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Section 1
## Illustrations
## Chapter One
It was a dim and lightless night. Heavy banks of cumulonimbus covered the land, while far overhead curtain-like altostratus drifted, blotting out the thin moonlight. In a blackness so complete that even an owl’s flight was thrown off, a red flower bloomed, tearing the night sky apart. The Libertalian Air Force’s single-engine jet fighter, the “Super Storm” (Super E シュペルオラージュ), able to climb to eight thousand meters, blew apart as if two thousand cubic meters of aviation fuel had detonated. One after another the fragments, trailing fire, fell and vanished into the heavy cloud layer below. “Selvan! Selvan’s been taken out!” The wail came echoing from the radio. The third casualty was the formation leader. No longer able to issue a single effective order as commander, the formation leader became scraps scattered toward the earth. “Damn it! This is Yellow 2. I’m taking command!” “Where the hell is the enemy? We can’t see a thing!” “It’s over. We can’t get away.” “Shut up, kid!” The pilots still alive squawked and clamored. Extreme tension and terror had triggered a massive release of the brain’s own narcotic chemicals, and the emotions of everyone flying a fighter ran wild in every direction. The pilots, reason already gone, could not even manage that basic of the military: unity of opinion. It is easy to sneer at a spectacle this ugly, but from where they stood there was nothing to laugh at. Set in the pitch-black night, on soil far from home…
## Chapter Two
A life long turned upside down between day and night is not a habit one shakes off in a day or two. The fatigue seeping without pause from the face Klaus dragged up off the officially issued bed showed just how wretched last night’s sleep had been. He rubbed his eyes and, at the window, met the morning sun while looking out at the view. What lay before him was the streets of Belhagen, the academy city still spreading across the north of the Libertalian Empire. In Belhagen, this Western world that had walked out of a history soaked in blood, anyone who held a loyal heart in the pursuit of scientific truth was equal. On these streets, people rose above the conflicts of nation, religion, and people, and could stand shoulder to shoulder, giving everything they had to the problems of science. At the same time, because the populace here carried the Libertalian spirit of respect for advanced intellect, people from other lands were not discriminated against, and the odd conduct scientists took up on a whim was tolerated. Belhagen could be called one of the few places that deserved the name of a scientists’ paradise. Yet even in paradise, darkness clung. Not every research institute and scientist pursued pure scientific inquiry alone. Organizations and scientists who had come for ends other than human progress and the advancement of science existed as well—regrettable, and real. In the suburbs of Belhagen, for example, there was an SS technical proving ground. Every day that ground ran all manner of experiments aimed at raising the efficiency of slaughter and destruction. Two days ago, coming from Belhagen…
## Chapter Three
Just as the hard winter withdrew and spring drew near to waking, Vestonia shifted its policy a little. They seemed to want the new bomb not only for holding the Fourth Great War in check, but for hastening the end of the Sabian civil war as well. Just as the giant machines that had appeared again, together with their legions of escort fighters, crushed the emergency force of the ***Adler Legion, blew apart a company of Sabian rebel troops and a strategic strongpoint, and people on every side were racked with worry for reasons of their own, the little witch was running flat out. The ***Wilhelmina Memorial Institute was driving forward, with the force of a raging tide, the development plan Analisa had proposed. From the moment the plan was approved, the work had gone on around the clock without a day of rest. The technical team went without saying; even Analisa did not go home at night, and slept in the laboratory. It was into this extreme busyness that the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) came to request a consultation with Analisa. She had wanted to drive them off with a single line—“Don’t come here and get in the way, you octopus”—but with a figure of the rank of Director of the OKW Economic Equipment Bureau calling in person, she could not do that. This was, in effect, a message declaring that the situation was extremely urgent and that the armed forces had been driven to the utmost hardship. Army Lieutenant General ***Gustav Bayerlein, Director of the Economic Equipment Bureau, visited Analisa together with Ingrid and spoke with her in a respectful, calm tone. The enemy giant machine, laden with the bombs that were the heart of the problem, flew at a height that not only fighters, but even high-altitude anti-aircraft missiles, could hardly reach…
## Final Chapter
The early-summer wind was very pleasant. Klaus Schläfer, having come out of ***Berlichingen Station, bathed in the mild sunlight, walked the street lined on both sides with lindens and beeches all the way to the bus stop, and sat down on a bench. He let out a breath, loosened his collar, set his luggage beside him, then drew a cigarette from his breast and began to smoke. There was still a little time before the bus came to meet Klaus. Smoking, he took up the weekly he had bought on the way and began to read the pieces inside. As he read the idle gossip about entertainers and the articles that seemed to look at the world from the waist down, a piece that caught his interest suddenly leapt into view. “The Sabian Civil War: A Script Toward the End” The unrest that had gone on without cease at the western edge of the Western sphere was at last about to be brought to a stop. The great offensive known as the “Bloody Spring,” begun a year ago with the successful hunt of a giant machine, had been a great success. The rebel army had completely seized the initiative, and the countries that had originally backed the republican government had given up and drawn back their hands. As a result the rebels controlled eighty percent of Sabia. Radical republican volunteers from all over the world and fanatical communist forces were still resisting to the last, but the general trend was settled— When Klaus had read the whole article he shook the ash onto the ground and blew out a plume of purple smoke. “They don’t understand a damn thing.” He did not know what sources the writer had drawn on, but the piece was far too shallow. An end? What came next was the climax. From here on…
## Afterword
A sudden confession: I am, in fact, a gamer. In recent years I have mainly played FPS and A (action games), but I also like STG (shooting games). Well—I like them, and I am terrible at them. I usually get stuck by the second stage and cannot clear it. And I am getting on in years; my eyes cannot keep up anymore. Even so, the worldviews of STG games, and their fiercely individual characters, still draw me in deep. Ikaruga, Radirgy, DoDonPachi, Cho Aniki, Espgaluda… every one of them is outstanding. Most commercial games in Japan take the path of righteous companions and the pursuit of a happy end; I prefer the simple, choice-rich stories inside STGs. I am also looking forward to the high-definition HD port of Under Defeat. And while I was writing this book, the home-console port of Espgaluda II had just come along. That character immediately became my favorite. Well—actually I like his grown-up form even more. In any case, I will do my best to share this joy with all of you readers () ……Ah, A really is too cold. So the conversation got forcibly cut off, then? That is fine too. So from here I will change the mood and say something serious. One of the reference works for this book, The Psychology of “Killing” in War (by Dave Grossman, published by Chikuma Shobo), holds that “human beings have a strong resistance to the act of slaughtering their own kind.” This strong human resistance to the act of killing, Grossman describes with words such as 【the noble quality human beings possess】 and [this resistance lets us believe that hope for humanity still exists. This power of resistance, when it…