Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth3 (section)

===Part 7===

The sunset dyed the sky red.

The enemy hadn’t waited.

“I’m reading a large object incoming from outside the atmosphere to the north-northwest at Mach 10.5. It’s a ballistic missile from either the United States of Narmeli or the Cutalularia Republic!!”

“That’s exactly what we want!!” shouted back Mikoto in her formfitting flight suit as she ran across the maintenance hangar.

Even the best plan needed real results to gather trust.

The plan had been to use a large piece of debris or some stardust moving outside the atmosphere at greater than Mach 10, but a real ballistic missile was much appreciated in this case. If she could shoot this down and prove that a ballistic missile attack was no threat, the trouble within the Izanami would go away.

YF-22A (the giant girl in a long-sleeved black leotard) had been on standby in the maintenance hangar and her eyes widened now.

“Wh-what’s going on!?”

“It’s time to settle this. Kongou-san, prepare the Shinshin for takeoff. You aren’t going to say it isn’t ready, are you!?”

A ballistic missile was flying this way at Mach 10.5.

Every second counted.

As soon as the Shinshin two seat custom was launched from the carrier, Mikoto took action.

Specifically, she raised the sharp nose nearly vertically and accelerated as if piercing into the heavens.

She broke through the thick clouds into the empty evening sky.

The fighter rattled unnaturally. Alerts she had never seen before flashed on the monitor. She was at max speed, but a stall warning appeared. The air was so thin the main wings had nothing to slice through. It also appeared to be affecting the water fuel’s burn rate.

(Oxygen. You take it for granted, so it’s terrifying when it’s suddenly not there. Now I really feel like I’m in another world!)

Maybe they should have prepared a special oxidant to keep the water fuel burning without the oxygen from outside.

No longer was she in an orange world.

On one side, the black starry sky. On the other, a blue spherical surface.

Wasn’t the sunset an illusion created by the air refracting the light and absorbing certain wavelengths? Mikoto was reminded of that fact now that the atmosphere was so thin and she had left behind the rules of the surface.

The altimeter displayed 24,000 meters. The canopy’s exterior was freezing over.

Just a bit further.

Only 1 more kilometer. Just 1000 meters!!

“Got you.”

There was no air to limit the visual range and she was freed from the limits of the horizon, but she was still too far away to see it with the naked eye.

Still, it appeared on her radar.

The fighter’s radar could only scan out to 200km, but it could cover a much wider range when linked to the carrier’s anti-missile radar.

A monster was flying straight this way.

“Railgun 01. I’m starting.”

She suppressed the panic growing inside her.

She forced herself to ignore the engine’s whine and the coating of ice creeping across the canopy.

She only had one chance at this.

She had to make it count.

“Lock complete. Final check clear.”

An ordinary air-to-air missile wouldn’t work.

She could intercept the ballistic missile in space with an anti-air laser that could slice through any flying object at the speed of light, but she didn’t know where to get a toy like that.

But.

She could do something similar.

(I knew I could count on Kongou-san.)

If air resistance could be ignored, then this super weapon could theoretically max out at the speed of light by increasing the voltage endlessly.

The fighter’s stealth had been sacrificed to attach a 155mm caliber 19m long cannon to the top, albeit a bit to the right to ensure the canopy could still open and close.

(Not only does she have the skill to make this, but it’s just like her to get to work the instant I asked for it. Yes, none of us are the bad guy. We all just want to protect the Izanami and Izanagi so we can get back home!)

“Fire!!!”



In other words, she had an aircraft-mounted anti-ballistic-missile strategic defense railgun.



The Shinshin shook hard. It just about lost its balance at 25,000m, but Mikoto somehow managed to keep it steady.

You could think of it like a smaller and lighter version of the electromagnetic catapult.

But it was powered by Mikoto’s esper power. When she provided it an instant maximum of a billion volts, the weapon further amplified that to produce what she thought had to be a powerful weapon indeed.

What she saw seemed no different from light.

So despite firing it herself, she didn’t have time to follow it by eye.

Unlike a sniper rifle powered by gunpowder, she didn’t need to predict the target’s future position based on its distance from her.

It had already hit.

A white dot suddenly expanded into a massive explosion outside the atmosphere.

It was hard to tell at such a great distance, but that had to be more than 10km across.

It wasn’t a cluster bomb or thermobaric. It was even more destructive light.

But just before reaching its target, it had been blown away outside the planet.

She had won.

“Ksshh!! Ksssshhhh!!”

The noise over the radio was awful.

The enormous explosion in space may have rapidly compressed the magnetosphere covering the entire planet.

Come to think of it, this wouldn’t cause a magnetic storm or an electromagnetic pulse, would it?

Maybe that wasn’t a huge deal since they were over the empty ocean, but she decided to make a radar and visual check for civilian ships on her way back to the carrier. She didn’t want anyone to die adrift because their electric-controlled engines stopped and their shipboard radio couldn’t send out an SOS.

“Ksh. …gone. Railgun 01, can you hear me? This is Izanami. Early-warning radar confirms the ballistic missile is gone. You successfully intercepted the missile!!”

Even as Kobayashi’s celebratory voice reached her ears, Mikoto’s mind was far away.

She was looking at the planet.

That enormous and deep, deep blue spherical surface was floating in the dark. She could see the Y-shaped continent that differed so much from Earth. Everything felt free and equal up here, yet it also forced her to recognize that the world was finite.

Why were they doing this?

Who was devouring the limited planet?

She sighed softly.

“Railgun 01 to Izanagi and Izanami crew. How was that?”

After a short delay, a cheer burst from the radio. It reminded her of the scenes on the news after a rocket launch.

She had proven it was possible.

It would depend on the distance of course, but a ballistic missile crossing continents would take between 10 and 20 minutes from launch to impact.

So as long as they had a way to intercept it, they had plenty of time to get a fighter up in the air after detecting the launch.

The continent’s ballistic missiles were no longer a threat.

As long as they had the railgun-equipped Shinshin and the #3 to pilot it.