chin. They weren’t particularly high-spec ASes, but they seemed well maintained. There was no way to escape machines that could run over 100 kilometers per hour. Estes had thought about stealing one and using it to beat the others, but that was definitely impossible. The Savages were still active, with operators currently inside them. They were also standing up, which would make it impossible for an outsider to climb all the way up to the hatch.

“Prepare the cameras,” Dijkstra shouted. “We’ll tape some public executions! The camera will send the spectacle right into their living rooms!”

This might just be the end... Major Estes was thinking, just when a single bullet landed between him and the president. He heard the gunshot ring out at the same instant he saw the mud splatter from the hit.

The guerrillas froze up for just a second before quickly readying their rifles.

“That’s enough!” came a sharp call. On the western side of the crumbling ruins—high up in what would be the right-field stands in a baseball stadium—stood a woman with a rifle pointed at them. She was East Asian, with the exotic appeal of a leopard, dressed in camouflage pants and a tank top. Upon seeing her, the Deterevs let out an appreciative cry.

Sergeant Mao? Just her, eh? As Estes was wondering what the hell she intended to do with a single rifle, she went back to shouting at the guerrillas.

“If you don’t want to die, drop all your weapons! I’m sure you idiots don’t know this, but reinforcements will be here any second. We’ve got a plan to take you all down in one minute flat!”

“What in the world?” The president scowled at her.

“If you release the hostages and skedaddle, we’ll let you off the hook. Guatemala is due west, right? Make it there and you live,” Mao said with an easy smile.

“I just need one meter more. The machine to your left. Get it to move a little bit left,” Weber whispered over his miniature transceiver.

“Got it. Hang on,” Mao whispered back.

Then a new voice came in. “Seagal here. I’m in position. They don’t see me.”

“Zimmer here. I’m in place. Ready any time.”

Weber was currently lying face-down in the deep brush, his beloved rifle at the ready. It was a .308 caliber bolt-action, an old and well-used gun with a stock and frame made of sturdy walnut wood. To a layman it might look cheap, and the trainees around him had probably thought so, but nothing could be further from the truth.

He was currently positioned behind Mao and the guerrillas, in the brush outside the ruins, about 200 meters away. The outer walls of the ball field structure were crumbling from centuries of exposure to the elements, and had large chunks missing here and there. From his current vantage point, some ways away from Mao and the others, he could see almost all of the stadium.

200 meters, he speculated. Not that far away. But the target he was aiming for through his scope was just so small.

The Savage standing in the ruins had a heat vent shaped like an inverse triangle located on its back, just above its hips. He had to put a bullet in a two-centimeter slit right in the center of that. Beyond it lay a crucial part of the Savage’s system, the control box that regulated movement in the lower half and relayed signals from there to the central system. If he could sever the main and auxiliary cables connected to that little part, he could paralyze the AS from the waist down. Given the way the thing was balanced, this would probably cause the Savage to instantly pitch backwards. But the vent had so far avoided turning his way.

“Give up? What are you, stupid? There’s only one of you!” President Dijkstra laughed merrily. “You’re clearly just a straggler. You can’t fool me with a bluff!”

“A bluff? Is that what you think this is? By the time you’re surrounded by six M6s and fish in a barrel, it’ll be too late to turn back. They’ll blast apart those beat-up old Savages before you can try anything!” Mao smirked, trying to sound as obnoxious as possible.

Inside, of course, she was sweating bullets. She had the guns of over twenty guerrillas pointed right at her, and she was currently so exposed that if even one of them decided to get cheeky, they could pick her off where she stood.

But this was what she wanted—all eyes on her. It meant that they hadn’t noticed Sagara, hiding behind a stone pillar just behind the Savage to her left. Sheesh, that guy has guts and stealth for days...

“Especially you! You hunk of junk! You’ll get it first!” Mao pointed at the leftmost Savage, which stood right behind the guerrillas.

“Wh-What?!” came a voice through the machine’s external speakers.

“I know a lot about ASes, and you’ll be the first against the wall when the reckoning comes,” Mao announced. “You’ve just got the face of a hack pilot!”

“The face of a... Hey! How do you know what I look like?”

“Uh... given your body language in that thing, you’re obviously hideous!” she taunted. “Well? I’m right, aren’t I?”

“How dare you! I’m perfectly good-looking!”

“Are not! I bet you’re woman repellant, as hairy as an ape with stinky BO! Rock bottom of the manhood barrel! I know it! I proclaim it with confidence!”

Even after all her provocations, the Savage refused to move. Most of the people in the ruins were probably starting to get suspicious of her efforts to mock that particular operator.

“What in the world is the point of this?” the president complained to her.

But Mao ignored him and, growing even more desperate, clenched a fist and shouted. “Admit it! You’re hideous! Your father was an alcoholic and your mother was a whore and you yourself are a miserably premature ejaculator!”

The next instant...

“Y-You...Who are you calling a premature ejaculator?!” the pilot shouted angrily, activating his machine and moving forward to the right.

There we are... Weber’s eye against the scope opened wide.

The Savage’s hindquarters were turning towards him, and the angle was now just barely workable. He focused his concentration to its limit, each second feeling like an eternity. He felt sure he could see the control box through the tiny slit on its back as clear as day.

The steel, the air, the sensation of the walnut wood under his fingers... He felt his breath come to an unconscious stop as he merged with his rifle, moved as part of its mechanisms, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet fired. He could feel it flying forward, beyond the cloud of white gunpowder smoke.

And just as he had imagined it, it tore through the air, plunging itself deep into the arm slave’s back.

The Deterevs, Estes’s mercenaries, and the girl in the cheongsam all stopped and stared as the ranting, raving Savage suddenly froze in its tracks.

“What? What?!” exclaimed the pilot. His lower half was totally immobilized, as if his feet were stuck to the floor. He swung his AS’s arms around wildly in an attempt to regain his balance, but it was all in vain as the machine swayed forward, then back, and...

Crash! With a splatter of mud, it hit the ground, back-first.

Yes! Mao internally cheered, but at the same time, she could barely believe it. Weber had insisted that this bit of high-difficulty sharpshooting was what he could do... yet even so, it had been a magnificent performance.

“Bull’s-eye. The rest is up to you,” said a slightly smug voice over the radio.

Kurz Weber is truly an amazing hand on the sniper rifle, Mao realized. It wasn’t dumb luck that he’d shot through the major’s trophy from a kilometer away. Which meant he was more than just some frivolous jerk. In fact...

No, not now, Mao told herself. Gotta hurry... This was no time to be blown away by Weber’s performance; instead, she adjusted her rifle’s aim and called into her transceiver again. “Zimmer!”

“Got it!” Immediately, Sergeant Zimmer leaned out from where he was hiding in the ruins about fifty meters away. He propped a Minimi machine gun up on one of the giant stone blocks and began unloading on full automatic, letting an indiscriminate rain of bullets shower down around the guerrillas and the mercenaries.

“R-Return fire!” The guerrillas, returning to their senses, turned their attention from the fallen Savage to begin firing back with their rifles. Mao, upon hearing chips of stone go flying from the hail of bullets around her, quickly ducked behind a stone pillar.

“Wah... wah, wah!” Major Estes and the others got down on the ground, still tied, and began crawling away like inchworms. Meanwhile, the president’s daughter maintained a surprising degree of cool as she ran back and hid in a depression in the ground.

Like a waterfall, the sound of gunfire roared through the ruins of the old stadium.

“Yeah, that’s the way. Keep up the fire!” Mao stuck just her rifle out from the obstacle behind which she’d hid, firing indiscriminately. There was no need to hit the enemy; she just needed to draw their attention away from the fallen Savage. She’d told Zimmer this, too, and he was now probably repeating the same pattern of briefly taking cover before wildly returning fire.

Now it’s all up to Sagara, Mao thought. If the boy’s skills were all he claimed, this would be checkmate. If they weren’t... she’d be surrendering, if she wasn’t killed first.

Just then, one of the two still-functioning Savages ran at Mao. The other headed for the area of the ruins where Zimmer was hiding.

Well, that’s not good, thought Mao. At this rate, she and Zimmer wouldn’t last another minute.

Sagara was hidden just beside the fallen Savage, close enough that there was a real chance it might have crushed the pillar he was hiding behind when it fell.

All right, he told himself. Keeping low, he ran out from behind the stone pillar. He was dashing at full tilt for the head of the Savage as it tried in vain to right itself with immobile legs. The way its giant’s arms flailed around presented a serious risk to unarmored humans, but this had been Sagara’s favorite machine in his Afghani days. He knew exactly what the range this particular model’s arms could cover, and knew there was little chance of being hit if he approached directly over the head.

Despite being covered in the mud splashed around by the struggling robot, Sagara successfully made it to the head of the collapsed Savage, climbed over it, and opened a panel about the size of a sheet of B5 paper roughly where a human clavicle would be located. Within the panel was a manual opening lever for the hatch.

The machine continued to flail, threatening to throw him off, but he managed to hold tight to the armor’s seam, grab the lever, remove the safety pin and yank it rightwards. The Savage’s movements immediately stopped as there was a rush of air pressure. The large frog-like head slid forward, leaving the hatch on the back of the neck open. Inside the cockpit, just large enough to fit a single person snugly, sat the sweat-drenched operator.

He was definitely... hideous.

“What the...” The operator looked up, taken aback.

“Get out,” Sagara told him, sticking his pistol in the man’s face.

“Y-Yes, sir...”

The man slowly began extracting himself from the cockpit, but Sagara was in a hurry, so he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him out by force. He then planted a heel into the man’s solar plexus and slithered into the Savage’s cockpit himself. He slid his arms through the control cylinders and gripped the sticks at the end of them, manipulating them swiftly.

Close hatch. Reactivate generator. Cut power to lower half. Adjust bilateral angle. Set master mode. These movements, as swift and sure as could be, would have had his training camp instructor weeping and crying, ‘You’re the instructor now’ if he saw him.

The moment the message 《Combat maneuvers open》 popped up on the black-and-white screen, Sagara got the Savage moving.

One of the other Savages was right in front of Mao now.

She ran around as well as she could, cleverly utilizing the natural maze created by the remains of the ruins, but she was just buying herself a trivial amount of time. The Savage could ignore all obstacles, crushing the stone floor beneath its feet and busting through pillars to make a beeline for her.

“Resistance is useless! If you won’t be taken in quietly, we’ll take you in by force! Then we’ll dress you like a sumo wrestler! How do you feel about that?!” the machine’s operator said through the external speakers.

“I’d really rather not!” Mao declared. She turned back to fire her rifle at the Savage, but the anti-infantry bullets didn’t make a dent in the AS’s thick armor. It would be one thing if she could do pinpoint sniping like Weber, but he was the only one who could perform such miracles.

The other guerrillas were pouring in behind the Savage, and it was all she could do to keep ahead of their merciless gunfire. As she heard rebounds whizzing by her ear, she used her incredible athletic abilities to bound over a fence and continue to fly through the ruins. Any ordinary man would have already tripped and been filled with lead ten times over... but not even she could last long against an AS.

“Still trying to escape?” the pilot jeered. “Die, then!” The Savage leaped, kicking at the stone tunnel into which Mao had run.

She felt a heavy jolt around her as the blocks were crushed to rubble, the impact throwing Mao herself about three meters. As her body slammed against the hard ground below, the world around her went white for a second. Against her will, Mao cried out as the air was expelled from her lungs, and sharp stings of pain went running through her ribs and her wrists. But she ignored the physical pain and got back to moving immediately. Even as she crawled herself along the decimated ruins’ floor, though, the Savage’s large foot stomped down right in her path.

Mao looked up and saw the egg-shaped body towering over her. “Give up already, woman!”

Ah, I’m done for, she thought regretfully. I wish I’d gotten to try out the M9 just once before I died... But just as she had that thought, the Savage in front of her lost its balance. Something had grabbed it from behind.

“What?!” the pilot exclaimed.

It was another Savage—the one which Sagara had stolen. His Savage, dragging its legs behind it, had grabbed tight to the enemy machine’s right leg, almost like a zombie.

“L-Let go... urgh!”

Creeeak... crash! There was a roar of shredding metal as sparks flew and oil sprayed. Sagara’s Savage had broken the enemy’s right knee through arm strength alone. The machine’s leg frame was strong enough against vertical pressure, but surprisingly weak against the lateral. Sagara had used that knowledge to enact an AS version of a submission hold.

Impressive, Mao thought. It was a move one could only accomplish if they knew the machine like the back of their hand. And on top of that, Sagara had done it without the use of his own machine’s legs.

The enemy Savage was forced to its knees. It was then that the third Savage, which had previously been pursuing Zimmer, came running.

Sagara’s machine silently righted itself. With incredible skill, it moved around with arms alone, as fast as it could walk, almost like a gorilla.

Facing it, the enemy machine’s engine roared, and it readied its Israeli-made monomolecular cutter as it dashed at Sagara’s Savage. The latter, in response, silently positioned itself into a squat and let the enemy’s slash miss it by a hair. It then grabbed the enemy machine’s wrist with one hand, then used the opponent’s momentum against it to throw it off balance. As the opponent tripped and fell forward, Sagara’s Savage lifted up its free hand, and...

Crash! The enemy Savage flipped in midair and crashed head-first into the ground. There was a tremendous sound of impact as smoke rose up and pulverized stones went flying. It was basically AS-style jiu-jitsu. To perform a move like that, you needed an unparalleled sense for what a machine could do. And on top of that, it bears repeating, Sagara’s machine couldn’t even use its legs.

Sagara had offered this strategy up as what he could do, and Mao quite frankly hadn’t had high hopes. He’d far outstripped her expectations, though. He’d certainly proven his skills vastly superior to those of that Israeli, Harrell. He might even be better than Mao herself...

Truly incredible. Mao wasn’t the only one watching on in shock; the guerrillas were too. As they did, Sagara’s Savage stole the monomolecular cutter from the collapsed enemy machine and stabbed it into the part of its back that housed its control system, rendering it immobile.

As it did so, the machine whose right leg he had snapped earlier was awkwardly approaching Sagara’s machine. Sagara’s Savage pulled out the knife in response and, while balancing its weight on its left arm, beckoned the opponent with its right. “Come and try me,” he urged him. “I’ll teach you how to fight with a damaged machine.”

“D-Damn you!” The enemy Savage charged desperately, but the result was already plain to see. A man who was barely a novice didn’t stand a chance against a specialist. Sagara caught the enemy’s arm cleanly, wrestled it to the ground and, as with the first machine, severed the control system in its back with the monomolecular cutter.

After defeating the enemy ASes, Sagara’s Savage, still moving around using just its hands, turned to the Deterevs and released a burst of its head-mounted machine guns. Some men scattered in panic, while others threw down their guns and had the gall to ask for merciful treatment.

“Feel free to resist all you like,” Mao said, leaning back casually against a ruined stone pillar. She was covered in scratches, had a few mild sprains, and was extremely exhausted... but she was still in good spirits. “We can do this as many times as you like. But remember... we’ve got the best team in the world!” she proclaimed proudly.

Not a single man there was inclined to argue with her.

They untied the mercenaries, got the president’s daughter safely into custody, and tied up the Deterevs—the Determined Revolutionaries. Obviously, Mao was the hero—er, heroine—of the day, and Estes and the others showered her with praise.

“But try to make the rescue a little gentler next time, okay?” Estes said with a laugh.

Mao and the others then engaged in a short interrogation of President Dijkstra. When they’d asked him how low-rate hoodlums like the Deterevs had wound up with ASes, he’d said, “Well, my second cousin’s friends with Chairman Castro in Cuba. So, we asked, and he sent us a few. Ha ha ha...”

“Liar!” Mao said angrily.

“It’s true!” Dijkstra protested. “He said they were old anyway, and asked us to get some use out of them... But it turns out ASes cost a fortune to maintain, so we kidnapped the president’s daughter to earn the money we needed...” Then they’d hidden the machines in a temple deep in the ruins, a place the scouting team had failed to check.

But no matter how Mao threatened him, Dijkstra stuck to the Castro story, so they cut the questioning off there. It seemed just strange enough to be true, after all. And at any rate, it would be in the Belize Defense Guard’s hands now.

Once that was done, Mao was able to catch up with her subordinates—the members of Team Topaz.

Zimmer had some light injuries, but he was okay. “Boy, really thought I was dead back there,” he told her with a laugh. “What a crazy plan. You guys are a force to be reckoned with.”

“Thanks,” she told him. “I might be counting on you in the future again too.”

“Please don’t. I’m a little too old for this action, I think... Ha ha...”

Then Weber arrived and said, “Whew, thought I was dead back there.”

“Why?” Mao asked, curious.

“There was this huge snake crawling around right next to where I’d staked out my position,” he explained dramatically. “Venomous, I’ll bet. Just glad it didn’t bite me!”

“Oh, really?” Mao responded indifferently, but she was smiling inside. She’d thought that a man like Weber would be bragging about his skills the moment he arrived. But he didn’t. Maybe he’s a more serious man than I gave him credit for. In fact...

“Is he actually... self-conscious about it?” she muttered to herself. If so, it was rather charming. Mao felt like she could forgive him for his past idiocy.

“Well, I’m just glad it went well. You’re pretty impressive, too,” Weber said, nodding swiftly as he folded his arms.

Then, finally, Sagara disembarked from his AS. His face pale, he whispered, “I thought I was dead back there.”

“Really?” Mao asked. “Looked to me like you made short work of them.”

“Actually, I meant the stench in the cockpit of that AS. The previous operator’s body odor...” Watching Sousuke look so green around the gills, Mao found herself bursting out into laughter. She’d thought of him as aloof, almost robotic... but it seemed he could be normal now and then, after all. Perhaps he wasn’t completely lacking in charm. “Anyway, Sergeant,” Sagara continued, “you’re an excellent NCO.”

“Really? You think so?” Mao asked.

“I don’t think we’d have gotten them out alive without you. That kind of decisiveness in the clutch isn’t something anyone can learn,” Sagara said with his typically sullen expression. He had a monotone manner of speech that could have come off as sarcasm, but somehow, Mao now knew that he didn’t mean any harm.

“Thanks,” she said sincerely.

“We’ll be going, then. Good luck.”

“Take care, Big Sis Mao. It’s been fun.”

Sagara saluted, and Weber grinned. Then they left, chatting with each other about one thing or another.

Mao felt strangely sad to see them go.

A moment later, Estes, who’d finished giving his withdrawal orders, approached. “Sergeant. You’re set to head back to Merida Island this evening, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I have to take the hostages and Maria to the capital,” he said, “so I probably won’t see you again before you leave.”

“Got it. Take care, then. Thanks for the help,” Mao said.

Major Estes let out a low groan. “Hang on, did you forget? You’re supposed to take back a pair of trainees.”

“Oh. That’s right...” She’d completely forgotten. The previous night had been so chaotic, she’d forgotten the original reason she’d come.

“So, did you pick out the two you’re taking? I’d appreciate it if you could tell me now.”

“Hmm...” Mao folded her arms. She made a big show of thinking it over, hemming and hawing under her breath. But in reality, her mind was made up. “In that case...”

“Hmm?”

“I know you might not be happy about it, but there’s a pair I’d really like to take my chances with,” she told him. “I finally got that gut feeling I’ve been waiting for. Two people for whom I could be a great team leader... I think I finally found them.”

After a long pause, Estes smiled. “So you’ve fallen in love, eh?”

“Yes, I think I have,” she confirmed with a grin.

“Great. So who’re the lucky guys?”

“Heh heh... Well...”

And with great aplomb, she said their names.

〈Engage, Six, Seven — The End〉