As Odin’s senses grew calm, beads of sweat gathered on Doyun’s forehead. Doyun’s unsteady eyes fluttered and slid shut.
“Ando!”
When his legs gave out and he swayed, Odin immediately pulled him into an embrace. The moment they made Guiding contact, the biowatch sent out stabilization signals even faster.
「Odin Quaid (S): 12%」
「Odin Quaid (S): 7%」
「Odin Quaid (S): 2%」
“Remarkable. A very efficient method.”
“Uhh…”
The voice finally sounded like it was coming from a normal distance. Doyun struggled to open his eyes. Odin was looking down at him, smiling brightly.
“But it’s dangerous. If there’s an error in the timing calculation, you’ll pay the price without fail.”
Odin’s voice carried weight.
“I’m grateful you’d go that far for me, but I won’t allow you to use your body as a variable again.”
Doyun stared at him with an expression he couldn’t quite understand. It was the most at ease he’d ever seen Odin look. His Rampage number had dropped to 2%, so he should have been craving this new kind of Guiding like an addict, but Odin continued speaking calmly.
“Let’s make this the first and last time we do Guiding like this.”
There wasn’t a trace of reluctance in his voice. Doyun fought back the drowsiness pressing down on him and gave an answer two weeks late.
“Does this mean you can trust me and turn your back on the battlefield?”
Odin looked down in surprise at the new recruit, who was steadily losing his grip on consciousness. Even with his words slurring, Doyun left behind one insufferable line.
“…You said you couldn’t trust me, Colonel. But I trust my own skills.”
“Ha.”
Odin let out a small laugh and gathered the collapsed Doyun into his arms. Doyun’s limbs hung limp, all the strength gone from them as if he’d lost consciousness entirely.
The spherical training ground vanished, and from the semi-transparent hologram, Odin descended with Doyun held in both arms.
“Are you alright, Colonel?”
Starting with Kapu’s question, the training ground, which had gone quiet, grew noisy again. Odin glanced at Kapu. Without a moment’s hesitation, Kapu called for the medical team, looking down at the unconscious Doyun.
“Get the new recruit into a capsule right now-“
Odin carefully lifted Doyun and had the area cleared.
“That’s it for training today. Dismissed. For the rest of the week, train the squad according to the existing strategy.”
Odin confirmed the two medics coming through the training ground doors and spoke to the Major.
“I’ll take personal responsibility for the new recruit’s training and put him through an intensive course myself. You don’t need to concern yourself with it.”
The Colonel, whose Rampage number had dropped to the 2% range, clearly looked different than before. It was a very subtle difference, but the expression that was always tense and on edge had eased.
His breathing had deepened compared to before, and his gaze lingered in one place longer. Normally he’d have been irritated by the medics fumbling around, but he seemed not to care at all, carefully setting the collapsed Doyun down on the stretcher instead.
What that change meant couldn’t be determined yet, but Kapu swallowed hard with unease. She sensed that starting from this very moment, the Genius Strike Force had crossed a river of no return, whether toward becoming stronger or more dangerous.
Chapter 2. Guest from the Abyss
On the outskirts of Varnas Space Station, at the far end of the gravity control zone, lay a vast open space. It was a memorial space for the joint funerals held regularly every month.
At the central altar sat a biodata capsule in place of a coffin. Paulo’s body had never been recovered. Instead, his last recorded position coordinates, Rampage number, and combat log had been preserved in sealed form.
Anna placed a pure white flower, as large as her own face, on the central altar. Then she returned to her seat and buried her face in Fred’s side.
The strike force members in black dress uniforms stood in rows.
“Killed in action, Master Sergeant Paulo Brie.”
The protocol officer’s voice echoed through the memorial hall.
“Genius Strike Force. Confirmed combat-incapable during reconnaissance mission. Recovery deemed impossible.”
Odin Quaid stood in the very front row. His posture, hands clasped behind his back, showed not a hint of disorder, and not a single crease of his uniform was out of place. His sky blue eyes were turned toward the capsule, but his gaze hung somewhere in empty space.
He had already reviewed the combat records from that day dozens of times. The gaps between retreat orders, Paulo’s coordinates, each squad member’s status. Even after returning to the space station, Odin had kept running the simulation alone. Until it produced a result where everyone survived.
“The name of the deceased will be inscribed on Varnas’s satellite. Salute!”
As the sound of boots rang out, the wall of the memorial hall slowly opened.
One of the thousands of small artificial satellites operated by Varnas Space Station appeared on the screen. Across its smooth outer hull, one new name had just been added.
Glowing characters streamed along the satellite’s orbit. The satellite would continue circling through space from now on. Carrying the names of the dead, while the living carried out their missions.
“…Paulo. Goodbye.”
It was Anna’s whispering voice that broke the silence. Fred gazed at the satellite for a while, then slowly lowered his eyes. His large hand covered Anna’s. With every breath she drew in after that, a rough, thick sound mixed in with it.
Before long, only the sound of Anna’s crying echoed through the memorial hall.
“Anna.”
Odin beckoned to Anna, who by now had tears and snot running freely down her face. Anna ran to him and buried herself in his arms. She cried even more bitterly than before, but no one so much as looked at her sideways for it.
Anna pressed her face into Odin’s uniform. In the Colonel’s arms, she was allowed to cry this openly. It was a kind of permission, a privilege Odin granted only to her. The rest of the squad stood with reddened eyes, making no sound at all.
Odin Quaid didn’t cry either. He simply stood in silence, watching the broadcast screen of the satellite that had become a star in the night sky.
Even before Paulo, he had faced countless names in this very place. In his first year as Colonel of the Genius Strike Force, he had returned having lost half the unit, standing here on crutches.
Every time, he swore he would never let another name be inscribed on a satellite again, but every time, he failed. So this moment, having to make yet another promise he couldn’t keep, felt to him like a punishment.
He wasn’t granted the right to shed tears. Because when orders came down from above, he would have to send his men into the jaws of death again.
The next reconnaissance mission would even include a new recruit Guide who had never once set foot on an alien planet.
“Again.”
At Odin’s command, Doyun bit down on the gag in his mouth and swallowed a groan. His wrists and ankles were bound together behind him, leaving him completely unable to move. Current ran through the hard, cold metal running from the back of his neck down his spine.
Already on his fourth consecutive failed escape drill, Doyun’s forehead was drenched in sweat. Odin’s boots came into view before his eyes. At the impatient tapping of that foot, the veins at Doyun’s temples briefly stood out.
“Mmmph…”
When he forced his head up, he met the eyes of Colonel Odin Quaid, who was holding a timer.
Doyun had been summoned, two days after waking up, not to the eleventh underground floor but to a separate training ground set up on the eighteenth underground floor.
The Colonel’s claim that he’d personally oversee special training hadn’t been an idle promise. This vast training ground held only the Colonel himself. Doyun had wondered what kind of impressive training had been prepared for him, but two hours in, he was still being wrung out while restrained.
“Your body’s tensed up completely.”
Watching Doyun writhe, Odin let out a small sigh. With his first reconnaissance mission just around the corner, there was only one essential piece of training Odin meant to pass on to him. Teaching him to get himself out of an emergency situation on his own.
Kapu called this training the “Sneak Drill.” It was the most basic course every new recruit went through in their first month of service, a training whose only goal was survival, no matter how undignified or unglamorous it looked.
“Mmph! Mph! Mph!”
His whole body apparently cramping, Doyun now signaled, with quite a bit of temper, that he wanted to be let free. Odin quietly swallowed his laughter.
“You need to check your biowatch.”
“Mph?”
A look of protest came back at him, as if to ask how he was supposed to check anything with his arms bound behind him and a gag in his mouth besides.
“Hit your wrist against the floor three times. Then an interface will come up in front of you.”
Doyun struck his wrist against the floor three times, irritated. A hologram of key information immediately appeared before his eyes. Amid the flood of text, the most prominent letters began to bold and rise to the front.
「Warning! Energy depletion in 01:42」
Doyun’s eyes went wide. Only a minute and a half left. Having already experienced firsthand, through Guiding synchronization with Odin, what energy depletion meant, Doyun gritted his teeth and twisted his body again. But instead of loosening, the restraints only sent an immediate jolt of current up through his thighs and back.
“Aack!”
His body flinched reflexively and dropped flat against the floor. A groan thick with pain tore from him as though his breath had been cut off.
Odin called out to him calmly.
“Ando.”
That damn Ando. Ando, my ass. No. Ando could go to hell.
Only the anxious certainty spread through him that this training wasn’t going to end anytime soon. Doyun pounded his forehead against the floor again and again, venting his fury in place of an answer.
