Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume3 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 5===

The floating general airport’s control tower had enough communications equipment to intercept transmissions on any frequency, but now Omotesandou Kyouka had the random number table needed to decrypt the Indian military’s transmissions.

A vast amount of clear voices and data were revealed to her.

But even with it all visible and audible, it used a lot of technical terms and codewords meant to hide those terms, so a normal person would have had a hard time comprehending what was being said. But she was different.

“I see.”

“Wh-what is it?” hesitantly asked Letnahe Kurent.

She would not escape this untouched now that she had handed over the flash memory containing the random number table. She had shaken free of her hesitation, but she would still want something useful to come of it.

She had cast out her spirit of justice for this.

Even after marrying and exchanging rings, she had never been able to throw out her first love. She would protect Kiyosawa Hadome from this crisis. She would not back down on that no matter what.

Kyouka removed her headset.

“The Indian Space Force wants to launch their nuclear strike no matter what. Since they refuse to recalculate their schedule even as the conditions change and new information comes in, they are most likely planning for their attack on the Threat to fail. I explained that much before, didn’t I?”

“But why!? If they launch a nuclear strike but it doesn’t show results, the international backlash will be fierce. Does the Indian military want to commit diplomatic suicide!?”

“What if they could bring another country down with them?”

Kyouka laughed and Letnahe stared in shocked silence.

“On who will responsibility fall if the nuclear strike fails? This mission is not being run by the Indian military alone; it is run by the larger coalition force. I don’t know if the US or China are in charge, but whatever superpower is at the top will take the blame more than any of the individual countries making up the coalition. All those smaller countries will refuse to take the blame, insisting that the superpower pressured them into it.”

“So you’re saying,” the silver-haired, brown-skinned soldier gulped while touching the side of her glasses. “Everyone would take damage, but not the same amount? And if another country took more damage than their own, then the Indian military would benefit? That’s their game!?”

“Everyone signs nuclear reduction treaties, but nuclear weapons never seem to go away, do they? Why is that? If the treaty says each country must reduce their nuclear weapons by 30%, then the burden is vastly different for a country with 100 versus a country with 10,000. Which is why they never succeed. Well, they might do it so they can dispose of the excess they don’t want to bother keeping around any longer, but a compromise to bring peace? That’s only an excuse used once they have carefully thought through everything and they know the burden on the other nation will be greater. It’s a strategic move, similar to something from shogi or chess.”

With a normal nuclear reduction treaty, the damage would not be all that great.

They only agreed to a target to aim for and there were no actual penalties in place if they failed to achieve that target. The country could weasel out of it with their usual equivocation.

But things would be different this time. They would have made a nuclear strike that failed to defeat the Threat. They would have caused many unnecessary deaths. And it would be unclear whether responsibility lay with the Indian military or the entire coalition force.

Would that be allowed to stand?

The furious people of the world would undoubtedly demand a forced reduction treaty with actual penalties for noncompliance. The actual reduction amount might be 50% or 80%, but whatever it was, the countries with more nukes would have to pay more to dispose of them.

India was officially recognized as a nuclear power, but they had far fewer than America or Russia. If they could keep the damage to themselves low, they could effectively rob their opponents of national power.

“What is my homeland doing?” asked Letnahe like it was a curse.

She cared about the family represented by her ring, but she also could not throw out the memories of her first love contained in her watch.

While trapped between those two, she had to be aware that everyone in the world had people they cared about in the same way. And they had met other people they found irreplaceable. But all of that would be brought crashing down as simply as performing a sum or subtraction.

But Kyouka shrugged.

“I can’t really blame them.”

“?”

“All of humanity must join together to fight the Threat. That one excuse is all anyone needs to endlessly expand their military these days. But the fight against the Threat will end someday. And what will everyone do with their stockpiled weapons then? Do you really think they will dispose of them after spending so much money on them? Do you honestly think the top brass will throw out all their privileges and make themselves unemployed?”

“But…”

“The fight against the Threat might end, but they will still find a way to make those weapons necessary. How about they fight against natural disasters? They could use powerful missiles to drive the greenhouse gasses out of their country and they could use underground nuclear experiments to create artificial earthquakes that provide a safe release for the power of the plates. Really, it could be anything, even missile farming or drone mining. They will all find some reason or another to protect their way of life. …We will continue to live in an age where every country wants as many weapons as it can get. So is it that strange for someone to decide now that they should take weapons away from the other nations?”

Letnahe gasped this time.

She could not believe how far this conspiracy went. Each individual piece might seem reasonable enough in isolation, but the end result had put Omotesandou Kyouka’s home of Japan in the crosshairs. Not only had she been born and raised there, but her trusted companions were fighting on the front line just before this meaningless nuclear strike that was never meant to succeed.

Yet she “couldn’t really blame them”?

She actually sympathized with India’s plans and what they hoped to gain?

“What is going on in that head of yours?” Letnahe was dumbfounded, but she could not keep her questions inside. The words came out on their own. “Do you know how many civilians with no connection to the fight against the Threat will die!? And not just from the direct blast and heat! The wind will carry the fallout across this entire archipelago!! This isn’t just some number calculated out on a document. The lives being snuffed out here are all people who someone cares about more than anyone else in the world. That someone cares about so much they would be willing to violate all their principles and morals to protect them!”

“Yes.” Even now, Kyouka responded as promptly as ever. “I’m sure you already know since you must have done a thorough investigation on me, but my family lives in Kyoto. My parents, my grandmother, and my little brother. Oh, and the servants and drivers who have worked for my family long enough that they’re basically family to me. Their only real source of information is TV and the newspaper. That and anything they hear people talking about in the neighborhood, I suppose. They’re as normal as they come and a little too accustomed to peace, so I have my doubts if they would even evacuate after hearing the siren blaring. Even so, they are fairly well known in the local area.”

“…”

“I care about them more than my own life. In the event of a nuclear explosion, they will receive a large dose of radiation. And if Crystal Magic fails and the Threat is free to attack, they might just wipe out all of Kansai.”

Yet she was unmoved.

She remained her usual self and took only the optimal actions.

She had lifted her mind to a place that Letnahe had never managed since she kept her ring on even while wearing that white military uniform.

“But why should I weep and wail? What would that change?” Anyone who saw the President here would realize that even smiles came in multiple varieties. This one looked like her face had been sliced open in a crescent moon shape. “The first ship taught me all too well that death does not discriminate. Pray all you want, no god is going to answer. God is not a vending machine that dispenses miracles for anyone who wants one. Do these not sound like the words of the strongest? Writing up a formal complaint about life being unfair would be a waste of time. We need to focus on the good fortune we have to find ourselves here and with a few different options available to us. We can still change how this plays out. So what is it we can do? And what ''should'' we do?”

“Are you saying…you know the answer to that?”

“Whether it is an ‘unfortunate misunderstanding’ or a ‘communications failure’, the Indian Space Force wants an excuse to launch their nuke. They want something that shows Grimnoah has lost and the adult military must take over.”

“Are you saying you can keep them from doing that by taking away their excuse? Like…having Grimnoah defeat the Threat right away? No, we wouldn’t be in this mess if you could-”

“Wrooong,” cut in the President. Then she presented her conclusion. “We can’t defeat the Threat right away, but don’t you think we could obscure the result, ensuring no one can tell if we won or lost?”