Chapter 32: The Closing Mirrors

Chapter 32:
The Closing Mirrors

 

THRUM!

Super Eva’s stolen heart pulsed in the center of the circle of dust and debris stirred up by the spindle’s sweep. The heart’s current owner, the Torwächter, advanced toward the sound of Heurtebise’s imitation heartbeat.

Were Armaros’ retainers driven to steal the heartbeat’s source? Or did the imitation heartbeat simply offend them?

Hikari’s eyes darted between her Eva’s visual feed and the map with the deployment diagram. The dot indicating the Torwächter’s location crossed a demarcation line on the map.

“Th-the target has entered the mirror array!” Hikari stammered. “Heurtebise to Kommandobrücke—I’m switching the graviton floater mode.”

The graviton floaters stopped making the imitation heartbeat and prepared to generate gravitational distortions. Losing the sound of the heartbeat it sought, the Torwächter slowed its advance, as if unsure, which was just what Hikari wanted.

From the control plane, Clausewitz announced that the trap was ready.

<<Mirror convoy, close the circle! Ritter, begin!>>

The sixteen armored trucks, with trapezoidal arrays of quantum wave mirrors mounted on gimbals, raced across the barren land. The convoy overtook Heurtebise and began to spread out.

Heurtebise’s graviton floaters hummed. The majority of the energy created by gravitons escaped out of our dimension through gravitational waves. But when positioned right, the graviton wave mirrors could reflect and focus those waves into a single point in space.

The Torwächter continued swinging the spindle. As the giant took another step, the space beneath its foot warped slightly and snapped violently back into place.

This was the limit of the N2-based graviton technology. By producing gravitons in greater quantity, the effect could be used to make Heurtebise and the N2 Flanker fly, but those were fixed targets upon which the floaters could be applied in great number. Gravity-based weapons that could blast away or even knock over a distant target remained the stuff of science fiction.

But graviton technology still had its uses. The gravitational alteration could pass through the Torwächter’s shield. The effect wasn’t strong enough to push it over, but the Torwächter stumbled on the small distortion and staggered forward.

Clausewitz spurred her on. <<Again, Hikari!>>

“Yes, sir!”

Evangelions and Torwächters were able to stand on the ground. In other words, they were physical objects affected by gravity, and their A.T. Fields and power shields couldn’t block the force, either.

The Torwächter tripped on another distortion and lurched forward, just barely regaining its balance.

<<Careful! The Torwächter lengthened the sling! The spindle will hit you on the next revolution!>>

Hikari’s eyes widened. She looked to her left where the jet-black projectile raced toward her.

She swung the positron rifle around and managed to shoot at the last moment, but she missed. The spindle had bounced and changed course, smashing into her rifle. The weapon was instantly destroyed.

The impact jolted through Heurtebise’s left shoulder and opened a deep crack in the Eva’s armor.

“I can’t block it with my power shield?” Hikari asked. The surprise hit even harder than the feedback pain.

 

In Heurtebise’s control plane, Clausewitz’s assistant said, “Huh? The spindle pushed right through Heurtebise’s shield. We’re not just dealing with kinetic force here.”

“It’s not over yet!” Clausewitz said. “Heurtebise’s major organs have taken only minimal damage.”

<<Heurtebise to Kommandobrücke. Return the dummy plug’s control levels to how they were before. I…I can’t draw enough power on my own.>>

The fear in her voice startled Clausewitz, but now that he thought about it, this was the first time she’d been in a real battle while in full control of her faculties.

“Stay calm. I know you can do this!”

<<But, sir!>>

“If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll ready the dummy plug for deep submersion. I’m also working on getting you a replacement for that rifle.”

He’d promised to release Hikari from the dummy plug’s control, but the dummy plug was still operating—just at a much lower level. Completely shutting off the dummy plug would allow the Q.R. Signum to infiltrate the pilot’s psyche, just as the scale had done to Japan’s Rei Quatre. The dummy plug was shouldering that burden in Hikari’s place.

But Hikari couldn’t draw as much power from the scale as she had before—and not just because she’d given one of her two scales to Japan’s Super Eva.

Back to the matter at hand, Clausewitz reminded himself.

“Russian railgun howitzer battalion, are you ready?”

The moment he finished speaking, his screen flashed bright white.

The railgun shell struck the Torwächter’s shield and created cascading, rainbow-colored electromagnetic smoke clouds.

The transfer of kinetic energy was so terrific that the shell wasn’t merely obliterated, it ionized. The black giant’s shield held strong, but the impact sent the Torwächter reeling backward. Yet the giant managed to stay on its feet. It counterattacked immediately, smashing the spindle into the side of the well-hidden forty-ton howitzer. The mobile railgun was utterly destroyed.

The camouflaged tank crumpled like a cardboard box, and the 350-meter-long railgun tumbled across the ground, like a thin strip of paper tossed about in the wind. It crashed into a quantum wave mirror truck. The trucks’ A.I. system recalculated the formation to compensate for the loss, and the remaining vehicles assembled into the new formation.

Though the gravitational distortions had felled Super Eva on the first attempt, the Torwächter had been tripped up almost ten times now and still stood. But it was easy to calculate how to stabilize—or destabilize—a biped. Medical researchers and roboticists had been performing those calculations for a long time.

Heurtebise and the mirror trucks created another distortion point.

This time, the air pocket burst behind the Torwächter’s back, and the black giant staggered forward. The large, circular motions of the giant’s hand faltered, and the sling flung the spindle high into the sky, then straight down. The projectile sank deep into the ground, dislodging a chunk of frozen soil larger than an Eva.

<<Hikari,>> Clausewitz said, <<can you break through that thing’s shield?>>

“I can do it!” she replied, not knowing whether or not it was true. But she at least had a chance.

Though she was frightened, she counted on her shield’s protection as she propelled her Eva forward. Heurtebise discarded the broken rifle and drew its legside sword. The Torwächter tried to right itself, and she sent another gravitational echo bursting at the back of its leg. The Torwächter went down on one knee. Heurtebise thrust its sword.

CLANG!

At the blade’s tip, the two giants’ power shields clashed.

Hikari shouted a war cry and pushed the sword forward with all her strength.

She noticed something strange. Her sword’s tip was shaking.

No…the shield is?

Hikari looked beyond the fiercely flickering light of the shields. There was the Torwächter’s chest.

The heart is beating faster.

A rapid-fire BA-THUMP BA-THUMP BA-THUMP overlaid a waterfall-like roaring. From the heart, restless lights flickered and wispy smoke rose. Hikari was immediately reminded of a large pot that had begun to boil over.

What’s happening to the heart?

Beneath the two giants, the ground burst open, and the spindle flew out. Caught by surprise, Hikari couldn’t move out of the way in time. The spindle struck Heurtebise and split its armor open from abdomen to chest.

The air shot from her lungs, her head rocking back. She saw white shards of broken armor scattering. Beyond them, the Torwächter pushed its left palm toward her, and the air distorted.

FWUM!

Heurtebise’s giant body was thrown backward.

An invisible wall had struck her. The Torwächter had attacked by pushing its power shield against her.

Oh, I didn’t know we could do that…

Toji was a fair distance away but close enough to see what had happened with his own eyes. “Hikari!” he shouted. But then Clausewitz spoke over the shared frequency without encryption.

<<Break, break, break! We’re firing from the west. Heurtebise, don’t move!>>

Now came the important question—what happened to the Torwächter’s power shield when the black giant was using it as a weapon against Heurtebise?

On patrol west of Novaya Zemlya, the Russian fleet had been waiting for this moment. The fleet-wide FCS synchronized the ships’ railguns into three volleys, each separated by only a miniscule delay. The first obliterated any obstructing terrain. The second cleared aside the air and debris. The third passed through the dense air and smashed into the Torwächter with maximum kinetic force.

All that was visible of the first two volleys were the trails of scorched atmosphere left in their wake, but the shells of the third volley converged on a single point and blossomed into a tremendously bright explosion that blotted out everything else.

The shock wave slammed nearby Heurtebise against the ground, pinning the giant there as debris and air particles battered its shield.

Hikari thought she heard voices cry out in awe from all over the island.

Indeed, the artillery soldiers watched through their spotting scopes, the commanders of each squad watched through the main screen, and the crew of the observation planes watched through composite resin windows. All were waving arms and pumping fists in victory.

The battlefield was strewn with debris, white, gray, and black.

But in the center of it all, the smoke cloud dissipated outward, as if something was brushing it aside—and something was. The Torwächter had spread its shield.

The bastard was still alive.

But the sight of what emerged from the smoke left the attackers speechless.

The Torwächter’s left arm had been ripped away, and both legs were missing from the thighs down. Yet the giant hadn’t fallen. Extending from the ground, the Torwächter’s rear plate hoisted the legless giant to its original height.

“Wait,” Clausewitz said, flabbergasted. “How is it still moving?”

The Torwächter was still moving, albeit slowly. Conveying the one-armed, no-legged giant, the rear plate pushed through the debris as it slid along the ground toward Heurtebise, who was still flat on its back. The black giant looked like a torso strapped onto the bow of a broken ship, like a figurehead.

Nerv Japan’s report had theorized that Armaros’ rear plate connected through hyperspace to the Victor’s rear plate. No more than ten or so present on the island had seen the report, but in that moment, every single one of them was thinking about what they’d read.

 

With a barely audible pwssh, Hikari’s plugsuit injected sedative into her body.

From the command plane, Clausewitz called out, <<Hikari, are you all right?!>>

“Y-yes…but I used the sedative, and…”

<<Don’t worry. Just hang on. I’ll increase the dummy plug’s control. The Q.R. Signum will become more active, which should speed up Heurtebise’s regeneration. Just take it easy. We’ll pilot you from here.>>

The dummy plug had only just begun interfacing and optimizing with the Eva’s damaged organ systems. Heurtebise’s body was still limp, but the N2 reactor and the graviton floaters got to work. The weary giant lifted from the ground and started to move…slowly.

The pain in Hikari’s chest had begun to subside. Between the sedative and the dummy plug system, her consciousness was growing hazy. But she needed to speak.

“Clausewitz, sir… The heart. The Torwächter’s heart is beating faster, and…”

<<What is it?>>

“It feels dangerous…even though…it’s my class rep’s—my friend’s heart.”

The Torwächter continued to slither toward her.

But as its quarry began to fly away beyond its reach, the mangled Torwächter froze, no longer pushed by its back plate, like a child left behind.

Brightly shining particles rained like blood from the Torwächter’s gaping wounds. The particles came from the same radiant light that spilled from the higher dimensions with each beat of the Center Trigonus’s heart.

“The heartbeat…” Hikari said, “it’s…”

The heartbeat’s sound had been drowned out by the battle, but now that quiet had fallen again, the Euro and Russian soldiers noticed the black giant’s hastened pulse.

BA-THUMP BA-THUMP BA-THUMP.

As glimmering blood gushed from the Torwächter’s wounds, the light behind the crack of the Center Trigonus flickered even brighter. Crudely grafted onto the Torwächter’s chest, Super Eva’s chest cover glowed red with intense heat, searing the black giant’s flesh.

Was the heart about to explode, taking the giant with it? That might be cause for celebration if that were the extent of the destruction.

The soldiers felt an instinctive alarm. They were standing in front of a dam about to burst.

“Damn it,” Toji said from the cockpit of the hovering N2 Flanker. He pounded his fist on his cybernetic leg. “I think I understand now.”

Super Eva’s heartbeat inspired hope in humanity to keep fighting, even when confronted by colossal forces that could easily squash them. The heartbeat signified the will to exist. It was a force that fought, at any expense, to remain on the world’s stage even after the curtain had fallen. Armaros feared that heartbeat. He’d stolen the heart in desperation.

“He fears the heart, and so he hates it. He wants humanity to destroy it!”

BA-THUMP BA-THUMP BA-THUMP.

“And as if that wasn’t bad enough, when that thing blows, from what Maya-san says, the blast will wipe out this whole island—and beyond. With all these soldiers dead, our will to survive will weaken. What a fine way to teach us a lesson, huh?”

But what could be done? If the soldiers evacuated, and they tried to call down Aten’s Hammer instead, the Torwächter might escape, leaving humanity no better off than when this had started. Let up now, and they’d lose their opportunity to destroy the Torwächter.

In the control plane, Clausewitz said, “We just have to keep fighting.”

Everyone else was thinking the same thing.

The flow of the Torwächter’s glimmering blood slowed, and that was when the soldiers realized there was a second black giant.

Pressed tightly against the back of the propped-up Torwächter, so that their two shapes matched, the second giant reached two arms around the front of the first and soothingly held the raging heart. The heartbeat calmed.

Then the second giant moved out from behind the silhouette of the first and revealed its own rear plate.

“A-alert!” Clausewitz stammered. “All forces, alert! A second Torwächter has appeared! I repeat…”

But Toji was the most surprised. “That’s impossible! The other one… Shinji said he’d defeated the other half!”

The Euro and Russian forces began firing at will. Amid the rising smoke, nearly every shot missed. The chaotic barrage obscured the new Torwächter from view. The giant seemed to have deployed its power shield, but the thick smoke, electromagnetic interference, and heat blocked all sensors.

All Toji saw was the very tips of the two giants’ rear plates touching together.

“Damn!” he said. Using the military advisor protocol, he cut into the combat radio frequency.

“Nerv Japan observer to all forces. This is an emergency! All units near the Victors—er, the Torwächters—withdraw immediately!”

But the Euro’s control plane wasn’t hearing any of it.

<<What idiot is shouting on this frequency?!>>

The cause of Toji’s panic was about to become clear to them.

 

“Kommandobrücke to Heurtebise,” Clausewitz’s assistant said. “Hikari, can you stand up?”

The giant’s white legs were unsteady, but with the help of the graviton floaters, Heurtebise stood. Its chest armor had regenerated but little else.

The damage extended to the Eva’s internal organs, though everything that was supposed to be on the inside had at least stayed that way. All that could be done now was to apply pressure with the restraint armor and pray that the wounds would heal faster than the Eva’s movements tore them open.

Within the transmission window, Hikari shook her head, as if shaking away the last of the pain from in her skull.

<<I think…one of the railgun shells…clipped my wing. The floaters aren’t damaged, but…>>

Clausewitz watched at the neighboring display. “Frontline units, retreat!” He’d just seen the two Torwächters’ rear plates separating. “Front lines, retreat!”

“Is that an order?” the assistant asked.

“Get the hell out of there! Leave your equipment and run!”

He’d reached the same conclusion as Toji.

“The gate is opening!”

 

The two plates separated. Between them, visible through the smoke, the gateway widened like a blackout curtain, unfolding in midair.

Above, Hikari watched from Heurtebise.

The second Torwächter finished opening the gate and then leaped out from the cloud.

Hikari gasped.

Two long, ponytail-like wings fluttered in the air. A silhouette appeared, bearing dynamic curves that flowed in and out from chest to toe. It was an assertive, feminine form.

“Asuka?” Hikari said. “What are you doing here?”

A black stain had spread from the Victor’s plate attached to her back, blotting out much of her signature red color.

“Wh-wh-whaaat?!” Toji sputtered, also taken by surprise.

Just minutes ago, he’d received word that she’d disappeared off the shore of Kanto Bay.

Just what the heck is going on here? he wondered.

But he didn’t have time to think about it.

A crowd of white hands emerged from the darkness to clutch at the edges of the gateway. A moment later, seven Type-3 Angel Carriers spilled out from the other side.