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GXP 13 chapter 2

2 "The beginning of survival."

Seina cruiser was switching from navigation to inertial flight.
"It's too quiet ... ...."  Seina unconsciously murmured.
"I don't think they can detect the stealth function on this ship, is there anything to worry about?"  Even Kirche who knew about Seina's crisis avoidance ability was a little confused. This ship was constantly upgraded with a philosopher's latest technologies. If it could detect the ship, they would have to have the same level of tech as Airi. Nevertheless he wasn't put at ease.

"Huh!!" A ship suddenly jumped out a short distance from them. Kirche started the engine without  hesitation and quickly dodged an attack. "Gah!"

The battleship that came out jumping out was a small simple aircraft carrier, and three separate ships came out right after them.
"Space pirates! Emergency jump ... ... Kaaa!"  Kirche declared. The cruiser and the battleships had very different mobility and there were four of them, so their engines were taken out quickly.
 "We need to make it to that planet!"  Kirche steered the ship towards the planet.
"Kirche, land there!"  Seina pointed to where the ship that transported the Kamidake would have gone down.

"But why !?"
"Please!"
"Ok I guess!" There was no time to think about it.  She corrected their trajectory and the cruiser rushed into the atmosphere. Of course, the battleships followed.

"Ah!?"  Kirche focused on one of the monitors.
 "Hopefully this works!"  Kirche operated the console and ejected a communication pod.

 They lost control of the ship for a brief moment but soon controls came back online and half of the enemy ships had been taken out the remaining two quickly fell apart in the atmosphere behind them. "What was that!" "I threw the communication pod at them after I overloaded it, It seems that it worked." Kirche spewed a sigh of relief.
"It should've scrambled their sensors and controls, luckily we have a philosopher's ship so our systems came back online quickly."
 "Oh! I was scared for a moment there."   The ship swayed and part of the outer hull detached.

"Usually it is impossible, but ..."
"It's cause this is Ms.Airi's ship, isn't it?"
 "It's like Airi has no concept of a limiter on the things she makes... I swear ... ... However, thanks to that was able to do it."
 "It's 30 seconds to the ground, is everything ready?"
"Everything is fine. Our landing point is a bit dangerous, it's on the other side of the  mountains so we'll be in a blind spot from the perspective of Tarrant's base."

 "Preparing for landing, enabling shock resistance!"  The viscosity of the bridge's air increased, and Seina was enveloped by something that felt like cushioning material or gel. It was the same stuff that stopped the air spill when the outer  hull was damaged when he was attacked by Komachi in a previous training trip.

 The outer wall separated apart and purged the protruding parts and the heavy engine. By lightening the load of the ship it shortened the braking distance. But now they were on stored energy reserves and didn't have much time.

"Deploy the shields!"  The shield came out in a streamlined shape and it absorbed the impact. Even so, the landing came with quite the shock, but the gel completely counteracted it, and so Seina felt almost nothing. It was like a roller coaster with no wind, but the inertia was still there.

Nevertheless the ship was now in an unusable state. They needed to find Fuku and get the Kamidake and her to safety. While thinking about how to do such a thing, they skidded to a stop as a rock wall appeared in front of the cruiser. Naturally there was nothing they could do at this point.
 "The shields will hold." Kirche told him but his worry wasn't of the impact but of the falling rocks.

(I hope it won't collapse ... ...)  Even though the impact wouldn't harm him it would be a pain to get out of, and there was no guarantee that the wall wouldn't just collapse on them entirely.
Dogagagagagaaan!  Although lots of sand was kicked up, the shield had managed to pierce a large hole in the rock wall and the cruiser had stopped unexpectedly fine.
 --------------------

Gyon!
Something woke up in this planet's darkest depths. At the same time a small light flashed then faded out. It looked like the flame of a human soul and it was glowing pale.  

─ ─ ─ How did they ...?  
A small red light lit up to respond to that voice.  
─── They've come back.  
─── They're all here? No way.  
─── Everyone.... They're all back.    
---------------------- 

The cruiser completely stopped and the viscosity of the air returned to normal. Instantly Kirche got up and began to investigate the situation.
 "... ... Do you have any injuries?"  she said in a worried voice, but her face was still facing the monitor.
 "Yes, but I'm okay ... ...."  They noticed the sound of the shattered fragments striking the hull. That noise was the shield disappearing.

 "Let's hurry!"  Seina who had a bad feeling said as he grabbed a survival pack, he used it to blow open an emergency exit and they left out of it.  
Cankan! gun! Gon! The sound of the rocks hitting the hull gradually grew.

 "Hurry!"
 "Wait a moment ... ... Catch!"  Seina threw some energy reserves pulled from the console to Kirche. Kirche was big as human, but still weighed as much as NB. He could carry her but  he didn't want her to run out of power. He left the ship and moved somewhere that look safe.
 "Well, Seina, what now ... ....?"  Kirche said shyly.  

Baki Baki Bakki! The rocks crumbled and buried the ship.   Seina looked around a bit and when it was safe he and kirche got up and looked at the sight for a bit "let's get out of here soon." Their pursuers were shot down, but a new ones should've been on their way.  

Because it was hot Seina's suit deformed to cover his whole body like a second skin, this had many survival purposes. Seina's outfits were ridiculously overly functional because Airi made them herself and she went overboard on the functions. Well maybe Airi just knew that Seina would need them but no doubt she also used him to experiment.

His outfit was designed so it was even possible to survive if he got sucked out into the vacuum of space. So needless to say, he could still breathe with it like this and it took care of all excretion and moisture accumulation and filtered the air. If he had to he could live off the recycling for a week without any outside moisture.

 Seina 's suit was also full of features not found in his enemies suits. It had Heat sensors as well as the ability to trace even tiny amounts of odors to tell him if it detect life signs or motion reactions. Although he had no subspace camouflage, it had optical camouflage and nanomachine detection prevention. He could detected by a high end scanner, but it was still a suit that could fetch a large fortune if put on the market.

 "Be careful of leaving traces." Kirche said, Seina got down and looked at the ground. There were a lot of footprints from Seina and Kirche there. Even if he couldn't be seen by sensors, being seen by his footprints would make that function useless.
The wind was strong and full of dust so thankfully they were about half gone already.

  "Either way, they should be able to find those prints with a sensor, but it's getting filled in slowly." Seina Took off his shoes and deformed his feet like a snake to increase the ground contact area. Kirche returned to NB form and got on Seina 's backpack.
 "Let's go!"
---------------------------

 "What !? What's happening !?"  The Central Operating Room of Tarrant's base, which was monitoring the battle with Seina, suddenly had it's display monitors turn red and put out an error code.
 "What the hell did those guys do !?"
 "The entire system has been shut down! The cause seems to be an overflow from the super space used for system access!"

 "Are you serious! Are the access elements safe?"
 "All of the guys working here are done. Perhaps it is better to think that all the elements that were accessing the super space became useless."  To the operator's answer, the operator chief looked at his personal cell phone, but it displayed an error just like the main monitor. Radio wave radio communication can't not be used in a shielded base. In worst cases, wired communication should used instead.

"How of our backup inventory is this going to eat up?"  The operator chief asked, but nobody could honestly reply because nobody could check the stock in the warehouse.
 "I'm guessing about 20% of what we have in reserve."

Access elements weren't broken when used normally. Still they deteriorated, so at a private level it was normally necessary to do replacements once in a hundred years, and for the military once every thirty years. Since the things used at Tarrant's base were military items, they took time to procure. For that reason,  they kept an inventory, and replaced things in cycles that didn't overlap, it was divided into 10 year intervals. So twenty percent of the stock was inherently sufficient.

 "What about all the old devices?"
 "Some may be left, but they should have already been resold."
 An element with sufficiently high performance that was old-fashioned was still commonly used. Even for second - hand use, the demand for them was high for Space pirates.

 "Fuck me!"  The operator slammed his fist on the console.
 "I told you it was dangerous to unify the net system, but those idiots demanded we do it!" 

In the past, their facilities were destroyed when the massive escape incident happened with the original J, and the system was redesigned after that. The Technicians who knew that the GP had a state-of-the-art unified system said they wanted to unify them in a high-performance system like that, and Tarrant gave his okay on it.  

A state-of-the-art access element is a thing that can be accessed with super high space with little time lag even over long distances. However, since it was delicate, there was a safety system in place to prevent overflow accidents and allow for emergency communication in case of any mishaps, but because they got them through their connection with the GP army, it was hard for for them to obtain large quantities of the safety system elements. In other words, they were using most of their elements in an almost unprotected state. 

"Calculate priorities and hurry up and begin restoration work. Please check if for any old style devices that need to be changed."  the repair technicians ran off as the operator chief sat down and collapsed in his chair.

 "Do you think that's the reason we didn't pick up Seina Yamada's ship?"
 "Probably not ... but there's nothing else that seems to be the cause."
 "Lorelai, the pestilence god ...... It's rumored that you can use normal communications still, send someone out to find his location."

"Is it ok to use the nano machines for communication?"
 "It's an emergency, and vigilance from space is a priority, besides they're old, they're going to need to be replaced soon so we may as well get what use we can from them."
Basic nanomachines are often camouflaged as natural objects drifting in the environment so that they're hard to detect, but since they also age and deteriorate some kinds needed to be replaced. There were also types that increased by making copies themselves, but they were picky about making duplication mistakes, there currently only used in certain cases. After a certain period of time the nanomachines biodegraded and turned into dust.

 "Since the ship was destroyed and it got lost here, They won't be getting off this planet, our communication blocking means no backup is coming, there's no need to panic."
 "Roger that!"  The operator stood up with a bitter smile and went outside the room.     
---------------

 "............ Good morning, this kind of mannequin can be done easily, this place may be designed like a bunker but although it's security is strong against external attacks, it's surprisingly fragile to those on the inside"  Actually Clay had made the same mistake before long ago.

"By the way, are you still there?"  Clay was looking with an embarrassed face at a monitor full of errors.
 "─ ─ I  a m."
"It's quite fine whether you were involved in this or not, it doesn't effect me here."
"I  w a n t  t o  d o  t h i s   w h i l e  t h e  H o y s t o k e  i s  s t i l l  h e r e.  I f  I  c a n  t a k e  o v e r  t h a t  s h i p  I  c a n  u s e  i t  t o  g e t  b a c k  t o  t h e  a c a d e m y."
 "What do you have for payment for the body though?"
 "W h a t  a b o u t  t h i s ?"  
Clay seemed a little surprised by the surprising proposal as he looked at the monitor.
 "...... Hmm, that would be okay." In other words it was the access code that he wanted.
---------------------- 
The overflow of the super spatial communications however had another effect on the Hoytstoke. A small incident was occurring with the guards.

 "Are you going to provide us with replacement super-space communication elements!? We have to return home too ya know!" The army guy said with high-pressured attitude, but with fear in his voice towards Tarrant.
"You can make it home without it, it'll be tough, but I don't see how your functionality will be compromised."
"I don't mind I'm just in a hurry!"
 "Well since you don't mind so much, you also won't mind making an inventory and passing it on to be checked for."
 "Roger that!"
"Hey, we have a lot of work that needs to get done, so hurry. How long will it take you to get that inventory done?"
"Chh! No time at all I'll go get it right now!" The guard left to the designated warehouse.
 -------------

"Captain, is everything okay?"  The operator approached the captain.
"What happened?"
 "A hole was opened momentarily in our security wall ... ...."
"Did you identify the location?"
"We're in the wrong place to be figuring that out."
 "............ I see, so it's something on our end, I won't tell anyone, you should also forget you know, I'll do the same."
"OK."
  -------------------------------------

"It's strange that no one's come after us yet."  Seina stopped about 10 kilometers away from the crash site. It had been about about twenty minutes so far.  normally someone should have been searching for Seina, but there were no reconnaissance ships or even an unmanned probe.

 "Do you know what's going on?"  Seina said as he looked at Kirche. Her body was originally Seina's NB so she had advanced sensors.
"It seems like the enemy base's systems have crashed and they are using the previously disabled nanomachines around the area to communicate, it seems that their about to stop functioning though so something must have happened that is making them use them. I should be able to access them.... It seems their superspacial systems have collapsed... and there something about a battle?"

"They probably mean the fight we had in orbit."
"It might be possible for us to get into their base. If we can rescue Fuku, we should be able to escape in the Kamidake."

"I don't want to even think about what she's going through right now ..."
Kirche began probing for Fuku.
"It seems the Kamidake is being constrained, Fuku is probably being time frozen. Infiltration is not a realistic plan, but it's possible for me to enter their system and operate it. I may be able to undo the time freeze once we get closer ... but.... "
"But?"
 "We need to make sure we get both of them ... ... and we need to get closer. But it's dangerous. We'll give away our location ... .... "
"Is there any possibility it'll fail?"
"Yes, I think that it is better to get closer first, but if were talking safety I think that it's better to just wait for help from the Earth."
"Is that so……"
"We need to act to make sure they get here as soon as possible, just in case!" Kirche had on a nervous expression.

 "I'm sensing an energy response!"
 "Is it an enemy?"  Seina was wary of his surroundings.
 "No, I think that someone is being attacked, it's not a dynamic reaction."
 "An attack? From who?"
 "Let's hurry and find out!" Seina and Kirche started running at the same time.

----------End of chapter-------------