The two were under watch from beginning to end during their return to Fuyō. When they arrived, they were directed to enter through the sunlit business port, not the shadowed operations port they left from. It's over—Terra thought. If they had entered through the operations port, they could have attempted to jump in the Insomnia and flee in an all-or-nothing escape attempt. But even that possibility had been foreclosed.
The business port entrance, located on the flower-shaped Fuyō’s stigma, was ornamented by flamboyant, colorful lighting. The centerpiece was the giant, iris-like gate which was not only capable of admitting large spaceships but entire fleets into the premises owing to its 400-meter diameter. The port was wholly different from the other clans—simple piers that jutted into the vacuum—and the Gendō took great pride in it. Still, constantly cycling such a large airlock chewed through oxygen. As a result, it only saw use during VIP visits or ceremonial events.
“Good work, Kanna-san and Terra-san. Your commendable efforts have brought you here.” The transmission came from the pillar boat ahead of Terra and Diode. The plasma pink ribbons that adorned Meika’s midnight blue hair swayed as she moved around in a way that suggested she was attempting to peek in on them through the camera feed.
“My my, do show your faces, will you? Well, I suppose there are times when girls don’t want to see each other. I had been anticipating the possibility of meeting with you as we disembarked, but... passing through the airlock one-by-one is taxing.” Through the projected image of Meika, the colossal circular port door could be seen slowly beginning to open like a pupil. “One does not often encounter opportunities for such a grand entrance, so do be sure to fully enjoy it as you bring the boat in. Those waiting at dock are eager for you to put in an appearance,” she kindly suggested, then vanished with an amused laugh.
“That blackhearted woman... She’s totally making us into a sideshow.”
Diode frowned without a single word in response, then closed her eyes with regret. Needless to say, their contest ended in total defeat. Meika and Chūya caught six heads totaling 48,000 tonnes, while Terra and Diode only caught the small fish Meika dropped. That single head only weighed 1800 tonnes, so there was no need to go through the process of verifying the results. The next step was simple and effective: nothing more than formalities to destroy their remaining hopes.
Terra watched the situation develop around them from the rear pit. Their pillar boat descended in automatic entry mode; extreme maneuvering while attempting the unfamiliar fishing style left them with less than 10,000 tonnes of mass. Two pillar boat escorts with far more fuel were practically glued to them even before atmospheric escape, and the cannon near the business port remained aimed at them the entire time. Not even water would leak around the security curtain.
“She’s turning us into a sideshow, but locking us in behind the gate is also her way of completely trapping us, isn’t it?”
“That’s the kind of woman she is.”
“So... I know this is a bit premature but let me apologize again.” Terra brought her control pit level with Diode’s. “I put on that display of bravado, but I wasn’t able to win this for you. That probably will only cause you no end of trouble from now on. I’m sorry—I was useless.”
“What.” The girl’s expression grew confused as her eyebrows shot up. “What?! Just who do you think you are, huh?”
“Isn’t our age difference big enough to make me your responsible older sister?”
“Age? Why bring that up? I haven’t paid age any mind for the last three and a half months. And when it comes to flight time, I’m definitely the veteran here, am I not? You could say that about a few other things too, so what makes you suddenly act like this is your fault?”
“Because if you add it up, I’m responsible for a larger number of the things that shouldn’t have happened, that should have been done, and that went wrong. You got captured alone and lost your freedom. You didn’t have the escape ship, Eda-san’s assistance, money, anything. Compared to you, I had all that and the time to come up with a plan and my decomping abilities. I could have destroyed the port with a clay mass or slipped past our enemies by hiding in clay. Now that I look back, there was a lot I could have done, b–sniff–but my re–sniff–resolve and ideas were–sniff–n’t enough.”
“Wait, now you’re going to cry?! Isn’t that playing dirty?! If you’re crying, then I’m going to cry, too. Despite all those choices and abilities of yours, this clan still managed to tangle you in their pointless conflicts and rotten destinies, and from now on you’ll be imprisoned and confined to a breeding program—no, actually, the Clan Chief is interested in you or something, so he obviously has some vague plan or hopes for you. Please think about how I feel, knowing I’ll have to see the one I love off to a temple of darkness!”
“WUAHH.... DIEZAAAAANNNN...”
Terra rushed to fuse the two control pits together before Diode coldly pushed her aside with, “Woah, you’re so noisy.”
“Whyy?! Even though we might be separated for life!” Terra cried.
“That might be true, but I don’t want our last moments together to be that pathetic! You’re not like that! You can be more composed. Wipe your face, Miss Twenty-Four Years Old!”
“Wiiibe by...” Terra groaned. She had shown her most vulnerable point, and moments later, been skewered through it. She turned around and wiped her face with her sleeve—forcefully enough to leave scratches on her nose from the rough fabric of the deck dress—and then faced Diode with a hopeless expression. “I wiped my face.”
“Good.”
“Also, I calmed down a little—sorry.” Terra felt back to her senses after venting a little. She blushed and hung her head. The biofluid gel started to boil.
“Okay. How should I put this...” Diode looked exhausted from wearing a kasuri kimono and sighed like she was three steps past her tolerance for everything. “You have a lot of boxed-up crying fits stashed away in your closet, don’t you?”
“Sorry.”
“And you sure calmed down in a hurry, huh.”
“Yeah. The door started to burst open just a little there. But that’s just how upset I was!”
“Well... It’s good that you wear your heart on your sleeve so openly.”
“How about you, Die-san? Are you always going to stay this calm?”
“What?” Diode glared. She looked up at a corner, down at the ground in the opposite direction, then hummed as she squeezed her eyes shut. Then, quietly, she spoke. “Yes, I will. As long as you don’t die.”
“...Could you open up?” Terra asked as she knocked on the wall separating them.
Diode opened her pit and gave her a ‘hm’ before turning her face away. Terra anxiously climbed in and reached out to hug her.
“Die-san...!”
That exact moment, she heard a notification ping from a registered contact. “‘Scuse me, Terra-san, but do you copy? I’ve got a time-limited offer for you.” The voice sounded familiar. Terra returned to her pit like she’d been flicked.
“Uhhh... This voice... Pri-san?! You weren’t peeking in here, were you?”
“Wha? No. I wasn’t peeking, I can see your boat. Ah, don’t ask where or how, no time to explain.” In a tone that didn’t seem to be hiding any particular intent, the Trades woman said something Terra didn’t expect. “You two lost the fishing contest and you’re expecting about to receive public humiliation as criminals, yeah?”
“We really didn’t want it to end that way, though.”
“Well, if you had the option between that and running away as extremely-wanted criminals after destroying it all, which would you choose?”
Terra’s mouth was agape. She locked eyes with Diode, who was already staring at her.
The girl replied, “It’s a trap. There’s the possibility she’ll pin it on us if anything goes wrong.”
“Is she really that bad a person? Never mind,” Terra said, shaking her head. “Even if it’s a trap, it’s still the better option. Pri-san!”
“Present! So, what’ll it be? Answer in the next few seconds, please!”
“We’ll take ‘destroy it all’!”
“Got it! Well, not like you had much choice!”
As she gave her cheerful rejoinder, the two felt a gentle vibration. The pillar boat, still on autopilot, had touched down. The gate overhead was beginning to close.
“So, what are you planning to do?”
“Actually, you’ll play leading lady. Can you decomp?”
“Er, let me see.” Terra gently extended her consciousness outside of the gel, checking to see if she felt one with the boat. “Yes, I can.”
“Could you chop the pillar boat into a hundred pieces?”
“What?!”
“It’s a decoy plan. You’ll hide among 99 other pieces while I snatch up the one you lot are in. Can you do that? You can, yeah? Be quick about it!”
Terra momentarily held her breath, then closed her eyes. She was weighing the advantages and disadvantages with no input from the girl next to her. To her surprise, she concluded it could work. At the very least, it wouldn’t cause sudden death or mass destruction. Utter mayhem, maybe, but that ‘maybe’ was precisely the reason it would be effective.
“Die-san, be sure not to separate the pits.”
“Ok.”
“Three, two, one, NOW!” Comforted by Diode’s immediate and indifferent response, Terra acted decisively to put the plan into action.
Decompression—break the boat into a hundred pieces—or more like breaking the boat into ten pieces and then breaking each of those into ten more pieces. It was difficult to picture her body suddenly dividing into one hundred pieces, but simple to imagine subdividing ten separate pieces that only weighed a few hundred tonnes. Starting from the bow, she made nine cuts to divide the boat into round slices of roughly the same size, maintained a connection between them with thin strands, and then radially divided the rounds in ten. The mental image of cutting ingredients by hand while hobby cooking had served her well.
Then she molded the part they were in and maybe three others into stars as a signal, and the rest into folding fans similar to pizza slices. Terra worked as quickly as she could while doing her best to avoid mistakes with her measurements. From start to finish, the whole process took five seconds.The people waiting around Fuyō’s business port were startled—to them, the pillar boat that had slowly followed in behind Meika looked like it had suddenly been cut up with a knife and split into round slices. Before anyone could register what was happening, the pieces broke apart and scattered.
<<Mega burst detected! Seek thermal and contamination protection!>>
The warning was immediately issued for the entirety of the pressurized area, and people in the vicinity rushed for shelters. The port hatch closure came to an emergency stop in order to vent contaminated air into space. Responder sirens came rushing in from all across the base ship.
The only witnesses to what happened next were in the first squad to respond. A single utility vessel appeared in a gap between container-sized boat fragments that tumbled and bounced off one another in the zero-g environment, and securing one, rushed off into space.