Chapter 33
With the sheer size of my unit, I couldn’t exactly army crawl to remain undetected, but I found that even with the wind, unless I perfectly timed every movement with every gust, the sound of the moving parts and hydraulics that propelled my suit forward were going to be a problem all their own.
If I wanted to move quietly, I needed to use my heel thrusters, but that created the problem of the slight glow from the heat based propulsion system beneath my feet.
Small, unusual visuals like that stood out to anyone who was even remotely paying attention, and I wasn’t going to be surrounded by amateurs.
Knowing this, I determined I’d alternate between movement types as the situation allowed.
In the grass, running was best, as my footfalls were slightly muffled.
The heat in my propulsion jets would otherwise risk burning the vegetation, creating an easily track-able trail.
But over rock, where there was no vegetation to burn, and my steps would be louder, the propulsion in my heels was most effective.
It was imperfect, but it was the smallest consideration that could make a difference in early detection.
I moved swiftly but carefully towards the canyon’s edge, then I dropped to a prone position beside a massive bolder that would block view from at least one direction.
I blended with the red dirt thanks to my little mud bath, and I listened through the chirps of insects and the whistle of the breeze, until I was confident there was no one nearby.
I hadn’t been detected yet.
Peering down into the canyon, there was a small army of soft, glowing lights patrolling the area.
The base itself was off in the distance, but it was so large and imposing, it was impossible to miss.
An intense pink glow radiated down the central tower of the base, casting the color for a several hundred meter radius that was peppered with the vague hints of shadows moving through the night.
A nuclear reactor? That made sense, in hindsight.
A suicide mission would be pointless if it didn’t take out something grand and crippling.
I only vaguely recalled a battle like this in History class.
I knew it was a turning point in the war, but I was so young when it happened, and living in the Protectorates, the news focused more on the casualties and damage to the home planet than it did on the politics.
If they’d known at the time that this would be the catalyst that made Gehenna desperate enough to attack a neutral station like ours, making this operation ultimately the battle that led to losing Zircon’s independence, I wonder if the narrative would have been different.
I’d blocked out a lot of the battle stories of the Star Crossed Conflict, and I didn’t see the point in rehashing them, even in the interest of training.
The climate now was nothing like it was then, when Gehenna didn’t have its own humanoid mechanized mobile units.
Comparing the current war to thirteen years ago was about as relevant as comparing tactics before and after the invention of guns, or comparing a battle of horse-mounted knights to a battle of tanks and machines.
I told myself that was why I avoided those lessons, but I knew that was a lie. I blocked out the information because the story told by the victorious “Democracy of Mictlan” didn’t reflect the reality I saw in Zircon.
What was there to glean from sanitized accounts of a conflict, written by the victor to an audience of its supporters? How did I know what was true and what was well-crafted marketing and propaganda?
If I was going to make a difference in the world, it wouldn’t be by poring over the strategies and triumphs that the powers-that-be were willing to share publically.
It would be in a situation like this, in the moment, fully understanding how real people think and move in the heat of a life or death situation, when everything was on the line.
I couldn’t expect to depend on what once worked in order to carve out a future in a situation that never previously existed.
This battle would never happen again, no matter how proud the mission programmers were as they reloaded and rebuilt it.
This was no time to get philosophical. I shook off the thought, and started picking apart a path.
Dropping straight down the canyon might be rougher and louder, but to take the only sloping path would be putting myself into a bottleneck situation, and there was no advantage to being surrounded by walls where enemies could come from any direction, including above and out of sight.
Any half way clever infantry would be prepared to ambush a location as advantageous as that.
So that left me with scaling a cliff, since using my thrusters to lower myself down slowly would make me a sitting duck with glowing lights beneath my feet in unfettered view from an entire fleet.
I counted eighteen units among the visible light signatures. The coloring was notably Gehenna’s Orange, in stark contrast with Mictlan’s purple.
So were my peers in emulated Ghuls instead of Shinkas?
I suppose in a generated environment, they could manipulate the visuals to reflect whatever suited the mission.
That was good to know. I had some experience with the way that Shinkas moved, their light placement and weaponry, and how best to destroy one, but all I knew about Ghuls was what I’d seen during the attack, where I wasn’t exactly closely studying the unique differences between units.
At best, I’d read an article that analyzed some pictures and shaky videos, but it wasn’t conclusive information.
Which led me to believe that Mictlan engineers still had limited knowledge at this point, so the units would likely be Ghul in appearance only. Even if the higher ups might know more than we were told, it was unlikely that VR Programmers would be privy to information deemed top secret.
I banked this information, keeping it in the back of my mind as I scanned the canyon walls for any lights along the high vantage points.
Nothing visible, but these were the highest ranking soldiers in Astaroth.
The chance that at least one of the last two was hiding while securing the high ground was almost a given.
I would guess Elio was the type to rush in, but I would bet that Sebastian and Breaker might be more on the strategic side if their sparring strategies were any indication.
My timer continued to climb. My mission time was unlimited, which meant I wouldn’t be leaving this VR chamber until I was either executed by the enemy or had hit self-destruct myself, which was daunting from every angle.
Waiting until everyone was deliriously tired was an option, if not for the fact that I would also end up deliriously tired.
Think.
I looked back on all of the lessons I’d learned thus far, attempting to latch onto something that might actually prove useful. How might someone systematically hunt down and execute each of these enemy units in a way that was covert enough to avoid alerting surrounding allies?
A huff of a laugh escaped my lips.
Why, by leveraging the technological decisions of General Hideki Takeyama, himself, of course.
I knew from Dr. Dorian’s class that if I took out the pilots directly via destroying the core of the units, it would eliminate the threat, while the tracking chip implanted in the neck or the tailbone would still send out their location beacons.
In theory, my kills would still register, since their vitals would indicate elimination, but the unit itself wouldn’t disappear on the map, as their trackers would be undisturbed.
With twenty men, it was unlikely they would know who was where, and even if they did, they’d have to check the entire roster via their COMMs to figure out my exact destruction path.
As long as I killed them before they could call for help, this gave me a stealth advantage and a plan.
This was a good opportunity to reinforce my point of why this was a weakness and not a feature in the Shinkas. Though I didn’t know how cohesive these men worked as a squadron at this point, so it would be a gamble no matter how efficiently I pulled that off.
Okay, enough talk. Time to get this over with.
Keeping that in mind, I slathered more of that red clay dirt on myself before I descended.
Hand over hand, careful step over careful step, I started lowering myself down the cliff side at an uneven and jagged point that offered good visual cover from the direction of the base.
I was far enough away that it would be near impossible to see me without my lights to give me away.
I got to the bottom of the canyon, and I used my thrusters at one meter off the ground to dissipate enough momentum to land in silence.
Tall spires and stone columns were the only cover down in the red rock canyon. speckling the landscape generously, and twisting toward the sky.
I moved closer to the perimeter of the base.
The first enemy unit’s steps could be heard in the near distance, every footfall audible despite the gusts that had only gotten more powerful between the narrow canyon walls.
I watched him move while hiding behind a stone pillar until I could verify he was alone.
Unlike in a normal mission, I wasn’t given the names of the enemies when I homed my viewport on them, so I couldn’t use my limited knowledge of my past encounters to determine their rank or fighting style.
That was inconvenient.