The satellite's top-down view could no longer catch sight of the lone aircraft that had plunged in by itself.
But judging from the enemy's movements, the battle was clearly still raging.
Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of flying machine lifeforms had blotted out the sky.
From a distance, they looked like a dense black storm cloud.
Except this was a living storm cloud.
Now that cloud was dropping rapidly, as though it were about to slam straight into the earth.
Even though strikes from high altitude were catching up and shaving off portions of it, there were simply too many of them. As a result, the surveillance feeds from the surface, positioned more than five hundred kilometers away, showed only what looked like a rolling mass of liquid metal crashing down toward the ground.
It gave the impression that the sky itself was collapsing.
No, more accurately, that black cloud layer had split open and formed a funnel.
And the pointed bottom of that funnel was stretching toward a single target.
That target was the unusual metal fighter that had made the solo breakthrough.
As the bottom of the funnel extended farther and farther toward the surface, it became a gigantic black tornado, as if the black cloud layer were descending all the way to the earth.
In truth, that was exactly what it was: a storm formed from countless flying machine lifeforms, trying to swallow that fighter, drag it into the center of the vortex, and grind it to pieces.
Ordinarily, in a dogfight, getting tailed was the most dangerous position of all.
In that situation, attacks from the dense swarm of flying machine lifeforms behind you were far harder to evade and far more lethal.
But this fighter that had charged all the way down alone kept dropping some kind of bomb behind itself, and with every explosion, some sort of energy effect spread out and formed a protective wall.
Whenever the machine lifeforms' lasers or energy spheres entered the blast zone, their energy twisted and scattered.
And if the machine lifeforms themselves slammed into it, they melted instantly, turning into something like molten iron.
But after the fighter successfully broke through the blockade of the black cloud and shook the flying machine lifeforms off behind it, an even deadlier situation rose up before it.
It collided with the electromagnetic shield of the super-extremely giant machine lifeform. That hemispherical shield looked like an elastic balloon being poked inward by a finger, its surface caving in deeper and deeper.
As the indentation continued to deepen, the devices maintaining the electromagnetic field shield began to explode. The field flickered violently, as though it were about to collapse entirely.
At first glance, that looked favorable to the metal fighter.
In reality, the danger had only become worse.
The super-extremely giant machine lifeform, that colossal mechanical beast, unfolded countless gun barrels, as if every spike on its body had been raised at once.
As orange light flashed from the muzzles, dense beams and shells surged upward like a rainstorm in reverse, all converging on that single point.
And the moment it opened fire, the force field was deliberately shut down as well, otherwise its own attacks might have been reflected back by its defensive barrier.
In an instant, the fighter was swallowed by that overwhelming volume of fire, as if it had been vaporized outright.
At the same time, the huge numbers of flying machine lifeforms pursuing from behind were also caught in the blast and a large section of them erupted in flames.
And yet, in truth, every single one of those attacks had missed.
The reason they had missed was because the metal fighter had doubled its speed in an instant.
It was almost as though it had left an afterimage behind, and all of those attacks had simply passed straight through the afterimage and struck nothing.
After that, the observers on the ground completely lost sight of the fighter carrying the creator.
Five seconds after it vanished, they detected an unimaginable surge in energy.
In that instant, it was as if the sun itself had fallen into that stretch of ocean. A blinding radiance lit up heaven and earth more brightly than daylight.
It felt like witnessing a supernova with one's own eyes.
"Bzzzt... bzzzt..."
"Gr... calling... bzzzt... please... re...spond..."
"Observation Post A calling the escort squad. Respond!"
The ground Resistance forces kept trying to call out, but all that came back over the channel was static.
The escort squad was the combat formation observing the super-extremely giant machine lifeform from the air. Their mission had originally been to break in the instant that electronic virus field disappeared.
At first, their main task had been to continue destroying the enemy.
Now that they knew who had destroyed the super-extremely giant machine lifeform, their mission had changed to escort and rescue.
"It's no use. The electromagnetic interference is too severe."
Not only the escort squad, but the Resistance in other regions and even the bases in orbit had all lost contact.
"Judging from the scale of that energy burst, there is no question that the enemy's launch plan was successfully stopped."
"So was the price we paid worth it?"
Those words plunged everyone into silence.
Because the only one who could ignore the machine lifeforms' electronic intrusion was their creator himself, personally piloting a fighter into what amounted to a suicide strike.
And a price like that was not worth it at all.
One after another, they could only glare furiously at the fading "sun" ahead of them.
But the disappearance of that sun did not mean the scene beyond it had become visible again.
Through telescopes, it looked as though the massive explosion had thrown the magnetic field of that section of sea into total chaos and even disrupted the climate, as if heaven and earth themselves were undergoing violent upheaval.
Sea tornadoes had formed. Rain was falling. Hail was falling. Even snow had begun to fall. Thunder crashed wildly through the sky.
Large amounts of irregular lightning even spread across the sea surface and plunged into the seabed, making that entire region look as though a forest of lightning had grown out of the ocean.
"Tsunami detected. This position will be affected. We need to evacuate immediately."
And yet no one seemed to hear those words.
Even the one giving the report sounded as though she were reciting something meaningless.
Every one of them remained staring at that ocean wracked by heavenly upheaval.
"Bzzzt... Observation Post A... bzzzt... this is... bzzzt... escort squad..."
The communicator by their ears crackled again, still full of static, but this time they could at least confirm that it was the escort squad they had sent out to observe.
"Observation Post A... this is the escort squad... the launch plan of the super-extremely giant machine lifeform has been completely destroyed."
The second half of that transmission came through clearly.
"And Lord Kain?"
There was silence from the other end.
"This is Central Command. Ground forces and orbital forces are not required to conduct search-and-rescue operations. Your next mission is to continue the extermination of the super-extremely giant machine lifeform and ensure its total destruction."
That was an order transmitted from space by laser communication.
It sounded so cold-blooded it was almost chilling.
Even though everyone knew that, in a situation like that, the odds of survival were essentially zero, the commander's voice was so calm and steady, without the slightest trace of hesitation, that it made people genuinely doubt her loyalty to humanity.
Especially the ground Resistance in Area A.
They were the closest to the site, and they knew more than the Resistance units in other regions. They knew exactly who the creator was that had piloted the fighter in that suicidal attack.
Because of that, some began to suspect that the higher-ranking androids in Central Command were actually pleased by Lord Kain's death.
Because with him gone, the three beings who stood above them would be gone as well.
And that suspicion was not without reason.
The person in charge of Area A, Jackass, had taken over command after Anemone left. She knew some of the inside story, including the fact that YoRHa had long been secretly sending people to eliminate certain individuals, A2 among them.
And A2 had been the one who first discovered traces of humanity, the first android to remain at Lord Kain's side.
The more Jackass thought about it, the more plausible it seemed, until a shiver ran through her.
She even thought of an even more terrifying possibility: that the higher-ups might now move to dispose of the other creators hidden among the various units as well.
And perhaps the regional Resistance leaders, including Anemone and the others who had been taken up there, were also going to be eliminated.
No.
The identity of the sacrificed creator had to be made public.
The shocking conspiracy that might exist within Central Command had to be exposed.
(End of Chapter)
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