Chapter 9: Electromagnetic Blitz

Chapter 9:
Electromagnetic Blitz

 

ALARMS SOUNDED throughout Tokyo-3. Another threat had come, same as it had ever been. Nerv was rarely the aggressor; the hostile entities mostly came to them.

Starting with Rei Quatre’s rebellion, that troublesome cycle seemed to be starting again.

 

In a holding cell in the interrogation office, Rei Trois heard the alarm, and her shoulders twitched.

She let out a startled gasp and immediately tried to connect to the other Ayanamis.

It was a reflexive response driven into her through training. She couldn’t see Quatre, but for a split second, she connected to Cinq and Six—or at least she felt like she did—but that was all. Then, once again, she was alone.

The guard stationed in Rei’s cell stood and said something to her, but she only trembled.

 

Dressed formally, Commander Katsuragi Misato entered the command center. She had just returned from the government offices of Tokyo-2, where she had gone to explain the decision to terminate Eva-01. On the way back, her heavy VTOL aircraft stopped to pick up Aoba, who had taken off running toward Cage Two the moment they arrived.

Inside the command center, Rei Cinq and Rei Six were talking over each other, their voices coming through the room’s speakers from orbit.

“What’s going on? Report,” Misato said.

“A single, large-scale threat is approaching from the direction of Mount Myojogatake,” Hyuga replied. “We have visual conformation that it’s the same type as the Angel Carrier that previously attacked us.”

Angel Carrier. That was the name Misato had chosen for the animated corpse of the mass-production Eva that had carried Sachiel in its cocoon.

“That close?! Why didn’t our radar or satellites see it?”

Whatever trick the Angel Carrier had employed, it had managed to slip through Nerv’s long-range detection systems—both visual and seismic. By the time it had been noticed, it was mere kilometers east of HQ.

“And what’s with these two talking?” Misato asked.

“They suddenly woke up and started talking to each other,” Hyuga said, “not through the mental link, but over the terrestrial monitoring frequency.”

“What about Trois? The mental mirroring?”

“Apparently, she was able to briefly connect with them. The two in orbit have a detectable time lag between their brain waves, so I think she’s telling the truth.”

“Why did they wake up?”

The clones had been speaking at such a breakneck pace that the staff inside the command center at Hakone hadn’t been able to decipher any meaning. The prevailing theory was that the pair shared identical knowledge, and their conversation simply skipped over everything they didn’t need to say. But before that theory could be put to the test, the clones’ conversation had started to break down, approaching total incoherence.

Misato quickly grasped the danger.

“Stop them!” she shouted. “Their minds are going to break. Make them go back to sleep. Return their brain activity and metabolic control to sustainable levels.”

By the time the pair had been induced back into a deep sleep, their vitals were off the charts.

As long as the pilots were not of sound mind, the S² Engine-powered Evas and their gamma-ray laser cannons had to remain out of play. The search-and-destroy system Nerv Japan had spent two years developing only functioned through a single teenage girl, and because the system relied on her, it was now effectively useless.

 

<<Attention! The SSDF forces in Gora have begun an attack.>>

The screen switched to the main tower’s camera, which showed the purple-tinged eastern sky. A few seconds later, the image shook.

“We’ve received a communication from the commanding officer of the SSDF guard forces,” Hyuga reported. “They have engaged the enemy at 10:35. Due to ongoing civilian evacuation, air support is being withheld.”

Frustrated, Misato said, “Then they should have prioritized the evacuation and waited to engage. Guide the civilians to the nearest shelters.”

At the foot of the eastern mountains, the curved neck of a beam cannon briefly came into view before firing. The beam’s focal point blasted the bare surface of the mountain.

Misato squinted at the screen. “What is that?”

The dazzling beam of light converged on the Angel Carrier on the far side of the ridge. Airborne particles caught by the beam were scattered, forming a curtain of lightning bolts.

The image brought Hyuga to his feet. “Incredible.”

“It’s the SSDF’s new maser howitzer! So that’s what was on the pair of armored flatbeds that came in to Yumoto.”

“I know we have our own maser beams for power transmission, but I never expected this.”

The maser cannon couldn’t put out as much energy as Nerv’s gamma-ray laser or positron rifles. But the weapon could focus its beam for nearly four seconds uninterrupted, resulting in a higher cumulative energy output. The maser’s tremendous energy requirements were supplied by an N2 reactor, which had been developed alongside Jet Alone’s successor.

The Angel Carrier quickly put up a field, but not before the maser beam, using a reflector at the end of the cannon’s arm to focus on a single point, struck its target—the cocoon inside the Carrier’s rib cage.

 

“So then,” Misato said, “everything we learned in that battle…”

“It looks like they found out,” Hyuga added.

The rest of the beam’s energy was deflected by the Carrier’s shield and scorched the mountainside.

“And yet they withdrew Akashima to Tokyo-2, claiming they didn’t want to be involved in the destruction of Unit One.”

“I hadn’t heard anything about them completing the maser cannon,” Hyuga said. “Do you think they’re using this as a field test where they don’t have to worry about repercussions? If the maser doesn’t work, it’s still our mess to clean up.”

The Angel Carrier rocked backward—

“It’s not stopping,” Misato said. “Send out the surveillance drone.”

—and squatted down.

Wait.

For a moment, the Angel Carrier appeared to have been immobilized, but it was simply gathering strength in its legs. In the next moment, it leaped high into the air. The giant turned, mid-flight. When it landed, it was a considerable distance away, the SSDF maser howitzer crushed under its feet.

“Incredible!” Hyuga said. “Did the maser miss the mark, or was it simply not strong enough to punch through?”

“One of those,” Misato said. “Is it just me, or does this Carrier look a little different from the first one? Its shoulders are more like our Evas.”

Indeed, some kind of plating appeared to be sticking out on either side of the Carrier’s head.

 

Eva-02’s icon began blinking on the status board, accompanied by a pleasant electronic chime.

<<I’m bringing up Unit Two with the rectenna.>> Asuka said. <<I’m counting on you to have the maser transmitters ready. I’d been hoping to borrow power from the SSDF, but they didn’t last very long, did they?>>

“I wouldn’t advise putting yourself on the receiving end of that cannon,” Hyuga said, responding to Asuka’s joke in earnest. “A maser beam that focused wouldn’t give you power, it would punch a hole right through your rectenna!”

“Are our maser transmission towers ready?” Misato asked.

“Raised and calibrated.”

“Asuka, I love your confidence, but don’t forget that you’re our last defense.”

The only Eva that Nerv Japan could currently field was Asuka’s.

The orbital sniper network—Nerv’s supposed ace in the hole—could no longer be counted on. They still had Eva-00, but its pilot was Rei Trois, and there were fears she might end up going the same route as Quatre.

And Unit-01 was…

 

Asuka shook the thoughts from her head. “Unit Two launching!”

Her right hand held the Lance of Longinus.

When Eva-02 emerged from the eastern gate, it wasn’t trailing an umbilical cable.

A folded frame on its left shoulder pylon opened in the shape of a large cross.

“Rectenna open.”

<<Beginning transmission in five seconds… Two, one, mar—>>

Kzzk!

Interference cut off Hyuga’s countdown, but Asuka didn’t panic.

“Receiving maser beam. Power gain is within tolerances.”

<<Unit Two, this is the command center.>> Hyuga had switched to a different communication band. <<Direct the battle away from the monorail station. We have civilians there.>>

“Acknowledged, command center. If I get anywhere near that area, cut my power. I don’t want to vaporize the evacuees.”

Maser transmission towers stood all around Tokyo-3, aside from a few areas where line of sight was restricted, such as the ravines between the mountains and some lakeside sections. This infrastructure had been forced on Nerv Japan by the UN, under whose auspices Nerv Japan existed. It was the global community’s way of protesting Nerv’s decision to equip the Series-0.0 Evas with S² Engines. Their message was clear: stick with cables and beams.

This power transmission was efficient enough to free an Eva from its umbilical cable, but the electromagnetic interference reduced its efficacy by more than half. Still, the maser method was useful in cases such as this, where the Eva needed to go beyond the cable’s reach.

The transmission towers swiveled in unison to follow Eva-02’s movements. Powered by ultra-short coherent waves, the Eva walked up the slopes with the rectenna upon its shoulder, like a massive cross.

The spillover microwaves turned to heat and light, crackling across the surface of Asuka’s A.T. Field.

 

In the chaos of Cage Two, the attachment of Eva-01’s new chest piece had hit a snag. While the mirror was being moved into place, the overhead crane brought in a separate piece of armor—a headpiece with boxy, angular facets and a curved, bow-like horn. Siren lights spun to warn the crew that the crane was in motion. An alarm blared as well, though the sound couldn’t be heard over the Eva’s thunderous rumble.

“You’re even replacing the headpiece?” Toji asked Maya.

“What? I can’t hear you!”

Toji patted his safety helmet and tried again. “Are. You. Replacing. The. Headpiece?”

“Yes!” Maya shouted. “This restraint armor is bigger all around. Whoever designed it must have anticipated the Eva having a truly beastly body. You can feel the designer’s fear in the work. See how there’s an armored visor that can be lowered to cover its eyes?”

“I don’t know. Feels macabre.”

The crane stopped, and the headpiece swayed.

“A little more to the right!”

The crane’s range fell just short of Eva-01. The engineers began pulling at a rope hanging from the headpiece, and the scientists joined them.

“Suzuhara-kun, help them out!” Maya ordered.

“Going analog, are we?”

“We’re not working on a factory line. This is what one-off builds are like.”

Toji would have a chance to learn that for himself if he took a job at a workshop. He was at that time in high school when teachers started asking their students about future plans. Of course, the students were talking among themselves, too. But as Toji pulled the rope, somehow the future no longer felt real—not just his future, but the world’s.

 

Asuka considered the situation. The eastern evacuation route and the monorail lay between her and the Angel Carrier. In that case…

“Command, I’m going to circle around to the north. You saw how the Angel Carrier destroyed the maser. This one is actively on the attack.”

The previous mass-production Eva’s only goal had been to reach the Chronostatic Sphere, and it had ignored anything not directly in its path.

<<You think you can draw it away?>> Misato asked.

“Ja, boss. I’m closing the rectenna. Cease power transmission.”

Eva-02 sprinted across the foothills of Mount Daigatake and crossed Highway 138 to the north of Mount Kozuka. When Asuka had positioned herself northwest of the Angel Carrier, she unfurled the rectenna again.

She slammed the butt of the Lance of Longinus into the ground and shifted the Powered 8—the next-gen pallet rifle—from a one-handed to a two-handed grip.

“Switching to burst-fire mode.”

The entry plug’s AI chimed and tightened the aiming reticle for accuracy.

“I’m not really looking for accuracy, but sure,” Asuka said. “Command center, Unit Two initiating fire.”

Three shots cracked through the air.

 

Unlike an A.T. Field, the Carrier’s power shield was invisible. But when Eva-02’s three bullets struck the shield’s surface, the tremendous kinetic energy produced rainbow-colored pillars of flame.

“Hey, you! Look over here!” Asuka shouted.

As if it could hear her from three kilometers away, the Angel Carrier turned—and held out its hand.

“Huh?”

The air distorted. Asuka dropped her left hand from the Powered 8’s foregrip. No sooner had she grasped the Lance of Longinus than—

Wham!

She felt like she’d been struck by an ocean wave, and Eva-02 was knocked back with tremendous force.

Startled voices erupted throughout the command center, where Eva-02 appeared on the main screen.

“What the hell just happened?!” Misato asked.

Asuka replied as if the answer were obvious. <<That thing threw its power shield at me. The question is, did it come up with that trick on its own, or did it see me and Shinji do the same thing?>>

“Are you suggesting it was around back then?”

<<I don’t know. I wanted to hear how it sounded.>>

 

The roar inside Cage Two startled Aoba, but he hurried across the catwalk and into the old, dusty control booth. Maya began inputting the professor’s hard-copy data while Aoba fed the Magi system what was on the storage device.

Toji didn’t understand what they were doing. “So, what, you put that mirror thing around him, and everything’s just fine?”

“Say you had a normal mirror,” Maya replied, “and you wanted to use it to reflect light at a particular spot. That would require some careful, precise adjustments, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“This restraint armor was originally designed by Dr. Akagi to permanently freeze an Eva’s core.”

“And that will keep the Eva from self-destructing?”

“Unfortunately,” Aoba interjected, “it’s not that simple anymore now that Eva-01’s all worked up. Even if we cut it off from the dimensions on the other side, there’s so much energy flowing through that it would break the mirror and keep coming. Frankly, I’m stunned by what I’m seeing.”

“That’s why we’re changing plans,” Maya said, still pounding the keys. “But like I said, it’s going to take careful, precise adjustments. We’re going to redirect the stream of energy and prevent it from expanding the extradimensional window any further. If we get to that point, and everything goes well, then we can think about what comes next.”

 

Above ground, a long-range battle of rifle versus invisible shields had begun.

As Asuka had planned, the Angel Carrier changed course and began closing in on Eva-02. But her enemy hadn’t moved as far away from the city and its transportation network as she wanted. Continuing her patient retreat to the northern wall of the caldera, she evaded the Carrier’s shield attacks, occasionally firing back to keep her opponent’s attention.

And then—

“This is far enough.”

She went on the attack. Eva-02 folded its rectenna again, stowed the Powered 8 on its rail mount, and took the Lance of Longinus in hand. Asuka sped toward the Angel Carrier, dodging left and right around the incoming shields.

“Just as I thought! When I change directions, there’s a short delay before it reacts. Which means…”

Accelerating to top speed, she projected her A.T. Field in a cone ahead of her and dove headfirst into the Angel Carrier.

The field shot across the ground, shredding the surface and kicking up great clouds of dust, yet still preserving all its tremendous kinetic energy for when it slammed into the Angel Carrier’s shield. With a deafening roar, the two barriers met, light cascading like fireworks from their plane of contact. But the Carrier’s shield held, deflecting Eva-02’s charge.

The Carrier turned sideways to pursue the cone of Eva-02’s A.T. Field, and Asuka saw her opening.

The tips of the Lance of Longinus appeared from the dust cloud. Eva-02 hadn’t passed the Angel Carrier, it had projected the A.T. Field forward while remaining behind.

Separated from its field, Eva-02 thrust the lance, and its two red prongs pierced the Carrier’s red, glowing cocoon all the way through.

 

Cheers erupted in the command center.

Asuka had struck the Carrier’s weakest point before the larval Angel inside it even had a chance to come out.

“That was great, Asuka!” Misato said. “But isn’t that cheating?”

<<Shut up,>> Asuka replied, playing along, but—

Something doesn’t feel right. I should’ve met more resistance.

“What?!”

Asuka reacted with confusion and then surprise.

A powerful force was pulling the lance, past the point where there should have been anywhere for it to go, deep enough that the weapon’s twin tips should have already emerged from the Angel Carrier’s back.

The Carrier’s power shield slammed into Eva-02’s arms and forced it to release the lance.

The shield’s impact shredded the cocoon, revealing a black-and-white-patterned sphere consuming the lance.

 

“Leliel!” Misato sprang to her feet.

The Angel Leliel.

The black-and-white moiré sphere was only the Angel’s shadow. The Angel itself inhabited a pocket of imaginary space within the sphere and could swallow up anything and everything.

“We’ve been tricked!”

The Angel Carrier came here to steal our copy of the lance.

But what good was knowing the enemy’s plan when it had already been achieved?

Once the Lance of Longinus had been swallowed whole, Leliel’s shadow vanished from the cocoon.

 

Asuka was furious.

Eva-02 detached the microwave rectenna from its shoulder, plunged the giant cross into the ground at the Angel Carrier’s feet, and jumped away.

<<Hyuga, burn it!>>

In the command center, Hyuga scrambled for the controls.

Two nearby towers, and three distant ones with trajectories only narrowly passing above the terrain, blasted their maser beams at the rectenna in unison.

 

Without external management, the five microwave beams rapidly overcharged the rectenna. In an instant, its capacitors’ superconductive lattice broke down.

Eva-02’s vision filled with white.

Multiple terawatts powered the resulting electromagnetic explosion. The steel frames of the nearby transmission towers melted from the induced current, and their concrete foundations disintegrated like sand. The water in the soil surrounding evaporated, and the ground in a five-hundred-meter radius swelled and then exploded.

Asuka retrieved the Powered 8 from her shoulder rail.

The timer for her internal battery reserves raced toward zero. Beyond her HUD rose a mushroom cloud streaked with lightning, and from it, the Angel Carrier emerged.

“Yeah,” Asuka said, “you would survive that, wouldn’t you? You know, I think I’m starting to dislike you.”

 

Asuka heard a sound.

Thud!

At first, she thought it was her own heart racing.

Thwump! Thwump! Thwump!

But it seemed…distant. Where is that coming from?

Her eyes were locked on the Angel Carrier, but for some reason, she was transfixed by the sound.

“What is it?”