Clockwork Planet - Volume 02 Read online

  Prologue – Back Sweeper

  In this universe, ‘Eternity’ does not exist.

  This is the Truth. An absolute unchanging basic principle.

  This is not a topic of another notion.

  If there is a beginning, there is an end; this is hailed as the truth, and also a massive realistic line.

  It is the same as us being born for no reason, us dying in such worthless manners.

  This ever-changing universe will be burned to nothingness, it is just a matter of when.

  While the universe is expanding faster than light, the massive energy is being depleted at an unimaginable rate.

  This is called the end of the ‘thermal death’.

  Unlike what the term implies, a universe that cease to expand may end up being at absolute zero.

  Of course, this is merely one of the models of eschatology we have imagined.

  Humans have foolishly depleted time, intelligence, talent, and given the countless number of gears that form this universe—the laws of physics, we can deduce that such an end may come.

  We will meet our demise; it is only a matter of time.

  Humans, the universe, everything that exists will meet the same ending.

  This is a natural causation effect based on thermal physics, one without need for proof.

  –However, perhaps we cannot consider it this way.

  If the Truth is that Eternity does not exist,

  It will be impossible for the Truth itself to be Eternal.

  This is probably what ‘he’ thought.

  And then, he had this thought,

  “In that case, why don’t we fix it?”

  –The world permits paradoxes.

  This entire scenario was simply a case of antinomy, an illogical subjective coherency.

  Even after picking up on the latest hypotheses, Science is a teaching that constantly updates itself with new terms—it was simply a certain type of religion, but that was fully an issue of another dimension.

  This thing called the universe—is actually so illogical after all.

  This was what it seemed to ‘him’, at least.

  That this universe is still in ebauche, so Physics itself was a crippled theme.

  If he were to do something to the extraordinarily massive base movement,

  And if he were to change its movement completely, what sort of distortion would there be?

  For example, if he were to change a single gear.

  If that were to occur without creating paradoxes in Euclid’s geometry, the current universe would operate on completely different laws and continue running without a hitch.

  There were many people in history who thought of such things.

  However, there was only one person who had the ridiculous talent of turning this into reality.

  His name was ‘Y’.

  A mysterious talent who, through the use of gears, recreated the Earth that had suffered ‘thermal death’ and died.

  The best clock technician in all of humanity, who created the ‘Clockwork Planet’.

  –With such a ridiculous theory, ‘he’ established the greatest, monumental accomplishment ever since the beginning of time.

  It was so unrealistic it could be a legend amongst the mythology.

  However, the current reality could not be denied. Earth, supposedly dead, is now living on gears.

  Tick tock, tick tock—the clock hands continued to turn.

  A thousand years passed after that–

  (…The tobacco stinks.)

  ‘He’ curled his lips as he narrowed his mechanical eyes.

  The room was devoid of light, and it was pitch dark, yet he could see the tobacco flame as clear as day due to the light condensing function in his prosthetic eye, and silently exhales some smoke.

  It was a strong man in his prime.

  To be precise, he was a cyborg of that age. The thick frame was covered with muscle gears all over it, and a tight-fitting black rubber suit was wrapped around his power-type body.

  His name was Vermouth.

  That was not his real name—but a codename. He was an agent for a certain company.

  However, due to a blunder during his youth, he lost his original body and normal life.

  “…”

  The sigh was mixed with with a purple haze.

  Theoretically, he should not be smoking in the midst of a battle.

  The tobacco flame was easy to spot, and would leave a stench behind. As for health issues…this was not the problem.

  Even so, Vermouth continued to smoke. This was his superstition.

  The flame burned silently, and he inhaled some smoke before exhaling it out again.

  The scent of smoke certainly filled his body, buried in the midst of gears.

  Using that scent, Vermouth could determine his own luck.

  That—was not a good scent.

  He asked,

  “…Amaretto. Is my memory mistaken? Our job entails us staying here until the next morning, right?”

  Through the darkness, he stared at a corner.

  The shadow crouched at the thick steel door responded,

  “Can you please not pressure me like that? Senior Vermouth?”

  That person answered sarcastically.

  Like Vermouth, he too was dressed in a black rubber suit to blend with the darkness, his pale face the only thing showing. He was a young, lanky man.

  Without looking back, he continued to work on multiple tools with his hands, and said,

  “It’ll take time to get this unreactive gear lock to ring. Will be bad if you ejaculate too early.”

  “The tobacco smiles disgustingly shitty, Amaretto.”

  Vermouth snorted as he shook his massive frame.

  “We got to hurry up with our work and put out the fires under our feet. If we don’t hurry with this, we’ll have guns pointed at our butts here.”

  “…I’ve been thinking, Senior Vermouth Is there a special reason for you to be smoking when you have been converted completely into a cyborg? You can’t taste anything, right?”

  “I don’t know whether you’re an idiot, or I’m an idiot for trusting an idiot like you to watch my back? The smoke is not to be felt by the tongue, but by a man’s soul.”

  “It only that Galliano can maintain his tar-filled artificial lungs and be touched by that, huh?”

  “That guy’s just an old virgin who sold his soul to god. He’s not a man–”

  –Immediately afterwards.

  Vermouth suddenly kept quiet, and in an instance, drew his gun from his waist.

  His icy face showed no signs of tomfoolery. With a sharp glare, he pointed the gun at the ceiling.

  At the same time, Amaretto too turned his back to the wall and readied his gun. He did not sense anything, but his senior, Vermouth had responded as such—this was ample reason to react, and there was no doubt about it.

  Both of them pried their eyes amidst the darkness, being on their guard, ready to respond whenever ready.

  And so, with a snap,

  A slight rattling could be heard from the duct in a corner of the ceiling.

  The duct cover was moved aside, and a woman showed her face.

  Dressed in a tight-fitting black rubber suit, just like the duo, was a silver short-haired female cyborg.

  Vermouth sighed, and lowered his gun.

  Amaretto returned to the door again and began to work. At that moment, the woman landed on the floor quietly in a fluid motion, akin to fresh cream being squeezed out.

  “What now, Strega?”

  “No can do. This door is located in an independent place after all.”

  She—Strega, dusted her clothes as she answered.

&nb
sp; “The barrier is like an air-raid shelter there. I can’t check out the inside through sonar. I entered the ducts too, even the other systems like the air-conditioning, but a mosquito can’t even get inside, let alone a rat.”

  As Vermouth nodded, Strega continued on,

  “It looks like they got something they really want to hide, not just a security function that is for show or made out of insanity. I can’t even fathom this place being a simple warehouse. Well, that’s why we’re here, right?”

  “Another suspicious looking job? Shit…no wonder the smoke’s so bad.”

  Their mission was to investigate a certain factor

  It was not rare for an unknown factory to be listed under a dummy factor.

  The 5 Great Enterprises had the power to govern over the fates of any other enterprise.

  But it would be a different case altogether if they were consuming one-tenth of the city’s power, and other resources like fresh water.

  Who exactly was giving the instructions?

  What were they actually creating?

  What was the objective, exactly?

  They had to ascertain what was right, and what was not. This was not to pursue the benefits for their own company. It was a necessity for crisis control and safety assurance, part of their daily duties.

  However—

  The trio quietly conversed using the disguised close-ranged ‘resonating gears’.

  “The outside is the backbone company working under the ‘military’, but from how it looks, this place place looks like it’s tightly guarded like a Central Bank when it only needs a Private Military Company to manage it. We can’t even grasp the background even after sneaking all the way in. It’s not easy, but there has to be a limit.”

  Vermouth communicated as he lit a second cigarette.

  “…The only ones able to set up such a facility in secret are either the 5 Great Enterprises or the ‘military’.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll scratch our own company from the list since they did send us here. It is strange—”

  While Strega muttered skeptically to herself, Amaretto answered,

  “Those energetic guys are involved too? Didn’t they just get their butts stabbed by that Breguet Princess to the point of bleeding?”

  “Seriously? Thanks to the fact that the supposedly dead Princess is still alive, it basically caused a fire on every armory, from the Vachrons to the ‘Guild’, heads were flying.”

  “To the public, she’s undoubtedly dead, at least.”

  Vermouth shrugged, and continued,

  “The corporate funeral was already held. I sneaked into that event casually, and the speeches from the president and eldest daughter was so touching it induced tears. There’s no way anyone can change that story now.”

  “In other words, nobody can complain for being killed by someone else now? That’s quite a long one.”

  “That’s not it.”

  Amaretto interrupted,

  “There was no proof of Marie Bell Breguet’s involvement in that terrorist information leak. If she had died before it actually happened, there’s no way there’ll be proof that she had participated in it.”

  “That has nothing to do with it, right?”

  Strega snapped back sharply.

  “It’s weird—with that, that means we have enough proof right? For our industry’s standards.”

  “There’s no doubt that she’s really guilty, but that’s not the question here. She managed to complete such an operation without leaving any traces behind–that’s an important factor here.”

  “…What do you mean?”

  “If she’s able to commit such a major incident in secrecy, it probably means that she’s still in deep contact with her own family—the Breguet Corporation, and there’s a high chance of them supporting her in the background.”

  Amaretto patiently explained,

  “If we kill her now, it means we’ll automatically be enemies against the Breguets. Even if they can’t openly protest—actually, that’s an unnecessary risk.”

  “Whether they do oppose us or not, they’re the ones who will cause the commotion, right?”

  “We can’t necessarily say that. For example, the main culprits behind that Kyoto incident are the Vachrons and the ‘military’, but the other companies have given consent through silence. If they never tried to stop it, that means they’re equally guilty.”

  “Even if that includes revenge? Isn’t that way overboard?”

  “It certainly is an unprecedented incident, and thanks to that, we got the main conspirators heads flying—but on the other hand, it means that’s not even the deepest secret.”

  “So all that for such…?”

  As Strega widened her eyes, Amaretto continued,

  “The real ‘classified information’ that can topple the organization has yet to be revealed. Once everything is clear, society will be overturned. The only thing told to us is that it is something of an ‘open secret’.”

  “…Maybe it’s just that they don’t know, right?”

  “Probably.”

  Vermouth let out a sigh,

  “But maybe that’s not it. This sort of terrorist information leak will be unreal if it happens to this extent. I guess we can assume that it was only a warning.”

  Amaretto nodded with a bitter grain,

  “I don’t want to be the enemy of a Princess who’s becoming hysteric after getting her butt rubbed lightly.”

  “Are you changing your target of sarcasm for the sake of the world?”

  Strega shot an icy stare at Amaretto.

  “Shut up and open that thing up already!”

  “Okay okay—it’s done now. Kept you waiting.”

  Amaretto answered with his real voice.

  And with a thud, a heavy sound echoed, the steel door slowly sliding to the sides.

  “Alright, we got Sambuca activated. Get in!”

  Vermouth and gang spun the support-type automata that was sleeping in a corner of the room, activating it, and entered through the thick heavy doors.

  ● ● ●

  And then,

  They found something they had never seen before.

  “—Impossible.”

  Vermouth let out a hoarse voice, his breathing frantic.

  “Is-is such a thing, possible…?”

  He could not believe the information displayed in his eyes, and shook his head,

  —To summarize.

  The giant safe they spent lots of effort to open was ’empty’.

  Is the mission over? The giant space, used as a workplace, was empty. The numerous manufacturing equipment, giant cranes, ladders were left behind in a tidy, lonely state.

  Vermouth and his gang proceeded into this emptied work place.

  There was also a research lab and a room with lots of papers and terminals deep inside the area.

  …Over there was the remaining data .

  They felt a chill from the glimpse they had,

  “…If all these are facts, this isn’t a problem that can be settled by sacrificing one or two cities.”

  If this went badly.

  The thing called the ‘Clockwork Planet’ will—

  “Anyway, senior Vermouth, let’s copy the data and get out of here. We can investigate the details later. It’ll be bad now if we can’t get this intel back…”

  Amaretto, having calmed down quickly, said so.

  Having made contact with such dangerous information they themselves could not deal with, they had to make such a simple decision as quickly as possible—

  Vermouth and Strega recovered thanks to these words, but just when they were about to take photos of the data—

  —At that instance.

  “!?”

  The trio had been converted to cyborgs.

  But they felt an unbelievable aberration in their bodies that were covered by artificial skin.

  It was an intangible—skin tingling, animal-like, instinctive feeling.

 
That was ‘fear’.

  The trio, highly professional agents, felt their bodies freeze.

  —It was worrying.

  There definitely was ‘something’ outside the room, inside the thick darkness.

  It was small, extremely small—yet it had an unexpected scent of violence.

  The trio quickly dispersed without a word. They went deep into the room, seemingly wanting to escape.

  Without any discussion beforehand, they chose not to draw their guns, but to use their Coil Spears instead.

  The Coil Spear.

  It is a blade that vibrates at a rapid rate, and could be converted into a small firearm, even a shotgun and a grenade launcher; it was the strongest human portable weapon when considering both practicality and firepower. If a normal person were to use it proficiently, he would be able to match a military automata.

  Also, for the cyborg trio, this was a weapon they could use to fight back even if the enemy was a heavy arms automata.

  But it, being a product of the latest clockwork technology, could not be created by anyone other than the 5 Great Enterprises. However, since it did contain unique characteristics of each company’s technology, there was the risk of them revealing their affiliation easily.

  Their job was to infiltrate; using it would represent a failure in their mission.

  However,

  They immediately made the decision to use it.

  —There was no hope of surviving without using it. There was also a reason to survive at all costs, rather than to die like that.

  As professionals, the trio made the decision based on the current situation and previous incidents.

  (—No, it’s just an excuse now, right?)

  Vermouth grimaced in his heart, and found his hand trembling.

  Who exactly would be outside the room?

  The cyborg trio optimized for combat—was forced to draw their strongest weapon out of ‘fear’.

  (…The room sure is small.)

  Vermouth activated the laser, sonar functions in his mechanized body as he analyzed the situation.

  It was a secluded room. There was only one exit. The source of their worry was standing outside the door, not surrounding them.