Chapter 27, Swept by A Storm

Mizuki-2 was deployed to the solar orbit of Lem, under the command of a Foreigner: Jessica Li, who had the most warship command and organization experience among those Magpie freelancers. The numbers of Sidonia's officers and officer school seniors have taken one hit after another since the return of Gauna; they were mostly pressed into piloting just to replace the attrition.

Jessica earned her commission after an interview with the military leadership and some familiarity training with the Mizuki's bridge crew. She used to be an Earthgov Marine Corps landing craft commander at a younger than average age, until her former tactical group leader - that well manicured son of a weasel, Fabrik - roped her into one of his get-rich-quick schemes that crashed with everyone's investment except his own.

Her new colleagues Samari and Seii were great people. The regular pilots were impressive too, showing good prospects as role models for the freshly graduated Class 8 pilots assigned to the ship. The manpower situation could have been better if Mizuki-01 could return from the expedition back to her home universe on schedule; however, Yuhata kept asking for delays citing very disturbing discoveries.

As a cutting edge ship optimized for combat, the Mizuki-2 was stronger than any Earthgov ship she served on, let alone the glorified transports she commanded. Few ships outside of Planet Crackers could match its over-700 meters length; even discounting its guardians, its firepower overshadowed the USM planetary assault ships Fabrik operated from during his pilot days.

However, nothing was enough in the face of Gauna.

Minutes after the forward deployment team activated the ship's mission payload, the Semi-Autonomous Energy Converter, bridge crew detected the familiar Hyggs reaction pattern of Kyuketsuga. It flew at a reduced speed, and a signal strength between one and three cores of full output. Like Hoshijiro Shizuka's pilot ID 702, Yamato Eiko's student ID 291 was blacklisted to prevent it from exploiting Sidonian radio.

"All squads, from around the Gravity Net." Jessica tried her best to evaluate a counterattack plan, "Samari, what's your ETO back? We'll ready your loadout. Sui, Shou, you two take the armory racks and wait for her."

"90 seconds at stable acceleration." The answer was reassuring; it would be easy to hold off that skeletal alien for now, as Mizuki-2 has a full 24 Guardians assigned while the Mizuki-1 carried 16 for its exploration role, including Tsumugi. That ship even had only 200 crew members instead of the full load at 1000!

"A gravity anomaly is traveling with Kyuketsuga!" The observer reported, enlarging the scan image, "Ena wavelength in passive mode, directly connected to its front."

"Underside Hyggs cannon, max scatter mode, fire on target acquisition. Heavy Mass Cannon B turret, track and load Kabi ammo." She assessed ways to deal with the Gauna's mysterious payload. It was time to be proactive like the many street fights she had on the ground, during the Mars Riots, "I've heard you can crack planets better than we do, Sidonian technology. Show it!"

The Mizuki's bridge was slightly shaken by the dull burst of energy beneath. Nearly instantly, the scorching cyan beam impacted the passive Ena, blasting it into a cloud of pink smoke. Still, the unidentified object proceeded with its course.

"Kyuketsuga is slowing down... Ena materialization detected!" The inexperienced observer audibly took a gulp, "Identifying Gauna cores. 3 large cores, more than 500 standard type. Logging unidentified object as SMUS-22!"

The weaponry and Guardians of a single Mizuki could reasonably take on 5 single-core Gauna SMUSs, using the previous SMUS-21 Ocarina as reference; three cores and at least one Kyuketsuga meant a tougher match.

"Seize the window, if your old plan fails, at least use it as a bluff." Fabrik said this a long time ago; it sounded like a good argument for Jessica to maintain her approach when the Ena was still reforming itself.

"Fire! All turrets and main cannon, load!"

SMUS-22 continued on like an unguided missile, freshly formed raw Ena colliding with the HMC projectile; as if too good to be true, the first core was destroyed by this almost blind shot. Then, Kyuketsuga emerged from its foaming explosion, while the other two main cores advanced on course.

Samari was now in position to retrieve live ammo for her High-Cost Test Model Guardian, taken from the hangar by the two youngest second-batch Honokas; Shou's T18M rearmed her, while Sui's gold-painted T18DL stood guard. These kids were supposed to receive their own T19s, but the production lines have been strained ever since Kunato asked for a second custom Guardian for himself.

In a blink, Kyuketsuga was within spitting distance; two of them, holding bony hands, spread their vampire wings wide open above the three Guardians.

"How the fuck..." Jessica's hand hovered on the fire control override console; a hailstorm of weighted Kabi could nick the wings of at least one skeleton, but only Samari's Guardian would be guaranteed to survive the collateral fire.

The bridge's communication and observation screens were filled with static; Kyuketsuga has played its usual energy bombardment trick. Not life threatening for Mizuki or anything hardened like the T18M, but still an effective electronic warfare method.

Sui's cry for help was the first thing everyone heard when radios were back online: "Aargh! It burns! Take the wires off me!"

The T18DL, in its pursuit for frictionless pilot input and response integration has taken an aggressive approach with intrusive data-neural interfaces, using both physical and wireless connections. It was designed by a junior mechanic and realized by a Kunato research grant, neither of them positive indicators of pilot wellbeing.

Behind Sui, the HCTM wasn't taking the attack too well either; there was little room to re-design its defenses with the various prototype and untested modules already in place. Samari wasn't hurt, but the machine would take some time to recover. One Kyuketsuga took the opportunity to enclose its wings around her.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

At least, the other monster was isolated, and chased off to a safe distance by Seii and Tsuruuchi.

"Die! Why don't you eat this, hungry Gauna!" Shou has grabbed the Kabi nodachi prepared for Samari, and charged at the skeleton. The oversized blade was designed before the Ochiai incident, as a sword that also doubles as a spear, but the youngest Honoka's training was more focused on shooting. Since she managed to overcome her fear of Gauna, at least visibly, so she should handle herself decently, right?

The nodachi sliced into the flabby, fleshy wing, making one of the Gauna's stacked skulls turn towards her. She fired her Guardian's head turret, just in time to collide with the monsters blinding pink beam.

"I'm good! Back off, let me have it." Samari declared in an authoritative voice as she unleashed full auto fire, still under the tangling melted wings, "Bring Sui away from them!"

"Die! Gauna, die! No!" Shouting and chipping away at the wings, Shou was dead focused on attacking the Kyuketsuga. By luck, she pulled back and made a heavy cut that collided with the HCTM's armor underneath the Ena. A large piece of the wing, along with half an arm, flew off. Ena reformed at the cut, shuffling armor around.

Warning: Gauna core exposed

Samari could see the core on her camera before the cockpit message confirmed it. Waiting for one more second, she rammed the Guardian's left fist onto it and activated the pile bunker on its forearm armor.

Warning: Foaming disintegration confirmed

Another Hyggs pulse shook her machine as she scanned for the other Kyuketsuga; it was right behind her again. Extending its sickly skeletal arms, it reached over her, but latched onto Shou.

Warning: High energy reaction detected

A flash of pink and red filled her vision. In the next instant, the monster and its prey were both out of sight.

////

The Earthgov Guardian pilots have gotten another step closer to be able to train each other. Returning from another practice battle in the rings of Saturn, Shizuka took a breather and watched the trainee pilots recount the session.

"...Forearm mounted vulcans have great articulation, but your firepower is still concentrated in the front 90-by-90 degrees cone." Mark Rosen, one of the new pilots alongside Hailey, debated with Gabe. He had a decent level of space flight experience before, referred to the program by Robert.

"What, you've gotten too comfortable with automatic turret aiming? Exercise your arms, it's not that hard manually tracking targets."

"Gabe, Gabe, you ever watch your own video records? Almost every kill you did is a body slam. You always run out of ammo too fast, because you flail around doing your jackass suppressive fire!"

Although the Earthgov military was also often short on resources and manpower, Shizuka felt it hard to understand that they didn't share Sidonia's emphasis on precision in combat. Every Guardian pilot of SD704 shot recklessly in the early phases of training; as time went on, some made volume of fire into a personal competitive edge. It was interesting comparing the piloting styles of former spacecraft pilots with former soldiers, too.

"Everyone got the vibroblades, and I see chances to use them, asshole. You can't even hit me when you're standing still."

"Yeah? You haven't hit me when I'm standing still either, fucking GI!"

Well, debate was a charitable word. At least they weren't fighting with the 1/10 scale dummy Kabizashis like the Johnston cousins were, to settle whatever those two were arguing about... She took a few more seconds to evaluate, and messaged Alissa for help with maintaining order.

Shizuka looked forward to the day of Nagate returning and touching up her substitute work. After all, piloting school did not offer enough practice, while her time as Benisuzume offered few things she could teach human pilots. Why did everyone knowledgeable refuse to say when he could leave hospital?

There was that vision of him warning her that something has made the Shockpoint jump across the universes, just like she did; however, according to Kendra and the few declassified Sovereign Colonies documents, Markers only communicated through copies of dead people. However, he was just next to the supposed ghost, his vitals abnormal but far from braindead. How?

She made a few scans for familiar Gauna signals afterwards; nothing has turned up.

Since weeks ago, even before the Raikou attack, she felt her anxiety grow day by day. Training, data recovery and Necromorph cleanup all proceeded as planned, but all thoughts of Sidonia worried her. What would the Earthgov pilots be good for if they couldn't join the fight for survival at Lem any time soon?

Kyne wasn't able to replicate the randomized Shock anomaly that brought her here, even with her brain scans at Temple Prime on hand. All herself did was formulate barely coherent thoughts with her brief seconds of humanity during restructuring - wishing for two conflicting impossible things: To be together with Nagate far away from the fighting, and to tear apart absolutely everything opposing her, with the same priority.

The Ravager's scientists were all relocated off ship for safety reasons. She was only given one channel to find out anything about the research focused on connecting the universes - up the command chain of SD704. She had a nominally higher authority than Robert and Alissa within this unit, better make use of it and send a request in person.

Before she knew it, she was at the door of Fabrik's office. He preferred to keep it unlocked outside of missions, claiming it was good for awareness.

"Sorry, but they put me out of the loop, too." He was straightforward with it, while Kendra used various expressions to dissuade both him and Shizuka, "I've been itching to civilize some space tumors myself, excuse my phrasing, but command hasn't given me any schedules."

Shizuka could tell the Commander wouldn't simply shut down the topic, so she waited for him to continue.

"If I should take a guess, it's the shortage of Hyggs engines and Kabi. Our reactors on the Black Moons will be hard to maintain and resupply over there, also..." He leaned in to whisper, making Kendra wince, "We made Kabi alright, but it's mostly inactive Marker glass."

"...Oh."

"The good news is, if we're only talking about getting across the universal border fence, that's surprisingly easy!"

"Why do they..." She combined willpower and a small touch of subconscious Gauna personality limitation to turn her scream into a plain incredulous gasp.

"Okay. We are supposed to brief the pilots about it sometime soon, anyway." Kendra intervened in her designated responsible adult role and gestured the other two toward the office's main computer screen, linking her RIG to it.

The video was titled Payload test EX-06: The main subject was a vast and perplexing system built somewhere in silent deep space, comparable to CEC's dock stations; Shizuka could tell there were at least two active Shockrings in this array from ship identification cards she read. They were set up perpendicular to each other while both facing a central focal point.

One of the Shockrings lit up in green. An asteroid, spray painted with identification marks, was launched into its center with a magnetic catapult at low speed.

INERT PAYLOAD SUCCESSFULLY ENTERING TARGET AREA, a subtitle emerged on the screen, while a smaller window cut in to displayed a view of the other Shockring. The painted rock was flying leisurely on the other side, text scrolled across the screen to estimate its movement characteristics.

The next video started before she could take in all the information. This time it was "Unmanned astronomer X-19", starting with Buckell showcasing a probe on the same launch rail. It was capable of mapping out the relative positions of stars in its calculated exit position before returning, in order to determine time passage and precise spatial orientation.

What was the calculation result? Year 3395 plus time passed, margins within 8 months. Eyes glued to the numbers, Shizuka suddenly felt sources of dread materialize in her mind, few of which she realized they even existed.

"See, although I can't write you a solo recon mission just yet, let me offer you the next best thing." Fabrik moved in front of the screen when he saw she quickly composed herself, "Special vacation, one month, anyone asks, I'll say you're off to visit family."

"Nobody will let me through that gate."

"It's a month of free time, SD704 will keep itself together in your absence against its pilots' best efforts." He chuckled, "Really, you don't need me to remind you what you wanna do, what you can try. Put a few good words in for us alright, Little miss Messenger?"

The Commander has laid out his superiors' intention of making a deal: The Kyne Faction, the Messenger's family, has things to exchange for the Shockpoint research. Shizuka understood immediately, though she told herself to give it more thought.

"Your break is approved." The electronic permission sheet flew onto her RIG, "I always wanted to try a Guardian myself, you know? Used to be a pilot."

"...Thank you."