Chapter 23: The Curtain

Chapter 23:
The Curtain

 

RATHER THAN FLY directly to the moon, Cinq’s Eva-0.0 and Asuka’s Eva-02 increased their orbit gradually. The plan was to make contact with the Longinus Curtain at the shallowest possible angle.

Asuka looked at the Earth overhead.

She’d read a report stating that the shifting tectonic plates had caused the Arabian Peninsula to begin rotating counterclockwise.

The Himalayas had risen sharply, and the Indian subcontinent had begun sinking under the Eurasian plate to its north. The people there had begun fleeing to the surrounding countries, but the landmass, with one of the highest populations in the world, was moving faster than the people who inhabited it.

The tectonic plates were comparatively light and didn’t typically sink, aside from a few specific locations.

When they did sink, it meant the mantle beneath them was shrinking on a massive scale.

By measuring the inside of the Earth, geologists theorized that the Earth was losing material from its inner layers. Both the expansive mantle and the core were gradually vanishing.

“It’s hard to believe,” Asuka said to herself, “that the Earth is losing weight and the plates are butting into each other.”

Wait…

If the Lance of Longinus is using some strange power to shrink the Earth, then where is all that missing material going?

 

<<Unit Two—Soryu-san.>> Cinq’s voice crackled through the hydrospeaker. <<We’re 600,000 milliseconds from making contact with the barrier.>>

Asuka gazed into the void.

She called me Soryu-san.

The primary Ayanami, Rei Trois, had called Asuka “the Second Child” at first. It had taken two years before she started calling her “Asuka.”

And now that Cinq has formed her individual identity, she calls me Soryu-san.

Cinq was making more of an effort to be sociable than the other Ayanamis, but Asuka had trouble figuring out who the real Cinq was. She was easy to talk to, but sometimes Asuka got the sense that the girl was only going through the motions. It was hard to tell if she truly meant the things she said.

I don’t know… She might be a good person, but if she isn’t genuine, then who’s going to take the first step and be her friend?

Maybe I should mind my own business.

 

Asuka spoke into to her cockpit’s computer. “Connect to Earth. Nerv Japan, Hakone command center.”

The display read, TRANSMISSION ANTENNA ORIENTATION NORMAL. LOCKING ON TO LOW ORBITAL NETWORK. SYSTEMS IN ORDER.

So then, some satellites are still managing to hold on to their fuel.

“Command center, this is Unit Two. We’re ten minutes from the Curtain, and I’m seeing irregularity in the distribution of the Van Allen radiation belts’ magnetic flux density. I think the Lance of Longinus is stirring up Earth’s magnetic field, but whatever the cause, the simulated measurements from thirty minutes ago are way off.”

<<Hakone command to Unit Two Allegorica. Please proceed.>>

“When I align the gravitons on my wings, they’re picking up vibrations in the gravity waves coming from the Longinus Curtain. I think the lance is causing the barrier to vibrate.”

Another voice came over the line.

<<Asuka.>>

“Yes, Shinji, you don’t need to say it. I’m going to get this done.” Asuka spoke without the bravado the old her would have used. “Watch me.”

<<Unit Two, this is Unit Cinq. We’re 200,000 milliseconds from the Curtain.>>

“I’m filling my plug with LCL to prepare for the impact.”

All the measurements indicated that the Longinus Curtain was, as suspected, a phase-shifted space. If that was indeed the case, then an A.T. Field with the same phase differential should be able to open a way through.

 

At first glance, there seemed to be nothing ahead, but as Asuka neared the barrier, she began to see a faint, rainbow-colored light—the Longinus Curtain. The barrier’s thickness, if it had any, was as close to zero as possible, and yet the field distorted Earth’s view of everything in outer space.

“Counting down to contact. T-minus 7, 5, 3. Unit Two, mark.”

<<Unit Cinq, mark.>>

When the two Evas manifested their A.T. Fields and connected with the barrier, a tremendous force immediately pushed back against them and altered their course.

 

The A.T. Fields made contact with the Longinus Curtain, and interference patterns bursting with color spread outward.

The fields rumbled and shook. Maybe the barrier wasn’t as smooth as it looked.

The spherical Curtain itself rotated around the Earth, and Eva-02 Allegorica and Eva-0.0 maintained a slightly faster orbital velocity, with a slightly larger radius. As a result, they slid along the interior surface of the Curtain.

But that wasn’t the only reason the barrier hadn’t repelled them.

“It’s pulling us in,” Asuka said.

Whatever the force was, it wasn’t gravity.

This force was preventing them from using their A.T. Fields to extricate themselves from the barrier. But aside from the vibrations, the friction was nearly nil, and they were free to move in two dimensions along the inner surface of the sphere.

“Cinq, can you still control your Eva?”

<<Only as much as you. I don’t think we could escape if we needed to abandon the mission.>>

“Then all we can do is push forward.”

Following the plan, Asuka attempted to punch a hole through the area of contact between the Curtain and her A.T. Field. The tip of her prog knife created a tiny opening that scattered brilliant light.

Ripples, like the wake of a ship, formed on the barrier.

“I’m going to make this quick!”

She focused on the blade. As she wrenched the breach open, countless phase-differential pockets spilled out, radiating different wavelengths before evaporating into nothing.

As the knife slid along the barrier, the opening became an ever widening ellipse.

Just then, a voice, staticky from the interference, came over her hydrospeaker.

<<Urgent message from Hako—Command. The lance has cha—course!>>

Asuka clicked her tongue. “We’ve been noticed.”

That possibility had been factored into their strategy, and they’d timed their contact with the Curtain so that the Lance of Longinus was at the point in its orbit farthest away from them. But would that buy Asuka enough time?

“This is—ne Command. The lance made a ninety-degree turn along the Curtain and is maintaining speed at ninety kilometers per second. That’s—shortest—”

The lance veered toward them on the shortest course, without losing any speed. It was better than if it had left the barrier and flown toward them in a straight line, but among the expected outcomes, this was the worst.

Why does everything always have to go like this? Haven’t you heard of the laws of physics?!

 

The hole in the barrier had grown, but it was still small—too small for an Eva to pass through. Asuka and Cinq had no way to remove themselves from the barrier and drop their orbit, and they didn’t have enough time to figure out an alternative.

The lance would intercept them in another 600,000 milliseconds.

More than enough time to widen the—

But Asuka’s thoughts were interrupted when the Curtain shook. Her Eva-02 Allegorica and Cinq’s Eva-0.0 lurched violently, sliding up the surface of the barrier.

The hole became distant and then suddenly closed.

“Scheisse!” Asuka said.

<<This is—kone—mand to Ev—Two. What happened? Your orbi—vector changed.>>

<<The Curtain shook without warning!>> Cinq said.

The two Evas slid a long distance across the barrier before finally stabilizing again.

Asuka was going to have to start over.

“What was that?”

<<I’m not sure.>> Cinq’s voice was shaky. <<But I think the whole Curtain might have shifted due to the lance changing course.>>

“You’ve got to be kidding. That wasn’t in the briefing!”

They’d already lost too much of the time they had until the lance arrived. They needed a new plan.

“Cinq, I’m going to alter my orbit. Synchronize your navigation system with mine.”

<<Synchronized. Now what?>>

“We’ll shift our orbit so that we’re travelling away from the lance, and I’ll work quickly. We’ll buy as much time as we can before it catches up.”

<<But we’ll be forty degrees inclined from the moon’s plane of rotation!>>

“We can worry about that after we’re on the other side.”

For the second attempt, Asuka and Cinq didn’t remain stationary relative to the barrier. Instead, they traveled faster to take advantage of centrifugal inertia and help the prog knife cut through.

They had originally intended to use this method to evade the Lance of Longinus, should the weapon catch up with them, but now that they knew it could change course without losing velocity, evading it was no longer an option.

Even if they dodged out of the lance’s path at the last second, it would simply turn and keep coming.

 

“We could separate—” Cinq began, but she cut herself off.

She’d come up with the idea to split the two Evas up along the surface of the barrier. That way, one of them would have more time.

But she realized that if they separated, they’d each only have one A.T. Field to cut through the Curtain. The slower cutting would cancel out any time they gained.

“Unit Two,” Cinq said, “I’m going to boost my S² Engine to emergency output levels.”

 

“Do it,” Asuka said. She returned her focus to the virtual display, where her prog knife was digging into the barrier.

Eva-0.0 placed its left hand behind Eva-02’s shoulder and fired backward with its Field Stepping Booster. Cinq focused her A.T. Field onto the tip of the massive gamma-ray laser cannon in her Eva’s other hand and worked at widening the small hole Asuka had opened.

<<Switching now.>> Cinq’s S² Engine’s output increased sharply, and Asuka could feel it rumbling on her back. Propelled by the full force of Eva-0.0’s FSB, Eva-02’s prog knife pressed deeper into the barrier.

Through the Eva’s feedback link, Asuka could feel a tremendous weight on her arm. She wasn’t sure which would buckle first, the Curtain or her Eva. Amid the roar of the vibrations, Asuka heard Eva-02’s chest creak.

Asuka grunted under her breath. She refused to back down.

The tip of Eva-0.0’s laser cannon passed through the hole Asuka was struggling to open, and Cinq manifested her A.T. Field around the cannon’s barrel.

“We can do this!” Asuka said.

But in that moment, she knew something was amiss. The S² Engine’s output was increasing without stopping.

Nothing in the Series-0.0 Eva could have caused this. Was this the barrier at work?

No S² Engine had ever been successfully recovered until Shinji’s Eva-01 had ingested one of the Angel Zeruel’s. Whenever an Angel’s S² Engine was destroyed, the Angel died in a gigantic explosion; and whenever an Angel was killed with its engine intact, the engine rapidly decayed.

When Nerv’s engineers had attempted to salvage the S² Engines from the mass-production Evas, they’d placed the Evas’ corpses on artificial life support to trick the engines into perceiving that their hosts were still alive. Even then, the engineers had had to remove the engines with their spines intact and reinstall them externally on the receiving Evas.

Should we jettison the engine?

If they did, Cinq’s Eva would run out of power in minutes. She would never reach the moon, and even the trip home would be a gamble.

But Asuka knew of one last-ditch method to get Cinq out—abandon the Eva at the barrier and escape with the entry plug’s thruster alone.

But then Eva-02 would be—

 

Clang!

From directly above Cinq’s head came the sound of composite armor cracking and breaking.

She switched her screen to the rear-facing camera and saw something beyond all expectation—the head of a mass-production Eva with her entry plug cover clenched in its maw.

The monster’s head appeared to have sprouted from her S² Engine’s spine.

Did pushing the S² Engine beyond normal operation cause it to start regenerating its body?

She couldn’t eject her plug now.

“So—” Cinq began to call out Asuka’s name but stopped herself.

Soryu-san hasn’t noticed. She’s focused on her blade—too focused to detect the mass-production Eva forming behind her back. Our best chance lies with me. There’s only one thing to do. After all, I…

The mass-production Eva’s newly formed arms reached out and broke Eva-0.0’s neck.

Cinq cried out in pain, but no sound came.

The mental feedback link disconnected almost immediately, but the pain had been so intense that her vision blacked out.

But I haven’t lost consciousness, and by all rights, I should have. Is this what they call luck? I don’t actually need to see the controls to do what must be done.

“Soryu-san,” Cinq said. “I gained a self, but…I’m not anybody.”

I can still accelerate and move, and I can still grasp.

<<What do you mean?>> Asuka didn’t turn to look. She kept on cutting the hole.

“I think that I’m the part of Ayanami that she shows to the world. It’s like someone took the face she wears for other people and made that into a person—or at least, that part of her is emphasized in me.” Cinq paused before adding, “I’m nothing.”

<<I’m not sure I understand, but…>> Asuka answered as best as she knew how. <<Maybe that’s how you started, but if you don’t like it, you can change who you are.>>

Through the vibrations, Cinq could feel Eva-02’s, and Soryu-san’s, determination.

<<Anyway… I’ll help you. We can figure it out together.>>

We can?

We can!

As the mass-production Eva continued to grow, the S² Engine remained on the brink of self-destruction. Cinq decided to put that overwhelming power to use.

“Thank you,” she said.

In the next instant, reaching out from behind Eva-02’s back, Eva-0.0’s laser barrel projected a tremendously powerful A.T. Field, momentarily blasting open a large hole in the Curtain.

 

An incredible force rocketed Eva-02 Allegorica out through the hole in the Curtain.

“That was amazing, Cinq!”

But as she flew, she turned and saw Eva-0.0 tangled up with a mass-production Eva that had grown out of its back. The monster clawed Eva-0.0 back inside the barrier and exploded in a massive cross of light.

She’d seen similar cross-shaped explosions, majestic and unsettling, many times before—whenever an Angel had been defeated.

Asuka started to call out to Cinq, but before she could, and before the radiant cross dissipated, a speeding band of light pierced its center.

It was the Lance of Longinus, 32,000 kilometers of dazzling light racing by at ninety kilometers per second.

“Not like this,” Asuka said. The cross tipped over like a felled tree, bursting into tiny particles, and then it was gone. “Cinq… Not like this!”

By the time Asuka recovered from her initial shock, the lance was already tracing an arc into the distance. The hole in the barrier had closed without a trace.

“Damn it. Damn it!” Asuka wailed.

There was no going back. She could only go forward.

Shaken, Asuka looked to the moon, looming large.

“Have you no mercy?”