Fighting Boy Meets Girl

Before Sousuke even finished saying Mao's name, the two mechs in front of him burst into flames and collapsed.

It was a sniper from the ocean! Closer inspection revealed an AS with a large rifle about a thousand feet from the shore. Mao's M9 appeared to be kneeling on the sea.

Then, beneath it, the Tuatha de Danaan surfaced, cleaving the inky water.

"Sousuke? You have just one chance: Jump directly from the tip of the cape!" instructed Mao.

Leaving two enemy AS divisions in the dust, the Arbalest ran into a rocky area of the beach. It climbed a rocky slope. Really, the cape resembled a giant ski jump.

As debris flew all around, the pursuers fired, destroying pine trees left and right. Sousuke accelerated without looking back.

Suddenly, the end of the cape loomed. Ahead of it, there was a cliff—beyond that, the sea. Carefully cradling his passengers, Sousuke concentrated.

As he leapt, the ground disappeared beneath his legs, and his body felt weightless. There were only dark waves beneath him now.

The de Danaan approached quickly. Mao's M9 waited with outstretched arms.

"All right!" hooted Mao, catching the incoming Arbalest. "Urzu Seven recovered! Admission from hatch four: complete!"

"Hatch four closure commencing! Two more seconds," reported the duty officer, whose screen read secrecy maintenance. "Closure complete."

Teletha Testarossa nodded and said: "Hard to starboard, course 205, full combat speed. Mind the depth, please! "

"Aye aye, ma'am. Hard to starboard, course 205," echoed the navigation officer. "Maximum speed!"

The ship lurched right, chopping through the surface waves. Enemy fire splashed haphazardly around it.

The screen's velocity display shot up past fifty knots, close to thirty-five miles per hour.

The fastest any normal submarine could travel was forty knots, but the de Danaan easily broke through that barrier. The on-screen speedometer continued to increase.

"Present speed, sixty-five knots."

Seventy-five miles per hour!

This freakish cruising ability was what enabled the de Danaan to get to the coast in such a short amount of time.

Quickly, the ship fled the coast.

"When we reach a depth of one-hundred sixty-five feet, flood the main ballast tank and set the diving angle to five degrees," ordered the navigation officer. "Maintain present speed."

"Aye! Beginning planned dive," responded the helm officer.

Tessa and Mardukas closely watched the diving procedures.

"This is the first time we've pushed it this hard," Mardukas commented.

"The super-conducting propulsion system?" clarified Tessa.

The executive officer nodded and said, "Yes, ma'am. It seems tough. From our preliminary tests, I thought it would be more delicate."

"I'm surprised, too." Tessa smiled and looked at her screen before adding, "I guess that's strange for its creator to say, isn't it?"

She returned her attention to passing a series of patrol boats.

Freshly patched up, Sousuke returned to the hangar.

Kaname and Kurz both were conked out in the medical office still.

The hangar was quiet; noise regulations throughout the ship prohibited the maintenance crew from working there.

Covered in bandages, Sousuke gazed at the kneeling ARX-7 Arbalest. Splotches of mud and grass stains marred the white exterior. The armor was a mess, and the lower right part of the head was missing.

In this light, it was just an AS—an eccentric prototype mech based on the M9 Gernsback. But what on Earth was…

"Looking pretty terrible," declared the lieutenant commander, approaching from behind Sousuke. "What happened to Gauron?"

"He died. No mistake this time."

"I see. I wish I could have been there for that." Kalinin sighed. "You look like you have more to say."

"Yes, sir. What exactly is the Lambda Driver?"

Kalinin seemed prepared to answer this frank question. "I heard rumors Gauron had one."

"Yes, he did. And this AS has one, too, if I'm not mistaken."

"You're correct. When I heard that Weber's M9 got totaled, I knew it was a possibility. That's why I sent the Arbalest. It takes an AS with that kind of firepower to stop one of the same."

Now Sousuke understood why they had flung an unmanned, highly valuable, experimental mech into enemy territory.

"That still doesn't answer my question," persisted Sousuke, "about the Lambda Driver."

"You don't need to know. Not at this stage."

"Lieutenant Commander, I am aware of rudimentary physics, but I've never heard of a device with powers like that."

"Of course not. No one in this world has thought of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Your generation probably hasn't realized it," Kalinin said heavily, "but today's weapon technology is abnormal. It started with the AS. The Lambda Driver, ECS, this ship's propulsion system, sensors—it's all overdeveloped. Any way you look at it, it's weird. Don't you ever think it's strange that sci-fi robots dominate the battlefields?"

Commanding a mechanized assault division was an everyday activity for Kalinin, so Sousuke was surprised to hear him say something like that.