Chapter 20, In the Furnace

The manmade structures on Aegis VII were all suspiciously clean of any Necromorph biomass when USM Ravager's ground team landed. The gunships circulating overhead found no signs of active mutants on the outside. There were splattered patches of oxidized blood on walls and floors, too small and dry to reanimate, and a disturbing amount of burnt skeletons at the spaceport; though, no fungus-like organic growth reported from before the incident was seen anywhere.

Security footage recovered by Kendra all ended at 12 hours after the outbreak, painting an imposing sight: Outside the communication antenna's control center, the mission's goal, was an angry undead hellscape complete with howling, half-dissolved human torsos stuck to walls. However, when the heavily armed away team reconnected the compound's camera network, they found all organic traces gone. Further exploration on site confirmed it.

Dr. Stross theorized that all necromorph matter disintegrated into basic organic sludge when the Marker was destroyed, just like on the Ishimura. Where would the liquified biomass go was left unknown, but the team set up landmines next to drainage openings around their operation zone, just in case.

After an hour of uneventful exploration, the ground team headed for the communications center for further data recovery. On the Ravager, Commander Fabrik gave the green light to launch the Type 17E for planeside operation testing.

Then, everyone heard a rumbling, an underground thunder below the entire mining colony. It came from all directions, all sectors of the circular compound. The motion signals were gigantic, and their trajectories all converged on the center of the planetcracking crater.

USM RAVAGER COMPUTER: Marker signal detected, all personnel please secure your person or limb to nearby safety structure

"Another Marker on this planet?" Kendra asked Stross, "I don't see..."

"Not a Marker. Many small signal sources, not a whole mature one..." He gasped, "This is amazing. The recombinant organic matter must be using local minerals and geothermal energy to replace the missing Marker."

"Shit. Commander, how fast can we get ready for evac?"

"I hope your dropship is kept warm, away team." Fabrik nodded and announced, "Once you are back on the Ravager, we hightail it. Gunship wing, watch for..."

A solid, well-defined earthquake interrupted him; a mountainous mass of formerly human substance erupted from the center of the crater.

"That thing. Start hitting it!"

////

Before the Shockpoint mission, Yuhata and Izana were invited to the Captain's own home in the highest, oldest open air residential section of Sidonia. It was an awkward long ride in the high speed elevator reserved for bridge members, followed by an exhausting stair climb. The view was great, the safety handrails were high and firm, but the Kunato family mansion was in view all the time.

Inside, they were greeted by the Captain without her mask, who bluntly presented a shocking decision once the two kids sat down for gravity-grown, gravity-ground coffee at her table.

"You are joining the expedition?" Yuhata's expression was far from professional, and Izana just sat in place with total confusion, "This new scientist who replaced Dr. Tahiro is yourself?"

Outside two of the Hunter's moon's original crew members, Jessica and Stefan, there were three people from Sidonia chosen for the mission. Izana, Honoka En, and some mysterious new blood only known as Dr. Kobayashi.

The proposal sounded unexpected and character-breaking, as if the Captain had just suggested she would try to personally assimilate into the Large Mass Union Ship in the hope of becoming its controlling personality.

"Yes. This isn't my first expedition into a place entirely unknown to humanity. New discoveries always helped Sidonia move ahead, don't you know the story behind how Kabi was found?"

Yuhata felt something began to click in the back of her head. She looked around the dated, barely lived house they were in, and regained her vision as the ship's junior leader: "I hope our meeting is off the record, Captain, because it sounds like you are looking at this mission as a way to get out of your responsibilities. If you want to take a break, don't be so drastic?"

Izana cringed, while the older woman fell silent. The latter then spoke after the Vice Commander stared into her soul for half a minute: "Midorikawa, let me tell you the real story behind the Kabi."

The reception of the story was as good as expected. The kids could only drink and nod until the end.

"Please feel safe about sharing this with us, because of how sad it is. Really. ...So you have decided 600 years have been too much." Yuhata rubbed her forehead.

"Captain, you sound like you're confident that we'll all die over there." Izana shrank into the rear of their seat, "Shockpoint is safe! We'll be back, and we'll find Nagate."

"Thanks, you two. It felt like I should have told him the story long ago, well, I'll start with communicating my thoughts to you first. Good practice before we meet him again, right?"

"Oh." The two kids again both realized something in Kobayashi's words, she was interested in finding Nagate more than finding a new home for Sidonia, something they also both refused to admit sharing.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

She easily saw it in them, too, and she smiled knowingly. A second later, the smile turned sad: "It's only fair that you know his full story, too."

When the personal history lesson finally approached the modern day, Yuhata froze in her chair, her memory bringing attention to a strange detail she found from re-watching Nagate's first mission after her promotion: "So... Command knows about Ga-487 but still sent out the training pilots to test his abilities."

"Not exactly. I know the existence of that thing in the ice, and the Immortal Council send them out to see if Nagate can be killed."

"So this is what making choices as the captain really feels like..."

"It was one hard choice that lead to many hopeful things, to me at the time. Yamato Eiko was a promising student who reminded me of myself, but to save as many people as possible, we needed to wake up Nagate's true power. Not giving up anyone is impossible."

Izana thought of the few less-than-friendly interactions they had with Eiko.

"Then, Ga-HV, Kyuketsuga, showed up just after his disappearance. It's rare when a risk I took came back to look at me in the face like that. It hit harder than Benisuzume to me, like it was laughing at me for losing Nagate."

"Gauna are not really vessels for the hate of the dead to return back from hell, right?" They shuddered. The millenia-old urban legend had revived since Benizuzume's appearance and refused to die, "Sorry."

"Not even the Extraterrestrial Life Research Institute knows that." Kobayashi smiled again, "This wasn't the last straw for me to change my mind and look for a vacation, if you wonder. Not just Nagate's disappearance either."

Yuhata nodded, feeling more prepared to carry out her substitute role.

"I think you should have a look at this as well." The Captain stood up and took a lightly scorched notebook from a nearby dusty chest of drawers, the put it on the coffee table, "When the Hoshijiro house was vandalized, police rescued this from her room but thought it's dissent material."

The notebook contained essays written in preparation for for officer school selection, along with her own commentary of the accepted responses. None of them was disruptive or antisocial compared to the regular outbursts of the Disarmament Faction, but considering she became the most destructive entity known to mankind...

Hardship, survival, acceptance of personal insignificance, unflattering but firm trust in humanism, nearly desperate search of a worthy goal to proudly die for - those were her notes about, and then, determination to create something she could dedicate to.

"I would have enjoyed a battle of the wits against her in the officer school..." Yuhata sighed.

////

For a moment that flesh-and-blood neural systems could not quantify or perceive, Shizuka felt herself back inside a Mass Union Ship, standing right before its main core. It was a scene she never remembered witnessing but instinctively pictured with the correct data input. The size of the immaterial Gauna core was off scale, both spanning across a shapeless star system, and only as big as her own head. A human face began to ripple and materialize on the surface.

"Who are you?"

She identified the man from information she siphoned as energy, radio waves she took over from the Marker to recharge herself on the Ishimura.

Brant Harris, the man who became the Cyborg, empowered by Necromorph tissue, machinery, and Ena. He blinked, and spoke:

IS IT THE HOUR OF CONVERGENCE? WHERE IS MERCER?

"No. Why are you here? Are you Necromorph or Gauna?"

CURSE YOU. WHY ARE YOU THE FIRST FACE I SEE AFTER BEING MADE WHOLE?

"...Back off."

ARE YOU THE REAL MESSENGER OF CONVERGENCE?

She felt Zoe shaking her from behind, across the cockpit seat back. Shaking her head, she resumed piloting through direct Ena connection.

////

"Commander, I need your help in distracting the enemy." Nagate spoke to the public channel as the Type 17S was moved onto the add-on hangar's electromagnetic launch rail. The Guardian was in a horizontal containment position, cockpit seat facing upwards, launching with topside in front. He switched on the cockpit's semi-inertia limiter, one of the few copied parts onboard that performed better than the original, "Please spread out its tentacles, I'll make a path to the core."

"You'll have it!" Fabrik answered in a heartbeat, "Fire control, set anti-surface missiles to manual targeting, sync your aim vision to Black Moon 1."

Fire zone indicators appeared on the Guardian's tactical map; outside, the launch rail began to charge up. Electricity still fluttered from circuits hastily reconnected after the emergency landing.

USM RAVAGER COMPUTER: Launch system 90% green, engage unit rocket pre-fire. Takeoff ETA 5

It was like a high speed elevator ride compared to Sidonian hangar launchers, which felt like using the giant humanoid to perform a standing jump. Once the Type 17S cleared the hangar, Nagate set its rocket boosters to full throttle. He would have 8 minutes to get to the Hive Mind's core - while keeping his machine and the makeshift Kabizashi in proper structural integrity to destroy it.

Flipping the machine to face downwards in the air, he heard Shizuka call in from the Type 17E, cockpit view switched off and sounding like something in her mouth: "It's going towards the ship!"

The hybrid monstrosity dragged itself towards the edge of the crater, using tentacles to claw ahead and clear debris. Fortunately, it didn't develop Hyggs-powered flight like a proper Gauna, or did not have the necessary amount of fuel.

Above Nagate, the Ravager's missiles flew over him in a high arch, spreading before their dive for maximum dispersion around the Hive Mind's tentacles.

Warning: High energy reaction detected

Organic particle distributors opened their mouths on some of the tentacles; bring orange targeting beams formed and steeped across the sky to intercept the missiles.

BANG!

A blue flash of light shot across the sky from afar, hitting one of the Necromorph's cannons. The monster reeled as the appendage exploded, flailing its remaining arms around.

"Hoshijiro, energy depleted."

"Leave me to it." Nagate pulled back the throttle and set a controlled descent into the path of the creeping terror. His Type 17S moved it's legs downwards, adjusting thrust to reduce its falling speed.

The Hive Mind's regeneration power was hard to tackle without the projectile accelerator developed on Sidonia or artificial Kabi ammo. There was only one artificial Kabizashi, to be used together with the head-mounted laser cannon - neither would be ideal in cutting through the biomass infused with Ena. Still, there was one more option.

Warning: Gauna core detectedWarning: Gauna core in extreme proximity, top assimilation risk

Organic matter bloomed underneath him, flayed apart layer and layer by the thruster blast. Within the blood vapor and volatile high-energy Hyggs particles, the hybrid Necromorph's core revealed itself.

"Amazing." Back on the ship, Stross commented, "The creature not only used minerals and organic substance to rebuilt the Marker, it also created a Hyggs solenoid within the Marker structure. Infinite energy... Kickstarted the reaction to evolve."

"We don't have Hyggs or Kabi, why is it crawling at us?" Fabrik asked in an overly leisurely manner.

"Should I take a guess? It wants our Shockpoint drive, making one is slower than taking one. You know, Ishimura himself studied the first Marker's extra-spatial energy channeling paths."

"It's got a tactical mind, then. More than a rock or a Gauna..."

"Look at the alpha waves, Commander, that's thought coming in and out of the Marker. It can even understand the Gauna's composition better than we do, they're both fractal heuristic structures."

As the Guardian directly came across the monster's core, its horizontal velocity reached zero. Holding the Kabizashi sideways, Nagate turned the machine around, letting some newly formed tentacles catch him on purpose - and then activated all rocket thrusters to maximum output, pointing towards the core below.

SUMMUS HIC IN MORTE, NOSTER SANCTUS EST

HAND OVER YOUR VESSEL, UNBIND US FROM PHYSICAL SPACE, BECOME OUR VESSEL

Warning: Gauna core exposed

The head-mounted laser cannon instantly activated and spun around, sweeping back and forth in a 270 degrees arc, cutting off all tentacles holding the Guardian. Nagate shifted the Kabizashi overhead, and pushed the Guardian's arms down like it was an extension of his own body, cutting into the Marker-infused core.

LIFE TO DEATH TO LIFE ETERNAL

ALWAYS TIME FOR SACRIFICE

THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER BUT IT WILL NOT END, THEY WILL NOT KNOW WHAT YOU CANNOT UNKNOW

At the moment of impact, he saw messages and visions. He searched around for any signs of Shizuka.

"Tanikaze, you did it! We won!"