An alarm didn't pierce the quiet like shattering glass, nor did the bed shake. Since Sōfu-iwa was a place with neither glass nor beds, the trackers' attack plan differed considerably from the one back at Idaho.
"Terra-san! Kanna! Get up! Now!"
Terra and Diode simultaneously woke up and threw on the lights the moment they heard yelling. Naturally, since voices didn't carry between pits, it had to have come from the communication system. Rock broke in over the comms again.
"Run, the trackers are here! Get over to your boat!"
"R-really?!"
Terra fumbled for her quickmask, but it wasn't there. She reached for her shotgun next, but it wasn't there either. She started to panic. Diode gave her pit a hard kick.
"Wake up, Terra-san. Rock! Where are they? Above or below us?!"
"Above you. They're rappelling down from the observatory. It's the usual bunch of tightsuits. We're boarded up in the supply room, so we'll be fine as long as they don't blast the top off Sōfu-iwa. We'll be okay. But don't worry about us, you two are the targets. Get moving already!"
"You're okay with us just abandoning you here?"
"When did you become such a saint?" Rock sneered. Then, in a somewhat gentler tone, she said, "Well, I'm happy to hear that. Come visit another time."
"...If the wind carries us here," Diode said bluntly. Then, she yelled at Terra rudely, "What are you smiling about? We're supposed to be fleeing! Escaping!"
Terra had received a message from Linia on her minicell. When she looked at it, she saw the passcode for in-board cable communications, probably to help them escape. There was a memo attached: "Please take great care of Kanna-san." She wondered if Diode and Linia also had a history.
"Thank you, Linia-san. Ma'am, keep well!"
The two leaped out of their rooms and began running downstairs. But at the landing Diode, who was leading Terra, abruptly stopped.
Turning around, she murmured, "I figured out their little trick. I'm certain they won't treat us like amateurs and underestimate us again. If they've announced their presence above us, they must have already set a trap at the lower exit. Let's go back."
"Wouldn't we just be running straight into their hands?"
"Yes. That's why we'll take a different route."
That route was the dust chute. Once inside the shaft Diode used to watch the trash fall from as a kid, which connected to every pit on the way up—
"D-Die-san, this is really scary..."
"Please just look up. Just focus on my butt!"
—the two ascended like slime backwashing up a drain.
The dust chute went through the whole ship, up to the telescope room on the top floor. The two thankfully didn't find any threats when they climbed out. When Terra quietly looked down from the observatory window, she accidentally let out a chuckle that was completely disconnected from their situation.
"I thought this when we first got here, but that besshu-shaped streamer is kinda cute."
"That's the Gendos' national flag."
"What's a national flag?"
"Who knows? It's a mysterious tradition. Maybe leaving it up tricks them into thinking she's loyal."
"But aren't the trackers here anyway? I guess its usefulness wore out, then..." As she looked down at the streamer, she caught sight of a small armed shuttle that looked like it had just arrived flying around the lighthouse room. "Ugh... They came armed. If that's the case, I guess it means they want to take me down. Since you're the only one who's valuable to them and all."
"They won't be taking you down. Please summon the pillar boat, Terra-san."
"Will it get a signal? Wouldn't they jam it, or tap the systems maybe?"
"We'll summon it by cable. The boat's moored to the pier down there. There's probably also a control line connection, so look for it, please."
So that's the purpose of a cable connection—impressed, Terra raised the minicell implanted in her left hand and pressed it to the observatory's wall. No matter what kind of building it was, it was sure to have a communication circuit running through the walls. The walls there were also made of AMC clay, which made it possible for someone to tap into the cable communications from anywhere as long as they had the passcode.
Within ten seconds, her minicell located the pillar boat being kept below.
"Alright, I've got it on the line. Come up here!"
The boating system could respond to assigned tasks as long as they were simple. The pillar boat, which had been moored as a sphere to reduce crosswinds while it remained on station, slowly began to rise on its jets. Then another aircraft, a shuttle, approached from below. The trackers had prepared an ambush, just like Diode said.
"We don't have the luxury of boarding normally, Terra-san. We're going to have to jump!"
"Whaaat?! Aren't you scared of falling?!"
"It's better than getting caught."
The two smashed out the observatory window and jumped, aiming for their boat as it hovered beside the Tsunami Search. Since they were inside bubble-like pits, they weren't worried about suffocating in the hydrogen and methane atmosphere.
If they slipped and fell, though, that was that. As they fell through the skies under a 2G acceleration, Terra worried she wouldn't make it out alive.
"AIEEE...!"
She felt the soft landing and the familiar interior of the pillar boat surround her at the exact same time. She sighed, relieved.
They shed their bubble pits for the control pits. While Terra was still in the process of making her way through the slimy tunnel, she saw only a single lit point on her cockpit's VUI before a sharp command issued from it.
"Cockpit, lift up! Runaway!"
Just like that, the pillar boat massively accelerated, causing Terra's pit to tumble all the way aft of the boat. As the boat started climbing, its jet plume singed the rock tower Rock and Linia had barricaded themselves in.
"Diiieee-saaan!"
"Quick! Give the lift up command to the rear pit!"
The jets were at full throttle, running without any vector tweaks or power reallocation. As a result, the nozzle configuration blasted out huge plumes which spread around them, cueing them into the resulting thrust vector. The two quickly began flying in the opposite direction. Diode quickly opened and set virtual throttle panels on her left and right and started adjusting each nozzle—or so it seemed, until she brought every throttle panel in reach to her right and killed the power to all of them. Terra was astonished.
"What are–"
Terra acted on reflex to avoid an emergency. Before she could even think of curling into a ball and screaming, she had to live up to the name Terra Tell-Tale and decompress without wavering first. In an instant, she flattened the boat, which had started yawing to the right due to the idle jets.
At that moment, a cloud of sparks shot past them with almost no room to spare.
"They're actually shooting."
Diode frowned. Terra once again used her imagination to grasp the entirety of the boat and began stretching it into a shape with high speed and maneuverability. However, something rolling around inside the ship was obstructing her—the previous day's besshu catch still seemed to be alive, and it wasn't allowing her to change the boat's form. Even though she wanted to point the squid in the direction of flight, it insisted on rolling sideways.
Terra gave up and made due with a shape that wasn't fully flat, resembling the rays of the shallow ocean world Centomica.
She pulled up the multi-frequency fish scanner VUI and assessed the situation behind them. In the night-vision footage, Sōfu-iwa was already a speck in the distance. A single rhombic shape stood out —the deep black muzzle of an armed shuttle aimed right at them. By the time Terra noticed it was glowing, they had already dodged the shot. Diode was scowling at the projection of the scene behind them. She dodged the two follow-up shots with an agile maneuver, hoping to use the moment to break the pursuit. It failed, and their pursuers followed.
The two took stock of the trackers. It took a few seconds between shots, so they were probably using physical bullets instead of laser or particle guns. It was impossible to tell how much firepower they had, but judging from the barrel's caliber, it wasn't enough to sink them in one shot. At most, it might break a nozzle or shave off some clay. That suggested their plan was to make contact once the pillar boat stalled and began to sink.
Terra and Diode were at a disadvantage when it came to maneuverability. They were in a big fishing boat, and no matter how capable a decompa might be at shapeshifting, there was nothing that could change that fact. While their boat had the thrust to give them an advantage in straight-line high-speed flight, they couldn't fly at full power in the dirty atmosphere. Their only choice was to keep evading their pursuers as long as possible.
"Let's put out a mayday signal. The Gendo are unreasonable, but at least half of the other clans should be willing to help us."
"Will the signal get through considering an E-storm just happened?"
"Hm? Aaargh, this microwave belt weather is awful! Why did it have to be now...?!"
"That's precisely why they decided to attack now, no?"
The dust suspended in the atmosphere didn't just degrade the flight conditions, but communications, too. That was probably what prompted their attack; the poor connection would allow them to abduct Diode without anyone noticing.
"We really are at a disadvantage with all this." Steeling herself, Terra continued, "I'm going to make a hard shield behind us."
"Wait, it's too late for that. Check this out instead." Interrupting Terra, Diode sent one of her VUI panels to the back pit. Terra looked and nodded. It was a file she'd made the day before—their fishing strategy for black-veined squid. "The school's an obstacle. Let's blend with them."
"Nice idea! I do feel bad for the besshu, though..."
The pillar boat turned sharply and plunged into a thick, majestic cloud wall in the Left Eyeball.
Black-veined squid are large-class besshu. Even the smallest ones measure fifteen meters in length, and some grow up to sixty meters long. The squid are shaped like fishing sinkers. As they pump their innumerable, muscular tentacles in flight, the eyeball located at their pointy end darts around. Although they are besshu in the same size class as bachi orca and were both named after creatures they resembled from the Anno Domini era, they differ in two major ways. The first is that the squids' mouths are in the back, not the front.
The second is that the squid don't swim much laterally. They swim vertically instead. Like a cartesian devil, they float and sink from the altocumulus clouds at eighty kilometers above sea level down into the middle layers one hundred kilometers below sea level. To the Circs' knowledge, the squid weren't intelligent, but their vertical swimming required an entirely different fishing technique.
Then the pillar boat, for the second time, and the enemy boat, for the first time, headed towards the black-veined squid habitat. They leapt straight in as they broke through the clouds.
The sky was almost pitch black as blue-black rain fell across the whole area. For a moment, everything lit up as lightning flashed. Tens of sinker-shaped figures as far as the eye could see, their sizes easily rivaling a spaceship big and small alike, stood completely still as if frozen to the sky. It was a spectacular view.
Terra screamed in delight. "Woah! Doesn't it look like there are more of them now?"
"It does. I wonder if they take shelter in this area. Mm!"
Diode focused her eyes on the darkness and quickly rolled the boat. A moment later, something big and heavy brushed against them. Once again, lightning flashed, and the besshu they had seen earlier were now at different altitudes. The two suddenly realized that in reality the besshu were moving. Their apparent stillness had been an afterimage.
"How does it look behind us?"
"They're coming–"
High speed, poor vision, and obstacles. Diode had to keep her full focus ahead of the ship to maintain her situational awareness, so Terra kept watch behind them. They're here—Whenever there was an irregular flash of light, a single figure flickered in and out of sight among the school of black-veined squid. That figure never lost sight of the two or ran into any squid. Irritating though it was, the pursuing pilot was also incredibly skilled.
"They're following us. We didn't shake them off! They have to be using something besides radar and visuals."
"Insistent, huh? Ah well, we'll have a heat signature as long as the engine keeps running..."
"That's it!"
Terra clapped her hands together and adjusted her breathing to decompress again. She opened small holes all over the thermonuclear engine.
"We've lost thrust and it's like the throttle is choking. What are you doing, Terra-san?!" Diode's shout had an uneasy edge to it.
"It's fine!" Soothingly, Terra said, "I created an intake to mix our exhaust with the cold air outside. I think it will make it harder to detect heat from behind us!"
"You can do that?"
"I'm not done yet! I thought of one more thing!"
Next, the sides of the hull started to undergo a huge transformation. The structure evoked Terra casting a net, but the shape spread into several thin bags that quickly filled with air. As they expanded, Terra closed them off using her specialty in ribs and strands. They were empty inside, but the outside was specially crafted to resemble a pillar boat. One-by-one, she separated them from the main boat as she finished them.
Diode's breath hitched as she watched the scene unfold. "Incredible..."
Terra formed four boats with the same shape around them but didn't let go. One moved like a dolphin bobbing up and down, the second spun around, the third darted left and right in a frenzy, and the fourth flew straight at squid before dodging them masterfully. All four looked just as real as the boat the two were in.
Once the decoys all looked accurate, Terra cast them away from the main boat and controlled them with a wire connection.
"CLONE FIGHT!!"
The trackers' moves had become erratic. They chased the first clone, which suddenly switched places with the third. When the trackers seemed to get a lock on the second, the fourth came rushing at them. In the midst of it all, a fifty-meter black-veined squid suddenly emerged, forcing the trackers to swiftly turn to avoid the floating obstacle.
"Ahaha! Terra-san! Terra-san!" Diode burst into unhinged laughter. "You're the best. You're seriously the best! Ahaha...!"
"Fuhehehe, I am? I am?! Bwah!" Terra had gotten a little too happy, and the third clone exploded before her eyes.
A flash of light, different from lightning, had raced up behind and blown through it. Another cloud of light followed behind it, raking across their boat. Their opponents had ditched the barrel and started using buckshot.
"Ahhh, was my trick no good...?"
"No, you're doing great, those guys are wasting their bullets. Please keep it up!"
"Okay!"
It was now a matter of life or death.
Rain and dust, lightning bolts and alien lifeforms, black and white. Spray and steam filled the air. Diode pushed her piloting skill to her limits as she flew hither and tither. The 16,000-tonne mass whirled, rolled sideways and back, and weaved amongst the squid like it was knitting them together. The OMS nozzles lined up along the hull spouted flames that flickered like fairy lights as Diode alternated between diving and climbing.
Terra kept tight control over the decoys. It was fine for them to get shot, in fact, her strategy planned for that possibility. However, the amount of clay she needed to make those fragile imitations wasn't zero, and their pursuers might get some lucky hits. She had to operate them with nothing less than her full attention. She pulled the remaining three to and fro, using them as a decoy at some times and putting them on the offensive at others. She was improvising as much as possible while maintaining their intricate dance.
That game of tag was put to a sudden end in a way they couldn't even have imagined.
The fleeing pillar boat's surroundings suddenly became nothing but an opening between several squid that slowly sank, leaking black gas. The trackers had lost their patience and started involving the squid in the conflict.
Terra frowned a little and whispered, "Squid-san, I'm sorry for getting you caught up in this."
"Hey, we really don't have much room to talk about that."
Catching squid was the reason the two had come to begin with. Although the two were just making small talk, the next thing that left their mouths was nothing less than genuine astonishment.
"Terra-san, look!"
"Huh, what?"
The squid closest to them had turned its pointed end towards the trackers and was rushing at them. The enemy boat was obviously taken by surprise but wasn't hit by the squid. They swiftly evaded it and shot. However, shooting seemed to have been a bad decision. Other squid began swarming towards the enemy boat, each racing to be the first to get there. They repeatedly rammed the shuttle from the front, rear, and sides.
"Black-veined squid can do that?! They can actually move like that?!"
"I had no idea. It's my first time seeing this, too. Maybe they got mad about being shot at."
"Why? They didn't react at all when we caught one, did they?"
Even if they couldn't comprehend why, the fact was the squids were treating the armed shuttle with unadulterated hostility. The constant barrage of violent impacts smashed the shuttle's antenna and broke its radar.
"Looks like they can't shake the squid off. Ah, are they ensnared in the squids' tentacles? Ah, ah... the gun's broken, too..."
The two slowly brought their pillar boat about and watched the shuttle being surrounded by the squid school. Terra looked anxious, so Diode whispered, "Do you want to help them?"
"...Huh?"
"You're kind, Terra-san. And because you're kind, you don't just want to abandon them, do you?"
Despite what Terra thought, Diode hadn't been teasing her with that question. She had a gentle, faintly sympathetic look in her eyes. However, in spite of that, Terra used all of her willpower to shake her head.
"No, I can't forgive the people who tried to steal you away back there. Let's leave them—who knows, they might actually have another trick up their sleeves."
"...You're trying too hard."
"What? Woah–"
The pillar boat spun sharply. The squid were coiled around the shuttle like a ball, so the boat's trajectory was aimed slightly above them.
"Trying to act tough doesn't suit you. If you feel sorry for them, just be honest and say so, please."
"Die-san–"
"Have the remaining decoys fly around the school of squid. They can use the opportunity to escape if they're lucky... Well, their gun's broken, so they'll surely need to retreat."
"...I'm sorry!"
Since another one of their decoys had been shot down, only two remained. Terra positioned the decoys to the left and right underneath the pillar boat, and the two flew extremely close to the enemy boat in that formation. One of the decoys snagged on the edge of the squid ball, slightly untangling them. Propulsion flames rapidly emerged from the gap the two opened.
"How was that?"
"It worked, but it still wasn't enough!"
"One more time, then?"
Diode once again brought the pillar boat about. Terra placed the last remaining decoy directly underneath them, then decomped again to harden and reinforce the pillar boat's bulky hull. Diode agreeing to rescue them felt crazy, so Terra, alert to the possibility of a surprise attack, was preparing to keep the girl safe from danger.
"Let's go!"
The pillar boat was on a precise trajectory. They raced towards the enemy ship, or rather, what was soon to be a shipwrecked shuttle. At that moment, before their very eyes, the entire squid school balled up their tentacles and swung.
☆☆☆☆☆☆
<What is your name? Can you say your name?>
<Terra... Intercontinental Endeavour...>
<Do you know where you are?>
<Fat Beach Ball... Inside, a cloud. There were a lot of squid... Sōfu-iwa... I smell gel.>
—Pah! Terra suddenly came back to her senses when she felt a zap run through the fingertips of her painful left hand. The doctor in her face, a woman, was asking questions.
"Do you know who I am?"
"T-the first aid avatar! Boating, end emergency stationkeeping mode! Return crew control!" Terra shouted, and the doctor nodded once before disappearing.
That virtual image, an interactive tool, appeared whenever a crew member passed out from accidents, seizures, or other health events. After it shut off, only a murky darkness remained.
Terra was dazed. She could tell she had passed out, but couldn't remember the moment itself. The impact sustained by the pit had been incredibly violent, no doubt. Her headache felt like her brain had been divided into bags and each one of them was being squeezed. Her eyes and ears felt like they were being stabbed with fingers. The pain was hydraulic, the result of her pit warping inwards from a collision.
Terra had the sense that the dark scenery outside was quickly racing upwards. Gravity also felt weak. She had the realization that both she and the boat were in the process of falling.
"Die-san! Die-saaan!"
There was no response. Terra shuddered.
What happened? Where's Diode? What about the boat? What about the trackers' ship?
There were only two reasons a pair would go missing while flying a pillar boat.
The first was that the pair had died instantly. The second was that the pillar boat had been physically split into two.
Terra was crushed by a wave of grief and nausea the moment the first reason came to mind. It was possible, since they had been flying through an obstacle-filled squid nest. Another possibility was that the trackers' ship had done something to them at the very last moment.
Sinister, repugnant thoughts that a single cubic centimeter was all that remained of Diode's existence, or that she'd been pulped into 38 liters of juice and mixed with AMC clay spilled from Terra's mind. She did her best to shut down the thoughts.
Wait, wait, before any of that...!
There were still plenty of ways to attempt contact with Diode.
She restored a multi-wavelength antenna outside the hull and tuned the radio. She broadcast a signal hailing her boat from her own boat, a signal type that would absolutely never be used under normal circumstances.
<Intercontinental to Intercontinental, please respond.>
Not even two seconds passed before a small planet icon began spinning on the VUI.
"Terra-san, Terra-san!!"
Terra felt relief from the bottom of her heart. The voice sounded urgent, but it was one Terra was familiar with. That there was a response meant that the second possibility, an accident splitting the boat in two, was what had really happened. The pillar boat had broken in half somewhere between Terra and Diode. It was a serious accident, but it could have been worse. It was at least still possible to recombine the pillar boat.
That said, she still didn't know where the boat had split, or why.
"Terra-san, are you alive?!"
"Yes, I'm alive!" Terra answered clearly. She paused before she spoke again, "I was about to cry, though! I'm uninjured and only feel a light headache. My boat is falling. Do you know what happened?"
"I'm glad you're unharmed and proud of you for not crying. As for what got us—if I had to say, it was a squid punch."
"Huh?"
"Sorry, but let's save the explanation for later. My part of the boat is fine, so I'm going to rescue you. Please open a parachute immediately. The trackers' ship fled, so don't worry about them." Diode's tone was clinical, but her anxiety peeked through.
"Ah, yeah," Terra said, calmly following Diode's instructions. Diode was just casually trying to avoid sharing info Terra probably didn't need to know right away.
The atmosphere of a gas giant might not be a bottomless pit, but it took more than a minute or two to kill a human falling into it. Terra was fairly certain they had been at an altitude of about thirty kilometers in the troposphere. If she could make full use of atmospheric drag, she could stall her descent to sea level for an hour or two. Even then, the thick middle levels of the atmosphere continued well beyond that, so she stood a very good chance of being rescued if she took the proper measures.
Terra ordered her pillar boat to use its glider form. It was one of the available presets, so the crew only needed to state their preference for the pillar boat to start changing shape.
Its wings spread gently. Terra felt a little weight return, but it was nowhere near what it was before the accident. Terra frowned as she grasped her situation. The glider didn't have enough lifting power to slow her sinking.
"It's not really stopping."
"Okay, I'm bringing up the radar—damn, that's tiny! Is it a bathtub?!"
"I know, right? I'm pretty much down to just the pit."
The optical feed displaying her surroundings looked like a fuzzy memory.
The squid were gone, and as far as she could tell, the only thing visible in the total darkness of the cloud canyon was the incessant rain of dark liquid bake. Terra was falling at a leisurely 80 km/h inside a control pit no larger than a bathtub.
"If only the clay lump had been just a little bigger—the truth is, when we were attacked by the squids' tentacles, it punched your pit in just the right way to knock it loose. Can you remember? Ah, it all happened so quickly."
"Huh?" Terra's voice rose in surprise. "Just the pit? Is that even possible?"
"Haven't there been a number of cases with where squids coiled around pillar boats and did severe damage with tentacle punches?"
"I've heard of squid damaging engines and otter boards but never aiming for the pit with that sort of precision."
"If that's the case, then still it's a mystery as to why they attacked the trackers like they did. Assuming you're right, it's possible punching the pit like that was just a coincidence. Well, forget all that, right now your clay situation is what's important."
"Yeah, you're right."
AMC clay is an incredible material used for a pillar boat's engine and fuel, as well as the manufacture of batteries, cables, wings, and pressure-resistant armor, but the refineries are only found on the base ships in orbit. Down in the atmosphere, no matter how many besshu one might catch, there's no way to convert it to clay.
The boating system threw a warning for the remaining amount of clay. Terra laughed emptily. "...Haha, I've only got about three buckets with me."
It meant the clay stuck to the pit was all that was left.
"—I'm hurrying with your rescue." Diode spoke a little faster.
They were in a bad situation.
By that point, the two were separated by about five kilometers. However, Terra and Diode couldn't see each other anymore. Not only that, their microwave and longwave infrared sensors were having trouble getting through to one another. It was increasingly difficult to determine their relative positions.
The pillar boat's core dived into a pursuit. Over the day, its clay mass had been reduced from 40,000 tonnes to a mere 13,000 tonnes. However, the real issue was its form. Terra had decomped and given the boat a wide form resembling a ray right after the pursuit began. Its airfoils provided the agility to evade the pursuing armed shuttle, but as one might guess, that specialization precluded any sort of nosedive.
The boat's shape had become central their crisis.
Diode switched between rolling the hull left and right to reduce her altitude, similar to a historical dogfighting maneuver known as the "falling leaf". However, Terra was falling nearly vertically in comparison, so Diode couldn't really catch up. It would have been preferable to decomp the boat back into a form with minimal drag, but the decompa capable of doing that was in the clouds far below.
Terra being Terra, she tested several methods to decelerate. She commanded the pit to take a glider form and a jellyfish form before attempting to craft counter-rotating wings and spinning them. She also thought of crafting a nozzle to propel herself. Rather, the nozzle had been the first thing she tried, but she stopped when the boating system flashed the clay warning. Spraying mass through the nozzles would leave none for later, for starters, but rocket thrust was also losing its efficiency as the atmospheric pressure rose. The situation just didn't allow her to follow through with rocket propulsion.
Ultimately, she opted for a parafoil, the lightest available gliding form, and molded the clay into cloth and string. Still, it only reduced her falling speed to 50 km/h. Even worse, the wind had started to downburst ferociously. The parafoil kept losing its shape, and even when she patched it, it wasn't long before it collapsed again. She couldn't figure out which direction her pit was rapidly being blown.
"Hmm, things are looking kinda... This has turned into a really complicated situation."
Terra licked her lips. The scenery outside of the two cubic meter pit swirled like a turbulent stream of mud colored in the ten darkest shades found in a painters' kit, the pit swaying incessantly as the pressure increased by the minute.
"Terra-san, could you extend an arm? A ten-milli rod should do the trick." Diode's alto voice reached Terra. She maintained her usual cool, asking with the same tone as a polite request to pass the salt.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to shoot a net at you. I'll predict when it will hit you and have the net open accordingly. So, please, just swing something around to try catching it. Anything will work."
"Got it, something you can do fly fishing with."
The signal for the shot came. Two hundred high-density sinkers on an incredibly thin cable fell straight down. The weights were set to burst open and form a net 100 meters above the pit. Terra could see them on her VUI, but when the predicted time came, they weren't in reach. They scattered and drifted away on the violent winds into the skies above instead.
Diode had shot them in the completely wrong direction, at any rate.
"That failed. I'll try again."
"Okaaay, please do."
The shot signal came again, followed by a several minute wait until the expected arrival. The HIT symbol never appeared.
A dissonant chime sounded to inform Terra that the pressure outside had reached 1 ATM, meaning she had already fallen thirty kilometers. From that moment on, the relationship between the inside of the boat and the atmosphere would be reversed. The air and gel inside the pit were no longer trying to escape and were instead being pushed inwards. That said, it still wasn't a problem at all. The pit could handle up to 50 ATM, the pillar boat 200 ATM. There wasn't a crush risk yet, and still plenty of time until there was one.
That's right—Terra kept telling herself that.
Diode spoke up, "Terra-san, have you thought of anything we could try next?"
"Um, I'm a little ashamed to ask, but would it be possible to contact Sōfu-iwa and see if your mother could come help us..."
"There's absolutely no need to feel ashamed, but yeah, the communication won't go through... We can't reach anyone, whether it's by direct line-of-sight or satellite relay."
"True. Besides, one of the shuttles stayed there, didn't it? I hope they're okay."
"Now's not the time for you to worry about others!"
"Ahaha," Diode's emphatic delivery made Terra laugh. "So, it's at least possible to climb to an altitude where radio waves can get through under your own power."
"Yes. Plus, even if we're down to just the pits, it's possible to repair the boat as long as we can make it back to orbit. So let's think of more ridiculous solutions, too."
"Ah, then... you've more or less told me already, but can you decompress, Die-san?"
"Not very well. I scored eight points on the General Imagination Concretization Exam two years ago."
Terra had scored a full 100 points on the test.
"Of course, I'll consider decomping as an option, but there's a major risk that I'll break the boat if I'm not successful in changing its shape."
"Breaking it would be really bad, yeah. Then how about you keep the flat form but put full power into the dive?"
"Truth is, that's what I'm already doing." Diode shared a VUI panel with Terra displaying a propulsion output of four giganewtons.
For the first time since the ordeal began, Terra broke into a cold sweat. That level of output while plunging through the atmosphere was not good at all. To put it in simpler terms, Diode was essentially forcing a thin plastic foam board underwater and kicking it to keep it down.
"It's a bit hard to keep control. I can't focus on anything else. I'm pretty much doing the exact opposite of decomping."
"No! Don't do that, Die-san! Stop! Reduce your thrust!"
"Why should I do that?"
"Because I'm the boat's owner!" Terra stated firmly. "Limit your thrust to one giga! I'll suspend your twister account if you don't!"
"I don't want to, not until we think of something else." Diode replied immediately. "I won't be able to keep up with you unless I keep it that high."
She had hinted at something the two didn't want to say out loud, and that was the distance between them. The exact distance would be clear from measuring the communication lag, but it was already more than 20 kilometers. Diode wasn't catching up. She was falling further behind.
There was a suffocating silence before the two started speaking with increasing passion.
"I wanted to tell you earlier, but I'm absolutely not going back by myself."
"I won't allow it. It would be the worst if both of us died, so please go back by yourself."
A violent argument on the edge of hell broke out then and there.
"Why would that be the worst? Doesn't a double suicide sound good? I'd go for a double suicide. No way I'm leaving you behind, that's impossible. I'm following you in. You're going to suspend my account? Fine! Do it, I dare you. Do it with the knowledge the boat's going to blow up if you do, okay?"
"Cut the nonsense. You need to go back and keep living. You can tell my aunt Mora, Bonus-san, and Dishcrash-san what happened if you go back to Idaho! And of course, you can meet up with your mother and Linia-san and have a proper talk with them instead of shouting at each other! And after that, you can turn a huge profit catching besshu with the boat!"
"Haah, what are you babbling about? You must be pretty upset if you're already using empty words. If you're going to suspend my account, just do it already. But before you do, let me ask—you're hiding your true feelings, aren't you? You've been saying things you don't mean just because you want me to go back alive. What do you really want?! What are your true feelings?!"
"Knock it off with the 'true feelings' talk. If we open up about that right now, we'll panic and get even further from rescue! True feelings?! That's what you care about right now?! Is this really the situation to bring that up?! You idiot! Go back! Go back!!"
"But you do have feelings, don't you?! If you don't express them now, then when will you? So you'd better start talking now. Also, I already know what those feelings are, even if you don't share them, 'kay? You always stare at me plenty, don't you? You want to catch me and squeeze me tight, just like a small animal! A small animal!! I'm right, aren't I? I know all about it because I had that kind of thing happen all the time back at the girls' school—the big girls always want to pet and pamper the small girls! Tell you what, you can pet me and sniff me all you like, just tell me to come get you already!"
"Guh... you were staring too, Die-san. And you weren't just staring at me like you'd just caught sight of a large, rare animal. It was a different look, and I'm perfectly aware of what it meant!"
"—What."
"See?! You don't even know what to say to that! You had ulterior motives when we started living together, I'm sure of it! Look, it's true that I don't really know much about that kind of thing, but I'm not stupid, you know! You were totally dead set on living in the attic because you were trying to control yourself, weren't you? The truth is you really just wanted to come down and be pampered. I'm right, aren't I? And you tried to say it yourself... What was it again? Something something big and soft"—"W-wait."—"It was about these, huh?! Boobs! You love them, don't you?"
"What are you talking about?!" There was a shrill quality to her shouting that Terra had never heard from her before. "You can't say something like that, Terra-san! Stop, please!! M–me? Wanting to... with Terra-san's...? ...OOBS?? Wh–W–Why would I want to do something like that!?"
"So why are you so nervous, then?"
"I! Am! Not!"
"You are! And also, you touch them every chance you get! Besides, do you really think I never heard about my boobs when I was trying to get married? They've definitely got appeal! And you tried to sneak up on me thinking I didn't know that, didn't you? Even if I don't know much about that kind of thing, I noticed! You have experience with boobs, don't you? Were you feeling me up? Well, I noticed everything. You were definitely up to something, even if I didn't quite understand what!"
"Stop! Please stop, Terra-san! Sorr—You have my deepest apologies!"
"And then there's the condoms! I looked it up. They weren't for men, they were for fingers!"
"AAAAAHHHH! Okay, I confess! I'm guilty! I'm sorry!" At that point, Diode had undeniably started screaming. After screaming in shame, she covered her face and muttered in a daze, "It was just in case..."
Terra let out a long sigh and spoke gently, "I won't forgive you for that. So please, just go back already."
It took a little while, but Diode's response was something quietly growing firmer. "I don't want to. I'm going to save you. I don't care about reason or logic anymore."
"Even if I'll hate you for it?"
"Do you really not want me to?"
Terra opened her mouth, but her voice didn't come out. It couldn't come out.
Her silent response, and Diode's silent acceptance mixed together comfortably. Eventually, Diode began talking again, politely.
"Um, I had an idea. Do you mind?"
"...Okay." Terra gulped, then promptly asked, "Go ahead, what are you thinking?"
"I released the black-veined squid."
"Huh?"
"The one we caught first. I still had it on me, so I released it."
"Why did you do that?"
"I had the feeling that it was still moving. It was a different squid that hit you, but didn't it seem like it was targeting you for a reason? I thought so, at least. So maybe if we track this one, I'll be able to pinpoint your location."
"Ahh, well, if that's the case, then we should have released it to begin with. Even then, its settling rate is incredibly fast, right? How are you going to chase the squid?"
"I'm going to decomp into a diving shape." Terra swallowed her saliva in one gulp. Diode had just made a do or die declaration. "I can't make a very detailed shape, but I think I can do it as long as it's just a form that'll let me dive. And if it works and I catch up with you, you can return the boat to its previous shape."
"And if it doesn't work, you're falling straight in. The boat is going to groan, creak and break, and then you'll fall into the deep ahead of me, you know? That's when 4000 ATM will squash you... guuuh."
"Please stop scaring me! I can't decomp if I don't relax!"
"I'm well aware. Isn't it scary?"
"...I'm not scared." Terra heard the sound of gel being inhaled deeply. "If it means I can save you, there's not even a millimeter of fear in my thoughts."
Terra smiled, and what's more, she felt herself loosen up.
"Die-san."
"Yes?"
"Please come get me. I'll give you a reward."
"...Got it! I'll be claiming all of it. I'm going to start decompressing, so the antenna is going to melt for a moment."
The communication dropped out.
Terra took a deep breath from her belly and stretched her whole body. At that moment, she heard a violent curtain of rain whip against her pit and her parafoil, unable to withstand the gust, silently ripped into shreds.
She began to feel floaty. Her descent was in near freefall as it accelerated towards terminal velocity. Terra looked out from the small, tumbling pit as it fell, carried sideways and downwards by the storm's violent surges. Nobody had ever been calmer than she was.
There was one more planet residing within the depths of the storm.
According to observations made by the Circs when they first arrived, a rocky planet had collided with FBB around 35 million years ago. It still spun steadily in the depths of the bulky, gaseous body. That planet, which they had named Iron Ball, didn't just provide them with a variety of elements. Its continual stirring of the deepest layers gave birth to a variety of lifeforms and molecular structures, which then carried on the wind to FBB's upper atmosphere.
It was thanks to Iron Ball that the Circs could catch plenty of besshu, which in turn allowed them to live in a place like this. Isn't that wonderful? Aren't you thankful for it?—It was a platitude Terra had heard plenty of times starting from primary cruise school.
Am I? I wonder, Terra thought. No, I don't think I am. This world is stifling.
It was a small world with only around 300,000 inhabitants, isolated from wider civilization. It was an old clan society, strangled by old customs. They lived a life of marriage interviews, marriage, and bearing children—their path through life was predetermined. Refusing that path meant being coerced into something else. Freedom was always something chosen by other people and gifted to them, and those who refused that gift were knocked down a peg.
And because of that, even after that girl and I ended up in a place like this, we still couldn't speak our true feelings.
Now that she was here, Terra finally understood they had both been hesitating to say something neither of them had reason to hesitate over.
It was telling the person they loved to come be by their side.
It was putting that feeling into words and having it be heard. Something that wouldn't disappear, even if they acted like they forgot. The meaning behind "Why don't you come with me and stay at my place?" would change, and their relationship would become something that obviously didn't exist within the Gendo clan, or for that matter, the Endeavour clan.
What would a relationship feel like? I think it's absolutely expected that we can't be open about it, so will we have to keep it a secret and live in fear no matter what?
No—there's no need for that.
From the beginning, Diode had been gazing somewhere far away. She wanted to go beyond this planet. Terra finally understood why that girl hadn't given her the answer she wanted to hear.
She was scared I would say I didn't want to leave. If that's why, then I'm fine with leaving together. Going to the very edge of the Galactive Interactive in that giant, cross-winged bird, if that's what it takes. I have no reason to hesitate.
Once Terra found her resolve, she felt her heart open in a way it never had before.
Decompression. The shell of Terra's pit roiled, and the single liter of remaining AMC clay thinned, lengthened, and stretched into a kilometer-long fiber no more than a micron thick.
The fiber drifted and fluttered around inside of that storm, weaving a net no more than 500 meters wide. That net controlled the fate of the two. It was only a small chance, but it was a chance.
Something touched the tip of the net. Not even a moment passed between her noticing and the pit being yanked up. A mineral eyeball, as large as a table for two, stuck to the outer wall and moved around as it peeked inside and clung to the pit with its tentacle.
The squid!
It touched the fiber Terra had spread, having arrived in pursuit.
And the squid being here means—
The very next moment, a violent gust blew from above and a giant, misshapen lump of clay tumbled by, swallowing the pit the squid had just yanked up.
Then, the clay slid off.
"—Die-san!"
It wasn't possible to see the big, dark pink thing that had just raked by her. However, Terra knew it was the pillar boat. She knew it had taken damage and that she had seen just one fragment of the 13,000 tonne clay mass. Terra the decompa acutely understood the situation.
A girl who had failed to decompress was buried inside and unable to respond.
"DIE-SAAAAAAAAA—"
She was hit by the shockwave, and both the pillar boat and squid fell away. A loud wind blew and sent the pit tumbling. Terra screamed. Screaming was all she could do.
"Die-san... Die-san...!"
Terra's tears mixed with the gel as she watched the dot continue to get further away. She focused her full consciousness on the skies below her for the sake of keeping track of Diode, for the sake of touching her again. She regretted trying to drive her off, realizing Diode would have been the one stricken with this feeling instead.
It had been do or die, but Diode had gone through with it. The only thing left to do now was accompany her.
The last decomping—Terra crushed the soft, thin fiber into a curved shape along the bottom of the falling pit and stretched it into a long tail on the top, molding the pit into a teardrop shape.
"Please wait a bit, okay? I won't be long."
The pit fell faster, diving into the heavy water, ammonium sulfide, and ammonium hydrosulfide clouds. The depth meter continued to increase smoothly, the barometer naturally following suit. The outer shell began to creak. The hydraulic pain returned. Something broke somewhere. Something began spraying out. Something Terra had never smelled before was mixing with the gel. Terra clenched her teeth while all that happened, constantly watching the dimly swaying spots in the increasing darkness below with her aching eyes.
After a little bit, the whole scene began to glow.
She could still see the glow even when she closed her eyes. It quickly became more intense, engulfing Terra's mind and body—
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"What year is it now?"
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—someone wondered.
Light passed through leaves at an angle, illuminating a thicket from which a small woman emerged, treading on the dark soil and undergrowth with her sandals. She was dressed in white and appeared to be in her thirties. Her dashing, dignified pixie cut almost sparkled, and she puffed her chest out like it contained the most pride anywhere in the universe.
Terra blinked and stared at the woman, repeatedly checked over the lack of injuries on her own palms, then made sure there weren't any stains or tears in her emerald and gold deck dress. Looking around her, she saw a stone rampart wreathed in ivy, a covered wagon with the carriage slanted from broken spoke wheels, and a horse hurrying away to the one open space carpeted in wildflowers.
No matter which way she looked at it, she was in Idaho's media storehouse. She froze as her mind went blank.
"What...?"
The woman who had approached Terra circled around her once, looking at her with deep interest. She asked, "Was it an accident? A suicide? Or something else entirely?"
"Wha, what...?" Perplexed, Terra could only react by stepping backwards. She was certain her pit had been smashed to pieces, and that she was no longer of this world.
She suddenly remembered once hearing that humans witness their memories of a lifetime in fast forward at the moment of their deaths, like a dream.
Is that what's happening?
She didn't know this woman, though. Terra wanted to think of people who were important to her, and yet, someone like this had intruded.
"What is this? Who are you?"
"Me? I'm Eda. Dryeda de la Lucid, interstellar biologist first-class, one of the first Great Chiefs of the Circs, and father of the besshu."
"Wh-What?"
Her answer didn't clear anything up. Terra felt even more shocked and confused.
"Die-san..."
Feeling hopeless, she looked around for Diode in her surroundings. She wasn't sure if there was any point, since it was possible this scene was only an illusion created by her own body as it tried to escape reality.
However, her search definitely wasn't in vain.
The woman who had introduced herself as Eda spoke up, "Mm, wait a moment. I caught one more person just now. Did you come here looking for this girl?"
She walked towards the stone wall and brought back a girl in a diamond and graphite dress.
"...Die-san!"
Terra lifted the girl like she was stealing her back, then caressed her pale, smooth face. Her long eyelashes were shut tight, but breath continued to pass through her small nose while gentle warmth radiated from her body.
"Die-san...! What a relief...!" Tension completely broken, Terra collapsed to her knees and burst into tears there and then.
"I see, so you came to save this girl." Eda sat down on the low stone wall nearby and crossed her legs.
After allowing her emotions to spill out for a little while, Terra finally wiped her face and looked at Eda. "Did you save us? ...Actually, were we even saved?"
"I can't talk to anyone except the decompa, so that's why I gave you that girl as a little treat. But if I had to answer—sure, I saved you both. The place you've arrived at is a garden of ideas, where fellow people whose minds aren't constrained by language gather. You're in the middle of decompressing, so no need to worry."
Terra, however, only started to feel more doubtful. She had just started to think how great it would be if this were real, since she was holding Diode in her arms unharmed. It felt like the woman in front of her was denying that.
"We're in the middle of decomping? So... is this a dream?"
"It's not a dream, just like the pillar boat changing shape isn't a dream. Say some All Mass Convertible clay transformed into a stage and the actors on it started moving. Would you call that a dream?"
"No... I probably wouldn't." Terra noticed something felt off and opened her mouth. "Am I made of clay, then? What about my real body?"
"Does it feel like either of you aren't real flesh and blood right now?"
"It's... No, not really..."
"Then what's the problem?" Eda grinned so brightly Terra wasn't sure what to make of it.
"Anyway, change of topic." The woman hopped down from the stone wall and crouched in front of Terra. "May I ask what your name is?"
"Terra. Terra Intercontinental Endeavour..."
"Ooh, so the Endeavour clan lives on, eh? Congrats!"
"You said your name was Eda, right? Do you have anything to do with 'Exceptional Eda'?"
"That's me! Ahahaha, it's been a while. It makes me happy to hear that, but a little embarrassed, too. What's the year?"
"We're in CC 304."
"I see, so I overslept and missed the 300th anniversary. Well, it's good that it's been 15 years since someone fell in."
"15 years?"
Now that she mentioned it, I do remember hearing about something along those lines back then.
"So you've been asleep since...? You wake up when people fall in?"
"Mhm, I'm usually asleep. But whenever something happens, it wakes me up."
"Who?"
"Iron Ball."
Terra looked at her unblinkingly. Of all the shocking and surprising things that Eda was throwing at her, that one hit her the hardest.
Eda looked back at Terra and grinned. "Anyway, why don't we have some food while we chat?"
Terra knew it wasn't the right time to eat, but she was beginning to doubt everything. Eda guided her to a spot, and Terra took a seat on the stone wall. Eda produced a basket from the broken carriage. Despite Terra's unease with the off feeling about the place, she ate the cucumber-like and cheese-like sandwich she was offered and complimented its incredible flavor. Eda laughed at Terra's praise for the high fidelity of 303-year-old printers, saying it hadn't come from a printer.
"This is food, not 'food-like'. It's real cucumber and dairy from the early days, back when those things were still alive and kicking."
"...All of our ingredients are recycled organic matter now, so everything we eat comes from the printers."
"Hmm, for people orbiting a place that's starved for elements, I'd say they're doing well. Decomping is what lets us eat this sort of thing here."
While Eda chowed down on her sandwich, Terra murmured, "What exactly is..."
"What exactly is decomping? Mm, excellent, asking that right out of the gate. So, in exchange for temporarily reducing the capacity for human thought—the driving force of our language centers, in other words—to a minimum, one maximizes their ability to mold, which gives shape to the clay. Decompas—the Circs—believe they 'change the boat's shape to their desires'... but do you really think that's an ability that humans possess themselves?"
"Think? But aren't we really doi–"
"The clay changing shapes like it does makes you think you're the one doing it."
As Terra realized the alternative to humans molding the clay, she was horrified. "...The clay's alive and in sync with humans?"
"Ex–actly." Eda pointed at Terra and winked. "Iron Ball, the planet circling in the abyss. In reality, it's a single gigantic life form that arrived at FBB millions of years ago. Thing is though, it doesn't seem to have crashed here on purpose. It's been trying to escape the whole time. Life forms that call themselves 'humanity' arrived here recently, so it's been using that tiny crowd to slowly but steadily work on breaking out of here. 'We let them catch and export us on purpose,' is how it's done, more or less."
"We've been doing that?" Terra asked, then corrected herself. "They've been making us do that?" Correcting herself again, she asked, "Are they really okay with giving us a small amount of clay that's going to get roasted and turned into building material before it's shipped off in the Dàxúnniǎo?"
"The mola mola, which was introduced from a planet with an ocean, lays 300 million eggs—and of those, no less than 99% are eaten by predators. And yet, the mola mola hasn't shown any sign of being bothered by that."
"...So Iron Ball is a fish like a mola mola?"
"Ooh, you get it. You know your stuff, don't you?" Eda happily rubbed her hands together. "Its survival tactic does tend to favor a large number of births to make up for the high death rate, but biologically speaking, they're not related to fish species from Earth. The reason why they're similar is, well, you know."
"Like you just said, you're the father of besshu, right?"
Eda laughed happily for some reason when Terra pointed it out and started to brag. "That's right... I am. I poured myself into them. Body plans suitable for fluid migration, drifting, floating, rising and sinking, that sort of information. Before then, Iron Ball only discharged what we call 'bake', but after I got involved, things clicked, and it started to birth besshu in large numbers—that's why I'm the father. Iron Ball is the mother."
"Shouldn't you call her your girlfriend then?"
"Certainly. Kehkehkeh." Eda cackled joyously.
Terra stared at the totally unreserved woman, then remembered what the girl she held in her arms told her a while back.
"Didn't you have another partner?"
Eda stopped laughing and looked at Terra with interest. "You know about that?"
"You weren't the only Great Chief back then. There was also a woman named Magiri. I heard you two were married."
"So you do know about her! The last time anyone ever mentioned her was nearly 200 years ago, I think. Where did you hear that?"
"Idaho's Year 10 Ring, in the Antiquity Fan District."
"Woah, aren't we there right now? What a coincidence~"
"Now's not the time to be wowed. Where is this Magiri-san? You're so focused on Iron Ball... Isn't that like having an affair?"
Eda snorted and burst into laughter. "An affair! Ahaha, an affair! Ahahaha, this is the first time anyone's ever said that! I suppose it is, but I ended up having kids with this other woman because I ended up never going back."
"That's no laughing mat..."
"Well, the reason I never went back is because I was dead. I didn't call for Magiri either, because she would have died." Terra was at a loss for words. "I had a weird fall back in CC 8. Ball-chan picked me up right before I was crushed to death, like it did with you just now. A lot happened, but we successfully reached a mutual understanding regarding the ability to decompress. So it began producing besshu and allowed humans to catch them. But as you might expect, there's a possibility the besshu are an artifact of my personality—so if I decide to log out and go back up, the besshu will probably disappear when I do."
"That's... that's..." Before, Terra would have probably felt lost and troubled, but now, she had only one possible reaction. "Wouldn't it be better to throw it all away and go back to her?!"
"Ooh." Eda leaned backwards and said in a bright voice, "I'd single-handedly collapse the fishing industry if I did that, and since the Circs stuck up in orbit make their living off fish, that would be that, don't you think?"
"You can't be sure!"
"If it can't escape from this planet, Iron Ball won't cooperate anymore."
"And if it stops, so what?" Terra held Diode tight and glared at the legendary Great Chief. "Wouldn't it have been better to go back to Magiri-san, no matter what happened?!"
"Just hearing that, I can tell you're the type to commit, aren't you?" Eda nodded to herself. Her smile looked like a small flower petal. "I wish Magiri could have heard that, too."
"..."
The meaning behind Eda's words slowly sank in, and Terra turned red and hung her head.
She had just chided Eda for something that also applied to Magiri. When creatures resembling Earth's fish suddenly began to appear, there could be no doubt Magiri had sensed the reason why—her beloved partner still existed somewhere at the bottom of the atmosphere. Even if she didn't understand how, Magiri must have known she'd end up the same way as Eda, existing in the veil between death and the unknown.
And yet, Magiri hadn't come.
She couldn't be reunited for the same reason as Eda—the survival of the people living in orbit depended on her. That was when Magiri had summoned the Dàxúnniǎo and established their trade.
What am I even doing, acting like I know everything—how could I say that about those two?
"Um, Eda-san."
"Yeah, yeah."
"I'm sorryyyy."
"It's okay, it's okay."
Terra started to cry before Eda gave her a big, bright smile.
"Hearing that was refreshing. It feels like a little reward after a long 300 years."
"Okay..."
"And to show that I forgive you, I'm happily sending you two back up."
"Sending us... you mean we can go back? We can go back alive?!"
"Yep, Iron Ball can lob ejectors into the stratosphere. Sending your boat back is trivial in comparison." Eda said. For some reason, she turned around and muttered, "The squid punching you two like that was an incredibly embarrassing mistake. Some exception from 'Exceptional Eda', huh? But eh, I mean, a fisher decompa coming to the rescue of someone getting murdered by squid was beyond even my imagination."
"Um, is something the matter, Eda-san?"
"Nothiiiiing." Eda turned back to Terra and flashed a cheerful smile. "You two don't have to worry about a thing."
"Even if you say that, it still feels bad for us both to go back and leave you behind..."
"Ah, you're worried about that? Nah, it's fine. Didn't I tell you the besshu will disappear otherwise? Besides, even if I go back while you two stay here, Magiri is long gone. You two are the ones who will make others sad if you don't go back."
"I don't really know if they'd be that sad about it, though..."
"Really? Well, if that's the case, then I just don't want your pity. Besides, once the rest of Iron Ball gets scooped up in the end, we'll be leaving together."
"Is... that how it's going to be?"
"Yep, yep, that's how it's gonna be. Well, going outside is something that I'll do a little later—it's not like that's the reason Magiri developed the fishing industry."
"I see. So you lead a sleepy lifestyle, Eda-san."
"Mhm, that's right. Though I'll be leaving long after you die, in the sense of bodily function."
Terra had no way to tell if everything Eda said had been true, but she replied with a smile. "I see. You're definitely going to make it out in the future, Eda-san."
At Eda's prompting, Terra stood and headed for the archive's exit. A horse with a gorgeous mane accompanied them through the thicket. The sinister feeling that she was in the afterlife had long faded, and had become a nice, breezy place.
Eda quickly glanced at Diode's face. "By the way, Terra-chan."
"'Chan'?"
"C'mon, I'm 323 years old. Terra-chan, a minute ago you said no one would be sad if you died, so I was wondering... has that girl been giving you trouble?"
Terra turned to stand in front of the woman who looked like she couldn't be more than three years older than her and happily shook her head. "No? She hasn't given me any trouble at all."
"Good, good," Eda chuckled. "That's nice. I don't usually pick up anyone but the decompa, so a lot of things happened to catch my interest this time around. I like you. Here, take this."
As she said that, Eda grabbed the horse's tail and pulled it with all her might.
Woah.
Terra stopped herself from running away. The horse stood still, devoid of any anger, while Eda held a single tuft of golden hair. She handed it to Terra, who was speechless, and whispered to her with a meaningful grin.
"The Dàxúnniǎo only comes once every two years, right? But isn't it weird how that seems to be the only way to leave this system?"
"Now that you mention it, it is. Is there another way out?"
"This is. Did you know women who pull a horse's tail get sent flying?" Eda combed the long, slightly dry fur with her fingers. "If things get too hard to deal with and you don't know what else to do, pull on the tail of that little one. Use the Great Chief's code in Idaho's Early Ring, and there should be a partition. If you activate the Guāngguànhuán Drive, you'll arrive in the nearby Zugspitze star system in two weeks."
Terra gasped in surprise. "That's... Really, um..." She wasn't sure what to say. "If we leave, then won't it interrupt the besshu export?!"
"You can't be sure!"
"..."
"Isn't that right?" Supporting Diode on her shoulder, Terra extended her free arm to Eda, who slid herself into it. "Thank you very much...!"
"No problem, no problem."
Eda gently tapped Terra's arm and stood at the archive's exit. It was different from the one on the version of Idaho up in orbit, more akin to a gate of light.
"Now, get going. Make sure you haven't forgotten anything, 'kay?"
"Is it okay if I come visit again?"
Eda, both hands still shoved in her labcoat's pocket, walked behind Terra and sent her flying with a kick to her butt with a sandaled foot.
"Of course not, dumbass!"
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Above Terra, huge debris fell like the entire world was crashing down. As her pit was sent flying into the storm by the force of the impact, what little clay remained molded itself around her.
"Gwah! Ow, ow..."
After an intense and uncomfortable sloshing and jostling in the gel, Terra composed herself. The clay indicator on her VUI had changed from deep red to light orange.
Wait, more importantly—
"Die-san!"
Another pit was visible through the tens of VUI panels that had simultaneously rebooted and were flooding with information. Terra instinctively glued herself to the container wall.
"Boat! Synchronize the hydraulic pressure between pits and dock them to one another!"
The two pits immediately merged. Terra flinched as the muddy, foul-smelling gel began to mix as she climbed in, but pulled the small, limp figure into her arms.
"Are you okay?! Can you breathe?!"
She knew without having to be told that Diode was suffocating in her own vomit. Terra had never gotten into that situation herself, but saw it happen to her classmates multiple times back when she was a cruising student. It was a decomping failure. Diode hadn't been able to change the boat's shape to her desire and give it a new form. When AMC clay couldn't isolate a thought, it changed shape chaotically and caused a boat to shatter into countless pieces. As a decompa's sense of self gradually dissolved, the shock disrupted her proprioception and she lost the ability to tell where her arms, legs, head and body were positioned.
When that happened to a person, be they in air, space, or immersed in liquid, the same thing happened: vertigo, extreme seasickness, vomiting, and an inability to move.
"Terra-saa... that's enough." Feeling her touch, Diode pushed Terra away and wiggled free. "The gel, it's dirty–"
"Who cares about the gel!"
Terra made a big spinning gesture with her finger. It was a signal to replace all of the gel. The pump revved up and sprayed gel so forcefully from the circulator nozzles in the wall that it hurt. Terra wrapped herself entirely around Diode and pressed on her belly.
"Come on! Let it out! Breathe in!" She was relying entirely on brute strength to forcibly clear Diode's trachea. "How's that?! Are you okay?!"
"Ter... Ra... San," Diode gasped. Her whole face felt sticky, and upset, she glared at Terra. "You call that... completely charmless activity... 'artificial breathing'?"
Terra didn't say a word and kissed her.
She tightly hugged the girl, who was no more than half of her volume, and gave her a long, long kiss before she pulled back to stare at her. Diode's eyes were wide open in surprise.
"Wha, what..."
"That was my first time ever, you know."
With just those words, Terra made a bewildered Diode fall quiet. She sat Diode in her seat and stood in front of her. Bringing the decompa UI over from her own seat, Terra spread out four rows on her VUI and assessed the pillar boat's condition. Although its structure and composition had been clearly wrecked, the shape reproduced in her mind was completely faithful to the real thing.
"Thank you for all the effort you put into this despite not being used to decomping. I'm really thankful that you brought the boat this far."
"O-okay...?"
"I'll be trying my best too, even if I can't compare to you, okay?"
Decompression—Terra gently melted the 2000 tonnes. She rearranged the boat, smoothly molding its mass into a stack. She formed a single large nozzle underneath, sharpened the nose cone, and aimed the ship towards the faint blue at the zenith.
An eighty-meter-long solid rocket booster made itself visible. It didn't have the immense power that was standard for a normal pillar boat, but it was enough to make them a spaceship. Still, it wasn't enough to reach orbit—at best, they would achieve a suborbital arc over the planet instead.
But in the time it took between their rise and fall, the odds one of the sixteen clans would come to their rescue certainly weren't bad.
"How's this?" Terra asked, turning around gracefully.
Diode rubbed her eyes and started to cry.
"What's wrong?"
"Terra-san, Terra-san."
Diode's tears spilled out. The girl, who was so quick to anger, who had tried so hard not to cry the very first day they went fishing only to end up crying anyway, was now reduced to a sobbing, happy mess.
"I-I'm so happyyyy we... weeeee didn't faaaaiiiiil."
"Huh?"
"We sank, didn't we? You and me." Sobbing, Diode quickly pulled Terra into a firm hug. "We-We were separated, and, and we missed each other's hands, and were falling towards that d-darkness—waaaaaah!"
Diode buried her face in Terra's chest without hesitation, and dumbfounded, Terra took the thump. She definitely remembered sinking and was thoroughly ignoring the memory in spite of it. There was no way any of it had been real.
However—
"Boat, show the outside pressure log for the past hour."
Responding to her order, the VUI displayed the log. Thirty-two minutes earlier, it had recorded a pressure of 4038 ATM.
Terra quietly closed her eyes and rubbed the fingers on her left hand together. There was nothing in them, but the sensation of dry fur was clearly still there.
"—Die-san–"
"Terra-san! Terra-saaaannn!"
"Okay, okay, calm down." Terra hugged Diode's thin shoulders. The feeling of her touch, the vitality of her presence—in the end, they were things that person couldn't get herself. That was what had given meaning to her gift. "The boat's going to fall, you know. You don't want this to happen all over again, do you?"
Diode immediately stopped crying and shook her head.
"Then, will you fly us?"
"...Y-yes."
Diode held her hands up like a pianist about to start their performance before timidly swinging them back down. She spread out the twister's VUI and allowed the wind to sweep across the rocket's control surfaces to get a sense of its flight characteristics. Even though it was her first time taming a beast like this one, she gracefully nosed it down to align it to her desired direction with a light touch and extreme ease.
She was showing the flashes of pure genius she usually did as a twister, but she was still acting a little off. She turned around and peeked over her shoulder with her dark blue eyes trembling anxiously.
"Are you... really okay with this?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I go back, they're definitely going to come after us again. Other people will, too."
She looked at Terra, looked down, looked at Terra again, then looked down. Of all the times Terra had seen her face, this was the most vulnerable she ever looked.
"...That's what... it will mean to go back with me."
"Die-san."
"Yes?"
Diode turned around like she had been zapped.
"Mmmm." Terra presented her lips to the girl. "Didn't you say you were going to claim the whole reward?"
"...You!!" As Terra expected, Diode snatched her up for the first time.
She embraced Terra with the power of a small, fiery dragon. Terra felt the warmth of the cute lips, from which she had only heard sass, bluster, and griping, against her body for the first time. Unbelievable euphoria spread from the top of her head to the tips of her hands and feet, melting the entirety of her being.
"Haah." Diode pulled and looked up at her with a supernova sparkling in her eyes.
"No complaints, okay? You're the one who asked for it."
"Ye... yesh..."
Terra was no longer standing when she replied. Her large body was floating in the gel like a bouquet submerged in water.
"Well then, let's get going." She suddenly turned around and looked at the sky, determined. "This is a garbage planet where we can't even become fishers. But if you're with me, I think I can put up with it."
"We don't have to," Terra whispered faintly. "There's a horse."
"Huh?"
Diode turned slightly and a chuckle escaped Terra.
"I'll tell you about it later."
It was nothing she hadn't already said, and nothing they weren't already looking forward to.
They gave each other a big nod and reached for the scattered panels. They tapped their toes on the floor and swept their arms like they were drawing a comet's tail.
A burst of light kicked against the abyss.