Rei 02
~'/|\'~
“The jamming's stopped!” called Aoba from his control console.
Misato turned her gaze, silently fuming, to the main display. “How is Unit 01? Do we have any signals from it? Is Shinji still alive?”
Maya ran her hands over her keyboard. “Zero-One's onboard communication's equipment should be rebooting in... 3, 2, 1... we have contact back. We have life signals...” there was a collective sigh of relief, “... except the Third Child appears to be unconscious. The Evangelion is in a very, very bad state.”
A profile of Unit 01 appeared on the screen. The entire front was a blur of red warning lights, warning of internal damage, breeched hull, and warped servos.
“The armour at the front is completely melted,” stated Fuyutsuki, staring at the figure. “The control servos are completely melted. The organic muscles remain, and that'll be the only way to move it.”
Gendo adjusted his glasses, which had begun their inexorable, inevitable descent down the bridge of his nose. “Does the pilot remain synchronised, even when unconscious?”
Misato turned to stare at the wall. How could he? He just sent his son out to fight some extradimensional entity for the third time, just fired a nuclear weapon he'd attached to the Evangelion while Shinji was within the blast radius, and he wouldn't even call him by name!
Misato realised then that it was even more than that. She was beginning to care for Shinji.
While Misato looked away, Maya replied, “Yes, he remains synchronised, despite the lack of consciousness. Do you want to eject the entry plug?”
Gendo shook his head, a single jerking motion to the left.
“Keep him in there. Sedate him; try to keep him calm,but lucid. We have to keep the Evangelion content, and if the synchronisation wasn't broken by unconsciousness...
Which it should have been, thought Ritsuko. All the projections indicated that the pilot had to make an effect to keep connected to the EFCS. We tested it on the Second Child. But now there's two anomalies; Rei's asymmetric synchronicity, and the EFCS Type-1 remaining linked.
What is going on? Only Unit 02 seems to completely reliable, with nothing more than the expected side effects. The Fourth should really be a Type-2, along with the political benefits that kind enables.
“... then it remains active. We cannot eject the D-Engines, as we need to retrieve it, the restraining armour is damaged so we cannot lock it down, and thus we cannot control it in the case of rampancy.”
Ritsuko turned her gaze from the Representative. “More importantly, what's the status on the rest of the battlefield?”
“We're getting a feed from NEA Headquarters,” replied Aoba. “The Migou fleet is destroyed. The... the Herald is still alive, although motionless. It seems to have dug itself into the ground, point first, and there's a massive AT-Field over Mot. The phase shifts and the warping of the Riemann tensors are clearly visible.” He turned to stare at the Representative, flicking his gaze to Ritsuko. “It appears, as a hypothesis, to be repairing itself.”
“The Migou were really beginning to damage it,” said the blond haired woman out loud, seemingly to herself. “They'd managed to neutralise the phase differences by brute force. And Asherah changed after we hit it with a Clover burst, adapted to the new situation.” She sighed, in a deep shuddering breath. “We won't be able to hit it now. Look at that Riemann tensor. It would take the combined NEN fleet to take that down.”
What was not being mentioned by anyone in the room was the price that the Migou would extract for this use of nuclear weapons. The invaders had made it very clear, through private channels to the NEG, that any use of nuclear weapons would see a retaliation. The nukes used against Asherah had seen the deliberate defoliation of one percent of the Amazon, the Migou salting the ground to prevent anything growing there again. This would be worse. Perhaps they would use some engineered virus against an arcology, to make it into a charnel house if the infection was not caught. Perhaps they would introduce some alien lifeform into the Terran ecology, to throw it out of balance. The specifics did not matter. What mattered is that the Migou would contact them again, and blame them for the necessity of their actions. These messages would also be incorporated into their propaganda, making it more devastating because it was, in a sense, true.
“Will it remain like that?” asked Fuyutsuki.
“Purely as a hypothesis, I'd say no,” she replied, after a moment's thought. “It's not moving now, so at least it's been slowed down. I'm fairly sure... that is, I really, really hope that it can't use that beam weapon in this state, either. Although that's actually a misnomer. The data we collected from the broadcasts suggests that it's actually an extended barb of the AT-Field, using the local control of spacetime and the fundamental constants that it grants to make such an impossible weapon.”
“So it is safe to approach the Herald?”
Ritsuko nodded. Fuyutsuki cocked his head slightly at Gendo.
“Deploy Rei,” ordered Gendo Ikari. “She is to retrieve Unit 01 for repairs.”
Misato turned back to the rest of the room. “We won't be able to use the Evangelion in its current state,” she said, a slight undercurrent of hostility in her voice. “Almost all the onboard weapons are fried from that, and the DF blades seem to have been activated by the blast. They'll need to be replaced, too. How long will we have to repair Zero-One and work out a way to kill the Herald?”
“We don't know,” said Ritsuko, scanning her eyes over the MAGI's interpretation of the feed from the NEA spy drone. “Less than twelve hours, certainly. Maybe even less, if the smaller ships break the NEN cordon, or TF:V fails to stop that second fleet.”
“So, Director of Operations, it would be best if you started thinking,” added Gendo.
~'/|\'~
Rei ran along the road, following the footprints which the mass of Unit 01 had previously imprinted into the hardened surface.
Her objective was to recover Unit 01 and Pilot Ikari. She would perform that task, because she had been instructed to.
Her pupils contacted, shrinking to tiny black dots in her pale grey irises.
There are not active threats in the target zone. I can proceed with less caution than was suggested in the mission parameters. Pilot Ikari will be found behind one of the Swarm Ships.
She turned a corner, and then saw what she already knew. A blasted heath choked with smoke, fires coruscating over anything that could burn. The five kilotonne explosion had torn a five and a half kilometre wound in the remains of Old London, the edges of that once-great metropolis protruding all the way out. In the midst of the shattered buildings, levelled by the bomb, lay the carcasses of nine great beasts. Many of the Migou vessels had been slain by the human weapon, the unexpected attack knocking their ships aside with no respect for their noble goal or their wishes. One had ploughed nose first into the ground, its mass penetrating the urban layer and thus it stood as an impromptu tombstone for its kindred. Other Swarm Ships had been picked off by Herald in the aftermath, the unnatural being recovering far faster than the Yuggothians, who were still restricted by the nature of flesh, alien through it may be. Around the deceased leviathans lay the smaller corpses, infants to them, of the other Migou vehicles. Slagged, melted wrecks whose nature could only be guessed at, so great was the damage inflicted upon them.
Above this wreckage, matching the ash that covered the land, the skies were overcast. The clouds had returned, bringing with them a polluted rain, stained black with the debris thrown into the atmosphere. It fell down onto Rei, painting the orange armour of her Evangelion with layers of charcoal dirt. Her onboard Geiger counter flared up; she ignored it. These levels, though potentially hazardous to an infantryman, bore no threat to her body, ensconced as it was within the protective womb of Unit 00. Pilot Ikari would be fine too, she thought, because if the entry plug had been breached, he would already be dead. And if he was alive, there was no need to compromise the mission with undue haste, which might draw the attention of Mot.
Over the Herald, however, the skies remained clear, the clouds around it swirling like in the eye of a hurricane. The reason for this devastation stood, bottom embedded in the ground, enveloped in a thick, twisting web of shining white strands. These cast a strange light over the ashen wasteland that surrounded it, a harsh, white glow that reduced everything to black and white, draining the colour from the world and drawing it into the body of the great beast.
Rei stared at the Herald. Under the mesh of its AT Field, she could see that it was changing. It had been injured, she knew, and injured badly. Had the Migou been permitted to continue, they would more than likely have killed it.
Rei did not question the Representative's decision to use a nuclear weapon against the Herald. He had his reasons, and she did not doubt them.
But now Mot knew about that trick of the apes, impressive though it was. And it would not permit another such blow. It would heal from its wounds; both the Migou lances that had torn into it and the horrific scarring that had melted the entire side facing the blast, warping it and twisting the once-perfect geometry. And it would not be as foolish as to deny the evident wish of its master and lord, the Beast Nyarlothotep. It had been foolish to impose such anathematical order in this incarnation, it realised. No, it would let the perfect progressions of fractals determine its healing, and give itself to the whim of its master in shaping it. And it would not let such object, so small yet bearing destruction from the unity of its components, near it again, it thought, as new shapes budded from the edge of its wounds, similar to their parent body in shape, but each subtly flawed, even as they budded forth their own, even smaller, shapes.
It didn't matter, though. Rei knew where Pilot Ikari was, and she knew that the Entry Plug was not compromised. She would have know had something happened to the pilot or the EFCS. And that left her able to complete her mission. With her white hair waving in the LCL that surrounded and embraced her, like that of Ophelia as she floated down the river, Rei headed down into the centre of this hell.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, she thought.
~'/|\'~
Major Misato Katsuragi, Director of Operations for the Evangelion Project, was planning. She had commandeered one of the main Ashcroft Foundation meeting rooms, mainly for the fact that the entire table was the newest projection suite, of the same quality as the Operations Room, allowing her to access everything she could in there, along with the fact that this room had proper food delivery. And so she stood there with a sandwich in her hand, the bread filled with nanofactory-produced tuna. The genuine stuff was exceedingly rare; the fact that the seas were owned by fishmen who tended to to view fishing boats as “fresh breeding stock” made it rather hard to obtain.
Some would have viewed that as frippery and distraction. The Major knew that she didn't want anyone fainting or suffering from low blood sugar. The human body activated its primitive adrenaline response, even when it was not necessary, and this operation had left her on edge.
She stared at the projections containing all the information about the Herald and its predecessors that they had. She could feel a nagging headache coming on, from having to wrap her mind around the concepts that this entailed. This would probably take a few counselling sessions to deal with. She was still having the occasional nightmare about the Kathirat, joining the horrors of New Kuala Lumpur and of Tibet. The Major took another bite of the tuna sandwich, cheeks chewing frantically as she tried to make sense of these counter-intuitive impossibilities.
She glanced over the table at Ritsuko. She was frantically typing away, mixing it with voice inputs in her attempts to get the MAGI to properly model this particular AT-Field.
“Let's review the evidence,” she commanded. “Lieutenant Makota, run through the collected data.”
The Nazzadi technician adjusted his glasses, the AR flows converging then increasing their flow rate, and cleared his throat. “The target, classified as a Herald and designated “Mot” by the New Earth Army has proved to be the most dangerous of the encountered Heralds so far. When it appeared, it destroyed the Norwich base, opening a hole in our defences and permitting the Migou to break through our...”
The Major raised her hand. “I was actually talking about the tactical and technological data. We need to find a way to kill it.”
Makota blushed, the red bringing a hint of colour to his blackish-grey face. “I'm... I'm sorry, Major Katsuragi.” He cleared his throat again. “The Herald is armed with a weapon which defies conventional physics and current arcane engineering. It is notably more powerful than the main weapon on a Victory-class battlecruiser.” An image appeared of from the onboard cameras of Unit 01, showing the night-black beam lancing straight through a Migou Swarm Ship. “It also appears to be able to project multiple lesser beams at once, with high precision, tracking and accuracy. They emerge from the points where three or more of its faces meet. As a tetragonal trapezohedron, that gives it ten possible projection points. However, at most, seven can face one target at any one time.” The imaged changed to show Mot using its beams to swat the smaller Migou ships from the air.
Makota coughed twice, and took a sip of water. “It appears that the source of the energy for the beams all comes from a single internal source. The output of these lesser beams matches that of a BI-class charge beam; still dangerous, but notably less so than its main weapon. It possesses an increased refire rate on those lesser projections, though. For 12.9 seconds after it destroyed that Swarm ship, it did not manifest any beams. It was switching between targets every 0.8 seconds in the lesser mode. Moreover, it compromises its main AT Field to use the main weapons; the points when it was damaged match up with the points which it was firing.”
The Major swallowed her mouthful of sandwich, and a strange expression occupied her face.
“I see...” she said, tilting her head slightly. “Analysis?”
“According to the data we've collected to far,” began Makota, as the Major took another mouthful of sandwich, chewing intently, “it is presumed that the Herald automatically attacks any target within a certain range, or anything which attempts to harm it. Note the way that it ignored Unit 01 until the Pilot opened fire on it with a charge beam. It appears to prioritise based on threat, too. It switched fire from Unit 01 to the Swarm Ship, when the latter damaged it.”
Makota glanced from the display at the Major. She was reading it too. Misato Katsuragi seemed like a bit of a joke most of the time. It had been rumoured that she had been given this position because the NEA wanted someone who, despite having all those medals from the Fall of New Kuala Lumpur, lacked a real grasp of strategy, in a project that had been largely viewed as a waste of money, an obsolete predecessor to the Engels. It had been like choosing to invest in increasing efficiency of oil production in 2033. But this new Misato was strange. Not quite her.
He concluded. “Close range combat with an Evangelion is too risky.”
The Major frowned and swallowed. “What about its AT Field?”
“Still active.” He pulled up the images that Unit 00 had collected in its recovery of the crippled Unit 01. “It's so strong that you can even see the phase-shifted space, the barrier between its universe and ours.”
“What?!” snapped the Major. “Its universe?”
Ritsuko looked up over the table at her friend. “It's not quite true, but it's a useful way of modelling it.” She glanced at the Nazzadi. “Makota is a bit too much of a theoretician to explain it properly,” she said, smiling slightly. “Basically, within the domain of an AT-Field, the physical constants are anything but that.” Ritsuko paused for dramatic effect. It didn't seem to be doing anything to impress the black-haired woman. “Basically, the Herald can do whatever it likes, while it can maintain the interface layer between the area under the AT-Field and the rest of reality. That's why its weapon is so dangerous, the MAGI have finally calculated. Within the beam, the colour force is weaker than the electroweak force. Matter is unstable under those conditions, hence it rips apart. Armour means nothing, unless you're applying principles from outside the World of Elements to hold it together.”
The Major frowned. “But in that case, how was Unit 01 able to survive? It took less damage than a Swarm Ship, for goodness sake.”
“Because Unit 01 has its own AT-Field, remember,” chided Ritsuko. “That's why they can do the things they can do, why they can kill the Heralds. Shinji wasn't focussing on it, so it wasn't active at anything less than a background level, and he has access to less power, anyway.”
“So what's it doing now?” She was looking at the most recent images, at the strange protrusions that budded from all of its faces, producing its own offspring.
“At the moment? It's enforcing a strongly non-Euclidean local Lobacheveskian geometry to permit it to have an infinite fractal volume.”
Misato blinked. “What?”
Ritsuko sucked in air between her clenched teeth. “It's complicated.” She paused. “An easy example. In normal, which is to say Euclidean geometry, the sum of the angles in a triangle always equals pi radians. In Lobacheveskian geometry, pi radians minus the sum of the angles equals a constant.” She commanded the LAI to bring up the “explanation image”, that of “Circle Limit IV” by MC Escher.
“Here we are. This piece of art is ancient, but it's still really useful,” she said, gazing up at the black and white image. “In non-Euclidean geometry, all of these angels and devils are the same size. If you stood in that geometry at any point, it would appear to be the same to you no matter exactly where you were.”
A voice interrupted on loudspeakers. “Sorry to disturb you, but we've recovered Unit 01. It's being transported down to the maintenance facilities as I speak.”
Misato looked away. “How... how is Shinji?”
“We're keeping him placid with drugs administered to the LCL, until we can get the armour repairs done. There are low level first-degree sympathetic burns as a consequence of N/Phys feedback.”
Misato stared up at the ceiling, then the Major turned back to the main computer. “Once the Emergency Constriction Armour is fitted, get him out to the medical facility. I need the best arcanotherapists we have to see to him, to get him back on his feet as fast as we can. You have three hours. If he isn't fixed by then, dope him up with smart painkillers and get ready to get him back in the Evangelion.” She paused, and turned to look at Ritsuko. “What is the exact condition of Unit 01? What can it do in its current state?”
Doctor Akagi picked up a cup of coffee. “The chest plate and the third defence armour were completely slagged. It's fortunate that the central control unit remained intact.”
“Another three or so seconds and it would have completely overcome the residual AT-Field,” added Maya.
The older woman nodded. “We're fitting the emergency control armour, but that just serves as a restraint. It won't provide anything like the protection of the proper armour. It's not designed to be deployed in this armour.”
The Major nodded. “Roger. And what about Unit 00?”
“No problem with the restart, nor any recurrence of the synchronicity issues. Some minor feedback in the neural networks, but that decreased as Pilot Ayanami moved around and got used to the Evangelion in the recovery of Zero-One,” answered Maya, reading a fresh update off her data-slate. “A real battle is...”
“... not advised,” finished Ritsuko.
“I'll take that advice under consideration,” replied the Major. “Back on the topic of non-Euclidean geometries, though? You said that the Herald is impossible under conventional physics, yes?”
“Well, not directly,” replied the doctor, somewhat taken aback, “but, yes. The universe may be Lobacheveskian on a universal scale, but the difference between that and Euclidean is very slight. That degree of space-time curvature does not happen normally. It has an infinite volume within the field, and its surface area tends to infinity as it expands fractally. The geometric interface drawn by the AT-Field really does separate universes. That's why Mot is black. With what it's doing to itself? I doubt you'd be able to hit its main body, even if you pierced the Field.”
“So it's just the AT Field, then. If it's impossible without the AT-field, then if we punch through it...” said the Major, with a note of satisfaction in her voice. Misato smiled. “Get me the NEN database on the naval vessels in production.”
“Excuse me?” asked Makota.
“I have one little thing to try first...”
~'/|\'~
The Field Marshals stared at the Evangelion Project's Director of Operations. There was a moment of silence. Then;
“You want to have the Academia?” blurted out Lehy.
Misato nodded. “Yes. I want to borrow the incomplete frigate in the Portsmouth naval yard.”
Jameson asked the obvious question. “Why?”
“The Academia has had its ventral laser fitted, and its Class-A D-Engine, as well as some of its A-Pods. However, it lacks any of its hull armour or any of its other armaments.” She smiled. “It is, basically, a giant laser rifle for our purposes.”
Kora cocked his head. “Ah. Long range fire from outside the target's hit detection range. We've seen what your charge beam did to it; I can see how you might want more firepower. But a Skuld-class frigate has less firepower than a Migou Swarm ship, and we saw what that did.”
An alarm went off in the NEA Headquarters, and both Jameson and Lehy left the camera's viewpoint.
“Yes, Field Marshal Kora. That's why we have all the nanofactories in the Geocity ready to make some changes to the ship. Transmitting the files now.”
Misato waited, her gut roiling with nervousness she did not permit her face to show, as the Marshal read through the alterations. The Nazzadi raised one eyebrow.
“So... you intend to case the ventral laser in supercoolant refrigerant units, run the entirety of the Class-A into them, and use the internal D-Engines of your Evangelion to boost the A-Pods to allow one of your Units to move it. The power for the laser itself will be drawn from almost the entirety the London-2 grid.” The Marshal sat back. “Well, it's never been tried before. It is novel, I give you that.”
“The MAGI give it a 12.6% percent chance of downing the Herald in a single shot, with an increased chance of 46.5% for eventual victory.”
“Although I will also note that it also gives a 37.1% chance that the Academia will be destroyed. That ship could, well, from what the Foundation has informed us, it could fund your Project for almost half a year.”
He sighed, as she knew he would. “Approval given.” His face suddenly looked very haggard. “I'd tell you to make sure that you don't fail or I'll have your head, but that won't mean much. If we can't stop the Herald, dead men can't fire you.”
Misato nodded. “Understood, sir.” She cut the connection to Headquarters, took a deep breath and adjusted her hair behind an ear. “Open a connection to NPF Portsmouth,” she ordered.
The face of a slightly plump human woman appeared on screen, frowning at the Major over the top her AR glasses. Her eyes opened in shock as Misato used the over-ride function to open a new window on the woman's viewscreen, showing her authorisation documents.
“For all the reasons detailed on the document to your right, and authorised by the European High Command, the Evangelion Project, a specialist military research group of the Ashcroft Foundation has the right to commandeer the incomplete Academia, a Skuld-class frigate as of 15:00 today.”
“But... but it's impossible. It's not finished...” the woman began.
“Please activate the A-Pods in preparation for transport by our Unit 00,” added Misato.
“Wait? What?”
A broad smile crept over the face of the black-haired woman. “Just look out the window.”
The head of the naval engineering team almost fainted when she saw the bulk of Unit 00 approaching the naval yard. There was a period where the engineers and arcanotechnicains argued among themselves, some objecting to the “theft” of their work-in-progress ship, and others acting like rampant fangirls at the sight of the Evangelion. Some of the fangirls were even female.
Eventually, they managed to boot up the internal engines, getting the A-Pods functioning, and formally transferred responsibility of the 200 metre long ship to the 40 metre tall Evangelion. With the A-Pods in neutral, merely keeping the ship off the ground, Rei began to pull the frigate behind her, as she headed back to London-2.
~'/|\'~
High above the freezing wastes of what had been Scandinavia, when humanity had still owned the north, a wing of high altitude bombers, stealth-proofed against detection hung in the air. You could see the curvature of the Earth from up here, and the sky seemed mostly black, the superior sensors of the craft permitting you to see the stars, should that be your desire.
Captain Schwartz, commanding officer of the 120 madmen and madwomen of Charlie Company turned off the link to the external sensors of the aircraft and focussed back on the interior of his Mk-11 Hussar powered armour. The first two companies of battalions in Task Force: Valkyrie were always Engel assault formations; he had command of the elite of the Hussars. Some would argue that a mecha pilot, by definition, was more sane than an Engel pilot, given that they had not had invasive brain surgery to implant cybernetics. Those people had not encountered Hussar pilots, who gleefully and willingly jumped out of planes at the edge of the atmosphere. Delta and Echo companies were also up here, but he was ignorant of their location, hidden as their craft were.
He ran a full check on his Hussar. The suit, akin to its predecessor, the Centurion, moved as its artificial muscles flexed and shifted beneath its matt black armoured shell. He moved his head, its robotic, inhuman head rotating as he checked left and right. To the left and right of him, and in other planes, the other veterans were doing the same. If your armour locked up mid fall, the best that could be said was that they wouldn't need to bury you. Normally shortly after landing his role was to get to a safe place, where he could command his troops, but the drop remained dangerous. Hussar Assault Formations had a very clearly defined chain of command, due to the risk of the higher-ups catching AA laser fire from a Strepsiptera. Those Migou units were evil things, small mecha that could cling to the outside of a larger vessel and had a hideous number of rapidly tracking laser cannons that could fill the air with coherent light.
“What's the difference between a punch in the face and a broken Hussar?” he muttered to himself. “One goes 'Whack! Aargh!'. The other goes 'Aaaaaargh! Whack!'”
Dark humour was a favourite of the soldiers of Charlie Company. And pretty much all of Valkyrie, come to think of it.
Except this wasn't just Valkyrie here, was it. There was an extra bomber with that giant Engel that the Brigadier has assigned to him strapped to the bottom, wrapped in radar-proofed foil. It was still compromising the stealth of the unit. He only hoped that the Migou would mistake it for a monitoring plane, if they noticed it. The Lares bombers were almost unarmed, to maximise their carrying capacity when so much was already taken up by the stealth systems and their dedicated D-Engines.
A bleep went off in his cockpit. It was time. He flicked on the broadcast system, dedicated laser communications allowing the other craft to hear his speech.
Asuka was hanging in the neutral buoyancy of the LCL, stretching as best she could by swimming around the Entry Plug, when an alert pinged up on the main screen. With a few movements, she pulled her way back into her seat, getting ready at the controls. She was vaguely aware that she was floating facedown, but they'd given her an injection to temporarily knock out inner ear function, leaving her with only the OSE from the Evangelion itself to tell if she was upright.
It was the Captain of the company she was being dropped with. She didn't really see how it was relevant to her. She was outside the conventional chain of command, had already been given her mission by Berlin-2 Command, and couldn't contact them due to the need for stealth.
“Valkyries,” the man began, “it's that time again. We're sitting in our tin cans, at the edge of space, and let me tell you, that is a profoundly unnatural place to be. Well, we don't like unnatural stuff, do we, people?” He paused.
Oh, Asuka realised. It was some kind of speech, encouraging the rest of the troops to be big damn heroes or something. It just happened to be showing on her screen too, without the sound from the others.
“Damn straight, we don't like unnatural stuff. We don't like the fucking savages of the Rapine Storm,we don't like the butt-ugly fishmen and their fish-fucking worshippers, and we most certainly don't like the motherfucking bugs from Pluto.” Captain Schwartz grinned then, the smile of a predator. “Well, it most certainly looks to be our lucky day!”
“We in Charlie Company have been chosen to be the ones who get first try at the Migou fleet below us. Delta and Echo are going to be following us in, but we're the tip of the spear that's going to tear the guts out of these bastards so that the rest of Valkyrie can finish them off. And you know why? We're the ones, because we are just that damn good. We wiped out the Loyalists at Calgary, burned their homes and put down their bug-serving support. We were first to the scene in the Dagonite attack on Santander, and we held the fish-fuckers off until the city was evacuated, killing six of them for every one we lost. And in China, we took down that flight of Shantaks who tried to intercept our drop, and went on to rip the heart out of that branch of the monsters despite having lost half the unit. We're the best of the best, and we know that as a fact.”
His face become more sombre. “And this mission matters more than normal. The Migou have torn a hole in the defences of the British Isles, and the targets below us are rushing in to fill it. The Navy boys are trying to hold off the first fleet, but if this second one survives, the bastards will be able to push onto London-2, and maybe even open a second front in Europe. Some people might be scared by the prospect of going up against a Swarm Ship. Some people might be scared by the prospect of going up against ten Swarm Ships. Well, those people aren't the right sort of person for Charlie Company, because that is exactly what we are going to do! There is no god-damned way that we will let the Migou through do that while any of us can still kill. And so they won't succeed, because we are going to stop them!”
“Each squad has three demo charges. Two should breach the hull, then the third gets used in one of the listed locations, to cripple the bug ships. If that doesn't work, we'll do it as we have before; the hard way, with Mr Plasma and Mr Claw.” His face shifted, taking on a subtly different appearance set in a look similar to that of heroes of old. “Do not fear the Migou, for they are weak when compared to you. I'm merely human and I have crushed their damn fungoid and Nazzadi traitor forces more times that I can count! And how did I do this? With human technology, human wrath and human genius, with you, my men and women! You! I look upon your faces and I see the salvation of the planet written in every single one. The fury and righteous indignation that will send the enemy reeling into the utter dark, I see in every one of you! I look upon you, and I feel no fear for our future. I have lost most of my body, and had it replaced because of the Second War and the Aeon War! Every piece of my flesh, every drop of my blood I gave willingly, because it served Humanity! I look upon you, and I can see the same willingness.” The captain's eyes gleamed, bright in the light, reflecting blue in the glow of his control consoles. In that moment, he seemed to go beyond a man, and become an idea, that of the inevitability that humanity would prevail.
Asuka breathed deeply. The man had changed completely in that speech, becoming the kind of messianic leader that could rally a squad and lead them to certain death, in the knowledge that their deaths would be worth it for the species. And she would follow him.
But such righteous wrath could only last for a moment, and his voice returned to normal, as the man returned. “We've also got a new hell-jumper with us today. A new prototype Engel, one that can be dropped as we can, survive the burn from the edge of the atmosphere. Test Pilot Soryu will be assigned to target A1. Do not get distracted at the sight of something that weighs the same as two platoons coming down with us. Keep out of its way on the trip down. We are here to destroy the fleet, and I don't want my men taken out by bloody stupid mid-air collisions with something that we haven't trained with. We drop in two minutes. And remember. Morituri Nolumus Mori. Captain Schwartz out.”
~'/|\'~
“We've got the restraining armour fixed,” reported Maya.
The Major nodded. “Good. Sedate the Pilot, and get him to medbay.” Misato frowned at the screen. “I'm just finishing this list of recommendations for High Command, then I'll be down to medbay myself, to check in him.”
~'/|\'~
The clamps released, and the Hussars fell, their graceful arcs adjusted by their onboard Limited AIs. The challenge in this was roughly that of hitting a dart board from the other side of a city. Brute computation and the laws of motion prevailed where human intuition could not. In amongst the Hussars, like a hawk in the middle of a mob of sparrows, was Unit 02, arms spread wide as the experimental A-Pod booster packs on its back kicked in, adjusting its fall in the same way as the lesser human units.
Asuka concentrated, and projected out an AT-Field. She would get superior aerodynamic properties from it, the impossible, frictionless flat edges of the field cutting through the air like a heated blade.
She sat idly in a chair,flicking through a book bound in vermilion leather. The type on the front was solid gold, she remembered, and that was important. The white walls seemed very oppressive, this was a book for richly decorated reading rooms and dim libraries.
“The soldier-leader relationship is one of the great flaws of humanity, you know,” she had said to the elderly woman opposite to her. “Orders are obeyed without thinking, but also without believing. If you want to look at a superior model, I would recommend the hierarchy of the medieval Catholic Church. Faith and reason combined are superior to either separately.”
The old woman had smiled, her voice cracked and ancient. “You have done well indeed. Most fail to learn that even throughout their life, too limited by their belief in flawed reason over faith.”
Down below, the Migou second fleet was cutting over what had been Sweden, a fortified Migou hold-out against the NEG forces stationed in the Danish Territory. The humans could not attack them here, and much as they loathed having to evade the human defences, the first fleet had failed, taken down either by human treachery or the favour of the Endless Ones incarnate in Daoloth. Privately, the latter was believed to be more likely, but they had lost contact so quickly. The Hive Ship would be around soon, parked as it was in an opposing orbit to the freakishly large moon of this world.
It was then that they picked up a veritable hail of trajectories above them, all glowing hot and on an intercept course with the fleet. The fleet immediately flipped to full alert, as the Migou scrambled for their fighter craft. They didn't match the ballistic profile of missiles; they were dropping in far too steep an angle, and no launches had been detected. The possibility that it had been missed in the concentration on Daoloth was briefly considered, and ignored. As the objects got closer, their course adjusting for the evasion attempts of the Swarm Ships, a Migou technician on the command ship buzzed a warning. It had detected the Shield of Yog Sothoth from the targets, namely the larger one that they had assumed was ablative armour for the missiles. It was then that the Migou matched the smaller objects to the profile of human orbital drop armour, and a hail of fire opened up on the descending angels, as the Migou realised what the humans were doing.
Asuka's HUD was going wild, flashing icons all over the place as it picked up the Migou fighters that had just scrambled in a futile attempt to intercept the ballistic mecha. She ignored them, and adjusted her position, rotating in mid-air to let the A-Pods on her back have full effectiveness in slowing her, and co-incidentally getting in position to land hard on the Migou Ship the LAI was heading for.
Unit 02 slammed into the top of a Hive Ship, phantom pain shooting up Asuka's leg as the unnatural muscles of the Evangelion protested at the forces subjected to it. The Swarm Ship buckled and twisted under her impact, and lurched down notably as the momentum was transferred. She quickly recovered, leaping backwards, enabling the Dimensional Shields on her claws, and crippling a heavy laser cannon that was swivelling to face her. Rushing forwards again, she ripped the blades into the damaged hull, tearing a hole in the gut of the ship.
A flight of Darts strafed her back. She barely noticed it, as the biomechanical plates gave way to the strength of the Evangelion. She decided to aid it, and opened up with her lasers and charge beams, the beams cutting through the second layer. Suddenly, the plate came away, and she roared in triumph, her Evangelion roaring with her as she picked up the hull plate and hurled it away. The innards of the ship were vulnerable now.
Over on the ship to her left, a pair of blasts indicated that a squad had hit that ship successfully, breaking into the hull. The new hole was used as a gateway to the corpus of the ship, power armoured soldiers, clambering over the hull with their own, smaller claws to break into the guts, purging them with exceedingly hot plasma from their integrated cannons
Well, she lacked the ability to get inside, but she did have hot plasma. Asuka stuck her left arm into the wound, and triggered the experimental PP1-P, white hot ionised gas flooding the chambers of the ship. It burned through the interior walls, much weaker than the outer hull, expanding and tearing apart the Migou technology. The control centre of the ship, buried deep within the body for safety, had only time to watch the cancer of melted walls and blown out hangars spread through their vessel before the white heat claimed them too. The ship gave a shudder, and began to fall.
Asuka straightened up, scanning the rest of the fleet. She triggered her comms device.
“Captain, I've killed my assigned target. Do you have anything that your men have failed to get?”
There was a pause, and then Schwartz' face appeared, sweating profusely.
“Target A3 doesn't appear to have anyone,” he gasped. “Plant that fucking charge, then we can get out of here,” he yelled offscream, before the link cut.
Asuka smiled to herself. “A chance...” She then leapt up, in a great arc, landing on the next ship along, pausing only to crippled a laser cannon that tried to track her, before leaping into the air again, from Swarm Ship to Swarm Ship.
A thermal bloom arose from the hangar on the side of another ship, as the charge planted on the main D-Engine blew. Smaller figures scrambled out of the crippled beast, throwing themselves off the side. They were on their own from now on. They had to find a place for pick up, or make their own way back to NEG lines. They had nothing to fear from Assimilation, though; the NEG had thoughtfully implanted detonators in their skulls which exploded if they tried to leave the Hussar when they had set the device active.
There was chaos in the Migou lines, as the tip of Valkyrie was thrust into their own invasion force. It was only made worse when the large forces of the rest of the Task Force thrust north into Sweden, taking advantage into the hole in the defences which, in some inexplicable way, had now become the Migou's.
Asuka neared her target, which, perhaps aware of her presence, something that the Migou had long feared, was turning to retreat. She was firing as fast as she could with her head-mounted weapons, the gouges not doing much to the superior armour of the Swarm Ship. A rain of heavy laser blasts bore down on her; breaking the armour in multiple places and tearing into the flesh of Unit 02. The blasts and the phantom pain caused her to stumble.
This is not an advisable activity when one is trying to play hopscotch with 600 metre biomechanical leviathans, even when one is encased in a 40 metre tall cybernetic organism. The leap went wrong, her trajectory worryingly flat, which sent her slamming into the side of the Swarm Ship. She stuck her claws in, the blades enough to prevent her falling, and instead leaving her spread eagled onto the side of the ship, trying desperately to hang on.
“Nicht wie vorgesehen,” she muttered to herself. Activating her feet claws, she dug them in, and began to work her way around the hull of the ship, trying to get on top. Two annoying sets of plasma cannons were silenced by the resort of her head mounted charge beams, and once again she blessed the fact that she was not using the obsolete Unit 01.
Imagine the fact that the Third Child only has lasers mounted on Unit 01's head, and he lacks the PP1-P altogether. What would he have done against the last one? Electrocuted himself again?
In her escapades, she found a hangar, unsealed. Perhaps it was launching units, or perhaps they were just trying to save what assets they could. Nevertheless, the opening, large enough to fit a Mantis out (it was, in fact, one of the typical ways they deployed, leaping from their ships in an inferior version to what she had just done), would also permit her access.
The Migou on this ship were, in fact, getting an introduction to Mr Plasma; a brief, though mostly painless (due to the speed of the death) one, when the icon for it on the HUD began bleeping an urgent red.
“Weapon Offline. Shut Down for Safety Reasons. Cooling Systems Fused,” the LAI informed her. She had chosen a male, Nazzadi accented voice for hers.
“Idiot!” she yelled. “It's not safe to take my flamethrower from me!”
The LAI simply repeated the message. She decided secretly that she would get it changed; it suddenly sounded a lot less attractive. She withdrew her arm, and swung along the hull of the ship, now obviously listing as the damage she had inflicted began to tell. Hanging on with all four limbs, she adjusted her shoulders so that both of the mounted M-PACKs faced into the cavernous hangar.
She didn't wait for a lock bleep, instead triggering them together as a salvo of rocket death, the warheads blowing away the inner walls, already slagged and melted by the plasma cannon. The third salvo must have hit something important, as the glow from the engine ceased, and the Swarm Ship began its final decent. Asuka pulled herself up onto the top of the ship, the weapons now dead and no longer trying to target her.
The rest of the fleet was further away now; too far to jump. Even as she watched, the rest of Valkerie hit the six remaining ships... no, make that five, as she watched the internal explosions consume another vessel.
Asuka smiled broadly. She had done well, hadn't she. The Third Child was still ahead, as a Herald was obviously worth more than a Swarm Ship, but she had narrowed the lead considerably, and was now certainly thrashing the First Child. And given a chance to face the Heralds, well, she'd show them.
I'll show the Ikari's. All of them.
She rode the carcass of the Migou ship to the ground, leaping off and landing gently as the behemoth was broken by its impact, crumpling and dying. She watched the carcass, the warmth of self congratulation filling her.
Then she headed off to the rendezvous point. This was Migou territory, after all.
~'/|\'~
