Chapter 40: Outside the Window
Chapter 40:
Outside the Window
Outside the Window
B
ACK ON THE SOUTH SHORE
of Lake Ashi, a large fire was burning. Someone sounded a shrill whistle.
“Wait!” the firefighter with the whistle shouted. “It’s moving! Stop your work and retreat!”
The fire trucks began a hasty withdrawal, while behind them a bloody giant was attempting to stand up.
“Don’t worry about the equipment!” the firefighter said. “Leave it all behind. Send word to HQ right away!”
The giant shook off the large clumps of dust and debris that had covered its body after its fall, and the detritus crashed loudly into the flaming ground, sending embers shooting into the air.
This was the Angel Carrier that had held the larva of the giant water-dwelling Angel, Gaghiel. Super Eva had blasted apart its larva en route to the window, but the Carrier still possessed one working Q.R. Signum.
The urgent message broke the calm that had only just returned to the command center.
“Six!” Toji shouted. “Unit Zero! Can you get a shot from the Komagatake sniping post?”
After Super Eva passed through the window in midair, the Angel Carriers had turned around and followed it back inside, and the window had abruptly vanished. As far as Nerv HQ had been able to see, the threat had passed. Nevertheless, the current shift remained battle-ready while Toji sent out the firefighting and rescue teams.
<<
I’m tired,
>>
Six said.
“Hey! If you fall asleep now, there won’t be a tomorrow for you to wake up to!”
On the transmission window, little Ayanami Six’s hair fluttered in the LCL as she puffed out her cheeks and pouted her lips. But she began to aim her weapon.
“Good girl,” Toji said.
<<
I’m in the same grade as you, y’know,
>>
she said.
<<
So, what’s the decoy?
>>
Toji quickly realized what she was thinking. They needed something to capture the Angel Carrier’s attention. The attack would have to come as a surprise in order for Six to have any hope of penetrating its power shield. Even though the Carrier was down to a single Q.R. Signum, this was no time for foolish optimism. Eva-00 wasn’t Super Eva.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get that thing’s attention with a UAV.”
Just then, the scale of the map on the main screen zoomed out to place the entirety of the Hakone caldera within its borders, and Super Eva’s location indicator appeared to the southwest, beyond the caldera’s edge. But Shinji’s IFF system wasn’t responding.
“What is that?” Hyuga asked. The system had picked up gravitational waves matching those that Super Eva produced. “Do you think it could be another copy?”
The sensors were responding to Super Eva’s unique heartbeat.
“Like Euro-II?” Fuyutsuki offered.
The wounded Angel Carrier responded to the heartbeat and turned on unsteady feet to face south, putting its back to Eva-00 Type-F. Six didn’t pass up the opportunity. She nudged the crosshairs to the left.
Six began singing an odd little tune in 3/4 time. “Dum-da-da, dum-da-da.” She followed the Carrier’s shoulder movements. “Dum-da-da, dum-da-da. Use the rhythm to adjust for the target’s future position.”
Eva-00 Type-F had no right arm or leg. Because the giant cannon had been attached in their place, the Eva misidentified the weapon as part of its body and generated an A.T. Field in the acceleration chamber.
“Bang!”
Six squeezed the trigger, and a projectile of charged particles left the enclosed cyclotron, spiraled and compressed inside an egg-shaped chamber to gain even more acceleration, and zoomed through the barrel.
The A.T Field-based particle cannon, called the Angel’s Backbone, fired relatively quietly for its size, but its nearly instantaneous impact was tremendous. The particles obliterated the Angel Carrier’s Q.R. Signum, and the light from the explosion and cascading fragments illuminated the monster as it fell near the base of the mountain.
“Yeah!” Six shouted.
An unencrypted message came over the comm.
<<
Nerv Japan, can you hear me? I’m crossing into the caldera. Don’t shoot.
>>
With all its safety lights illuminated to avoid an accidental shooting, a mechanized giant appeared on the southern ridgeline.
“What the hell is that?” Toji asked.
In the dark, the mechanical giant’s lights looked like motion capture sensors. The mech raised an arm toward the kneeling Carrier, and with sudden, brilliant pulses of light, the Carrier was completely blown away. Moments later, the roar of cannon fire crossed the lake. The vertical and horizontal array of twenty large-caliber autocannons had unleashed a wall of depleted-uranium-based kinetic energy, and the Carrier’s upper body was totally vaporized into a scattering mist.
This was the JSSDF’s giant robot, Akashima.
One older way of writing “typhoon” used two separate kanji characters—but they could also be combined as a single, vivid glyph and pronounced “Akashima,” itself an old word for typhoon, and the robot’s namesake. Appropriately, earsplitting turbines propelled the Akashima as it planted its heavy legs on the outer ring of mountains and slowly found its balance. The false gravity waves—the copy of Super Eva’s heartbeat—stopped.
It seemed the Akashima’s weapons weren’t its only new equipment.
“Now the JSSDF’s mechanical puppet has quantum wave mirrors, too?” Maya remarked.
The N
2
reactor was likely supplying the necessary gravitons. First the Europeans’ Eva, the Euro-II, and now this. Apparently, copying Super Eva’s heartbeat was becoming a fad.
