Chapter 27: An Island Awakening
Chapter 27:
An Island Awakening
UPON LANDING AT ROGACHEVO, a Russian military air base on the southern side of Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago that divided the Barents and Kara Seas, a Euro soldier exhaled white breaths and grumbled, “What the hell kind of place are they choosing for the last battle?”
The Europeans, after discussing with Russia, had selected this location for the final confrontation and were rapidly preparing the ambush site.
The black giant Armaros, who’d brought calamity to every part of the globe, along with his underlings, the Victors and the Angel Carriers, were drawn to the heartbeat produced by Super Eva’s window to higher dimensions. An imitation heartbeat produced the same effect. Even now, after the Lance of Longinus had stolen Super Eva’s heart, the rumble of that imitation would still bring humanity’s enemies calling.
With the Evangelion—Heurtebise—and their combined combat forces, Europe and Russia intended on forcing a final showdown on this remote island.
Both seas, to the east and west, adjoined the Arctic Ocean. And at this high latitude, the pull of the gargantuan moon had a lesser effect on the tides, so damage from the water’s ebb and flow had been kept comparatively low.
Countless gray warships, constituting the bulk of Russia’s navy, were spread out across the water as far as the eye could see. Their cannons had been raised, and waterproof coverings removed, for thorough testing of their safeguards and controls.
The ground troops were outfitted with CBRN gear (airtight suits and gas masks) to protect against being turned into pillars of salt—if that phenomenon could indeed be protected against.
At least the protective gear wouldn’t be uncomfortably hot this far north.
But even if the soldiers grew too warm for comfort, no one would remove the gear by choice. In the previous century, Novaya Zemlya had been a nuclear test site, and even now, Russia maintained a stockpile of N2 weapons. They tested these weapons so heavily that the northern edge of the island wasn’t just cratered, it looked like the bottom of a giant pot.
The N2 reaction didn’t produce radiation—at least, not officially—but the testing had unearthed soil contaminated by the previous century’s nuclear tests. Everyone present had heard rumors of radioactive soil turning to dust and drifting away on the wind.
The angry bark of a drill sergeant echoed from inside the passenger plane that had brought the latest batch of soldiers here, and they rushed off the plane as if it were on fire. They were holding up the endless stream of aircraft queuing to land, refuel, and take off again, empty.
From the airport, soldiers and supplies were shuttled by truck, helicopter, and VOTL aircraft to the battleground—the bombed-out test site—which the locals had taken to calling Misha’s Frying Pan.
A strange aircraft circled the center of the basin like a wayward leaf as it attempted to land. It was Nerv Japan’s Platypus-2, a.k.a. the N2 Flanker.
The N2 Flanker was the progenitor of the graviton floater technology—the combination of N2 reactor and diamond-slit array. The experimental plane was a joint effort between Nerv Japan and the JSSDF, with a Russian-made aircraft serving as the testbed. In a certain sense, the aircraft was coming home, though its birthplace was hard to pin down. According to one story, the JSSDF had piled a bunch of graviton floaters onto a used Russian aircraft that had been purchased for tactical appraisal and subsequently mothballed. Another suggested that the graviton floater test unit had been built first, and later retrofitted with a nose and wings, so that the fore and aft could be differentiated.
Either way, the Allegorica wings on Eva-02 and Heurtebise were expanded versions of this plane’s systems and had been created from its accumulated data. The Flanker was later equipped with a railgun that drew power from the N2 reactor. Nerv Japan had hoped that, with its ability to fly freely at any speed up to Mach 2, the plane would serve as air support for the Evangelions. But once Hakone was leased to the UN, Nerv Japan lost the cooperation of the JSSDF. Due to the Flanker’s overall reliability, and its resilience against electromagnetic interference, the plane had been recently serving as a transport for Acting Deputy Commander Toji’s frequent travels.
“Let’s get to work,” Toji said. He’d come to observe the planned battle site. The UN had requested Nerv Japan’s participation in the main event.
But Super Eva had gone missing, and Eva-02 had fused with its pilot and might not follow orders. Meanwhile, the pilot of the last orbital Eva-0.0 was in the final testing phase of Eva-00 Type-F’s Allegorica system—but the engineers would do whatever it took to be ready in time for the battle.
Toji’s visit primarily served as a clear signal that Nerv Japan didn’t intend to ignore their allies’ call. Still, he dutifully observed the battle formations as he descended. He spotted Heurtebise’s control plane, of the Euro Sixth Rapid Response Unit, touching down on the dry, barren ground. He was changing course so that he could set the N2 Flanker down beside them when a warning came over the radio from the garrison.
<<Japanese plane, maintain your distance from the Eva.>>
“Aw, man. I was hoping I could use the bathroom.”
Toji hadn’t intended on staying for more than a quick look. Nerv Japan still had a lot of preparations ahead. For now, he just hoped they wouldn’t push the German Eva-02 Heurtebise too far. Down below, Hikari’s pure-white Eva was kneeling.
<<Ritter?>> the command plane’s bridge called to Hikari in her entry plug.
It took a moment before she remembered that Ritter—knight—meant her.
“Oh, er, yes!” she hastily replied. “Kommandobrücke?”
<<Did we interrupt you? Were you on the phone with your boyfriend?>>
“I would never do that on duty!”
That had been a joke. All her communications were kept under strict control. But she was a stickler for rules anyway.
<<Hikari, the additional quantum wave mirror trucks are here. Do you think you could start the calibrations?>>
“Affirmative.”
Leaning out from the cockpit of his parked Flanker, Toji removed his helmet and waved it to get Hikari’s attention. The helmet tumbled from his fingers and rolled away. He yelped in surprise and then scurried down out of the plane to chase after it.
“What is he doing?” Hikari laughed as she watched through the Eva’s partially zoomed-in side view.
Just as Nerv Germany and the Euro Sixth Army had promised, Hikari was no longer being hypnotically controlled.
At this point, she—and her human rights—were being treated with deference. With no other Eva-compatible pilots within their command, they’d adapted a new strategy—to use her natural amiability against her. They’d learned that as long as they apologized for their earlier discourtesy, and took a completely honest and cooperative stance with her, she didn’t have it in her to refuse. And yes, she knew what they were doing.
Her older sister had been caught in the Lance of Longinus’s light and turned into a pillar of salt, but she still had a younger sister in Germany. And while the mysterious presence inside the abandoned prototype body of Asuka’s Eva-02 might have been nothing more than vestige of a long-gone consciousness, Hikari believed it was Asuka’s mother. She didn’t have any evidence aside from her own belief, but she couldn’t just leave Heurtebise.
“This is Eva-02 Heurtebise requesting authorization to initialize my graviton floater array and take flight.”
<<This is Rogachevo Air Base ATC. Keep clear of the aircraft staging area.>>
<<Kommandobrücke to Hikari, you are authorized for your calibration flight. Be careful of the VTOL aircraft to your south.>>
Heurtebise’s graviton floaters began to hum and then roar, and the three-thousand-ton giant lifted off the ground.
The Eva rose about twenty meters, held altitude there, and then glided sideways to the right. The quantum wave mirrors, mounted on large armored trailers, swiveled to follow Heurtebise’s movements.
“Measuring for tracking misalignment,” Hikari said.
In far-off Hokkaido, the quantum wave mirrors had reflected and focused the spatial distortions created by Heurtebise’s graviton floaters into a single point in midair. Heurtebise had used the effect to knock Super Eva off-balance and send the giant to the ground. Since then, the Euro military had upgraded the trucks and increased their number. Now there were sixteen. With this many, the quantum wave mirrors could further amplify the imitation heartbeat. But that wasn’t all. The trucks could also create weaponized spatial distortions of drastically higher magnitude. Even as humanity continued to suffer under the weight of Armaros’ boot, they weren’t just lashing out like a cornered rat. They’d prepared a serious counterattack.
As Heurtebise glided through the air, the quantum wave mirrors swiveled atop the sixteen armored trucks. Every now and then, Heurtebise’s spatial distortions reflected between the mirrors and burst at the focal point, sending an explosive roar reverberating across the basin.
“Ah, I hate that sound,” Toji said with a wince. He thought back to how Super Eva had fallen to the ground again and again. Shinji had nearly lost his mind.
But back then, humanity was fighting among themselves. This time, they’d be fighting together against a common enemy.
He switched on the comms channel. “Hello? This is Suzuhara. Are you guys seeing this video?”
From his helmet speakers came a reply.
<<Woof! Woof woof!>>
<<A cat! Cat ears!>>
That was Azuchi—the golden retriever—and little Ayanami Rei Six.
“Huh?” Toji replied.
“What?” Aoba spoke next.
<<This is Nerv Japan. The sound quality is great. We’re getting some hitching on the video—it’s being routed through the stratospheric airplane network, and we’re running into some digital noise—but it’ll do.>>
“Where’s the American Eva?”
<<They’re on their way to you. Misato should be back in the command center any moment now, and Chief Ibuki should be watching your stream from the deck of the Yamato.>> There was a brief pause. <<Hm? Why are you outside your plane? Your suit and helmet should keep out the dust, but I’m not sure I’d advise it.>>
“Oh, er,” Toji said, rubbing the back of his helmet where it had gotten dinged in the fall. “It’s nothing.”
He switched the head-mounted display from a direct view to a zoomed-in view, aided by extra side-mounted cameras. Toji liked to think of it as his “bird of prey” view. The new picture was transmitted from the helmet, to the Flanker, to the stratospheric airplane network, and then to Nerv Japan HQ.
A giant trench had been dug around the outside of the basin’s rim. The tip of a massive railgun peeked out from the trench. The gun seemed to be a kind of mobile artillery.
“Hm?” Toji said.
Even farther behind the mobile railgun, he saw a convergence reflector that he recognized from the Japanese maser howitzer.
A voice came not from Toji’s headset but from directly beside him. “Hey, Acting Deputy Commander Suzuhara.”
Toji placed the voice immediately. “Lieutenant Colonel Kasuga?”
Toji returned the display to normal view and saw the large man standing beside him, wearing a winter-camouflage CBRN combat suit.
Everything Toji saw through his head-mounted display was being automatically processed by computer algorithms, which analyzed the man’s silhouette and estimated bone structure and, within moments, added the name “Kasuga” to the screen. But Toji didn’t need to read the digital name tag to know. This man could be none other than the commanding officer of the JSSDF Large-Scale Threat Unit. Kasuga was burly to begin with. And with his bulk stuffed inside, he made the protective gear look like a suit of power armor.
The soldier’s affable eyes smiled from behind his goggles. Kasuga touched his gloved hand to the side of his helmet’s covering in salute, and then turned in the direction Toji had been looking. “First Africa, then Russia. And here I thought all kaiju headed for Japan.”
“That’s never been a rule,” Toji said.
“But we’ve always been the ones on the front line. Don’t you feel like we’ve had something taken from us?”
“Er…maybe,” Toji said, noncommittally.
“Let’s go out for yakiniku sometime, while there’s still meat left to eat.”
Toji didn’t mind that Nerv Japan wasn’t commanding the operation, but he did care—greatly—that Hikari was being put on the front lines. Still, he was relieved to see that the Europeans had brought more forces than he’d anticipated. With sixteen whole trucks’ worth of quantum wave mirrors, maybe they could even make that black colossus eat dirt.
Don’t be so sure, he warned himself. Dangerous is dangerous.
A voice in his helmet brought him back from his thoughts.
<<This is Ibuki from the Yamato in Kanto Bay. It’s an emergency!>>
Hikari made her way through the quantum mirror truck calibration checklist.
After she finished testing the gravitational field control of several dozen different attack patterns, she made a soft beat with her graviton floaters. The sound matched Super Eva’s heartbeat perfectly, only much more subdued.
On the day of the battle, she would drive the beat with full power to summon the enemy.
In Heurtebise’s control plane, the crew were pleased with the results and were feeling reassured. Among them were Lieutenant Colonel Clausewitz and the officer serving as his chief assistant.
“I think we’ll be ready just in time for next week,” the assistant said.
“I think so, too,” said Clausewitz. “Hikari, stop the test heartbeat. Each truck, move to a new position and prepare for a second try.”
<<Heurtebise acknowledges. The heartbeat is stopped.>>
At once, everyone in the command center relaxed. Some stood from their chairs, while others reached for their coffee cups.
“I’d like to get more data on the wave interference,” the assistant said, “in case things get a little confused out there. We’ve got more trucks to coordinate than before.”
“I’m concerned about the opposite problem, too,” Clausewitz replied. “What will happen to the amplitude if more mirror trucks are destroyed than our estimates—”
A panicked voice came over the comms channel. <<Kommandobrücke, we have a problem! The echo is bouncing between Trucks Five through Sixteen. We can’t stop it!>>
The soldiers inside the command center tensed.
“The new trucks,” Clausewitz remarked. “Heurtebise?”
<<I’m not generating the waves.>> Hikari replied.
“Is the echo bouncing between the trucks unaided?”
“Heurtebise’s A.I. might have mistaken the command to stop for a change in output level,” the assistant replied. “The system could be automatically stabilizing the echo. The new model trucks don’t have enough output to generate the heartbeat on their own, but each does have an N2 igniter capable of producing a small number of gravitons to make small corrections to the wave.”
“Trucks Five through Sixteen,” Clausewitz ordered, “lock the mirrors in place and unfocus the reflections. That will disperse the wave.”
Thrum.
The test wave had amplified. The heartbeat was now loud enough to hear.
<<This is Truck Six! I can’t enter any commands. We’ve been locked out from the controls!>>
THRUM.
The heartbeat grew louder still.
<<This is Truck Eight! It’s not just the mirrors. I can’t even control the vehicle! The damn thing is driving on its own!>>
The drivers of the newer trucks were all screaming now as they reported malfunctions. Their vehicles were moving of their own accord. Something else was controlling them.
THRUM.
The soldiers began to stir.
The twelve out-of-control quantum wave mirror trucks began to tighten their formation.
“Why is this happening?” shouted Clausewitz.
The assistant slapped a palm to his head. “This morning, we used new data code to us by Nerv Japan to update the trucks’ computers with improved autonomy so that they can continue supporting Heurtebise in any eventuality.”
“What do you mean, ‘any eventuality?’”
“If the drivers are all dead.”
THRUM!
Now the A.I. was issuing an alert over the speakers. <<Warning: The imitation heartbeat has reached call signal decibel level.>>
“Damn it! We’re going to invite company!” Clausewitz jumped to the microphone and shouted to Hikari. “Heurtebise! Destroy the quantum wave mirrors on the malfunctioning trucks!”
<<Do what?!>>
THRUM!
Alarms began ringing all across Novaya Zemlya.
THRUM!
The false heartbeat was the signal to commence combat operations. The combat A.I.s for all forces present—the Euro army, the Russian navy, and the local garrison—announced the initial combat phase…a week early.
THRUM!
The entire island was a hornet’s nest that had just been poked. The soldiers, engineers, and scientists had all been caught off guard, but after a split-second’s hesitation, they took off running to their stations.
The first confused query—Is this a drill?!—came in to the Euro Sixth Army’s central command. Countless others flooded in after. In an instant, calls saturated the voice modulation transmission network, and text requests for confirmation scrolled down the command center’s display screen like a waterfall. The commander of the Sixth Army personally relayed the requests to Heurtebise’s control plane in the form of a strongly worded demand for an immediate explanation.
Hikari spoke through Heurtebise’s external speakers. <<Watch out! I’m going to lift you up!>>
She picked up the nearest truck and turned the vehicle away, sending the quantum wave echo out of focus. Before the other trucks could realign themselves, Heurtebise’s A.I. assigned them new tasks, and the trucks’ guidance systems once again allowed manual input from their human drivers.
The heartbeat, which had been thundering like tens of thousands of soldiers marching in unison, evaporated in an instant, leaving behind only the noise of alarms and jet engines.
The assistant let out a sigh of relief. Then, the severity of the false start sank in, and his face turned pale. He reached for the transmission switch. “We’d better let them know it was a mistake and get those alarms turned off.”
Clausewitz gestured for him to hold off. “Wait!”
“But they told us to reply immediately!”
“Wait two minutes until we can be sure we didn’t accidentally summon the enemy. Don’t take your eyes off the sensor readings!”
All eyes went to the display screen.
“What if we stop the alarm,” Clausewitz said, “and as soon as everyone relaxes, the enemy appears? Even if we start the alarm again, everyone will be out of step. We should remain in panic mode for now. Let them stay angry with us until we’re sure this really was a false alarm.”
Everyone was on tenterhooks. The requests to confirm or deny the starting order devolved into enraged shouting and vicious threats. Each time a new transmission came in, the young soldiers at the comms station trembled and looked to their commander with pleading eyes. By the time two minutes had passed and the lieutenant colonel ordered the all-clear, the control staff were all feeling heavyhearted.
As the assistant reported the false alarm, his only thought was how they were all going to be held responsible.
The alarms quieted. The aircraft shuttling personnel and supplies had already made their escape. The only remaining sounds were the rumble of the trucks’ engines, the Eva’s graviton floaters, and—
THRUM.
Clausewitz and his assistant looked at each other. “What?” they said in unison.
The heartbeat had been faint, but both had heard it.
“Why is the fake heartbeat still going?” Clausewitz asked.
The lieutenant colonel read the status window for the telemetry data sent by Heurtebise and the trucks but saw nothing unusual. “Hikari?” he asked.
Within a small sub-window on the display, she was shaking her head. <<It’s not me, and it’s not the trucks, either!>>
THRUM.
“Then…what is it?”
“Is that…an echo?” a soldier asked. The sound seemed to be coming from a different place than before.
Everyone who’d been moving froze and turned to listen. The soldiers who were already at their stations looked uneasily around to find the source of the heartbeat.
THRUM!
“That’s not an echo! It’s even louder than before!”
Something leaped out of the ground.
“Torwächter!” someone screamed. “I repeat, a Torwächter is here!”
Torwächter—German for gatekeeper—was the Euro designation for the enemy that Nerv Japan had yet to assign a code name. It appeared on Japanese detection systems as “Victor.”
They’d summoned Armaros’ vassal. But that wasn’t the biggest surprise.
Mouth agape, the same soldier shouted, “The Torwächter is making the heartbeat?!”
Heurtebise’s graviton floaters were still in alignment. The graviton array resonated with the Victor/Torwächter’s heartbeat and began beating in time. The sound made Hikari shiver with fear. This had happened to her before.
“No, not that,” she cried. “Not that!”
Inside the Eva’s control plane, Clausewitz said, “The Torwächter is making an imitation heartbeat? What the hell is going on?!”
<<Kommandobrücke!>> Hikari shouted from the speaker. <<It’s not an imitation. It’s the original!>>
“Wh…what?”
Another voice cut in. <<It’s moving!>>
The Torwächter held its arms crossed in front of its chest. Then it unfolded them to reveal a triangular object with a large cleft in the middle and anchors at each point.
It was the Center Trigonus—the vessel that contained Super Eva’s heart. Behind the cleft shone a brilliant, fiery light that flickered violently in time to the heartbeat.
In the speakers in Toji’s helmet, Ibuki Maya and the Hakone control center were coordinating the search for Asuka, but as the chaos unfolded around him, he was in no position to participate.
“Oh, come on!” he shouted. He recognized the Center Trigonus immediately. “Super Eva’s heart?! That’s what’s causing the heartbeat? Hyuga? Maya-san? Are you seeing this?”
He hurried to the N2 Flanker but ran backward so that his helmet camera could send video of the Victor back to Hakone, even if it meant a few stumbles along the way.
Shaken, Maya exclaimed, <<I don’t believe it! That’s the singularity—the window to higher dimensions and to the energy they hold. It’s the one we stabilized into a heartbeat with the quantum wave mirrors inside Super Eva’s chest!>>
No one spoke in the command center in Hakone. They were all too stunned by the feed from Toji’s camera. They were hearing Maya, too. It wasn’t like the chief scientist to raise her voice, but she wasn’t speaking for their benefit. She was talking herself through what she was seeing.
<<The Lance of Longinus stole the singularity from Super Eva and broke the shell that contained it. But when the singularity didn’t split the Earth apart, and we didn’t measure any unusual burst of energy coming from the lance’s orbit, I assumed it had exploded in the space they use to travel between their gates.>>
“That’s right,” Misato replied. “Once the singularity was torn from Shinji, it shouldn’t have remained stable.”
Misato thought back to the disaster in North Africa. The Lance of Longinus had been orbiting the earth and extending itself toward a complete ring when the weapon suddenly changed course—like an 28,000-kilometer-long steel snake—and pierced through the Earth, through Super Eva, taking the heart away.
She angrily slammed her hands down onto the desk at her station. “That heart belongs to Shinji-kun!”
She wasn’t speaking figuratively. Shinji’s own flesh-and-blood body possessed no heart. In its place, medical imaging showed a hollow cavity. His blood circulated from the beating of Super Eva’s heart. With that heart stolen, only Armaros’ Q.R. Signum scale was keeping him alive.
“While the singularity was beating within the reflecting mirrors, could it have stabilized into a heart-like state?” Hyuga asked.
<<Hm? By its own choice?>> Maya seemed to think about it. <<Like how primitive organisms choose stability as if they possess consciousness?>>
“Whatever the case,” Fuyutsuki cut in, looking to Misato, “we are where we are.”
“He’s right.” The commander nodded. “I don’t think the Victor would’ve shown up with that thing in its chest if it made it easier to kill.”
The opposite was far easier to imagine.
“Maya, what’s your take on Asuka’s disappearance?” Misato asked, shifting gears.
<<It may have been one of Armaros’ gates. She was sucked into the ground without a trace. In which case, searching for her here would be wasted effort.>>
“Come back here right away. I feel bad for Asuka, but there’s nothing we can do for her at the moment. I believe in her. That girl has luck on her side. She came back from the moon, didn’t she?”
“Next subject,” Misato said, turning to Hyuga. “Is Unit Zero Allegorica ready?”
“I’d say we’re sixty percent there,” he replied. “None of the remaining work is mission critical.”
“As of this moment, Unit Zero Allegorica is designated active. Six, get moving!”
“Woof!” Six said.
“Arm the Eva with no restrictions.”
“Woof! Got it!”
Misato clapped her hands. “All right everyone. Get moving!”
THRUM!
The enemy’s heartbeat frightened Hikari, and at the same time, she had to suppress the Q.R. Signum’s pulsing urge to seek it out. Her own Eva was producing a heartbeat, too, but hers was a mere imitation, overpowered by the real thing.
Nevertheless, Hikari managed to pick up the positron rifle from the ground at her feet. The fire control system loaded up, and the blue options of the practice menu were replaced one by one with a wave of orange live-fire modes. The Eva’s reactor spooled up and began charging the weapon’s capacitors.
“Ritter to Kommandobrücke, requesting permission to fire!”
Hikari felt sweat pouring from her skin into the circulating LCL. It was a strange feeling.