Ghost in the Evangelion – Layer 06
A Ghost in the Shell/Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover
UNSPECIFIED LOCATION, present day, present time:
Death is a bit of a bummer, to say the least. Since the dawn of time, humanity has attempted to overcome this limitation, whether through killing a threatening sabertooth tiger, or brewing alchemical potions of immortality. Why should the age of transhumanity be any different? Why shouldn't the transhuman turn her mind, the flawed Turing machine that it was, into pure information, copy it as many times as she needed, and live forever in the knowledge that the loss of one entity was merely the loss of some memories?
The first problem was the philosophical ship of Theseus; after all, wasn't each copy of the mind its own, sapient, sentient being with just as much right to live as the original? How did one truly define "life" and "individual"? If a ghostdub died, was that merely shot-term amnesia, or has a special, unique snowflake of an individual with her own experiences and rational mind, the full rights to individuality and right for continued survival as its procognitor died? Such questions occupied the minds of many.
The second problem was that it didn't work. The brain was a Pandora's box of electrical impulses that had a tendency to fail miserably when copied, and predictably suffered permanent, irrevocable and terminal mental damage; it was a special kind of son-or-daughter-of-a-bitch that could survive more than one or two ghost-dubbing processes without turning into a comatose, mindless, gibbering shell of a human being in which there was a dial-tone, but nobody home to pick up the phone.
And was the dub truly a human, in the spiritual and philosophical senses, or was it merely an AI pretending, a philosophical zombie that ate the brain of its procognitor? It seemed that even in the transhuman present, death still held the position of "absolute certainty."
Some people were not content with this answer; they had some things undone in this world and could not afford the cold embrace of death to put an end to everything. The foremost of these projects had been Dr Naoko Akagi's 'Personality OS' project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which flipped the Ship of Theseus the bird and dumped toxic waste into Heraclitus' river; strictly utilitarian, it decided to give the last 2500 years of philosophical discussions the boot and simply reverse-engineer any given human mind from its raw components; take an AI, take all the individual components of the human mind except the elusive ghost, and mix them together to a nice puree in the blender of a supercomputer. The resulting infomorph would act as a deputy for the procognitor, making decisions in her place even after her death. Fucking with all preconceptions of what constituted immortality? Yes. Useless? Hardly.
But the universe is a cold and uncaring place, and it has a perverted sense of irony; Naoko Akagi had killed herself before the project was completed.
Damnit, the thoughts ran in the circuits of the Major's brain I heard you were a good hacker, but I'd forgotten just what it means to hack the systems of a Superclass A "WIZARD" hacker. She paused her line of thought to slip a tiny Trojan into a stream of inconspicuous data. She was already in; that wasn't the problem—she needed to get full access to all the information that was stored in the memory banks of the decade-old computer, because else the infiltration would be of no value; oh, sure, she could leave a few nasty surprises, but that wouldn't help, except as a contingency plan. She knew what the confidential Superclass A "WIZARD" label she carried herself meant about her own skills, but she wasn't going to fight an active opponent if she could merely pick apart the many, many layers of attack barriers. That, among other things, meant not triggering even the smallest virus scanner.
If she could, she would have let sweat pour from her brow when a small text-readout in her mind informed that she'd passed the last of the barriers to the first level of secrets. That was harder than she'd expected, and she'd been cutting her margins way to thin; next time (if there was a next time) she would have to come in more prepared; she was getting sloppy, and that was simply not acceptable.
Now, Major, what's on your mind? She asked herself. She pulled up the files that looked the most interesting; "IGIGI", "Evangelion Units", data from the latest battles, everything known about Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami (there wasn't much, or it was well-encrypted) "Section 9" (did they know about their existence? That was the important question) and a few scattered references and uploaded memories of events from 12 years ago, but nothing concrete, and that was annoying.
This isn't nearly enough, she told herself. I'm going to need to look other places.
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APARTMENT BLOCK 23B, September 5th, 2030
*cli-drrrring*
*drrrring*
Shinji stared down at the remote control to the TV and wondered why changing channels also made his phone ring. Of course, he'd changed channels at least a dozen times that day without his phone getting a call, and there was all that crap about correlation not implying causation and electromagnetic disturbances and the part where every damn piece of electronics on his person was connected to every other damn piece of electronics in the house including the brain of a penguin, but the phone and the TV really had nothing to do with each other.
I should probably take it too.
Yeah. Besides, it's Misato. If she's calling it's probably important Shinji thought, prudently. Or she's just checking up on me to be nice, which isn't too bad either.
"Hello Misato." He said with a smile that she could not see.
"Hey Shinji!" she replied. "Look, I'm calling because I'm coming home very late from work today . . . might be tomorrow by the time I come back, actually. I've already eaten dinner here at ECCO, but if there's anything left over of that lovely food you make, don't throw it away, just put it in the freezer. Do you think you can manage to get to bed at a reasonable time?"
"Yes, and..." he began
"Oh, I almost forgot: You father asked me to pass you a message."
"A message," Shinji said. "From my father?" Shinji's smile faded into an expression of wary curiosity.
"Yes, you're to take the train straight to the Yugawara Central Airport after school tomorrow, and you'll need clothes for a day and formalwear."
"Wha—why?" Shinji stumbled, the curiosity becoming shocked suspicion.
"Your father said something about a business associate who wants to meet you, or something like that. We both had a lot of stuff to do and I really gotta get back to work now so..."
Shinji clenched his hand around his mobile phone as his mind turned itself inside out like a tesseract visualised in only three dimensions, trying to figure out what was going on. As his mind stumbled along paths of uncertainty in search of enlightenment, and explanation, or at least something sarcastic he could use to feel on top of things, he blurted out the least important question he could think of: "But what about dinner tomorrow? It's my time to cook!"
"Yeah, but you've cooked the whole week, and I haven't forgotten how to cook since the party; I can manage miso soup and fatty acid ramen for two for just a single day."
"Enough to last Penpen a lifetime I'm sure," Shinji said, under his breath.
"Goodbye Shinji, see you tomorrow!"
"Goodbye Misato." Shinji said and drew the phone away from his ear without glancing at his now white knuckles. He felt as if he could crush his mobile phone to dust in anger at his father. So... so arrogant. His knuckles whitened around the sturdy, designed-for-cyborgs handset. So fucking callous that he thought he could just use Shinji as a favour to someone else; a deal-sweetener, a strategic tool and not a person. Just like before.
And he didn't even have the decency to tell me in person.
Or over the phone.
A hundred, or at least several dozen, phone calls streamed through Shinji's head, rendered too perfectly by the memory playback software in his mind as he thought of them. He saw himself leaving school and sitting on trains to odd corners of Kyosho, and they merged with images of himself standing nervously in front of elderly CEOs, the slick feeling of sweat against his back as he waited in lobbies as his father's physical representative, one Ikari as good as the other as Isimud boiled him alive, the constant worry about proper etiquette, fumbling for the right honorific as he presented himself to a flying mass of tentacles, mangling sentences and stuttering nervously and making a fool of himself in front of some of the most powerful men in Japan and alien gods when he screwed up. His father always used him, whether as an ornamanent for meetings, or as a child soldier. Three years ago he had been foolish enough to think that it had all ended.
But it had not.
What happens to your carefully crafted business plans if I just don't come?
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The next morning, Shinji gobbled down a bread fried in egg while frying a fish for Pen Pen in the pan; fish fried in eggs, oil and bread-crumbs were, all things considered, not a bad meal for a penguin. Or at least he hoped so; if Misato had been wrong when he asked her what Pen Pen could and couldn't eat, then he was going to be really glad that Misato had a veterinary who knew how to handle man-penguins on speed-dial. Then again, the fact that Misato did have a veterinary who knew how to handle man-penguins on speed-dial...
It was almost as worrisome as the fact that the woman who was his commander in combat against alien invaders was actually a lazy excuse for a human being who was right now walking around in her underwear right in front of him, not quite awake or, Shinji suspected, sober. Doesn't she have any shame at all? Shinji thought while closing his eyes as a token of his disapproval. Among other things, it was hard to show disapproval when his eyes weren't closed.
"Misato," he began, unsure of exactly how to phrase 'Could you wear more clothes, please?' without getting bewildered by the sheer irony of it all.
"What?" Misato said as she pulled the tab of a can of beer and leant back in her wooden chair. She put the can of beer to her lips as Shinji derailed his train of thoughts in favour of a better line.
"It was your turn to cook this morning..." he said, at last.
"But Shinji," Misato whined, "I've been up all night doing the paperwork for the transfer of—yeah, you're not cleared for that, sorry... working all night. I'm dead tired and in about six hours I have to go back to work, and that's after your guardian-teacher conferences." She smiled a guilty and somewhat amused smile. "I'm just too sleepy to make breakfast at this time of day."
Shinji made a disapproving groan at her excuse. It's really no wonder she's still single at her age, Shinji thought to himself ...though I really shouldn't blame her for that, he reminded himself. Granted, she was lazy, but it was more that she was uncouth, which ran contrary to standard Japanese cultural values.
Or something like that; this field wasn't Shinji's forte.
"You're really coming to the guardian-teacher conferences?" Shinji settled for asking, partly because he felt that it was too silent and partly because he was curious in the somewhat morbid deer-in-headlights way.
"Of course; I'm your guardian." Misato said dryly, and then she took another deep sip of her beer and leant back and closed her eyes. "What, don't you want me to come?"
"Not when you're like this," Shinji said under his breath.
"What, you mean inebriated?" Misato said, and looked over at the puzzled Shinji: "It means 'drunk', but covers all levels of—"
"Yeah, I know that. I was just surprised you knew that word,"
"Hah! Gotcha!" Misato yelled. "Sometimes I even get Ritsuko to stop that perpetual frown of hers. My goal in life is to make Rei do a spit-take. But, don't worry, Shinji, I won't be inebriated when I meet you at your school. The alcohol will have broken down by then and I'll be sober."
"It's not that..." Shinji began warily, not really wanting to go where this conversation led.
"What is it then?" Misato asked. "Is there something wrong? Don't you want me to come?" she said, gradually switching to a concerned, maternal voice.
Shinji looked down at a particularly interesting crumb that had fallen off his plate. "Not when you're dressed like that, or like when you're off duty," he said quietly.
"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint your teachers," Misato said with a grin on her face "But I'm of course going to wear proper business clothing, don't worry."
The high-level debate on the nature of proper guardianship and acceptable behaviours in the proximity of minors was suddenly ended when the doorbell to Misato and Shinji's apartment rang repeatedly. For a moment, Shinji wondered who it could be, but then he remembered the JGSDF troops that guarded the building, and who called for verification whenever someone not on a preapproved list tried to enter. Since they had not done so, the visitor was either approved on a permanent basis, or the soldiers were grossly incompetent.
Strike that, they're on the preapproved list, Shinji said to himself I've sat a debriefing with that icy gynoid in command, and I think she's the type to shoot people for incompetence. Possibly non-lethally. If it's a first offence.
But anyway, he walked over to his pre-packed school-bag and hefted the strap over his shoulder. A little heavier than normal, the bag dug into his shoulder and gnawed on his collar-bone; the only people to ever come to Misato's apartment this early were Toji and Kensuke. Well, Misato sometimes comes home from work when I'm just about to leave, but she's here, so unless she has a doppelgänger she hasn't told me about, I think it'll be safe to open the door. he thought as he walked into the hallway.
Oh god, did I just seriously consider the possibility that I might be assassinated? What the fuck, I'm a normal person; I'm not supposed to think about stuff like that. I'm supposed to think about how I can ask girls out to watch movies with me, or how to pass the next test, or angst about not being invited to parties, or how long until I again risk my life in a giant rob—OK, so I'm almost normal. But I'm not paranoid. he said as he pushed down the handle to the outer door to let Toji and Kensuke in, or rather, to let two hormonal, lecherous and lustful teenagers flow in through his door like a pair of amorphous blobs, blissful in the faintest hope of catching a glimpse of Misato. At the very least, they were melting in her assumed proximity.
"Thanks," Shinji said at Toji, whose finger had barely left the doorbell "I didn't hear it the first time,"
Toji didn't respond. He was, like Kensuke, looking around the hallway, seemingly under the impression that Misato, rather than simply not being in the hallway, was in fact hiding under thermoptic camouflage, and if they just looked around erratically enough, they would find her and then she would fulfil their greatest sexual desires. At least that's what it looked like to Shinji, when he was personally a bit agitated by the last night's phone call. And honestly, Misato was his guardian and having them lust after her like that was almost like having his two best friends lust after his mother, which was a righthe reserved for his father, and even then he preferred to think that he'd actually been born through mitosis or parthenogenesis.
Although, come to think of it, that would mean that there had been something very odd with his mother's genetics, if either of those two processes could produce a male offspring. The product of some nice, sterile vat and his mother's genetic material, that was probably the least traumatising option for him.
As Shinji put his shoes on to leave with his two friends, Misato leant around the corner into the hallway to bit them all goodbye. There were both stunned and exasperated sighs, as Toji and Kensuke were treated to the sight of Misato's torso leaning out underneath her head, and more specifically, that fact that underneath that stunningly beautiful head was one large, round breast cruelly hidden underneath a teasingly loose top.
Shinji dragged Toji and Kensuke out the door. They appeared to still have motor-functions.
"Man, you're lucky," Toji said wistfully "Does she walk around like that all the time?"
"...yes." Shinji said as he let his head fall into his right hand. The asphalt before his feet was just so damned interesting at this time of day. All the time; she insisted on walking around every morning just a pair of boyshorts and a top, often sticky and translucent with sweat. The fact that the top was loose-fitting only meant that it hung that much more around her luscious, aesthetically pleasing curves... No, stop that line of thought.
"Have you, you know..." Kensuke began "seen... seen something more?"
Shinji tried to look dumbly at him, but since he didn't have cyborg-level of control of all his facial muscles, it didn't quite work as planned, given away by the fact that Kensuke looked like he was about to launch into an explanation of that, yes, "more" referred to nudity.
"Yeah, I've seen things, like..." There was a loud twin cry of . . . pride, Shinji guessed, from his pair of friends who both grinned in a way that was either lecherous or mischievous, or possibly both because of cultural mores. "...like the giant scar that runs all the way down from . . . her ribs I guess, to her stomach. It's this huge ravine of scar tissue about as wide as the last joint on my thumb is long, and it branches out in some places."
It didn't feel good to push them away like that, even when they were annoying.
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Shinji sat and let his fingers drum across his desk to the beat of various forms of post-progressive-retro-contemporary-anti-post-modern-whatever music that could really just be summed up as "we want to do something unconventional with these instruments right now", with varying success rates; Shinji made sure to pick the ones that actually sounded good in his ears, or just default to classical music, which had managed to survive several hundred years already, so he might as well not let it die. With his eyes closed, he really could sit anywhere he wanted and just get lost in the music, tuning out from the world without a single worry. Here, alone in the crowded classroom, he didn't have to worry about people leering at him for having Misato as a guardian, he didn't have to worry about the fact that he'd packed his bags like his father told him despite having promised himself not to, he didn't have to worry about his teachers telling Misato that he was falling behind in school. In fact, the only thing he had to worry about was that the music might at one pointend, and to know that that was his greatest worry at the time was so incredibly calming.
Seconds after this feeling of serenity, the universe decided that it was time to short-change Shinji in the Bank of Life and there was a horrible screech as a blue and white sports car slid onto the parking lot. The eardrum-shattering whine filled everyone's ears like the sound of a cat being tortured with a violin. One of the boys in the room broke a pencil to wooden fragments in his cybernetic hand, with a muttered "damn" on his lips. Several others dragged their pencils across their book, leaving carefully drawn katakana or English homework running from legible writing into the hard-drawn line that shouted "here something shocking happened!" at anyone reading a later time. At least until they rubbed it out.
When the engine roared, on the other hand, it unleashed a thunder of chairs, tables and shoes being pushed around as most of the boys and some of the more socially unconventional girls,scrambled and jumped to see who it was that had an actual, petrol-engine car with such a mighty roar. And what a sight it was! Not only was it a proper, imported sports car that left skid-marks on the ground, filling the air with the ripping smell of burned rubber; not only was a rare, veteran model, but its driver was a sight for sore eyes; a striking lady in business suit unbuttoned over her cleavage, long legs and a beautiful face covered in shiny beautiful hair.
Shinji looked down at her from his second-floor classroom, just like the rest of his class and, he suspected, every other class whose classroom faced the parking lot and wasn't sound-insulated. From this angle, he could actually peer down into her cleavage.
Shinji sighed. The best he could hope for was that his teachers were too distracted ogling his guardian to tell her how bad he did at school, but with his luck there was no way Ms Miyamoto would be a lesbian.
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The continuous drone of friction between mechanical parts was supplemented by the regular jumps in Shinji's train carriage as the wheels hit the small space between the lengths of steel track. At seemingly random times there would be the heave sound of metal against metal as the carriages twisted and turned along the not-so-straight tracks, or the rush of air as they passed through a tunnel. Shinji tried to drown out these sounds with his music, but he could no drown out his thoughts as he stared down at the large bag he'd packed. For a moment, as the train passed underneath a line of humming power lines, he tried to rationalise the elephant in the living room as being part of a visiting carnival, but failed when in a particularly mistaken interpretation of biological evolution, it became a blue whale courtesy of some whale-fishers passing by and everything just fell apart, leaving a sad boy standing with a terrifying realisation.
I've done exactly as my father wants.
Why did I do this?
As the train stopped at a station, Shinji mechanically and laboriously rose to his feet and heaved the bag onto his shoulder. As he stepped towards the open door he read the station name and froze. This is where I live.
I can just get off here.
I can go home and none of this will even have happened.
Shinji smiled and reached out towards the door. As he was about to take hold of the edge, the door slid out and touched the tips of his fingers, and the crowd of people who had been more resolute than him drew further and further away, before the platform slid out of sight with a lurch and the drumming sound of train wheels against the minute gaps in the steel track resumed.
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Shinji stared out and down at the myriad of city lights that lit up the Kyosho cityscape, from his window seat in a small business jet. He had not yet been informed of the need to put on his seatbelt or to fold up the small plastic tray on the table in front of him, but going by the digital clock in the upper left position of his peripheral vision, the aircraft would soon being its descent. Absentmindedly, he reached for the can of green tea, almost empty, that he'd been served by a female flight-attendant, and let the last trickle of the not-actually-green beverage pour into a transparent plastic cup. With a glance, Shinji eyed his father sitting in the seat next to him. The man was deep in today's newspaper, staring at the financial columns, almost as if he didn't have a giant board in his office that could have told the exact same information, updated to the latest second of stock-market values, rather than an archaic piece of dead trees carrying information that was a whole day old.
Briefly, Shinji wondered why his father had decided not to join the rest of humanity in getting a cyberbrain; the technology had existed for almost 40 years now. It made life easier in an untold number of ways, taking the technology that had once placed information at the fingertips and used it to place information at the very end of his neurons, for the fasted access anyone could hope for without becoming pure information. "Out of touch with reality", or perhaps "religious nutjob", were the terms used to describe the neo-luddites who remained baseline humans in the mid-21st century. Shinji had never thought of his father as especially religious, but then again he knew nothing of his grandparents, so maybe he came from a deeply religious background.
The type that would speak of 'family' warmly, Shinji though. And if he's religious enough to not get a cyberbrain, why did he pay for mine when I turned 16? Because he doesn'tcare?
I can't make sense of it, Shinji thought as he emptied the last few drops from his plastic cup and the plane made a soft stoop towards landing at Kyosho Central Domestic Airport.
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The dark-haired boy tugged at the collar of his shirt, trying to balance the heat-buildup under his shirt and tie with the desire to not look like a drunk salaryman or a gender-flipped Misato. The bulky, one-breast suit-jacket he was wearing was too hot and itched in places. He felt like he was boiling over, an impression not helped by the frustration and nervousness he had the distinctive feeling that he would probably implode under the pressure if he couldn't get the jacket off – or maybe the word he was looking for was "implode"; he kept confusing the two, and his troubled mind was no help.
It didn't help that he was inside an elevator with his father, the sine qua non of those feelings, waiting for it to reach the top floor of a towering skyscraper that overlooked Nagasaki. The building had an excellent view of Dejima (the original, Shinji sighed thankfully) from its exclusive and extravagant restaurant that catered mostly to western tourists by way of stereotype that was the cause of much moral outrage and parody.
Then again, a patron was a patron, and a filthy rich patron was a filthy rich patron.
But eventually the elevator doors slid open and both Ikaris stepped out simultaneously and studied their surroundings; lots of golden-dark-brown wood and brass that led in the direction of the restaurant. It felt like such a long walk, and neither of them was used to walking with the other, making their attempt that had seemed so easy when they left the elevator awkward. Shinji's legs were too short to keep up with his father's determined stride, and Gendo jittered back and forth as he tried to match his son's speed, not out of any affection for the burden, but rather because he wanted to present himself in as favourable a light as he dined with the high priestess of that dismal god Mammon.
But he was not going to pretend that he and the Third Child had an affectionate, healthy and active father-son relationship. He would not reduce an important financial event to a comedy or errors for the benefit of any observer who may have wandered in expecting a clichéd sitcom. He was not even going to dignify that idea by calling it "laughable".
And Avalon would understand. She was a parent too.
Shinji and Gendo entered the restaurant, a scarcely populated establishment of the type where the many tables always seemed to exist for the purpose of making sure that everyone could dine in solitude and small groups, rather than to actually accommodate patrons (or just because it wasn't peak season yet, if one wants to be serious about it) and sufficiently lit, with all that implied. As they walked disjointedly a few paces in, a pair at a table for four immediately rose in unison and turned towards the father and son.
"Gendo, how nice of you to join us!" a tall woman joked with a smile as she motioned towards the available chairs.
When they came a little closer, his father introduced Shinji to the tall woman, "Josephine Avalon", who wore a dark purple blouse and a simple black skirt. Her brown hair was just long of being a pageboy haircut, and a little too wild where it stood out behind her neck. She had a warm smile, and her decisive and self-assured posture was in stark contrast to the teenaged girl that stood behind her, who fidgeted with her fingers and wavered her gaze. The girl, introduced as "Melusine Avalon", was . . . well, unlike her mother she wore a long white dress that reached just beyond her knees, was slightly plump, and she had let her brown hair grow long.
She was also well endowed.
Very well endowed.
Anyway, they all sat down at their table and a haughty waiter gave them each a menu. Shinji scanned the list of appetisers and main courses, judging each by three distinct criteria: a) what is it?, b) do I think I will like it?, and c) how much does it cost so I don't inadvertently give my father an excuse to claim I cost him a lot of money?, although on reflection Shinji realised he hadn't prioritised these criteria and so his whole system fell to pieces and he ended up ordering something he was vaguely familiar with but liked the ingredients off that was within standard deviation in terms of price. Melusine, who was sitting sort-of opposite him, sort-of next to him, as the chairs were not evenly distributed around the round table, seemed to go through a similar mental process; she was flipping back and forth through the menu and mumbling very quietly in English with a concerned and nervous look on her face. It made her look quite cute.
"Shall we get down to business while we wait for the appetizer?" Avalon asked after they had ordered, and pulled out a small black laptop from her jacket, as well as a large pile of papers. "It appears that the World's bankers are determined to make sure the people meet in person, in the real world, to exchange imaginary sums," she said as the table shook a bit under the weight of the documents.
"I'd like to finish before they bring us our drinks." Shinji's father said flatly. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Would you rather we return to the gold standard?"
"I don't think the Japanese government would have a ship large enough should I want to make a transaction." Avalon said, and her smile widened. "On a more serious note, I'll need your signature on this line," she said, pointing to a piece of paper "and a signature here from an employee, verifying that you're sound in mind and body."
"Shinji, would you please sign your name on that line," Gendo said, to his surprise.
Wait, so he wants me to sign? But I'm a child, I can't legally sign something unless it's verified by my legal guard— Shinji let his head drop. Oh. Right. How wonderfully tautological, Shinji thought to himself, and reluctantly signed. The rest of the paperwork was finished right before a quartet of glasses and a bottle of wine was placed on the table.
"I hope you don't intend to sell me any more weapons, Ms Avalon, or I will go bankrupt." Gendo said, in what Shinji refused to believe was a joking tone.
"'Josephine', please. Well, you could tell me how you solved the problem I worked on before I left your corporation." Avalon suggested "Last time I looked at Unit-00, we had barely got it to move – in the sense that the exoskeleton was capable of dragging the biological organism along with it."
"I'm afraid that's a company secret," Gendo said with a smile. "Like the last thing I let you in on concerning ECCO's work."
"Oh, that was just mean," Avalon said with an even greater smile and turned to Shinji "Did you hear that? Your father think I'm the villain, but he's the one with the Secret Underground Base!"
"You have a volcano base, Josephine." Gendo replied.
"Well, yes, the soil is fertile and it can be used for geothermal power generation. Sun and wind power just aren't reliable enough, and tidal wave generators don't give quite enough—Melusine S. Avalon, stop fiddling with your dress! You'll ruin the lining. Now, where was I... yes, tidal power doesn't provide enough power, although I use that too, and of course after WW3 no-one wants to let NGOs get their hands on nuclear materials, but the Japanese grid is too... unreliable, in my opinion, so that closed off another route, and so..."
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The Kyosho Pacific Defence Arms Fair was a place where military freaks could, just once, and then they could die happily, knowing that they would never be in proximity to so much awesome stuff ever again in their lives. The halls were filled with, including but not limited to, tanks, multiped armoured vehicles, infantry weapons, experimental artillery pieces and large placards explaining the exact workings of anti-personnel weapons with morbid details on how they maimed effectively. Junior and senior officers from a dozen countries stood around, discussing the merits of numerous weapons and the myriad different technologies represented, and got into heated discussions about minor details most laymen were not aware of.
Perhaps of greater relevance was what happened behind closed doors in Hangar 17, a large metal and brick complex built right next to the faintly radioactive districts of Kyosho. Unlike the charred, wrung metal structures that had once burnt strongly enough to turn the darkest night into daybreak, courtesy of a Chinese nuclear missile, the hangar was clean and new, being slightly less than a decade old. To it and its maintenance staff's credit, it was regularly washed, so ash from the decaying black skyscrapers that was blown in from the sea had not marred the dully reflective metal surface.
The administrative wing of the building had been opened up to an enormous conference-space, complete with a stage with microphone stands and a white backdrop used for video-projection. Scattered on the linoleum floor were numerous round, white tables with white tablecloths, all surrounded by thick crowds of politicians, private investors, corporate executive officers, representatives for the military and the police (which were, de juro, the same thing in this country) and foreign representatives who also were subsets of one or more of the aforementioned categories. That is to say, all tables but one, which was only covered by two people, and one of those was a scientist to boot. While the rest of the conference-room was stuffed with a conglomerate of blue, black and green uniforms and suits with the occasional spot of brown, the Tachibana Laboratories table was like a barren death-zone which repelled people, most of whom has something very much against the whole 'child soldier' issue that was inseparably attached to the Evangelion. The only reason Dr Akagi's chalk white lab-coat-as-a-fashion-statement (how else would people know she had a doctorate?) didn't blend deceptively into the tablecloth was because Maj. Kusanagi had dragged her own chair over to give the table some life.
The limited palette of colour was expanded from a pitiful two too a much more grandiose three when Cpt Katsuragi stepped off the stage and joined them, wearing her dark green auxiliary JSDA uniform. She sunk down in her chair and emptied a glass of water without hesitation, tired after a long presentation on the Evangelion units, and the Q&A session afterwards, where she repeatedly had to explain in detail, from scattered notes in her cyberbrain, that their pilots were watched for signs of PTSD and stress, and that killing alien invaders simply could not be compared to being repeatedly physically and sexually abused by your superior officers and shooting other children with AK47s in a war-ravaged country like Congo. Shinji and Rei were under the protection of people who had their mental and physical wellbeing as their first and foremost concern, and would never do anything even remotely close to such despicable acts.
Another spot of unusual colour entered into view as a woman walked onto the stage wearing a pink blouse and a white jacket, with brown hair folding around her face. The light was again dimmed, and the white canvas, wrapped in darkness, lit up in comprehensible patters as light from overhead projectors reflected off the billowing surface. Against the black background, a whole, unbitten red apple with a stalk and a pair of leaves lit up, with the name of the company overlapping the bottom half: AvalonCorp. The slide flashed, and was replaced by another one, headed "Project ENKIDU" in English and subtitled (in Japanese): "Doing A Man's Work", before flashing once more to another slide. The third slide had a line-up of pictures, each showing a different Rakbu in action; Isimud casually swatting Jigabachi-helicopters out of the air with its beam of light, Ninurta tearing through the JDS Mutsu and Ishkur standing ominously over the small island in Yugawara Bay that was so affectionately nicknamed "Dejima-2" for no particular reason.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Josephine Avalon herself began "The Rakbu threat."
She continued: "Over the last two months, Humanity has experienced attacks from alien life-forms that attack indiscriminately and without provocation. The three we have faced up until this point have cost countless lives and have been virtually unstoppable—" Slides switched, showing a series of photographs where Isimud was hit by a thermobarric munition, only to stand up "—and the few victories the Japanese Self Defence Force has had against our extraterrestrial enemies have been slight and costly—" various figures appeared on the screen, showing the monetary costs of rebuilding Ashigarashimo and the number of dead for each battle, a number that seemingly rose exponentially.
"At this point, we are like newborn, throwing ourselves into battle no real knowledge of what the eventual outcome will be, or even how we are to progress towards that future. It is of my opinion that it is time to mature and step forwards into the future of our continued survival. For that purpose, AvalonCorp has built this:" she said, and suddenly everything became brighter, as the scarce lighting from the laconic slides gave way to a single photograph that filled the wall behind her, prominently displaying a giant vehicle head-on. There was a collective moan of curiosity coming from the audience.
"This is the Tsuiko," she said and waved up at the photograph, which instantly disappeared and was replaced with a video-feed. In the corner, small, man-sized letters read "[LIVE FEED]" and the camera rose up from its frog-perspective to a bird-eye-view, actualizing the scale of the thing; at least 30 meters long.
The Tsukio was almost beetle-like where it sat, with its curved elliptic carapace-like shell. Around the edge of the carapace were howitzers, spaced out evenly and in various states of rotation. Central on the carapace was an enormous turret that pointed forwards. It had its own R400 Heavy Particle Accelerator Cannon mounted on two points of articulation, next to large square barrel that couldn't be anything but that of a cruiser-sized railgun. On each side of the two barrels were missile busses with 12 missiles. It looked less like a land-borne vehicle and more like a beached caricature of a battleship, or an immobile fortress.
Then it stood up, on six long, sturdy legs covered in their own armoured plates, and the curiosity turned to awe.
"As I said," Ms Avalon said once the noise-levels were nominal,"we have been new to alien invasions despite two hundred and fifty years of memetic preparation, and it is only reasonable that we make a few mistakes along the way; the Tsukio is the first specialized anti-Rakbu weapon built entirely by ourselves, rather than through meddling with alien organisms to create half-breed warriors."
Dr Ritsuko Akagi raised her hand.
"Some people would talk about the wonders of technorganic synthesis, of the union of flesh and machine. We here at AvalonCorp, however, are more of the opinion that there is a reason that the height of military technology is the spidertank, not the cyborg horse." Ms Avalon continued. "Yes, Dr Akagi?"
"According to the technical specifications—" Dr Akagi said and threw a folder opened to the relevant page onto the tablecloth before her, its RFID-tag programmed from Ritsuko's laptop to give the relevant page number "the Tsukio doesn't have any form of device to neutralize the AT—" she bit her lips in annoyance over the slip "...anti-Inertial/Diffusion Fields that the Rakbu project around themselves. What can the Tsukio offer in terms of anti-Rakbu warfare that stationary defences or battlecruisers can not?"
"It can move on land?" Josephine Avalon suggested, rhetorically. "In any case, the general consensus among our military advisors on Project ENKIDU was that if the Rakbu came close enough for such a device to be useful, something had gone very, very wrong. Rather, the energy-output of the Tsukio's reactor has been set to handle the main armament, including the Heavy Particle Accelerator Cannon, which has proven itself combat-worthy of effortlessly penetrating the AI/D-fields of the Rakbu. AvalonCorp is more concerned with miniaturizing the counter-field devices so that they can be installed in missiles, but your organization is keeping the patent secret, even from the JGSDF..."
There was an uncomfortable silence that despite it insubstantial nature seemed to be centred on the Tachibana Labs table. Dr Akagi twisted the small microphone that hung form one ear away from her mouth as she cleared her throat, mentally preparing to launch into another verbal counter-attack.
"This is so childish," Misato shot Maj. Kusanagi over a private channel, while she dropped her head into a pair of folded arms and stared longingly at the bottles of expensive beer that stood in the centre of their table, just out of reach. One day, when she had time to take sick-leaves, she would cyberise her cardiovascular system to break down alcohol in her blood so she could drink beer whenever she wanted, but not now, when she was on constant 24-hour alert or less.
"She's not going to fight this battle here?" the Major shot back, eyeing the large JGSDF and AvalonCorp logos that decorated the room, her question mirrored in her peripheral vision, where the Conference-Area Network's chatbox was filled with comments like '...only defeated using a weapon built by AvalonCorp in the first place' and variations upon that theme.
"She gets really proud of her work, sometimes," Misato offered "She was like this in college too, but I'd rather not talk too much about my friend behind her back..."
"Fair enough," Maj. Kusanagi transmitted and closed the window, putting her mind to work at a more pressing concern. The amount of electronic chaos that was being thrown around in the room was high, as was expected from a room filled with overworked cyberbrains that were not only trying to follow the presentation, discussion and formal and informal chatboxes while doing a little fact-checking on their own over military and political VPNs, but also using those VPNs to balance budgets, write newspaper articles, weblog entries, record their memories real-time to external media or talk to their wives, girlfriends, lovers, mistresses , husbands and boyfriends. It was only because she was jaded that the Major was not constantly surprised by how much people thought was secure that really wasn't.
Yet, at the same time, there was something wrong about the chaos, as if someone had created a chaotic display of blue and green, and then expected to hide spots of red in the areas that tended towards teal. Sifting through the illusive wavebands, she tried to identify the noise and chaos, dividing the relevant from the irrelevant. For a moment, the pattern and structure of an Interceptor-feed caught her attention as it hid itself behind a fog of paranoid nonsense, before she let its analysis run as a background process, more concerned with the masked-array probe that kept pinging her ports as it swept across the available IPs. She'd been wrong, she realized; it wasn't as if someone were trying to hide red spots in fields of teal; it was more as if someone had tried to hide the a red canvas in the chaos of electronic traffic. She stared down into her lap and closed her eyes while opening a secure line to Ishikawa;there was something wrong, and her ghost was giving her a hard time about it.
"Ishikawa, I want you and Borma to scan the CAN of the ENKUDU conference; there's too much malicious traffic compare to what I'd expect. Get on it, and report back to me as soon as you find something specific. If you find something, either quarantine it, or backhack it."
"Yes Major," Ishikawa and Borma both replied. Looking up, Maj. Kusanagi started hunting down a few of the lines herself, by baiting them into a tunnel of electronic data, where the attacking connections were injected with the computer-security equivalent of painting yourself in fluorescent purple and running naked through Buckingham Palace. A slight feeling of joy registered in the Major's brain as she placed the end of her electronic tunnels directly in front of the main firewall. Then, she mentally frowned as she turned her attention back to the presentation, just as Dr Akagi and Josephine Avalon stopped throwing thinly veiled insults at each other's projects.
I think "soulless machines" counts as an ad hominem, Akagi, the Major added to herself. And a slur too, if you're not careful.
Ms Avalon gave the floor to a tall man in his fifties. His black hair was interspersed with grey ones, and the wrinkles in his face were growing more and more prominent, but considering that the man was already a general, it was only fitting, most of the other generals thought, that he was beginning to show signs of age; they couldn't just have the young fool running around and looking better than them, could they? As he adjusted his microphone, a young teenaged girl with auburn-reddish hair stepped up and stood beside him. The RFID tag of the podium changed to reflect the new speaker.
General Kirishima? the Major thought rhetorically ...makes sense. He was among those who opposed the creation of ECCO from the beginning, after the previous cabinet privatised ECCO's predecessor to Tachibana , his opposition was in a minority compared to the opposition that thought building a giant robot was a stupid idea, so he was practically an ECCO-sympathiser by military standards. And the General's strong ties to the Maritime Self Defence Force would explain how they could get a build-permit for such heavy weapons. Now, if that's General Kirishima, then the girl must be...
"...his daughter?" Ritsuko asked Misato, who glanced upwards as she accessed her cyberbrain, then matched it with the girl's augmented-reality tag.
"Yes, that's Mana Kirishma. She goes to school with Shinji and Rei." the Captain replied.
Suspicious, isn't it?
What is?
"...but that is not the main reason the JSDA and the JMSDF have supported the Tsukio." Gen. Kirishma said, then struck out his arm in the direction of his daughter. "This!" he exclaimed "is my daughter, Mana. She is as old as the Eva-pilots, or at least she will be after her birthday in a few weeks." This was met by subdued laughter. "She even attends the same school and classes as Mr Ikari and Ms Ayanami. I love her as much as I loved her mother, and it is my greatest fear that I will ever lose her."
Mana blushed.
"That is why," Gen. Kirishma almost roared "the Tsukio has been built so that no child will ever have to be a frontline soldier against the Rakbu!"
There was a loud applause erupting all around the hall, deafening even to the table where no one had clapped. Even there, there was a strained smile forming on Misato's mouth; it was an admirable cause. The Major lifted a glass of water to her lips. A few tables over, a JGSDF officer in a freshly pressed green uniform staggered to his feet as he was called upon to speak.
"A question concerning the software," he said, then swallowed before continuing, "The project briefing describes the Tsukio as fully autonomous, in the event of the pilot's death or failure to respond. This means..." he paused to wipe sweat off his brow "that the Tsukio is a war-machines potentially controlled entirely by an on-board mainframe. Doesn't this raise ethical issues regarding the separation of actual humans from the weapons, since it completely removes the last refuge of humanity from a cybernetic army?"
Instantly, silence turned to whispering turned to a muttered, collective shout. Chairs scraped against the group and protests were shouted above the roar of an insulted crowd. The JGSDF officer stared perplexed at the dour faces of the military cyborgs surrounding him.
"I humbly apologise," he nearly whispered as he bowed "'cybernetic' was meant to refer to the union of humans and electronic sentience, not as a slur against the cyborg population, of which I am myself a member..."
He quickly took his seat again.
"While I recognise your concern," Avalon said and gave a quick look to Gen. Kirishima "the Tsukio was never built with this as a primary feature, and the feature you're referring to is still in the prototype stage. It is not our intent here at AvalonCorp to deprive the officers in the chain of command neither their right nor ability to make decisions by giving the Tsukio autonomous systems, but rather to act as a dummy, if you will, for the willing and devoted soldier; if I'm allowed to be bold, the Tsukio is the USRMM's foray into the field of network-centric combat, and it is hoped that the prototype AI will either make or break the concept of supercomputer-controlled weapons platforms."
There was another round of applause that ran through the audience. Dr Akagi growled very faintly, and her face looked concerned.
"Now, let me demonstrate what the Tsukio is capable of!" Avalon said, and a video-chat-window opened on the main screen. Underneath, a small label read "Lt. Hayashida, JGSDF".
"Lt. Hayshida, will you please demonstrate the mobility of the Tsukio?"
"I copy."
The thin legs of the Tsukio spun in place, angling themselves tangential to the hull of the immense vehicle. For a fraction of a second, nothing happened, until the whole vehicle turned on its own axis. Dust clouds were thrown up along the ground. After a few rotations, the R400 suddenly stopped moving, remaining aimed in one direction while the rest of the Tsukio was in motion.
"As you can see, the axis of rotation for the Tsukio is the same as the axis of the turret; this means that the Tsukio always can maintain perfect aim, even when moving. The extendable legs mean this can also be done in rough and uneven terrain." Avalon explained.
"Like a child on an office-chair," Avalon muttered and threw a glance at Mana. "Would you like to say anything about how it feels to pilot, Lt. Hayashida?"
"Yes, Ms Avalon, as a spider-tank pilot, I'd say..." he broke off and swallowed, then remained silent.
"Yes..." Avalon's voice got a harsher tone "You'd say—"
"I'd say—" Lt. Hayashida said, nervously. "I'd say—" His feed turned to static snow, and everyone in the room got a little more attentive. To Maj. Kusanagi, it was as if someone has taken her multicoloured canvas and thrown a bucket of paint over it.
Then the entire building shook with a reverberating tremor, which was followed by an ear-pitching crack of pure eardrum pain for those unlucky enough to have biological ear or low-quality audio implants. The immense rumble continues as the sound of a 200 mm railgun firing was replaced the sound of an adjacent building collapsing – a cacophony of grinding concrete, the scream of wrung metal bars, and the rain of glass. Like a deep thunder, it rolled, as the audience in the conference hall staggered to their feet. In the west end of the building, a window had shattered from overpressure and showered a German diplomat with shards of glass. A bright light, followed by another explosion, and hot air rushed into the room, smelling of ozone.
"Has he gone mad?" Misato asked, as she stabilized herself against the table.
"The Tsukio-dono is not responding to our signals!" a technician in a blue overall shouted across the room. "We're unable to disengage the pilot!"
"Has it entered autistic mode?" Ms Avalon shouted back, from behind the podium. "Can we get a visual fix?"
"Autistic mode has not been engaged. It's receiving our signals and rejecting them!" the techie replied.
"It shot down our aerial camera!" another added.
"Then override command and force a reset!" the English woman shouted, a little less loudly as she was running towards the technicians and their portable command console.
"Ms Avalon, that wouldn't accomplish anything if the pilot is forcing a manual override! A few seconds of downtime at most!" the network-technician said.
"Not if it's a hostile remote signal," Ms Avalon began "—but we can't force it into autistic mode without knowing the exact nature of the attack; we might accidentally seal ourselves out."
"A remote signal? But it's protected by a quantum supercomputer!"
"Still, it remains a possibility we can't overlook."
At the other side of the room, Maj. Kusanagi was trying to get a clear picture of the situation, while helping Dr Akagi to her feet – then another near earthquake-like tremor nearly threw them both down again.
"His aim is poor..." Batou commented, via cybercom. "Could it be a poor attempt at ghost-puppeting?"
"Unlikely," Ishikawa chimed in "The hacker would have to get through a military attack barrier, and then it would be easier to pilot the vehicle directly than to dive the pilot."
"Too much lag." The Major added. "It's more likely a form of threat – You all overheard what its creator said?"
"There aren't very many quantum supercomputers around." Batou said. "Does this mean we should involve ourselves?"
Maj. Kusanagi considered this for a fraction of a second, and she again tried to help Dr Akagi to prop herself up, this time against Cpt. Katsuragi. "The evidence is superficial at most," she transmitted "But I can hear a whisper in my ghost." A smile crept up her face. "Togusa, Paz, Borma, I want a full deployment of Tachikomas with anti-tank loadouts here immediately. Ishikawa, see if you can track down the hostile signal."
"Yes, Major!" they replied, more or less in unison.
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Major Kusanagi, perched atop a blue-painted Tachikoma, peered at the grey-black Tsukio through her binoculars. It swept through the abandoned streets along the coast of Kyosho, moving further and further inland in the general direction of the capital city's government district – yet no terrorist organization had claimed responsibility for the attack, no anonymous demands had been issued, and nobody had, yet, died. All evidence pointed towards simple corporate blackmail, and Aramaki had only managed to scramble her ten minutes before the Japanese Aerial SDF would commence throwing up enough chaff into the air to knock Niihama City offline, before they fill the Tsukio with enough missiles to sink a battleship – why then, the more skeptical parts of the Major's brain egged her on, was she so interested in the JGSDF's pet project? Because, her rationality responded, oneof the groups in possession of a quantum supercomputer happened to be ECCO, whom Section 9 was currently investigated, and preliminary traffic analysis indicated that the one in Matsushiro wasn't not the perpetrator. And, secondly, she was bored. Sitting in on board meeting, pretending to be a JGSDF officer/guide/inspector was not the work she had imagined when she punched the Minister of Internal Affairs in the face with his own fist eight years ago.
"OK, listen up!" she shouted. "First priority is to disable the target. Second priority is to retrieve Lt. Hayashida alive and intact. If we can, we backhack the hijacker. Understood?"
At that, she climbed back into the pod of her Tachikoma and deployed down the face of a dusty-grey buildings and let the incessant, child-like AI jump between buildings and swing by wires towards its distant cousin.
"Oh man, that thing is huge!" one of them said, with an amazed tone of voice.
"Are we going to pilot those one day?" another asked.
"It is true, with the seeming proliferation of giant monsters, we are feeling a little useless," a third added. "With one of those for each of us, we could really show those Rakbu what Tachikoma Power can do!"
"Shhhh, 'the officers' don't like us chatting." A fourth chimed in. The Major's face stiffened, and for a fraction of a second, she let an annoyed grunt escape and then she shot Batou an indignant glare, for laughing. Her accelerometers screamed for mercy as the group of Tachikomas landed flat against a wall and rebounded, and once more the urban-camouflaged shell of the Tsukio came into view. "Borma, you're ready?"
"Yes Ma'am!" the deep voice responded, just as his Tachikoma braked down on a rooftop with the help of its elastic wires.
"Everyone, switch to autistic mode and enable laser—com in three, two, one..." and everyone's signals cut out, before a network of narrow infrared beams shot out between the blue spider-tanks, flickering on and off in encoded patterns. "Check-in!" the Major demanded.
"Clear!" Togusa, Batou, Paz and Borma all replied, their otherwise distinctive voices cut and electronically scrambled to a warped version of themselves, to save on bandwidth. It was considerably better than the alternative though; a horrible screaming noise, like cat's claws on a plate, played backwards on an infinite loop, like a malevolent swarm of audible pain, emitted from a wide-area jammer.
The Tsukio froze, for a moment, before it began to turn towards the source of the signals, mounted to the underside of a Tachikoma. The 12 artillery-turrets that lined its bow began to rotate against the attacking handful of spiders – which immediately disappeared from its sensors. Panels slid open, and small missile tubes poked out, scanning for potential threats. Still, the Tsukio was a juggernaut not particularly concerned with anything smaller than a proper tank, which might on a good day hit-and-penetrate one of its legs, if it was not too terribly distracted with the electronic countermeasures of just the kind it was lobbing out like Christmas presents at this very moment. With the sound of plastic bottles imploding, canisters shot out from its turtle-like shell and exploded, scattering thousands upon thousands of thin, reflective metal strips – or tiny, insect-like robots that dazzled sensor-systems with a cyberdrug-like attack of multicoloured lasers and strong electronic signatures. A thick white-grey smoke enveloped the area, and the Tsukio continued forwards, as if nothing had happened.
Then it came to a sudden halt, and almost toppled over on its thin legs, much like a newborn deer. Mechanically, it tugged at the white, sticky protein-based wires the Tachikoma had secreted across the road. More white lines shot out from afar and tied it shell to nearby concrete ceilings and walls. Like a jammed engine, it struggled against its ropes.
Then it fired, and explosive shells the weight of mature, unaugmented men shot forth and shattered the buildings around it, while its top spun, ripping blocks of concrete out of the facades as they crumbled, while its thin, spider-like legs climbed over the barrier. Dust and heavy particles struck the optical camouflage of the Tachikoma, colouring it visible in a neon-bright lightshow against the drab environment.
"Damnit!" Batou shouted, as his Tachikoma jumped off a collapsing building. "It's not..."
"Jammed!" Paz completed his sentence. "It must be directed signal."
"Borma!" the Major yelled "Can you get a clean shot at its satellite dish?"
"No can do Major! There's too much ECM!" he replied.
"Togusa!" Batou transmitted "The the—" his Tachikoma narrowly skidded sideways as a barrage of missiles shot into the wall behind him. "Damnit! Major, I've lost my thermooptic camouflage!"
"Then withdraw behind a building!" The Major stared at the Tsukio lob shells around, creatively and intelligently avoiding the obstacles in its way. The large particle cannon began to turn as the Tsukio crept long the road, and in an intense white-hot flash, a purple plume shot ahead of it, demolishing five streets of buildings along the road, while the slag was flattened from the barrage of bunker-buster shells it was loaded with. Why oh why, the woman thought, had the junior officer staff been so insistent that AvalonCorp give a full, thorough demonstration of its artillery capabilities during the arms fair? As her Tachikoma merrily followed along, the Tsukio moved onto the newly paved road, driving free and unobstructed towards the capital.
Then, suddenly, the turret turned a full half-circle, and the distinctive sound of its capacitors warming up resonated against the hull of Paz' Tachikoma. Just as it let lose another shot, Paz had finished plotting its course –right at Borma. Over the laser-com, a scream rung out, in a deep, baritone voice – and did not stop instantly, which was a relief for everyone.
"Borma, report back!" the Major transmitted.
"I'm alive," he replied, his breath coming fast. "Burns and my eyes are fried. The front end of my Tachikoma is completely gone. And that means the wide-area jammer is gone too."
"Do you need medical attention?" the Major asked. "Either way, Batou, go pick up Borma. Pry him out of the pod if necessary!"
"But..." he growled.
"Just do it." She transmitted, her message garbled by the fact that the Tachikoma was switching back from laser-com to normal radio.
That's when the Major noticed two signals aimed at the Tsukio. That's strange...
"Major!" Batou transmitted "Should we pull back and let the JASDF do their job?"
"We still have five minutes," she replied "And I want to see why so many people are interested in this giant robot-thing!"
"But Major, it won't slow down!" Togusa objected.
"I've thought it over," the Major stated, matter-of-factly "and the original course of action is still the best. If you don't think you can do it, switch with Paz."
"I copy, Major" the young man transmitted, and his Tachikoma lent forwards, as a mnemonic gesture, as its small wheels raced to catch up with the large, high-speed caterpillar tracks of the giant beetle-like monstrosity. Just as he was under it, hidden from its visual and infrared sensors by a coating of light-emitting micromachines and metamaterials, and stealthed from microwave-radar by the chaotic, debris-filled ground, a pair of white wires shot up and solidified into a sticky mass against the Tsukio's hull. Just then, the dust and gravel thrown against the Tachikoma broke the thermooptic camouflage, and a pair of heavy-calibre anti-armour machine-guns spun in their mounts. A heavy sound, like a demonic sewing machine jabbing a needled into steel plates, burst forth as the hull-mounted guns fired against the ground, where the Tachikoma had just been – there was a horrible metallic ringing sound as stray shots ricocheted off the denser armour-plates of the pod. Togusa felt like his eyeballs were about to pop out of his skull, just before he tried to re-assert himself to the fact that his entire world had been turned upside down. Before he could get a grip on his orientations, his Tachikoma darted off as 12.7mm shells strafed it. Strapped down in his seat, Togusa tried to ignore the blood rushing to his head and verified where the belly-mounted guns were, before he let the Tachikoma open fire.
A narrow spray of 7.62x51 mm bullets burst against the hull of the Tsukio to no avail; when something has its greatest cross-section when seen from below AvalonCorp's engineers had taken into account that this meant the vast majority of the ant-tank weapons it wasn't meant to go up against would be fired at the lower hull – hence, mere rifle bullets, would simply not do the trick.
This is completely unlike the actual things Togusa was aiming for, which were the belly-mounted guns. They, meanwhile, were completely standard guns and simply not made to be directly shot at. The first burst turned one of them into something resembling a very large cheese grater, while an anti-tank missile from the Tachikoma's front launcher reduced another into a metallic spiral that could be mistaken for a road-side sculpture. A second burst damaged one of the guns to the point at which trying to actually accomplish the task of a gun; firing bullets, made it explode. The fourth turret, meanwhile, shot off the Tachikoma's rear left leg.
There was a metallic clang, as the Major's Tachikoma slammed against the read hull and twisted said turret off like it was a human neck in the arms of a combat cyborg.
"Is everything OK?" the Major asked, as she popped the hatch of her Tachikoma.
"I'm sorry, Major, I didn't..."
"I take full responsibility Togusa; good work." She smiled uncharacteristically as she tossed a rope with a giant magnet at the end upwards towards the hull, and dragged herself towards an underside hatch. She lifted the plastic handle and opened a small door beside it, and, checking her memory for a second, rapidly typed in a 7-digit passcode; the hatch swung open, and she peeked in to see that nobody was standing immediately inside. The coast clear, she climbed in and pointed her Seburo C25 menacingly around, before helping Togusa in. "We're inside the Tsukio now."
The inside of the giant spider-crap-robot-monster-vehicle was damp, dark, and noisy, and the overall construction was similar to a Russian attack submarine, although Maj. Kusanagi would have to deny for another 40 years or so that she had the relevant knowledge of Russian vessel interiors to make such a comparison. She crouched next to a computer terminal.
"Ishikawa, have you got a fix on any of the hackers yet?" she asked.
"No Major," he replied "they're both using randomized array attacks, so I can only guess at locations based on traffic analysis."
"I copy that, Ishikawa. I'm going to try to plant a tracer-virus and—"
"Major, there are three minutes until the JASDF begin their airstrike." Chief Aramaki interrupted. "Please finish what you're there for."
"I understand, Chief." She turned to Togusa, mostly out of reflexes, before transmitting over Section 9's tactical network "I'm setting the entire system to force a shutdown in 60 seconds; the bootup will be corrupted. Let's check up on the pilot." Togusa nodded, and started counting down in his head. When he reached 57, the Tsukio lurched to a stop
The tiny door to the cockpit slammed open after a futile attempt to stand up against Maj. Kusanagi's foot, and a pistol in her hand, she burst in covering all angles against attacks, only to find a the pilot sitting calmly in his chair, his hand still on the controls, seemingly oblivious to the declaration of his arrest. In a split second, Maj. Kusanagi drew a cyberlink cable from her belt and shoved it into an available port of the pilot's cyberbrain.
Oh fuck, she though as her mind worked very hard not to synchronize with a disintegrating ghost there are three hackers here.
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The Major sat, once more, in a nicely but sparsely furnished office with a flat wooden finish, and bookshelves running over with political literature; annotated, well-read books, and a small shelf dedicated to gifts that their recipient was never going to get around to reading – the shelf directly below was for gifts the recipient was going to read eventually, and the one below that for gifts from close friends who knew his tastes, and hence were going to be read soon. The desk itself was dark wood, carved out from a tree over half a decade ago, and covered in papers made from trees cut down less than half a year ago. A small brass lamp sat on it, but provided no illumination as the windowless room was well-lit by a ceiling-lamp. The chair she herself inhabited was a comfortable leather chair made to support up to a ton of human and cyborg bodymass on its short, stubby, metal-reinforced legs.
"You had some concerns over our current mission?" Aramaki finally said.
"Yes Chief," the Major said with a voice that revealed a fraction of it "Its not usual for three different groups to attempt to hack the same prototype vehicle on the same day, only minutes after its existence had been revealed; the intelligence-reports I read mention that it was only known to a tight-knit group of JSDF officers. At the same time, Ms Josephine Avalon has started negotiating with Mr Ikari, and they both have heavy connections to ECCO and its American counterpart, so I'm afraid we're about to get our hands full. Section 9 was not built for this type of deep investigation, so we're going to stretch out resources thin until the JGSDF reigns out ECCO..."
"...at which point they'll no doubt become more uncontrollable and secretive." Aramaki nodded "I'll see if I can talk to Section 6 about operating-licenses for out-of-country business. I'll also see if some of my old friends in England know anything about this Ms Avalon and her colleagues."
"Ah, yes, those." The Major said knowingly "Thank you, chief. Was there anything more?"
"How will you be pursuing the three groups of hackers, presuming they're connected to our investigation at all?" Aramaki asked.
"One of the groups lead directly to a Tachibana Labs subsidiary," she replied, and leant forwards reflexively "...but it also leads out again."
"So it could be a false-flag attack."
"Or a double bluff to make it seem like a false-flag attack." Maj. Kusanagi and Aramaki nodded in unison.
"Exactly."
"Ishikawa and Borma are investigating the hackers who directly targeted the remote control system" she continued reporting "and I'm tracking down the ghost-hacker."
"Good, dismissed." Aramaki said, and the Major rose.
"Thanks Major", he said as she approached the door "For clarifying this to me."
"But chief!" Maj. Kusanagi muttered under her breath as she left the office. "I haven't clarified anything!"