She slides down the snow surface in a skiing posture, kicking up a cloud of white.
Chihaya’s Allrounder draws the large-caliber handgun Sengan from its hip, grabs a tree trunk, and pivots a half-circle around it to face backward.
An armor-piercing round fires from the Sengan at the Fernleg Scorpion that has come sliding through the snow cloud.
Recoil that would shatter a human shoulder transmits up the Allrounder’s arm. The tungsten-core round accelerated by that much propulsive force punches clean through the Fernleg Scorpion’s torso.
But a single bullet isn’t enough to stop a Fernleg Scorpion. Apparently not even registering the pain, the Fernleg Scorpion continues its slide and swings both claws open at the Allrounder.
“naaah!”
Letting out a vaguely indescribable cry, Chihaya shifts her weight left and leaps on the pressure mat. The Allrounder receives the input and jumps left, rolling across the snow.
The automatic stabilization recovers it quickly, and she sends it running up the slope of the Wakagawa Upper Mountain Range.
The Fernleg Scorpion wrenches its claws free from the snow where they’d buried themselves in the miss and wheels around. The moment its flank is exposed, Chihaya’s Allrounder pulls the Sengan’s trigger and puts rounds into it.
The Fernleg Scorpion’s movement slows from the direct hits to the side. One of the multiple rounds must have caught something vital — blue blood begins to flow.
A wound like that probably means it can’t catch the Allrounder anymore — but knowing how relentless Fernleg Scorpions are, Chihaya keeps her guard up. She can’t lead it to the Unison Human-Machine Technology base where she’s delivering the hydrogen cylinders.
In the forest, Chihaya’s Allrounder grips the Sengan in both hands and draws a bead on the Fernleg Scorpion as it starts to move.
Two shots in quick succession — tap tap.
Two more holes open in the Fernleg Scorpion’s already-large torso, and it loses the ability to move its legs — the blood can no longer reach them. The corpse slides down the snow slope under gravity and comes to a stop caught in the trees.
Chihaya finally lets out a breath. She swaps the Sengan’s magazine and heads back to where she’d stashed the hydrogen cylinder.
“glad I went with the optional loadout”
She holds the Sengan up in front of the main camera. She’d equipped it as a precaution against Fernleg Scorpions — which the assault rifle had been useless against last time.
When checking out a loaner Allrounder you can pay extra to choose optional equipment. The options include various weapons, and this time she’d gone with the Sengan — a handgun with good maneuverability.
Armor-piercing rounds use tungsten cores and pack extra propellant, so they’re expensive. This time Unison Human-Machine Technology is covering expenses, so as long as she doesn’t go completely overboard, she’s fine.
She digs out the hydrogen cylinder she’d buried under snow to keep it from being stolen or tampered with by animals, and loads it onto the Allrounder’s back.
She checks the map and battery level. Plenty of charge remaining.
A few more hours to the destination — the rare metal deposit mining base.
She has the Allrounder walk across the snow while sending a message to Unison Human-Machine Technology and transmitting the pre-arranged identification signal.
She’s about to enter the perimeter of their detection net, so she needs to check in to avoid being mistaken for an attacker.
No reply comes — odd, she thinks — and she spends about thirty minutes climbing the snowy mountain before spotting something black half-buried in the snow at the forest edge nearby. She stops the Allrounder and goes on alert.
She operates the Allrounder’s main camera and zooms in on the footage.
“……Bands?”
Three units classified as Light Rounder-series — Bands — are lying fallen.
Cheap, powerful, and responsive, they’re commonly used on construction sites. She’d heard they’re often the go-to for the early stages of base development when you need to get numbers up fast.
All three Bands have their camera-equipped heads destroyed.
——Whatever destroyed the Bands is nearby.
Chihaya immediately stomps the pressure mat hard and sends the Allrounder running.
An instant later — bullets hit the snow. Aimed at the hydrogen cylinder, it seems, but whether from lag or from the Allrounder already sprinting, the shots luckily miss the cylinder.
“oh no oh NO!”
It’s a cylinder filled with compressed hydrogen. A bullet into that means a massive explosion. Even with a metal body, if the cargo on the Allrounder’s back detonates, there’s no surviving it.
She drives the Allrounder desperately into the forest while having it raise the assault rifle and spray fire into the snow.
But unlike during the Fernleg Scorpion fight earlier, the snow doesn’t scatter.
“They soaked it and packed it!? WHY!?”
This is clearly not normal. The ambush, the pre-packed snow — there’s no other explanation than someone reading her patterns and preparing countermeasures.
She gets the Allrounder into the forest somehow and contacts Unison Human-Machine Technology again.
The reply to Chihaya’s message comes while she’s still driving the Allrounder deeper into the trees.
Three Band units have been destroyed, and we are currently focused on base defense. Night combat would risk further unit losses, so we cannot send assistance.
Fair enough. She agrees that night combat carries significant risk.
But then there’s the next line.
We await delivery of the compressed hydrogen cylinder.
Chihaya couldn’t accept that part.
Ordered to slip past invisible, fully-prepared ambushers in the dark of night and deliver a hydrogen cylinder that would explode from a single bullet — Chihaya mutters through watery eyes.
“that’s impossible……”