Boom—!
The sudden explosion startled Takao, who had been preparing to experience the recording again.
What was happening?
She immediately focused her sensors on the source of the explosion. Someone had fired into a region of the sky already shrouded in darkness.
What the hell were they doing?
Something appeared to have been caught in the blast. It hadn't been destroyed and was now hurtling straight toward her.
Honestly, Kongou! She had fired into the sky for no apparent reason, failed to destroy her target, and sent it flying toward Takao instead.
Without hesitation, Takao activated her interception system and opened fire.
A laser struck the incoming object—
"What—?"
Takao stared in astonishment. The laser had hit its target but failed to penetrate it. Instead, the beam seemed to ricochet, abruptly veering off in another direction.
She immediately deployed her Klein Field.
The hurtling mass of metal slammed into it with a deafening crash.
Bang!
At the instant of impact, Takao finally got a clear look at the object, and her Mental Core briefly froze.
It wasn't a lump of metal at all.
It was a humanoid figure standing more than two meters tall, clad in what appeared to be some kind of robotic armor.
The design did look rather outdated, though.
More importantly, it was extremely familiar.
Wasn't that the power armor worn by the Space Marines in the recordings she had watched?
The next moment, the figure drove a glowing sword into her Klein Field.
"You've got to be kidding me!"
Takao cried out in disbelief as the blade pierced straight through.
A flash crossed her vision. The sword tore open a breach in the Klein Field, and the intruder attempted to force his way inside without hesitation.
Takao immediately activated one of her large-caliber cannons—not in laser mode, but in bombardment mode.
Boom—!
At such close range, the shock wave alone would have blown Takao off the deck, but she deployed a defensive field around herself and endured the impact.
The blast successfully sent the intruder flying.
Unfortunately, it failed to destroy him.
At that moment, Takao's sensors detected that the suspected Space Marine's power armor possessed its own protective field, one capable of deflecting incoming attacks.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at a spot on the deck less than ten meters away.
The deck had melted as rapidly as plastic foam touched by extreme heat, leaving behind a crater nearly a meter across.
That had been caused by a single round fired from the intruder's gun just before Takao's cannon struck him.
More precisely, the shot had originally been aimed at her. Her cannon blast had disrupted his aim and sent the projectile slightly off course.
"Even the weapon and its firepower are nearly identical..."
Takao muttered grimly.
It was as though one of the Space Marines from those recordings had truly appeared in the real world—and immediately launched an attack on the Fleet of Fog.
With a sweep of her hand, Takao launched ten Corrosive Warheads toward the target tumbling through the air.
The power armor appeared capable of flight, but its speed was clearly inferior to her warheads. As far as Takao was concerned, the intruder was nothing more than a target hanging helplessly in the sky.
Yet when the Corrosive Warheads closed in—
"Urgh!"
Two miniature rotary cannons emerged from the armor's pauldrons. Their barrels spun rapidly as orange light flickered from within.
To ordinary human eyes, it probably would have looked like a single flash lasting no more than a second.
In reality, ten rounds had already been fired in less than that time.
Every single one struck a Corrosive Warhead with perfect accuracy, detonating all ten before they had crossed even half the remaining distance.
"Then let's see how you handle this! Try shooting all of these down!"
Every launch bay aboard Takao opened, releasing her entire payload of Corrosive Torpedoes.
In an instant, a dense swarm of torpedoes streaked through the night, trailing red light and shrieking through the air as they converged on the intruder.
The warheads formed a vast net, surrounding him from every direction.
The rotary cannons mounted on his shoulders began flashing again.
This time, however, the torpedoes had spread out into an encircling net and were advancing in three separate waves.
Once the first wave was destroyed, the resulting spatial distortions would prevent the intruder's bullets from passing through the blast zones.
Meanwhile, the explosions would obscure his vision and provide cover for the warheads behind them. Those torpedoes would curve around the affected regions and close in from other directions.
Suddenly, a beam of light sliced through the night.
"Huh? Wait!"
It was a laser attack—a sustained cutting beam.
The beam swept across more than a dozen torpedoes in the blink of an eye.
At the same time, four thigh-thick missiles attached to the flight unit on the intruder's back shifted upward. Their launchers rotated ninety degrees and locked into position over his shoulders before firing.
They flew at tremendous speed and didn't appear to possess any guidance systems. They were more like rockets, designed solely for velocity.
The four projectiles plunged into the swarm of Corrosive Torpedoes and detonated.
Instead of releasing ordinary shock waves or clouds of shrapnel, they burst like fireworks, scattering countless points of light. Each point then exploded again.
The weapons resembled a combination of human cluster munitions and thermite bombs.
Anything touched by their radiance melted instantly.
Four brilliant explosions wiped out nearly eighty percent of Takao's Corrosive Torpedoes.
Admittedly, that was partly because their target was so small. The torpedoes had been forced to converge tightly around him, allowing the strange munitions to eliminate most of them in one strike.
Between the blinding light produced by those warheads and the detonations of the Corrosive Torpedoes themselves, Takao temporarily lost track of her target.
In that case, she could only deploy her Klein Field at maximum strength.
Where was he?
There!
Directly overhead!
Takao immediately redirected the surviving Corrosive Torpedoes toward him. At the same moment, the anti-air laser cannons mounted above her opened fire.
She didn't expect those lasers to penetrate his armor, but they could still disrupt his movements and restrict his escape routes. That would leave him vulnerable to the Corrosive Torpedoes—or to the special weapon she was about to launch.
That weapon would unleash a massive electrical discharge across a wide area.
Fire!
At the same instant, Takao dismissed her Klein Field. Otherwise, the attack would rebound against the barrier.
But the instant the weapon launched, Takao's expression changed dramatically.
An explosion suddenly erupted on the opposite side of her ship.
Its shock wave sent something hurtling toward her deck, timed precisely to coincide with the instant she lowered her Klein Field.
She couldn't reactivate it immediately. The device she had just launched would be trapped inside the barrier and detonate against her own ship.
Damn it!
The intruder had calculated the timing perfectly, ensuring that both objects simultaneously passed through the space where the Klein Field should have been.
After weighing her options during that brief instant, Takao chose not to restore the field.
If her electrical weapon detonated within the barrier, it would temporarily paralyze her. Her Klein Field would collapse anyway.
A heavy object crashed onto the deck less than five meters away.
It was another metallic humanoid, this one clad in a smaller suit of power armor.
There were two of them?
No—only one!
He had been wearing two suits of power armor. The heavier outer suit had been nothing more than a decoy.
The figure that landed on the deck immediately kicked off the surface and launched himself toward her. The sword capable of cutting through her Klein Field thrust forward, aimed directly at her body.
"Stop him!"
Takao couldn't deploy a Klein Field around the entire battleship, but she could still generate a smaller one to protect herself.
Multiple defensive layers appeared directly in front of her.
The intruder's blade shot forward like a bolt of lightning and pierced five layers in an instant. It was finally stopped at the hilt, its tip hovering less than ten centimeters from Takao.
Ha! She had won!
More Klein Fields appeared around the intruder, enclosing him within a prison.
No—
Takao's expression changed again.
He had used the same trick twice!
The second suit of power armor was empty as well. Its back opened like a tin can, revealing nothing inside.
Where was he?
A sudden chill raced up Takao's spine.
Before she could react, the world spun around her, and someone slammed her facedown against the deck.
One of his hands seized both of her wrists and pinned them firmly together. The other held a gun pressed directly against the back of her head.
Checkmate.
Through their physical contact, Takao realized that his body wasn't made of cold metal.
It was flesh.
She immediately turned her sensors toward him and finally saw his face clearly.
"Huh?"
Takao froze.
Her eyes widened, and her thoughts nearly crashed altogether.
W-Wasn't this the man from the recordings?
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]