Andro Motta stared in utter disbelief as the girl bounced out of the trench. Her limbs swung with slightly exaggerated motions as she sprinted toward the Imperial army's line.
Everyone thought a powered mech charging the enemy should charge fearlessly, like a rhinoceros striding with its head held high. But Shali's mech looked more like a monkey with its backside on fire.
He knew, of course, that Shali wasn't moving so wildly because she was drunk. She probably had little experience piloting powered armor, had shoved the throttle all the way forward, and had no idea how to keep her balance.
That didn't make much sense! Hadn't she claimed to be a seasoned ranger who'd traveled across most of the world? Traveling through space meant dealing with all kinds of emergencies. Even psychics had to use machinery to handle accidents now and then. There was no way she'd never piloted a mech before, was there?
The truth was, in this day and age, any ranger or freelance mercenary daring enough to roam the galaxy looking for work was at least a semi-professional mechanic and powered-armor pilot. Psychics were no exception.
Come to think of it, Miss Shali's background really was a little mysterious. Aside from her extraordinary skills, in many ways she seemed like a sheltered noble young lady.
...Still, a noble young lady calmly walking across frozen ground strewn with corpses in a thin dress would be quite a shocking sight even among the martial-minded nobles of Tiriro.
In any case, she certainly wasn't an ordinary ranger.
Motta's wild thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, deafening roar. A blazing flash erupted across the frozen ground, followed by an even more violent and deadly shock wave. Filthy clods of earth and snow flew everywhere, raising a lethal wall of wind