Horizon:Volume 10A Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Circuit Name Girl

They’re spinning

They’re spinning

They’re spinning

Are they winning?

Point Allocation (Calm Enough to Rhyme)

●

The Musashi’s departure was instantaneous.

Those up top were only spared being ripped from the ship thanks to Musashi’s gravitational control, but the shaking was too much to be fully eliminated.

There were those for whom the secondary effects lifted their feet from the deck and began to send them into the air.

The Musashi’s acceleration caused most to fall over and land astern.

This even happened to a few of the Technohexen.

They were quickly lifted to their feet by the others or escaped harm by grabbing onto the towing belts or ropes that had been attached with hooks to reinforce weaker areas during acceleration.

But those who had risen too far for the counterattack had nothing to grab onto. Musashi’s residents regularly worked in high places, so they had spells for controlling their falling speed. So if they began to fall and couldn’t land on any structures or towing belts…

“Farewell, my friends! Our battle ends here!”

“Yes, farewell! But come to think of it, we didn’t arrange a rendezvous point for anyone who falls!”

“Oh, you’re right! Then farewell for real! Wahhhh!!”

As they rapidly noticed their failure to communicate and plan, someone else rushed in.

It was a blue god of war with a canine texture.

“Is that the Satomi President’s Righteousness!?”

●

Yoshiyasu was mildly enjoying her first flight in a while.

The battle had already begun, but her current job was to travel between the Musashi’s ships and pass rescue ropes and spells to anyone falling from the stern.

The ropes were thin and with hooks on either end. They were meant for work in elevated locations and their 20m length was contained in a tubular bag.

But when she was heading out, everyone nearby was shocked by how she pulled them out of the bags with Righteousness’s hands.

“Gods of war usually use a special stocker to remove those.”

Should she take that as a compliment of her deftness with the god of war’s fingers?

She was also given an additional spell that acted as a patch for the usual fall speed control spell. It provided a correction spell that would direct them toward the Musashi’s deck and a defense barrier spell that would activate in an emergency. The former would prevent them from falling off the ship, but the latter would create a midair foothold for them.

Of course, that latter case would not provide a horizontal platform. It was only creating a wall to stop their fall, so it was tricky to control. Yoshiyasu was creating defense barriers as well, but she was still getting the hang of it and sometimes placed too much distance between the faller and the barrier. When they crashed into it, it would give them a spin, so…

“Ahh! Satomi President! Thank you- gwahhhhhhhhh!”

“Ha ha ha! You’re not supposed to hit the barrier like tha- gwahhhhhhhhhhh!”

“Wow, you two suck! I can handle it, Satomi Pres- gwahhhhh!”

I really shouldn’t be screwing up three in a row like that, she thought, so she moved in closer next time even though that was more annoying for her.

All that aside, it was unusual for the ship to accelerate so quickly that even Musashi residents were thrown off.

They had only managed it thanks to the purging of most of the base hulls and all unnecessary blocks plus the reinforcements to the frame.

The port gravitational cruising system had been partially closed until the Azuchi approached, but the thrusters on the starboard side of the port ships and all the thrusters on the central and starboard ships had been open and directed aft.

Once they took action, all of those were pressurized.

The barrage and everything else had been a smokescreen for their escape.

They were moving fast.

They broke free of the Azuchi as it overshot them and they were directed southeast. Moving from the Kyou region to Mikawa.

To complete the history recreation of the Iga Crossing.

●

The Iga Crossing, huh? thought Yoshiyasu.

According to the Testament, the main Matsudaira force had arrived in Sakai, but the Honnouji Incident occurred while they were on their way to Kyoto. Fearing an attack from the Akechi forces or an Ikki, they decided to pass through the Iga mountains for a retreat to Mikawa.

The records of that history recreation left a lot of unknowns, but Musashi counted as the Akechi forces at the moment and the Iga Crossing was a good way for returning them to being the Matsudaira forces.

If they could escape to Mikawa, the Iga Crossing would be established. In the big picture, that would announce that they were no longer Akechi and would make any pursuit from Hashiba meaningless. But to do that…

“We need to hurry.”

The Musashi has been accelerating in stages for a bit now.

Travel between ships currently meant either using a towing belt with a craft the size of a transport ship or using a craft that could keep up with the Musashi’s acceleration like Yoshiyasu’s Righteousness.

The aerial group was made up of members of the special duty teams and officers. They wouldn’t engage in combat, but they were essentially skilled delivery workers who could provide rescue support.

They didn’t have much personnel left with the base hulls gone, but these were essentially the elites. And based on that level of preparation…

…They were expecting this back before the Honnouji Incident, weren’t they?

Not only had they removed the base hulls, but they had prepared the necessary personnel too.

Righteousness: “Musashi Representative Committee Head, did you arrange the personnel?”

Nagaya-Stable: “The Vice President gave the order and I first had each committee head make recommendations and ask for volunteers. Everyone was free to choose to remain or not, so it was our job to determine what we could do with the people we had and make the necessary adjustments.”

Righteousness: “Must be nice to have so many people in your academy…”

Nagaya-Stable: “What’s so nice about having no end of work? When I was in Satomi, I had enough down time to go fishing. I much prefer it that way.”

That’s one way of seeing it, I guess, thought Yoshiyasu, but she felt like they both had a point.

“Oh.”

The sign frame placed over her sight devices told her the special duty team members had finished circling around a protruding area.

That meant her job was complete, but things were still underway.

Vice President: “Have you finished rescuing them!? Then continue the Musashi’s acceleration!”

…We’re still not done speeding up?

That meant the battle outside the ship would be limited to artillery and craft as mobile as hers.

Was it immature to hope she would get a chance to fight? She wasn’t sure.

But what would happen now? She hoped they could escape. As someone who would play a role in Musashi’s future, she had an interest in that future.

She thought they could make it.

Hashiba had badly overshot them earlier. They had done a splendid job of trying to ram the Musashi, but they had been fooled by Musashi’s barrage and failed to keep up with the Musashi’s escape.

The Azuchi was no longer astern of the Musashi. As the Musashi accelerated eastward, the Azuchi was more to the south than the west. They were on an ascending course toward the narrow plains of Nara.

Their course was completely off now. It looked like the two ships had crossed paths nearly perpendicularly.

“So can we win this without even fighting!?”

Just as Yoshiyasu said that, alarms sounded and a series of red sign frames opened around the 3rd starboard ship below her to the southeast.

This was a warning.

…For what?

What did they need to be warned about now that they had successfully begun their acceleration getaway?

“What is it?”

She linked Righteousness’s sight devices to the Musashi’s sensor data.

Righteousness was a god of war, but it had trouble processing all of the data coming from the Musashi. So to make it easier to comprehend, she extracted just the visual data separated into three primary colors.

When she added in light amplification for night vision, she was stunned by the resolution and breadth of view. But the Musashi had an acting captain who could handle data even broader and deeper than this.

…And she’s the daughter of a bathhouse!

Musashi’s personnel all seemed so weird to her.

But she immediately grasped the purpose of the warning. One area had been given a denser concentration of resolution.

The Azuchi.

The bows of the three leading ships were drawing out white lines of fog in the night air.

However, those trails were not extending from north to south.

They began from the north where the Azuchi had started, but…

“They’ve turned east, toward us!?”

●

Suzu read the Azuchi’s motion.

The ships of the same model as the Musashi’s were on an ascending course, but they began to gently turn to the east.

…They opened their thrusters on just one side!

The Musashi used the same trick for rapid turns or drifting.

“Suzu-sama! What is the Azuchi doing?”

“A side flip drift!”

Suzu answered without hesitation.

She wasn’t certain, of course. But operating a colossal ship had taught her some things. No matter how large and heavy a ship, there was a trick to making rapid turns.

…You need a side kick!

In other words, drifting.

Generally, that meant rapidly braking the bow end.

While the ship’s inertia pushed it forward, the bow became heavier while the stern became lighter. The bow could leave its course thanks to its weight and it would remain locked to that course, but the lightened stern would swing around in a turn using the bow as the pivot point, creating a drift that seemed to “swing around the ship’s rear end”.

How the bow was handled as the stern rotated around it would greatly change the ship’s course and speed.

What would the Azuchi do there?

…Will they gather momentum…to pursue us? Or will they reduce their excess speed…to pursue us?

She knew this was a side flip drift, but what kind would it be? The answer arrived from an unexpected source.

Tonbokiri: “Their side flip drift’s high-speed rotation is coming as a high-speed rotation!”

I’m not entirely sure what she means by that…but it’s fine as long as I partially understand…right?

●

Yoshiyasu saw it as she landed Righteousness on the Oume’s stern bridge.

She saw the Azuchi’s side flip.

And this wasn’t just a side flip.

…They’re also sliding their bow along in a drift!

With just a side flip, the bow pivot point would have its position fixed once it was directly below the side flip. Just like a human doing a cartwheel couldn’t move their hands supporting them on the ground.

But the Azuchi had broken that assumption. In their pursuit of the Musashi, they had taken their ascending north-to-south course and twisted their bow around to the east. And like that…

…Their supporting “hands” are sliding toward us!

Their front port ship, which was the farthest from the Musashi, had its bow drop down fastest. The front central ship was next and the front starboard ship last, but its bow stabbed down closest to the Musashi.

Those three ships did not stay put. Like three pillars, they glided rapidly through the sky, skimming just above the surface.

And the three rear ships swung around in the sky to follow after the first three.

The Azuchi performed a handstand.

All of its momentum was concentrated in the stern of the three ships swinging skyward. It was just like swinging a hammer or other weapon with a heavy end. Not much strength was needed at the front because the stern was swung through the sky by its own weight and momentum.

“Oh.”

As Yoshiyasu watched, the Azuchi’s three front ships had their downwards-pointing bows dragged through the sky.

The force of the Azuchi’s charge had swung its stern upwards. Pulled by the inertia of the stern, the three front ships were lifted upwards and pulled a bit backwards.

But the front three ships wouldn’t allow it.

The sliding bows accelerated further and were pulled upwards while the gap between the front and rear ships was bent just a bit from above.

The force pulling the front ships upwards had been given an angle by the bend.

The bows of the rear ships briefly stopped in midair and their sterns instead moved forward.

This resulted in the three groups of front and rear ships forming three “>” shapes in a row.

Asama: “Huh? That doesn’t look too good.”

Circle Be: “Yeah, while it’s not the same type of movement, doing that with towing transport ships is a bad idea. The back of the rear ships will pass the front ship, but that means the link between them will tug the front ship back, which makes it impossible to control.”

Laborer: “With linked carts, that can happen when you reach a corner on a slope. The rear cart will slide forward and swing the front cart around. I’ve had to go without pay a few times because of that.”

Then had the Azuchi failed its maneuver?

Had it tried to pursue the Musashi and screwed it up?

But someone objected to that opinion.

Bell: “No…! It’s like…Futayo-san said!”

The acting captain’s voice urged them to be cautious.

Bell: “Their high-speed rotation…is rotating at high speed.”

What did that mean? Yoshiyasu was watching the motion with her god of war’s sight devices and she took a closer look at how the Azuchi’s front ships were being pulled upwards.

Righteousness: “It started as a high-speed side flip led by the front ships, but is it now a high-speed side flip led by the rear ships!?”

●

“Azuchi” saw this fleet maneuver as a complete “failure”.

General wisdom said performing a side flip was unthinkable, but she had accepted it after performing it a few times already.

The problem was how their excessive momentum during the side flip allowed the rear ship to surpass the front ships.

If the Azuchi were a human, this was like cartwheeling too fast and screwing up the landing. Because the hips or legs hit the ground first.

This was the same. The Azuchi’s ships were losing their balance and falling.

They were forming “>” shapes now, so they would fall forward instead of “landing on their feet”.

In other words, it was a failure.

But that was only when viewing this as a human action or as a standard maneuver.

They were performing this maneuver in the night sky, not on the ground. And unlike a human body, the front and rear ships could maneuver independently of each other.

The two sets of ships had formed three “>” shapes side by side.

There was a way to bring that back to success.

“The front ships have started angling down, so we will swing them backwards like pendulums. Shaja.”

After pulling the front ships up and swinging the rear ships toward the sky, they had plenty of clearance below.

That meant they simply had to swing the front ships back to turn the “>” shape into a “\” shape.

“Here we go! This will be a high-speed side flip drift with a stern-focused direction change!”

She did not stop there. There was more they had to do.

They needed something else to direct their bows toward the Musashi and catch up.

“We will perform three consecutive flips! Shaja!”

●

Suzu pursed her lips.

The Azuchi’s maneuver was even wilder than the Musashi’s.

…Th-three flips!?

That was so much rarer than a single loop-the-loop.

But the Azuchi sent its three front ships rotating backwards like kicking feet and threw its stern end forward.

In a side flip.

That would ordinarily direct its bow toward the ground, but since this was continuing after their initial flip, the three ships’ sterns were rotating toward the ground like the hands planted on the ground in a cartwheel.

And in their place, the front ships were swung around toward the sky.

The front ships were lighter than the rear ships, so they whipped through the sky, trailing fog.

None of it ended there. The rear ships again soared backwards like kicking feet to make another flip that was compact yet didn’t lose any speed.

Suzu realized something as she rotated the Azuchi’s model once and then twice.

First, each flip brought the Azuchi’s course closer to a pursuit of the Musashi.

And second, based on the order of the flips…

…They’re picking up speed to catch up to the Musashi!

The Azuchi intended to finish the maneuver by throwing their bow forward with plenty of momentum.

●

Yoshiyasu noticed a difference between this maneuver and the Azuchi’s side flip she had seen during the Kantou Liberation.

…The initial half rotation shifted it out of place!

A giant ship’s side flip was generally meant to kill its momentum.

By landing with its stern in the direction of motion, it could use the forward thrust produced by its thrusters to brake against the backwards sliding.

But what if an an extra half rotation threw the bow in the direction of motion?

“All of its ships will be launched forward!”

That was exactly what Yoshiyasu saw in the southwest sky.

Thanks to the consecutive side flips, air currents raced through the night sky and white clouds of fog spread out like ripples. And the Azuchi completed its three and a half flips as it spun through the sky.

Bell: “Here…it comes!”

The Azuchi adjusted its course like a wheel, taking a course that would bring it behind the Musashi.

It was attempting to match the Musashi’s course from the southwest.

The Azuchi’s three front ships had been thrown out into the sky overhead, in a position that appeared even higher than the moons.

It stretched up in the sky and, this time, did not descend from its side flip motion.

Showing off its bottom hull, the black and red ships each split the white clouds of fog while pursuing from the southwest.

“Here they come!” shouted the people watching the sky from the Musashi’s deck below. “Are they trying to stop our Iga Crossing!?”

●

Vice President: “Hm, I need to consider some possibilities.”

Horizey: “What kinds of possibilities, Masazumi-sama!? A counter punch on the pursuing ship using your Masazumi Cannon!? I’m sure that would dispirit them too much to continue pursuit!”

Vice President: “The Battle of Mikawa would have turned out very differently if I could do that.”

Art-Ga: “Have you completely forgotten how you did do that when Tres España attacked?”

Flat Vassal: “So what’s going on again?”

Novice: “We thought we were manipulating them, but they may have been manipulating us. Is that it, Takarazuka Honda-kun?”

Silver Wolf: “You mean their initial charge, right? We made a show of counterattacking and tried to evade the Azuchi, but since they were coming straight toward us, we had no choice but to head away and begin our Iga Crossing.”

10ZO: “But instead of the Azuchi overshooting us and giving up, they’ve stayed with us…so you think they had planned for this?”

Vice President: “Judge, that’s right. I think they’re being commanded by Takenaka Hanbei. And based on our debate in Kantou, she was a good choice for their situation.”

Tachibana Wife: “What situation is that?”

Vice President: “High damage, high return. She’s willing to make any sacrifice as long as she wins in the end. That’s the perfect policy given Hashiba’s position.”

●

This is a real pain, thought Naomasa with a whistle as she entered Musashino’s engine room.

“Oh?” The workers who hadn’t evacuated turned back toward her, but there weren’t many of them. However, it was only the veterans who had stuck around and Taizou smiled bitterly down from the bridge spanning the top of the engine room.

“Sounds like the Vice President had her surprise ruined.”

“You see it that way too, Old Man Taizou?”

“I do,” he said while metallic machinery sounded from port and starboard. The gravitational thrusters were being adjusted to align in more of a straight line.

The thrusters had been pointed a bit inward before, so ether light and heat had scattered within the enclosed engine room. But now all that was being drawn out, producing wind.

“It’s getting chilly,” commented Naomasa as she followed the structures and control devices that began sliding within the engine room.

The view from above made management easier, but actual control ultimately required contact with the machines to perform various checks.

She started by pulling out spare thrusters in order to support the movement of the external thrusters.

She operated them in the unmoving central base. She checked a few sign frames and gave authorization.

“Isn’t it a little soon to say they saw through the surprise?”

“No, the Azuchi didn’t hesitate at all. That means they had decided to do this from the beginning. Even if we had sent people out to counterattack, the Azuchi’s commander probably would have found some reason to make their charge.”

Meaning…

“If we had been slower to move, they might have rammed us from more of an angle instead of straight on like this. Suzu-san did a good job.”

“Hey,” called over another team leader. “What should we do!? We’re shorthanded, so if you know what’s going to happen, we’d love to know now!”

“Keep us going straight, idiot. Because that gives us the most speed.”

“Judge!” A few workers raised a hand, readied their wrenches, and adjusted the control systems to provide extra clearance in the movable parts. Naomasa made her own adjustments to leave the center as clear as possible and to avoid anything that would obstruct the thrusters. After that, she made regular adjustments to the power system to account for the outside environment and other external factors. With spell support, she increased or decreased the pressure at each point to keep the power output at the peak line at all times.

This kind of work helped cool her head. She checked the sign frame and smiled bitterly at Masazumi and the others’ discussion.

…Well, it’s good to be on our guard.

But…

“Don’t overthink everything, idiot.”

“That’s for sure,” said Taizou. “Focus too much on outdoing your opponent and you feel like you’ve lost as soon as you’re injured. Viewing survival as a win in and of itself is how you get Musashi’s carefree attitude.”

“Judge. But Old Man Taizou. Do you think they can catch up? The Azuchi’s side flip was really just a course correction. They made a compact turn while maintaining the speed of their charge, but they still need to catch up to us before we reach Mikawa.”

“Then I have only one thing to say: if they don’t catch up, we call that a win too, Naomasa.”

After some thought, Naomasa shrugged.

“Then I’ll work as hard as I can. Suzu’s doing her part up top, but the enemy will be doing the same.”

There was one other thing that bothered her.

“This course takes us away from Europe. I wonder what they think about that.”

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