The sky was tearing apart.
When Edmond looked up, missiles covering the entire horizon were crossing each other's paths, turning the sky into a war map with their flaming tails. The explosions came with a delay; first the light, then the tremor, followed by that deep roar that collapsed into one's chest... The earth trembled beneath his feet. But Edmond did not move.
He was the kind of man who should have gone unnoticed in the middle of a war. Neither a commander, nor a symbol, nor a hero. Just a figure who needed to be there... a shadow that looked like an extra.
The front wheel of his bike was buried in the side of a hill coated in jet-black mud. Edmond leaned his torso against the bike, locking both legs into the ground. He bent his knees slightly to keep his feet from slipping, constantly adjusting his weight. Since the weight of the rifle on his back crushed his shoulders, he had leaned it against the side of the bike. His massive ammunition bag sat silently in the mud, as if it wanted to be buried there.
The plasma cannon was as big, crude, and brutal-looking as the bike. Its metal body flashed momentarily with the reflections of explosions from the sky, then plunged back into darkness. Its weight pulled the bike to the side, trying to topple Edmond with it. Edmond pressed his feet into the ground like nails, resting his hip against the bike's seat; it was as if he were trying to keep a giant machine upright rather than fighting a war.
Another explosion. Its wave swept over the hill. Mud splattered. Metal groaned. But what Edmond held in his hand did not change.
In his hand was a can of beans. A tasteless food he used to grimace at during his noble days... Now, it left a strange peace in his mouth. He had pried the lid of the can off with his knife and stirred the inside slowly. Then he began to eat with his hands, without haste, with an almost ritualistic calmness.
While missiles tore through the sky, while robots fell from the heavens, while the battlefield screamed... Edmond chewed.
He cast a quick glance over his shoulder. He measured distances, smoke, and moving silhouettes. Then he turned back to his task. He took another bite. It was as if all this apocalypse was merely a background noise trying to interfere with his real business.
He was heading north, but he had to take a long detour. While the north was filled with war robots and missiles, the right thing to do was to head slightly west and travel in a semi-circle.
As a spoonful of beans he had stuffed into his mouth slipped from the corner of his lips and fell to the ground, worms emerged from beneath the muddy earth and attacked the bean. Seeing the worms appear at the base of his shoe was enough to spoil his appetite.
Edmond tossed the can to the ground. But at that moment, he heard a sound through the silence of the war that had subsided for a split second. The sound of gears clashing, indicating a car engine struggling to run. It was as if nearby, a junk vehicle was barely being forced to start. He threw his leg over the bike, hopped on, and set off, leaving a trail of mud.
He climbed up the hill he was on, revved the bike slightly, and dropped to the ground. Placing the rifle on the ground, he looked through the scope at the men standing by vehicles at the bottom of the hill.
There were twenty-eight of them. Although they were dressed like Calosian people, they looked healthier and stronger. Four vehicles... Three of them were armored, with machine guns mounted on top. Another one, the vehicle struggling in the mud, was a scrap vehicle consisting only of a skeleton.
These men had chained the stuck vehicle to one of the others and were trying to pull it up.
Edmond thought he shouldn't mess with these men. If he wanted to go north and save Sevda, he had to be little more than a ghost.
But then, in the front of the randomly arranged vehicles, he noticed a man in the back seat. After looking closely through his scope, he realized this man was a Calosian forced to sit in the back with his hands and arms tied. This Calosian was the old man named Mahu—the man to whom he had entrusted Calmo, the one Edmond had encountered at the bakery.
If Mahu had been captured, Calmo could be in danger too. If he was curious about Calmo's fate, then he had to do something. He scanned with his binoculars for a while. He could try to take them down one by one with his rifle, but even though he was on a hill, he was in the open. He couldn't risk more than 20 people raining bullets on him the moment he was noticed. So... he came up with a crazy idea.
He crawled slowly back to his bike. His knees sank into the mud; with every step, metal and bone groaned together. When he reached the bike, he stopped and caught his breath. Then, he grabbed the plasma cannon leaning against the bike's frame with both arms, pulled it to his chest, and dropped it hard onto the ground. The earth sighed under the shock of the weight.
The knife he pulled from his pocket glinted habitually, even in the midst of war. With the tip of the knife, he loosened the locking screws on the plasma cannon one by one. Each screw let out a short metallic scream, as if resisting the pressure inside. When he lifted the cover, the heart of the weapon was exposed. The power circuits...
Translucent energy rings rotating between thick insulation layers pulsed with a pale blue light. This weapon did not run on gunpowder or conventional ammunition. What was inside was neither a bullet nor an explosive; it was a trapped flow of energy.
The plasma cannon didn't fire energy directly. If it did, it would vaporize its owner on the first use. Instead, energy was directed to a converter core located in the center of the weapon. There, the energy was rotated in a closed loop, compressed by magnetic fields, and vibrated at a specific frequency.
Plasma was unstable. It was neither gas, nor liquid, nor solid. The only way to keep it under control was to force it to learn a rhythm.
As the energy converter rotated the plasma at a certain frequency, the plasma became denser and sharper. If it rotated at the wrong frequency, the weapon would explode; if it was off by just a bit more, it would silently melt everything inside, leaving only an empty shell. Edmond checked the circuits. The magnetic ring was intact. The cooling channels were still working. The power cell... was at its limit, but it was enough.
"If I play with the frequency in the weapon's energy converters a bit..." he thought to himself. His gaze was locked on the open core. "...this will no longer be a weapon."
His fingers paused for a moment on the adjustment ring.
"If I disrupt the magnetic balance, the plasma won't be able to hold itself. The converter won't be able to compress it... it will only trap it." He took a short breath. "And trapped energy, sooner or later, explodes."
Timing was everything. If the frequency was disrupted too early, the weapon would melt in his hand. If it was disrupted too late, the plasma would have already been fired. But the right moment... the right second...
"That's when," he thought, narrowing his eyes, "I turn this damn thing into a bomb instead of a cannon."
He exhaled and started the weapon. As soon as the energy ammunition entered its slot, pure energy torn from its core crawled through the cables, passed through the rings, and flowed toward the energy converter. The converter trembled violently as it compressed the energy at the set frequency. A thin, restless vibration... as if the weapon were alive and holding its breath.
Edmond pried one of the motherboards loose with his knife. There was a single screw behind the board. That screw... adjusted the looseness of the rings dipped in special chemicals inside the energy converter. In other words: the frequency.
There was no turning back now. The ammunition was inside the weapon. The energy had already reached the converter. The weapon was practically begging to be fired. The plasma cannon resting on the ground began to shudder; the vibration soon enveloped the entire frame.
"I hope you don't screw this up too, Aldo..." Edmond muttered.
He slowly loosened the screw.
The weapon's vibration suddenly turned feral. The metal groaned as if screaming. The heat was rising so fast that the weapon was about to melt itself.
"Damn... too tight," he hissed and loosened the screw a bit more.
He had no more time to tinker.
The plasma cannon was vibrating so violently on the ground that mud splattered in every direction, covering Edmond's face and clothes. Earth, metal, and energy were mingled.
"Nothing else for it!"
Edmond chained the plasma cannon on the ground to the bike. He tossed his bags and everything else he could grab onto the ground. He started the bike and hit the gas. As the bike lunged down the hill, it dragged the plasma cannon behind it.
Edmond ran and threw himself to the ground at the edge of the hill. The bike, though wobbling, sped toward one of the mud-covered vehicles and stopped. Edmond took his binoculars and watched the bike as it tried to move where it had tumbled.
"Hey! What was that!" one of the men shouted. Then he looked at the bike that had crashed into the vehicle and was dragging on the ground. "Guys..."
"Is that a bike?" The bike struggled in the mud like a dying animal, constantly jerking forward as it tried to keep going.
"Where did this bike come from?" he was saying when finally, the plasma cannon caused a massive explosion.
With the force of the explosion, the vehicle in the mud also blew up; severed limbs and other pieces of flesh scattered around. More than ten men vanished instantly with the blast of the plasma cannon. While black smoke spreading from the car restricted visibility, the men who scrambled for their weapons wondered if this explosion was caused by a random stray bomb from a plane or if someone was attacking them.
Edmond didn't give the men much time to think. Tak tak tak tak... He fired four bullets in a row. He hit one through the smoke, and another by the side of the car. One of the men had thrown himself to the ground to avoid the bullets, but from Edmond's position, he was wide open. As the ballistic bullet from Edmond's gun lodged in the man's head, his face hit the mud; his head bounced twice on the muddy ground. The fourth man had aimed his gun at Edmond but died before he could fire.
They were trying to hide... The fact that Edmond's rifle only held four bullets at a time was nothing short of stupidity, especially in an era like this. Indeed, this rifle had been brought to this planet not as a weapon of war, but as a hobby tool for a spoiled rich man.
He reached his right hand toward his back chest and placed the bullet he took from his breast pocket into the gun. The moment he fired the bullet and took down one more person, he realized he shouldn't use the rifle anymore. Rising from where he lay, he began to run toward the smoke-covered vehicles. He took one of the pistols from his waist, aimed like a good marksman, and began to run toward the vehicles with rapid steps.
"Hey!" someone shouted. "There's a wounded man here!"
"Did one of the robots come?" someone was yelling when he noticed Edmond, who had climbed onto the vehicle they were hiding behind. Edmond had taken the other pistol in his hand as well. With two pistols, he began hitting the men beneath him one after another.
A bullet was fired... If Edmond hadn't heard the footsteps of the man behind him and suddenly thrown himself into the mud, that bullet would likely have hit him in a lethally dangerous spot. But he had sensed the man and thrown himself to the ground; the bullet only grazed his waist.
When he fell face-first into the mud, he landed next to one of the men he had shot in the neck. The man's hand was at his throat, trying to stop the blood flowing from his neck. He was in his death throes, vomiting blood. As the flowing blood woke the parasites beneath the muddy soil, Edmond turned his back to the ground and drew his gun. He aimed toward the other side of the vehicle. The man was hiding on the other side, on guard. Edmond shot the man's foot from under the vehicle. When the man reached for his foot, writhing in pain, he shot him in the hand this time. He looked to his right... There was a grenade on the corpse next to him.
He pulled the pin of the grenade and tossed it under the vehicle. While he crawled backward in the mud, the man on the other side opened the door and got into the car. Just as he was extending his gun out the window, the bomb under the car exploded. The man was turned to dust within seconds by the small successive explosions.
How many were left... Only a few... Fear must have gripped their bodies. Perhaps they were hiding behind a vehicle or trying to heal their wounded friends. Edmond's plan was clear.
He began running toward the front vehicle. When he opened the front door, the old man in the back, Mahu, cried out: "Please don't kill me! Forgive me!"
"Shut up! You're drawing attention!"
At that moment, another explosion occurred. Likely one of the bombs on one of the wounded soldiers had caught fire and caused an explosion. Edmond began to floor the vehicle. The car lunged forward, leaving a large mass of earth behind. By the time bullets began firing from the rear, Edmond was already cresting the hill.
"Please! I'm just an old man!"
"I know, you idiot! Would you please shut your mouth?"
"Let me go!"
"Where could you even go if I let you go right now?" The vehicle launched off the hill and onto the plain. The sky was still a prisoner of war. While missiles and bullets exploded above them, they tried to move, vibrating across the rocky terrain. "You, old man!" A massive missile exploded in the sky like a firework. "Aren't you Mahu?"
"And who are you?"
"Edmond Kingsley..."
"Who the hell is Edmond! I don't know such a name."
Edmond looked at the old man through the rearview mirror, who had a cloth wrapped around his head. Their eyes met in the mirror.
"Stupid man! Look at my face..."
"Heh... Yes... You're that revolutionary man from the TESO2 factory. Excuse me, the rebel man..."
At that moment, another car flew out from a bump. There were two Calosians on that car; one was driving while the other began firing. Normally, there was a metal wall at the back of their skeleton-only cars. The bullets fired at Edmond and Mahu kept lodging into this metal plate, but it didn't seem like the plate had much strength left.
"What are we going to do?" Mahu shouted. "Someone help us!"
Edmond reached for his pistol. Before he could get his hand out the window to fire, a bullet hit the gun, opening a huge bullet hole at the tip of the pistol. Edmond tossed the useless pistol out the window.
"We are under heavy fire. Mahu... Look at me! Hey! Look at me! Don't panic! Isn't this a battlefield? Even though we are in a battlefield, we've drawn too much attention! I bet there are missiles waiting to be fired at us right now!"
"So!"
"Let's jump from the vehicle! Quick, unscrew the bolts under the seat! Use the seat as a barrier and jump!"
"Are you crazy? If we jump from the car, even if they don't shoot us in the head, they'll run over us with their wheels! I'm old, but I'm not stupid!"
Edmond, holding the vibrating steering wheel with one hand, turned back and put his hand on the old man's shoulder. "Trust me and jump! Quick!"
Edmond floored the gas and accelerated. Meanwhile, Mahu had stood up, unscrewed his seat, and was waiting with it in his hand. "Jump!" Edmond shouted, grabbing his own seat to use as a barrier, and jumped toward the muddy ground.
He had intentionally positioned the vehicle so that they wouldn't hit the ground directly; they would roll down the side of a slightly rugged hill. Bullets struck the seats. As soon as they hit the mud, they began to roll. Old Mahu was rolling so hard that Edmond reached out to the old man and took him in his arms. While hugging the old man tightly, he felt the successive blows on his back.
Edmond looked toward the hill out of the corner of his eye. The vehicle of those Calosian-looking bandits was coming down the hill when a drone passed overhead very quickly. It came and went as fast as a whisper, and a few seconds later, two missiles found their targets. One missile hit Edmond's vehicle, while the other blew up the vehicle coming down at them from the hill.
The vehicle, under the impact of the missile, sank into the ground and bounced; it began to somersault and came to a stop just a few meters ahead of Edmond, rolling in flames.
"Oh... thank goodness," Edmond said, taking a deep breath. His new clothes were covered in mud. In fact, since he was someone who had just taken a shower, returning to the filth bothered him quite a bit. He stood up and tried to get rid of the mud on his body. The glow of the flames from the burning vehicle fell onto his mud-covered leather jacket.
"Hey! Old man!" he shouted to the old man lying on his right arm, who was on top of Edmond's legs. "Are you dead, man!" When he began to shake the man, the old man suddenly got up and began to vomit a few steps away.
"Ah..." The vomiting continued. The worms under the earth were scrounging through the mud they lay in to come to the surface and eat the vomit from his throat with great appetite. "Ah!" he shouted and vomited some more. Then he put his hands in the mud and slowly stood up. He tossed away the worms that had tangled in his fingers. He must have been dizzy because he was swaying while standing. "I feel nauseous. I think... I think I'm far too old for things like this."
"I'm glad you're not dead," Edmond said and stood up. Then he took the old man's arm. "But we need to get out of here, old man. By the way, how are Calmo and the other kid... how are they?"
"We... we had heard of these men before. They were a cannibal tribe from far to the west... They were never this well-armed or aggressive. They never came this far east... So we weren't expecting it. We didn't expect them to block our path. To let them escape, I took a gun and drew their attention to myself. Calmo, Sulo, they should be fine... Sulo knows these lands quite well. He knows them better than I do. He must have returned home already."
"Great... We need to get home quickly too, old man."
"But why are we going back the way we came?"
"Because my damn cigars and canned food are back there. We're going to pick them up and then continue on our way."