novelFailure >> Attack on the Turkana District Space Elevator - Sp. Station (2)
| ← Ch.164 | Ch.166 → |
The rifle bullet flew just a few centimeters past his head to hit the wall behind him.
"Oh, how kind of you."
The 17-year-old girl continue smiling thinly in midair as she quietly applauded Heivia. Her shirt was not tucked in, so it floated up to reveal her shapely navel.
Evidently, she really did not need bulletproof equipment.
"If you had aimed between my eyes with that first shot, that would have killed you."
"..."
"So even after seeing it in action, the soldier remains in his egg. That baby chick there seems to have noticed, though. These carbon nanotubes are the heart of the giant transportation infrastructure supporting this 100 thousand kilometer elevator. Mere bullets cannot tear them. If you do hit them, they will take in the bullet like a bow or slingshot and send it right back at you."
Jack-of-all-trades Myonri had rejoined them at some point and she glanced down at the grenade on her chest. And with this many people paying Louisiana a visit, they could split into two teams and circle around from both sides, preventing the wires from acting as a shield.
"Any questions?" asked Louisiana while slowly flipping upside down.
"Was your relationship with Braskine a, uh, p-platonic one!? You didn't throw out your inhibitions and do a lot of experimenting just because you were in college, did you!?"
"Why do you hear about a boy and girl being friends and immediately assume it's sexual in nature? Is that just how it is with you high schoolers who run entirely on lust?"
Louisiana breathed an exasperated sigh.
Quenser's question must not have been clever enough for her liking because the genius girl reached her slender finger toward something while still floating upside down.
Namely...
"I can us these carbon nanotubes in more than just passive ways. So how about I get more aggressive this time?"
She flicked the edge of one of the belt-shaped wires. With just the one finger.
The immediate result was more like an invisible wall than a noise.
The bizarre shockwave hit the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes, slamming all their backs against the walls and transportation equipment.
Quenser thought he was going to expel the contents of his stomach.
"Gah!?"
"The wires are wires. This facility is meant to restrict their vibration, but it can also give them a new vibration. And since this room is filled with artificial air, sound and vibrations can of course propagate through it. How do you like the music played by the world's largest string instrument that covers a quarter of the distance from the earth to the moon?"
It was more than he could have imagined.
The very technology being used was different. Instead of supertechnology that were just guns and bombs but better, this was like being thrown into a sword and sorcery fantasy world.
The Federation of Elevator Industries was not just a single company.
It was a giant space development agency jointly funded by 7th Core, the seven large companies that controlled the Capitalist Corporations home country. Simply put, the Federation spoke on behalf of the Capitalist Corporations as a whole. It had been given funding and the latest tech from those seven monstrous companies, so of course they would have some crazy stuff.
However...
(We were caught off guard by new tech we'd never seen before, but we're still alive. )
Quenser forced down some sour saliva and pushed his thoughts in a positive direction.
(This isn't like the Object wars. If we let an Object's first attack hit us like this, the entire unit would've been reduced to ashes!!)
"If possible..."
The genius girl in gym clothes and a lab coat traced her slender finger along the vibrating wire. She was looking at the carbon nanotube, not at Quenser and the others.
Guns were not a bargaining chip against her.
That extraordinary aerospace researcher had displayed something that seemed even more supernatural than psychokinesis.
"I would prefer not to use her to kill. I accept that Mother Lady is a weapon that will change the very era we live in, but I want to use it to help the Turkana District."
"After you tricked them and stole their land for your precious elevator and then turned the whole place into a desert by sucking all the water out of the ground!?" shouted Heivia."Your supposed philanthropy makes no sense!!"
"Re Terra." Quenser slowly interjected while grimacing in pain."Re Terraforming. Are you trying to give the world a single unified environment?"
He searched for the meaning of everything he had seen so far and constructed a theory he would much rather not know about.
"I saw the plants, animals, dirt, and water of the Turkana District in this space station. You plan to suck it up from the ground base and scatter it from space. Across the entire world! Then Asia, Europe, North and South America, and the rest of the world will all be remade to have the same environment as the Turkana District. You aren't planning to alter some other planet - you're remaking earth. Because you believe that will make every part of the world equal, regardless of terrain or environment!!"
"Hmm?"
Louisiana did not provide a real response.
Instead of a yes or a no, she brought her finger to the back of her hips. Fixing the red sports bloomers riding up in her butt was apparently more important to her than listening to the enemy.
She did not even look their way when she spoke again.
"You seem to be mistaken about some things. You shouldn't accuse people based on groundless speculation."
"..."
"Besides, you're not the Faith Organization, so surely you don't think the world will be saved if you just continue with your blind Object worship. You have no way to save the world. Rejecting someone else's ideas without one of your own is what children do."
The space elevator was a largescale space project meant to carry great quantities of cargo outside the atmosphere. If her plan was executed, it would be far worse than volcanic ash paralyzing a city. No matter how much the people on the surface tried to fight it, they would never catch up. Once the environment itself had been altered, the lifeforms already there would die out. Everything would be made uniform.
Slugs could not live on the dry ground and moles could not live in the hard ground. The distribution of animals could be easily controlled using soil and water quality. If you could dump dizzying amounts of it from the sky, that is.
The deep ocean bottom barely changed across the entire world, but it apparently grew deeper at a rate of 1mm every thousand years. That was supposedly due to fine cosmic dust that poured down from outside the atmosphere, but Louisiana was trying to dump meters of it in a single day.
That might increase the population of endangered animals like giraffes and lions.
But there would be no variety there. The Legitimacy Kingdom was fighting for the extremely ill-defined plan of "protecting the varied plants and animals that might be useful as a drug at some point". What if some strange new disease was spreading and the plant or animal needed for the cure had gone extinct? A unified environment would take away crucial flexibility and might even lead to more extinctions.
And that was not an issue with the plants and animals of the Turkana District.
It would be the same no matter what part of the planet you chose. Life could not be ranked in a hierarchy - none of it was superior or inferior to anything else. If a species of wheat or grape considered the most valuable to humans was planted all across the planet, that would only increase the risk of it entirely dying out at some point. Even seemingly useless weeds and the bugs swarming below the streetlights were supporting the world in some roundabout way.
A single person would change the world.
Quite literally so. She really was going to change the planet's environment.
(I knew Louisiana Honeysuckle was supposed to be a genius, but this is absurd!!)
Even so, if she was going to use sound, she would be bound by the nature of sound. If she was going to use wires, she would be trapped by the shape of a wire. Louisiana Honeysuckle had used her intellect to extend her reach into space where she was trying to remake the planet as a whole, but she was not a witch with a magic wand.
All of this was the result of high-level science. If they figured out how it worked, they could prevent her from using it.
"Heivia, ready your gun."
"Wait, shouldn't we withdraw for the time being!?"
"Louisiana is a true monster. She knows the structure of the elevator like the back of her hand, she can entirely ignore standard military tactics, and she can even use 'magic'. Don't carelessly try to attack her directly."
Then was there nothing they could do?
Quenser continued before anyone could ask that question.
"But those wires are 100 thousand kilometers long and they have a known natural frequency. We knew the number from the beginning, so we know what her magic really is and interfering with it won't be that hard!!"
"Oh, I'm shaking in my boots."
Louisiana cowered down in an obviously performative way. That kind of confidence was terrifying. She was surrounded by dozens of soldiers who made a living killing and shedding blood, so how could she smile? If it was based on science and not groundless faith, then she had to know her tricks were not absolute.
Anyone could use science as long as they understood how it worked. That was what made it the standard most wildly supported by humanity.
And yet...
"Okay, enough playing around. I should probably just play my trump card now. Time to end this romantic space story and drag it back to the boring world of the military. Development Code: Elinabell."
The Federation of Elevator Industries had funding and technology from the seven large companies of 7th Core.
This genius and true monster had full authority over it all. She wielded a supposedly impossible privilege in the world of science that should have been equal to all. Genius.
That one word felt like an occult jinx or an invisible barrier. That researcher had everything a student like Quenser did not.
As the snap of her finger rang through the artificial air, Louisiana Honeysuckle introduced them to her insane talent.
"We have developed a Second Generation Object specifically designed for use in outer space."
Part 4
In that moment, logic vanished from the world.
Part 5
Quenser's vision returned.
But he still could not fill in the blank in the back of his mind. He could only see things in unpleasant flashes and his brain could not figure out what the colors and shapes meant.
His senses did not return for a while.
It was a weirdly pleasant feeling, like having his fingertip freed from the fishing line constricting it.
"Pant, pant."
He only now realized he had been breathing rapidly, nearly to the point of hyperventilation. His helmet's thick visor was down, but that was the correct decision. He had been thrown out into the starry sky where he could not tell up from down or judge distance or direction.
He was in outer space.
(What - dammit - what happened!? How could I be thrown out into space when I was in the middle of the space station!?)
His memories were failing him.
But instead of the memories not existing, his weak mind was refusing to recall them.
"Heivia, Myonri! Is anyone still alive!?"
There was no response.
Had they all been reduced to chunks of flesh floating out in the vacuum of space, or were they afraid sending out a signal would give away their position to the enemy?
The enemy.
The 7th Core's representative.
The symbol of the Federation of Elevator Industries' power.
"..."
He could not calm his breathing. Beads of sweat swam through his helmet and he could not even brush them away with his hand.
(That's right. )
It was like a jigsaw puzzle or like defragging a hard disk.
The fragments he had been refusing to recall began to piece themselves together, whether he wanted it or not.
(We were caught off guard. Louisiana fixed herself in place with a carabiner and pulled a lever while laughing. That opened a smoke vent in case of fire, so we were all sucked out of the space station. )
But how had Louisiana Honeysuckle managed to catch them off guard?
That lab coat girl may have been a genius, but a large group of Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had gathered there. She was not the star of a samurai movie, so it was unrealistic to think she could take on so many enemies at once.
Real war was much crueler and more boring.
They were not fighting in order to look cool, so that was not too surprising.
So what had happened?
(It arrived. )
There was only one thing that could allow one side of a battle to crush the other: sending in greater firepower. It was a simple but absolute law.
(She did something...and then the whole station shook violently. Which distracted us enough for her to catch us off guard. )
He gulped.
Pain flashed in the back of his mind. The blinding light was coming from his brain, not his eyes. Was it really this painful to recall a traumatizing experience?
He did not want to believe it.
He did not want to accept that was real.
But his head moved all on its own. It turned. He could not fight the ultimate charisma carried only by the strongest weapon.
There it was.
It was a few kilometers away, which was nothing in space.
It was more than 50m tall.
He saw a colossal nuke-resistant mass.
The spherical main body was covered with so many laser beams and plasma cannons it looked like a sea urchin or a chestnut burr. The most notable trait was the large half-circle piece attached around the main body. That bridge piece was fixed in place like headphones and had cylindrical tanks attached at even intervals.
The large rings on the back and bottom of the main body appeared to be the propulsion devices.
But they seemed insufficient to support its 200 thousand ton weight. The rings probably had some kind of engine equipped at even intervals for a multipurpose attitude control device that could act as retrorockets as well.
"She cut her precious daughter loose from its huge umbilical cord, " said a dazed voice over the radio. It was Heivia."Where the hell was that thing in the elevator!? In a higher station? Or in the weight at the top!?"
"How should I know!? And that isn't what matters!!"
Quenser could not imagine what this thing would do.
What kind of main cannon did it have? What kind of propulsion did it use? Were its armor panels and reactor different from the surface Objects? What kind of tactics would it use?
It was right in front of him, but the information refused to enter his head.
Instead...
"Gyaahhh!!"
"Stay low. We need to withdraw. Find something to hide behind!!"
"That's useless against an Object. What good is playing hide-and-seek with that thing!?"
Only the sounds of lives being shredded shook his eardrums and then his entire body too.
Then he realized this should not have been possible in space.
(I can...hear them? I'm in a vacuum, but I can hear the sounds directly???)
This was not reaching him through his communicator. He could tell the physical voices were reaching him. It was just like a movie or game where firing a laser beam filled outer space with noise.
He heard an odd sound of ejection.
It came from that Object. It had a main cannon on either side, but instead of from the front, some kind of gas was being ejected from small holes covering their sides.
In fact...
"Oxy...gen???"
He thought this had to be some kind of joke.
But that nightmarish waste of resources did not vanish from his view.
7th Core and the Capitalist Corporations as a whole had sent this monster out into the world.
The Federation of Elevator Industries was not your normal organization. That much had been obvious ever since Louisiana Honeysuckle made an appearance, but the nightmare had taken physical form here.
The vacuum of space was such a basic and fundamental concept, yet it had been shattered with a single attack.
"Are you insane!? That Object controls oxygen in the vacuum of space!?"
The sound of burning metal reached him.
It was like hearing a cheap cigar lighter.
But this was concentrated oxygen filling deadly outer space. Some of the soldiers had to be breathing a sigh of relief when they did not die after their spacesuit tore or helmet broke. Was there really enough oxygen there to have some level of atmospheric pressure???
They were surrounded by lifegiving oxygen.
But.
That very oxygen was used as fuel for a fire hot enough to melt steel.
There were screams.
Those death cries normally would not have reached him through the vacuum of space, but he could not get them out of his ears or brain.
"Ah, ahh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?"
He was on the outer edge of the oxygen area, so he was flipped over and thrown beyond the reach of the explosive flames. The flames had not hit him directly, but he still would have been roasted by the heat if not for his heat-resistant spacesuit.
He could not perform the calculations necessary to determine if this was possible with just oxygen.
It may have also used some other gas like hydrogen or acetylene. But it was not the technological issues that left him speechless.
He saw countless spheres the same color as flesh floating around.
It took him a second to realize that was the result of human flesh being liquefied, gathering together in zero-g, and then cooling. It had long been said that people became stars in the sky when they died, but that had finally been made a reality with technology. But this was not something anyone had wanted to be real. In contrast to the original saying, the reality had no hint of dignity or respect to be found. They were just round blobs. People were reduced to things. No more and no less.
This was not the only way to use oxygen.
It could be used to burn, to cool, and to oxidate. Since the Object had a near endless supply of the element necessary to maintain life, it could also be using some kind of biological weapon. Like a microbe that eats aluminum or a larva that chews through plastic.
"Louisiana."
The Capitalist Corporations had completed their space elevator.
They had carried materials into space for war.
Was this why they had needed so many supplies in space that they needed to build Mother Lady?
"Louisiana Honeysuckle!!!!!!"
Part 6
"A Second Generation built for use in space?" groaned Frolaytia Capistrano in the civilian space base in the distant Amazon District of South America.
Their Object was in Africa. Their First Generation could intercept ballistic missiles, but the Baby Magnum could not hit the Capitalist Corporations Second Generation from the ground.
(All seven 7th Core companies paid obscene amounts of money to build that thing up in space, but what do they hope to use it against? The killer satellites are sufficient if they only want to take down enemy satellites and control the wireless data network. Are they hoping to attack the lunar villas, or do they think they need to fight space aliens???)
The busty silver-haired commander reminded herself of the forces available to her while she stared at her laptop. She had sent a request for emergency support from their home country, but (as expected) that was not looking promising. Every minute and every second counted, but after spending 10 minutes trying to get through, she had only received a single sentence in response: "The Federation of Elevator Industries' new Object has been given the enemy codename of World's End."
(World's End, huh? They do love their dark humor, giving that name to an oxygen-controlling Object. If we define the "end" of the world as the farthest territory filled with breathable air, then that thing's location is indeed the world's end. )
Of course, humanity was observing more than just the planet they had been born and raised on. They were observing outer space in several ways, including radar and radio telescopes. If a 50m mass had been floating out there, it would have led to a number of UFO sightings.
So...
(There was apparently another station located higher up the space elevator than the main one in geostationary orbit. The Object was probably constructed in there. )
"What should we do?"
"Sit tight, Princess. You need to wait. We can't launch the Baby Magnum into space even with that elevator."
"That isn't what I meant. Is there anything we can do from the ground base?"
"Hm, " thought Frolaytia while holding the long, skinny kiseru in her mouth.
Mother Lady was controlled by the Capitalist Corporations out in space, not the Legitimacy Kingdom on the surface, but did that meant there was nothing at all they could do?
"Okay, I have an idea you can try out, Princess. The elevator's wires are carbon nanotubes, so they're made from carbon. We can use that to-"
Just as the capable woman was sending out a command to help regain control of the situation, her laptop screen unnaturally froze up.
"Hm!?"
Her lit kiseru nearly fell from her mouth, so she had to quickly grab it in both hands. But nothing else changed. It was hard to tell with the Princess's constantly blank expression, but the communication window had completely frozen.
The connection icon on the edge of the screen had zero bars, so no signal.
Military lines had multiple communication methods set up in parallel and it was set to automatically switch over if one of them went down, yet she had nothing at all now.
With modern information technology, it was perfectly possible to command a team in Africa and a team in space from the Amazon District, but there was nothing she could do if communication trouble cut off all of her data.
But would the officers whose hearts were more sensitive than a rabbit's take those circumstances into account? Those people who never left their home country desks tended to ignore the risks they were demanding and then shoved all responsibility onto the local commander once something went wrong. And after setting up that kind of insurance, they would never allow any damage to their own reputations. So even if they understood the circumstances, they would pretend not to.
Frolaytia knew she was in serious trouble.
She messed with the settings, held her head in her hands, and then placed the laptop on the floor, touched the edge of it with one hand, and stretched her other arm and her legs horizontally with her hips still bent within her tight skirt.
Was this a rhythmic gymnastics stretch, or was it a dancing sunflower toy of an older age?
At any rate, she wiggled her body in that mystery pose.
Since she was alone, she did not bother worrying about her short tight skirt.
"Nh, nhhhhhhhh? Please! Come back, signal! Save my career!! Please! I don't want to be demoted and sent to some godforsaken part of the world for something as dumb as thiiiis!!"
Was it less pathetic to pray to god or to try becoming a human antenna? Since there was no one else around, spoiled Frolaytia tearfully went for the ultimate answer of both. However...
"Excuse me, Major Capistrano."
"Bwahhhh!!!??? Cough, cough, ahem!? ...Do you need something?"
After clearing her throat in a "speak a word about this and you're dead meat" sort of way, she turned around in a composed fashion.
The intellectual girl (age 12) who had skipped so many grades she had ended up in the electronic simulation division was still tilting her head in confusion.
"We have detected high-power wide-range jamming from ultra-high altitude. The Federation of Elevator Industries is likely responsible. The jamming signal is being blindly sent down from space, so it is unlikely they have located us here. But just in case they do begin an orbital bombardment, you should hurry to the tank base's heavily-armored operation command vehicle."
"Curse the Capitalist Corporations. This was a cheap shot!!"
It made sense. Why else would she not have received a single bar of signal after selling off her pride and stretching her arms and legs out like that? All that embarrassment for nothing!
"It defeats the purpose of a laptop, but you can attach a wire to recover communications. Using the undersea fiber optic cable network, you can contact the team in Africa. And the Baby Magnum's powerful communication equipment can break through the jamming to communicate with those in space. In other words, no good luck rituals are necessary in this case."
"Then get communications back up pronto. And I wasn't doing anything!!"
Unable to restrain the heat rising from within her body, Frolaytia shouted (in a display of childishness greater than the 12-year-old).
The Legitimacy Kingdom response to being shamed was to retaliate 100-fold, so the major renewed her resolve toward this harsh and dangerous war: Don't think you're getting off with just having to dance in the nude.
"Hee hee. I sometimes rely on good luck rituals too. Like when I'm baking something in the oven while off duty and the tablet displaying the recipe site freezes."
"Please stop. I don't want to hit a 12-year-old, so use that genius brain of yours to figure out when to hold your tongue!!"
Part 7
Death was approaching.
It could hardly have been closer in this zero-g space that barely felt real.
Quenser could not even think about the space elevator or the plan to unify the earth's atmosphere. Not when his survival one second from now was far from guaranteed.
"What the hell are we supposed to do?"
A radio transmission suddenly reached his spacesuit's helmet.
It was from his awful friend Heivia.
"The World's End? I don't want its name! I want to know what to do about it! Was that one staticky transmission all we get!? No one told me they had an Object! We don't have any equipment capable of taking that thing down, you idiots!!"
(Then stop sending out this meaningless transmission, you true idiot!! Do you want it to detect your location!?)
Quenser did not dare send out a warning.
This Generation Two space Object was bizarre even for the Capitalist Corporations.
It was fundamentally different from the traditional Objects that traveled along land or sea. It lacked a system for keeping its 200 thousand ton weight afloat, so no air cushion engine and no static electricity propulsion device. It had ring-like parts on the back and bottom of its spherical main body, but they looked too delicate. The exact system was unknown, but those had some sort of propulsion device attached at even intervals which were likely used for attitude control and as both rockets and retrorockets.
The central main body had an additional component attached like headphones or like a hagoromo from Island Nation mythology and that component had cylindrical tanks attached at even intervals. Its primary weapons were the pressurized oxygen nozzles extending from either side. It controlled massive amounts of oxygen in the vacuum of space to burn away all enemies in the ultimate act of waste and luxury.
The propulsion devices attached on the ring-like units behind and below it could apparently all be moved separately.
Whether they used oxygen, ions, photons, or jets, those were likely used for attitude control, acceleration, deceleration, and turning. Its main cannons could melt armor, but they may have been able to emit different amounts of oxygen from both sides to rotate the enemy.
(The Capitalist Corporations includes the Island Nation that's gone mostly isolationist, doesn't it?)
Quenser gulped.
(Is it supposed to look like their Fujin and Raijin? Dammit, this is why it isn't healthy to have enough money and talent to actually build every little idea that occurs to you!!)
And he did not have time to just sit there observing it.
He could not escape the Object's attacks by spinning defenselessly around in empty space. Before even thinking about winning this, he had to find a shield capable of protecting him or he would die.
He heard what sounded like a soda being opened but much louder.
That was the oxygen.
If that sound could reach him, then there was enough oxygen for the sound to propagate through.
"The space station."
He grabbed the grip connected to his extravehicular activity unit by a cable.
He knew it was risky, but he still gave a shout.
"Listen, you don't have to respond. Doing so would only tell it where you are. That damn thing won't want to destroy its own home base!! So use your nitrogen or whatever else to get over there. Hurry!!"
The student was traveling toward the giant donut-shaped space station's wall even as he sent the message. Specifically, toward the back side of a giant parabolic communication antenna sticking out from the gently curving wall.
His reasoning had to be correct.
One look at the sun was enough to tell, but heat traveled differently in space. Instead of heating the air or water, the sunlight was emitted as rays of heat and anything they shined on would receive that energy. In other words, it happened directly. Structures built for space would be made to reflect the radiation that caused machine malfunctions and health problems, so the station would reflect infrared.
However.
The invisible oxygen that normally represented life could move behind anything in the way.
When the oxygen was ignited, some of the spacesuited soldiers were roasted despite using one of the container-shaped experiment modules as cover. The flames moved like a chameleon's tongue to accurately capture its prey.
That was less than 20m from Quenser. On the astronomical scale of outer space, that distance was razor thin.
"Gyahhhh!?"
The scream that reached the student's ears belonged to Cottage who had survived so many seemingly hopeless situations before. Not even the miracle boy was a match for that Object. He was killed before he could even fantasize about a medical girl. Quenser actually had trouble telling whether that had been a human scream or simple noise from the heat destroying the communication equipment.
Only a few round blobs remained afterwards.
It was those balls with the same color as flesh.
The exact same tragedy had repeated itself. This was a stabilized form of hell.
People were robbed of their dignity and reduced to mere things. It felt like getting a glimpse of a factory production line that automatically processed human bodies into leather bags.
"We can't last like this."
Peeping Tom Heivia defeated the entire purpose of hiding by complaining over his radio. Maybe he feared the stress would destroy his heart if he did not.
"For one, we can barely move! These extravehicular activity units are only meant to stabilize us - they aren't rocket boosters. If we try to use them like that, we'll run out of nitrogen in no time. Then we'll be stuck spinning endlessly through space. Even after we die!!"
The Object would send out just enough oxygen for the flames to reach the soldiers hiding behind cover but not enough that it would destroy the heat and radiation-resistant space station's hull. It only had to repeat that process to eliminate all of the aphids crawling on its precious flower. As huge as it was, it was surprisingly good at delicately adjusting its power. That meant Quenser and the others could not use the elevator, the space station, or any other Mother Lady facilities as hostages.
(What do we do?)
Quenser could not calm his breathing or even wipe the sweat from his face. It occurred to him that he might be able to breathe right now if he removed that troublesome helmet, but if that were true, it would mean having his flesh and even bone roasted away by a brutal flamethrower a moment later.
(How can we possibly survive this!? That thing's an Object, so not even a nuke could destroy it. We couldn't even scratch it if we fired our peashooters at it while carefully keeping our balance out in space!!)
Flames exploded not far away from him. They was more distance this time, so the oxygen must have run out while it was spreading in a marble pattern. He could not hear the explosion, so it had the same empty feeling of watching an old silent film. But the lives being burned away were 37th soldiers in the same uniform as him.
"Can't we contact the Princess who must be itching to join the fight down there!?" said Heivia."She has to be directly below us since she was protecting the elevator's ground base!"
"You heard all that noise in her long-range transmission, didn't you? Not even an RC toy would work out here! Besides, do you really think her attacks could reach up here even if we did contact her? We're 36 thousand kilometers up, so nearly the entire circumference of the earth! And that distance is straight up for her!!"
"What about her anti-air laser beams?"
"Even the old-fashioned ballistic missiles only flew at around 3000km up, so this is another world altogether!!"
In fact, they had to pray that the Capitalist Corporations Second Generation World's End did not have any ground-attack weapons. If it could launch an Object-level bombing from satellite orbit, the Princess would be unilaterally destroyed. From the BCE wars when boiling water or quicklime were dropped from atop cliffs to modern wars where the terrain could be permanently changed with the tap of a touchscreen, holding the high ground had always provided a significant advantage.
But now was not the time to be worried about her.
It was Quenser's group that was being directly targeted right now. Only Object-level firepower could blow away an Object. They knew they were asking for the impossible, but if they could not procure some firepower on that level for themselves, they would be destroyed by that 200 thousand ton weapon.
"What do we do!?"
Part 8
The Princess yawned like a sunbathing cat in the middle of the vast empty desert of Africa's Turkana District. She was in the cockpit of the First Generation Baby Magnum.
She had gotten bored of watching desert reference footage while eating popsicles from the freezer behind her seat. Her stomach was feeling kind of full.
(I'd really like something a little more interesting. Like a shaved ice machine. Or a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of a large frappe with iced milk tea on top of that. )
The old maintenance lady spoke to her over the radio.
"Stay focused, Princess."
"I am."
"I can see in the data when you snap back to focus like that. Your vitals don't lie."
The ground base at the bottom of the Mother Lady space elevator was stationary. The Capitalist Corporations' Federation of Elevator Industries had provided generous amounts of money and supplies to win over the local guerillas and us them to defend the elevator. Now that the Legitimacy Kingdom had taken the ground base, there had been concerns that they would be worn down by never-ending attempts to retake the base, but that had not happened.
The only attacks came from the occasional mortar shells.
That was nothing to fear with an Object's anti-air lasers that could accurately shoot down a MIRV long-range ballistic missile attack that scattered countless warheads through the air. When the explosives flew in like a long throw in baseball, she shot them down easier than clay pigeons at a shooting range. Sending in an Object had helped immensely. The Capitalist Corporations had thought they could use the guerillas as disposable pawns, but the locals were not rushing in to attack anymore.
The Princess rapidly moved her eyes behind her goggles.
But she was not accurately tracking explosives tearing through the air.
"Hey, how many different birds are there in the Turkana District?"
"According to a conservation group's records, there are 150 species of wild bird...although this data is from before the rapid desertification. Why? Explosives disguised as birds have existed as far back as ancient China, so did you find a special drone?"
(So I've found half of them. Now, where are the other half?)
The old maintenance lady's worries were unfounded because the Princess was locking onto every bird-sized reading and marking them down. Once she got bored with that, she planned to scale the radar down to the insect level. The guerillas must have had their spirits broken and given up on even the mortar attacks because those were the only things she could find in the air here.
It was strange.
This elevator was sponsored by the entire Capitalist Corporations and had been constructed with joint funding from 7th Core.
Surely there was more than just the guerillas making cautious attacks with borrowed weapons. When was the ultimate Capitalist Corporations Generation 2 going to arrive from beyond the horizon? The Princess yawned again while filling in her hand-drawn bird encyclopedia.
(Do I not even get to fight this time?)
"Yawwwwn... This peace is boring me to death."
Part 9
Quenser felt like the fear was going to awaken something inside him.
The chattering of his teeth was so loud and irritating. He tried to hold his jaw to stop it, but the round helmet got in the way.
He shouted into his helmet's mic despite the risk.
"I'm going to detonate it. Hold onto something for support, everyone!!"
There was no sound.
The outer wall of the space station was destroyed. With their shuttle destroyed, Quenser's group had nowhere else to go. If they overdid it and the station fell apart, they could only wait for their oxygen to run out. But if the station held together, they would have created a bunch of debris out in space.
Their extravehicular activity units for attitude control could not provide long-range movement like boosters, but what if they grabbed onto that scattering debris to "hitch a ride"?
"Dammit, they have a cutting-edge Object while we're stuck surfing on metal scraps!?" complained Heivia.
"Sometimes a dress made by patching together newspapers found at the park can be sexier than full silk mourning clothes. If you don't like it, then use that extravehicular activity unit of yours, Heivia. Now get going!!"
"I can't stop trembling!!"
"So what? It's the same as a baseball. Check the speed with an IR laser and then grab onto a safe piece of debris!!"
Quenser shouted those instructions while clinging to a thin panel about the size of a tatami mat. That finally allowed him to move. The piece of debris could only move in one direction, so he would have to jump to another piece if he wanted to change directions.
The World's End space Object did not seem troubled.
He heard a gas being expelled. And since it reached his ears...
"Eek, here it comes!" said Heivia."It's that oxygen. Did it light the deadly fuse sticking out from its ass!? We'll all be roasted!!"
"Shut up! I know that!!"
Quenser shouted back, stuck a pen-shaped electric fuse into a clay-like Hand Axe plastic explosive, and threw it. He used his radio to detonate it once it was suitably far away.
The resulting explosion resembled a thermobaric bomb and was large enough to engulf an entire city. His personal equipment could never have caused that. It had used the oxygen. But he had detonated it before the oxygen could reach them, so no one was hit by the flames.
Quenser breathed a sigh of relief even though he still could not wipe the sweat from his brow.
He was alive. His theory had preserved his life. He was not a chained-up pet dog that shoved its face in a bowl of food placed in front of it at a set time every day. He thought for himself to survive. That was the human way to live.
"The oxygen doesn't care who you are or why you detonate it. If we can ignite it before their Pilot Elite, we can trigger the explosion when we want."
The oxygen was consumed by the explosion, so they could eliminate its power over them by burning it all away before it spread too far.
The oxygen was so frightening because it was invisible, but they could take advantage of the short lag between releasing it and igniting it.
Was the Object not using its laser beams or other secondary cannons because of the oxygen? Those were never meant to aim for such small targets anyway, so it would not want to ignite the oxygen at an unexpected point.
"The earth is covered in oxygen, but that doesn't mean you can just make the whole atmosphere explode. It has to be concentrated pretty heavily and mixed with hydrogen or acetylene to be weaponized like this. Don't panic just because you can hear sound in space, Heivia. There's nothing to fear if it can't reach that deadly concentration!!"
"But how are we supposed to know if it's reached that point!? That's as ill-defined a standard as saying it's healthy to play with yourself 'in moderation'! How much is too much!?"
What mattered was that the World's End was an Object that used large quantities of oxygen.
It could not create oxygen out of nothing in the vacuum of space. Maybe it used electrolysis on large quantities of water and maybe it had the oxygen compactly stored in liquid or solid form at an extreme low temperature, but if it did have it stored in those tanks, they only had to destroy those.
The obvious target here were those cylinders arranged around it like the drums of the Island Nation's Raijin.
"As cutting-edge or bizarre as that thing is, it's basically a giant flamethrower, right? Let's set fire to the enormous flammable tanks on its back and crash it into a lunar villa."
"And how do you propose we do that!? That's a nuke-resistant Object!!"
Quenser ignored the complaints. There was no path to survival that way. If they wanted to live, they had to push past the panic, keep thinking, and challenge their own fear. If they stopped thinking, they would either stop moving and become a stationary target, or they would charge in toward certain doom based on thoughtless emotion. They had to be brave but still rationally face the reality before them. Only those who never gave up on making progress could grab at the lifeline dangling before their eyes.
(It doesn't move all that nimbly for an Object. Is it afraid of knocking some debris into the station it's supposed to be protecting?)
Whatever the reason, it presented an opportunity.
Quenser moved between a few different pieces of debris larger than an Island Nation tatami mat in order to approach the Object's surface.
If he was going to pull out a plastic explosive, it had to be here.
"Here goes. This is your only chance to see how it's done!!"
He threw the clay.
Just as he placed his fat finger on the detonation switch, he sensed a disturbing pressure. He felt someone's gaze crawling across him.
He was not scorched by an invisible laser beam and he was not turned into space garbage by a tackle from that 200 thousand ton weapon.
He heard a gross sound.
He looked down at his right arm. From the wrist to the elbow, the supposedly polished spacesuit was turning black.
"Oxidation!?"
It really was oxygen. The spacesuit was designed for use in a vacuum, so it never should have taken this sort of damage.
There was a reason the spacesuit with over ten layers was also polished bright. It could not deflect the sun's heat rays or radiation without that. At this rate, he would lose his life to the fury of nature. Invisible poisons would kill him.
He suppressed the rising fear, clenched his teeth, and pressed the switch.
The sound did not reach him.
His vision spun around, but he was certain the explosion had directly hit the headphone or bridge-like part that connected Raijin's drums in a half circle.
"This doesn't have to break the tanks. It only has to send a shock through them to reach the internal pipeline connecting them!!"
"What good is that? A shock? You think pressing a massager against that Object is enough for her hips to give out!?"
"Whether it's from a solid or a liquid, the World's End has its oxygen compactly stored in a different form at ultra-low temperature. That means it has to convert it back into a gas to use it."
He tried to hang on, but it was no use.
The piece of debris slipped from his hands and he could only flail his limbs in search of another piece.
"That means we should be able to do the same thing that causes car engines to stall. Mix some air bubbles in with the liquid and it'll malfunction. So shaking the pipe isn't useless. We can't destroy it and we can't tear it away, but a small impact should still trigger a malfunction!!"
Heivia, Myonri, and some others must have followed him because he saw some poorly-guided missiles flying toward the Object.
Just then, the World's End quickly changed direction.
The action sent a stir through its surroundings. Specifically, the killer satellites equipped with four arms below its solar panels responded to its presence and approached.
Maybe the space Object was considered an enemy because it had never meant to be sent out to fight and thus was not registered in their systems, or maybe their sensors had malfunctioned from the heat. Either way, the weapons loaded with explosives crashed into the surface of the 50m Object.
Countless explosions followed.
"Gahhhh!?"
Quenser had already been spinning, but now he was given an additional twist in an unnatural direction. He tried using his extravehicular activity unit, but the brakes would not work. However, he must have been thrown toward the space station. He did not have time to measure their relative speed with a laser, so he just grabbed at something hard with his flailing right hand. It was probably the remains of some cargo materials used when sending the killer satellites out into space from the station. He clung to the large piece of debris that resembled a metal wall.
The Object was surrounded by explosive flames, metal balls, and all sorts of debris, but it was unharmed.
"It didn't work at all, " lamented Heivia, wherever he was at the moment, but his voice was drowned out by another sound.
It was the sound of highly concentrated oxygen being released into the vacuum. They did not have time to let the failure bother them. The next attack had already begun.
And since Quenser could hear the oxygen, it must have reached him.
He quickly pulled out some Hand Axe.
"It lured in all those killer satellites and let them explode, " continued Heivia."Just so it could blast the fleas off of itself!! There's no way we can make it malfunction with an external impact!!"
Quenser was still unsure what to do when the city-sized explosion erupted.
Part 10
Louisiana Honeysuckle heard a quiet electronic beeping.
That girl in short-sleeved gym clothes and a lab coat was riding a bicycle. Really, she had only used the station's cargo sorting system to bring a container loaded with a training bike to the center of the elevator. With a 20km diameter, she could never live there comfortably without a system that allowed her to transport entire rooms.
This was the elevator terminal at the center of the safe and comfortable donut-shaped station. The terminal alone was larger than a domed stadium, but it may have been more like a switchyard since it included the cargo management and the elevator car maintenance and cleaning.
They did not have to worry about weight since the station had no gravity, so unlike a switchyard, the materials and pathways were stacked vertically as well.
(Today's quota is 30km. They say every part of the human body has its purpose, but when you look at the cellular level, it's packed full of unnecessary functionality. Just like a computer sold for cheap at an electronics store. )
She whispered to herself while pedaling the bike and sending small beads of sweat out into the zero-g air.
"Shouldn't be long now, " said the genius girl who had conquered space before anyone else.
The Legitimacy Kingdom intruders might think the Capitalist Corporations had used the space elevator as camouflage for constructing a space Object, but it was actually the opposite. She had been unable to receive funding to simply build the elevator, so she had needed to rework the plan into a military context.
That was where her much older brother Sladder Honeysuckle had failed.
He had dedicated his life to the mass driver system and, once that had been rejected, he had chosen to leave the Capitalist Corporations as a whole. There was nothing wrong with carrying your own ideals about space, but let them control you and you could never make them a reality. Louisiana had possessed the flexibility to allow her ideals to be clouded by compromise.
As the name suggested, the Federation of Elevator Industries was dedicated to the construction and use of the space elevator. As long as she never lost sight of that, she could stay true to her ideals.
She was indebted to the Turkana District. So much so that she had known it had to be the location of the elevator she had bet her entire life on. Yes, that choice may have caused some suffering for the local people, but she would repay them in time. All the necessary calculations were already complete in her head.
She had intended to empty her mind while pedaling the bike, but the simple task had instead turned her focus inwards.
A former schoolmate of hers had lamented the lack of medicine.
His name was Braskine Mintfrappe.
Why were Africa and Europe so different? What made the deserts of Africa so different from the deserts of North America? The two of them had given much thought to those environmental and geographical issues. His straightforward sincerity had drawn her to him.
But that would soon end.
She would correct the world's problems. She would make it all equal. To those in need, it would come as a blessing. To those blessed with plenty, it would come as a crisis. How would this day be recorded in history? She continued down this path because she believed most would rejoice.
Then again...
(They must have already noticed. Since there's still no sign of Object reinforcements sent in from the Capitalist Corporations home country, the higher ups must not have found as much strategic value - and thus attraction - as they had hoped. )
"Hello."
"Sigh. Oh, it's you, Silk S."
The small LCD screen in the middle of the steering wheel changed to display someone's face.
This was one of her contacts in 7th Core, the seven companies who funded the Federation.
She stopped pedaling but remained on the bike as she pulled up the chest of her gym shirt to wipe off her face.
"Don't you have that incompetent president to look after?" she said.
"The baby just had his milk and went to sleep. I mean, we're talking about the emperor who still hasn't noticed his lack of clothes - not that his company has been issuing tons of bogus stock and not that his company has been 'hollowed out' by selling off all of his buildings and factories behind his back. The 'deals' he thinks he's making are no more real than a board game."
"You're a scary woman."
Louisana's tone remained light and she did not seem to care that pulling up on the shirt brought her shapely navel into view.
But light as her tone was, she did mean it.
This meant that one of the most famous companies in the world had no products or assets left. It simply continued scattering bogus stock to gather money from the world's investors while selling the corporate group's countless facilities and personnel to other companies to illicitly absorb double the profit. That was this secretary's true job.
And yet the brand name kept its world-famous reputation.
It overpowered countless other companies with nothing but lies.
Louisiana caught her breath, squeezed the handlebars tight, and began pedaling with her slender legs.
"The Wendigo Vehicle Group has a market cap of 6 trillion dollars. The company is large enough to influence the value of the dollar, yet its actual total assets amount to a shocking 0 cents? If those furious investors saw your HQ now, they'd probably fall on their asses in shock. I mean, every floor except for the president's office is nothing but empty offices with nothing but landline phones inside."
"If they discovered it, they would abandon the emperor in his new clothes and escape while they still could, but it looks like they won't even have that opportunity."
"Let's not forget that he's the man who rose to being one of the most powerful people in the Capitalist Corporations by gathering nonexistent mining rights, wills, and land deeds and then gathering money from the world's investors with fictional deals made with bogus stock and presentations for nonexistent new projects. He started with a paper company that didn't do anything and continued buying up rival companies until he had reached a position in 7th Core. And you're the woman who pampered him to the point he lost it all without even noticing."
"He makes for a decent shield."
"See, this is why you're a scary woman."
The two women shared a bewitching laugh.
Even if this conversation were being recorded and reached that president, he would immediately conclude it was an insulting forgery. That was how thoroughly he had been "educated".
That skilled secretary was known as the Silk Spider.
No one knew her real name. Not Louisiana, and not anyone in the major company where she worked as a strategic secretary. The company server listed her as a Serenade Blackrose, but that was a common fake name. She was shrouded in mystery, but no one dared risk the consequences of carelessly trying to discover more about her. If you wanted to avoid being forever known on the seedier side of the internet for your role in a video that shocked the world, the wise choice was to let those mysteries remain mysteries.
Eventually...
"Not long now, " said Silk S.
"No, " agreed Louisiana while continuing to pedal and sending jewels of sweat out into the zero-g around her."And all because you turned a blind eye to what I was doing."
"Doing accounting day in and day out is so boring, so every once in a while, I like to cheer myself up with an unprofitable fireworks show."
"I'm glad you gave me that honor."
7th Core was made up of seven companies.
This one had been hijacked by a faceless villainess, but the other six had their own plans. They were all likely involved in some equally complicated situation that had no connection to what their business ostensibly was.
They would normally be terribly particular about the accounting, yet they had still provided the vast sum needed for constructing the elevator. That suggested the executives did have their concerns about the world. Hopefully, that would be enough to solve the problem. But even if the elevator failed to live up to expectations, it could still be reused for military purposes and pay back far more money through lucrative wars.
In a way, it was very simple.
Her brother had been the kind of eccentric genius who refused to compromise on his principles, so this had been more than he could bear. Louisiana, on the other hand, simply saw it as something she could easily control.
That may have been why the siblings never worked together on a single project.
"I have high hopes for you, " said Silk S.
"Hopes for what? For me to save the world?"
"For you to prove that the machinations of a single individual can defeat all the boring numbers."
Louisiana smiled while sipping a sports drink from a bottle through a straw.
And she spoke the forbidden words.
"Haven't you already proven that? You have earned the title of International Eater by taking over an international company all on your own, after all."
"Hee hee. Not all successful people enjoy the loneliness at the top. I would love to have some company as I look down on the world from such heights. I am praying that company can be you. Bye."
That was the end of it.
Silk S had not discussed business in any way. It seemed like a meaningless transmission that only brought risk. That secretary used a real war to satisfy her personal enjoyment and set the world in motion for her own entertainment while making sure her name would never go down in history.
So Louisiana had no real reason for her suspicions here.
She stopped pedaling and thought to herself in the bike seat.
(She made it sound like their CEO is going to break soon. Damn you, Silk S. Are you stirring up trouble to find your next target? But what greater mark is there than 7th Core?)
She shook her head.
She shook away those worthless thoughts.
If she was going to let her mind wander, she could guide it in a more meaningful direction.
(Sladder, you failed. )
She bluntly assessed her own brother.
That other genius had only ever focused on himself, so he had failed to become an Eater. He had failed to escape being one of those who was chewed up and spit out by society.
But scientists could still see beauty in a snow crystal or extremely simple equations. And they could also detest efficiency and consumption at times.
(That is why I will be the one who conquers space. Even you should be able to accept your failure if I am the one to defeat you. )
She sighed and looked to the heart of the space elevator. A few carbon nanotube wires were lined up in parallel like a 100 thousand kilometer string instrument.
She would take victory for herself and this toy was necessary for that.
(I need to settle this while they're busy playing with the Second Generation Elinabell. I acquired my elevator by compromising my ideals and allowing some flies in the ointment....To do that, I had to deceive the people trying to preserve their simple way of life in the Turkana District and take their land from them. They've been forced to endure so much hardship up to this point, so it's time someone finally rewarded them in some way. )
"Now, then."
She began pedaling hard and pushed her body so the simple action and faint exhaustion would direct her thoughts inwards.
She thought back to her memories of the Turkana District and of her old friend.
She would repay them. By correcting the world's mistake.
All alone in the enormous core of the elevator, she smiled with the look of a mischievous child in her eyes and spoke as a different type of genius from her brother.
"Time for the world's largest concert."
Part 11
He was spinning.
Quenser Barbotage's vision was spinning.
The timing of the explosion must have been altered. The World's End used oxygen, but that oxygen would detonate the same no matter who ignited it. So if Quenser threw a plastic explosive to ignite the oxygen before it had spread out as much as the Pilot Elite wanted, he could alter how far the explosion reached.
However.
He heard a few cracking sounds like someone stepping on thin ice. Something white obscured the left half of his vision, like he had run into a spider web. He rubbed at his face out of instinctual disgust, but that changed nothing. He could not wipe this away.
They were cracks.
His helmet's visor had been damaged. When he began to imagine what would happen if it broke and lost its airtight seal, intense static filled the back of his mind.
"Eek!?"
He could feel the extreme terror clutching at his throat.
But it was all over if he screamed. His own panic would lead to further panic, starting an endless chain reaction, so he did everything he could to suppress it and think.
(We need Object-level firepower. )
He clenched his teeth.
These thoughts were not a way to avoid the reality before him. They were to face it.
(Nothing we do ourselves can destroy that thing, so we need to bring an Object here. I need to figure out a way to do that!!)
Killer satellites, an Object, and even garbage and defective items meant to burn up in the atmosphere.
The Federation of Elevator Industries had left this area of space full of trash.
And the blue planet shined below him.
He started to think about adjusting his angle to return safely to that planet, but that would not save him.
He viewed his homeland once more. There was more than just blue there. The red lights seen here and there had to be the battlefields where Objects fought. The scale of those battles was so large that they could be seen from space.
But.
What did it really mean that he could see them from here?
"Wait a second."
"Hey, Quenser, what are you rummaging around for? Pulling out a bomb isn't gonna destroy that thing!!"
"It doesn't have to. I'm interested in the path of the trash floating around here!"
"What?"
"Redirect that trash the way I want and I can change the future!!"
Part 12
"Meowww."
The Princess was so bored she had finally balled up her hands to become a cat.
And she went the whole nine yards by pulling out black cat ears and a tail from the costumes they had prepared for the upcoming carnival.
She had pursued wild birds on her screen for a while, but she had eventually given up on finding them all. She had realized that some of the birds were nocturnal, so she could never complete her bird encyclopedia during the day.
She had nothing to do.
She was starting to feel lonely.
But a transmission reached her ears while she relaxed in her cockpit.
"Quenser here. Ksssshhhhh!! Princess, ksshh, can you hear me!?"
"Quenser? You...you didn't hear anything!! Don't listen!!"
"?"
She frantically waved her hands and covered her blushing face, but he seemed to have bigger issues at the moment. She was jealous. Those nimble soldiers had flown up into space where they actually had a battle to fight. Time appeared to be moving much faster for them than for the Princess who was bored to death down here.
"Requesting support! Kssshhh, right away!!"
"But I can't, " she mumbled with tears in her eyes."My anti-air lasers can't reach geostationary orbit at 36 thousand kilometers. Even the best ballistic weapons only reach around 3500 kilometers. You're just too high up."
"Ksh, I don't want your anti-air weapons."
"Hm? Then what do you want???"
"I don't care about your main cannons! Kssshhh!! I just want your help right away!!"
"Hmmmm???"
Part 13
The prototype weapon was indeed only a prototype.
When Louisiana Honeysuckle had put on an uncomfortable tight skirt suit to make her presentation to 7th Core executives, she had listed out its merits while tapping her pointer against the whiteboard, but she did not actually need an Object in space. She had only wanted the space elevator and the Object had been her way of earning funding. With no need to make it practical, it had been given bizarre equipment that never would have been approved for an ordinary project. That was how it had been given highly concentrated oxygen as a main cannon.
She could check how much exercise she needed on the small screen on her training bike. She pulled her feet from the sandal-like straps, freeing them from the pedals. Her butt in red sports bloomers rose from the seat.
(It was not a necessary part of my plan. )
But an Object was still an Object.
Without a second one in space, it became the unchallenged champion of any zero-g battles.
(It was only meant as camouflage, but I will still use it if I can. This will not be fun for you, Legitimacy Kingdom. )
She bent her legs to bring her knees up to her chest and spun through the air in something like the fetal position.
But her thoughts were interrupted by some ear-splitting noise.
She heard static as some EM waves messed with the communications equipment.
"?"
It was coming from an unthinkable direction: down. The elevator provided a solid sense of up and down, so that meant the surface of the earth. There were plenty of EM sources down there, including radio towers and airport control tower radars, but this was much more powerful. It finally surpassed the limits of the circuit boards for the cameras equipped on the space station's exterior and the circuitry itself was destroyed. Even though those were designed to withstand a certain level of radiation and EM waves.
What was this? What was happening?
Had someone on the surface detonated one of the nuclear weapons that were thought to have been eradicated long ago? No, not even a nuke could cause this!!
"It can't be..."
Louisiana Honeysuckle was dumbfounded.
A genius girl like her was quick to understand what this had to be. Even if she did not want to reach the answer, her mind would provide it for her.
"It can't be!!"
Part 14
There may have been 36 thousand kilometers in between, but the Princess and the Baby Magnum were waiting at the space elevator's ground base.
The First Generation's anti-air lasers could not reach that far, but so what?
They only had to make use of some other form of power.
"Ksssshhhh!! What the hell? Ksshh, what's going on here!?"
Heivia had managed to join Quenser at some point and he grabbed at the other boy's shoulders. In zero-g, that nearly put them both into a spin.
He quickly used the extravehicular activity unit on his back to steady himself before continuing.
"What did you tell the Princess to do!? Ksshh, what is that down there on the surface!?"
"Static electricity."
Quenser's answer was unbelievable.
Heivia seriously doubted rubbing a balloon against your hair down on earth could affect anything out in space.
But the student had more to say.
"Listen, the Princess's Baby Magnum uses a static electricity propulsion device. Even if it also sprays a repellant, that's still enough static to keep a 200 thousand tons afloat. With that much power, we can use it."
"Wait, are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"But she's surrounded by cracked desert as far as the eye can see. The desert is primarily made of quartz, iron sand, and probably small amounts of some other minerals. The quality isn't good enough to ship it out for industrial use, but that doesn't matter to us. When sand is floating in the air, the size and weight of the grains affects the covered area. A space with quartz floating around is a lot like a glass fiber duster."
Did it cover an area of 10km in every direction, or was it of 100km?
Either way, static electricity would accumulate there. Even commercial carpet could store more than 10, 000 volts, so how many orders of magnitude higher would a space this vast contain?
"And any container will spill its contents once its capacity is surpassed, " said Quenser."Just like lightning, it will scatter something very powerful along with the light and sound."
This was what he had wanted.
"Static. A thick EM wall is released toward the sky!!"
It seemed to cover the surface of the World's End's spherical main body. Sparks scattered from it like fireworks.
Or maybe it was more like carelessly sticking a metal spoon in the microwave.
"Wait, what happened to the Princess!?" asked Heivia.
"Not even a nuke can destroy an Object. And Generation Ones in particular were designed with EMPs in mind, so this won't do any real damage to her."
That was all Quenser said before changing the subject.
"The light can reach us, " he said."The lights down there are leaving the earth. You can see the flames of war caused by the Objects, right? Light is a form of EM, so if we can see the light, we know EM waves can reach us!"
But Heivia's response sounded skeptical.
The threat had not been eliminated.
"Wait, is that all?"
There had been sparks.
That might have brought down the average tank or armored truck.
But.
"Sending those deadly EM waves all the way up here is impressive. You even managed to hit your target. But that thing's an Object, which, like you just said, not even a nuke can destroy! You can probably aim somewhat well using the elevator's wire as a guide, but you still can't specifically target the Object from the ground. How can you possibly break through its armor like this!?"
"Not to worry." Quenser smiled a little. If he could still smile, it meant everything was still going according to plan."I thought of all that. Did you forget, Heivia, that the elevator controls this region of space? Now, do you remember how it launches its cars straight up? It caused us a lot of trouble down in the Turkana District's desert, if you recall."
The change occurred primarily at a single point.
Something floated by right in front of the World's End. Maybe it had been in a transportation container caught in the fighting and maybe it had been dumped by the elevator, but that was a spare elevator car slowly rotating through space.
It bumped lightly into the Object's spherical main body. That was no coincidence since Quenser's Hand Axe plastic explosive had pushed it there. Either the nuke-resistant Object had ignored it as harmless, or the EM waves had interfered with its sensors.
However, the bus-sized machine had a certain device installed.
"It converts EM waves into electricity."
Space was filled with a white flash of light brighter than a lightning bolt.
"Gahhh!!"
The explosive light was enough to blind someone, but Quenser could still hear everything clearly. That was probably because he was hearing the others through his helmet's communicator. He opened his mouth while trusting his voice would reach them in the same way.
He felt pain more in the back of his head than in his eyes.
He felt like he was going to vomit in his helmet if he did not distract himself.
"Gh...ordinary lightbulbs have a vacuum inside so the filament won't burn, but there are a few exceptions."
"What is - ksshh - your point!?"
"A flashbulb. By filling the glass ball with oxygen and passing electricity through it, the filament is instantly burned through to create a massive amount of light. Doesn't that remind you a lot of things here? We've strangled it with the very high-density oxygen it sprayed everywhere!!"
"Kssshhh, you did this while we were trapped inside that lightbulb!!!???"
The filament was made into a thin thread so it was easier to burn through, but the Object was much the same. It had more than just the spherical main body. It had cannons, propulsion devices, tanks, and many other components sticking out.
Not to mention that Heivia, Myonri, and the others had worked so hard to fire missiles at it.
The nuke-resistant Object may have just shrugged that off and it may have only created scratches not even a few millimeters deep on its surface, but those slight claw marks created pieces thinner than pencil shavings that stuck out from its surface. Electricity gathered around the ends of those and they burned like a filament.
Once the bright white flash faded away, the Object was flipped over and floating toward empty space.
The damage must have bene concentrated on the parts sticking out. The oxygen tanks connected like headphones had been torn through and its two main cannons were bent. The heat in the main body had yet to cool, so its surface was still glowing orange.
None of it had been meaningless.
Quenser had just one thing left to say.
"It's over."
Part 15
Clattering sounds echoed through the space station. With the World's End destroyed, Quenser's group had returned to the station.
This was his second time to leave the vacuum of space and enter the artificial air, but Quenser did not feel dizzy this time. It scared him that he was getting used to it.
He saw a short-sleeved gym shirt, red sports bloomers, black kneesocks, and sneakers.
Plus a lab coat over it all.
The central figure of the Capitalist Corporations' Federation of Elevator Industries wore an outfit that seemed wholly unsuited for outer space. As before, Louisiana Honeysuckle was floating in the enormous central area. For some reason, the bored-looking 17-year-old girl was twisting her body. She seemed more interested in whether her underwear was sticking out from the leg of her red sports bloomers than in the fate of the world.
When she noticed them, she began to speak without untwisting herself.
"I see you have chosen to help destroy humanity. I assumed it would be the Faith Organization that thoughtlessly caused this sort of calamity, but it seems the true ruinbringers were the Legitimacy Kingdom. At any rate, humanity's last hope has just been extinguished. Even I failed to predict this one."
"Shut up." Heivia made sure to keep his assault rifle aimed at her."You couldn't calculate this out with that clever brain of yours? I don't give a crap about your grand Re Terra project about unifying the environment or whatever the hell. This elevator is no more than a weapon of mass destruction. You don't get to claim ignorance about how many people would die if that thing was used against flesh-and-blood soldiers. Or about what any survivors would want to do to you afterwards!!"
"But I notice you haven't shot me yet."
Louisiana was isolated and alone with a few dozen guns aimed her way, yet she still smiled.
Those few dozen were all that remained.
Quenser did not even want to think about how many others had been with them when they first launched into space.
"This space elevator is the world's tallest structure with a full length of 100 thousand kilometers. You might not like it, but you can't just rig it with explosives and blow it up like with an ordinary building. You need accurate plans and a user's manual even if you only want to get rid of it, don't you? You cannot kill me until you have that."
"You seem awfully sure of yourself, but did you really think we would stick to only the strictly legal methods of getting that information out of you? We have plenty of reasons to hold a grudge."
"Oh, and one other thing."
She ignored Heivia.
She was not bluffing. This confidence appeared to be real.
But why?
"You seem to think you have destroyed the Elinabell with that clever method."
"..."
"Relax, boy." She laughed when Quenser's shoulders jumped."You have indeed defeated the Elinabell. She remains mostly intact, but she can no longer function and I doubt the Pilot Elite had time to eject....But it took you an awfully long time to defeat her. During the explosion, she sprayed her oxygen and gas in a certain direction."
"Wait...wait a second."
"Was that not enough of a hint? Then how about another one? Where on the earth were you planning to drop her?"
Quenser did not even have it in him to shout "wait".
Genius Girl Louisiana Honeysuckle placed her index finger on her slender chin and revealed the quiz's horrific answer.
"You're dropping a 200 thousand ton weight, so no matter where it ends up hitting, I'm pretty sure it will affect the entire planet."
Between the Lines 2
The Mother Lady space elevator's space station had 2008 external experiment modules attached on the outside.
Quenser himself had checked in a few of them.
For example, there had been a plant factory that could be harvested dozens of times a year. There had also been an animal protein factory that quickly produced bugs that ate those crops.
There was a real benefit in those things, which may have been why he had accepted it and moved on.
Louisiana Honeysuckle was undoubtedly a bad person.
She had deceived the people of the Turkana District so she could take their land and build her space elevator without properly explaining the environmental risks. That had led to the verdant land drying out and the existing ecosystem collapsing. Over 80% of the many local plants and animals had died.
But it could all be found here.
Genetic samples for all of those plants and animals could be thawed out at the press of a button.
150 species of wild bird.
178 species of land animal, 599 species of fish, 10, 630 species of bug, and 3811 species of plants.
They were all accounted for.
"Then again..."
Earlier, Louisiana Honeysuckle had smiled and spoken to herself.
The space elevator was equipped with all sorts of observation equipment. She already knew what had happened on the surface and who had died.
Braskine Mintfrappe.
She had met that man in college and they had laughed together about the most pointless things, but he was no more.
She had only ever focused on the equations and assumed she could understand everything about the world if she understood them. But that boring worldview had undergone a radical change when she had visited Africa over her summer vacation.
"I no longer have anyone to celebrate with as our dream is realized."
The land had become a wasteland.
She had repaid them in the cruelest possible way.
But even if no one understood her, she could not back down. She had to make this dream come true.
It was her duty now that she had learned the truth.
This may have been the real difference between her and her much older brother.
She was not attempting to reach outer space for herself.
In fact, she had enjoyed talking about space to people who knew nothing about it. If not for this, she might have dreamed of working at a planetarium.
But she had a much bigger task now.
The threat still remained. And now that her brother had lost the competition and left the Capitalist Corporations, it was up to her to solve the problem.
She had no intention of becoming a hero. She was merely driven by the duty she felt after learning the truth. She could not protect anything as things were and she would lose everything if she ignored it. That impatient feeling had led her to destroy everything within arm's reach.
But that was fine.
The last laugh did not belong to her. The person with whom she had hoped to share that laugh was no longer with her.
But the Turkana District remained.
So it was the residents of her second home there who deserved the last laugh.
She would correct people's mistaken worldview.
She would save the world while all alone.
| ← Ch. 164 | Ch. 166 → |