Codegease: Air and Land Warfare 1946

Page 133

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, a raging fire illuminated a kneeling steel giant. Beside him, in front of a green-haired girl dressed in white, a tall boy was slowly pacing.

"If," it was that boy's voice again, "weakness is evil, then is strength justice? Is revenge sinful? Is friendship the so-called justice?"

In front of him, a row of Britannian soldiers were pointing assault rifles at this guy who didn't look so normal.

"There's no such thing as justice or evil!" Behind the soldier, a KMF (King of Military Personnel) with an officer-like figure above him replied, "For bait, there's only one path: death!"

"Is that so? Then let me leave you with the so-called facts."

Then, Davis, hidden in the shadows, witnessed a scene that he would never be able to comprehend.

……

"Lelouch vi Britannia hereby orders!" The boy pointed forward with his left hand, then waved it behind him with a flourish, "Everyone! Die!"

Chapter 145, Section 208: Who are you, the people in black?

"Yes! Your highness!"

……

“Wha…what the hell?” Davis felt like he was dreaming. “What the hell? This kid just suddenly…”

That's right, the boy in the school uniform put on a show, and then the soldiers either pressed pistols to their own necks or pointed their assault rifles at each other. In a flash, a volley of bullets flew out, sending all the Britannian soldiers to pools of blood.

"Oh, this is hilarious, young man. Are you sure you're not missing a magic wand and a scroll combo? Shouldn't a medieval dark wizard be your profession? What are you doing rebelling against this broken empire...?"

At this moment, amidst his anxious surprise, Davis hesitated: Was it necessary to kill him? Although he seemed strangely threatening, he was clearly an enemy of Britannia, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, wasn't he? He himself had no desire to be a slave to this dog empire.

But at that moment, the ceiling in front of the boy suddenly collapsed, and two steel giants, one red and one gray, fell down, their appearances not belonging to the Britannian army.

"Oh God, looks like I'd better get out of here..." He quickly reversed his Glasgow car slowly, trying to hide himself and all his movements as much as possible, disappearing into the darkness and the gap in the floorboards.

……

"We have been waiting for you for a long time, Lord ZERO." These words, which came from the Grey Giant's loudspeaker, passed right by Davis.

……

"Get these policemen out of the way! You idiots!"

On the elevated bridge leading directly from the Tower of Babel, a massive command vehicle rolled over and headed straight for the building.

"It's dangerous here, Governor Carares!" Caronville exclaimed, sensing the danger. "The terrorists inside the Tower of Babel are heavily armed. You should retreat to a safe distance to avoid being attacked!"

"How many times do I have to tell you before you stop making excuses! Coward! The ambassadors of the Chinese Federation are still watching the Britannian army. Do you expect me to sit in the back and watch those rebels without imperial citizenship run rampant here?"

"All traffic has been blocked. The situation is under our control, Governor. The terrorists' intentions are unclear at the moment. Ensuring the evacuation of civilians from the building is our top priority. Once we determine their motives for the attack, then..."

"Get lost! What nonsense does a mere lieutenant colonel have to spout!" With communication with the command vehicle cut off, the lieutenant colonel could only watch as the behemoth led its personal guard closer and closer to the Tower of Babel.

"Tch, hopeless..." Caronville slammed his fist on the table in his command room in anger. "His good luck in escaping to District 45 and going through hardships is probably going to cost him his life now. These noble vases who only know how to blindly rush headlong into things."

“Uh, I’m not trying to be sarcastic, Lieutenant Colonel,” a soldier said at this moment. “If Governor Carares had gone to District 45 with you, he probably would have been the one to die on the first day.”

“I completely agree with what you said, ha.” The lieutenant colonel sneered, “I’m afraid that when the enemy’s rockets blasted his eye through the portal tore it apart, they also removed the last bit of useful pulp from his brain.”

"Alright, I think we should still have a combat unit inside the Tower of Babel. Calling Sergeant Ethan Davis! How are you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir, I'm in a bad situation!"

"Be more specific, I want to know..."

Suddenly, a burst of static on the radio abruptly stopped.

"Sir, the sergeant's identification signal has disappeared!"

……

“OK, Davis…” At that moment, in the Glasgow car, the soldier finally turned off his identification signal. “Now we’re going to play hide-and-seek, double agent, huh? This identity is pretty good, isn’t it?”

Now his identification signal has disappeared from everyone's electronic map in Britannia. All he has to do now is follow the direction of other people's signals, listen carefully to everyone's communications, keep his mouth shut, and quietly follow them—without the knowledge of those blue-skinned pigs and terrorists.

At this moment, the squadron not far ahead was in a panic, constantly reporting back to their superiors over the radio.

"Sir! We've been ambushed!"

"They seem to know where we are! Our identification signals have likely been compromised!"

Immediately afterwards, the circles and dots representing their existence disappeared from the map.

"Oh? Is it that scary?" Davis was skeptical. Seeing another group of "comrades" approaching, he quickly crept up behind them and followed.

"Crack!" Suddenly, a huge claw shot out from behind a wall next to the corridor. He could see clearly that it was a red giant. It grabbed the two Sunderlanders together and pressed them against the wall. Then, like a simmering oven, the two poor bastards turned red and shiny, and then they were crushed and exploded.

"Oh! Come on..." He quickly hid himself. "Looks like these guys are pretty smart. If I hadn't turned off the signal in advance, they would have popped out and crushed my brain... God, I want to chill my brain, not braise it."

Muttering to himself, the red robot ran past him, looking much like the guest who had startled Lelouch earlier. It slowly ran away, completely ignoring the anomaly in Davis's direction.

"Huh? That's it?" The soldier shook his head. "Without the stolen identification signal, won't it still look around?"

Then immediately, two more KMFs appeared from the direction the Red Giant had come from and went on their way as if nothing had happened.

"Oh, you idiots." Davis couldn't stand it anymore and fired a burst at the two good-for-nothings. "Are you all living in a radio? How many Yankee lads in Western Europe last year didn't have the guts to search houses and get killed by the Nazi dogs?"

Seeing that no one was around, he ran out of cover and picked up the two black KMF weapons.

……

Meanwhile, following the last group of police officers, Taylor, Philip, and Garcia had already retreated to the back of the governor's command vehicle.

"OK! Bro! Look closely! We're only in police uniforms, not here to die with you!" Taylor pushed aside a soldier blocking their way and, along with two of his men, carried the injured Sergeant Nagayama Chizuru back to the back.

Behind them, in the skyscrapers, groups of KMFs were descenting from the upper floors of the buildings.

“So, Lieutenant Colonel!” Garcia picked up the sergeant’s walkie-talkie. “Could you send a vehicle to pick us up? It’s not easy to transport our wounded here.”

"The vehicle is almost here, soldiers. I'll pick you up and bring you to meet me. The governor has ordered him to drive the terrorists to the lower level and then trap them from both the main entrance and the upper level. But can you tell me if you can contact Sergeant Davis?"

"What? You can't call him either?!" The three soldiers were shocked. "OK, Lieutenant Colonel, if we lose another one this time, are you going to take responsibility?"

"Shut up, you idiots! Just because I haven't received any news doesn't mean the other units haven't, understand? If you want to live to see the sun rise tomorrow, shut your tongues and get ready to get on the truck!"

……

Looking back, Davis was actually following several KMFs that didn't seem to be "master's" weapons, slowly making his way to the lower levels of the Tower of Babel.

"Seriously, they're incredibly stupid." He used his Glasgow night vision goggles to discern tire tracks in the stairwell. "Are these people retreating? Since this is a war zone, they should at least move in batches, with one group retreating and another staying behind to keep watch... Do they even know how to fight? Or were they born without an umbilical cord and just made of electrical wires?"

Finally, they arrived at a large courtyard. Davis secretly observed from several floors above with a camera—there was a Sunderland aircraft there, but also a gray KMF and the red shadow he had seen before. Logically, it was unlikely that the red one had been captured, so it seemed that all three aircraft belonged to terrorists.

"Damn it, I can't eavesdrop if you don't come out and talk..."

Helpless, he prepared to continue downstairs, but at that moment, a golden figure suddenly appeared and went straight for the three.

"Oh, this must be the lieutenant colonel's dog." Well, here we go again, forced into watching the show.

"Damn, do you guys all like wielding knives so much..." Watching the four KMFs fighting each other in close combat, even the big guy in gold didn't bother to get entangled with the red giant's big claws and jumped directly onto the Sunderland—and why did the other two seem so slow to react?

As he spoke, the gray giant leaped over and took a blow for Sunderland, and the two figures became entangled.

"Well, I dislike both sides a bit, don't I?"

Davis suddenly got the idea, saw a UL round among the weapons he had picked up, and fired it at the two men. He didn't know if he hit them or not; before the smoke even rose, he retreated to save his life.

However, looking behind them, the other two who hadn't been hit didn't seem to want to follow.

"Should we keep going?" he thought, but suddenly, the entire building began to shake!

……

"what happened!"

Lieutenant Colonel Caronville was still at the rear when he saw the Tower of Babel being sliced ​​in two, as if cut by a machine tool, amidst a series of flashes and explosions. Except for the bottom few floors, the entire building began to collapse towards the ground in a terrifying tremor and billowing smoke.

Unfortunately, the governor's command vehicle and the viaduct beneath it were both caught in the shadow of the building's collapse.

"Lieutenant Colonel! We have lost contact with His Excellency the Governor! According to the helicopter unit, the terrorists appear to have detonated explosives deployed in the Tower of Babel, blowing the building up! There is no one on the overpass, not even the Governor or his guards!"

"Oh, alright then. Order all troops to remain on high alert." Strangely, the lieutenant colonel looked relieved. "Ahem, so be it. Let the terrorists deal with these fools for us? Seems like it works."

……

"God... have you gone mad..."

Meanwhile, the three soldiers who had just arrived at the rear were probably quite frightened.

"They blew up such a big building?"

"I'm saying, I hope something bad has happened to Boss Davis..."

"You damn jinx, would it kill you to shut your mouth, you bastard?"

However, just as the three were about to fight, the huge television screen on the street suddenly became filled with static, and a dark figure appeared on it.

"Oh, look who's this?" A black helmet, a long black cloak, with only a little bit of white and pale purple showing. "Are you happy to be on TV? You're all wrapped up like a charcoal stick."

……

"I am ZERO! Britannia! Listen up!—"

……

They were unaware that this person's figure had just appeared on television screens in every Tokyo concession and even around the world.

At this moment, in a construction site in the Tokyo concession, where the Britannian Empire had recently captured Germans and Soviet prisoners of war to work, three of the guards were also drawn to the large screen that could be seen by looking up at the construction site.

"Hey, Comrade Stasevich, what's he saying?"

"My English isn't fluent yet, so I don't know..."

……

Not only the guards, but even the workers stopped and looked at the excited black figure posing. Unlike some of the Japanese from Area 11 who excitedly jumped up and down, they looked puzzled.

"The time has come for the strong to wait and see! I... feel extremely sad..."

"War! And discrimination! The strong continue to commit evil! Chaotic tragedies and comedies circulate everywhere! This world has not changed at all! So! I have no choice but to appear here again!"

"As long as there is a distinction between the strong and the weak in this world, I will continue to stir up waves of rebellion! The foolish Governor Carares has just been executed by me! This is only the beginning! I will continue to fight! To confront all those who abuse power!"

"Here! I declare once again! The United States of Japan is established here! From this moment on! This room will become the first territory of Japan! Regardless of race, ideology, or religion! The qualification to become a citizen is to exercise justice! This world has reached the point where evil flees in terror before me!"

……

"Hmm..." After watching the stranger's speech with ambiguous expressions, two people on the construction site had meaningful looks on their faces.

“This group is really interesting, isn’t it? At least they don’t resemble the Polish partisans at all.”

Once these two started speaking German, it became clear why they couldn't quite understand the English on the TV screen.

"Well, may I address you as Major Karlstadt here?" the younger man asked the middle-aged man.

"What do you think, Captain Schreiber?"

"So... I think this guy named ZERO, and his helper, might be our touchstone."

"Let's see what this empire has to say. Heh, I thought my idea was a bit far-fetched, but it turns out that there are already people who agree with it so quickly."

"Those Russians on guard duty, huh? And those working over there, aren't they also inferior Slavic people? As children of the German nation, we have no interest in behaving like them, and besides, this isn't their territory, is it?"

"So it looks like we have to give in to these aliens?"

“The Aryans should be supreme, shouldn’t they? If you have any ideas, I can help you persuade a few of them from among the crowd.”

……

At that moment, a KMF that had just descended to the ground using a grappling hook suddenly caught the eye next to the foundation of the Tower of Babel, prompting Taylor and his two companions to grab their binoculars and shout excitedly.

"Okay, I said... Lieutenant Colonel Caronville? I'm Sergeant Davis. Sorry, I just barely crawled out of the rubble. Could you please find me a helicopter or something to get me back from this hellhole?"

Chapter 146, Section 209: Who is the Black Prince?

Well, with the entire Tokyo concession in complete chaos, Clark had no choice but to get busy.

After handing over the goods to my brothers here, I have to run over to that other room, a place that nobody usually goes to when they're free.

"OK! Down the mountain!" Strange, the door wasn't locked as usual.

"Yeah, boss!" The guy from Area 11 was still busy at his computer.