51. Infiltration Operation 2

Thank you for the typo report.

Before the Great Alze Empire’s advance forces reach the Sol System, the issue must be resolved.

Separately, Maria estimates the window to deceive the Primary Core is three days.

Since the Primary Core is currently dreaming, it’s safe to communicate with Agirakana—so I established contact with Lieutenant General Eris of the Ground Forces via comms line.

“General Eris, this is Yamada.”

‘Your Excellency, what is it?’

“…In short, I need you to extract personnel from the Ground Forces for a special operation—destroy the unknown sector within the Core Interior. Details are to be confirmed with Maria, who is here with me.”

‘Command received as an order. Leave it to me.’

It’s not much harder than slicing through an enemy fleet. The ground troops have been getting restless—everyone’s been itching to show off since the Aerospace Force’s been hogging all the spotlight. Honestly, it’s a pain to keep them in line. Someday, though, we should plant an Agirakana flag on some planet or another. Your Excellency, why not test the waters—just for fun—by taking over Earth? We could do it with zero casualties, you know.

Earth, subdued like a picnic.

I’ll pretend that’s a joke. Surely it must be a joke.

Anyway, what does the Agirakana flag even look like? I’ll ask Maria later.

No, no—digging into that now means I’ll have to think about flags. And I don’t need a flag. I’ll just stay quiet. Rumor has it the common version is a navy-blue circle with a white hexagonal prism. That’ll do. But then again, that sounds like a ground unit flag. Hmm.

After outlining a series of circumstances, it was decided to swiftly execute the ground unit’s primary core destruction operation.

General Eris seemed to regard the 2nd Infantry Battalion as the elite force, selecting forty-eight of its most capable members from the unit currently undergoing training at Agirakana, dividing them into four squads, and preparing to transmit the detachment through the teleportation device located in the Captain's Office to the location where Maria had identified as physically containing the primary core. At this moment, the internal teleportation inhibition system within the core would be temporarily disabled.

Under the watchful eye of Major General Eris, commander of the ground assault force, Lieutenant Colonel Hayar Elinite, commander of the 2nd Battalion, and Major Haruna Frante, his deputy, directed the assault troops from the ground assault command center aboard the assault amphibious vessel AA-0002. Other officers of the 2nd Battalion, including four company commanders, were also present in the ground assault command center.

To avoid interference with the armor suits’ control systems from external sources, the assault personnel’s armor suits were set to operate autonomously, and unmanned accompanying weapons were not assigned to the troops—due to the confined space and the risk of control system interference.

Naturally, the primary core must be assumed to be armored to the extent of the hull itself. Moreover, given its relatively modest volume, the armor of the primary core is likely to be monolithic—no obvious joints or weak points where seams might form—leaving the external access slit at the end of the penetration route as the sole vulnerability.

A timed explosive of sufficient yield will be deployed through a partial destruction of that section, without damaging the external interface, then the team will withdraw.

The surrounding area is a critical sector of the secondary core—though in practice, it’s already a decoy. Even if the destruction spreads widely, damage to that section is inconsequential. However, the timed explosives containing antimatter—up to four in total—will be deployed from separate locations at staggered intervals. This will cause a mismatch in the evacuation timing for team members via transfer devices, potentially leading to unforeseen levels of destruction and increasing the risk of casualties among the personnel.

Major Eris described the operation as straightforward. The odds of successfully destroying the primary core appear favorable, though survival of the troops is by no means guaranteed. She had accepted this difficult assignment not for herself, nor for Earth—though Earth was, of course, a factor—but for the sake of the mission. The selected ground troops remained calm. There was nothing left to do but pray for their safety and the operation’s success.

The forty-eight infiltration team members, once gathered in Agirakana’s Captain's Office, were all clad in dull silver armor suits. Among each squad, two personnel manually operated self-propelled carriers loaded with equipment. One load was a perforation device for drilling through non-hull sections; the other, a cylindrical core-destructive bomb.

This time, the team carried no projectile weapons. The reason was simple: if projectile or beam weapons were used, the primary core’s independently maintained sensors might detect the released energy and, by way of stimulation, awaken—possibly at an inopportune moment. Thus, each operative’s primary equipment was a type of vibration cutter—specifically, a pyration blade designed for slicing into enemy vessels.

The pyration blade is a single-edged sword, roughly sixty centimeters in length—compact enough to maneuver in tight spaces. However, the tip of the blade is coated with hull-material composite, making it too heavy to handle barehanded, even for a bioid. Thus, it must be wielded with both hands while wearing a powered exosuit for assistance.

Whether true or apocryphal, a story once told over wine by Major Eris—inebriated, naturally—claimed that on Earth, even cars offer no resistance whatsoever. She said that merely placing the blade’s tip on a car’s hood was enough for its own weight to drive it straight through to the ground.

The transfer room next to the Captain's Office was not designed for large-scale transfers, so six personnel are transferred at a time. The forty-eight assembled personnel are divided into groups of six, to be transferred to the objective point eight times in total. The gravity at the destination has been adjusted to 1 G—normally it would be zero-gravity—but this is no concern, as close-quarters combat is now feasible. There are no light sources at the destination, so active sensors built into the armor suits will be used.

The buzzer signaling the operation start time sounded in the ground combat command room.

The order to begin the operation, issued by Major Hyar, reached the assault team members waiting in the transfer room via their helmets.

‘No special instructions. Proceed with the operation calmly, as trained. I expect you all to carry out your duties.’

‘First squad, launching sequentially! First squad, go! Next, second squad, go! ……’

One after another, team members were beamed in groups of six, and soon the transfer chamber was empty.

『First squad, assembled. No anomalies detected. Advancing down the corridor.』

『Fourth squad, assembled. No anomalies detected. Advancing.』

Each squad had been beamed to a different location—each a dead end, with the hull armor missing at the target slit. If even one squad could detonate the antimatter bomb they’d smuggled into a section suspected of housing the primary core, the mission objective would be achieved.