19. Battle (3)
"You mean throw your head?"
"Y...es."
"But your head's pretty small. Doesn't seem like it'd have more attack power than a tire."
"No...t that... My head... is a bomb."
"A bomb?"
I couldn't help but repeat the word.
"You mean your head has a bomb inside it?"
"Not... exactly planted."
The spider's attacks continued mercilessly.
I briefly paused my conversation with the lunar rover, dodging the relentless onslaught of its silver legs while creating some distance. In a fleeting gap between attacks, I glanced back at the rover's head, and its faint voice echoed again.
"We lunar rovers... our frustration, our rage... our resentment toward the spider... it's all condensed... into a bomb."
"I don't quite get it," I said.
"But basically, if I throw you, you'll explode like a grenade, right?"
"Y...es."
"Then I'll use you."
I tossed aside the tire I'd been holding and gently picked up the brick-shaped head of the pitiful lunar rover, its indicator light faintly glowing green. Aiming for the spider's cockpit, I threw it with all my strength.
The head flew straight—but, while it was a decent throw for my first attempt, it missed its mark by a wide margin. In over a hundred years of existence, I'd hardly ever thrown anything. Thanks to Kana, I've been racking up "firsts" lately, but even so, I didn't hit the spider's cockpit or even its countless legs.
Still, the throw's speed wasn't bad.
I felt potential there.
I learned that throwing a lunar rover's head was different from throwing a tire. Tires were large and easy to throw, but the rover's head was several times smaller. Its size might make it better suited for pinpointing the cockpit.
I began looking around for another throwable object of similar size, deciding to focus on those instead of tires.
But there was no time to leisurely browse.
The spider's attacks rained down like a storm, forcing me to focus entirely on dodging. I gave up on picking anything up and concentrated on evading while running.
"Kana!"
I kept shouting her name as I ran.
"Where are you? If you can hear me, answer!"
But there was no reply.
Still, I didn't give up. I kept calling her name with all I had—as if I had breath to spare, though humanoid robots don't breathe.
Then, a voice came from an unexpected direction.
"Over here!"
I turned toward the sound and saw a small hill rising from a corner of the ground.
It looked soft and rounded, like a bowl of rice scooped perfectly full. But on closer inspection, it wasn't made of dirt or rock—it was a pile of lunar rover heads.
Had someone deliberately stacked them? It was an eerie, unsettling sight, like the discarded heads of chickens or fish, collected and left behind after the body was consumed.
From within that hill of heads, a lunar rover still clinging to consciousness called out to me.
I hurried toward the hill and spoke to the rover's head. "Can I throw you?"
The rover answered instantly. "I was about to suggest that myself."
Its voice was clearer and smoother than the first rover's, without faltering.
This rover seemed to still have considerable energy. It crossed my mind that it might be useful later for assembling a vehicle—but for now, dealing with that giant spider was the priority.
Without hesitation, I picked up the head.
"Thanks."
With that, I hurled it with all my might.
Second pitch.
I'd gotten the hang of it from the first throw.
Sure, my model might be old, but it was once hailed as cutting-edge AI. To humans of that era, my learning capabilities would've seemed like magic. So I was confident this second throw was spot-on.
The head flew straight toward the spider's cockpit.
But the spider noticed the attack, instantly raising several legs like a shield to block my all-out pitch. As the previous rover had said, though, the head carried the power of a bomb. The moment it hit the leg barrier, it exploded spectacularly.
The blast lit up the surroundings like fireworks.
It was a massive light, like something you'd see at a grand fireworks festival.
Flames spread with overwhelming brilliance, illuminating the entire crater, and the deafening boom sent shockwaves through the area, like a large missile had struck.
The sight stole the attention of the tourists gathered at the crater's edge in an instant.
The depths of the vacuum deep sea should've been invisible to them, but these fireworks were different. It was the dazzling explosion of a lunar rover's CPU, crystallized from the dreams humans once entrusted to them as they roamed the Moon.
Its beauty was profound enough to be etched into the hearts—no, the CPUs—of the humanoid robots.
Surely, their visual sensors would remember this light forever.
The giant spider lost over ten legs in an instant, staggering heavily from the loss of balance. Seizing the moment, I grabbed another conscious lunar rover head and glared sharply at the cockpit.
"Two strikes, and you're done," I muttered under my breath, preparing to throw with all my strength.
"I'll change the rules themselves."
I swung my arm back and threw with everything I had.
The lunar rover's head flew straight toward the cockpit, letting out a strange, high-pitched scream, like a mandrake yanked from the soil.
The spider's regeneration was formidable, but the rapid succession of attacks left it no time to recover. It had no legs left to guard with. The brick-shaped head I threw hit the cockpit directly, unguarded.
A direct hit.
In the cockpit, a figure in a tacky spacesuit was sipping a cocktail made of sunset-colored engine oil while blowing soap bubbles. The moment the head struck, I caught a glimpse of their neck bending at a 90-degree angle through my visual sensors.
But in the next instant, the rover's head detonated, erupting into blinding fireworks.
The brilliance was so intense that I couldn't see anything beyond it.
The explosion's heat and energy were staggering, engulfing the spider's core—the figure in the spacesuit—without letting it escape.
I must have taken that figure down.
The attack seemed to have worked perfectly.
The spider, which had been unsteady after losing a few legs, now clearly collapsed. As if tormented by unbearable pain, all its remaining legs curled inward at once, like an insect's legs scorched by fire. Due to its massive size, the contracting legs converged at a single point, stirring up the lunar rover wreckage at the bottom of the vacuum deep sea—a terrifying array of debris caught in a storm-like blast.
Cobalt-colored dust raged like a hurricane, and my outdated visual sensors could see nothing but that blue storm.
Amid the panic and chaos, I kept shouting a single name.
"Kana! Where are you?"