Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 5 - Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11 
There Is Still Time to Battle I 
“No time to be sitting around on our laurels.” 
It was 12:56. 
M seemed to have noticed something after Pitohui left, so he turned to his remaining two squadmates, Llenn and Fukaziroh, and commanded, “Run for the center of the island. Full sprint.” 
“Huh? Whoaaaaa!” Fukaziroh exclaimed as she, too, realized what had changed. 
It was the sea. 
The speed of its rise was even faster than before. In fact, the water was already within about fifty yards of them. The field was rapidly being submerged by the waves. It was as though some massive living thing was creeping up on them without a sound. 
“C’mon, Llenn! Let’s go, Llenn!” she urged. 
“…” 
Llenn sat there dumbfounded until her friend came over and yanked her arm. “Huh? Oh…yeah. I know,” she said, getting to her feet. 
“Follow me,” M ordered, starting to run. She took off a few yards behind him. 
M ran in the lead, Fukaziroh to the right behind him, and Llenn to the left. This formation was designed so that hardy M would be in the front, limiting the damage that might befall the smaller girls if he happened to get shot. 
Aww… Everyone’s doing their best to make me feel better, Llenn thought, feeling her heart prickle painfully. 
It hurt, but now was not the time to be down in the dumps. She had to run and keep from going under the advancing waterline. 
And once she boarded the giant ship in the distance, she would see Pitohui. 
“Let’s hurry! Everyone sprint!” 
Without Boss, the rest of SHINC took off running. The sea would be upon them if they stayed in place. 
The first command came from Tanya. As she ran, she called out the next team leader. “Since Boss is gone now, the next one is Sophie, right? You’re up!” 
In SHINC, gym-team captain Boss came first, then Sophie, the vice-captain. Next after that was Rosa, for being a third-year, followed by Anna, Tohma, and Tanya by way of a rock-paper-scissors match. 
Sophie plodded along as best she could empty-handed—her PTRD-41 was in virtual item storage now. 
“Hang in there!” encouraged Rosa, who wasn’t very fast, either, holding her PKM machine gun. 
Anna and Tohma were the snipers—and fleet of foot. Every now and then, they stopped to scan the area with their Dragunov rifles. It was hard to imagine that any teams would be in a comfortable (or oblivious) enough position right now to start taking potshots at them, but they were prudent. 
Tanya sped in the lead and had to stop now and then before she got too far ahead. “What do we do when we get close to the ship? I’m guessing MMTM will be on our right, and Llenn’s team will be on our left. Unless she was chosen to be a traitor,” she said to the rest of the squad. 
As she ran, Sophie replied, “There’s no time for fighting. You’re forbidden from combat unless absolutely necessary. If there’s a ship, that means we need to get on board, or else we drown. Getting on should be our top priority.” 
“Good point! I guess the other teams are thinking the same thing!” 
“Yeah. But…” 
“But?” 
Five men with camo-painted faces—the members of MMTM—were on the run, passing through the thick forest and out onto the wide-open fields toward the hill at the center of everything. 
The ghillie suits were back in their inventories, and the loose branches and leaves they’d piled on top of themselves shook loose as they ran. Those things weren’t going to come in handy where they were going. 
Up ahead, they could see the rear port side of the luxury cruise ship. But it was still far off, over a mile away. 
The leader tag for MMTM had moved to skinny Jake, the gunner with the HK21. 
“Hurry, guys! We gotta get there as soon as possible!” 
“I know that! This is tough…” 
“It’s tiring to run like this. Mentally speaking.” 
He and the others had figured it out. They realized that if they didn’t get on that ship as soon as humanly possible, they were going to lose their lives. 
And that everyone already on the ship was going to do their utmost to stop them. 
 
Around the time that the original teams began to run for it, the cruise ship There Is Still Time got its first passengers in many, many years. 
On the monitors in the pub, the crowd got a close-up view of the betrayers’ team on their flying platforms descending onto the helipad at the fore of the ship. 
The six platforms touched down within a span of only twenty seconds. They stepped off the platforms one at a time, and the engines promptly sputtered and emitted white smoke, sending a clear visual signal that they were no longer meant to be used. 
The fact that the smoke was traveling directly upward told the audience something. 
“Oh, the wind’s completely stopped.” 
The six players made a circle around the H on the pad. 
It was on the very tip of the enormous ship, so when the camera zoomed out, the people became very, very small. 
“Hey, everyone! My new teammates! How are you doing?” Pitohui cried out, the first to speak. She seemed to be doing very well, indeed; she grinned jovially. 
“I realize I’m pretty famous, but we can do a round of introductions! List your weapon and your style of combat, too! I’m Pitohui! I use a KTR-09 and some other stuff! You all saw the SJ2 replay, right? Same thing as what you saw there! No Barrett this time, though! I can do just about anything! Nice to meet you! Let’s have some fun out there today! Whoo!” she chattered, like the person taking charge of the floor at a drinking party. “You’re next, blockhead!” 
“Oh, uh… Hello…” 
On her left was member 002 of T-S, the large fellow in full body armor. He bowed his helmeted head to the group. In a strangely reserved tone, he continued, “My name is Ervin. How do you do? This is my weapon, an XM8 with suppressor. No pistol. A few grenades.” 
“Okay, Ervin! Nice to meet you! Let’s be relaxed, no fussiness! You were on the winning team last time, right? Be loud and proud! A win is a win, no matter how you do it!” Pitohui encouraged him, sensing his feelings. Everyone knew that T-S got bashed online for how they won SJ2; they were called cowards and cheaters. 
“Oh, thanks… That’s really nice of you to say, ma…a’am,” said Ervin, who couldn’t help but be polite in the end. 
“Am I the next to go, then?” asked the bandana man on Ervin’s left, raising his hand. “My name’s Tomtom. I dig machine guns! I love machine guns! Still got lotsa bullets! You want support, you want attack—I’ll shoot the hell out of whatever you want! Nice to meet you all!” 
He was the kind of person who always had a smile on. His bright and ditzy vibe remained the same, whatever team he happened to be on. 
“Nice—good to hear! Next,” prompted Pitohui, who had clearly taken the reins. She pointed to the next member. 
The man in light gear with a nice, compact MP7A1 said, “Hi, everyone! I’m Cole. I play an agility build. I’m probably the fastest one here! And that means I can also take the least damage before I die!” 
He smiled confidently; he understood that in order for his betrayal to be the most effective and devastating it could be, he had to gain their trust first. This was his best initial opportunity. 
“This is my weapon! An MP7A1! If we get into any battles in the cramped quarters of the ship interior, lean on me! I work well as a point man and as an attacker!” The self-promotional way he spoke almost sounded like a young person at a job interview. 
“Okay. Shall we move on to the last two?” Pitohui said, her tone heavy with knowing sarcasm. 
Ervin, Tomtom, and Cole all looked at the two who hadn’t yet introduced themselves. Of course they know who these people were. They were both nearly as deadly as Pitohui. 
“I’m Eva. As far as my weapons and fighting style go…I’ll just flatter myself and assume you already know,” said SHINC’s Boss, aka Eva, putting one heavy foot forward. Her thick chest—whether muscle or bust, it wasn’t clear—puffed out with pride. 
No one bothered to contradict her. Nobody would have taken part in the third Squad Jam without knowing about the runners-up of SJ1 and fourth-place team of SJ2. 
She used the silenced Vintorez sniper rifle over her back and the Strizh automatic pistol in the holster at her waist. Strizh was only a nickname that got attached to the gun during its trial period in Russia. Perhaps its official international name, Strike One, would be more recognized. 
As she showed in her one-on-one duel with Llenn at the end of the first Squad Jam, Eva was extremely quick for her size. That was a benefit of Saki’s real-life athletic reflexes, of course. Because she put plenty of points into her stamina, she could take plenty of hits. 
She might be a fearsome enemy, but that meant she was a relief to have on your side. 
“That’s it? Well, I don’t need more info than that anyway. Hi, Eva. I’m happy we get to be on the same team,” Pitohui said with a charming smile. 
“Sure,” Eva replied, her face a craggy mask. 
“Then let’s go ahead and introduce our last member: Daveed! In fact, he’s been playing GGO about as long as I have!” Pitohui continued, her tone freewheeling. 
“What?!” yelped none other than the man who was last to introduce himself, MMTM’s team leader. His eyes and mouth were gaping in the middle of his camo-painted face. He looked rather silly. 
“P-Pitohui… You…remember…” 
“Yep, I remember you. We were in a squadron together a long time ago, but I never forget anyone I’ve met before.” 
“…Well…thanks.” 
MMTM’s leader, whose real name—character name, at least—was David, pulled himself together and said, “I’m the leader of Memento Mori, David. You can also call me Dave. But do not call me Daveed!” 
It seemed like he had a sore spot in his past about that. 
“I use an STM-556 with a 40 mm launcher. I’ve got the long barrel on it, too, so I can snipe to mid-distances. And I’ve got a 9 mm pistol,” he explained to the other four. Of course, they’d seen him in the footage of the last two tournaments, so they knew all that already. 
Then David added, “To be honest, this betrayers’ team rule infuriates me. I’d like to drop a grenade down the collar of whoever thought of it. But for the sake of my comrades who kindly saw me off, I will promise to fight my hardest to the end.” 
“I like it! I bet we all feel the same way!” Pitohui chirped. 
But Cole had to try his hardest not to betray his inner monologue, which went something like: Heh-heh, not me! Lucky me, I get to reap the reputation of beating this lineup! 
“All right, then! Let’s do it, gang!” Pitohui said, wrapping up the introductions. She continued, “By the way, are we going to get to register as a new team? It’s inconvenient if we can’t see one another’s hit points, and it’s not fair if we’re the only ones who can’t talk on the comms!” 
“That’s true,” Eva agreed. “Once I stepped onto that odd device, mine stopped working with my squadmates.” 
“Do you think it’ll work if we apply and register for a new party?” Tomtom suggested. 
“Nice one, Bandana! Hang on then, everyone,” said Pitohui, gesturing with her left hand. Though the others couldn’t see it, she was manipulating her own command window. 
Pitohui typed something into an invisible holo-keyboard for a few moments, then waved her hand sideways. Party invitation sub-windows appeared before the other five. 
The message said: You have been invited to join Team Betrayers. Do you accept? YES/NO 
So Pitohui had chosen the literal route. Once everyone had hit YES, a new team had arrived in SJ3. Their squad tag automatically converted to BTRY. 
“Awright! It’s set up! Whoo! Okay! It’s always worth a shot! The SJ3 system is awesome!” Pitohui cheered like a little kid. She even hopped around. 
It was such an over-the-top celebration that David grumbled, “Of course it was going to work…” 
Next, Pitohui switched on the device in her left ear, turned away, and mumbled, “Can you all hear me? Is my sexy ASMR voice coming in?” 
“You bet.” 
“Loud and clear!” 
“Very crisp!” 
“Yes.” 
“No problem,” the others said in clockwise order, telling her that her own device was receiving signal. 
Eva glanced at the wristwatch on her left arm. 
It was 12:59. In moments, it would hit one o’clock, and the sixth Satellite Scan would begin. 
“What do you think?” Eva asked. 
Pitohui answered, “I bet the scan will happen. Let’s watch and hold a planning meeting. But before that, how far away were each of your teams when the rule kicked in? Mine was still well over a mile away.” 
The other four said about the same. Ervin was the only one who said nothing, but everyone else knew where Team T-S had been stuck, so they kindly did not touch upon it. 
“Then we’ve still got time.” 
Pitohui pulled her Satellite Scan terminal out of her pouch. 
1:00 PM. 
As expected, the sixth scan arrived, but the island was now unsurprisingly quite small, maybe a mile and a half to a side. 
The scan moved quickly, lighting up the dots on the screen. 
On the southwest edge of the little island was LPFM. The name hadn’t changed, even though Pitohui was gone. 
On the southeast corner, also heading toward the ship, was SHINC. Continuing around counterclockwise, MMTM was in the northeast, ZEMAL was in the north, and TOMS was in the northwest. 
Lastly, completely isolated out in the middle of the ocean remained the lonely dot of T-S. 
And in the center, atop the ship, was of course their own dot, BTRY. 
“Yup, I knew it,” Pitohui said, putting the terminal back in her pocket. “I might not need this again for the next one.” 

Everyone else agreed. The next scan would come ten minutes later, but by then, the ship would be surrounded by the five other teams. Looking wouldn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. 
“Excuse me, who among us would like to be the leader of this team?” asked Ervin, the sci-fi soldier, who still insisted on being polite. 
“Miss Pitohui extended the invitation to the rest of us, so she’s in that position by default,” noted Cole. While he didn’t speak quite as politely, he did add Miss to Pitohui’s name. 
“That’s fine.” 
“No problem,” agreed David and Eva. If the two other toughest characters didn’t complain, no one else was going to. 
For his part, Tomtom didn’t seem to care who was the leader. It was obvious he was itching to shoot his machine gun, and everything else was secondary. 
“So what kind of strategy are you going to cook up for us, Team Leader?” David asked, his tone just a bit chilly. 
“I’ve already got one,” Pitohui answered immediately. 
At 1:03, Llenn’s team finally came within half a mile of the ship. They’d been checking the results of the scan as they ran. 
They came to a stop, found a lower spot in the field, and hit the dirt in case of snipers from the ship. It had taken quite a long time to get this far, and the sea was still rushing up on them from behind. Llenn could have gotten here faster alone, but she had no choice but to wait for M. 
They also kept an eye out for SHINC straight to the east to be safe. They didn’t seem likely to attack at this point in time, though, even if Eva had still been on the team. 
“It’s huge…,” Llenn gasped. 
The ship was still half a mile away, but it looked as large as a mountain. It was intimidating. 
In fact, if it had been an actual mountain, it wouldn’t have felt nearly as large. But a ship was a man-made object, and because it wasn’t meant to be sitting atop a hill, the eeriness of the image was only amplified. 
It felt like the castle of some wicked demon lord. Llenn started to imagine a demonic Pitohui with a black cape flapping in the wind, laughing evilly, and she let out a sigh. “Haaah…” 
“If you sigh, your happiness’ll fly right outta your mouth,” chided Fukaziroh. 
“Yeah… Too late for that. Ugh, I can’t even imagine what Pitohui’s going to do now…,” Llenn muttered, not bothering to turn around to face her friend. 
“Well, the entire system just guaranteed that Pito’s betraying us,” said Fukaziroh with a little shrug. 
As he watched the ship through the scope of his M14 EBR, M said, “Fuka. Take out all the remaining plasma grenades you have and load them into one of your launchers.” 
“Oh? How come?” 
“Pito knows where you keep them. She’ll shoot at your backpack. The metal grenade launchers will provide a bit more defense against bullets, at least.” 
“Ah, that makes sense!” 
Fukaziroh obediently set to the task, switching out the grenades in her left-hand launcher (Leftania) to the plasma kind. There were five of the powerful grenades left. 
Llenn kept herself pressed to the ground and watched the cruise ship through her own monocular. The angle was looking onward at the front of the ship from the starboard side. But when she looked at the cliff-like side up to the bottommost deck, she noticed something was missing. 
“Huh…?” 
Normally, the entrance to passenger ships was on one of the decks, requiring a boarding bridge affixed to the dock or a staircase-like ramp—but neither was visible here. 
“M…there are no stairs or ladders; how are we supposed to get on board? Do they expect us to climb the sheer sides of the ship?” 
“That’s not possible without a really high Climbing skill and the right tools.” 
“Exactly.” 
The sides of the ship were an overhang, meaning the angle actually went backward during the climb. No ordinary person could scale that sort of slope. 
“Do you think there’s a way up on the other side?” 
“Probably not,” M said. “But I’m not worried. Once we get closer, there should be an entrance, even if it’s on the smaller side. I’m certain of it.” 
“Oh? How can you be so sure?” asked Fukaziroh, who was done switching her munitions. 
“That ship was designed to be a refugee ship after the ultimate war. If it got grounded, then the people on board would need a way to get down. If they didn’t have a ramp, then they must have opened a hole big enough for people to get through, down near ground level.” 
“Ah, I see.” 
“Ooooh!” 
Llenn and Fukaziroh were very impressed with M’s reasoning. Of course, they could imagine a past in which they pulled up the ramp to stay safe aboard the ship, instead, but that would make things so much harder for the players on the ground. GGO was still a game, so they wouldn’t set up something that was simply impossible to tackle. 
“But since the idea is that the ship sank deeper into the ground over many years, it could have gotten buried or shrank to a smaller size.” 
That was indeed a possibility. Llenn set her monocular to maximum zoom and focused on the boundary between the side of the ship and the grass below it. 
“Ah! There it is! There are holes, just like you said! On the side…about a hundred feet apart?” 
They were there. It was very hard to see, but whether exploded out of the steel hull or burned out with heat, there were definitely holes in the ship that wouldn’t have formed naturally. 
It was hard to gauge the size without an object for comparison nearby, but they certainly were not large. Surely a single person would be able to fit through them, however. 
M said, “Good. Then our next task will be getting from here to there, inside the ship.” 
“Gotcha, gotcha, gotta-gotta-gotcha,” Fukaziroh jabbered. “But that raises the question…” 
“Once we get closer to the ship, won’t the team on top shoot at us?” Llenn finished. 
M glanced backward to confirm that the approaching sea hadn’t caught up to them yet. Then he said, “But of course. This island is going to sink. That means we die if we don’t get onto that ship. Team Betrayers knows that, too. And that means…” 
“That means our first priority should be keeping the teams surrounding us from getting onto the ship! That’s our first line of defense. If we hold that, we win,” Pitohui lectured. No one raised any protest. 
The six had left the helipad and were now trotting down the starboard deck. The hallways weren’t in good shape, but it wasn’t like there were any giant holes that made progress impossible. 
David continued behind them, carrying the launcher-attached STM-556 in his hands. “How exactly will we defend this spot? Even if we shoot right over the sides, only Tomtom can get any decent distance,” he pointed out. 
He was right. The only gun on this team with 7.62 mm rounds and an effective range as high as eight hundred yards was Tomtom’s FN MAG. It could fire automatically and often, so his machine gun was quite valuable to the team—but it was only one gun and obviously inadequate to protect the entire perimeter of the enormous cruise ship. 
Of course, they could also split up to each cover an individual range of the perimeter and shoot anyone who approached, albeit with shorter range. But that meant getting shot at in return, of course. 
Since there were far more invaders than defenders, they’d be ducking down out of the line of fire at times. And when they needed to switch magazines, that would leave a long period of undefended approach time for the other side. 
On top of all that, it would be an especially disadvantageous position for Cole, whose gun was light and compact at the cost of an effective range of barely two hundred yards. 
“It’s just too big,” Eva muttered, cursing the tremendous size of the craft. 
“So here’s what I say!” Pitohui decided as she ran in the lead. “First, we need to limit the number of approaches the enemy can take, to limit the amount of space we need to defend. Did you see the holes right near ground level?” 
“Yeah,” said both Eva and David. They’d been paying close attention while on the flying platforms, and they figured out that those holes were the only entrances for the approaching squads. 
The other three were following in silence, not taking part in the planning. They were probably too busy feeling relieved that there were three extremely capable people on the team to do the thinking. 
“There were many holes,” said David. “We don’t have time to trap them all.” 
To go down belowdecks to the bottom of the ship and place grenade traps around all the many holes in the sides would take way more time and resources than the six of them splitting up could accomplish. 
“That’d be impossible. And you won’t see any traps until you’re up close on them, right? I want to eliminate the ways in, but specifically, I want to control the approach, to lock down the area around the ship. And to do that, we need good visibility.” 
“I understand your point, but what method is going to be that convenient for us?” Eva asked. 
“Let me show you. We use this!” Pitohui replied. She stopped running and smacked a small boat with a yellow cover right next to the walkway. 
From here to the stern of the ship, the rescue boats were packed end to end. 
“It’s probably better if as many teams as possible rush the ship at once from different directions, right, M?” 
“That’s right. So if you hear gunshots from some other team getting to the ship, we’ll go with that timing.” 
“What if everyone’s thinking the same thing, so nobody goes in?” 
“It’s possible. But the sea’s rushing in on all of us, so everyone has a time limit.” 
“Good point. Is it possible that as we get closer, other approaching teams will start a battle?” 
“It’s not impossible, but it seems like a bad idea.” 
“I guess so. Everyone wants on the ship first.” 
“And in that sense, it would be great if you could act as decoy, Llenn. You can draw more gunshots than anyone else with your presence.” 
“Sure, just give the order. I’ll be your decoy.” 
Llenn and M were huddled on the field, planning their moves. They were on their feet, ready to leap up and run the moment they heard gunfire. 
“Now?” asked Fukaziroh, who had her MGL-140s in either hand and was dying to sprint. “Once we’re within four hundred yards, I’m gonna blast the hell out of ’em. It’s just too bad I don’t have any smoke grenades this time!” 
Fukaziroh had not brought any smoke grenades. She hadn’t had the time to acquire any. If she’d brought them, she could have set up a smoke screen along the route to the ship, but it was too late to regret it now. 
Instead, she had plasmas. Within her accuracy range, Fukaziroh’s offensive power was unparalleled. She could aim for the upper parts of the ship and wreak untold destruction if she wanted. 
“Not yet…?” Tanya murmured. 
On the opposite side of the ship from Llenn’s team—the southeast—SHINC was prepped and ready to charge the craft at any moment. 
Their strategy was the same. Once they heard the sounds of battle, they would rush through the field, stick to the side of the ship, then go inside the holes they spotted with their binoculars. 
“We’ve still got a hundred yards of space until the sea gets here,” reported Anna, the rear guard. But there was no saying if the sea would pick up its pace. 
“Not yet…” 
Sophie prepped her left hand, ready to swing it at a moment’s notice. 
At this moment, MMTM and ZEMAL were also thinking the exact same thing. 
And so was the audience in the bar. “Which is it? Which of them will jump first?” 
On the monitors, they could see each team’s hiding spot, as well as the waves coming for them. 
“There’s no way they’d all drown and let the betrayers’ team win, right…?” 
“Don’t say that, man! I wanna see more battling! They set up this cruise ship; let’s see some vacation combat!” 
“Hang on. There’s still the heavyweights from last time, T-S. My guess is that the sea level will go up until the ship is on water, but it’ll still be below their rooftop area.” 
“Daaaah! Please, say it ain’t so! What if the ship and building are miles away from each other?!” 
“I dunno why you’re asking me… Maybe the people who designed the map weren’t thinking about that…” 
Even the audience was worried about the future development of SJ3. 
Then, at 1:08, there was movement—from the ship. 
Llenn was the first to notice it. 
“H…huh? Something fell from the ship. Something yellow.” 
M and Fukaziroh had been watching the side and rear. They snapped back to forward attention. 
There, they saw a yellow-topped rescue boat falling from the starboard side of the mammoth cruise ship. 
But those rescue boats belonged to a cruise ship that held thousands of passengers, so they were not small, by any means. The length of each one was well over seventy-five feet. In fact, they were larger than your average cruiser or fishing boat. Each one was meant to pack in the passengers when it was in use, with a capacity of over three hundred. 
Those boats, hoisted to the side of the ship, were plummeting to the ground, one after the other. It was a drop of about fifty feet, where the boats crashed onto the grass. 
The fiber-reinforced plastic must have deteriorated with age, because the bottom pieces cracked when they landed, making them useless as floating devices. 
“Oh! They got us…,” M gasped, a rare show of emotion. 
“Huh? What are they doing?” Fukaziroh wondered idly. 
They were watching the starboard side of the ship, but on the port side, the exact same thing was happening. Enormous rescue boats were dropping one after the other, starting near the prow. 
“Agh! Shit!” said Jake, current leader of MMTM, as he looked through binoculars. 
“Aaah! Oh no!” added Sophie from SHINC, from a separate location. 
It took Llenn an extra beat to figure out the purpose of the people doing this. 
When the boats fell and cracked onto the ground, they were covering up the holes on the side of the ship. In other words… 
“Aaaah! Pito’s blocking the holes we need to get inside!”