~'/|\'~
The rest of the trip passed without incident, if one were not to count the confiscation of Ken's camera and the wiping of all of its memory as an incident. Hence, the group that arrived in the Li Lecture Centre was somewhat desolate although individually for completely different reasons.
Therefore, when they arrived at the anteroom to the main conference centre, group cohesion disappeared very rapidly.
“Man,” Toja muttered to Shinji, as they migrated towards the snacks that were being served, “I don't know why I even agreed to come with you lot on this trip.”
“As I recall, you seemed convinced that this was some kind of date with Misato,” pointed out Shinji. “Despite my attempts to point out that it wasn't.”
“I don't remember any attempts to point it out,” the Nazzadi replied.
“That's because there weren't any,” admitted Shinji. “I found it sort of amusing.”
Toja shook his head. “You're a really bad person, you know.” He sighed. “Some day, you'll be the death of me, with your evil plans to get me to waste away while in pursuit of the fair Major Katsuragi.”
“Well, then. You know what to do,” Shinji replied, with a half-smile on his face. “You can stop chasing after my guardian. It's annoying when it doesn't succeed, and it would be creepy if it did.”
Toja made a non-committal grunt. “How are you holding up, mate?” he asked Ken, changing the subject. “They may have wiped your camera, but at least you'll have all your memories, right?”
“And uploaded a hunter-seeker to your storage account, too, don't forget that,” added Shinji, gingerly. “That is why they took the camera, to hit your upload server.”
Ken sighed. “Yeah, I guess. It's just really, really annoying. The rest won't believe what I've seen. And I promised Taly a shot of the C2 docks, too...”
There was a moment of shocked silence.
“You... and Taly,” stated Shinji.
“As in, Miss Annoying Nazzadi Idiot Bigot. Miss Humans-are-House-Apes,” added Toja.
“Miss Everything Nazzadi Is Better, Especially The Mecha... ah. I see,” continued Shinji, as something clicked. “Mecha fangirl, am I correct.”
Ken grinned, widely. “Yeah. Like you wouldn't believe it. And I just happen to be the best informed about everything military and bipedal in the whole Academy, which is quite an achievement, I can tell you that.”
Toja grabbed Ken in a head-lock. “Nice one. Even if she's a horrible person, she is hot. Really, really hot.” He sniffed, in an excessively melodramatic fashion. “I'm so proud of you.”
“Guys,” warned Shinji, “there are probably more security guards here than at school, and that's saying something. Not to mention the cameras. So let's keep the tactile affection to a form that doesn't look like you have in a head lock.”
The boys sprung apart. “Yeah,” muttered Toja. “I don't want to be tased again.”
They both shuddered.
“Anyway,” continued Shinji, “yeah, the fact that she's a subspeciesist jerk is overcome by her hotness.”
“Seriously, guys, she's not really that bad,” Ken replied, with a hint of indignation. “Yeah, she can be a bit unpleasant, but she mostly puts it on to annoy her step-mother.”
Toja nodded, understandingly. “Ah. It all makes a lot more sense now. It's kinda common for kids whose parents end up remarrying humans. Making them put on more clothes, or even some clothes, and speak in English; you're all a bunch of horrible fascist tyrants,” he added, flashing his prominent canines in a grin.
“We are not,” Shinji replied, also with a smile.
“Are too... nah, it was a joke. I love all you barely evolved tree dwelling apes... although only in a friendly way for you men.”
“Lots of collateral damage there,Toja. You're the same species as we are, just repainted and with a new set of headlamps... oops, I mean 'eyes',” Shinji pointed out, “installed.”
“Hey, I didn't say I wasn't a barely evolved ape too,” said Toja, reasonably. He grabbed a banana (a real one; few expenses were being cut for this conference) from the fruit table. “See. I love bananas. Wow, fancy,” he said, getting distracted by the genuine grapes on the table, and taking a handful. “Anyway, we're getting distracted. We were meant to be mocking Ken for being interested in Taly.”
“While feeling slightly jealous about the fact that she appears to have some interest back,” added Shinji. “You know when they say that a girl's got a wonderful personality, what that's really meant to mean? Yeah. She's the opposite of that.”
Ken shrugged. “And it isn't anything beyond friendship, yet. Sadly. She showed up at TechSoc, we got into an argument about the MV-14 Scimitar against the ASM-XI Oryladi and their role as an artillery support mecha, we both shouted down Pauleyon when he dared suggest that the M-111A2 Jaeger was cooler, and things went from there.”
Shinji shrugged, as he helped himself to an apple. “Well, I suppose it makes about as much sense as the fact that our friendship sort of started the day you punched me in the nose. I guess.”
“Hey, Shinji!” called Misato, as she walked towards the three boys, two others in tow.
“Mmmph?” he asked, mouth full.
“Sorry, introductions first. Shinji, this is Colonel Rury, of the NEGA Special Weapons Division, and Juan Carlos, a Sub-Project Manager for Project... Herkunft, wasn't it?”
“Herkunft, yes,” the man nodded.
“Juan, Rury, this is Shinji Ikari, Test Pilot of Evangelion Unit 01, the Prototype.”
The Nazzadi woman, in a strict military uniform nodded. “Yes, I've read his file. Nice to meet you, Shinji. I suspect we're going to see quite a bit more of each other over the next few months, as the Evangelion project is fully integrated into the New Earth Government military.”
“I can't help but feel a little apprehensive about that,” Shinji remarked.
Red eyes stared at him, before her face broke into a smile. “Ah, good. Apprehension is probably the most human response when a mysterious woman in a NEGA uniform tells you that she's read your file and expects to see you a lot more. And much as certain elements might be disapproved of, necessity is a harsh mistress.”
Shinji frowned.
That wasn't reassuring at all.
“Well... I suppose...”
“Anyway,” interrupted Misato, “what I came over to say was that I think it would be best if you went and tried to talk to Asuka. Perhaps, this time, without getting into a flaming row,” she added, with a strong hint of sarcasm.
“She started it,” muttered Shinji.
“Hmm,” said the Major, and it was the word, rather than a sound. “Look, if you're going to be living under my roof, compromises will have to be made,” added Misato.
Shinji sighed. “Very well.”
He scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of that shock of red hair. This quest was not aided by the fact that the ante-room was filling up; the conference was due to start fairly soon, which would at least provide a concrete end-date for the upcoming conversation. He did vaguely consider just prevaricating, then telling Misato that he hadn't been able to find Asuka before the event, but, though he was loathe to admit it, she was right. Mutual hatred was probably not the best relationship to have with a girl who would be piloting a forty metre tall war machine along side him. And by “piloting”, really, “controlling with her mind” was more accurate, bringing whole new areas for things to go wrong.
He found her in the corner of the room, slumped against a pillar, intently reading something on her PCPU. Asuka looked up as he approached.
“Oh, it's you,”she said, in a curiously impassive tone of voice quite out of sorts with how he had seen her act before. “Major Katsuragi told me that you might try to talk to me.”
“Ah,” Shinji replied. “She suggested that I come over and... well, talk to you.”
Asuka shook her head. “I'm not really surprised. Warnings about not getting into a flaming row in public?”
“Uh huh.”
“Harsh words about how compromises would have to be made if we're going to be living in the same house?”
“Yep.”
“Those words coming immediately after I pointed out that it was all your fault?” added Asuka, confidentially, in a tone of voice that wasn't really a question.
“Switch the direction of blame around,” replied Shinji, “and... yeah,” he admitted.
“So let's be at least partially civil to each other for a few moments, and then we can go back to not talking,” Asuka concluded.
“That works.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“So, um.”
“Yes.”
The silence continued, just as the room filled up more.
“How can people who are so smart be so petty-minded,” Asuka blurted out.
Shinji frowned. “I'm sorry?”
“All the people around us. Honestly, I try to contribute to a discussion about military tactics on the Eastern Front, and those idiot locked me out of the conversation. It's never anything overt, but I can see the way that they turn to ignore me, the way they look at me as if I'm a little girl, the way they dismiss me as not knowing enough.” She snorted. “Close-minded fools.”
“Maybe you didn't make a good first impression,” Shinji blurted out, before he could stop himself. Internally, he winced. This was going to flare things up again.
Those eyes locked onto his. “What do you mean?” she replied, in a chilly voice.
“Well,” he began, and paused. Honesty, or an attempt to defuse the situation? “You kind of started with me by slapping me, then calling me dull. Before I'd even said anything to you,” he added, a hint of sarcasm creeping in. “I hope you didn't try that with them.”
“Yes, but that was because I was defending my honour. In here, I didn't have a trio of perverts staring at me!”
The temporary truce was already breaking down.
“My heart bleeds, it really does. Honestly, haven't you spent enough time around Nazzadi to know their attitude to nudity? It shows in their fashion sense!”
Asuka looked shocked. “How dare you! And I suppose you're a master of Nazzadi culture, Mr One Of My Best Friends Is Nazzadi!”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” retorted Shinji, trying to keep his voice down. “One of my foster mothers is one.”
Asuka cocked her head slightly, and raised one hand. “Wait. Pause for a moment. I thought you lived with Misato.”
“I do now,” he replied, taking a deep breath and trying to calm down. “Since late August. When I was basically conscripted.”
Asuka's eyes narrowed momentarily, at the reminder of how little training Shinji had been through. “Sometime today I'll show you what a real Evangelion looks like; a proper, MP Model.”
Shinji blinked. “Wait, what? Where did that come from?”
A sigh escaped from the girl's mouth. “You've never seen what the finished model is mean to look like, only the incomplete Test Model and the Prototype. You'll want to see what the final design will look like; after all, they're obviously going to retrofit yours.”
“But why...”
“Because it's obvious that the MP design is better! What are you, stupid?”
“You're dead!” shouted a voice from nearby, in a shocked tone. The surrounding conversation fell to a hush. “What are you doing here!”
A man, his hair snow white, was pointing at the pair of them, hand shaking as if with some palsy. He looked like he had some Caucasian blood in him, despite his predominantly Asian features, premature wrinkles etched into his forehead. A younger, Nazzadi man rushed up to him, lowering the arm, and gently tried to guide him away.
“Dr Miyakame, I think...”
“Don't 'Dr Miyakame' me,” the man snarled. He stared at the pair, Asuka in particular, and blinked twice, data rolling across the AR glasses he wore. “I'm quite all right,” he said, in a softer tone. “I just had a momentary shock.” He shrugged off the younger man, in a way that showed he was considerably more fit than his prematurely aged features would suggest, and stepped towards the perplexed pair of Shinji and Asuka, hand (still shaking) held out.
“You would logically, therefore, be Kyoko's ... daughter,” he said, carefully,as the conversation rose back to its previous level. “The spitting image. He turned to stare at Shinji, an unwrinkled hand taking the boy's chin, and moving it to various perspectives. “And you, of course... that nose, that facial shape. You're Gendo and Yui's, aren't you.”
This somewhat unorthodox method of introduction left them both momentarily speechless, before Asuka, overcoming the surprise first, answered, “Yes, sir.” She paused, smiling sweetly, in a rather rapid change from how she had been before, before continuing, “But you are?”
The old (though not as old as he looked) man frowned at her, slightly, before his face took on a slight smile. “Don't try that on me. Your mother used to try that; didn't work then, either. But to answer your question, well, I suppose neither of you would remember me. I'm Doctor Anton Miyakame, Director for Research and Development for the Engel Project. I...” he paused, eyes suddenly far away. “I worked with your parents in the development of the Evangelions.” He blinked rapidly. “I'm sorry. It's been twelve years, and I've forgotten your names. Looking at you... well, time makes a mockery of a man who's suddenly feeling very old.”
“Second Lieutenant Asuka Langley Soryu, pilot of Evangelion Unit 02,” she replied, saluting the man.
“Shinji Ikari,” Shinji added, considerably less triumphantly.
“He's the Test Pilot of Unit 01,” Asuka added, emphasising the peculiar rank that resulted as a consequence of Shinji's dubious legal position.
Dr Miyakame went pale for a second. “Oh my,” he said, quietly. “Oh my.” He blinked rapidly. “Oh my. It was just yesterday, it seems like sometimes, that you two were toddlers. And you're both piloting those... things.”
“Yes,” Asuka nodded proudly.
“Dr Miyakame,” it was the young Nazzadi man, again, “there are some people who want to talk to you...”
“Go!” the doctor barked, and it was an actual bark, a feral sounding noise from deep in the back of his throat. The assistant flinched away, half-raising his hand above his head, disappearing into the crowd. He blinked twice. “I was the leader of the team,” he continued, in the same calm tone of voice, “that worked with the noetic interface of the arcanocyberxenobiological organisms; those A10 Nerve Clips you have in your hair?” he said in a tone that mixed pride and sorrow, pointing at Asuka, “I designed them,” he said, with what almost sounded like a guilty undertone in his voice. “I remember when I showed them off, in that team meeting,” he added, his eyes going cloudy. “Your mothers had both bought you along. It was... well, towards the end of my... work with Evangelion,” he continued, slowly, choosing his words. “It was already... getting tense. There were frequent... discussions. Heated discussions. Especially between Yui and Kyoko. I'm sorry about how I acted earlier. It's just... those words, and that tone of voice,” he said to Asuka. “I suppose it's natural for you to look and sound a lot like her.”
“No, honestly, it's fine,” Asuka replied, with a broad smile.
He shook his head, a brief reflexive twitch. “Never mind. It's natural. Very natural. Exactly the same words. Anyway, we left you two with the Paragon child care.” He chuckled then, a young-sounding noise quite out of line with his appearance. “I was with your mothers when they came to collect you; someone had to work as an intermediary, because, well, they weren't talking again. They had got into a design argument about control schemes, and well, Yui had started needling Kyoko about her... never mind.” He shook his head, and blinked twice. “Apparently you two had squabbled for about five minutes, and someone had pushed the other one over. But then something had happened (which we never got the full story) and you'd ended up building a fort together.” There was a faintly indulgent smile on the man's face. “And then you'd started bombarding the other children with plasticine bombs that you'd built, cheering when you scored a hit.” The smile was replaced by sadness. “Of course, your mothers snatched you up and walked away without talking to each other. And then a few months later there were the... never mind.”
The prematurely aged man sniffed.
“We have our own debts to pay. I failed them both. I tried to pay it off with the Engels, but seeing you two has reminded me of another one I have. Tell your Doctor Akagi that she'll be hearing from me.”
And with that, the man walked off into the dense crowd, shoulders slumped.
“Uh, Dr Miyakame,” Shinji called, but the man gave no sign of having heard.
He and Asuka gave each other worried glances out of the corners of their vision.
“That's pretty bad AWS,” they both said, simultaneously.
He's pretty crazy is what they both meant. Not that it was very nice to think like that, but it was true.
They then smiled faintly at the fact that they had shared that thought, then looked away; Shinji in embarrassment, Asuka in irritation.
“What was that about?” Shinji asked.
“Look, it's pretty obvious,” Asuka replied, her normal personality reasserting over the shock that had almost given the other girl a foothold. “Obviously our mothers were colleagues...”
“He said 'parents'. Possibly my,” Shinji felt bitter inside, at admitting the relationship, but continued, “father too? I know he's Ashcroft in a big way. Yours?”
“No.” Asuka stated that absolutely. “Not a chance. Anyway, he worked with them.” She swallowed. This would take some courage. “And then there were some... accidents.”
She fell silent.
“Yes,” Shinji said, softly, staring down at his hands.
There was a silence, though through this one there was some understanding.
“Did you hear him?” Asuka asked, staring blankly into the crowd. “He worked on the Evangelion control systems. That means he blames himself for the accidents.”
The silence which followed was broken by a man in a NEG military uniform calling all guests into the main hall, for the start of the demonstration.
~'/|\'~
“The undue dominance of the bipedal weapons platform in modern military affairs has gone on long enough.”
These were indeed fighting words. In the audience, after all, were both the Director for Research and Development, and the Director of Operations of Project Evangelion, and the Director for Research and Development of Project Engel. Not to mention, of course, the presence of several senior staff from the NEGA High Command. But, then again, the Daeva Project had always been a Navy plaything, and those words were not irregular complaints from the NEGN. The Director of the New Earth Government Project, Daeva, a weapons project unrelated to the endless sequence of Ashcroft Projects, knew this, and he was sure enough that he felt he could rile the audience a little before displaying the main project.
“A bipedal, humanoid design; it is fundamentally flawed as a weapons platform. I look before me, at the audience. I know that you are all intelligent individuals. I know you're all familiar with the concept of surface area-volume ratios, pressures, centres of mass and all those other little things that make the bipedal design a sub-optimal combat design. And I know that you know that. Despite the pressures from... certain groups and committees in the Army, the Vreta, despite its “official” role as a combat support unit, despite the fact that it uses last generation battlefield protection, despite all that... the Vreta is still the practical mainstay of the majority of the army outside of urban environments. It out-ranges every single mecha in the NEG arsenal... why do you think that is? Because it is designed so that the recoil of its main cannon is absorbed through a solid system, not stuck out on the end of limbs which reduce the size of weapons that may be mounted. Because it uses A-Pods as its exclusive method of transport, giving it a combat velocity twice that of a Broadsword. Because it is cheaper to build and easier to train crew to engage in combat operations in a Vreta than the multitasking required for a Broadsword. And yet there are elements in the High Command of the Army that want to phase it out.”
The Nazzadi man, his red eyes gleaming in triumph, paused and took a sip of water.
“You might ask how this state of affairs came about. Indeed, I do so myself. The best explanation I have is that... we grew lazy.” He paused, to let his comments sink in. “We got used to the D-Engine, and the fact that we now had a dependable source of constant, finite power. We got used to the Operator Side-Effect and the intuitive skills for piloting (though not, I may note, actual combat) that arcanotechnology granted us. We got so used to the current technological paradigm that we did not think outside the narrow walls of our box. It is true, yes, that with the D-Engine, we can overcome the massive power consumption required for mechanical bipedal locomotion. It is also true that if we cut out the middleman, and simply installed A-Pods, we would obtain a more stable firing platform, which could also carry more armour, mount larger weapons and move faster. Yes, all three. That is how much better, in a purely mechanical context, an armoured roughly cuboid shape is over a humanoid.”
He inclined his head in turn towards Dr Akagi, then Dr Miyakame in turn, keeping a slight smile on his face.
“That is not, of course, to belittle the stellar work which our colleagues, and, yes, sometimes competitors in the various Ashcroft Projects have been doing. Thanks to them, we have a new element, that of the arcanobiological in military science. Their work in the fields of arcanocyberxenobiology have been instrumental in the continued survival of the human species. In the years since the deployment of the first Engel, they have proved their worth many times over. It is not surprising that twenty percent of the military bipeds larger than Powered Armour are now a product of the Engel Project. Indeed, the... unfortunate effects,” and here, his voice took on a downcast tone, “that the Engel Synthesis Interface has on those pilots which volunteer for those cybernetic implants, and the necessary mental fortitude that candidates must have, are proving to be the main limiting factors on Engel deployment, not production. Likewise, the products of its predecessor group, Project Evangelion, which went public just this week, have proved astonishing in the termination of High Threat Extra-Normal Entities, even through their size and exceedingly limited numbers will mean that they will be never more than a highly specialised Heavy Assault Unit.”
Shinji felt somewhat ambivalent about that. On one hand, it was true, and the man did make a lot of sense. On the other hand, it didn't feel right for this arrogant Nazzadi to be lecturing him on 'inefficiency' and damning them with faint praise. Around the table, though, both Ritsuko and Asuka appeared to be fairly livid at his words, while Misato was so bored that she... he squinted... she was drawing something on her napkin. Toja appeared to have gone to sleep, although that was uncertain; he had somehow propped up his head in a way that made him look like he was paying attention.
“But the point is,” the Chief Engineer on Project Daeva continued, “they were still working with flawed materials. Before now, only bipeds, or, in the case of the Ish, snake-like aquatic creatures, have been able to incorporate the wonders and marvels of ACXB into their design.” The man put both hands on the lectern, leaning forwards. “That, gentlemen and ladies, changes today.”
Naturally, Ken was soaking it in. There had been a few squeaks of near terminal levels of happiness, but the boy appeared to still be alive, though approaching catatonia from endorphin overdose. That the speaker was insulting mecha with his every word and intonation seemed to have been overcome by the fact that he was sitting in a real, really real, technical briefing.
The man snapped his fingers, loudly, the amplified click echoing throughout the hall. At that command, the wall behind him faded to transparency, the amorphous material aligning to permit the passage of light.
“Behold, the Araska. The first functional battle-ready prototype from Project Daeva.”
Behind him, beyond the metamorphic wall, was a leviathan. The first impression was one of massive, irresistible bulk. It looked almost as if it had originally been built with the harsh, square lines of human design, but all the edges had been smoothed, rounded off, while smaller bulges, ovoids protruding from the smooth, almost organic surface, covered the vehicle, giving it a look worryingly akin to pustules. Floating roughly half a metre off the ground, the blue tinge to the air below a sign of the use of A-Pods, the Araska was roughly forty metres wide, ten metres tall, and seventy metres long. The A-Pods seemed to be concentrated in larger rounded, armoured sections protruding from the hull somewhat, at each of the four corners. A single, capital grade laser gazed like a Cyclopean eye from the front, while triplets of Charge Beams were mounted over each of the A-Pod clusters. A multitude of lesser, anti personnel weapons clustered the hull.
“That's no tank,” muttered Ken, in the last stages of terminal ecstasy. “That's a land battleship.”
The Chief Engineer paused for a while, letting his audience soak in the spectacle. “The Araska is but the first, and the largest of the tanks of Project Daeva; with the experience gained from the construction of this unit, we hope to miniaturise the process to allow the Daeva-Process to be applied to tanks of the size of the modern Vreta. But I get ahead of myself. I'm sure that questions are being raised about what makes this tank so special. I'm sure that, from your perspective, all we have done is create a very light frigate. There may be some impressive miniaturisation, true, but there is nothing that seems to justify the bragging that I have been engaged in, seemingly deliberately alienating large amounts of the NEGA, along with two Ashcroft Projects.”
There were, indeed, nods from the audience.
“What if I were to tell you that almost all of that bulk is armour? That the armour is superior to conventional materials, is self-repairing at rates incomparable to that which even the Seraph is capable of, and comes with pre-existing optical sensors that can, with very little effort, be re-purposed for military goals. That the Araska, though extensive use of automation and high grade military LAIs, only requires a crew of nine?”
There was general uproar in the hall.
“No...” muttered Ritsuko, in shock. “They wouldn't dare...”
“Yes, it's true. Project Daeva has accomplished a paradigm-changing event in the field ACXB; we have developed a functional, modular form of extra-dimensional organism which functions as regenerative armour. We call it... Type-S. It is lighter, harder and tougher than conventional materials,” he continued, as the voices died away, triumph filling his voice. “Although the Daeva series of tank will be designed to maximise the advantages which the Type-S Armour provides, we believe that we will be able to design a variant which can be retrofitted onto capital ships, thus giving them a concrete military advantage over Migou ships of the same weight grade.”
Dr Miyakame, on the next table along, blinked twice. “So, they did it...” he said softly.
“Welcome to a new era of warfare,” Tokita said, staring out at the audience. “We hope it will be bought to an end very quickly.”
The light on the podium moved to a younger looking human male, in NEG naval uniform, his hair tucked neatly back, standing at the side of the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we will now take a short break. When we reconvene, there will be a demonstration of the Araska prototype, as well as questions from the floor.”
The buzzing sussuration of conversation filled the vacuum.
Asuka stood up, and grabbed Shinji by the collar.
“Excuse me, Major Katsuragi,” she said, smiling sweetly, “but may Shinji and I be excused? This man is just being pointlessly insulting, and I think the time would be spent more efficiently if I could show my co-worker Unit 02.”
Misato flapped her hand in their general direction. “Sure. Just don't get in trouble or try to severely injure each other.”
Asuka left, half-dragging Shinji by the arm, albeit in a way that wasn't recognisable as such unless you knew what you were looking for.
Misato smiled at Ritsuko, who had arrived just before the start of the speech, slightly out of breath. “See. I had some words with them, and they seem to be getting on better.”
The blond woman stared at her, her expression dubious. “If you say so, but that's not what I saw.” She turned in her seat to look at Toja and Ken. “That reminds me. I'm sorry, but you two don't have the security clearance to watch the next part of the demonstration, as it's quantitative, not qualitative. I'm afraid you'll have to leave the room. Just go talk to the woman waiting outside with the badge consisting of three linked squares. She'll show you to an entertainment room.” Toja sat up immediately, but noting the reluctance in Ken's eyes, she added, with a glint in her eye, “Unless, of course, you'd report your observation of classified ACXB development to the OIS?”
That was enough to evict the two.
“So, anyway, Misato...” She noticed the other woman's gaze was not directed at her, but instead was over her shoulder. She turned, and her eyes immediately narrowed at the sight of Dr Miyakame, standing not a metre behind her chair, completely silent. His eyes looked just as cold as hers.
“Yes?” she asked, in an acidic tone.
“Dr Akagi. We need to talk. In private. Now.”
~'/|\'~
It had been incredibly easy to get to the space where Unit 02 was being stored. Both Asuka, and, somewhat surprisingly Shinji, had arcology access granted at blood scanners to a number of surprisingly sensitive areas, including the series of stripped out bays in an Engel Project facility where the Evangelion was being stored.
Shinji stared up at the vast crimson shape, the red so dark as to be almost vermilion. The hangar was designed for much smaller biomechanical abominations against all human sense, and so Unit 02 knelt, hunched over in a way that almost made it look like it was giving itself in supplication to a higher power.
“Hmm,” he stated, as he stepped into the shadow of the best, looking at it with an almost clinical eye. He'd seen the other two Units close up; for Unit 01, he'd even seen it without most of its outer shell, locked down by the restraint armour that left only a thin layer of biofoam between the creature underneath and an onlooker. “Four eyes instead of two. The head is a bit differently shaped. And those things on the shoulders?” He stared at the boxes, trying to evince their function. “Some kind of rocket pod thing, I think. Looks like the front opens up, certainly. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same as mine. Bar the colour. Did you get to choose it?”
Asuka glanced back at Shinji, as she walked towards her Evangelion. “What?”
“The colour. It's different.”
She shot him a glance which spoke poorly of her view of his mental capacities. “That's only the base. The camouflage goes on top,” Asuka explained, as if to a child. “It's only this colour so that the technicians can check for cracks in the top layer of plating.”
“I know that,” Shinji retorted. “Unit 01 is usually purple and green, but it doesn't actually fight like that. You'd have to be an idiot to send a war machine out like that; some kind of ignorant feudal knight.” He thought for a moment. “Or a Nazzadi, I guess,” he added, correcting himself.
“They do have a tendency to be a bit style over substance,” Asuka stated. It was rather chilly in the hangar, actually, as the coolant that snaked in tubes wrapped around the Evangelion, not to mention the fact that the next hangar stored Seraph Engels in serried ranks, and the organisms liked the cold. So maybe the Nazzadi cut of the dress was leaving her chilly. But she would be damned if she was going to let him see that.
“The colour isn't the only difference, though,” she continued. “After all, Units 00 and 01 are prototypes. They're just test models. That's why your one synchronised with someone who hadn't had any training.”
Shinji couldn't let that one pass. “Yes, I certainly see why they'd want to cut that feature from the Mass Production Model. I mean, we wouldn't want for it to be too easy to find suitable candidates. That would take all the fun out of it. No, what we really want is a war machine that's really hard to...”
“Shut up, idiot,” Asuka replied, without turning her gaze from the sight of her Evangelion. “But Unit 02 is different.”
“You mean it's really, really hard to synchronise with?” Shinji interjected. He was having surprising amounts of fun; certainly more than he would have had, staying in London-2 and sulking about the fact that his father was a better parent to a weird creepy White who writes odd notes in her room and is quite possibly crazy, than he was to his own son. Sniping at this volatile redhead was like shooting explosive barrels with a rocket launcher; the trick was to not get caught in the resultant explosion.
He had a sudden urge to join the Academy's Debating Society.
“I said, shut up, idiot,” was the response that comment produced. “This is a true Evangelion, the first on Earth to be built for actual combat. The final model,” she proclaimed, turning to face him with her arms spread out wide, eyes catching the light from the distant ceiling.
It was, Shinji had to admit, a stirring image.
~'/|\'~
The meeting had reconvened. They were taking questions from the floor.
Ritsuko elevated her hand.
“Ah, the famous Dr Ritsuko Akagi. I'm very glad to see that you're here,” said Tokita, the Nazzadi speaker, with what was widely assumed to be insincerity despite the lack of any obvious inflections which would indicate its nature. “Please, go ahead.”
“According to your initial speech, the Araska is equipped with a capital-grade D-Engine. How have you solved the instability issues which arise when the WEYL and RICCI tensor fluctuations induced by a D-Engine reach a critical density? Moreover, how will you prevent a dimensional rupture if the core of the Black Box is ruptured before the automated shutdown can fuse the confluence?”
“That's a very good question, and was in fact the second highest hurdle we had to overcome in the project. We solved it via a combination of advanced LAI handlers which can adjust the power flow to prevent a resonance cascade, which, yes, is a known problem if the WRT fluctuations become too dense, along with a distributed power grid which, using Unita and Xu's work on metastable dimensional taps, decreases WRT density by 21.8% over a conventional mono-engine. Moreover, by embedding the cell-source structure in the tissue of the arcanocyberxenobiological organism, its natural dampening abilities mean that a rupture should, we calculate, proceed along geometrical, not exponential rates, allowing the deadswitch to fuse the rupture. Should that situation arise, of course.”
“But I would query the use of Unita and Xu's work on the grounds of safety issues,” stated Ritsuko. “mD-Engines are still a theoretical prediction, and applying their work to a standard D-Engine is far too risky, in my opinion. And to deploy such a mD/D Hybrid-Engine into a weapon designed for close range ground combat invites the possibility of a localised metastable space-time collapse. I need not raise what happened last time one of those occurred.”
“And I would protest that the comparison of the mD/D Hybrid-Engine of the Araska to the events in Las Vegas is mere scaremongering,” retorted Tokita. “If I were so inclined, I would perhaps raise that we should not be stationing a certain arcanocyberxenobiological organism so close to a city when the Evangelion Project has repeatedly refused requests from both the NEGA and the NEGN to reveal the source of the the extradimensional lifeform used as a template.”
“Which is irrelevant to the subject at hand,” shot back Ritsuko.
“Perhaps,” the representative of Project Daeva stated, quite deliberately. “Nevertheless, such arguments have been raised multiple times in the development of the Araska, and have been noted.”
“Stop it,” muttered Misato to her colleague. “You're embarrassing yourself.”
“Ah... you there, I'm sorry, I don't know your name,” continued Tokita, waving aside any other points from Ritsuko, pointing at a female xenomix sitting on the Engel table.
“Opuly Ladislao, Sub-Director of ACXB Research, Project Engel,” said the woman, who looked like she was one of the oldest xenomixes alive, in her mid twenties. “You accuse Project Evangelion of refusing to release data on the ACXB organisms used in their work, when you yourself refuse to permit other groups to examine the extra-dimensional organism used in Type-S plating. Do you not consider that hypocritical?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “You, over there, on the NEGA table. No, the one on the right. No, my right, not yours.” He sighed. “It would be lovely to have an absolute frame of reference.”
There was a notable amount of laughter from the audience.
“Lieutenant Colonel Remi Obasanjo, New Earth Government Army. Project Daeva is a New Earth Government Navy pet project. How can you justify the production of tanks within the funding auspices set for Navy Special Weapons Projects?”
The engineer grinned widely. “Under the Auspice Protocol of 2076, void-capable and submersible craft are under the jurisdiction of the Navy. The Araska is both void-capable, and submersible. In truth, yes, the Araska can function as a super-light naval vessel as well as a super-heavy tank; Project Daeva does in fact have its roots in attempts to make the smallest vessel which could mount a capital grade weapon, before the innovation of Type-S plating. Later models will be more specialised for land warfare, subject to the ratification of the Daeva Project as a New Earth Government Project. They would then come under the command of the Army for operational purposes, with maintenance remaining with Project Daeva. As per the current arrangement with the Ashcroft Project Engel.”
The woman smiled. The Army had heard what it needed to hear with that reply, which had removed their major objection to the Project. Now all that was left was to see if it would live up to all that it had promised.
“Next, please.”
A Nazzadi woman stood up, on the same table. “ Colonel Rury, of the NEGA Special Weapons Division. The Araska seems designed to challenge the eponymous products of Project Evangelion, and even if it was not, it is the only land unit within the same weight category. From observed data, how would the Araska fare against a Herald?”
The hall went silent. This was the question which everyone had been waiting for. That it had come from the NEGA SWD was not surprising, as the SWD was one of the major backers of Project Evangelion, and was, according to many members of the Navy, a hold-out of bipedalist favouritism.
“Well, firstly, I would disagree with your contention that the Araska is designed to compete with the Evangelions.” The man smiled to himself. “It's designed to replace them.”
There was a hiss of indrawn breath throughout the hall.
“Circumstances have seen us out on this, too. The most recent Herald, code-named Mot, was killed by the use of a Navy vessel and its ventral laser. True, an Evangelion may have been squeezing the trigger, so to speak, but the damage was done by brute force Direct Energy Transfer, not some special feature of the Evangelions.”
Ritsuko sprung to her feet. “So the fact that the laser, powered by the entire usable output of the L2 grid, was not able to breach the AT Field until the AT Field of Unit 00 neutralised the protective barrier somehow escaped your analysis?” she asked, as calmly as she could.
“No, it did not. However, it might have escaped yours that the entire AT-Field of the Herald was concentrated in one point to stave off destruction. Which brings us to the other advantage of the Araska. We aren't reliant upon 'special candidates' and we don't need to use teenagers,” the man spat, disgusted, “as child soldiers.”
Misato winced. “It's a really good thing those two aren't here,” she muttered to herself.
“We aren't dependent upon the unreliable human mind, which is fallible and prone to breaking, to deploy our war machines. Anyone could, with training, pilot the Araska or any of its planned successors. Since the start of your Project, you've found, what, three suitable candidates. We already have trained crew for five Araska P-Types. Just from our test pilot program. So, to return to the original point, against a Herald, we know that brute force works. And we can bring a lot more of it to bear for a fraction of the cost.”
He smiled, his grin blatantly patronising, at Ritsuko then.
“And it's inevitable that we will find a way to replicate the AT-Field. Science, whether conventional, arcane or sorcerous, will always find a way.”
He pressed a button on the desk, and the lights dimmed, the wall behind him fading to transparency once again to show the bulk of the Araska.
“And now it is time for the demonstration.” He paused. “Silence in the audience, please,” he added, over Ritsuko's attempts to answer.
He flipped out a PCPU, dialling a number in a blatant act of showmanship.
“Hello? Yes, hello, Captain Wupata.... yes, yes, I'm fine. Listen, I have a little favour to ask. Would you mind telling your charming men and women to open fire. All together, please. Yes, thanks. No, really, I owe you one. Well, see you. Ciao.”
He snapped the PCPU shut.
“Captain Wuptata. Wonderful guy. Known him for quite a while. Do you know, he heads an artillery company now?”
And with that, the shells hit. A full salvo from a company of M111-A2 Jaeger Self-Propelled Howitzers, the magnetically accelerated shells following a near-perfect parabola before slamming down as one into the hull of the Daeva. From the point of view of the audience, the sight was a horrific burst of sudden violence, the transparent wall behind the speaker showing fire and smoke. Shrapnel tore into the wall, leaving in off colour and opaque in areas.
There was utter silence in the hall, as the smoke cleared. You could have heard a pin drop.
The veils thrown up by the explosions parted, to leave the Araska. Its back had been flayed, torn open by the blasts, deep wounds torn into its hull by the barrage. But even as the audience watched, a black, tar-like substance welled up through the scars, filling them. Odd blisters floated in the tar, which glowed a strange luminescent green, even from that distance. The tar kept on swelling and bulging, bloating out of the wounds, even as the rate of expansion decreased, forming what looked like cancerous bulges on the hull. Even as they grew, though, a strange flaky layer, in military green, grew over the black, coating it; and where it coated, growth ceased. Within seconds the Daeva stood before them, not identical to how it was before, because there were new growths on the top, but intact.
There were panicked yelps from the audience at the sight, and two people were nosily sick.
“Lieutenant,” Tokita called out, “are you all right in there?”
A face appeared on the wall behind him, the transparency becoming an opaque, moving image. The Hispanic man grinned.
“Bit noisy in here, but we're fine.”
There was a burst of nervous laughter from the audience.
“Anything damaged?”
“Well, charge beam FR-2 took a direct hit from a shell. It's broken 'til we can take her in for a proper repair cycle.”
“Damn,” declared Tokita. “I'd said that I'd take her back unscratched. Looks like I owe the engineering team some drinks.”
More nervous laughter.
“I'd just like to point out what just happened. The Araska took an entire company's worth of artillery shells. We timed it so that they hit as close to simultaneously as we could make it, just to put the self-repair functions of the ACXB organism to the limit. If they'd hit further apart, the damage could potentially have been repaired before the next shell hit, depending on spacing. The only permanent damage? One of the charge beams took a direct hit from an artillery shell, beyond the ability of the on-board nanofactories to repair. Now, let's run the Araska through her paces...”
~'/|\'~
The room was a vast sphere, shaped to atomic level precision. There were neither sharp angles nor shadows nor reflections anywhere in the man-made void. Such things could have disastrous consequences, for it had been found that the presence of sorcerous wards too close to this place disturbed the thing contained within.
The ABN Facility was a Grade-A facility. It was designed to hold things of such a level that their mere presence induced Aeon War Syndrome; ancient horrors spoken of in myth, entities which induced AWS in the Migou, things which would not die, would not sleep and should not exist. Those true horrors of the universe which mankind had encountered (or, in its worst moments, made) were sealed here, undying and restless. Was it any surprise that the Auburn district, on the edge of New Chicago, in which it was located, was viewed as a hell-hole slum by the NEG as a whole, a place where cultists gathered, and extra-dimensional beasts were attracted, before the near-absolute military lockdown around the place terminated them? Where the AWS score of the inhabitants was a good two to three points higher than average for the population? Where children were sometimes born with Outsider taint through no fault of their parents, and the parapsychic rate was nine times that of the ambient population?
Of course, a cynic could say that characteristic made it useful, made it worth keeping so close to a population centre.
But legally, Vault-H2 did not exist. The thing contained here exceeded what the highest grade storage facility acknowledged by the NEG was permitted to keep. If the Migou knew that humanity had it, their galactic empire would have been stirred into action, the countless masses of their hive worlds thrown against Earth to wipe it out, regardless of the consequences. If the Rapine Storm and the Death Shadows had known that the NEG had it, they would have done anything to secure its release. If the Dagonites knew that mankind had it, they would have thrown away all their lives and their search for the sunken city of their master to ensure that it was ended.
Only two members of the New Earth Government Cabinet knew of the existence of the ABN facility in any detail. No member of the New Earth Government Cabinet knew that Vault-H2 existed. The number of people 'in the know' could be counted in the low double digits, and almost all of them were servants or members of AHNUNG. The others were believed by AHNUNG to belong to it.
Ryoji Kaji stood on the platform that wrapped its way around the equator of the interior of the sphere, in a full-body glowsuit which cast no shadow. No flesh was exposed; the internal air supply was designed to only last for three and a half minutes, to limit exposure to the threat within the Vault. The air, thick and heavy from the 3 atmosphere pressure of pure helium weighed down on him almost as much as what he was about to do. As an inspector certified by the Ashcroft Foundation; in reality, AHNUNG, as the guards of this containment sphere were compromised from the very beginning, he was tasked with the inspection of the contents of Vault-H2.
He was in here alone. Mental proximity to the thing sealed within usually produced Late Onset Aeon War Syndrome within minutes. The air limit was just an artificial means of controlling exposure. But Kaji had been chosen by AHNUNG because of his observed resilience to Aeon War Syndrome; the selection for this mandatory check on Vault-H2 had come about after the Ballydehob Incident and the deployment of VREES in clean-up. Just another incident where the VREES selection criteria had produced agents for AHNUNG with extreme tenacity.
The duty was simple. A pathway would be extended half-way to the inner sphere, which would be opened. The agent would observe that the physical manifestation of the entity remained within the seal, quiescent. The agent would mark this as affirmative, the inner seal would be resealed, and the agent would be extracted, for examination of mental well being and for signs of cellular taint from proximity.
It was completely impossible for someone to release the entity. Not only would they have to pass the fifty metre gap between the end of the walkway, and the inner seal where the entity was contained, but if someone got that close, the entity would crush their mind through its presence. It was anathema to humanity, not through malevolence (though it had that, boundless reserves of vitriol which could transmute the oceans and consume the land), but simple otherness. And even then, the security watched everything that happened in this dome, each watcher vigilant for, unlike a human being, the Panoptican Limited Artificial Intelligences could view this place without breaking. They were sentient, but not sapient. And even if all that could be subverted, the wards that wrapped around the facility at a safe distance would trigger if the entity tried to escape; they would be rent asunder by its presence, true, but they would fulfil their role and raise the alarm.
Vault-H2 was impregnable.
Unless AHNUNG had been pushed into selecting this very special agent by another player in the game, without them even knowing it. Unless that agent had been chosen by the other player because they were able to resist the taint of the First. Unless the Panoptican LAIs could be subverted by an external source, backdoors opened into their sealed network at the time of the construction of the Vault, only exploitable by the three most powerful super-computers on the planet. Unless the agent had been provided with a piece of valued and arcane technology stolen from the alien and ultimately unknowable Tsab, their mastery of dimensional pockets brute forced out of a stolen device by the crude techniques of human sorcery, which would permit the entity to be concealed by a thief, hidden outside the normal five dimensions.
Unless the Soul of the Outer Gods willed all of this to happen.
a discontinuity
And Kaji was in the inner seal, already flipping open the hidden compartment in the briefcase that the man in London-2 had provided him with. Obsidian black and a yellow gemstone with angles which were wrong which glowed with a sick internal light stared out at him, seemingly the eye of some malign intellect. All around it, the interior of the compartment bore its repeating, interlocking motif, of an asymmetric, five-branched tree-like shape.
The Elder Sign.
Kaji reached out a gloved hand.
Now comes the hard part, he thought.
I think it goes “morituri nolumus mori”...
~'/|\'~
And in the unfathomable, unspeakable depths that were neither here nor there, but were instead other, something stirred.
Its lord and master called, and unlike the other faithless servants, who followed the traitor who had supplanted the true Hierophant, it was still loyal.
And so the elect called to it, and it would obey.
It wanted to.
~'/|\'~
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)
.
