Chapter 137: Information Gathering – Employees

A sudden expansion of the front meant a sudden increase in personnel.

This tent village made that painfully obvious.

The tavern where Highball and I had been drinking was thrown together in a hurry, yes, but it had still been commissioned as a facility. So it was built inside the existing fort.

But what about everything else?

The merchants who smelled profit and came running?

The mercenaries like me, late to the war?

The fortress was not large enough to swallow all the people gathered by this sudden expansion. And so barricades went up, and countless tents were pitched outside the fort.

They were not allowed to build pillboxes.

If things went bad, they had to be tents—things the fort could crush underfoot.

A structure becomes a shield for the attacker and the defender alike. Since this tent village sat in the very area the fort was designed to fire on, it could not exist if the fort were to perform as intended.

I walked through that tent village with E.B. and Rudo.

It was breakfast time, probably.

There were food smells everywhere. Since we were already here, we decided to eat.

I wanted something gentle on the stomach.

At my request, we ended up with morning porridge.

We bought it from a stall and ate standing by a convenient wall.

There was one large pickled plum in mine. I broke it apart with my chopsticks and scattered it evenly through the whole bowl. Not especially polite, but there was no point caring.

E.B. ate her plum in one bite. The pit, placed on her tongue with an eh-reh, looked slightly obscene. Rudo started pestering her as if to say even the pit would do, so I tore off a bit of preserved jerky and gave it to him.

“That looks like it’d be good torn up and mixed in.”

“…What are you, a genius?”

Let us try that.

“Well, it does seem bad for digestion.”

“…”

Let us not.

Be kind to me.

Be kind to my stomach.

The slow heat of the porridge warmed me from the belly outward.

Still holding the empty bowl, I leaned against the wall without much thought and looked around.

As the fact that I had been able to buy breakfast suggested, food stalls seemed to be gathered around this area. I had heard they had gone so far as to buy tent space specifically to gather the stalls together. The upper ranks had it rough too. As someone using them, though, I appreciated how easy it was to understand.

Then I noticed people gathering around one of the stalls.

They seemed to be handling Monos bodies. The flag they had raised showed a picture of a Monoz and an abacus.

Abacus.

As a trading company that was also a secret society, Abacus had apparently chosen this moment to step into the open.

I did not know what they were thinking.

They had probably found out that Dragon Unit’s body had been modified. I no longer had any jobs or surveillance coming through Suen. I seemed to be treated as a defective product.

“…Hey, Touji. If that’s Abacus, then…”

“Well. It is probably that, yes.”

Monoz which could be forcibly shut down.

The Insectum turning to offense.

Abacus stepping into the open.

And, following those two abnormalities, the third one: Monoz betraying people.

Monoz had been humanity’s good neighbors.

Friends.

Now, among them, there were ones who betrayed.

If all they did was refuse to lend a hand at a critical moment, that was almost cute. In some cases, they had even killed their contractors directly.

In a sense, more than the first two, this was the major abnormality for us mercenaries.

The betrayal of Monoz.

Though, honestly, my first thought was that it probably had little to do with me.

The Monoz who betrayed or rather, the contractors who were betrayed, shared a tendency.

They had not treated Monoz as friends.

They had not even treated Monoz as tools.

They had treated them as slaves.

Yuri taught me to treat Monoz as friends.

Shinzo was taught to care for Monoz as tools.

Yes. To greater or lesser degrees, every mercenary was taught that Monoz were human strength. And yet there were people who did not even obey that much.

Those were the kinds of people now lined up at the Abacus stall, and—

“In other words, a gathering of incompetents.”

“If they hear you and it turns into a fight, I’ll help you, you know?”

“Don’t try to act cool,” E.B. said, and ground her knuckles into my cheek.

I very much wanted her to stop.

***

Now then.

Because I had joined the war late, my lodging was near the outer edge of the tent village.

If it had only been me and Shinzo, that would not have mattered much. But for the technical team, like Akito, and the children in combat roles, like Kirie and Touka, I did feel a little bad.

If you set up base near the battlefield, there was no need to think too hard about what would happen if the enemy attacked. I told them to unpack as little as possible and stay ready to run at any time, but even that had limits.

I was sorry for making things inconvenient in so many ways.

When I headed for that tent, Dog Unit was sitting in a washbasin at the entrance.

Beside him was one of the girls from the technical team.

Come to think of it, Rat Unit had proposed applying an anti-sand coating. I remembered that now.

This was probably the preparation for it. A wash first.

The order seemed to follow the zodiac. Boar Unit, the last one left, was sunning himself with a slightly bored air.

I knocked him lightly.

I’m back.

Boar Unit noticed me, but apparently had no intention of stopping his sunbath. Without even looking this way, he blinked his eye-light at me.

“Good work. How’s it going?”

“Hm? Ah, Touji-san. It’s fine! He’s sparkling clean!”

“I see. Sorry, but I’m counting on you.”

With that, I ducked into the tent.

Five hundred years later, the climate had changed completely. The stabbing sunlight was hot and harsh, but the humidity was not much to speak of, so once you stepped into shade like this, it was not a serious problem.

Apparently, the coating had already been finished up to Tiger Unit.

Inside the tent were Ox Unit, looking bored, and Rat Unit and Tiger Unit, facing each other and apparently discussing something.

Rat Unit noticed me and came over.

Report: There are two messages.

“I see. Let’s hear them.”

Question: Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

“…”

I do not really need that sort of thing.

Was it that bored?

Ah, right. Dog Unit, its usual partner for killing time with electronic shogi, was outside.

Then I suppose it could not be helped.

I would play along.

“…Let’s hear the good news first.”

Regret: Both are ordinary news.

“No, then—”

What was that question just now supposed to be?

I would like to interrogate you about it for roughly an hour.

Report One: Notice of next mission from Smile Company Commander. Meeting tomorrow morning at ten.

Report Two: Father-in-law attack now → Shinzo currently responding in the back of the tent.

“E.B.”

“Mm? What’s up?” 

E.B. came over, and I showed her the terminal screen. She had her chin resting on my shoulder, half-hugging me from behind. On seeing it, she deliberately went kakkun with her jaw.

Please stop. It vibrates through the bone.

“I didn’t hear anything about this.”

“…What do you think it is?”

“The timing’s the timing. Maybe he came to poach you?”

“To tell me to fight as a Tooth, not as a human?”

“Mm. Something like that.”

“I see.”

Scratch, scratch.

I scratched my head.

What to do?

How should I handle this?

As a matter of feeling, unfortunately, I was on the human side. If I dressed that up in difficult logic and said it was rooted in biological instinct, then, if possible, I wanted to stand on the side that protected my own kind.

“…”

Well, I did not even know whether his goal was really that.

Thinking too much beyond this point would be pointless.

I should just ask the man himself what he wanted.

I lifted the hanging cloth being used as a divider with one hand and went to the back.

There were three pipe-chair-like things the Monoz had prepared.

Three people were sitting there.

Just as Rat Unit had said: Mr. A.B., Shinzo, and one suspicious person with a bag over his head.

Well.

Clearly a victim, or something like that. With a bag over his head and his hands tied behind him to the chair, he looked like an enemy soldier captured by terrorists.

I could only imagine the next scene being a bullet through his head.

Shinzo clapped me on the shoulder as he left the room.

“Try to save him, if you can. It’s Suen.”

“…Ah.”

I sighed.

I see.

Suen, is it?

Scratching lazily at my chest, I dragged a chair over and sank my weight onto it.

“What happened to this?”

“A group came to take Bulging Eyes back. This one was with the first negotiation party. He said he knew you, so I brought him here.”

“To release him?”

“Don’t be stupid. To squeeze him for information. The others didn’t understand a word we said, but this one did, so I brought him.”

“…I see.”

You can do it, right?

Mr. A.B. grinned as he said it.

I had the feeling poaching me would have been a much nicer topic.

Not a kind world.

A cruel one.

That was all.

First, I needed to decide where I stood.

Save Suen, as Shinzo had asked?

Or follow Mr. A.B. and squeeze out information?

Well.

Sorry, Suen, but the latter.

If this was about the Monoz betraying people, Abacus would have information too.

“What they want is Bulging Eyes released?”

“They called him Doctor.”

“…So they’re after the technology.”

“For a world that doesn’t need Monoz, apparently.”

“Well, well—”

I’m surprised you did not hand him over.

Without Monoz, humans could not match Tooths. If I were on the Tooth side, I would hand him over. The drum-can army and modified humans were both several steps below Monoz.

I worked my terminal and typed.

Can you hear us?

An answer was typed back the same way.

I can hear.

I see.

Then play along with the farce, please.

OK.

That exchange finished.

“My usual method is asking the flesh, but…”

“I see. We were just about to do that ourselves. You’re not going to save him?”

“Well, he has helped me before, and I have no doubt he is fundamentally a good person, so my heart does ache, but—”

“You’re a terrible bastard, Hound. Then, let’s see… dominant arm.”

“Ah, wait. I want that too.”

“Oh? What’s this? You are saving him after all? Whether the dominant arm is intact or not makes a big difference in his life after this, you know?”

“No, not that. Even if he gets a prosthetic either way, taking the dominant arm has a stronger sense of no going back, doesn’t it?”

Start with the fingers.

Apparently, if you freeze them with liquid nitrogen first, they’re easier to cut.

“Is the H in Hound for horror?”

“Close enough.”

That kind of conversation.

At first, Suen had been killing his heart. Then he heard my voice and probably felt a little hope that he might be saved.

Only to be treated to this.

He began to tremble.

He must have been gagged. I could hear breathing, fast and shallow.

Near hyperventilation.

I stroked his fingers.

His body jumped.

His head shook left and right like a child refusing something.

“…”

I did feel a little sorry.

But Suen—and by extension, Abacus—knew what lay behind this abnormality.

On a battlefield, information is life.

Sorry.

I wanted it too.

“Okay, my son. Not just the dominant arm. I’ll give you the whole thing. How long to squeeze him dry?”

“Three days.”

“Do it in one.”

“Then let’s split the difference and call it two.”

I said only that, then clapped both hands together.

Meeting adjourned.

I called E.B. and had Father removed from the room.

Now then.

Even if I questioned him, Suen was only a low-ranking member. He probably did not have much information.

I would use him properly and ask the upper ranks of Abacus instead.