Chapter 143: Time Doesn’t Stop Ticking Away
Warning! Chapters 140-145 were all posted back-to-back! Returning readers, make sure you pick up the story in the right place!
Chapter 143: Time Doesn’t Stop Ticking Away
Setsuna looked down over the new facility from her equally new office window in dazed awe. Once they’d gotten the second Guild Raid Team fully up and operational, Nedzu had surprised her by declaring that they needed a facility of their own to operate out of. Somehow, despite construction ability being desperately needed everywhere, the Dean had swung the creation of an entire compound for the Guild to expand into.
Sure, part of how he’d pulled it off was easily explained by it being a repurposing of UA land, with much of the material used being equally repurposed or recycled out of the various Urban Training zones. But you wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t been familiar with UA before. Heck, even those who had been might not realize it, if they hadn’t taken an extensive tour of the various training facilities available prior to the invasion. Something Setsuna herself had only done out of boredom and with the ability to split off an eye to have it go wandering around the grounds, looking for interesting things.
The new Guildhall alone was the size of a small mansion, and the rooms assigned to veteran Guild members were quite luxurious. More small studio apartments, instead of the dorms they’d used in the Hero Course. Nor was the Guildhall the only building of the new compound. A new training complex, barracks for the numerous JSDF troopers, a maintenance depot/armory for their power suits and heavy weapons, even a testing range for their personal needs. All of it done at a scale that could easily support eight teams, not two.
Of course, that was partially explained by the fact they already had third, fourth, and fifth Raid Groups being trained. Only the third team, currently training with Raid Group 1, was anywhere near ready to be deployed. The other two groups contained a lot more people who’d been headhunted out of the various city militias and smaller Hero Schools, shored up by some UA graduates who’d agreed to come back for ‘retraining’ as Raid Group assets. Those teams each had select members of the two ‘veteran’ Raid Groups leading occasional training scenarios, but were otherwise following a basic training curriculum intended to get them up to a certain baseline in both individual skill and group operations.
A curriculum that, much to both of their disbelief, Setsuna and Mina had been the primary authors of.
Oh, Nedzu and a number of the veteran JSDF officers and noncoms, including a couple of the power suit operators, had helped. But it was Setsuna and Mina who’d had final say on virtually everything, as essentially the Guildmaster and Second in Command of the UA Guild. Which is how, at not yet quite 20 years of age, Set found herself in charge of several hundred ‘Adventurers’ and a couple of thousand military personnel. All feeding into the rapidly expanding Guild system which, if things worked out, would be taking over handling all Rift Bubbles in Japan within no more than a year.
Of course, it wasn’t only the UA Guild that was part of that Guild System. Three more Guilds with at least one fully formed Raid Team had sprung up. One was a team formed of experienced Pro Heroes and Heroines who’d had the mental agility to shift gears to the new methods. Something that was apparently hard for existing Veteran Heroes, who’d mostly been solo or small team operators for years or decades. The second was the Shiketsu University team, which got some of its expertise from those they’d sent to train with UA’s Guild. Shiketsu was also, like UA, rapidly expanding their Guild program, with two more Raid Groups of their own in training.
The final team, a bit more unexpectedly, was a joint project between the former Seiai and Ketsubutsu Hero Technical Academies. Those schools had been hit much harder by events, but had apparently managed to come out in a functional state by combining. It was an odd mix, and their team was a bit more dysfunctional than UA’s or Shiketsu’s, but they were effective enough to handle at least modest-sized Rift Bubbles. All in all, the Guild System was being adopted far faster than Setsuna had ever expected, and she’d somehow found herself riding the beast as the veteran Raid Group commander.
What the fuck even was her life right now?
… … …
“We’re all agreed, then?”
There were general murmurs of ascent in reply to Admiral Hilgert’s question. The one who eventually spoke up was, appropriately enough, General Beaumont.
“The plan is sound. Though, given how A2 performed, I’d still very much like to push for more of the new Androids, as many as the Miracle Kids can whip up. Without her, even the Shieldmaidens wouldn’t have been enough to push the assault that let me shut down the Kenya Gate.”
Others nodded and the Admiral sighed. A2, despite having a slightly acerbic personality, had quickly grown popular among the troops. Much to her own discomfort, he was fairly sure. Honestly, having been an Anime Kid growing up, he got it. Badass Android Waifu was badass and cute, after all. Even a bit ‘Tsun’ without being full Tsundere. Not to mention entirely convincing as a ‘real girl.’ Which, as Hilgert understood it, she pretty much was. An AI so developed that it was sapient and might even have a soul. Certainly, one that had risen far above her original creators’ programming.
That was, of course, the issue though.
He and many others felt it was wrong to push for what was effectively conscription. He’d sent a review and recommendation up the line, encouraging the higher ups to ask Midoriya and Yaoyorozu if there were more combat Androids coming, but pushing didn’t feel right. Not even if more like her would be a godsend.
“I’ll keep on top of any news there, General Beaumont, I promise. As I understand it, the primary reason for any delay is that the ‘Miracle Kids’ you’re referring too ended up taking an off-grid mission deemed critical enough to pull them in for. No one is quite sure when they’ll be back, and no one else knows how to…activate, I guess? How to activate more of the Androids.”
The General looked discontented with that answer, but she settled down regardless.
“You’re at least happy with the new Shieldmaiden IIs, I trust?”
That caused the General’s mood to shift, a grin forming on her face.
“Fuck yeah, I am! The new group didn’t just bring my numbers back up to full strength with replacements, but provided another four squads to the 6 I already had. If not for them, I’d say you were crazy to push for another Greater Gate so soon. With them, I’m pretty sure we can hack it.”
He nodded. It was, after all, the combined assessment of this entire group. While a few squads of Mark I Shieldmaidens had been diverted to the other fronts, the entirety of the new Mark IIs had gone to General Beaumont, as she was currently the one with the best idea how to use them. With reinforcements to shore her up and one of the Greater Gates in her combat zone already disabled, they were hoping to push farther and hit the Greater Gate in Sudan. The Western forces had pushed east, with American-made Hover Tanks filling a similar roll to the Shieldmaidens. They had made it as far as the borders of Chad before stalling out. If the Easten Forces could shut down the Sudan Greater Gate while the Americans shipped in more resupply, they could have both fronts press in on Chad afterward. Which would secure the entirety of North Africa. It would also leave the combined East and West forces to then push south and pin the remaining invaders between them and the heavy forces that had been pushed into South Africa, allowing them t-
Admiral Hilgert’s thoughts were cut off with an abrupt thud as the entire ship heaved.
Klaxons rang only a moment later and a bare instant after that one of the guards burst into the room.
“Sirs! Attacks from the water! We’ve taken hits from below!”
More thuds and the ship shuddered again. None as hard as the first hits, but still very worrying.
“To the flight deck! We need to get you all airborne and back to your commands if we’re under attack!”
The snap of that order from the Admiral got all of the men and women in the room moving, many of them cursing. All of these men had been combat veterans even before the Invasion and were not about to panic. The Admiral wasn’t wrong, though. If something was managing to attack them at sea, they couldn’t afford to lose the bulk of the African campaign’s high command all at once…
… … …
Nedzu cursed, something he wasn’t prone to even alone in the privacy of his office, as he read the reports of what had happened to Admiral Hilgert’s fleet. The man himself had, thankfully, lived through the disaster. The fleet had lost almost a third of its ships before the battle was over, but measures taken in fear that the Empire would eventually make it into the water en masse had worked to repel the attack in the end. Where, exactly, the enemy had managed to get enough units into the water to amass an attack against Admiral Hilgert’s fleet was still being investigated.
Unfortunately, even when they eventually found out, it would likely already be too late.
They had, up until now, been lucky that the enemy had been unable to gain much traction as a waterborne threat. Unfortunately, as the old saw about ‘The enemy get’s a say too,’ went…it was obvious they had. There had been a similar attack against the western coastal fleet, with said fleet losing even more of its ships, including the bulk of its logistics vessels. Clearly a coordinated strike, one meant to cripple the logistics of the ongoing battlefields in Africa. If the attack had happened even a week and a half ago, it might have been enough to cause the African Campaign to start suffering immediate supply issues.
As it was, it was still problematic, but less devastatingly so. The recapture of Kenya entirely had left their forces in control of enough airspace to ship in supplies that way instead of by sea, and Forge 1 was producing war material as well, which could be orbitally inserted as supply drops if needed. Interrupted naval trade, not to mention needing to be aware of possible attacks from the ocean on any coastal area, was going to be a problem in the long term. But it wasn’t a crippling one. Not with steps already underway to move their military-oriented industrial base off planet anyway. Claws tapping, he thought hard, then nodded to himself.
“Time to take steps to push harder on the space side of things, I think. With a set of everything but the shipyard already online, we have a proof of concept and all the pieces we need for more explosive growth. Now, who should I contact to get things moving in the right direction…”
Contemplating his contact lists, Nedzu’s mind hummed away, reshuffling the bigger picture. Two steps forward, one back. Not ideal, but they were still making progress. That would have to be enough.
… … …
Jirou hissed as she saw the scene in the bunk room aboard Orbit 3. The lower gravity here meant the blood splatter had carried much farther than it would have done on Earth, and her mind was already firing on all cylinders as she attempted to resolve how that was going to affect her investigation. The very last thing she’d thought she was going to be called on for while helping babysit some of Izumi and Momo’s projects while they were away was something like this. She supposed it was inevitable, if she’d really stopped to consider it. They now had several thousand people working up in Orbit, all of them from wildly diverse backgrounds and under immense pressure.
Of course, sooner or later, they were going to get crimes of passion.
Anger, in this case, she was pretty sure.
After all, one didn’t beat a man to death that brutally if you weren’t thoroughly pissed off about something. Well, unless you were a psychopath, she supposed. But they’d carefully screened for that sort of thing with every worker up here. No, this screamed of an argument gone wrong and a temper coming into play. The trouble, of course, was that their space operations hadn’t exactly taken the time to consider under whose laws everyone up here was living. They’d had far too many other things to juggle to consider fine legal details like that.
There wasn’t even anything like a security force.
That would waste too much space for something that shouldn’t have been needed, or so had been the original thought. An oversight made by scientists and engineers who were a little too willing to believe logic and reason would always carry the day. Something that was going to need to change, even if it only meant a very small detachment of…probably Heroes with Quirks that caused minimal collateral damage. That would get them the most mileage for the least additional commitment. If they could grab WHA Heroes, it would help with some of the legal jurisdiction issues, too.
For now, Jirou was all they had to work with, since she could at least claim she was investigating under the auspices of Aegis Inc internal security and have her girlfriends back her up on whatever conclusion she reached. Grimacing once more as she pulled out a camera to start the process of documenting things as she’d been taught in her second year Heroics classes, she settled in to solve Earth’s first murder in space…
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A/N 1: Here were see one of the major changes I'm making to shorten the story at work. Instead of showing the action and combat of the Guild and the military operations, I merely showed a brief overview of both.
A/N 2: Same with the Hero side of the things. Originally, I might have showed Jirou's investigation in far more detail. Now, I minimized the focus on that side of things while still keeping it at least going in the background.