Forty-two kilometers east of Chimera Seventeen, the "605th Artillery Position."
"Report! The Combat Command Center has just sent word: Target Zero has come under attack. The feint operation is temporarily suspended!"
"Report! The Command Center has issued updated orders! The feint operation will continue!"
"Seven minutes until the first batch of special ammunition reaches the position. Do not wait; begin loading immediately! The transport units will keep delivering the follow-up ammunition!"
The force stationed at the 605th Artillery Position was a patchwork artillery division assembled from four artillery regiments, temporarily designated the 605th Division. Its mission was to carpet-bomb the restricted zone with saturation fire before P.F.D.A. began its advance during Chimera Seventeen's final operation, clearing as many obstacles as possible from P.F.D.A.'s path.
Two hundred and seventy-five artillery pieces of varying calibers had been deployed across a position spanning 126 mu, arranged according to their ranges—the front half of the position lay on flat ground, while the rear half stretched upward along the foot of a mountain. At the summit of that unnamed hill stood a 970-millimeter Super Heavy Cannon.
"Super-heavy siege cannon—Nine Strikes."
Before Nine Strikes was built, the largest-caliber artillery piece in the history of human civilization had been the 800-millimeter Gustav Railway Gun.
Nine Strikes had come into existence entirely by accident—under normal circumstances, with advanced technology, a nuclear warhead no larger than a fist could wreak more destruction than ten Gustav Railway Guns combined. Coupled with today's incredibly mature rocket and missile technology, the only reason for a giant-caliber cannon like the Gustav Railway Gun to exist should have been to satisfy men's romantic fantasies about battleships and big guns. There had been even less need to build a resource-devouring monster like Nine Strikes.
It had been an unimaginably difficult siege... A city in Alaska