86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 4
What a pain.
Confirming the status of the Para-RAID, he spoke to all the squad captains.
“…All Strike Package members…”
Cyclops’s radar picked up an enemy group. Unarmored humanoid targets weighing roughly a hundred kilograms each. Self-propelled mines. A highly condensed group of brittle self-propelled mines were easy pickings for a cannon’s buckshot fire. Shiden licked her lips, ruminating on the foolishness of the hunks of scrap metal.
It was then that she heard the sound of someone gasping through the Resonance.
“All Strike Package members,
cease all combat
and retreat—Shiden, don’t shoot!”
“?!”
Shiden’s index finger flew off the trigger at the last second. Cyclops hopped back, with Shiden pressing a hand against her left ear. The quasi-nerve crystal implanted beneath her skin had been taken out when she joined the Federacy military, along with her variable data link ear cuff, but habits picked up during four years on the battlefield died hard.
“What the hell?! I was just about to take out that whole group! The timing was perfect!”
“Assuming those are Legion… But the ones I was talking about weren’t.”
“Huh?! Then what else would they—?”
Halfway through her words, Shiden realized the truth. The enemies were antipersonnel weapons the Legion had developed in humanoid form. However badly made, the self-propelled mines were only shaped like humans. So if the figures in front of her weren’t self-propelled mines, the answer was clear.
The figures emerged from the darkness, with staggering steps that made them appear wounded, just like the self-propelled mines that couldn’t walk upright. But their silver colors stood out all too clearly.
An Adularia’s silver eyes stared at Cyclops. They
stared
at her.
The Legion used their blatantly unfair technological advantage to tirelessly develop and stay one step ahead of humankind. But their programming prohibited them from making a weapon that was
too
similar to a human. Even the self-propelled mines, which were close in that regard, didn’t have human faces. They lacked mouths, noses, and of course, eyes.
Which meant that this…
“So that’s what’s going on…?!”
Shiden swore under her breath.
What the fuck?
“…There’s white pigs here…?!”