Kanoki, the Actor operating the Berlet, was both irritated and impressed as he stared at his monitors.
“This Allrounder can really run.”
The Allrounder’s weak processing power means it can’t run a collision-avoidance app to automatically navigate around obstacles. Threading through these trees — sparse as they are — is pure operator skill.
“Probably the type who’s been jostled through crowded city streets.”
The Berlet weaves through the trees effortlessly, collision-avoidance app doing the work, as he gives chase.
The speed gap is obvious. The Allrounder’s silhouette gradually grows larger in the monitor.
Then, apparently realizing it can’t outrun the Berlet, the Allrounder starts kicking up snow with its assault rifle. Watching the Allrounder disappear into the white, Kanoki lets out a low whistle.
The snap decision to bolt. The presence of mind to blind his targeting with blown snow. Getting this much out of a unit people mock as an antique — whoever this is, they’re putting up a real fight.
Plunging into the snow cloud could cause communication interference or lag. The Husaria’s LAN functions are probably still active, buying the Allrounder some help.
Driving the Berlet into that without the Husaria’s support to fall back on is a little risky.
He’d assumed the targets would be nothing but amateur Actors, but this one has some backbone.
Even so — an antique Allrounder is never going to match a Berlet for speed.
Kanoki maneuvers the Berlet around the snow cloud and heads to cut off the Allrounder’s path.
Get it in range and the built-in light machine gun should finish the job.
The Allrounder’s visible weapon is the assault rifle Breakthrough — effective range three to four hundred meters. The Berlet’s built-in machine gun is four to five hundred. He can engage from outside the Allrounder’s range.
“No hard feelings. Nothing personal.”
The Allrounder seems to sense it’s being cut off — it fires the assault rifle in bursts as it curves right.
Like a sheep fleeing a sheepdog named Berlet, the Allrounder has no choice but to head back the way it came.
Still, it’s putting up a good fight against a Berlet. Without the snow it would’ve been over long ago.
Kanoki isn’t particularly worried.
Once the sun goes down, the Allrounder — no night-vision scope — won’t be able to navigate between the trees and will have to either collide with them or come out into the open. A few more minutes and this ends in the dark.
The Allrounder swaps out its magazine, kicks up snow, and runs out of the forest. It’s figured that out too — a desperate gamble, taking the fight to open ground.
If the Berlet stays in the forest and refuses the open engagement, the Allrounder gets away; if it gives chase, it’ll be dealing with return fire. Something like that.
“I’ve got a machine gun, though.”
He brings the Berlet out of the forest, uses the sleeve-stored machine gun to throw up a broad wall of snow ahead — communication interference be damned, as long as he doesn’t get caught the moment he steps out, that’s fine.
He punches through the snow cloud and goes after the Allrounder.
No trees to get in the way now. The distance closes fast.
He pushes the Berlet to full speed, closing in on the Allrounder still stubbornly kicking up snow like it hasn’t given up yet.
Firing the machine gun into the snow cloud at the Allrounder, Kanoki is certain of victory——
“——huh?”
The monitor suddenly lurches up and down. For a split second he thinks lag — but then the view in the monitor rushes upward and disappears.
The Berlet is falling. Kanoki the Actor feels no sense of weightlessness, but the crash that reverberates through his headphones and the flood of red error messages that follows tell the story of the impact’s severity.
The snow cloud had blocked his forward view, but he’d stepped through a crevasse. He starts to wonder whether that kind of coincidence is even possible — and then it clicks.
“——this is the rare metal deposit!?”
He tries to move the Berlet’s head and look up. The legs — its greatest asset — are already broken and it can’t move, but what catches his attention is that there’s no Allrounder at the bottom of the crevasse.
Then the Allrounder appears on the main monitor.
Dangling from the crevasse’s edge — a wire anchor driven into the rim, the Allrounder hanging from it.
“gh——”
Before he can raise the one arm still intact and open fire, the dangling Allrounder pitches a grenade down at him.
No escape. He’s been completely played.
An explosion that shakes the ravine floor. Berlet armor is thin — there’s no walking away from that. Every visual device including the main camera spits errors, and the screen goes black.
The Berlet’s status diagram on the system screen shows no undamaged sections. Total destruction.
Kanoki sits on the floor, stunned.
“You’d throw a grenade into a mineral resource deposit? And you could’ve triggered an avalanche and buried yourself along with it……”
She’d probably burned through all her assault rifle ammunition making the snow cloud to hide the crevasse. Even so — that’s a lot of nerve.
That nerve. That decision-making. He’s seen this before.
“A combat operator? A mercenary? ……Might be willing to flip sides for the right price.”
He’d barely started to consider it when his headphones let out a harsh crackling sound.
The monitor’s dark so he can’t see, but it must be coming from the Berlet’s barely-surviving sound pickup. Sounds like someone is trying to pry open the Berlet’s armor and take the black box inside.
“……heheh”
He heard a laugh. Like air escaping.
What? Kanoki listens carefully. The voice has an electronic quality to it — a voice changer, coming from the Allrounder itself.
Probably had the speaker switched on, ready to offer surrender terms when the Berlet fell into the crevasse. They don’t know the Berlet’s sound pickup is still alive.
But this works out. Attempting to access the other party’s connection is riskier than just talking through the Actanoid on the ground.
Kanoki opens his mouth to start negotiating — and hears the unsettling laugh again.
“heh, heheh……”
What is so funny, and he closes his mouth.
Following the laugh: the grating sound of metal being torn as the Berlet’s chest armor is ripped away.
“Is this person actually enjoying the destruction?”
This one is dangerous. A genuine wrecking machine — no, a bomber.
“h-heh, you’re next——”
Those are the last words before a notification appears: the Berlet’s black box has been taken. Signal lost. Communication cuts out.
Kanoki feels cold sweat running down his spine.
“Is that Bomber still planning to keep going……. No, wait — are they a mercenary hired by Unison Human-Machine Technology? If so, are we going to be fighting that thing from now on?”
He decides this needs to go to his superiors and reaches for his phone.