Chapter 35

[E35 AND E52 DESTROYED. E17 SILENCED. IT APPEARS THE TRANSMITTED DATA WAS ACCURATE; COMMUNICATIONS JAMMING HAS DECREASED.]

Koume’s inorganic voice echoed through the bridge.

"Yes!" Taro shouted, punctuating the air with a triumphant fist pump.

"Estimated time until contact?"

"Uh, um... roughly one minute. More importantly, Teiro, what the hell is going on here?"

Marl pointed a trembling finger at the monitor, specifically at the drifting, shattered husks of several WIND ships they had just pulverized.

"Fuhehe. Did you see that?" Taro smirked back at her. "Live-ammo weapons are still top-tier, you know? Unlike beams, these guys don't have decent physical shields. If it hits, it goes straight through the armor in one shot."

Taro puffed his chest out with insufferable pride. Marl, however, wasn't letting him off that easily.

"That’s not what I’m talking about!" she snapped. "Those warheads are clearly guided weapons. I can see them performing complex evasive maneuvers against the enemy beams. But how? Did you seriously pack a sensor array and a full guidance suite into every single round?"

"Nah, that'd be impossible given the size... oh, wait, actually, that is how the torpedoes work. Man, Marl-tan, you’re a total buzzkill for spoilers."

"Wait... you idiot, how much does a single one of those cost!?"

"Aha... ahahaha..." Taro let out a dry, nervous laugh, unable to meet her gaze under the sudden, crushing weight of her financial glare. Marl let out a sharp huff of air.

"And?" she pressed. "What kind of insane trick did you pull with the railgun rounds you're firing now?"

"Hmm, it wasn't actually that complicated. I just slapped a tiny Shield Generation Device on the railgun warheads and set it up so I could manipulate their movement directly through BISHOP."

"...Hah!?"

Marl’s face contorted into an expression that was profoundly un-ladylike as she glared at him. "W-wait just a damn minute. Are you telling me you’re controlling every single projectile currently in the air in real-time?"

"You bet," Taro answered nonchalantly. He glanced to the side and noticed that even Koume was staring at him with a look of genuine surprise.

"Mr. Teiro... [E44 DESTROYED]... Koume now understands that you are also personally handling the Lock-on Control. In point of fact, you are simultaneously maintaining active locks on seventeen high-speed targets."

"True that. Oh, wait, I just dropped another one, so it’s sixteen now, right?"

"My apologies, Mr. Teiro. But more importantly... are you physically alright?"

Taro blinked at Koume’s perplexed expression. "About what?"

"It’s not 'about what,' Teiro!" Marl yelled. "Normally, your brain would have been fried to a crisp by now! Do you have any idea how much computational processing that requires?"

"I mean, if you put it that way... it feels pretty normal to me? Though, I’ll admit, trying to have a conversation at the same time is making me a little busy."

"I’m speechless," Marl muttered, then her eyes narrowed. "But I think I finally figured out what your Gift is."

"Seriously!?" Taro’s focus wavered for a split second, and he immediately lost four of his lock-ons. "Crap!"

He scrambled to refocus on his work. Marl, while still expertly managing her own beam turret, paused for a beat.

"Based on the situation, it’s multitasking—specifically, Parallel Processing—on a truly ridiculous level. It’s an ability everyone has to some degree, but in your case, the scale is off by several orders of magnitude. Honestly, if I weren't seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it."

Marl looked him straight in the eyes. Taro just stared back with a blank, gormless expression.

"Uh, so what? Like... I can do a number two while doing a number one?"

"...That is the single most disgusting way you could have phrased that," Marl groaned. "For the first time in a while, I genuinely found myself wishing you’d just die."

"What do you mean 'in a while'!? You’ve thought that before!!?"

"The fact that you have to ask suggests a profound lack of self-awareness, Mr. Teiro," Koume added. "To explain in further detail—"

"Stop! Please! Don't say another word!"

Taro felt a wave of emotional damage from their bluntness, but he kept his hands moving on the BISHOP interface, hunting for new targets. Inside his mind, within the sprawling, chaotic mess of his Function Groups, he spotted several countdowns nearing zero.

Trajectory Correction: Move Slightly Right.

Taro’s custom "Move Slightly to the Right Function" flashed a command to a warhead screaming through the void. The projectile jerked to the side just as a WIND debris-incineration beam scorched the space where it had been milliseconds prior. More beams followed in a relentless barrage.

Evasive Movement: Purupuru Evasion.

Taro instantly linked a trajectory correction program he’d dubbed the "Purupuru Evasive Function" to the relevant block of code. He triggered the Shield Generation Device on the warhead and began manipulating a series of fragmented Movement Control Functions as if he were playing a high-stakes arcade shooter. He was doing this for all six warheads currently streaking toward the enemy.

I was never really that good at bullet hell games, though.

Part of his consciousness was fully present in the room, while another part existed in a semi-lucid, hazy state. Between the reality of the bridge and the digital realm of BISHOP, the "BISHOP Taro" was busy swatting away an endless stream of incoming Problem Functions.

Every piece of data the ship screamed at him was a Problem Function: incoming beams, lost lock-ons, warhead proximity alerts, hull integrity warnings. It was a literal flood of information, ranging from "immediate crisis" to "ignore this crap."

Actually, this isn't a shooter. It's more like Breakout.

Taro cleared the final Problem Function in his immediate vicinity and let out a long breath. Controlling the warheads was a massive drain on his nerves, so he decided to dial back the aggression once the enemies equipped with jammers were dealt with. There was no telling how long this fight would last, and since these "obsolete" warheads were no longer in production, there was no way to resupply. Beams had their limits too, but their "magazine capacity" was about two orders of magnitude higher than his physical rounds.

"We’re gonna run out of ammo if I keep this up... Koume, I think the signal should be clearing up. How are we looking?"

"One moment, please," Koume replied.

Taro used the brief lull to mess with the monitors, zooming in on the machines fighting at the station.

"Whoa, what the heck are those!? Robots? Like Mobile Su... actually, they look a bit too chunky for that. Hey, Alan, you know what those things are?"

"[THIS IS STARDUST. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'WHAT ARE THEY?' THEY'RE HUMANOIDASSAULTDRONES. H.A.D.S. YOU’VE NEVER SEEN ONE?]"

"A HAD? Man, those are cool. Are they expensive?"

"[DEPENDS ON YOUR SCALE, I GUESS. THEY'RE PRICEY COMPARED TO STANDARD DRONES, BUT THEY DON'T COST AS MUCH AS A FRIGATE. THEY'RE PRETTY PICKY ABOUT THEIR PILOTS, SO THE MILITARY DOESN'T USE THEM. THEY'RE STRICTLY CIVILIAN GEAR.]"

Taro let out a grunt of interest. Since the knowledge Overridden into his brain was strictly from a military curriculum, it made sense that he was clueless about civilian-grade hardware.

"What do you mean they 'choose their pilots'? Do you need some kind of special talent?"

"[HMM. WELL, IT'S NOT QUITE A GIFT, BUT YOU NEED A HIGH APTITUDE FOR THE REFLEXIVE SELF-PROJECTION FUNCTION. IT'S THE ABILITY TO MAP THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF MOVING YOUR OWN LIMBS ONTO BISHOP FUNCTIONS. BUILDING THAT SYNCHRONIZATION TAKES RAW TALENT.]"

"So you move the robot like it’s your own body... I mean, it looks awesome, but isn't that incredibly dangerous?"

"[PRETTY MUCH. THE BIGGEST FLAW IS THAT YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO PUT A HUMAN INSIDE THE DAMN THING. EXCEPT FOR REACTION SPEED, MILITARY UNMANNED DRONES ARE BETTER IN EVERY WAY... OH, WAIT. ACTUALLY, SINCE YOU CAN PILOT THEM DIRECTLY THROUGH BISHOP, THEY DON'T NEED TO BE AS SPECIALIZED AS DRONES. THEY'RE MORE LIKE JACKS-OF-ALL-TRADES.]"

"I get it. The Imperial Military has carriers that hold hundreds of tiny ships, so they don't really need a multi-role robot. They can just launch a drone specialized for jamming and another one for shooting."

"[EXACTLY, BOSS. THE EMPIRE'S STRATEGY IS JUST TO CRUSH EVERYTHING WITH OVERWHELMING NUMBERS. THOUGH, IF YOU'RE THINKING OF GETTING SOME FOR OUR SHIP, IT’S NOT A BAD SHOT. WE’VE GOT THE SPACE FOR MAYBE EIGHT UNITS. THEY’RE GAS-GUZZLERS, BUT THEY’RE HANDY FOR MAINTENANCE WORK, TOO.]"

"Heh... a cool robot on my ship... not bad at all."

Taro’s imagination began to wander into the realm of giant robot ownership. Just as his consciousness was about to fully drift away, Koume’s voice snapped him back to reality.

"Mr. Teiro, the WIND units utilizing Connection Jamming have been neutralized. Communications with the station are now possible."

Taro nodded silently and zoomed in on one of the humanoid weapons on the monitor. It was encased in heavy armor plating layered over a complex internal frame. It wasn't "sleek" by any stretch of the imagination—it had the powerful, bulky build of a sumo wrestler. Taro briefly fantasized about piloting one, but then realized that with the way those things moved, he’d probably be groggy and puking within five minutes.

[EMERGENCY LINE: DRN-001]

Taro saw the incoming communication request pop up on his BISHOP interface and opened the line immediately. Hearing the voice of the person who was presumably the HAD pilot, he let out a sigh of relief. He decided to act as cheerful as possible.

He didn't quite know why, but it felt like the right thing to do.