Chapter 141: New Species

War is numbers, brother.

In other words, in an infantry fight, if you can meet the enemy with more hands than they have, things tend to go your way.

Against artillery, though, the answer is dispersal.

If you clump up, one direct hit turns a lot of people into ‘no good’ at once.

So then.

In this situation—being ambushed by infantry through underground tunnels while also being shelled—what exactly was effective?

I thought about it.

No answer came.

Because normally, this situation should not exist.

Artillery is not an attack method you can aim that precisely. It always carries the risk of catching your own side in the blast. In fact, even now, Ants were being blown apart by friendly shelling.

For humans, this would be impossible.

Friendly fire lowers morale for the ones who shoot and the ones who get shot.

But the Insectum are true eusocial creatures.

The individual exists for the species.

In a society built out of roles, what role is given to infantry?

Yes.

Naturally, dying is part of the job.

Rain falls.

So the rain falls.

Whether it is an infantry battlefield or whether their own allies are there, the rain of shells still falls.

A battlefield impossible between humans.

And also, a battle situation that had been impossible for the Insectum until now.

“…”

Another new species, then.

They were appearing far too quickly.

Still, they were not there yet.

Their tactics had not caught up to the new species’ performance. If they replaced the shells falling from above with Armor Rolls, the damage would spread even further. Incendiaries would be more effective too, if they scattered them instead of dropping them as a single mass.

Even I could think of that much immediately.

But unlike humans, who expand their ways of fighting with new equipment, the Insectum have expanded theirs through new species.

Their tactics are weak.

They are bad at immediately folding new power into strategy.

Meaning if we were going to hit them, it had to be now.

“Ground-to-air Patriot system, hurry up and assemble it!”

“Heavy infantry! Slime-filled greatshields—reaaady!”

“Shelling incoming! Hold, damn you!”

Screams mixed into the battlefield shouting.

Or else sound vanished altogether.

In the middle of all that, I sat on the back of the Monok with E.B. at the handles, picking out likely enemy positions from the data being sent in.

The direction of incoming shells.

The way they fell.

From that, estimate rough distance, drop it onto the map, add elevation, and narrow it down further.

『Smile to Hound. How’s picnic prep? Pack your lunch? I hear sweets help with fatigue.』

What are you, my mother?

“…I packed peanut butter sandwiches.”

『Okay. Okay, Hound. Departure time’s almost here. I want to create some opening chaos with simultaneous picnic-team deployment. Move on my signal.』

“Hound, understood.”

As I answered, I sat as if hugging E.B. from behind.

Locked my legs to Horse Unit.

Loaded rounds into the Type Five.

Coming with me were the fast ones with high combat ability: Tiger Unit, Monkey Unit, Rooster Unit, Dog Unit, Boar Unit, and Rudo. Rat Unit, slow on its own but in charge of search, joined by being dragged along behind Horse Unit.

“You want me to fly, Touji?”

“Yes. The longer we take, the more casualties we get. So—”

“Right. Then hold on tight. Oh, but don’t touch anywhere weird.”

“…I’ll save that sort of thing for tonight.”

I said it with a small shrug.

“…Pervert.”

E.B.’s ears went red.

“…”

Cute, I thought.

Well, that said, because she used a biological exoskeleton, and because of various other circumstances, even in this position the feeling did not really—

“Ghk! —Ow… Um… Why?”

Why did I just receive a sudden backward headbutt?

My nose hurts violently.

“Shut up!”

***

Amid the scenery streaming past, a tiny wrongness.

A flash caught at the edge of my eye, like light glancing off a scope.

I turned my gaze.

I rested the Type Five on E.B.’s shoulder and looked through the scope.

“Two o’clock. Spotter confirmed.”

“Range?”

“Under a thousand. Ah, keep going just like this.”

I unlocked my left leg and brought it up onto the seat. Holding it as if cradling myself, I used that knee and E.B.’s shoulder to support the rifle.

The scenery slid through the scope.

I thought of its future.

Imagined it.

I saw it.

There.

A little ahead of now.

I pulled the trigger. The round slipped down the barrel. I killed the recoil with my shoulder as my right hand worked the lever.

Next round chambered.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Put him back inside the scope.

Clear.

Down.

If that lowered the accuracy of their shelling even a little, I would be grateful.

“Rooster Unit, Dog Unit, Rudo. A1. Sorry, but go take a look. Something was strange.”

“Strange?”

“He had something unfamiliar on his back, or so it looked.”

“Your eyes are as good as ever, Touji.”

“That’s all I’ve got going for me…”

“Speed?”

“With Rooster Unit there, they can catch up to us. Maintain current speed.”

It had looked like an Ant, but the silhouette was wrong.

For one thing, the spotter’s position was strange.

When I checked the map, sure enough—or perhaps, of course—it was too far from the predicted artillery position. There was a chance he was the spotter for another group’s assigned area, but with manpower this tight, I doubted they would set such a close scouting range.

What came to mind was Abacus’s newly released technology.

Long-range communication.

The lost technology that had bought and secured the right to use part of the radio waves emitted by Tree Crystals.

Where had that gone next?

Think that far, and the worst possible image drew itself in my head.

On a battlefield, communication range connects directly to win rate.

—Ah, damn it.

Our odds are thinner than I thought.

“Touji, enemy squad ahead. Three hundred meters!”

“I see them… but…”

Another new species?

If Ants were ant-people, these were giant ants. Their abdomens were oddly huge, either storing honey or built for easy birthing.

There were fifteen of them.

Armor Ants were accompanying them.

If they were being used like tanks, that meant high firepower, high defense, high mobility.

Strong.

Hard.

Fast.

Something like that?

“…”

I swapped to armor-piercing rounds.

The target was that abdomen, the one practically begging to be shot.

“…”

I pulled the trigger.

The round hit.

At the same instant, the reinforced exoskeleton sensed it and switched my vision to anti-flash mode.

Even so, light is fast.

I saw it for an instant.

My eyes hurt.

E.B. must have seen it too, because she stopped the Monoku.

“…”

My sight returned almost immediately.

But a sea of fire now spread in front of me.

We should have had plenty of distance.

And yet the heat wave had reached us.

What kind of heat output is that?

“Touji, correction. Not enemy squad. Suicide squad.”

“…So it seems.”

They were probably meant to scatter and operate from here.

I marked the map and sent it to Rat Unit, but it would not reach headquarters from here.

Nothing for it.

“Tiger Unit, Boar Unit. A2. Return to headquarters. Give this information to Captain Smile. As you can see, the firepower is absurd, but their armor seems thin, so build the tactics around Snake Unit’s sniping. …However, if these things come out of the tunnels…”

What do you think we should do?

“Touji, that last part turned into a question.”

“…Sorry. No, normally, just passing the information along should be enough, but—”

With this much power.

I could not help thinking about countermeasures.

“One minute.”

I declared it and started a timer.

If three of them charged in and detonated, they would open a hole in the fortress wall. If one of them exploded inside, I had the feeling that would be the end.

Then handle them before that happened.

Simple.

Except there were tunnels underground.

I did not know how far they spread or how long it took to dig them. I did not even know that much. So, at present, I could not think of a countermeasure that included the tunnels.

…No.

Before that, had the enemy even thought of this tactic?

If this new species had already appeared on the battlefield, there was no way it would not be talked about.

Which meant they were not used to it yet either.

Worst case, this was its debut.

Then—

No good.

Expecting enemy incompetence was not a countermeasure.

I gave up.

Leave the rest to the people above.

I checked the timer.

Still thirteen seconds left.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight—

Zero.

At the pip, I hit it fast and stopped it.

“Come up with anything good?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

How about you? I passed it to E.B.

“Yes! Kill them before they come out!”

“Rejected.”

That would be a grand disaster of one chain explosion after another, followed by the ground collapsing.

I had wasted a minute.

…No.

Wrong.

I had waited for the sea of fire in front of us to calm down a little.

That was what I decided to think.

Then text danced across my headset.

From Monkey Unit.

Proposal: What about spraying them with a highly viscous, nonflammable material and hardening it?

“…Right. That… does sound good. I think. A2, take that countermeasure proposal with you too. And prioritize linking up with A1 first. If these things show up farther ahead, Rudo will die.”

Because he was close to bare flesh.

He would hate it, but we would have to switch him to full-body dog armor.

***

I had expected it, technically.

That did not mean I wanted to be right.

The artillery piece was a giant bee with the same general build as the giant ants from earlier.

A very large backside.

Ants and bees were both Hymenoptera, if I remembered right. Similar kind of creature, so maybe they evolved in similar directions easily. It felt like they had increased the number of types with a quick minor change, snack-style. Very eco-friendly.

That giant bee was firing from its abdomen, just like the Insectum snipers, the Wasps. Except instead of stingers, it was firing shells.

That part was fine.

The problem was that the artillery position had been turned into a simple base, and our attack had been detected.

As a colony, it was crude. But earth had been piled up, trenches had been dug, and Wasps had been placed to pick us off once our mobility dropped.

Hard to attack.

I got down from Monoku—Horse Unit—and, with E.B. and Monkey Unit in tow, peeked out from behind a rock.

That was my conclusion.

“Touji. Can you kill all those big bees from here?”

“I can. —If the things in those abdomens explode.”

Would they please load some kind of incendiary shell?

No?

No, probably not.

Better assume the tragedy with the giant ants had already been passed along. It must have surprised them too. I knew that for a simple reason.

The dismembered remains of giant ants were lying around.

There had probably been two at this base.

If they had left them intact, they would have made excellent kindling. But with the abdomens dismantled and the fuel inside soaked into the ground, that effect could not be expected.

“…”

No.

Could I ignite vaporized fuel?

…No good.

I did not know whether it had actually vaporized. Even if it had, I did not know how powerful it would be if burned. In the first place, I did not know the range of that gas.

Still, insects really are something.

No hesitation when killing their own kind.

“Building a position and trading fire—”

No.

That was bad.

We were outnumbered, and they held the high ground, so the position was against us too.

Then a mobile battle.

But that was also a little rough. They had changed the terrain to make it hard to run.

“Touji. Do you remember the parasitic type I made a while back?”

“…The thing that got pregnant in two days and gave birth in seven?”

“Yeah, yeah. The one you attach to bikes and stuff to boost their performance.”

“…”

I had a very bad feeling, so I did not answer.

“I have one here.”

Yet, mysteriously, the conversation moved forward anyway.

E.B. was holding something like a grotesque cocoon.

It was the sort of sight that made me worry about our future child, still unseen.

“Let’s put this on Horse Unit!”

“Wait. Please wait.”

“It’s fine. Think of it like the Stone Mask from JoJo!”

“…That is not fine.”

Horse Unit would stop being human.

It had not been human to begin with, but still.

Also, why do you know JoJo?

Monoz?

It was Monoz, wasn’t it?

More specifically, Tiger Unit, Dragon Unit, Snake Unit, or Monkey Unit?

Ah.

Monkey Unit had frozen completely while looking away from me.

I see.

So it was you.

But while we were arguing like this, the shelling continued.

Time was precious.

Since she said it could be removed later, we decided to implant the mysterious egg into Horse Unit.

Report: I reject my humanity.

“…”

You too, Horse Unit?

For some reason, I looked down at Monkey Unit.

This time, it looked straight up at me and met my eyes.

Snitch: The culprit is Dragon Unit.

“…I see.”

Apparently, it was Dragon Unit.