Editing Tytania:Volume 3 Chapter 3 (section)

=== III ===
From the 1<sup>st</sup> to the 3<sup>rd</sup> of February, SY&nbsp;447, the Tytania forces continued their reconnaissance operations both above and below the sea. A joke was whispered that if an army of such magnitude were to submerge, the entirety of Bargash’s oceans would expand in volume and transform into Archimedes’ bathtub. It was on the third day at 18:50 that a definitive report arrived.

“An enemy signature has been detected on radar.”

“What is the distance?”

“Just under 1,500 kilometres.”

“In outer space, that would be a mere instant.”

Under the sea, however, things did not work that way. Utilising WG, the cruising speed was 150 kilometres per hour, with a maximum of 190 kilometres per hour, and fleet manoeuvres required ten hours to complete.

“I was thinking about it too much in a roundabout way.”

Ariabert flashed a bitter smile for the umpteenth time that day. While navigating underwater required ten hours, once they emerged into the air and reached the airspace above the target, it would take less than one. He himself was well-versed in combat within the vacuum of space, yet when it came to matters within a planet’s atmosphere, he could not help but feel a subtle sense of unease.

Ariabert immediately ordered the ascent to the sea surface and the transition to aerial flight. However, he limited this to only half the fleet, leaving the remaining half to continue navigating underwater. The unit led by Ariabert himself would resurface to the east of the enemy, then dive to attack from the east while pursuing them towards the west. Should the enemy flee westward, their retreat would be blocked by the underwater unit, resulting in a pincer movement from both the east and the west. If they attempted to surface, they would be struck from above by the separate detachment waiting at low altitude. Furthermore, should they flee into the deep sea, they would only succeed in cutting off their own means of escape.

Ariabert muttered to himself:

“I shall make Mr&nbsp;Fan Hyulick a prisoner of Tytania for the fourth time. This time, I shall have to invite him to Uraniborg…”

It was not that he had sensed the murmur of Duke Ariabert Tytania, but Fan Hyulick, who was overhyped as a wandering hero, felt a sudden chill and pressed a hand to the nape of his neck. He had experienced this many times since he had unwittingly been branded an enemy of the Tytania Clan. He never grew accustomed to it, nor did it ever turn into pleasure.

The cruiser he was aboard, the ''Honest Old Man Junior''<ref name="ftn12">“Honest old man second generation” (正直じいさん二) is pronounced “Honest Old Man Junior”.</ref>, sat upon the seabed at a depth of 4,850&nbsp;metres. It had been there for nearly a month. The sight of this vessel, with a displacement of some forty thousand tonnes, lying on the ocean floor alongside other ships, might have evoked the image of a remote fish market rather than a display of heroic grandeur.

After the Vardana Empire—that is, Tytania—had formally declared war, Doctor Lee said the following to Fan Hyulick:

“If we suffer a single defeat, it will be the end of us. In other words, we must not fight until a state of certain victory has been established, both tactically, politically, and economically.”

“And when will that be established?”

“The devil knows,” answered the disciple of the devil with solemnity, while the unfortunate fugitive cursed the Doctor’s master under his breath.

Having descended to the seabed without having thought of any other ingenious or effective plan, he wondered if this choice had truly been the right one.

“The Blaze Flag Army was intimidated because Lord Ariabert took such a militant stance. Is there any guarantee that the Bargash government will not be intimidated?”

“I cannot provide such an unscientific guarantee.”

“You say that with such confidence. In any case…”

Fan Hyulick intended to retort with biting sarcasm, but as nothing came to mind, he merely faltered. He finally regained his composure and gathered his thoughts. If the Bargash government were to succumb to Lord Ariabert, what would become of their position?

“Should that happen, the Bargash government would abandon us. It is only natural; they have no obligation to share in our destiny.”

“… Perhaps I made a mistake.”

“At what?”

“At everything.”

Fan Hyulick had become extremely sceptical of life and fate. He wondered if he was destined to continue playing an ill-fitting role in an ill-fitting costume until the day he died.

Even so, he felt that it was a strange thing. When the space surrounding the hull was a vacuum, one gained a sensation of flight and floating, yet when the surroundings were high-pressure seawater, a sense of confinement and compression rushed in. Although the ship was supposed to be protected by multiple layers of its own structural strength and tension-vibration fields, it felt more like a tangible and intangible coffin.

The reason was not particularly complex. Once the shell protecting a fragile human being was breached, in space, one was sucked out into the void, whereas in the deep sea, the intruding water would crush the person. It could be said that this difference strangely influenced the psychology of the crew. Whether that was true or not, Fan Hyulick somewhat believed that such was the case.

The ''Honest Old Man Junior'' had originally possessed a different name, but the new crew members ignored it. Instead, they almost exclusively used the phonetic English abbreviation “OOJ<ref name="ftn13">OOJ is pronounced “double-O J”.</ref>”. Not every new crew member was a soldier of the Bargash Regular Army. Including Fan Hyulick, Doctor Lee, Compton and Miranda Casimir, Alan Mahdi, Mikhail Walenkov, Louis Edmond Pagès, Salam Amzekar, Doctor Ibn Kasim, Seraphine Coopers, and others, their total number came to two hundred and twenty-nine.

Even if they were called Tytania’s greatest enemy, this was the reality of their strength. They lacked at least three zeroes to fight a grand, head-on war. One could only feel a sense of awe at Tytania’s methods, dispatching even Lord Ariabert to a matter that could have been settled by simply sending a single battalion of the Military Police.

“Who could ever hope to win a head-on battle against Ariabert Tytania? Even I only won by a stroke of luck,” declared Fan Hyulick.

It was not a mere expression of modesty but a sincere sentiment. He did not even want to contemplate how that stroke of luck had altered the fates of millions, himself included. He had simply found himself in this state, struggling to fulfil his responsibilities while trapped in circumstances thrust upon him, and felt a sudden urge to demand a responsible answer from someone as to why the situation had come to this.

With every victory, he found himself driven into a greater corner. He had been cornered by Zarlisch, and just when he thought he had finally defeated him through the desperate counterattack of a trapped rat, he now found himself thrust into a conflict with Ariabert. It was as if a fatal navigational error had been programmed into his life’s course from the very beginning.

While reserving his objections to fate, he had managed to resolve to fight and die—even if that was nothing more than self-deception. Yet, it would have been one thing if he were to scatter magnificently amidst the brilliance of the stars; instead, he was forced to hold his breath at the bottom of some wretched, impoverished ocean on a miserable planet, waiting for either an enemy attack or their retreat. The situation only added to his sense of suffocation. For someone like Fan Hyulick, who had not yet reached the age of thirty, it would have been far easier to simply explode all at once.

However, that disciple of the devil known as Doctor Lee would not permit it. It seemed he would not even allow him the mercy of death until he had completed the equation in which Fan Hyulick took Tytania down with him.

As Fan Hyulick brooded irritably upon the past, the present, and the future, a young woman wearing a sun visor, Seraphine Coopers, smiled at him. She knew that the mantle of a hero did not suit Fan Hyulick’s frame.

“You’re giving up, then? Your only redeeming quality was that you would never yield to Tytania.”

“As far as I’m concerned, if Tytania would forgive me, I wouldn’t mind handing over ten thousand written oaths.”

Of course, Fan Hyulick knew that this would never happen. His very existence was a necessity to the Tytania regime. He would be kept alive as long as he was needed, and once his utility had passed, he would be eliminated. If Doctor Lee was indeed preferable to Tytania, then it would simply mean that Fan Hyulick would be allowed to live even after he was no longer required. In exchange, however, they would undoubtedly force upon him the homework of contemplating what human society would look like after the collapse of the Tytania regime.

Fan Hyulick felt a significant surge of anger. Why on earth should he be the one to fret over something like a “New Cosmic Order after the fall of Tytania”? There was absolutely no reason why he should bear such responsibility. If the disappearance of Tytania was to bring disaster upon human society, then they should simply have ensured Tytania’s survival and continued to submit to its rule. Indeed, the majority of human society was already content to do so. Fan Hyulick himself had been quite happy to live a life of complacent ease. And yet…

“Fan Hyulick!”

The call pulled him back to reality. It was a woman’s voice, yet lower and more forceful than that of Seraphine Coopers. Miranda’s face approached him, taut with tension and excitement.

“It looks like things have taken a turn for the worse. Tytania is…”

An alarm overlaid her voice as Seraphine Coopers readjusted her sun visor. Her act of taking up the heat rifle belonged more to the realm of an expression of fighting spirit than to any practical effectiveness in the combat that was about to unfold.

Her comrades, who had begun to move with urgency, also took up their rifles and exchanged looks of hardened determination.

“They’ve found us…!”

A tremor raced through the neural network.