Chapter 175

It looked a lot like a car seat, except it was a stripped-down, exposed frame. Taro hopped onto it and adjusted a square device at the end of a mechanical arm until it clicked against the side of his helmet.

"Man, I still can't believe we actually got this thing installed so fast. Tearing apart an entire cruiser was totally worth it."

The base of the arm was anchored to a nearby gargantuan structure, atop which sat a truly massive turret, perched like some metal god of destruction.

Back when they were hashing out the defense plan for Ladder Base, the crew had scavenged every bit of firepower they could find, but they still came up short. In the Galactic Empire, ground combat was about as common as a polite bureaucrat, so weapons larger than a personal rifle were basically nonexistent.

Taro had asked Alan if they could just lower a whole warship down the orbital elevator—knowing full well it was a insane request—and was promptly told to get bent. But Marl, hearing the exchange, had piped up with a "Well, maybe..." and proposed a different brand of crazy. Her plan? Dismantle a First Fleet cruiser in orbit, send the pieces down the elevator like a very expensive IKEA set, and put it back together on the ground.

Bringing space-grade hardware down to the surface was an exercise in pure, unadulterated inefficiency when you factored in maintenance, but as a one-off disposable firework, it promised to be glorious. Besides, they were out of options and out of time.

[OPERATOR RECOGNITION... COMPLETE]

[ACCESS LEVEL: ROOT AUTHORITY]

[AIMING SYSTEM INITIALIZED]

A chaotic swarm of firing parameters flooded Taro’s helmet display, and a simple crosshair snapped into the center of his vision. When Taro tilted his head, the turret far above groaned as it began to pivot in perfect sync with his neck.

Are we really doing this? Did I peak too early?

The view through the crosshairs looked like a fever dream. If he hadn't seen the NASA footage beforehand, he probably would have started screaming and never stopped. WIND, WIND, and more WIND. They were a literal black tide of sludge surging through the narrow valley.

[BEAM CONVERGENCE SYSTEM: ERROR]

[ADJUSTMENT FAILED. FOCUS VALUE FIXED: MAXIMUM]

BISHOP pinged him with the error notification. Taro ignored it; he’d locked the beam focus on purpose. He narrowed his eyes at the screen.

[THERMAL SHIELD: FORCED ACTIVATION]

[LOCK-ON SYSTEM: MANUAL OVERRIDE]

[BOMBARDMENT READINESS: 100%]

The turret above let out a low, predatory hum as a faint blue shimmer of a shield began to coat the barrel.

"Emergency alert! Thirty seconds to main battery discharge. All personnel, assume the crash position. I repeat—"

Taro’s own pre-recorded voice echoed inside his helmet, and his HUD flashed a warning yellow. Why does my voice sound so weird on tape? he wondered, staring at the ticking countdown.

"Put the target in center, flip the switch. Target in center, flip the switch..."

Taro muttered the mantra to himself, his hand mimicking the motion of flipping a physical toggle in the empty air. In the corner of his eye, he could see his employees face-planting into the dirt to take cover.

[COUNTDOWN: 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...]

"You ground-pounders have never seen a cannon like this. Try not to wet yourselves! Marl Cannon, fire!!"

"Wait, what?! Why did you name it after m—"

[MARL CANNON: FIRING]

Before Marl could finish her screech of protest, Taro curled his index finger.

Instantly, the world turned white.

Inside the turret, countless particles were accelerated to impossible speeds before screaming out into the atmosphere. Enveloped in a blue magnetic field that shoved air molecules out of the way, the beam fought the thick resistance of the planet’s air. Some particles escaped the magnetic bottle, slamming into the atmosphere and instantly converting their kinetic energy into raw, blistering heat.

"Gwah! Urgh!"

A violent explosion of fire and shockwaves hammered the area, pinning Taro into his seat. It felt like he’d been dropped into a high-gravity centrifuge; he couldn't move his head, his arms, or even a finger. The helmet’s sound dampeners cut out the noise entirely, leaving him in a vacuum of silence.

"Guh... dammit! I knew it! This thing was definitely not meant for use in an atmosphere!"

He sat there, pinned and miserable, until the pressure subsided. Taro curled his aching body as feeling returned to his joints. The light-filtering visor dimmed back to normal, revealing the carnage.

If we weren't wearing these Armed Suits, we'd all be piles of ash right now.

Despite the thermal shield, the gun barrel was glowing a bright, angry red and belching thick plumes of white smoke. The metal railings near the turret had been vaporized or torn out by the roots, leaving twisted shards dangling in the air. Most of the Ladder Base roof had been reinforced with metal and ceramics, but a few stray bits of plastic and rubber that had missed the inspection were now nothing more than puddles of unrecognizable goo.

"Looks like it worked about as well as the test, Boss," Alan’s voice crackled over the comms. "Keep an eye out for falling debris, yeah?"

Falling debris? Taro thought. He looked up into the dim, sand-choked sky.

"What do you mean, fall—WHOA?!"

Taro threw himself into a roll as something plummeted from the heavens. The projectile smashed through the seat he’d been sitting in just a second ago, burying itself in the roof with a deafening metallic thang.

"This isn't even about luck anymore! First the ladder, now this?! To hell with everything!"

Taro peered at the object embedded in the cruiser-plating of the roof. He recognized it instantly.

"Is this... a piece of a WIND? How far did this thing fly? Wait, seriously?"

He looked toward the valley where he’d been aiming. The enemy should have been several kilometers away. When he saw what the space-grade main battery had done, he forgot how to breathe.

"The terrain... it's just gone. Damn, the Marl Cannon is terrifying."

It looked like a hundred-meter-tall giant had taken a mountain-sized drill and charged through the landscape. A straight line of earth had been gouged into a glowing, incandescent trench by the beam’s diffusion. The shockwave had triggered massive landslides across the valley walls, kicking up a fresh apocalypse of dust.

He couldn't see the exact impact point through the towering pillar of black smoke, but clearly, the particle mass that hadn't reacted with the air had delivered its full payload upon the target. The smoke rose to an absurd, impossible height, looking like a summer storm cloud that had been dyed ink-black.

"It’s just a standard ship cannon! It’s the same as the ones we always use, and Plum’s is way more powerful anyway!" Marl shouted, stomping out from behind the turret looking absolutely livid. "And stop calling it the 'Marl Cannon!' It makes me sound like some kind of violent thug!"

She punctuated her sentence by kicking Taro square in the thigh.

"See?! You are a violent thug!" Taro yelped. "Dammit, the defense boost from this suit is being completely cancelled out by your attack boost... Anyway, Marl-tan, how long until we can fire again?"

"Again? Honestly, if we fire without a full diagnostic, the whole turret will probably explode. I’d say once every fifteen minutes is being optimistic. If the barrel warps, we’re done."

"Right. So we’ve got fifteen minutes to survive by other means."

Taro turned his head toward the base of the rising black smoke. As if the previous shot had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience, the WIND were already scurrying out of the clouds, reforming their endless, undulating line.

"If they were human, they would have turned tail and run by now," Marl muttered, looking exhausted.

"Too bad they aren't human. All right, time for the close-up work."

Taro grabbed the rifle he’d stashed in a container and locked it onto his back. He was a total amateur when it came to brawling, but he had a feeling things were about to get personal.

"Fine... we brought everything but the kitchen sink, so you’d better use it," Marl said, giving him a sharp wave.

Suddenly, panels in the armor designed to house the Debris Incineration Beams slid open. A swarm of Sentry Guns rose into position, their heavy barrels gleaming.

"Watch and learn. Parallel processing is my specialty."

Taro snapped his fingers. Every single one of the two hundred Sentry Guns pivoted in unison like a field of sunflowers following a very angry sun. They were arranged like the quills of a hedgehog, and they were all under his direct command.

"The only question is... do we have enough bullets?"

The Tank Unit, having crawled back out of their holes after the firing warning, resumed their rhythmic pounding of the enemy line. Mortars and rockets arched from the base, desperately trying to stem the black tsunami.

With no cover in the way, hitting the target was trivial. It was actually harder to find a dud than it was to find a direct hit.

"This is why humanity can't win," Taro whispered.

The WIND didn't care. They climbed over the shredded remains of thousands of their comrades without a second of hesitation. Taro’s side hadn't taken a single casualty yet; they hadn't even been shot at.

The enemy was just... moving forward.

And to Taro, that was the most terrifying thing of all.

There's something inherently wrong about eyes and actions that lack emotion. Maybe it’s an instinctive fear of insects?