The Ultimate Shell
The ultimate… shell…
“What the hell is that…? It’s not rotating.”
Hermes, third sector—Residence. A Class-2 cabin.
The man peering out the window through binoculars hastily scooped up the documents from his desk. Clutching them, he burst into the corridor, sprinted down the stairs at the far end, and hammered on the basement door.
He yanked it open before any answer could come from inside. The reek of oil and iron hit him full in the face.
“Elena! That damn bridge finally stopped!”
“It’s spinning just fine, thank you. Can’t you feel the artificial gravity?”
Gary thrust the map of Hermes under the nose of Elena, who was still bent over her work, face hidden behind a welding mask. The eye-searing sparks died. Beneath the mask a pale face appeared—eyes and hair a pure gold brighter than the sparks themselves. Even the irritated scowl looked beautiful as the girl stepped forward and snatched the map away.
“What do you think you’re doing? That’s dangerous. Do you have any idea how rare this manual is? What if a spark lands on it?”
“Not us—ES-13! Every last one of the fourteen bridges linking to the second sector has shut down!”
Ship systems failing one after another was hardly good news. The excitement in his voice came from what that failure would change.
“The conditions are right here! Main system down, lower facilities completely wrecked, and the officer in charge… died half a year ago, didn’t he?”
“He was so thrilled he’d found an empty room he tried to move into a Class-1 cabin and got killed by a mutant hiding in the toilet. Useless old fart.”
“Anyway! That means Evon Square’s threat level is now Stage Three. Even civilians who aren’t military or crew can operate the security systems—just punch in the console password!”
The activation conditions for the security sequence that let each zone be locked down in an emergency. At Stage Three, almost every function was available short of completely severing the sector from the ship.
“So do you know the password?”
“That’s…”
“We were the ones who sealed the gate to Evon Square in the first place. And now you want to open it again?”
With every administrator who could have fixed the situation presumed dead, even low-clearance civilians were being granted access. Put another way: the place was that dangerous. The advance team that had once gone into the commercial district for supplies had simply vanished. All that came back were shredded scraps of bodies; no one ever learned what had torn them apart.
“It’s too dangerous. I’m against it.”
“We still have to go.”
Conditions in the residential sector were getting worse by the day. The bare minimum of supplies needed to stay alive had already run out. Food was so scarce they regularly went to bed hungry.
“The supply depot is on the opposite side of the ship. The only route is through the commercial district.”
“We’re not ready yet. Wait a little longer.”
“Elena, I don’t care that you’re the only mechanic left—this time you’re coming. Rivan ordered me to bring you.”
The old, the young, the women—no exceptions. Every survivor had to pull their weight for the group.
“Tsk. Fine, get out. Let me change.”
Elena carelessly tossed the welding rod she’d just been using at Gary’s feet, then slipped carefully past the enormous metal arm hanging from a ceiling hook so it wouldn’t drop, and disappeared into the back.
She’s a strange one, all right.
After the end came to the ship, some people had started fearing other humans more than the mutants. Even so, loving machines this much was definitely an odd temperament.
—Hurry up and get out already!
A spanner or wrench might come flying next, so Gary hastily opened the basement door. Just before climbing the stairs he glanced back and muttered,
“How the hell does she plan to fix that thing…?”
“Not ready yet” could only mean one thing. What Elena had been working on until a moment ago was a humanoid weapon left behind long ago by the soldiers once stationed here.
We kept moving along the bridge.
Drifting in zero-g barely drained any power; it was surprisingly comfortable. No mutants came lunging at us. Large obstacles we simply avoided; the small ones we could shrug off with the hull.
Every so often, though, Sera’s worried voice would slip out.
“Jin, does it hurt?”
“The outer shell has no pain receptors, so I’m fine.”
If I had to compare it to anything, it felt like being pelted with tiny hailstones. Minor damage was accumulating on the frame, but the number was unavoidable.
“Then… there are nerves on the inside?”
I could feel her fingers wriggling, but whether that counted as nerves was hard to say. All five senses were different from a human’s now. I was simultaneously watching a shredded power distributor approaching from the front and Sera’s bangs inside the suit. Normally I could smell the outside and the inside separately, but right now that didn’t matter. Even those senses seemed to have shifted a little from human norms.
Even now—perhaps she was tense because I hadn’t answered—when I brushed away the faint beads of sweat that had formed on the nape of her neck, a sweet scent rose. Strange. You didn’t usually get that kind of sweetness from a person.
“Nnh… Jin?”
“Sera, more importantly, I have something to tell you. It’s bad news.”
Explaining wouldn’t change anything, so I moved on to the more important matter: the message that had appeared on the status window when I woke up inside the trash chute.
Discharge Limit Exceeded
Remaining power was consumed until it fell below 1 %, inflicting fatal damage on the core.
Every 24 hours the unit will enter a forced shutdown state for 2 hours.
※ Caution: Avoid excessive power consumption. Severe operational strain may result.
“From now on I will intermittently cease activity once a day.”
“Again?”
“Pardon?”
“Ah—nothing.”
In short, my consciousness would cut out and I would fall “asleep,” just like before. Fortunately, a few functions—oxygen generation among them—seemed to keep running the way breathing does even when you’re unconscious. There was no way to fix it for the time being. Still, two hours a day wasn’t enough to cripple our operations; as long as we avoided truly urgent situations we would be fine for now.
“I’ll give you advance warning before I shut down.”
“Yes… understood.”
Perhaps the thought of being unable to use the suit on this dangerous ship was too vivid; Sera nodded in a tiny voice. The temperature of both her cheeks and her forehead rose by roughly 0.3 degrees in an instant.
Evon Square.
The vast commercial district named after Evon Stranoff—supreme commander of Hermes and a member of the imperial family. We had ducked into trash chutes to rest along the way, yet the journey alone had still taken more than thirty solid hours.
The city that greeted us after that long ordeal was overwhelming.
Holy shit…
Dense clusters of buildings and roads built beneath the enormous cavity stretched all the way to the curved horizon. A few of the structures that connected to other bridges even touched the ceiling. Plenty of vehicles had burned down to skeletons, plenty of buildings were broken or bent, yet there still looked to be no shortage of places a person could hide. Emergency power was running, so the whole area wasn’t pitch-black—another major plus.
“Why didn’t you live here, Sera? The environment looks far better.”
“I never had the leisure to comb every single building for a place with working climate control. Just hauling supplies back and forth by myself was already a full-time job.”
Apparently she had repeatedly loaded herself with oxygen tanks charged at the airlock, thrown them into trash collection bins, and trudged back—like a Himalayan climber opening a route. She had barely managed the round trip; thorough exploration had been out of the question.
Of course, with me here that kind of hardship was over.
“Now that we know how dangerous the bridge is, going back will be hard.”
“We don’t have to go back.”
She seemed reluctant to leave her familiar hideout, but I truly hated that airlock. Narrow, filthy, water dripping everywhere, damp. Walls and floor pure white, no windows—it felt like a sensory-deprivation chamber. Contrary to my first expectations we had found a new shelter almost immediately, but so what? Any of these countless buildings would be better than that place.
“Where’s the destination?”
“There’s a workshop whose safety I’ve already confirmed. We need a few things there anyway, so let’s head there.”
Supplies. The word made the countless shops lining the streets leap into focus. A ground-floor building with shattered glass that looked like it had sold stationery caught my eye.
“Let’s grab art supplies too.”
“Were you serious about that?”
“This unit does not lie. Improvement of drawing skill guarantees the survival of Second Lieutenant Sera Robini.”
“Speaking that stiffly on purpose doesn’t make it more convincing.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. If she kept being unable to draw the way she was now, serious problems could arise later. The moment the Evolution Algorithm brought up the “painting education program” again, it would eat one of our important choices.
“Lowering evaluation of Second Lieutenant Sera Robini’s artistry.”
“Lowering evaluation of Second Lieutenant Sera Robini’s tenacity.”
“Lowering evaluation of Second Lieutenant Sera Robini’s self-objectivity.”
“Aaaah! I understand! I’ll take them, so please be quiet!”
Fortunately, a message-paste job that rivaled Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Enter splendidly achieved the objective.
“Honestly… we’re not elementary school children. What is this…”
Sera, sketchbook and colored pencils in hand, looked faintly humiliated, but the moment we reached the front of the workshop her expression brightened again.
“Finally…! We should rest first.”
The place was hangar-sized rather than an ordinary maintenance bay, yet the interior was ordinary enough. Broken machines sat gathering dust; it didn’t look particularly safe or good for hiding. More importantly, filling a space this huge with oxygen would drain power all over again.
Sensing my concern, Sera smiled a little and said,
“No need to worry. It’s certainly a bit unsuitable as a permanent hideout, but this is the largest workshop in all of Evon Square. Everything from small firearms to hull-repair shuttles ends up here when it breaks!”
“——.”
I was still admiring the first truly beautiful smile I had ever seen from her when she rounded the corner with light steps and thrust her arm forward.
“And among them is this! Jin, you’re going to love it—look!”
At the tip of her pointing finger stood a solitary rectangular structure that looked exactly like a pure-white shipping container.
“A brand-new airlock!”
For the first time since becoming a combat suit, I felt genuine vertigo.