Saazbaum stared at the image before him, his face livid.
A Landing Castle had been destroyed while descending, shattered with frightening ease.
Moments earlier, it had been plunging through the atmosphere, its hull generating tremendous heat from the friction.
Now it was gone, replaced by a massive hole in the atmosphere.
Air poured through the opening, stretching into a long white trail that resembled a needle of mist stabbing into space.
That was the result of the beam. It had pierced the atmosphere and disrupted the surrounding air pressure.
Judging by its power, Saazbaum was certain that even an Aldnoah-powered absolute defense field could not have stopped it.
A Landing Castle could not cover its entire colossal structure with such a field in the first place.
Against a weapon like that, there was only one possible outcome: death.
Wonderful. Who would have imagined that Earth still possessed such a weapon?
No, this could not belong to Earth.
If the Terrans had possessed something this powerful, they would have used it long ago.
Princess Asseylum must have obtained the weapon from somewhere.
Did the royal family possess a secret weapon of this magnitude?
Had the emperor been hiding something like this all along?
And how had they secretly transported it to Earth?
There was no way anything that large could have slipped past the Orbital Knights watching Earth from orbit.
That left Saazbaum with only one plausible explanation.
Perhaps Earth possessed its own Hyper Gate, one directly connected to Mars, allowing the weapon to be transported straight to the surface.
Whether that theory was correct did not matter right now.
The immediate problem was how to deal with the weapon.
As they enlarged the image of the firing point on the surface, they saw a menacing Wave-Motion Gun suspended above the ground.
Its muzzle was still aimed skyward, seemingly preparing to fire another volley.
The farthest Landing Castle destroyed had been five hundred kilometers away. That suggested the weapon could probably strike targets at even greater distances.
In other words, Saazbaum's Landing Castle might already be within range.
Here in space, they were nothing more than targets.
"Descend! All Landing Castles are to descend immediately!"
Saazbaum transmitted the order to the other Orbital Knights.
Of course, they had no reason to obey him.
After watching a Landing Castle shatter from a single shot, they had to be terrified. Why would they willingly perform what appeared to be a suicidal descent?
Unfortunately for them, they had little choice.
"If you descend now, you might survive. If you remain in orbit, you'll be nothing more than sitting ducks."
"What do you mean?"
"Count Saazbaum, are you certain you aren't ordering us to commit suicide?"
"Do you really believe you'll escape its attacks if it comes after you in space? The weapon clearly requires time to prepare before firing, and there are currently only five of them. We must descend with more Landing Castles than they can destroy in a single volley. As for who gets hit, that will come down to luck."
"And if we reach the surface? Wouldn't that be even more..."
"Fool! Reaching the surface is the only way to guarantee your safety! With that kind of destructive power, do you think they would dare fire it directly at the ground?"
Saazbaum cut off the man before he could finish. There was no time to waste.
His Landing Castle had already begun its orbital descent.
However, he did not send it plunging straight toward the surface. Instead, he moved along a diagonal trajectory, positioning the Moon behind his Landing Castle.
The enemy would not dare fire on him unless they were willing to risk destroying the Moon as well.
Fortunately, his current orbit was relatively close to it.
After hearing his warning and seeing that he had already begun descending, the other Orbital Knights' expressions shifted repeatedly before they followed suit.
None of them could afford to gamble that Saazbaum was wrong.
The knights who had conspired with him to assassinate the princess were especially terrified of the reckoning that awaited them. Their only choice was to risk everything on the descent.
If they remained in orbit, death was certain.
If they descended, their odds might still be nine deaths out of ten, but at least survival remained possible.
...
A second volley of Wave-Motion Gun fire pierced the atmosphere, reducing another five Landing Castles to fragments.
That should have terrified the remaining Orbital Knights into abandoning their descents.
Instead, the projections before Asseylum displayed live images from around the world as fourteen points of light suddenly began descending together.
Asseylum froze for a moment.
"Princess, aren't they afraid?" Eddelrittuo asked.
She had never imagined that these people could be so unafraid of death.
"Commander, which ones should we intercept?"
Kain received White's request for further instructions.
There was no way they could intercept every Landing Castle this time. Some targets were certain to slip through, so White was leaving the decision of which ones to destroy to him.
Kain had initially struggled to understand why the enemy had suddenly begun such a reckless, suicidal orbital descent.
Then the answer became obvious.
They believed they were nothing more than defenseless targets while they remained in space. They had also realized that the Wave-Motion Guns could not safely be fired at the surface.
That meant landing the Landing Castles on Earth was the correct choice. Once they reached the ground, the Wave-Motion Guns could no longer attack them without causing catastrophic damage to the surrounding region.
The Orbital Knights who had overcome their fear and continued descending were most likely the people behind the princess's assassination. They knew they would be punished if the conspiracy failed, so they had chosen to gamble on a mass descent and see who was lucky enough to reach the surface.
Six of the lights, representing six Landing Castles, were already outside the Wave-Motion Guns' firing zones. Those targets would inevitably escape.
The five warships equipped with Wave-Motion Guns had not had enough time to travel farther or reach the opposite hemisphere.
Too little time had passed between their arrival in this world, the assassination attempt, and the declaration of war. Their firing coverage extended across no more than sixty-five percent of Earth's airspace.
The Orbital Knights' first wave had primarily descended over the hemisphere where Kain was currently located, so every one of them had been struck.
They had chosen this hemisphere because they wanted to invade under the righteous banner of avenging the princess, who had supposedly been assassinated there.
Each knight wanted to be the first to claim that "vengeance" and use it as an excuse to demand credit later.
At present, they could lock onto only nine of the lights involved in the sudden descent.
Based on the information White transmitted, the predicted landing sites appeared before Kain.
"Destroy these five."
Of the nine targets, only two were descending toward regions with almost no human population. The other seven were headed directly for densely populated cities.
Kain removed the target descending toward the least populated area from the list, along with another that could not be safely engaged.
That Landing Castle had positioned the Moon directly behind itself. If they fired, the Moon would lie along the beam's trajectory.
The knight was exploiting their unwillingness to damage the Moon, using it as a shield during his descent.
Based on the Landing Castle's original orbital coordinates, that target most likely belonged to Count Saazbaum.
Asseylum had provided the approximate positions of all thirty-seven Orbital Knight clans, including the region occupied by Saazbaum's Landing Castle.
However, those locations were only estimates. They could not blindly fire beyond visual range at the listed coordinates because there was no guarantee the beams would hit their targets.
As for why they did not simply bring the YoRHa over, the Landing Castles were currently too close to Earth.
They were not tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.
At such close range, moving the YoRHa too quickly could create powerful tidal effects across Earth.
Moving it at a safe speed, on the other hand, would leave them without enough time to destroy all the Landing Castles.
Furthermore, the YoRHa would inevitably be positioned above the Landing Castles. If it opened fire with excessive power, its attacks could punch through the targets and strike Earth's surface.
That would be far too dangerous.
"Understood, Commander."
The Wave-Motion Guns' third cooldown finished.
At White's command, five blue beams once again tore through the atmosphere and annihilated the five selected Landing Castles.
This time, the targets had almost completely passed through the atmosphere, making the resulting explosions far more visible.
The remaining Landing Castles could no longer be intercepted.
They plunged toward their chosen destinations and slammed into Earth's surface.
(End of Chapter)
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