Still accelerating!
The Arbalest was now being used almost like an AI-guided missile, constantly maneuvering and shifting trajectory, and its speed had long since broken the sound barrier.
Then, in the next instant, something that once again defied physics occurred. It came to an almost perfectly inertia-less hover.
But from the distortion in the air after that abrupt stop, it was obvious that he had used some method through the Lambda Driver system to brake.
And at that very moment, the descending warhead's position overlapped with his.
Impact!
A blazing flash...!
No, not right.
There was no burst of light at all.
Instead, the air there twisted in an even stranger way, like the reflection in a calm pond being violently disturbed until the entire image blurred into chaos.
But that phenomenon lasted only for the blink of an eye.
A real blink, and then everything returned to normal.
And what appeared next was so shocking that everyone was stunned speechless.
W-What was going on?
The Arbalest had caught the warhead.
Not with its actual mechanical hands in direct contact, but with what looked like a layer of energy covering them, as though it were gripping the warhead with a pair of invisible gauntlets.
At the same time, the machine's posture looked strange. It was holding the warhead with both hands near its waist, almost like it was about to fire off a Kamehameha.
At the same moment, another ring of distortion appeared, as if some kind of elastic shield were vibrating and sending out ripples. The machine itself was now enveloped within it, the same kind of spring-loaded shield he had used to launch himself before, except this time it had been magnified dozens of times over.
In the next instant, the distortion suddenly looked like something plunging into water and kicking up a perfectly round ring-shaped splash.
And then, without warning, it went utterly still.
There was no gradual settling.
It was like a bowstring pulled to its limit and then released, snapping back into place so fast the eye could not follow it.
And once the distortion vanished, everything became clear.
The warhead was gone.
And the Arbalest had suddenly come apart.
It disassembled so completely that it looked as if every bolt and fastening in the machine had vanished, leaving it nothing more than a heap of loose parts.
It was as if the machine had also been eroded by the passage of ages, become so fragile that the slightest touch would turn it into dust.
So the machine now gave the impression that it was evaporating away.
What had just happened?
How had the warhead disappeared?
Suddenly, Tessa noticed something even stranger.
"Melissa, do you see that? The ocean split open!"
"I'm not blind!"
Even as she snapped back with those words, Melissa stared at the image on the screen in even greater shock.
Because the Earth was round, not flat, when she looked toward the horizon where sea and sky met, she could clearly see a V-shaped gap had suddenly opened along the line of the ocean.
That V-shaped tear was what Melissa saw from the perspective of her M9. But through the drone circling in the sky, with its more downward-angled view, the scene was far more shocking.
Some unknown force had sliced brutally across the sea's surface, opening a wound that stretched so far it was impossible to tell where it ended.
And at the place where that cut first began, the seawater was already surging back in, refilling the gash and healing it shut.
"Wait, Kurz, that direction looks like...!"
"Yeah, it's exactly the direction of that enemy force we've been taking so seriously!"
Kurz replied in a tone that carried a trace of gloating delight.
That thing...
It was just like the old turtle hermit in Dragon Ball winding up and firing a Kamehameha, releasing an almost invisible shockwave that split open the sea and rushed straight toward the exercise zone that had sent them such a deadly gift.
It might have been nearly invisible, but the air still showed slight changes.
Even a rapid torrent could churn the air into visible distortion.
Like in the desert, when the view in the distance wavers and twists strangely.
So if one looked carefully, one could just barely make out the transparent trail of that air-borne Kamehameha ripping across the sea, tearing a giant opening through it.
...
In the joint North American and South H exercise waters.
Nearby, a Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft was conducting surveillance over the North H side.
According to the message they had just received, the warhead had already re-entered the atmosphere, which meant something should soon happen at the locked target coordinates.
If it had been daytime, the naked eye probably would not have been able to see anything clearly from this distance.
But right now it was nighttime, so it would stand out far more.
Hm?
There it was.
A huge hole had instantly been burned through the black cloud cover there, blooming with beautiful and deadly light.
"Blackbird confirms detonation over the target sea area. But it was an airburst?"
That report was immediately sent back to the command ship on the surface, though the observer was confused as to why it was an airburst.
Hadn't they been told it would plunge directly into the sea?
"An airburst? Damn it, they could intercept even that?"
"Not necessarily. Based on observation, the detonation occurred very close to the sea surface, no higher than three thousand meters."
If that were the case, then even if it had not directly struck the submarine, it could still have inflicted severe damage.
No...
What if the submarine had already submerged?
Wait. The higher cloud layers looked strange too, almost as if the energy from the spherical blast had been reflected upward into the sky.
But the observer immediately discarded such an absurd idea.
That was impossible.
He kept staring at another nearby section of the sky.
The second missile was about to come down as well.
He also glanced at the stopwatch in his hand, silently counting down in his head.
Impact!
Hm?
Nothing happened?
Maybe he had misjudged the timing. But when another three seconds passed, the observer's expression froze.
There was no way his calculations could have been that far off.
That meant something had gone wrong.
At the same time, several F-16 fighter jets were flying above the sea, less than five hundred meters over the surface, alongside the anti-submarine aircraft.
"What is that?"
"The ocean split open?"
The sea looked as though it had been cut open by a blade, leaving behind a long scar.
And that scar seemed to be extending toward the fleet?
One crewman aboard the anti-submarine plane turned pale at once. He immediately pressed himself to the window and looked back over his shoulder, only to witness a scene that left him stunned.
A destroyer had happened to be right over the split in the sea, and it had been caught in the path, torn apart on the spot.
And the radio transmission did not sound like the signal had simply been cut off. It sounded more as though the vessel had suddenly been struck mid-sentence, breaking into a shriek of vicious static.
"Calling..."
The voice stopped abruptly.
Because at that exact moment, he saw flames erupt on the South H escort ship sailing beside it.
What was happening?
An enemy attack?
The radar had shown nothing at all.
And there was no time to think further.
Because inside that escort ship, a miniature sun was born.
(End of Chapter)
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