Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth8 (section)

===Part 2===

A Japanese stealth fighter.

It sounded like the stuff of dreams and romance, but it did exist.

(Not even counting the bizarre Academy City ones.)

The experimental technology demonstrator had been built from only domestic parts to learn the technology, not to actually take part in air combat.

“The Shinshin, huh?”

Mikoto hadn’t been interested at first, but the desire grew inside her as she thought about having to say goodbye once rescue arrived. She was outside the wall and this was a Japanese stealth fighter. She wanted to touch it while she had the chance.

“Was it only ever a life-size model, or did they actually make one? Whatever the case, I never heard anything about it being mass-produced,” said Shokuhou Misaki, her lips pouting.

Mikoto was surprised to find her still in the hangar. She had assumed the girl would be on the bridge or CIC so she could boss people around.

The craft had an elegant streamlined shape and a somehow pointed look.

But it wasn’t like a katana.

She sensed none of the heat of steel that had been forged by a human hand.

This was pure icy beauty. And nothing more. Each and every tiny part might as well have been stamped with a “computer-optimized design” message, like the sutra written all over Hoichi the Earless.

Mikoto usually thought of stealth aircraft as black, but the Shinshin was mostly pure white. It also had bright red and blue lines. Although that may have been because it was only experimental.

(Were the 3D model and small flight test models colored this way too?)

“But wait. It’s bigger than I expected.”

“Probably because it’s a 2-seat custom,” said Shokuhou.

Sure enough, it had two seats, one behind the other.

The actual specs weren’t public, but the idea had been to more or less match the F-22A.

Stealth technology wasn’t a divine miracle, so it wouldn’t remain exclusive to America forever.

In fact, while gathering the technology and developing one was all well and good, Mikoto wondered how Japan’s defense budget could afford so many of the super-high-tech stealth fighters that had been too much for even the military superpower of America to produce in great quantities. Real life wasn’t a robot anime and a single ultimate craft wasn’t enough.

(So who paid for all of these and from what budget?)

Mikoto pushed over a simple gangway that resembled a pool lifeguard tower and took a look inside the cockpit.

She opened the clear canopy.

And she climbed in.

“Ugh… Surprisingly cramped.”

“It’s military. What were you expecting?”

There were no gaps, making her feel like she was the foot slipped inside a high-heeled shoe.

“If it’s designed for long flights, I thought it would be more, y’know, comfortable, like with a memory foam back.”

“Soft cushions would be squashed flat by the ultra-high-g environment, so they wouldn’t be very useful.”

Mikoto tested a few buttons in the cockpit until she heard some static.

Maybe it was thanks to the thick bulkhead open to the outside, but the craft’s radio had picked up the carrier’s communication signal.



“Um, SOS, SOS, mayday! This is the Izanami. We do not know our situation, but we are adrift. If anyone is near enough to hear this, we ask that you follow this signal to rescue us.”



“Well, that’s done.”

“Come to think of it, can we really just wait for someone’s rescue ability? Since we’re in the ocean, we definitely aren’t in Academy City, so I hope there isn’t any trouble with another country related to the esper development and our DNA maps.”

Mikoto felt they could wait until they had escaped their current predicament before worrying about that. Arriving ashore alive was their top priority for now.

And it turned out Mikoto wasn’t the only one relaxing.

More voices arrived over the radio. Since their phones couldn’t communicate with the land-based servers while out on the empty ocean, even the basic call and email functions weren’t available, so everyone had started carrying around handheld radios.



“Huh? We’re in the ocean, but there’s a pool.”

“We really are the only ones here. We won’t even have to wait in line.”

“They have karaoke. I-is that one of the legendary bowling alleys I’ve heard so much about!? Since we’re here, we might as well check it out!”



Mikoto stared into the distance.

…She felt awfully silly pretending to be a foot in a high-heeled shoe inside a hangar that reeked of machine oil. The cruise ship camouflage appeared to have been a thorough job, so enjoying the resort would be a much better way to spend the short time until rescue arrived.

And while this realization was sinking in…

An earsplitting electronic tone exploded from the speakers throughout the ship.

“What!?” shouted Mikoto as she poked at the cockpit’s communication controls. “Is that an alarm!?”

“I-it’s a false alarm. Nothing more,” someone replied on the radio. “The ship’s early-warning radar appears to have picked something up… It’s flying straight this way from the northwest, but it’s probably whoever’s coming to rescue us.”

Mikoto saw motion on one of the small monitors in the cockpit. It appeared to have a datalink to the carrier’s early-warning radar.

There was indeed a large dot there.

And it was moving fast.

“That must be our rescue. Now we can finally get back home.”

The voice on the radio (probably from the bridge) sounded unconcerned.

At some point, Shokuhou had shoved her head right up next to Mikoto’s.

“Excuse me, Misaka-saaan.”

“Whoa, what do you want!?”

She was standing on the simple gangway that resembled a tennis umpire chair so she could lean into to cockpit and see the display. That brought her face extremely close. Her long blonde hair tickled against Mikoto’s cheek.

Shokuhou was still staring at the display.

“Mach 1.25. That doesn’t sound like a large helicopter to me. Not a tiltrotor either. My guess is a large aircraft equipped with two or even four engines.”

“So what?”

“A 40m aircraft has no midair stopping ability. It also can’t land on a carrier runway. …The quick arrival is appreciated, but how do they plan on rescuing us?”

Mikoto and Shokuhou exchanged a glance at extreme close range.

The alert siren increased in volume and the ship’s lighting all switched to red.

“Oh, no!” shouted the voice from the bridge. “How do I switch off this false alarm!?”

“Is it…not false? Bridge!! Send all the data you have to me!!”

That request came too late.

With a rumble, the 300m nuclear-powered aircraft carrier shook vertically. Including the cruise ship camouflage, the hunk of steel had to weigh more than 100 thousand tons.

“Eh? Eh?” said the voice on the bridge.

“They shot something at us?”

“It didn’t hit us,” said Shokuhou. “See that big pillar of water in the ocean outside the open bulkhead?”

What would have happened if that had hit?

The fighter’s small display made it hard to tell, but a few centimeters there had to mean an actual distance of more than 100km.

At that kind of distance, a small speck separated from the larger dot.

No, it had been launched.

That was the second shot.

The size, speed, and trajectory of the rapidly-approaching weapon must have triggered an automatic prediction from the carrier’s database. English text appeared on the radar screen.

Estimated Model: ASM Harpoon.

“That’s an anti-ship missile…”

The identification was made through computer estimation.

Mikoto paled.

“That Harpoon was designed to destroy ships like this! I don’t know who this is, but is that a bomber coming for us? All we did was send out an SOS over radio, but did they follow the radio signal to sink the entire damn ship!? Without even a word of warning!?”

“It still might be a false alarm,” suggested Shokuhou.

“You saw that earlier explosion! And the second shot is flying this way!!”

“The Harpoon was launched from the air, so we aren’t dealing with pirates or terrorists! That has to be a national military. Why would they open fire without even checking to see who they’re firing on!?”

An explosive noise continued on and on, sounding something like a much deeper version of buzzing wings.

The close-in defense Gatling guns installed across the Izanami (and disguised to look like parts of the cruise ship) must have opened fire. They were of course under automatic control, so the girls didn’t even have to touch the console.

Eventually, they heard an especially loud explosion.

A distant one.

The Harpoon must have been shot down near the water, but…

“You understand that we only got lucky there, don’t you?” said Shokuhou. “We can’t count on that happening again.”

“…”

“With their second shot failed, they’ll just launch a third. They’ll keep going until they blast through the ship’s hull!! They will eventually break through our close-in defenses which can maybe shoot down one missile after firing tens of thousands of rounds. Do you want to be strewn across the sea along with the nuclear-powered engine that will be leaking who-knows-what into the water after the hull breaks open? We need to cut off the threat at the source!!”

What was Misaka Mikoto currently seated inside?

It wasn’t a movie theater seat, that was for sure. She had a chance to alter the situation playing out before her eyes.

Shokuhou pouted her lips.

“Misaka-san, all you’ve done is read through the thick manual. What makes you so sure you can actually pilot this thing?”

She didn’t need to say a word.

With a buzz, all of the systems in the Shinshin’s cockpit came to life.

Misaka Mikoto was a Level 5 with power over electricity. That gave her more than just destructive power – she could use her power to hack in and tame programs or to perform cyber attacks. She could control the flaps and thrust vectoring nozzles as easily as opening and closing her hands.

“Too easy.”

Despite what the old RCS models suggested, it seemed the latest fighters didn’t use a HUD that placed the display over the actual view. In order to transform her entire field of view into a weapon, Mikoto put on a pair of ultra-thin goggles that were even more delicate than sports sunglasses.

“Ugh, really. If you’d screwed up the startup process, I would have had an excuse ability to stop you.”

Shokuhou held a hand to her forehead atop the simple gangway and snapped her fingers with the other hand.

Immediately, Mikoto’s body jerked to the side.

No, that wasn’t what happened.

She couldn’t see straight down from the cockpit thanks to the pointy nose, but Hokaze Junko, who was always at Shokuhou’s side, had grabbed the fighter’s front landing gear and started pulling. With Rampage Dress, not even the 20-ton Shinshin could stop her.

“Whoa, hey, H-Hokaze-san!?”

“This is faster than hooking it up to a tractor and guiding it that way,” said Shokuhou. “Now, the electromagnetic catapult guide rail is over here, so attach the wire over here.”

“Queen.”

“The catapult switch is on that box hanging over there, isn’t it? Okay, Misaka-san, close the canopy and fasten your seat belts. Oh, and make sure to clench your teeth so you don’t bite your tongue. You will be accelerating past 250km/h in less than 5 seconds, so you could injure your neck if you aren’t careful☆”

“Are you sure you want to stand on that guide rail, Queen? That is well within the contact danger zone.”

It turned out she didn’t actually want to do that at all, so the blonde girl scrambled away as the Shinshin shot forward with a loud metallic scraping sound.

It was a lot like taking off from within a tunnel.

The Japanese stealth fighter shot from the bulkhead gaping wide at the bow of the camouflaged aircraft carrier.