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Revision as of 01:00, 14 October 2011
Chapter 8
Part 1
A craft 80 centimeters long and 50 centimeters wide including the very ends of the main wings was bringing destruction to Academy City. It had the same basic form as the kind of toy with a battery and motor inside that gained propulsion from a propeller. Normally, it was controlled remotely, but if the signal weakened, it could continue flying automatically according to a program.
It was a small UAV.
It held the detonation signal for the Solntse hydrogen bomb and would mercilessly detonate the bomb Anti-Skill had recovered once it entered Academy City airspace.
Someone had sent it out.
It was as if the grim reaper had folded a love letter into a paper airplane and thrown it toward Academy City.
Mikoto pulled out her cell phone.
Before, she had been unable to contact Academy City. It was likely the situation had not improved, but she refused to give up on that hope.
Lessar was (reluctantly) applying first aid to Caliche and the others from her organization. Mikoto darted through a narrow employee corridor, heading to a floor where she thought she would get a better signal.
She opened up her address book, highlighted Shirai Kuroko’s number, and hit the call button.
She had to get her message across as soon as possible.
If they were satisfied with only having successfully intercepted the old fighters over the Sea of Japan, they would be unable to stop the slowly approaching UAV.
If that happened, it was all over.
Academy City would disappear in a flash of light.
(Answer, answer, answer. Just answer already!!)
The ringing continued.
The confusion must have been continuing on the other end as well. Mikoto doubted they would actually announce that a hydrogen bomb was approaching, but the back and forth over the emergency lines could possibly overload the communications network. She had to get her information across before that happened.
She knew she had to, but…
She had to get it across no matter what, but…
No matter how many times she tried, her phone would not connect to anyone outside the shopping mall.
“Dammit!!” cursed Mikoto.
She hit the call button again, but it just would not connect. She was not even switched over to the message center.
A bad feeling built up in her chest and she gave up on trying to make a call. Instead, she started typing out an email with her thumb. Right after she hit the send button, she got an email in response. It was simply too quick. She checked her inbox and found a new message with a cold subject saying her email had failed to send.
(But I managed to connect with that Lancis girl before!! Is it just outside this city I can’t connect to!?)
Mikoto’s power could be used over a network. However, she failed even when she tried to forcibly open the line. It was either cut off with some kind of special method or the connector was physically removed.
Then, Lessar opened the door coming from the employee corridor and headed toward her.
“How goes it?”
“Not well.”
Mikoto explained what had just happened. As usual, Lessar’s expression clouded over a bit.
“We have no way of knowing if the Solntse’s detonator has been dismantled yet or not. Academy City has no idea this UAV is headed there. …With the way things are, can they really avoid this danger?”
“It’ll be difficult. I’m sure they will remain on guard for the time being, but it will only be on the level of seeing if any remnants of that group are still inside Academy City. They won’t suspect that there is still a chance of the Solntse detonating now that they have determined it to be safely recovered.”
“So what will we do?”
Mikoto lightly shook her cell phone in response to Lessar’s question.
“We find the person that’s keeping me from using this. Whoever it is has to still be hiding in the shopping mall. First, we need to find them from the method and route used to block the signal. …And if they’re the person behind all this, they might have a means of getting a detailed location of the UAV. If I can get that information to Kuroko, the odds of successfully intercepting it will go way up.”
“Caliche I Niknosh did not seem to have any more allies,” Lessar said as she thought. “Should we hit her some more to see if anything more turns up?”
“With as much blood as she’s lost, anything else is likely to stop her heart. If we aren’t likely going to get any information, it’s just a waste of time.”
(Well, the blocking of the signal is not the kind of method I would expect from Caliche anyway.)
“?”
Mikoto looked puzzled, but she had no time to think about anything else.
She focused and turned her power toward the cell phone.
“Where are you going to check first?”
“The transmission network from the shopping mall to Academy City. I’m rechecking the path data from this phone takes as it heads to its destination. There has to be an opening a third party is using to cut in and interfere.”
As she responded, Mikoto manipulated the internal workings of the cell phone directly using her power to manipulate electricity, but she was very uneasy.
They were at the climax. Whatever she did, she had no time. If some new giant and dangerous secret organization showed up, it was highly likely she would not be able to deal with it. She had to pray that the enemy was on a size where she could manage to take it out before the UAV arrived at Academy City from Tokyo Bay.
As she thought that, Mikoto suddenly frowned.
“What is it?”
“I’m checking how the data from my phone heads to Academy City, but it seems that all phone data in the shopping mall gathers in one place before being sent outside.”
That in and of itself was not too unusual.
In an area that dealt with information with a certain level of value, phone lines did not just stretch all around like a spider web. All the data would be gathered together in a giant server and checked in real time before being sent out. Essentially, a checking station was set up.
There did seem to be isolated servers like the one for credit card information in the casino, but the main pipeline out seemed to be cut off due to the emergency situation.
It was a bit different than she had expected, but now the issue was just where the checking station for phone and email was located.
Mikoto continued to look confused and spoke to Lessar.
“It’s in the main computer of the stock market center. In other words…”
“The center of Code EIC?”
That computer had been set up on the pretext of gathering stock data from around the world and processing it all at high speed. In secret, Code EIC sent out information to various types of media both mass and local in order to freely manipulate the people within the shopping mall. In either case, it was not too strange for it to act as a relay point for cell phone data.
However, the timing was odd.
Code EIC has already been suppressed and had no one controlling it and yet it was blocking transmissions that would inform Academy City of the danger.
Mikoto thought for a bit on what that meant, but her thoughts were cut off by Lessar.
Technically, it was by a noise coming from Lessar’s clothes.
She forced her hand down through the collar of her lacrosse uniform-like shirt.
“Oh, it seems I have my hands full with transmissions, too.”
“…Isn’t it a bit much to stick it there with that outfit?”
“Heh heh heh. They may not look it, but mine are big enough to hold something between them.”
“Shut up,” Mikoto snapped back.
At the same time, Lessar pulled her wireless device out.
But…
“Um…Why are you holding that piece of cardboard like it’s a cell phone?”
“There’s no need for you to know.”
Lessar made no attempt to explain why she looked so victorious.
“Hello, hello. Is this Bayloupe?”
“Yes. I’m currently on the roof of the grand hotel.”
Mikoto looked shocked. The cardboard vibrated and produced a human voice.
(??? Is that a cell phone made from some new material…?)
She thought it must be ecological, but she also thought it would be unsuitable for normal life. It seemed the corner would start peeling up if you messed with it.
“How are things at the hotel?”
“In regards to the rioting? Things are relatively calm here. It seems the shopping facility was the worst, but everyone has just been staring in disbelief ever since that strange giant wheel was rampaging around,” the girl who seemed to be named Bayloupe then changed the subject. “Can you see it from there?”
“See what?”
“One portion of the airport on the edge of the city just opened up. If it isn’t a pitfall for an elephant, it has to be a launch facility for a rocket or a missile.”
Mikoto and Lessar exchanged glances.
“A missile…? It isn’t related to the Solntse, is it?”
“If they could use multiple hydrogen bombs, they would have actually put them on the old fighters, don’t you think? They went out of their way to reuse the hydrogen bomb that they have no idea how far Academy City has dismantled, so they presumably only have one Solntse.”
“Which means…”
“A rocket?”
Mikoto thought for a bit.
What reason was there to launch a rocket that had not been turned into a weapon…?
“We still haven’t found whoever is truly behind this plan.”
“Then are you saying whoever it is has been cornered and is trying to escape using the rocket?” Lessar said with a puzzled look. “But what would they do even if they made it into space? Even if they managed to escape our reach, a spaceship that cannot resupply from a space station or something can only stay up there for a few days. And its expected landing spot can be calculated from the surface. In fact, a ballistic missile with a normal warhead could shoot it down. That method of escape is nothing more than cornering oneself further.”
“They would just have to never come back down to the earth,” said the girl who seemed to be called Bayloupe. “If whoever is behind this does not need supplies, that doesn’t matter.”
“I see,” Mikoto said cutting in. She politely matched the other two by speaking in British English. “So someone is acting in secret to make us think Code EIC is behind this.”
“They’re afraid of taking the blame themselves, so they’re making it look like it was all caused by an out of control computer. But there is a danger of their interference being detected if the computer is thoroughly investigated, so they’re having the computer escape the solar system so it cannot be investigated.”
“But isn’t the plan stored in the offline storage…?”
“I’m sure they’ve thought of that. They could have added some unnatural parts to the records to make it look like the records are just fakes Code EIC made to manipulate people.”
“Which means,” said Mikoto confidently, “whoever is truly behind all this is currently making preparations in the launch pad’s control room. If we capture whoever it is and get the whole story from them, we can wrap this whole incident up.”
