C-Rank Ranked Match — The Bridge To Heaven

I’d been listening to the battle over the comms, so I knew how things stood. Niko had beaten Kurenai, then been taken down by Tsubasa herself.

“Sorry.”

That single word comes through from Niko.

There’s nothing to apologize for. She traded herself to take out Kurenai, who outranked her, and that alone is a huge accomplishment.

“You performed admirably. Crimson Wings are exceedingly troublesome when all three are gathered, so wearing Kurenai down is a great achievement.”

Ugh… Shiina said every single thing I’d wanted to say.

“N-Niko!! Um, I— that is—!”

“What is it?”

“Aaah, just leave the rest to us!!”

On the other end of the line, Niko laughs.

“Yeah. It’s all yours.”

The comms go quiet for a moment. And then,

“Shiki.”

Shiina pulls up on a bike in front of the house I’d been using as my base. I leap down from the rooftop.

“Is this bike an armament?”

“No. This one was simply left sitting out on the field. Vehicles such as bikes and cars, drones, EN Bottles, Repair Kits, Grenades and the like can all be recovered out in the field. Now then, please get on.”

“R-right! Excuse me, then!”

I climb on behind Shiina, but…

Um, I’ve never ridden two to a bike before… wh-where am I even supposed to hold on…

I try slipping my hands around Shiina’s sides.

“—?!”

— Twitch!! Shiina’s whole body gave a jolt.

“Wah?! S-sorry!!”

“…Shiki, a little lower, if you would.”

So Shiina’s ticklish at the sides. She’s got a surprising number of weak spots, huh…

This time I wrap my arms around her waist and press myself close against her.

“All set!”

“Shiki… um…”

“Wh-what is it?”

“There is no need to hold on quite so tightly… ah, no. It is nothing. Let us go.”

We ride down the road and out of town, the bike rolling along a neatly leveled dirt path.

“From here, we head for the center of the safe zone. The zone shrinks inward toward its center, so if we can reach the middle, we will be able to carry on from there without having to move about much.”

“Understood!”

“There is, however, one difficult stretch.”

“The great bridge, Heaven’s Road, right?”

“Precisely.”

I’d read the whole map before Shiina arrived. It’s built from two islands. The island I was on until moments ago is Origin Land; the one I’m heading for now is Oasis Land. Origin Land is half wilderness, while Oasis Land is mostly town; nature covers only about a fifth of it, a single small sea of trees.

To reach the center of the zone, we have to pass through Gunman City, where Niko went down. Between it and the plain we’re on runs a wide river fed from the sea, and the only way across is by bridge. That bridge is Heaven’s Road.

But according to Shiina, there’s a strong chance the bridge is being staked out for an ambush.

“The odds that a Space Girl is lying in wait on the bridge are around sixty percent. The bridge is three hundred meters long. It has width to it, but the footing is in truly poor condition. On top of that, the far side is dotted with any number of sniping positions, which makes it an ideal spot to lie in ambush.”

A long, exposed road, hard to cross at speed. For a sniper, there’s no easier place to line up a shot.

“If we are ambushed, I will rely on you for covering fire.”

“You got it!”

I straighten up, let go of Shiina with both hands, and equip my sniper rifle. The bridge draws closer. I peer through the scope to the far side, but there’s no sign of the enemy.

We’re okay… I think.

“We are entering the bridge!”

The instant the bike rolls onto the bridge, an enemy contact appears on my radar.

“Range five hundred! Three enemy units, all bunched together!!”

“We are punching straight through!!”

It happened just as we reached the middle of the bridge. Off in the distance, a massive swarm of rockets launched into the sky, arcing high and bearing down on us. Their count: fifty-four!!

“This many—?!”

“It’s FunBom! The whole team’s Bombers!!”

“Shiki! As many as you can—”

“I’ll shoot them down!!”

I convert the sniper rifle to data and stow it, then equip my assault rifle.

Bullet Piece!

With the Bullet Pieces and rapid fire from my assault rifle, I knock the rockets down one after another.

“What pinpoint shooting… not a single shot wasted.”

“But there’s no downing all of them!!”

Six of them… no matter what I do, there are rockets I can’t shoot down in time!!

Shiina can’t take her hands off the bike. The bridge is in bad shape, all ridges and cracks; letting go with even one hand could throw the whole thing off balance. But stopping to intercept the rockets would be a fool’s move too. Linger too long in a spot this exposed and another party could catch us in a pincer, and on top of that we’d never stop FunBom’s second volley.

“Shii!”

The Shield Pieces only launch four meters out! Blocking with them means eating the blast! And the Bullet Pieces are still recharging — I can’t fire them!

What do I—

“Six Petals!!”

Shiina launches Six Petals, and it stops the six rockets that slipped past my fire.

“I managed to hold them all off… but Six Petals is…!”

In a Ranked Match, once an armament is destroyed, there’s no repairing it. If a part has merely lost durability, a Repair Kit can mend it, but what’s been lost outright doesn’t come back. In other words, Six Petals is done for the rest of this Ranked Match.

“It cannot be helped. We simply could not afford to take damage here.”

“But what do we do?! The next volley’s coming any second!!”

I switch back to my sniper rifle.

“There is no problem. They are already within our sniper’s range.”

At the far end of the bridge, atop an observation deck, I can make out the Bomber units. Range: two hundred twenty meters.

“…At this range, missing is the harder thing to do.”

The three Bomber units swap in their rocket launchers and loose another volley. In that same instant, I squeeze the trigger of my sniper rifle.

I’m aiming not at the Bomber units, but at the rockets they’ve only just fired. My rifle round strikes one of them dead-on, touching off an explosion. The blast spreads to the other rockets, swelling into a detonation big enough to blow the observation deck clean apart.

Three more kills are added to my record.

“…Not a hair’s breadth off.”

“Splendid. I am sorry to ask when you have only just finished a job, but Shiki — I hear an engine behind us.”

A hundred and ten meters back, a four-seater car is chasing us. A Space Girl leans out of the passenger seat, leveling an assault rifle.

“It seems we have been used as bait.”

“So the moment we’ve outlived our use, they attack…”

I snipe out the car’s front tires, left and right. It loses its balance and comes to a stop dead in the middle of the bridge.

“You are not going to finish them off?”

“That’s right. Seven hundred meters ahead, I can see a car making straight for this bridge. Let’s set them on each other.”

“Fufu. It is good to see nothing go to waste.”

We ride on across the bridge. Behind us, a fierce clatter of gunfire breaks out.

But it’s none of my concern.