Chapter 11: Heartbeat
Chapter 11:
Heartbeat
Heartbeat
A
T AN ALTITUDE
of 300 kilometers above the moon’s surface, Eva-02 Allegorica released a scouting satellite from its payload and then another a short time later. But the satellites didn’t carry much fuel for orbital corrections—and, as if to illustrate this dilemma, Eva-02’s AI recalculated its own orbit yet again. If their orbits kept on changing, Asuka wouldn’t be able to rely on their reconnaissance for long.
Having launched the satellites, Eva-02 Allegorica began dropping into an even lower orbit.
THRUM!
Asuka felt her heart beating fast.
Hm? Am I nervous or something? That’s not like me. I—
She put her hand to her chest.
“Wait, that’s not coming from me. Isn’t that what Unit Two’s chest sounds like?”
THRUM!
What’s going on?
Talking to her Eva, she said, “You do realize you’re not Super Eva, don’t you? You don’t have a heart in there!”
But the heartbeat kept pulsing. The feedback from her Eva was causing the inside of her own chest to feel warm.
Asuka grunted. “Why is this happening?”
The cause was far away from Asuka, beyond the possibility of her knowledge, back on Earth.
On the other side of the Longinus Curtain, two Evas were locked in battle. Euro-II had begun mimicking Super Eva’s heartbeat in order to summon back the Q.R. Signum Shinji had torn away from it.
Never would Asuka have guessed that her Eva-02 was having a twin resonance with another Eva of the same model.
A vision of Hikari accompanied the heartbeat. Asuka didn’t know about Euro-II or that Hikari was its pilot. And she sensed—not necessarily for that reason—a different Hikari from the one Shinji saw, not one ruled by inescapable terror. Asuka’s vision was the exact opposite; Hikari was smiling, childlike. But why?
BEEP!
An alarm brought Asuka out of her thoughts. Even before she read the warning’s contents, she slapped the emergency startup button. The heartbeat had begun to negatively affect the Allegorica system’s graviton floaters, and the gravitational field was being buffeted about.
Asuka clicked her tongue. She’d intended on gliding silently into hostile territory with her systems on standby. But the alarm was like a cell phone ringing in her pocket—whatever its message, it wouldn’t be good news.
Lights flowed like blood through the status board, and the plug filled with LCL. The Eva shared its senses even more closely with Asuka, and the jolting heartbeat ratcheted up another notch.
“Agh, would you shut up?”
The N
2
reactor automatically spooled up its output to combat levels, and the control sticks lost their stiffness. Strength swelled through Unit-02’s entire body, and the Eva was now operating at full power.
Eva-02 was still lowering its orbit toward an altitude of 200 kilometers.
Don’t tell me it’s Armaros already. Well, I guess that would save me the trouble of searching for him…
What appeared before Eva-02 was not Armaros but rather a zombie drawn to the heartbeat.
Asuka’s telescopic cameras enlarged her view of the moon’s horizon ahead where an Angel Carrier stood.
“What?!” Asuka shouted. “What are
you
doing up here?”
To the best of the engineering team’s knowledge, the bodies of the larva-bearing giants had once belonged to the white mass-production Evangelions. How had one of those gotten up on the moon, and also…why?
“I wonder if it’s spotted me yet.”
It’s looking this way.
It’s looking—
Her thoughts were interrupted as she was struck by a beam of light accompanied by trichromatic bands of color.
Immediately, Asuka lowered the left control stick, and the thrusters pushed the giant down.
The beam followed, and Asuka’s consciousness began to grow distant. Then Eva-02 Allegorica quickly dropped altitude and found refuge on the far side of the moon’s curvature.
The Allegorica system needed some time to build up its gravitational effects. When it had finished rearranging the gravitons between its artificial-diamond slits, the Eva used the gravity field to stabilize its altitude. Flying over the peaks and valleys, the scenery like a black-and-white silent movie, Asuka laughed with satisfaction.
So, finally, we meet again!
Asuka’s hair stood on end, her skin covered in goosebumps. Her face twisted into a ghoulish smile.
“Hallelujah!”
The moon’s geography was far more jagged than she’d imagined it would be as it passed beneath her with incredible speed. She flew over the monotone landscape—patches of sunlight and black voids of shade—then over great rivers of flame. She had Eva-02 retrieve the Powered 8 railgun from its pylon. The giant gripped the gun in its right hand.
Asuka laughed. “Ah, I was hoping more than anything that
I’d
be the one to get you when you showed up!”
Asuka knew that beam-like mind attack. In that Carrier’s cocoon was the Angel Arael.
“You humiliated me last time,” Asuka said as she looked over all the gauges and readouts on her display as if she were looking in the mirror one last time before a big date. She made sure she was still linked to the scouting satellites.
She locked the satellites on to the Angel Carrier—the Arael Carrier—for constant monitoring.
“But you’re not so bad, after all. I mean, you brought yourself to me. And this time, I’m going to kill you!”
Ignoring the protests of the weapons control system, Asuka switched the Powered 8’s output to the maximum setting. One feature of the railgun was the ability to finely adjust the rate of fire, but at this setting, the weapon wouldn’t be able to unleash many shots. Once she’d spent the capacitors’ stored-up energy, even her twin N
2
reactors would need some time to replenish. More than that, the friction and abrasion would severely wear the rifle’s acceleration rails.
But in exchange for that cost, the Powered 8 could fire a single shell with kinetic energy an order of magnitude greater than the previous-gen pallet rifle could achieve.
According to analysis from Arael’s attack three years ago, the Angel used an A.T. Field to penetrate its opponent’s psyche. During the attack, the Angel’s A.T. Field was no longer a wall, but rather a tunnel reaching out to pierce and neutralize its target’s own A.T. Field.
That same kind of barrel-shaped field structure was also utilized by Eva-00 Type-F’s long rifle, the Field Piercer, a.k.a. the Angel’s Backbone. But in the brief moment of firing, the Eva-00 Type-F was vulnerable to a direct attack. Perhaps Arael would share that same weakness. Even better, Arael carried out its attack over a prolonged period of time. Of course, that meant that while Asuka was aiming her shot, she’d be exposing herself to the Angel’s mental attack.
Asuka began altering Eva-02 Allegorica’s flight path. Making a beeline for the Arael Carrier would have prevented her from using the moon’s topography to her advantage. For the battle, her strategy would likely involve flanking her enemy as they traded shots through the gaps between the mountains. No matter how low she flew, she was ultimately on an orbital path. She wouldn’t be able to change course like an airplane in atmosphere. Outer space was irritating like that.
According to the map generated by her scouting satellite’s sensors, her first opportunity to fire would come in thirty seconds.
Even before she emerged from the shadow of the mountain, the ridgeline became brightly lit. Arael was already targeting Asuka.
Is it because of the heartbeat?
But then her moment came, and she squeezed the trigger.
“Eat 240 megajoules of pure destruction!”
The Powered 8’s recoil sent Eva-02 Allegorica somersaulting backward, enveloped in Arael’s light. But she’d aimed true.
I’ve got this.
The Carrier reached out its arm, and a powerful shield appeared. Just before Eva-02 passed behind the next mountain, Asuka saw her shot strike the shield, but rather than disintegrating from the tremendous transfer of energy, the Carrier’s shield ionized the railgun shot and converted it into a circular, rainbow-colored shock wave that scattered the nearby regolith.
The attack didn’t go through.
What?! The Carrier can generate its own shield even while Arael is performing its mental attack?
“That’s cheating!”
KAFWOOM!
Suddenly, the N
2
reactors shut down, and the Eva switched to its internal power source. The operational limit timer began counting down.
“Hey! Come on!”
The Allegorica’s control system had crashed after having to relentlessly recalculate its altitude control and graviton floater alignment. The N
2
reactors automatically performed an emergency shutdown. The phase-differential electric generators on the wingtips should still have been working, but the power transmission had been shut down from the Allegorica unit.
Every part of Asuka’s Eva from the waist down was frozen and unresponsive. She couldn’t even disconnect from the Allegorica unit.
“Agh!” she shouted, hitting the console with her first.
The console refused to send the command to reboot the system.
“I shouldn’t have expected anything better from a prototype!”
Letting out a stream of curses in multiple languages, Asuka released herself from the pilot’s seat and floated in the LCL’s current toward the rear of the entry plug.
“You’re not some old computer, so stop acting like one!”
A breaker box for the Allegorica unit had been installed behind the pilot’s seat next to the large logical definition drive. Asuka had no option but to reboot the system with a manual switch. But her Eva would soon be leaving the mountain’s cover.
“I wish I hadn’t told them to install this somewhere it wouldn’t get in my way.”
If Cinq were alive, she’d be able to see the battlefield from above and provide me cover with that gamma-ray laser.
Asuka felt a loneliness too powerful for words. Just as she became aware that she was alone, a beam of light appeared on her display.
Arael’s beam reminded her of the light that had appeared when Cinq was swallowed up by the Lance of Longinus.
That was when Asuka’s consciousness was stolen away. Just a moment’s weakness let the Angel in, and Arael’s light penetrated deep into her being.
THRUM!
A strong jolt struck Asuka all over her body, and she reawakened with a grunt.
An impact to her head had left a burnt smell in her nose. Asuka looked around and saw that her hair had gotten sucked into the intake for the LCL circulation system at the rear of the plug, and the fluid had stopped flowing.
LCL had the same buoyancy as the human body—slightly lighter than water. The fluid wasn’t easily compressible, and its flow carried considerable force. The sudden stoppage had sent a jolt through the entire system. One of three LCL circulation pumps had broken, and if Asuka hadn’t been wearing waterproof earplugs, her eardrums would have ruptured, too.
Violently awakened by this jolt, her head throbbing, her face flushed even though no one was around to see, Asuka let out an ugly scream.
What the hell am I doing?
The Allegorica unit began its restart sequence. The Eva had gone off-kilter and was now descending. The giant had passed into a valley out of the Arael Carrier’s line of sight, but with its systems impaired, Eva-02 would crash into the moon in less than forty seconds.
Keeping one eye on the startup indicator light, Asuka used the cutting edge of her multi-tool to slice off her hair. Though she took pride in her long locks, she didn’t hesitate. Soon she was swimming to the front of the entry plug and back into her pilot’s seat.
Asuka expected a lot from others, but even more from herself—and that included self-improvement. So what if she lost her hair? She still had plenty to be proud of.
If Asuka didn’t get the LCL circulating again, she’d suffocate within minutes.
“But first, I have to deal with that monster!”
With bloodshot eyes, Asuka glared in the direction of the enemy hidden on the other side of the mountains and then began separating out the usable parts of the still-rebooting system.
First, the thrusters…