Chapter 46: Do you want the moon?
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
The mental energy that tore through the resistance made Heinrich’s eyes glow red as he fought off the Mayen Zerg’s attack as best he could, but Blizzard’s trajectory still twisted out of control.
A light energy cannon blasted away the iron-clad Zerg that was trying to drive its steel-like legs into Blizzard’s abdomen, and LK809 accelerated towards Blizzard.
“LK809, stop approaching and maintain a distance of ten kilometers from the Mayen Zerg!” Heinrich’s voice stiffened.
They reached thirty-two kilometers.
The Mayen Zerg moved slowly and was slowly approaching Blizzard, which was up in the air. It opened its mouth on the back of its uneven armor, its sharp teeth lined up in three layers, and the acid in its cavity was boiling.
The Zerg killed by Blizzard fell into his huge mouth and was instantly corroded.
“Marshal!”
Heinrich heard Lin Xu’s shout in the midst of his dizziness, drops of sweat rolled down the side of his forehead, “Lin Xu…I’m here, don’t worry…”
“Heinrich Chu!” Lin Xu pressed the seat tighter, his expression cold and urgent, “Turn on double piloting privileges!”
“No, no…”
Mayen Zerg’s mental attacks were difficult, and he didn’t want Lin Xu to have to suffer.
Lin Xu saw that bargaining was ineffective, coldly reached straight up and pulled down the right pilot’s mental manipulation helmet. The AI mechanically reminded, “No permission, please confirm permission for Blizzard pilot Marshal Heinrich Chu.”
Blizzard was falling, and Heinrich’s forehead was tense with veins as he tried to raise the mecha with the joystick. Lin Xu’s gaze sank, flipping out the program modifier he had been hiding to change the AI commands, and forcing access to the mental manipulation system despite Heinrich’s murmurs.
Swish… The vision in Lin Xu’s mind went blank instantly.
“Blizzard’s mental manipulation system has been accessed, welcome, Mr. Lin Xu.” The tone was gentle as water, but the Mayen Zerg’s mental attack pierced his brain like a sharp knife. With it came a tidal wave of broken images that belonged to Heinrich’s memories. Lin Xu controlled the blocking of his mental domain to keep his memories from interfering with Heinrich as much as possible, and called out, “Marshal, I’m with you, please confirm.”
In the era of mecha piloting through the mental energy manipulation system, the number of mecha masters was extremely rare, not only because it took two pilots with extremely high levels of mental energy to process the vast amount of information, but also because the mental domains of the two pilots would be empathically linked during the manipulation.
Only very tacit and cooperative drivers were able to complete the common-sense connection. In this state, they were even able to see each other’s past memories in their minds. Such memories, if not properly controlled, could overwhelm the consciousness of the co-linked party.
The driver also needed to ensure a very high level of concentration, focusing all of his or her spirit on the mecha battle. The initial white light from the connection gradually dissipates, and the special vision brought to mind by the mecha’s multiple sensors emerged.
Heinrich felt the mecha being slowly lifted under Lin Xu’s manipulation, and Mayen Zerg let out an all-day roar as he watched the enemies fleeing the impending entrance. He felt Lin Xu’s ears ring as the sound waves impacted Blizzard. Lin Xu’s heartbeat was steady, smoothly excited, his brain equally active, but his mental domain tight and solid.
The invisible wall blocked Mayen Zerg’s insistent mental energy attacks, and fragments of Heinrich’s occasional flashes of memory crashed into that wall. Lin Xu said, “Marshal, go back to your mind.”
No, he didn’t speak again, and Heinrich picked up the message from Lin Xu in real time in the mental domain. Heinrich closed his eyes hard, and when he opened them again, he maneuvered Blizzard into a sharp turn, swooping low and firing light energy cannons into the Mayen Zerg’s yet-to-be-closed mouthpiece.
The brilliant light exploded low in the sky as Lin Xu once again cooperated in lifting Blizzard to avoid the corrosive liquid. Blizzard accelerated forward.
Lin Xu became familiar with the special vision of mecha Blizzard, and began to cooperate with Heinrich to carry out weapon strikes. In the state of common-sense, they did not need to communicate, and all thoughts were already known to each other, as if they were sharing a brain. But it wasn’t everything.
In the apocalypse, mental energy training and psychic manipulation were closely linked, and Lin Xu’s telekinesis actually counted as a remote side branch of psychic power. Years of practice under the guidance of a pure psychic ability user had given him excellent control over his mental domain state.
Lin Xu’s memory fragments were carefully concealed, but inevitably some flashbacks were leaked when he was thinking about it. For instance, the moment was recalled for a split second and the apocalypse base flashed by in a blink. Heinrich perceived the cold gray scenery between a shake, and a clear flash of an item with a marker in his very fragmented memory fragment that was controlled. This startled Lin Xu for a moment, and Blizzard shook. Why had Heinrich met the base marker?! A tide of surprise lapped against the high wall, and Heinrich was acutely aware of some of it, “Lin Xu?”
“It’s okay. Keep moving, we’re almost there.” Ten kilometers to go.
LK809 had stopped advancing thirty kilometers away, scarred by the massive Zerg siege. Confirming that Blizzard was gradually approaching the coordinates of the black hole, LK809 fired long-range shells to kill the Zerg chasing after it.
The distance of ten kilometers was almost instantaneous for Blizzard, and even though it was surrounded by a large number of Zerg, the advance was smooth with the synergy of the two pilots.
“Drop program is on, about to drop.” The AI said. Blizzard crossed the black hole like a silver sword, and the edge of the black hole emitted golden light, from which countless Zerg climbed and hissed at Blizzard.
“Drop.”
The shuttle dropped and the Zerg leapt up to scramble for this creation from humanity, sharp claws and teeth piercing the metal shell.
“Ultra-high energy particle cluster shot activated.”
The approaching Zerg dissolved into smoke almost instantly, the shuttle revealing itself as a rolling red.
“Explosion is about to begin, please keep personnel away, five.”
Lin Xu adjusted the direction of Blizzard, and Heinrich turned on the highest acceleration mode.
“Four.”
Dazzling blue light ejected from the thrusters, Zerg trying to grab the mecha’s instantly vaporized by the high temperature. The explosion unfolded at the foot of Blizzard, sound and light in the black hole of the mutation at times, chaotic and unusual.
“Three.”
An A-Class Zerg with its sturdy armor survived the high-temperature tail flame and bit Blizzard’s right leg. Blizzard’s rising movement paused for a moment.
A lightsaber cut off the right calf without delay, and Blizzard relied on its right knee thruster to continue its ascent.
“Two.”
But the blast wave caught up. Heinrich increased his speed to maximum. The ash mushroom cloud still pursued to engulf the Zerg and Blizzard together.
“One.”
The terrifying sound wave made the earth tremble and heave. Blizzard’s power systems were damaged to the tune of sixty-three percent, its braking systems disrupted by the intense radiation and heat. The AI sounded a confused alarm, “Warning, warning, mecha out of balance, landing impact above protection level, warning! Warning! Braking system failure, unable to correct!”
“Lin Xu! Eject lifeboat!”
This time, Heinrich shouted in the real world towards Lin Xu. Bang, bang-
The two escape pods shot out, leaping first into the air and trailing meteor-like flames as they fell into the atmosphere again.
—
Heinrich was awakened by the freezing cold.
As he regained consciousness and awareness, pain shot through his chest, and he opened his eyes with difficulty to see the large, cold white satellite hanging overhead, with Lin Xu sitting on one side, illuminated by the warm light of the fire. Lin Xu glanced at him and continued to fiddle with the fire, only to remember after a few seconds that they were out of co-connection and had to rely on words in order to communicate.
“Awake?”
Heinrich found himself lying in a sand pit that had fallen with ashes from the burning material, the sand still steaming. Lin Xu had warmed the sand pit by burning a fire with useless fabric from the lifeboat before the sun went down, and the sand would hold the heat for a while, but the icy night air still froze Heinrich awake. Heinrich was about to get up when he heard Lin Xu say, “You’ve got three broken ribs, so you’d better stay put.”
Lin Xu stood up and walked to one of the two liferafts. Heinrich remembered seeing the two liferafts falling apart before he passed out, quite a distance apart, and wondered how Lin Xu had dragged the bulky liferafts here… He walked with a limp, Lin Xu’s unceremonious chopping off of Blizzard’s right leg still left mental phantom pain. Lin Xu fished out the emergency nutrient solution from the lifeboat and gave it to Heinrich, “Drink it quickly, the liquid will freeze in a moment.”
Nutritional fluid had a certain repair effect, coupled with Heinrich’s special physique, broken ribs did not affect him much, and presumably he would be able to move normally at dawn.
“How did you access the double mental energy link?” The first moment memories flooded into his mind, Heinrich immediately thought of this question.
“Ika gave me the program modifier, which can pass most electronic devices…” Lin Xu said but inclined his head to dry heave a few times, he felt his stomach flip unpleasantly at the smell of the emergency nutrient solution.
“Are you okay?” Heinrich immediately stopped his previous question, but just as he asked it, he regretted it. How could Lin Xu be okay in his current state?
Lin Xu waved his hand to indicate that he was fine, and he sat down a little to the side, right on the sand at Heinrich’s shoulder side, a white combat suit already soiled with dust and long hair draped softly over his shoulders.
After calming his retching, Lin Xu rubbed his cold cheeks, half of his face lit orange-red by the fireworks, the other half glowing in the moonlight.
“The two-way communication system is broken.” Lin Xu looked at the rolling sand dunes at the edge of the sky, not wanting to talk about his discomfort, “I turned on the one-way signal transmitter.”
“Mmm. Reinforcements from the Golden Cross defense line should have arrived at the Silver Fortress, the Zerg source is cut off, all that’s left is the cleanup, it will reach the planet soon.” Heinrich added, “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.” When Lin Xu turned his head to look at him, he would look against the fire and moonlight, disappearing into darkness and blur, but with a faint glow reflected in his eyes. The two fell into silence, the desert wind whistled and blew through, the moonlight seemed to drop a thin layer of snow on the desert, a fine light shimmering between the particles, and like a sea wave under the moon.
“Lin Xu, humans… Do ancient Earth humans liked that moon belonging to ancient Earth very much?” Heinrich looked at Lin Xu, who was gathered in the moonlight, as if to melt into one.
“Yes, the moon was the brightest object in the night, carrying fantasy and poetry.” Lin Xu replied, “Mankind cannot let go of the childhood memories of this community, otherwise it would not have established the Crescent District in the Einstein Galaxy, thousands of light years away, after smashing the moon.”
Imperial history records that the Ark fleet yawed while fleeing Earth and crashed into one of the moon’s edges.
“Three months ago, Abyss Fleet’s probe made preliminary observations of the moon, she recovered some under the effect of rotation, but the gap did not disappear completely,” Heinrich said, adding that the scattered lunar blocks formed a ring of meteorites around the Earth, and the expedition included experts in astromorphology. This trip will grab meteorites for analysis… Do you want a piece of the moon?”
Heinrich’s golden eyes matured and composed under the silver glow, his cold, hard and sharp features remained the same, but with more sincerity. He looked at Lin Xu as if he would pluck the moon and give it to him as soon as Lin Xu nodded.
Lin Xu did not know how to reply, did not accept or reject, Heinrich was not in a hurry, quietly waiting for everything. He stared at the moon-like satellite again, and the Earth made him suddenly think of something, “Where have you seen this symbol before?”
Lin Xu drew the symbol from the memory fragment with his finger on the sand beside him – a square in a long vertical rhombus, the four vertices of the square against the four sides of the rhombus, and a circle falling into the square.
The moon was like water, but the sharp-edged geometric pattern was like cold, hard steel, revealing the morbidity of civilization. This was the symbol of the apocalypse’s East Region’s main base.
The author has something to say.
The double mecha setting is in reference to Pacific Rim. But not exactly the same, Imperial mecha technology is a little more advanced?
This Title is available for faster chapter releases through paid Patreon membership. Any proceeds go to keeping the website running. Check it out HERE.
