Impact met slash.
Following the deafening roar came a sharp crack—the sound of metal snapping.
The nose of the Swordfish aircraft, roughly a fifth of its fuselage, was severed clean by the column sword sweeping up from the flank. It tumbled through the air and slammed heavily into the ice.
Though protected by a specialized flight suit, the pilot trapped inside stood virtually no chance of survival.
The remaining four-fifths of the fuselage decelerated as it ricocheted backward and upward.
At the same time, the massive force of the collision finally forced Daie back, its body crashing heavily against the iron hull of the spacecraft behind it.
This was humanity's first attempt at a decisive kill against a Daie-class Great Spike... The result was out. From the Antarctic command center to the battlefield in the ice valley, a pall of bleak despair hung over all.
"Kill!" Amidst frozen, helpless stares, Pegmont roared, his red hair streaming as he struck a heavy blow across Daie's arm with his blade.
He was back. No one knew how he was still able to fight, or when he had arrived, or how he had gotten there. All that mattered was that he was standing there, his borderline reckless slash landing squarely on Daie against all odds.
The strike carved a deep groove into Daie's iron wrist.
A split second later, Daie dropped its shoulder and rammed forward, launching Pegmont hundreds of meters through the air until he slammed hard into the distant ice sheet.
Then came another roar: "Kill!"
General Bochen stomped one foot against the ground, sending hundreds of fractures spidering across the ice. His frame—neither tall nor imposing, even somewhat stocky—shot nearly a hundred meters into the air.
As he leapt, his combat blade was already sheathed behind his back.
Suspended midair, General Bochen gripped the jagged iron plating of the fractured Swordfish fuselage with both hands. With a furious roar, he forcefully wrenched the remaining four-fifths of the craft around in a violent flip.
To the stunned onlookers, the scene looked like an ant muscling an iron counterweight.
In that instant, the air filled with a sound of wind-shearing so violent and massive it resembled a crashing fighter jet... Using his own body as a fulcrum, Bochen flipped the Swordfish fuselage and hurled it downward with all his might, smashing it toward Daie.
Daie planted its feet and looked up.
*Boom!*
A direct hit.
The fuselage was impaled clean through.
Daie stood inside the wreckage with its sword raised in both arms, its legs driven deep into the ice, buried up to the base of its thighs.
It appeared visibly dazed by the blow.
"Try to hit its kidneys."
Over Christine's communicator came Bochen's exhausted voice.
*This guy always wastes so many words. What kind of moment is this? Couldn't he just say 'kidneys'?!*
"Understood," Christine replied.
"On it!" another voice cut into the channel at the same time, shouting an excited reply.
It was Pegmont. He was back again.
Covered in blood, he had once again materialized at the center of the battlefield in a way no one could comprehend.
Aside from his invincible Dual Super-S talent, to this day, no one in the world truly understood Pegmont's specialty—not even Pegmont himself.
Because his trait was likely the most unique and abstract among all known abilities.
*Clang! Clang!*
Seizing the Great Spike's momentary daze, Christine and Pegmont landed two consecutive heavy slashes, striking hard against the small of Daie's back where its source energy glow had first surged.
An unexpected result: this time, Daie was sent flying.
Its towering frame crashed to the ground, slamming heavily onto the ice.
This outcome seemed partly because the creature was unwilling to take the blow head-on and absorb the full brunt of the impact.
"Weak point confirmed," Christine said decisively over the communicator.
There was no sound from Pegmont this time. As Daie had flown back, its leg had lashed out in a rear kick that seemed to have caught him.
"Then keep pressing," came Bochen's order, heavy with grief and heartache.
Immediately after, *Boom!*
It was that same mangled fuselage again. Bochen hoisted it with both hands and brought it crashing down onto the ice a short distance away, directly atop the Great Spike.
The entire sequence took less than a second.
He scored another hit.
"All forces—" The Antarctic command center cut in, their order trembling with joy and excitement at the apparent turnaround.
"No, it's useless," Bochen interrupted, cutting off the command before they could finish. He said, "It doesn't matter how many more people come. Order them to withdraw. Christine and I will try one more time."
As he spoke, blood was trickling from all seven facial orifices of General Bochen.
Daie rose from beneath the mangled fuselage.
Christine was already waiting there. Ambushing it from behind, she slashed another strike across the small of its back.
*Crack!* This time, a fissure appeared in the protective iron armor.
Daie lunged forward, whipping around in panic to locate Christine.
Yet at that exact moment, a shadow even larger than the Swordfish fuselage was already hurtling toward it from behind.
Only this time, the blow was not brought down from above, but hurled in a horizontal spin.
This time... what was being used was Daie's own spacecraft.
Inside it were still five or six Great Spikes.
"Ahhh!" General Bochen bellowed in a mad fury. Twisting his body to build momentum, he ripped the spacecraft up from the ice... and then, amid the audible snapping of the bones in his arms, hurled the colossal vessel with everything he had straight at Daie...
From the perspective of pure physical strength, this was something even Chen Buer might have struggled to pull off.
***
"What? General Bochen, you're saying Daie got away? It really... escaped?"
Over the communicator came the command center's incredulous inquiry.
In truth, they had already received word of this from the soldiers below a step earlier. It was only because the news was so hard to swallow that they were confirming it directly with General Bochen.
"Mmh... yes."
Lying on the stretcher, Bochen gave a feeble nod, then turned his head to cast a weak glance at Christine, who was walking beside him with a sullen, furious expression.
"Yes. When General Bochen threw Daie's spacecraft to crush it... because of the distance, that ship suddenly launched straight into the air!"
"Then Daie leapt onto it as well."
"Our craft in the sky couldn't intercept it."
It had been an unexpected turn of events that no one could have anticipated. Christine held up the communicator to report, her expression growing angrier as she spoke, and she glared fiercely at Bochen.
Then, as if seeing him in such a battered state made her soften, she reached out and wiped the blood from his eyelids, turned back, and continued:
"My guess is that it still doesn't fully understand human military strength. After being wounded, faced with the situation at hand, it feared even stronger measures might follow, so it chose to retreat first. It knows its own importance."
"Wasn't it just scared shitless from getting hacked by us?" From another stretcher nearby came a voice—extremely feeble, yet still brimming with excitement.
"What does this have to do with you?! You reckless bastard!"
Christine turned to look. Pegmont's stretcher was steadily dripping blood onto the ground.
He wasn't dead... and it seemed certain he wouldn't die.
Offering no comfort or encouragement, Christine turned back and said, "Anyway, that's what happened."
"...Understood. Thank you for your service, Generals." The voice on the other end grew heavy.
Because that Daie had gotten away after completing its reconnaissance and even deciphering human language... this very likely pointed toward a dreadful, long-anticipated outcome.
***
Azure Alliance, Alliance Council.
Kemore's brow was tightly knit, his gaze fixed on the telephone on the desk.
*Ring, ring...*
The phone finally rang.
Kemore snatched it up immediately. "How did it go? Did our craft keep up with it?"
"I'm sorry. That thing was too fast," a low voice answered from the other end.
"...Understood. I see."
Kemore hung up the phone, looked up, and cast a grim gaze across the entire chamber. Then, he spoke:
"I hereby announce that the Azure Alliance will immediately and formally initiate 1993 Contingency Plan No. 1. Within a maximum of half a month, all groundwork and preparations will be completed to reveal the truth to all of humanity."
Chapter 598