Chapter 3 – The Operation to Annihilate the Opposition
1
War had broken out without warning in the northeast of the Dyrst region, and while the main body of the Provisional Elite Corps threw itself bravely at the Kingdom’s army in a hell of killing and being killed, something else was about to happen out in a small town where the anti-Princess nobles gathered.
“It’s so hooot! Somebody, water~”
I was wiping the sweat off and demanding a drink from one of my people when an enormous sigh came out behind me.
“Haah. The operation starts any minute and there isn’t a shred of tension in you.”
Linos, second son of the Gerreschiff ducal house, was waiting in the undergrowth in a Kingdom army uniform with a cloth pulled up over his mouth. He normally dresses like the flashy noble he is, so watching him lie low and breathe quietly was a fairly surreal sight. I, by contrast, was relaxing openly on a bench in the square.
“What’s the harm? Anyway, why don’t you come out of there instead of hiding? We’ve still got five minutes.”
“Five minutes, which is exactly why you should be changing. Now.”
“Ehhh.”
“Not ‘ehhh.’ Honestly, why does not one of your people ever pull you up… is there nobody here but fools?”
What a foul mouth on a noble’s son. If he weren’t in the Provisional Elite Corps I might have killed him half for the fun of it. But boss has impressed on me that I’m to keep things friendly with him.
I did as Linos and his endless nagging told me and put the Kingdom uniform on somewhere out of sight.
—Hmm. Now it’s even hotter.
“Somebody~ cold water~”
“Here you are.”
“Yep. Thanks~♪”
I drained the cold water out of the flask.
“This creature…”
“Regular hydration is basic conduct in the Provisional Elite Corps, is there a problem?”
I’d spent several days preparing this operation with Linos and we still didn’t fit together.
—When this job’s over I’m going to formally register my refusal to work with him.
“Hey. It’s time. Stop dawdling and move!”
“Yeees.”
“Don’t stretch out your answers!”
Nobles and I just aren’t compatible. That was my feeling on the matter that day.
2
The anti-Princess nobles were meeting in a mountain lodge deep in the hills, well away from the center of town. Normally there’d be nobody around, but with the central figures of a whole faction assembling, guards in full steel were making rounds everywhere.
“One, two… no, hang on, isn’t that about sixty?”
“Counting them is pointless. We finish them off in order, starting from the ones at the edge.”
Kingdom uniforms or not, there were few enough of us that moving unseen was the basis of the whole thing.
“I do wonder whether a young gentleman of the nobility can keep quiet…”
“Are you mocking me? At the very least I don’t make noise the way you do.”
Wearing a face that was doing its best to look cool, he gave his orders to the men he’d brought from the ducal house.
“You will take the area around the lodge’s rear entrance. We will handle the front.”
“Sir.”
I watched him give orders self-importantly out of the corner of my eye and turned to my own people.
“When the signal goes up in town, we start~ Oh! And you know what happens if you botch it, right?”
“Yes!”
My lot scattered too. Putting down the guards near the front entrance was me, Linos and a handful of others.
“Right then. Let’s get the job done quick.”
“Hmph. Don’t slow me down.”
“That’s my line, that is.”
To make the people inside the lodge believe the Kingdom’s advance had turned their way, Epika, division commander of the Imperial army’s mages, was to set off explosions and small fires in several places at once in town. Until then we kept our heads down. Except…
“…Nothing yet.”
“Silence.”
The time came and went and no signal.
—I can’t imagine that woman getting a time wrong, so is something actually wrong?
Uneasy about it, I waited a bit longer just in case.
—Yep. There it is.
About five minutes. Down in the lower town where the shopping streets run, big cracks of explosion and black smoke going up in several places. With that very showy signal we all moved at once.
“Front, here we go!”
“Don’t get out too far and die.”
“Hmhm! My risk management is perfect, thank you. I did a lot of looking during all that waiting, you know.”
Sight-Share doesn’t only project your own view to somebody else; you can also look through somebody else’s. There’s no restriction on the target as long as it’s alive, which includes the insects and small animals in the area. I’d checked the enemy’s positions from every angle there was, so my picture of where everyone stood was perfect, and I’d worked out the ideal order to drop them in.
“Ff!”
“—!”
You put a guard down before he can make a sound. To be safe I clamped a hand hard over each mouth and cut off even the small noises that leaked out.
“Right, next.”
One at a time, the guards around the lodge went down without fail. Even I thought I was working neatly.
And Linos, for his part, moved with enough dexterity that you’d wonder whether he’d been an assassin, putting his own down quietly.
“Huh. You’re not bad at all.”
“This much is a matter of course.”
The manner was as irritating as ever, but the ability was actually behind it, so it grated less than it had at the start. Apparently he isn’t a young gentleman who is all mouth.
“Now. We’ve cleared everyone here, do we go in next?”
Blood well up, Linos had a short blade ready and was looking at me as though he’d go this second. I put a hand on his shoulder and wagged a finger side to side.
“Heheh. We’re not doing anything that tiresome. Look, my people have brought the secret weapon.”
“Secret weapon…?”
“Yep. The lucky item that catches every single person shut inside a room!”
I told them to bring the thing over, and they moved quickly and came back with four palm-sized censers.
“What are these?”
“Hehe~ sorry to spoil the mystery, but don’t sniff it. You’ll drop dead instantly.”
I threatened him half in jest, and Linos and his men covered their noses and mouths and took two or three steps back.
“Ahaha! You’re way too scared~ the instant death was a lie. It just numbs your arms and legs a bit so you can’t move.”
“…If you were bringing poison, you tell us beforehand. Using it by accident would have been a catastrophe.”
“Sorry, sorry. I honestly just forgot.”
Laughing it off didn’t soften his glare. He doesn’t have to lose his temper like that. It’s not as though anyone got hurt.
These are ‘Acid Censers,’ one of the self-defense items that circulate in the slums where we lived. They’re extremely dangerous goods kept under a serious lock, and breathe in what’s inside and a person loses consciousness in a moment; keep breathing it and it can kill.
“So today we use these to finish off everyone inside the lodge.”
“Fadi. All the vents in the rooms are blocked. We’ve fixed the windows so they won’t open either. We’re set.”
“Ooh, that was fast!”
Once the enemy outside was cleared, the operation was complete as soon as the poison from these censers went into the lodge. No unnecessary risk taken, and every obstruction dead.
“Aah. Easy job~♪”
“Let your guard down and you’ll be knocked off your feet.”
“I’m not letting my guard down. Now, I’m opening the censers. Anyone who doesn’t know how to handle them, get well back.”
I unlocked a censer and threw it inside the lodge, and my people did the same, feeding the rest in at various points around the building.
“Right then. From here we just wait.”
I sat down in front of the lodge, and Linos looked at me and shrugged and let out a long breath.
“So I wasn’t especially necessary to this operation.”
He sounded, if anything, a little dissatisfied about it. And it’s true that all he’d personally done was remove a few guards on the outside of the lodge. For what was supposed to be a large-scale purge, this job hadn’t needed many hands.
But there was a second layer to it: bringing Linos in from the planning stage was boss’s doing, and boss had a reason of his own.
“Nah. Mister Linos was necessary to this operation.”
“I have done nothing in particular.”
“Not directly, no… but now the second son of the Gerreschiff ducal house is an accomplice in the killing of the anti-Princess nobles.”
Linos went quiet, wearing the face of a man asking why any of that needed saying.
“…And? That was obvious from the outset, surely.”
“Nope. Boss is a careful man. If this operation had leaked to the enemy and gone wrong, the first people he’d suspect would be the outside collaborators.”
In a sense the whole thing doubled as a test of whether Linos and Epika were worth having as collaborators. That’s why both had a few watchers attached, keeping an eye on how they behaved during the operation. Removing the anti-Princess nobles was a genuine objective, but what boss actually wanted was to smoke out any traitor among our own.
And this time we found there wasn’t one.
“I see… and what became of your assessment of me?”
“Taking the serious effort today into account, we’d like to continue the working relationship going forward. That’s our conclusion, I’d say.”
Linos had put real work into this, and so had General Epika. As collaborators laying the foundation of a new Empire, we may well be working together again.
“So, formally: looking forward to it, Mister Linos.”
“…………”
I put out a hand as a token of goodwill. Linos seemed rather unhappy about having been tested, but…
“Hmph. This is for the sake of the objective. I have no intention of being chummy with you, but I will swear to lend a hand in future.”
—I got a verbal commitment to keep the alliance going. From here on there’d be no need to keep watchers on him either, which was a weight off.
He wouldn’t shake my hand, but somehow I got the feeling he wasn’t going to betray us at the end of it all, and it became a lot easier to be flippant at him.
“Right! Now that we’ve deepened our bond, let’s finish the job! The people inside the lodge should all be unconscious!”
“Hey. Our bond has most certainly not been deepened! Don’t work yourself up on your own!”
“Come on, come on, don’t get so prickly. I’ll leave you behind~”
And besides the foul mouth, he does honestly do as he’s told. As a work partner I’d rate him fairly highly, is where I’ve got to lately.
3
A cramped space full of poison. I opened the lodge door slowly, and a quiet corridor ran away into the back of the building.
“Hey. It’s definitely safe to go in now?”
“The poison only works for a few minutes and we’ve aired it out, so I think we’re fine… probably.”
“Hey…”
I don’t actually know the details. Because I’ve never used one of these.
When I killed a lot of people, I never used to bother concealing who I was. Even if the crime came out and pursuers came for my life, I was confident I could kill them right back.
…But the situation’s changed, and I belong to a military organization directly under Princess Valtrune. I can’t do crime openly the way I used to.
“It’s hard work keeping the trail off you. There’s a lot to think about, and some of it I haven’t got a handle on.”
“Learn the parts that concern people’s lives, idiot.”
“Well, you see, my subordinates are excellent…”
I looked to my people for rescue.
“The censers’ effect will have run out by now. There’s no need to worry.”
“See! It’s fine!”
I pointed at Linos smugly, riding on that, and he brushed my hand lightly aside.
“You knew nothing at all. Don’t act important…”
Feeling Linos’s opinion of me drop a notch or two, I went on into the lodge without saying much.
“…Right. Everyone’s properly down.”
The guards inside had foamed at the mouth and passed out, and the anti-Princess nobles who’d been holding their private meeting in a good-sized conference room were slumped over the table, not moving.
“Finish them and we go home.”
I took the short blade out of my coat and put the edge into an unconscious noble’s neck. They can’t scream and they die easily, so it’s a happier end than dying in pain or in terror.
“…Fadi. Everyone over here is stabbed.”
“Right. Good work… check them off the list and record who we killed.”
We’d disposed of a great many anti-Princess nobles in a matter of minutes, which was a very good result, all told.
—Except it couldn’t quite be called perfect.
“…Duke Felsdorf sent a proxy and isn’t here, then.”
The single most important target, the head of the anti-Princess nobles, we hadn’t been able to kill.
“The man is cautious. He rarely comes to this sort of private meeting in person.”
“Hmm… well. Nothing for it, I suppose.”
Going by the list, we’d disposed of more or less every high noble besides Duke Felsdorf.
Even so, holding a private meeting when the Kingdom’s army might be bearing down on them? What were this lot thinking?
There was a bundle of documents on the table in front of each seat, and I picked one of them up.
“Bribery… collusion with the Kingdom… a joint venture with the church… huh. They were up to a lot of things.”
I read further, and the reason began to surface: they had been treating the invasion by the Kingdom and the Order as no threat at all, and meeting here with only minimal precautions. They had been told in advance about the attack on the Dyrst region by the Kingdom’s army and the Order. Today, the day the Princess was supposed to be occupied dealing with an attack on imperial soil, must have looked like exactly the right day to meet.
That there was someone among the anti-Princess nobles in contact with the Kingdom and the Order was easy enough to see through.
I read on.
“Divine Demon Orb… miasma… eternal life… development of Madmiasma… failed test-subject cases…”
The further I read, the more it felt like putting one foot into the dark of the world. Even working with the White Smoke Lizards I never saw a recipe for a drug as ugly as this.
“What the hell is this… actually, hold on. This test subject, I’ve seen him somewhere…”
A sketch of a large, heavily muscled man. Skin decently tanned and dark, not a single hair on his head.
“This one. He’s the man who went on the rampage in Marquis Rigel’s territory—!”
What was written in the record was extraordinary, and set out completely in the open.
‘Madmiasma test subject number twenty-eight, Nort Ledisipalt.
‘A serious criminal, imprisoned for crimes committed within Marquis Rigel’s territory.
‘Administration of Madmiasma produced severe violent agitation and loss of self.
‘Deployed experimentally as a strategic weapon in the fighting against the Provisional Elite Corps under the Princess.
‘Killed by the personal knight Aldia and the former Imperial army soldier Ritziareite, but confirmed to have massacred large numbers of enemy soldiers.
‘Madmiasma judged effective for physical enhancement.
‘A business partnership with the Kingdom is planned with a view to bringing Madmiasma into practical use, and new test subjects are to be secured…’
Oh dear. Is this for real?
“Hey. How long do you intend to stay in here? We’re leaving.”
“…Have a look at this a moment.”
“Hm?”
I handed Linos the bundle of documents from the meeting room. He took it looking mildly put out, and as he read further into it, those bored eyes turned serious.
“…This isn’t a fabrication, is it.”
He finished reading and gripped the papers hard enough to crease them, and asked me whether the contents were true.
“Who knows. But would they gather this many senior anti-Princess nobles together to share fake information?”
“They would not… these pieces of filth. Have they forgotten even the pride of an imperial noble?”
Contempt came off every edge of the words. Colluding with the Kingdom behind the Emperor’s back and pushing forward suspicious military experiments, that is evidence of treason nothing can overturn.
“If we denounce them, we can be rid of this lot easily without dirtying our own hands…”
“I would like to tell His Majesty this very moment… but.”
Linos put a hand over his face and let out a long breath.
“This is information obtained after removing the opposition. If we take it to His Majesty, our own covert activity may be pursued as well.”
“That could make trouble for Lady Valtrune.”
“Yes. Fortunately we now know their scheme down to the details. If it can be settled internally, so much the better.”
—I came for an assassination job on some nobles and I’ve ended up learning about something far worse.
This isn’t a factional problem. It’s the kind of thing that can shake the Empire at its foundations.
“We’re taking every document here back with us. Sweep up everything on the table.”
“Fadi. I will prevail on my elder brother and put the prestige of the Gerreschiff ducal house behind an investigation into Madmiasma. Anything I learn, I will share at once.”
“Thanks. Then we’ll go through everyone with a connection to the Kingdom. I’ll report to boss too, we’ll have to be thorough about removing the informants.”
Linos and I set our people to work and gathered up, one after another, everything in the lodge that looked connected to the anti-Princess nobles’ scheme. The more we looked, the more black evidence turned up.
—This is gonna get busy. To break their scheme open we’d have to be a great deal more active than we had been.
“Fadi. Collection’s done.”
“Right. Then we get out of here fast. Tell the ones outside to get ready to set the fire.”
I watched my man trot out of the room, then followed him out of the lodge myself.
Once everybody was confirmed outside, we set fire to the lodge so no evidence of the attack would be left. It caught quickly and eventually took the whole building.
The original plan had the mission complete the moment we killed the central figures of the enemy faction in one stroke.
A burning lodge and jet-black smoke. The wooden frame came down with a great collapsing sound and threw ash into the air.
“…And I thought this was where it ended.”
I said it watching the lodge burn and rot away. A blaze that ought to have been a fitting end had turned into no more than the start of a new job.
“What a lot of bother.”
“There’s nothing to be done. Given what we now know, it can’t be overlooked.”
Linos, standing beside me before I’d noticed him arrive, folded his arms and put the documents away inside his coat.
“We have one more pretext for destroying them. That is all it is.”
“I suppose so…”
Not just a completion report, then, but a whole separate piece of work on top of it. A bit of a nuisance, although I’d had time on my hands for the last two weeks or so, and it was about right for getting a body moving that had gone soft.
—Right then. Time to show what I can actually do, for once in a while.
With the burning lodge at our backs, we left.
As leader of the Provisional Elite Corps’ intelligence unit, I’d keep supporting Lady Valtrune and boss from here. And for now, get the results we’d just picked up safely home, and build my strength back up before the next job.