The Big Boar looked like a small mountain.

Flying around it in her Atalante, Emma made minute adjustments to the control stick and foot pedals.

Emma skillfully handled the machine, which was like a wild horse, but even so, she wasn't perfect.

To evade the optical weapon's attacks, the mobile knight repeatedly performed sharp, strenuous maneuvers.

Slightly. Just barely thrown off, a high-output laser grazed the surface of its armor, scorching it.

And the Atalante's excessively high energy output was putting an immense strain on its own joints.

It seemed more likely to self-destruct than be destroyed by enemy fire.

"I have to take it down before this thing breaks."

Sweating inside her helmet, Emma noticed a slight movement in a lens on the Big Boar's armor and immediately moved her mobile knight.

Rolling the machine, she dodged several lasers by a hair's breadth.

She moved as if she knew exactly where the attacks would come from the very beginning.

The Atalante was—keeping up with Emma's reaction speed.

"With this one, I'm sure I can—"

Emma felt as if she'd been freed from a great weight, but the rifle she carried couldn't penetrate the Big Boar's armor.

Emma checked her equipment.

"Even with this high output, a beam sword is no good. I don't think I can finish it with a physical sword either—in that case!"

She had the Atalante drop its rifle, then jettisoned the shield and physical sword from its left arm as well.

Now lighter, the Atalante accelerated even further.

Mistaking her actions for dropping all her weapons, worried shouts came from her allies.

"You idiot!!"
"How do you plan to win after throwing away all your weapons!"

There was probably some frustration in their voices, but she could tell her allies were worried.

However, Emma hadn't just discarded her weapons for nothing.

On its left arm, there was a weapon hidden beneath the shield.

It was a weapon not equipped on a standard Nevan.

With no time to answer the voices around her, Emma disengaged the Atalante's limiters.

With her right hand, she flipped a series of simple switches installed in the cockpit.

Excessive energy surged through the machine, and a sound like a scream emanated from its various parts.

Sparks discharged from its joints.

"I'll end this quickly!"

◇

Claudia's Nevan cut down a Zoke that had charged at it.

She was fighting with an axe taken from a pirate, but her gaze was fixed on Emma, who was battling the Big Boar.

The sight of the Atalante flying through the air while discharging electricity looked just like a bolt of lightning.

One of her subordinates muttered.

"—A flash of light."

Hearing the word "flash," she thought it was fitting.

But she couldn't understand why Emma had discarded her weapons.

"What does she plan to do after throwing away her weapons? Is it loaded with some weapon we don't know about?"

It wouldn't be strange for the Atalante, an experimental unit, to be equipped with armaments that even Claudia was unaware of.

But more than that, Claudia was astonished by Emma's talent, which she had failed to recognize.

Not only was she piloting a machine called a defect, but she was drawing out its full potential.

She was controlling it at a level of performance that surpassed a standard mass-produced unit, or even a custom one.

"So I couldn't see it, but he could?"

In a word, she was an exceptional talent.

A special kind of talent that couldn't be detected in standard tests.

The talent to pilot an unbalanced mobile knight with no assist functions as if it were her own limbs.

In this modern era where assist functions are commonplace, for such a talent to be discovered was a miracle.

Normally, she would have been dismissed as having no aptitude before anyone noticed.

In fact, Claudia had treated Emma as incompetent.

—And her lord had seen through it all, going out of his way to send Emma a suitable machine.

Along with frustration, Claudia felt a pang of jealousy.

A Zoke that had boarded the plant aimed its machine gun at the Atalante.

"I'll shoot that thing down!"

The pirates also thought it best to destroy the unpredictable Atalante first.

Claudia rammed her mobile knight into the enemy unit, and as it lost its balance, she swung her axe down.

"You've got some nerve looking away."

"St-stop!"

She mercilessly brought the axe down on the cockpit.

Letting go of the axe, Claudia snatched the machine gun from the Zoke.

When the Nevan gripped the machine gun, it requested an ID.

Claudia immediately began hacking it.

With practiced movements, she forced the machine gun into a usable state.

While destroying the Zokes that appeared one after another with the machine gun in her right hand, she gave orders to her subordinates.

"Don't let a single one get near her!"

"Roger!"

The Nevans continued to fight the swarming Zokes to protect the Atalante.

Seeing her allies fighting to protect her, Emma called out to Claudia and the others.

"Instructor!?"

"Just do what you have to do!"

"Y-yes, ma'am!"

Claudia wanted to complain about Emma still calling her 'Instructor' at a time like this, but she held her tongue and faced the enemy unit before her.

Protected by those around it, the Atalante landed on the ground, its momentum carrying it into a slide.

Then, an even stronger electrical discharge erupted from its joints.

◇

Inside the Atalante's cockpit.

Alarms blared, warning that the joints, in particular, couldn't withstand the high output.

In that state, Emma weaved through a rain of lasers and made contact with the Big Boar.

"This is it!"

Making contact opened a communication channel, and on the screen was a man in a suit, despite being a pilot.

"I don't know what you're planning, but what do you think you can do with just one unit? The outcome is already clear. In a few more minutes, this Big Boar will take you all with it in a massive explosion."

Knowing it would self-destruct the moment its internal power ran out, the man was perfectly calm.

Emma found it unsettling.

"Don't you understand you're going to die?"

"I have long since overcome death. I am Mr. River, the immortal salesman who can be revived any number of times."

"!"

A being who could be revived again and again using some kind of technology.

Emma felt revulsion toward River, who claimed to have overcome death using technology that should have been forbidden.

"Just because you can survive alone, what do you think other people's lives are!"

River treated even the lives of the pirates, who should have been his allies, like cheap consumables.

Emma couldn't forgive that.

"Lives? They are low-value consumables. People are nothing more than another resource. That should be the same for you people as well."

"That's not true! We are—"

"It's not different at all. Your lord is a prime example. Nobles are the kind of people who think nothing of human life. They are the ones who truly believe that the lives of others exist for their own benefit."

Hearing that, Emma remembered the past.

The sight of Avid, triumphant after defeating the space pirates.

"—He's different."

"Count Banfield? He's the same. He's the one who holds life cheap. Someone who truly values human life wouldn't mercilessly kill pirates."

"!"

For a moment, Emma was almost convinced by River's words—but then she pushed the control stick with all her might.

"Even so—I—like him—"

The Atalante grabbed hold of the Big Boar and began to lift it.

"Wh-what are you doing!?"

The boosters on the Atalante's back ignited, and it began to lift the Big Boar's massive frame.

River must not have expected this.

As the machine tilted, he grew flustered.

Emma glared at the Big Boar and shouted, as if to convince herself.

"—I'm going to be a knight of justiceeee!!"

The Atalante's twin eyes flashed with a brilliant light as it lifted the Big Boar completely.

Lifted on one side, the Big Boar lost its balance.

Like an overturned turtle, it exposed its underbelly, a part not normally designed to take attacks.

It was armored, but not so thick that it couldn't be pierced.

Having flipped the Big Boar, the Atalante struck its underbelly with its left hand.

It wasn't its hand, but the weapon mounted on its left arm that pierced the Big Boar's belly.

Emma pulled the trigger on the control stick.

"Pile—Bunkerrrr!!"

The weapon ignited, driving a stake into the Big Boar's belly.

The stake fired from the weapon plunged deep inside—and upon reaching the interior, the metallic stake glowed red and exploded.

River, who was inside, was terrified by the explosion.

"How did you get such an anachronistic weapon—"

The abrupt end of the transmission told the story of what happened in the cockpit.

As the Atalante pulled away from the Big Boar, it erupted in flames from within.

Claudia, who had been watching, checked with the electronic warfare unit.

"Hey."

"—The self-destruct function is not active. That was a little nerve-wracking."

Apparently, they had managed to destroy it without triggering the self-destruct.

Emma sighed in relief, thinking it was all over.

Just then, the Atalante reached its limit, and smoke began to pour from its joints.

"Huh? W-what!? I-I'm falling!"

As the machine fell, it was caught by Claudia's Nevan.

"Causing trouble to the very end."

"Instructor!"

"Call me Colonel!"

"Y-yes, ma'am."

As they were having this exchange, the pirates' Zokes began to gather.

"—That bastard is dead, but at least we'll get you."

Emma broke into a cold sweat as the pirates surrounded them, but the Atalante's radar announced the approach of allies.

The name of that ally was—Melea.

"No way."

A light carrier appeared above the plant, and from it, Moheib units descended one after another.

Seeing this, the surviving pirates panicked.

"They still had forces left!?"

The pirates tried to fight, but one after another, battleships began entering the atmosphere.

"That's—"

When Emma confirmed the allies on her monitor, she saw it was the main force led by Claudia.

"You've come."

Nevans launched from the battleships one by one, descending and beginning to destroy the Zokes.

A horned Nevan, just like the one Claudia piloted, landed nearby.

"Sorry we're late."

"No, you saved us."

A Nevan with its wings spread chased down the fleeing pirates' Zokes, destroying them one by one.

Faced with an overwhelmingly different scene than before, Emma finally let out a sigh of relief that it was over—and then promptly threw up the contents of her stomach.