Chapter 159 – Um… I Borrowed a Makina That Was Here…

"J-just when I thought it had finally stopped... I have ended up outside..."

Before the panoramic monitor, which showed nothing but countless stars and the black void of space stretching on forever, Letaria murmured in a daze.

The headlong charge that had been tearing through walls only moments ago had stopped as though it had never happened, and a single Makina now floated alone in the black emptiness.

"Letaria! Can you hear me?!"

Abruptly, Grain's voice, edged with urgency, rang out through static from the bracelet terminal on her arm.

"What the hell happened?! The station's outer wall just blew out!"

"Er... um... I borrowed one of the Makina that was here..."

Cold sweat streaming down, Letaria answered honestly.

From the other end of the comm came the sound of Grain's deep sigh.

"...I see. No, I'll say no more. ...So, what happened to the girl, Rofi?"

Grain swallowed the words that had risen to his throat and asked quietly.

"I did manage to get her out once... but she has been taken back into their hands..."

Letaria's voice sank weakly. The sight of Rofi planting herself in front of her to shield her flashed through her mind, and her chest tightened.

"I see... It must be frustrating, but we've achieved our original objective on this end. You get out of there right away, too."

Priscilla's voice cut in.

"That is fortunate. Looking at the radar, Miss Letaria, you have made it outside the station, have you not? Using that commandeered Makina, please move to the point I designate. Thanks to your spectacular rampage, Miss Letaria, it seems the rest of us will be able to escape safely as well."

As Priscilla spoke gently, a three-dimensional hologram map was projected from Letaria's bracelet. The route to the rendezvous point she was to head for was shown as a line of pale blue light.

"U-understood..."

Letaria shifted her mood and tried to move the machine by synchronizing her body's motions with it, "as she always did."

"H-huh...?"

But the machine did not so much as twitch.

"It is hard to move... no, it is not responding at all...?!"

She frantically touched the consoles and panels around her, but the system's power indicators were lit normally. Then Letaria suddenly realized a crucial fact.

"That is right...! This one is not in 'Trace Mode,' it is in 'Manual Mode'!!"

◆◆◆

Findlay, Carol, and the others who had secured Rofi had finally finished the recovery work after the large-scale outage caused by Priscilla's covert action.

But the violent shaking caused by the runaway Makina had badly damaged the station's interior, and a huge hole had been torn in its outer wall.

Argria's guards had fallen into panic at the unforeseen turn of events, but under Findlay's command the bulkheads were swiftly sealed and emergency repairs were under way.

"Status?"

Amid the ravaged passage, Findlay asked a guard calmly.

"Yes, sir. The intruders appear to have numbered several people, including 'Letaria Adeniam.' Intrusion into the control room has been confirmed, and most likely--"

"Their aim was the data management room."

At Findlay's pre-emptive words, the guard caught his breath, faltered, and nodded in confirmation.

Carol, who had been checking a terminal, walked over.

"Findlay... Caducus has been activated."

At that report, Findlay's brow twitched slightly.

"What... Do you mean it was taken?"

When Carol nodded silently, her expression bitter, Findlay's face hardened at once.

"...Letaria, then. She lives up to the name of the Rampaging Lady in her sheer wildness. Perhaps even Syn-Fibra cannot properly control her...?"

He muttered it half in exasperation, then turned his gaze to the dark-green-haired young man standing beside him -- Marei.

"Marei, secure Caducus. If securing it proves difficult... you may destroy it."

"Understood."

Marei answered briefly and started toward the launch hatch, his eyes betraying no emotion.

"I will go support Marei too--"

Carol made to follow, but Findlay quietly put out a hand and stopped her.

"Working out our next response comes first. Besides, I am curious how far M5 can go against Letaria. ...You are to take R1 and return to headquarters. It would be a problem if anything happened to you. I will catch up later."

At that instruction, Carol caught her breath, then bowed deeply.

"We cannot afford to be outpaced by that lot. Adjust R1 well. I am counting on you."

"Yes, sir. Without fail...!"

Carol called out firmly to Findlay's retreating back.

◆◆◆

"Ngh... Please, move...!"

Inside Caducus's cockpit, Letaria worked the unfamiliar control stick with all her might.

"Until now, I have moved a 'manual mode' machine only a tiny bit in the simulator...! Just moving straight ahead is all I can manage...!"

Grumbling under her breath, she fired the boosters and advanced the machine toward the rendezvous point.

She groped for a way to switch to the Trace Mode that let her handle a machine like her own limbs, as she always did, but she could not find where the switch was on this machine. In any case, it was common knowledge that most Makina, military or civilian alike, used manual control as the standard, and Trace Mode was normally not even installed.

For Letaria, who had piloted by Trace Mode alone until now, serious combat piloting in Manual Mode was almost a first, and she was little better than a novice.

Even so, she had at least the minimum movement procedures in her head, and so she managed, barely, to keep the machine advancing.

Pursuers were sure to come soon... before then, she had to somehow reach the rendezvous...!

Her comm with Grain and the others had gone dead once. They were probably fully occupied escaping from the facility too.

Was Rofi safe...? Leaving her all alone...

She was worrying about the captured girl, her gaze about to drop -- in that instant.

Letaria's senses caught a "presence" from her right flank.

"Ah--?!"

On reflex she wrenched the control stick over and stamped the pedal deep.

A moment later, a flash of blue photon light silently sliced through the very space where Caducus had been an instant before.

The clumsy emergency evasion shook Letaria violently inside a machine whose inertia control could not keep up. A fierce G-load struck her unprotected body -- she was not even wearing a pilot suit -- but Letaria gritted her teeth desperately and endured it.

"Ngh--!"

Breathing hard, Letaria turned her eyes toward the darkness from which the flash had come.

Far across the panoramic monitor, melting into the black of space, drifted the silhouette of a single dark-green Makina.