86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 11: Dies Passionis

“Urgh… Thank you for saving m
”

“Forget it, just get away from here!” Rito cut her off.

His voice came across as a severe shout that bordered on a scream. The woman jolted and, with her legs still numb, scrambled away in a crawl. Rito didn’t even follow her with his gaze as his expression contorted.

He couldn’t save Aldrecht in the end. He let him kill so many people. Aldrecht might have willingly become a Shepherd to do just that, but still, Rito ended up letting him get away with it.

He didn’t want Aldrecht to debase himself like that.

He didn’t want to save the Republic’s civilians. He wanted to save Aldrecht.

“Why…?”

Why did he end up saving a Republic civilian over Aldrecht? Why did a Republic civilian survive while Aldrecht had to die? It made him terribly angry, but even more than that, it made him want to cry. But the battle wouldn’t give him the time to do that. And so Rito vented his anger by slamming his fist against one of the optical screens.

One Dinosauria fixed its sights on the back of a boy cradling a girl in his arms, likely his younger sister. Seeing this, Kurena fired. Her 88 mm HEAT round exploded directly above the Dinosauria, blowing away its two machine guns and staggering the Shepherd.

Kurena landed Gunslinger in front of the Shepherd, standing between it and the two children. She stood there, guarding Republic children from a formerly Eighty-Six Shepherd.

“Eighty-Six…,” the boy turned around and whispered.

He looked to be fifteen, maybe sixteen years old…about the same age as her.

“That’s right!
”
Kurena shouted back through her external speaker, her eyes still fixed on the Dinosauria. “That’s right, I’m an Eighty-Six. But…”

We might be the Eighty-Six you people discriminated against. But fighting on is our source of pride, our identity. Fighting to this very day is what makes us Eighty-Six. And that’s why—

“We’ll save you! We’ll fight, so this place is going to be safe!”

They were like her younger self and her big sister, who tried to protect her. So now she would be the one doing the protecting. She was strong enough to do that now.

“You’re her big brother, right? So take that girl and run! Hurry!”

The boy seemed stunned for a moment, but his expression soon crumbled to tears.

“I’m sorry. Thank you…!”

From the corner of her eye, she saw him run off, cradling his younger sister. She fixed her sights on the Dinosauria, a Shepherd harboring the ghost of what was once a fellow Eighty-Six. It was a Dinosauria with an unusual antipersonnel configuration, having replaced its revolving guns with a 7.62 mm all-purpose machine gun. She could hear the voice of an unfamiliar boy cry out.

“Never forgive you”

“…Yeah.”

She could relate to that. Back in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, the same words left her lips countless times. The gloomy flames that burned in her heart lingered on, never to be forgotten. If she didn’t meet Shin… If she never had friends like Raiden, Theo and Daiya, Anju and Kaie and Haruto and Lena… Had even one thing turned out differently, those flames might have gone on to consume her.

Had that Celena officer not tried to save her parents… If her sister wasn’t there to protect her in the internment camp…

But still, that didn’t mean…

“Don’t do the same thing they did.”

Killing a brother trying to protect his little sister? Crushing defenseless children? You were an Eighty-Six. Why are you doing the same thing the white pigs did to us?

So as one Eighty-Six to another, I…

“I won’t let you act the same way they did.”

The Dinosauria lorded over the crowd with their four meters of height, and the Ameise providing recon behind them had mostly been whittled down, but since the self-propelled mines were indistinguishable from humans in the distance, it was hard to tell in the chaos of battle how many of them were left.

Worse yet, there seemed to have been Zentaurs deployed a few dozen kilometers away, because Tohru could make out launched self-propelled mines raining down from the black sky.

“Aaah, dammit, this is annoying! They keep getting in the way…!”

Anti-tank self-propelled mines contained HEAT explosives, allowing them to penetrate even a Vánagandr, assuming they clung to the top of its armor. Letting them approach at a certain distance was dangerous, but there were humanoid silhouettes all around him.

Using their experience from the Charité Underground Labyrinth, they pointed the directional laser at maximum output at any humanoid figures nearby. This helped distinguish humans from nearby self-propelled mines. Humans reacted acutely to pain and heat, while self-propelled mines had no sense of pain and either didn’t react or only reacted after a delay.

Tohru didn’t much mind accidentally pushing or kicking away Republic civilians, but he wasn’t inclined to indiscriminately trample them, either. He could do without having to bear that kind of guilt.

His proximity alert blared. Another self-propelled mine rushed at him, completely ignoring the invisible directional laser beam fired at it.

“Tch.”

Tohru moved his front leg back to kick it off. But just then—

“Waaaaaaaaaaaah!”

—with a wild howl, someone smacked the self-propelled mine with a long, blunt object. And despite the silly scream, it was a blow that had quite a bit of a swing to it, strong enough to dislodge the light self-propelled mine’s head sensor and send it flying in a random direction. Its body staggered and tumbled to the ground.

Tohru hurriedly stopped Jabberwock’s leg. As it turned out, the one who’d interfered was a slender Alba man wearing a business suit and glasses. He had a metallic rod he’d found somewhere gripped in his hands, and he shouted while glaring at the self-propelled mine scrambling on the floor in an attempt to get up.

“Y-you’re the Reginleif that stared people down this morning, right?!”

Upon hearing this, Tohru realized: This was the official standing at the entrance gate to the terminal square earlier. He’d thrown away luggage they weren’t allowed to bring in and was the one the citizens complained to when the soldiers were given priority to board the train. The same one who had to manage their entry, with tears in his eyes.

“I owe you for that! So I’ll handle the little ones!”

“Huh?!” Tohru exclaimed despite himself.

A cowardly, weak Republic civilian, all too brittle to face the Legion, was really saying this?

“You can’t do that! Get away! And run away, would you?! You’re in my way!”

For nine years, the white pigs pushed all the fighting on the Eighty-Six, shutting themselves off in the walls. And now they say this?

His gritted teeth squeaked. And anyway…

“To begin with…I was just watching, not glaring anyone down.”

Watching those white pigs squealing and snapping at one another. Watching how pathetic you pigs became, locked up within your walls.

“Still, that saved us today. So…!”

Self-propelled mines were still closing in on them nonstop. As the next self-propelled mine rushed him, the young man swung his rod at it. But at that moment, the first mine, which had been knocked facedown and failed to get up despite its floundering, finally managed to turn around. It directed the front of its torso toward the man.

This was a weapon that grabbed onto its target, exploding in a burst of directional shrapnel that tore the human body apart or a HEAT explosive that destroyed a tank’s armor.

Be it shrapnel or a HEAT, they always clung to their targets—with the explosives concentrated in the front of their chest.

“No! Get away—”

It self-destructed. It wasn’t an antipersonnel one, but an anti-tank self-propelled mine that produced a metal jet. Still, no human could survive that explosion from such a close range.

“…That’s why I told you,” he whispered under his breath, knowing he couldn’t hear him.

The staff member lay on the ground, burned and charred. His lips moved faintly.

“I’m sorry… No, that’s not right. We’re sorry, Eighty-Six…”

“Stop it.”

Apologies now? He didn’t care to hear them, and he didn’t need him to say them. They never helped them on the battlefield or in the camps, so what would apologizing now achieve?

“I won’t ask you to forgive us, but if you can…
”

Please don’t hate us.

The young man spoke in a whisper. His eyes knowing that being hated…being scorned, discarded, and eventually forgotten like insects was the sole atonement the Republic could offer the Eighty-Six.

They couldn’t not hate them. But at least for now, this one time…

“Won’t you please…save my country’s people…?”

In honor of the foolish way I died.

Tohru gritted his teeth.

“Like I care,” he spat out bitterly.

A white pig sacrificing himself? To hell with that. That’s not my problem. But—

“We’ll save your people. But not out of any honor to you. I just feel like it, is all.”

The Reginleifs focused on taking out the Dinosauria, meaning that handling the self-propelled mines had to be put off. Some civilians did try
to put up a fight. Parents protecting their children and spouse. Young people forming groups with their friends.

This was an entire sector’s worth of evacuation. People had their families and friends nearby. So they picked up blunt weapons, sometimes the detached limbs of exploded self-propelled mines, to protect their loved ones, using them to bash the approaching mines or otherwise pelting them with rocks.

All those who tried to resist got torn apart and killed in the process.

Thanks to the Reginleifs’ ardent fighting, the number of the Dinosauria was thinned down. But on the other hand, the civilians, both those who fled and those who stood and fought, were equally dying.

A single antipersonnel self-propelled mine unleashed a blast of shrapnel that could kill multiple victims. And on top of that, the fires burning here and there lit up the piles of corpses and the injured, dying people.

Seeing this, Lena gritted her teeth.

They had to minimize the victims…and to prevent any further losses…

“We have to do something…”

They need to evacuate this place, but they couldn’t let the civilians scatter aimlessly outside the Eighty-Third Sector. And yet the panic kept spreading. The lit-up battlefield revealed the blood, the charred flesh, the corpses, the brutality of it all, driving the people into a frenzy. The crowd was beginning to disobey what few voices did try to guide them.

“…Nordlicht squadron, move in to guide the civilians. Threaten them a little if you have to, but get them to gather behind plant number three—the point I just sent you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

But Shin cut into her orders, his voice cold.

“No, Lena. We have more enemies coming. We can’t have the master sergeant leave.”

The last Dinosauria finally crumbled to the ground. Its silver butterflies soared away, and a group of voices approached them, not granting the Processors the time to shoot them down. A metallic tidal wave crept up over the horizon.

And then a flash.

On the other side of the crumbled Gran Mur, a star burned brightly. It grew in number, from one to two, to five, to seven—these were flares fired by Skorpion units. As the parachutes gradually touched down, they lit up the ground like small suns…

…revealing the sheer scale of the murder machines approaching the civilians, who had so far been hidden by the curtain of the night.

“Hi…”

The final bit of reasoning this flock of lambs still had finally gave way. The Dinosauria had all been exterminated from the battlefield, but terror and survival instincts made the people fall back.

One child, who was actually relatively far from the scene of the massacre in the walls, let out a high-pitched scream, which sowed panic among those around them. Their panic spurred others to run, and before long, the entire crowd of refugees dissolved into a terrified mob.

The administrative workers tried to stop them, but their voices fell on deaf ears. Like an avalanche, they rushed back into the eighty-five Sectors, where their homes and peace once were. The Reginleifs couldn’t go after them, since they had to prime themselves for a clash with the Legion’s main force. Lena called out to them through the external speaker, but to no avail.

“Wait, come back! There’s too many of you to take cover inside the walls—!”

But upon saying this, she came to a realization with a shudder. Shin’s ability perceived that this new Legion force was twice the size of the Strike Package and the relief expedition’s combined forces. The situation was critical—it wasn’t just the Republic civilians. The way things were, even the Federacy forces were in a precarious position.

Major General Altner immediately came to a decision. The one who had to make that decision was neither Lena nor Grethe, but him, as commander of the relief expedition force. And being a seasoned general who had stood upon the battlefield since the dawn of the Legion War, he knew to adhere to his duties even at a time like this.

“Our support of the Republic civilians’ evacuation is concluded effective immediately. I deem further resistance to be impossible. All relief expedition, Strike Package, and defensive forces are to withdraw and retreat.”

“…!”

While she knew that this was the reasonable, correct course of action, Lena couldn’t help but gasp. Sensing this, Richard switched his Para-RAID settings to speak to her alone, and asked:

“Colonel Milizé. Do you think you’d be able to call back at least some of the fleeing citizens?”

“…No, sir.”

She likely couldn’t. And he asked her that question because he knew it was impossible and wanted to make her aware of that. He was telling her subtly that she couldn’t do it because no one could, and so abandoning them here wasn’t her or anyone’s fault.

“—Train 191 is currently on the platform. Train 191, once the remaining refugees board, set out at once. Train 192, which is currently on standby, will be the last train of the operation.”

“Train 191, roger that.”

“All combat engineers, military police, and headquarters personnel within the eighty-five Sectors—your duties are complete. Board train 192…and if there are any Republic civilians nearby, drag them onto the train if you have to. Once all personnel have boarded, set out at once.”

The military police somehow managed to pull some of the fleeing civilians onto the platform and forced them into train 191, which then departed. Half an hour later, at 02:58 Federacy standard time, the last train departing the Republic, train 192, left the Ilex terminal.

The military police guiding the evacuation; headquarters personnel, who’d finished dismantling their temporary HQ; and combat engineers, who’d returned from demolishing a part of the Gran Mur, all boarded the
train. They shoved the last of the civilians, who didn’t escape but rather froze up and stayed behind, into what would be the last refugee train.

All the lights in the cars were turned off so as to not alert the Legion to the train’s position, and the train fled through the pitch-black night, relying on night-vision devices to look ahead. In the distance, one could see two empty trains that had been heading to the Republic, trains 193 and 194, travel back to the Federacy after receiving word of the news.

Following this, the Strike Package and the remaining units began their retreat. The slow Vánagandrs went ahead first, while the Reginleifs and the Scavengers loaded with supplies served as the rear guard. This formation was set up so that, at worst, they could use their maximal speed to shake off most of the Legion, and while it would mean taking some losses, they could sprint through the Legion territories.

The Reginleif was capable of mobility high enough to damage its Processor’s body, but the Morpho pursuit and Dragon Fang Mountain operations proved, through the examples of Frederica and Annette, that even noncombatants could ride in it safely so long as it evaded combat.

Much like in Annette’s case, Saki—from the former Thunderbolt squadron, who had recently recovered from injuries—was charged with transporting her superior officer. Lena had sunk in the auxiliary seat of her Reginleif, Grimalkin, bracing herself so as to not bite her tongue from the vibrations of its movements.

She then turned around, glancing back at the battlefield growing distant behind her—knowing she wouldn’t be able to see it. Noticing this, Saki, still gripping the control sticks, switched on a sub-window with a fingertip. The hologram window displayed slightly grainy footage of the Gran Mur. It was gun-camera footage, transmitted via data link from the rearmost unit.

“Thank you.”

“…Don’t mention it.”

Even from a distance and a height difference, the Legion were visibly covering the base of the Gran Mur. Like a wave approaching from the distance, they marched one after another, encircling the place like a cloud of locusts. But they were not divine punishment, nor were they spurred by hunger; this plague of metallic locusts was driven solely by
cold, artificial, mechanical bloodlust, consuming cities, countries, the land, all humankind.

Lena felt, through Shin’s ability, how the Shepherds that had turned to butterflies to escape converged and appeared again among the other Legion. The hatred of the ghosts possessing their central processors had not been quelled one bit by the massacre they’d enacted earlier. Their maddened howls echoed still.

So the reason they didn’t destroy the Republic…

“The reason they didn’t do it with the satellite missiles…!”

This was why they allowed the Strike Package to arrive here and stood idly by as the Federacy aided in the Republic civilians’ evacuation. So that the relief expedition’s noncombatants would evacuate ahead of the Republic civilians and return to the Federacy first. That way, the expedition’s main force would be left with only its combatants, forcing it to decide to abandon the Republic civilians and escape by crossing the territories.

After all, if the Federacy forces remained within the walls and staged a do-or-die resistance, the Shepherds wouldn’t be able to enjoy slaughtering the Republic civilians.

But now the gates of the hunting grounds had swung shut. Their pure-white prey was trapped inside. And those who had expelled the Colorata and called them animals would be hunted down by those animals’ ghosts. In an eerie reproduction of how they’d closed the Eighty-Six in the Eighty-Sixth Sector and forced them to sacrifice themselves in battle in their place.

Like they sacrificed themselves in the name of Saint Magnolia’s passion, who’d led the revolution only to be cast into a goal she would die in by the hands of the very civilians she’d liberated.

Lena understood, with a shudder, that the massacre had begun. A massacre drunk on bloodshed, filled with fires kindled with the flesh of the living and screams of agony as its orchestra. A feast of white pigs to be devoured in the name of revenge, where no appetite would ever be sated and no thirst would ever be quenched.

Not until the last of them was consumed.

<>

Within the darkness of her airtight container, Zelene repeated those words. The answer to the question Vika asked her, but her protection prevented her from speaking.

I was expelled from the control network’s core—from the collective of the Legion Supreme Commander units.

Because I tried to stop the Legion.

The Legion’s current top priority was to search for the lost successor to the right to command them. The Legion were weapons only meant to substitute the role of soldiers, noncommissioned officers, and low-ranking officers. The Legion were originally never meant to fight on for years without someone to command them.

And in accordance with that initial order, Zelene Birkenbaum’s ghost had refused to sit back and watch as her homeland and humankind were destroyed—and was discarded for it.

The core of the current Legion control network, the Shepherds, used every logic and action possible to avoid that initial order. To fulfill their wishes—not as Legion, but their own desires.

To grant the desires they held on to even after becoming Legion, the wishes they held as humans even into death.