The battle should have been hopelessly one-sided, but the arrival of a single rampaging machine instantly tipped the scales in the opposite direction.
"Captain, you're getting too close!"
"Sorry! I got a little carried away!"
Koichiro Marito truly was getting carried away.
The trauma that had haunted him for years had erupted in reverse, driving him into something close to a battle frenzy.
Fifteen years ago, Martian Kataphrakts had seemed almost godlike to him. Earth's weapons had been completely incapable of harming them.
Now, however, the weapon in his hands had successfully punched through a Martian Kataphrakt.
Of course, this weapon had not been developed on Earth. It had been provided by the mysterious Kain. Simply mounting it on an Earth-built Kataphrakt gave the machine enough firepower to destroy its Martian counterparts.
The main differences between Earth and Martian Kataphrakts lay in their defensive capabilities, firepower, and energy sources. In terms of mobility and responsiveness, there was not actually that much separating them.
As long as Earth possessed a spear capable of piercing Mars's shield, its Kataphrakts would not be significantly inferior.
The handful of machines they were currently piloting had all been modified before the Deucalion departed Tanegashima.
"You should worry about your brother instead. That kid's a damn monster."
Among the weapons Kain had provided was a type of ammunition known as a thermal-melt warhead. Any Martian Kataphrakt struck by one was as good as dead.
However, every pilot had received only a limited number of warheads, so they had to use them sparingly.
Inaho Kaizuka had stubbornly insisted on launching his Kataphrakt. Aside from one shot that had missed, every thermal-melt warhead he fired afterward had struck its target.
"Inaho!"
Yuki Kaizuka immediately shouted her brother's name, her stern voice tinged with fear.
Her younger brother might have been exceptionally capable, but this was his first real battle. Watching him charge forward with no regard for his own life was enough to fill her with dread.
She had explicitly told him not to come, but after she launched in her own Kataphrakt, no one aboard the ship had been left to keep an eye on him. He had simply climbed into another machine and followed her into battle.
The Deucalion had not been required to participate in the fighting. No one had even asked them to join.
However, none of the crew could stand by and watch without doing anything. It would make them seem like pampered cowards who were terrified of dying.
In the end, the minority yielded to the majority, and the Deucalion joined the battle.
In truth, there had not been a single vote against it. A few people had merely remained silent.
The Deucalion was now fighting alongside the two Landing Castles belonging to the Orbital Knights who supported the princess.
To be honest, their attack would not have gone nearly as smoothly if the enemy's morale had not already been shattered.
The Kataphrakt piloted by Kain was simply too vicious. In one continuous assault, he had already destroyed two Landing Castles and killed two counts.
As a result, the lunar base and every remaining Landing Castle had concentrated their firepower on eliminating him first.
That left them with little attention to spare for the Deucalion, allowing the ship's forces to pursue the retreating enemy with relative ease.
Another massive explosion erupted.
Yet another Landing Castle became an enormous firework in space.
The Kataphrakt responsible emerged from the flames almost completely unharmed before accelerating toward its next target.
"What is that? I'm detecting multiple Aldnoah reactions!"
Nina Klein, the Deucalion's helmswoman, suddenly cried out in alarm.
A machine standing more than thirty meters tall was entering the battlefield at astonishing speed.
"Broadcast over the open channel at maximum power! Warn everyone on the front line!"
Captain Darzana Magbaredge immediately issued the order.
They had to use an open channel because the Martian Kataphrakts supporting the princess operated on a different communications system. The Deucalion could not contact them directly.
An open channel was different.
After the princess's earlier public broadcast, everyone must have begun monitoring the open frequency in case she transmitted another message.
Meanwhile, within the cockpit of the machine that had just destroyed another Landing Castle, Kain received the warning and immediately identified the approaching target.
It was unlike the other Martian Kataphrakts. It was much larger and appeared to be a combination of several different machines.
Only one name came to mind.
"Count Saazbaum," the princess murmured from the training-control seat in front of Kain.
In the anime ALDNOAH.ZERO that Kain remembered, Count Saazbaum's Kataphrakt, Dioscuria, could transform and combine. It possessed the abilities of multiple Aldnoah-powered machines and could independently travel through the atmosphere. It was even capable of launching directly from the planet's surface, entering space, and flying to the Moon.
However, although the machine before him vaguely resembled the one depicted in the anime, the differences were far too extensive. It was practically a completely different Kataphrakt.
This was probably just another discrepancy between the fictional work and the real world. The anime could only be used as a general reference.
In the anime, the blond man whom the princess eventually married was Count Cruhteo's son.
In reality, that was not the case. He belonged to an entirely separate house among the thirty-seven.
Furthermore, Slaine Troyard had never had any meaningful contact with the princess in this world. She had only met him for the first time during this journey to the Moon.
Kain therefore could not assume that events or abilities would unfold exactly as they had in the anime.
"Wouldn't it be better if you simply died obediently, Your Highness?"
That hate-filled voice rang out across the open channel. Its source was the composite Kataphrakt charging directly toward Kain.
By the time Saazbaum finished speaking, the remote weapons controlled through Kain's DRAGOON System had already fired more than a dozen laser beams at him.
Only one struck its target.
The enemy Kataphrakt appeared to have predicted the trajectory of every other shot. That meant one of its abilities must be an extraordinarily powerful form of ballistic prediction.
Even the laser that struck it had absolutely no effect. It was like firing a water pistol at a wall of steel, leaving behind so much as a mark.
This meant the enemy machine had also been equipped with that special dimensional barrier, the one capable of swallowing radio waves, light, and physical impacts.
Suddenly, an intense burst of lightning tore through the darkness of space.
Multiple fireworks blossomed across the battlefield as nearby Kataphrakts were pierced by the ultra-high-voltage discharge and exploded.
Only three meters from Kain's machine, crackling lightning strained to pierce the physical-energy shield that his mind generated through the A-Driver System.
The enemy had unleashed an indiscriminate electrical attack solely to eliminate him.
That also confirmed that Saazbaum's Kataphrakt had incorporated the ability of Count Zebrin's Electris, the first count's machine Kain had destroyed.
Hm?
Sensing something, Kain immediately reinforced his defensive shield.
In the next instant, a powerful beam blade slammed against it.
An identical Kataphrakt had appeared without warning only three meters to his right. It held its beam blade high, steadily increasing its output as it attempted to break through Kain's defenses.
It was exactly the same as the machine ahead of him that was releasing the electrical discharge.
That meant Saazbaum's Kataphrakt possessed yet another absurd piece of technology: quantum duplication.
The process supposedly used quantum teleportation to create another machine. However, when the teleportation occurred, the original body did not disappear. Instead, its information reconstructed an entirely physical body at the new location.
They might have been called duplicates, but every single one was technically the original!
This Kataphrakt was practically cheating!
(End of Chapter)
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