Evolve (12)
In the end, Roxy got caught. Having thought Nadia had given up, he tried to sneak closer—but Carry didn't miss the chance and knocked him out as she passed by.
It wasn't even that hard of a hit, but from his perspective, it was basically a hit-and-run. Unable to hide his bewildered expression, Roxy could only manage a sheepish grin as Nadia strode over.
Tied up with wire and dragged along, Roxy brightened up when he saw me.
"Friend, you came to rescue me!"
"No, I got caught too."
"Argh!"
I hadn't even really been 'caught' since I was on Nadia's side from the start. I'd also been after Roxy myself. Regardless, this felt like the thing to say.
"Alright, Roxy. You're our slave now. Time to work yourself to death."
"Uh... Fox friend, that wasn't a joke, was it?"
"Nope."
"This is bad."
When Nadia spoke seriously, Roxy accepted it right away. Running away didn't cross his mind—he'd only get as far as the next spot anyway.
"So what do you need help with? Since I'm caught anyway, I'll lend a hand. Just say the word."
"You have to do it not just for a bit, but all the time."
"Give me a break on that. I need to look after my new lover, too."
Roxy seemed about to tease us again but stopped himself. He caught on quickly.
Nadia narrowed her eyes as if she was displeased, but only for a moment. Then, accepting it, she put up a schematic on the holographic screen.
"See here? Doesn't this part look way too vulnerable to impact?"
"That's the generator area."
Maybe it ran in Kyle's family—Roxy figured it out just from the enlarged view.
"The power loader itself is treated as a bit old-fashioned these days, but not to this point. Ah-ha! The fox friend tinkered with it, didn't you?"
"Yeah. There wasn't enough room for Carry, so I had to tweak the frame to make space."
"So that's why. You can't just adjust one part. If it's not reinforcement but modification, it's even less possible. You have to rebalance the whole thing."
Still tied up, Roxy undid the wire himself, folded his arms, and went deep in thought. Meanwhile, I looked at the schematic Nadia had shared.
With the recent overhaul, the power loader design had gone through a major transformation. In order to increase firepower, huge grenade cannons were now mounted on both shoulders. This accomplished the original intention of boosting firepower, but in the process, the spot where Carry used to fit was lost.
Add one thing, lose another. Although I was Carry's first contact, lately she'd spent more time with Nadia. Splitting the two up simply wasn't an option.
It wasn't just about time spent together—their synergy was much more efficient when working as a pair, so it made sense.
"There's a very simple solution."
"What is it?"
"Just take out this cute friend altogether. Then there's no frame loss. No source of trouble."
"That's... Carry is essential."
We both made our objections clear.
"Well, there's a less simple way. Put this cute friend in separately. I mean, make a whole new unit."
"You mean, take out the circuits entirely?"
"Exactly. The problem is the size doesn't fit in the power loader cockpit, right?"
Roxy was questioning whether the transport robot's functions were truly needed right now. And to his point, Carry had been using her flight unit for travel almost exclusively.
The cargo function was hardly used lately—just for carrying small samples at most.
She could carry supplies, but she couldn't lug around massive things like ammunition for the new cannons—overcapacity. To be precise, she could carry them, but then the cockpit wouldn't be the right size. The unit would have to expand to handle heavy loads.
「〣( ºΔº )〣」
Carry understood what Roxy was suggesting and stiffened in shock. With a look that screamed, 'Does this mean I can't fly anymore?' she hid behind me, terrified.
She was too big to be hidden by my body. She must think, like a bird, that if her eyes were covered no one could see her.
"Sorry, but that won't do either. We need the flight unit for emergency escape. As for the cargo module, so long as it's deactivated, it's minimized and not too bulky. It's already combined with the flight unit anyway."
"Hmm... So the other options..."
Roxy rubbed his chin in thought, then suddenly looked down at Nadia. Nadia tilted her head at the attention. Roxy sized her up and asked,
"Fox friend, when you're in the cockpit, there's some extra space above your head, right?"
"Ah, yeah. There's a bit more than the difference between me and Hyun-woo's height."
"Then perfect. This way, it becomes a structure where no one gets hurt."
Roxy, satisfied by himself, zoomed out the blueprint and highlighted another spot: the top of the cockpit—Carry's dedicated seat. He proposed moving Carry's compartment from the front to the top.
"Push anything that juts out as far in as possible. Use a shutter structure so that it's closed when the cute friend isn't there and opens when she's on board. The cockpit ceiling will become a lot lower, but since the fox friend is small, it's not a problem. Visibility might be an issue, but that's solvable with external cameras and extra sensors."
Nadia swept her hand through the air above her head, then her ears drooped in dismay. Despite saying no one would get hurt, the first victim had already appeared.
"Small..."
"Small isn't so bad, fox friend. It's a good thing this time—it solved a tough problem."
"That's not reassuring at all..."
Nadia let out a quiet sigh. Her relatively short height was something she was self-conscious about, especially since her huge tail made her look even smaller by contrast.
Looking at the power loader, now sporting a sunroof, Nadia said,
"If it's closed, it can be sealed—but if Carry's in the middle, I don't think it would seal well. The head would be sticking out—it's structurally impossible to avoid gaps, no matter how precisely it's measured. That won't do. It needs to be suitable for EVA, too."
"Albatross tech can handle that much. And if we try and it doesn't work, we'll just have to bring in Kyle. That's how things have always worked out."
Roxy really should have been worrying about his own life rather than telling us not to worry—a comment like that in a place like this, unlike a bamboo forest where anything can be said, could get back to Kyle at any time. If that happened, I'd have to quietly pray for Roxy's soul.
Watching Roxy and Nadia's passionate discussion, I thought, 'Their enthusiasm is great.' Ironically, Nadia's energy reminded me I was alive—her bubbly liveliness kept me from sinking.
"With this, Carry can even be used for firing and targeting support."
"While we're at it, we might as well upgrade the missile control system. Sometimes the pod might connect directly, and Carry's circuits could handle that kind of load. Right, Carry?"
「ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌)」
Of course, Carry gave a confident thumbs-up. Her uniqueness was widely known by now. Even as top-performing Alpha and Beta series robots were breaking down, Carry—just a transport robot—was still going strong.
'Partly thanks to what Kanna's said getting around.'
Somehow, the story she told during our mission to the Keter base had spread among people.
Initially, I'd worried it'd seem odd, but the concern was unfounded. Carry had become popular. Apparently her emotional reactions were charming for a robot.
I snickered inwardly. It wasn't sensitivity; it was her quirky personality.
Just then, I snapped back to consciousness to find Roxy right in front of me.
"Jeez, you startled me! What?"
"Friend, what were you thinking about that you didn't notice until just now?"
"Nothing much. Are you guys done talking?"
"You spaced out? We finished ages ago."
Roxy shrugged, saying several minutes had passed. I must have drifted off without realizing.
Nadia had climbed onto Carry and was tinkering with the power loader frame. She waved when she noticed my gaze, then returned to her work.
Out of nowhere, Roxy asked,
"So?"
"So what?"
"I'm asking about the next step—what's the plan?"
"The plan..."
My words trailed off. It wasn't that I was unsure if I could speak about it, I just didn't have a concrete enough operation to call a plan.
"I heard the rough outline. We'll get support from Myosotis and use the purification protocol, right?"
"Yeah, for now."
"I usually just follow the plan, but I was curious if you had something else in mind."
That was true for me as well, but Roxy seemed to think differently.
"Well... it's not exactly another idea, but I am worried about something."
"Oh? What's that?"
"It's not deep: the pureblood supremacists. They're the biggest variable right now."
Unlike the mindless mutants who killed everything around them, the pureblood supremacist group consisted of humans who could think and take calculated action like us.
I—we—didn't know what they were doing right now, or what tricks they might be preparing. Not knowing meant uncertainty, and uncertainty bred anxiety.
That's what gnawed at me. It wouldn't be strange if they pinpointed our location and attacked at any moment.
As I said that, Roxy nodded, understanding.
"It's the silence that makes you nervous, right?"
"That's basically it."
"I feel the same. When sneaky guys go quiet, it usually means they're cooking up something. You detonated a nuke and put them on edge—no way they're just sitting idly by. I bet they're prepping something big."
I frowned. I couldn't tell what, exactly, Roxy meant by "something big."
"A nuke?"
"I don't know if it's a nuke, either. I didn't see it myself."
He had a point—I couldn't argue. Still, I asked if he had any guesses.
"If you want me to guess, it might actually be worse than a nuke. Ah, not in terms of destructive power, but in terms of being a disaster."
When I asked what the difference was, Roxy explained simply. The destruction caused by a nuke wiping out a wide area is just one kind. The catastrophe that befell Titan and the whole solar system was another kind of destruction altogether.
Roxy was suggesting that such a disaster might happen again, right here on Titan.
"That would be the worst."
The only reason our group had survived so far was that there'd been no outbreak of infection within. No internal cracks meant we could handle threats from outside.
If there had been an outbreak during a battle, we would have been pushed back again and again, until eventually the ship—and us with it—would be obliterated.
I had no idea what the pureblood supremacists were planning, but if it was triggering another systemwide infection on Titan as Roxy suggested, even we hiding in the canyon wouldn't be safe—the second wave would be far more virulent than the first.
"The panic room would be pointless, too."
We suspected the infection was a kind of supernatural power. No matter how perfectly sealed a place might be, without protection against supernatural powers, thick bulkheads would become a prison instead of a wall.
"I'm in favor. Of triggering the purification protocol, I mean. If we can't have it, let's just turn it all to ashes! ... Not in that mindset. We've just always been on the defensive. We need a chance to strike back, right?"
"If the purification protocol is triggered, it won't be a counterstrike—it'll be total annihilation on all sides."
While I hadn't heard exactly how Europa was destroyed, it was enough to know the satellite itself had vanished to imagine its power.
I told him that, even if we did trigger it, it wouldn't be a total activation. There had to be a window for us to escape, after all.
"Oh, sure, I get that. I'm talking before then. I mean at this very moment, not after it's triggered."
"... At this moment? There's nothing else to do. Is there anything more?"
If there were any way to strike back other than the purification protocol, I'd be desperate to try it. But we were struggling just to produce combat supplies—we barely had enough for that, let alone anything extra.
Roxy grinned.
"Friend, use me as the joker."
He thumped his chest, pointing at himself.
"Joker?"
"I'm not just a shuttle pilot, I'm also a crack shot with artillery."
Roxy pointed back and forth between the small armed shuttle and the multi-legged tanks. He explained that he'd had all the seats pulled out of the shuttle to make empty space—intending to mount a rail cannon using data Licorice had stolen from the military base.
"I'm leaving just enough room for myself, and loading the rest with the rail cannon. It hogs a ton of energy, so I'm not sure if there'll be enough space, but I'm doing what I can. And if it doesn't work, I'll keep at it until it does."
"The rail cannon... Who are you targeting with that?"
"Gotta take out that guy Cystus or whatever his name is."
Roxy flashed a dangerous smile. Only then did I realize whom he meant by "hit back."
"A rail cannon sniper shot at Cystus, huh..."
I didn't doubt Roxy's skills; I'd already seen him in action at the refinery. He had managed to directly hit Cystus's position with a laser cannon, even if it hadn't worked.
If he'd fired straight up instead of blasting through the roof—and if the output had been higher—he might have punched through the black smoke's defenses.
"Friend, even though you've awakened your supernatural power, the black smoke is still beyond you. Right?"
I nodded in silence. I was growing steadily, so if I had enough time, I could use telekinesis to disrupt the black smoke. The problem was, we didn't have that kind of time. For now, I had no way to counter it.
Roxy spoke with a serious look.
"The laser cannon was blocked, since he knew about it. But what if we attacked from completely outside his perception range? Fire a hypersonic round at him from a distance when he's off guard. He'll have no choice but to take the hit. He acts like a superhuman, but he's not a god."
"..."
I stared at Roxy. The fact that he was bringing this up meant he'd done the math in his head. Asking if he could build it or hit the shot would be pointless—he'd obviously say yes.
Even so, knowing the risks, I still asked,
"You only get one shot. You realize there won't be a second chance, right?"
The rail cannon's projectile, fired after a massive energy buildup, left a trace along its path. That made the sniper's position instantly obvious.
Even if Roxy managed to snipe, the area around him would definitely explode into chaos. Most likely, it'd be smack in the middle of a battle, too—suddenly leaving the field would be even more suspicious.
Once his firing position was blown, he'd be the first target, whatever the outcome.
"Of course. I won't miss."
Roxy nodded—he was fully aware.
"... It's dangerous. Why volunteer? You could die, you know."
"That's a weird thing to say, friend. I want to live, too. Who actually wants to die? I know it's dangerous, but sometimes, you have to advance despite the risk."
Roxy's words reminded me of certain moments. I'd faced those situations too—knowing the danger, but going anyway.
I'd gone to the Heaven mining base, knowing it might be lethal. Even while understanding the risk, I'd traveled between various sectors, refinery included.
I'd accepted every hardship—mutants everywhere, formerly trustworthy defenses turned against us—to reach the Keter military base and recover Albatross.
'If we hadn't recovered Albatross, we'd all be dead already.'
Strange, isn't it? The path that required risking death ended up being what saved my life.
Seeing my expression of reluctant understanding, Roxy continued,
"When the moment comes, I won't hesitate. I'll strike when there's an opening and land the blow."
"A finishing move, then. We have to keep it hidden in case they catch wind of it."
"No, no. It's not like that. Friend, the joker isn't some ultimate card you save until the very end. The joker is for a move at an unpredictable timing."
Roxy explained, no matter how much you try, you can never completely hide the joker. Its presence is certain, but no one knows when or how it will appear.
Just as we suspected the pureblood supremacists were plotting something, they must suspect we're planning a surprise, too. Each side had its own joker.
"The danger's real, but it's worth it. That Cystus bastard has to die if we want to get out of here."
"And what do you need me to do?"
"Just make a scene. The freak's so monstrous that we need to scatter his attention as much as possible to have a shot."
"That's my specialty."
"Great. Then I'll rely on you, friend."
Roxy bumped his fist toward me. I met it with mine, and a subtle tremor ran up my arm.
It hadn't been a long conversation, but I felt like the future, once blocked, was starting to come into view.