Full Metal Panic! Volume 10 (eBook)

Shouji Gatou (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
250 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-1-7183-4218-7 (ISBN)

Infos

The battle at Niquelo ignited in Sousuke and Kaname a new passion to find each other, but the rest of the world won't make it that easy. While Sousuke fights, waiting for the operation that might bring her back to his arms, Kaname endures new trials at the hands of a jealous tormenter. Everything comes to a head in an abandoned Soviet research town, and the winding tunnels beneath it-tunnels that hosted a catastrophe seventeen years ago, and which might hold the secret to the Whispered themselves!

Textauszug

1: Wall of Sand

Major Martin Estes received the bad news just after 1400 hours, at the peak of the desert heat: a large enemy force was approaching the ruins of the Marinid Sultanate-era structure they were using as a base. Thirty MBTs and four second-generation arm slaves had been confirmed, and a force of equal or greater size was expected to join them soon. It was Amalgam—more precisely, a Moroccan Armed Forces squadron in Amalgam’s employ.

Estes and the others, who had escaped the initial ambush on Mithril’s facilities, had been working for months to gather together the organization’s remaining resources and manpower. Their hope had been to eventually mount a counterattack, but now they would be crushed before they even got the chance.

“Goddammit,” he cursed, sucking in some of the simple tent’s dry air through his nostrils.

They were in North Africa, the desert region between Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, and Western Sahara. There were no mountains for dozens of kilometers. The sun was blazing down on them, warping the horizon in a heat haze. At times, Estes thought he was in Arizona or Nevada.

Tents and barracks lay here and there, camouflaged among the lines of stone pillars, and they had a makeshift runway cleared out of cracked flat earth. It was disguised enough to avoid detection in satellite photographs, but it was barely a base to begin with. They had less than one hundred men and a handful of second-generation arm slaves. They had stocks of M6 parts as well, but in many cases they were useless: a leg without a hip joint, a torso without a cockpit. He was crushed that the enemy had found their resistance base, of course... but he was also shocked they were sending such an ostentatiously large force to crush them.

“Hell... It’s like sending a tank to roll over a doghouse,” Estes muttered.

At this, Master Sergeant Zimmer, who had made the report, shrugged. “It’s unlikely that they know the full extent of our forces.”

“Oh, so they’re overestimating us?” Estes returned bitterly. “I’m honored.”

The small Central American country of Belize had once been home to a Mithril operations division personnel training camp. They’d trained mercenaries gathered from all over the world, screened them for aptitude, and sent those who qualified to front line squadrons. Estes had been the “principal” there, more or less, and with a few exceptions, most of the ground unit personnel in Mithril’s operations division came out of Estes’s camp. This included the West Pacific Battle Group trio: Melissa Mao, Kurz Weber, and “Sosuki Segal.”

When the massive Amalgam attack in January had destroyed Mithril bases all over the world, Estes and the others had gone into hiding in the jungles around Belize, entirely on foot. Tanks and armored cars couldn’t pursue them in a tropical forest, after all, and even ASes would have a hard time of it. Running on foot would put them at an advantage for evading enemy pursuit, and the heavy jungle cover even helped them avoid tracking by air.

After about three weeks of running, they’d made it to an airport in Honduras and escaped to Colombia from there. In the city of Medellín, most of those present had made the decision to give up and go home. Those who remained included a dozen or so Mithril instructors and four or five eccentric trainees. Knowing they stood no chance against Amalgam’s massive force at less than twenty strong, Estes and the others had decided to set up a private military company in North Africa and use that as cover while seeking information on the fates of their allies.

For the next few months, about all they’d had to show for their efforts had been reuniting with ten or so more former Mithril members. There seemed to be quite a few pockets of individuals like theirs out there, but tracking them down while they were in hiding had proved to be difficult. Most of those they did manage to contact were too pessimistic about their chances to rejoin. In time, Estes felt his own hope waning, and began to wonder if running a small PMC for the rest of his life might not be such a bad deal.

It was around that time that the incident in San Francisco occurred. The news reported it as an explosion near the harbor, but scattered photographs from the scene suggested it was actually the aftermath of an AS battle.

Master Sergeant Zimmer flew to San Francisco with a few of his men and spent a day scouring eyewitness testimony, security camera footage, and police radio records. It didn’t take long for them to work out that there had been a hand-to-hand fight between a black M9 and a Venom. What’s more, during the battle, the black M9 had received support from a cruise missile, which had enabled it to dispatch the Venom solo.

The operator of the M9 had to be Ben Clouseau, formerly of the Mediterranean Battle Group. And the cruise missile... it had to have come from that submarine, the Tuatha de Danaan. He’d never met the woman who commanded it, but the rumors all said she was gutsy as hell.

The news had electrified Estes and the others. To think the members of the West Pacific Battle Group had hung on, survived... and even managed to give the enemy a bloody nose.

Word of the incident seemed to have spread far and wide among other Mithril remnants as well. Encouraged by the Tuatha de Danaan’s resistance and deciding they’d like to stick it to Amalgam after all, they began to contact Estes again, in numbers he could never have imagined. A mere two months later, they’d tripled their meager roster and established a base on the edge of the Sahara. They’d even managed to recover their training camp’s funds from overseas banks and had begun rounding up supplies. The hope was that they’d eventually get a real fighting force together, but...

Now the enemy was on its way.

Estes didn’t know how Amalgam had found the base they’d worked so hard to hide, but it didn’t matter now. Their forces were overwhelming. Estes wanted to withdraw on the double, but the enemy would overtake their ground vehicles easily, and the transport plane they used for personnel and supplies was 1200 kilometers away. It was on its way at top speed, but it would take it at least two hours to arrive, and there was no way they could hold out that long.

A hopeless battle was about to begin.

“Damn. I really thought we’d last a little longer,” Estes whispered. He watched his subordinates scrambling around the baked earth outside the tent, making their nigh-fruitless preparations for battle.

“Never thought I’d hear you give up so quickly,” said Zimmer. “It’s understandable against a force like that, though.”

“Hah, who’s giving up?” Estes retorted. “At least we’ll give them a fight to remember.”

“Right. Let’s really make a show out of it.” The two men exchanged genuine grins, untainted by any sense of grim heroism. Then Estes grabbed a nearby assault rifle, put on a desert camo hat, and came out of the tent, where he felt the glittering sunlight burning against his skin. A dry wind brushed against his cheek, but it carried only the stifling heat of a hand dryer. How can the Saharan sun be so hot when it’s so cold at night? he wondered.

After giving instructions to his subordinates, Estes trained his binoculars in the expected direction of the enemy’s approach. The white sand of the desert and the horizon heat haze was all he could see. But, no... there was a sand cloud. A 4WD vehicle was streaking towards them across the rolling sand dunes, traveling at top speed in spite of the unstable terrain. It was a little over a kilometer away.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Should I take the shot? I think I can hit it,” his subordinate in a nearby trench said, peering through his .50-caliber rifle scope.

“No,” Estes decided. “Look closer.” This wasn’t a suicide run; on a second glance, he could see that the driver was leaning out of the window and waving to them. At first, all he could tell was that the driver wore a khaki shirt and had black hair, but the closer he got, the better Estes was able to make out his face.

“I know him,” Zimmer said. He’d been one of the instructors in Belize with Estes, which suggested that the newcomer was one of their own.

“Who is it?”

“The Korean. The one who passed the test at the end of the year, two years ago. We sent him to the West Pacific Battle Group, I think.”

“I don’t remember him,” said Estes.

“Oh, come on!” scoffed Zimmer. “The one who didn’t want to be there but did everything flawlessly.”

“Oh, that one. I remember now. He never distinguished himself, but he still made it to a passing grade at some point...”

“Right. That guy.”

“What was his name again?” Estes mused.

“I don’t know why I can’t remember... Yong? Yung?”

“It would be a little awkward to ask now. Hmm...”

After ordering his men to hold their fire, Estes walked out in front of the trench. Zimmer and one other man followed after him with rifles in hand. The vehicle finally arrived at the base, stopping about thirty meters away from Zimmer. Its young East Asian driver left the engine running as he got out.

“Major Estes, great to see you! I’m so glad you’re safe!” said the young man who ran up to him breathlessly.

“Ah, yeah... good to see you,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.2.2021
• Reihe/Serie: Full Metal Panic!
• Reihe/Serie: Full Metal Panic!
• Illustrationen: Shouji Gatou
• Übersetzer: Shouji Gatou
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• Schlagworte: boy meets girl • Espionage • Fish out of Water • Light Novel • Mecha • Military • Science Fiction
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-4218-7 / 1718342187
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-4218-7 / 9781718342187