Breaking through the dimensional barrier was no easy task.
He constantly checked the holographic screens in the cockpit and carefully monitored the displays projected onto the visor of his pilot suit.
To be selected as a pilot of a Mobile Dimensional Traversal Weapon in this war was considered proof that one was recognized as someone exceptional.
Balsky had been chosen as a pilot in his twenties. After undergoing repeated training at facilities operated by the Andromeda Federation Armed Forces, he had been assigned to the front lines several months earlier.
The Andromeda Federation was a vast interstellar union composed of seventy galaxies. Its state of war with multidimensional universes had begun as a result of trade disputes.
For the Federation, securing resources to support its explosively growing population had become an urgent priority. However, the resources of its seventy galaxies had already been exhausted, forcing it to seek the development of new universes.
It was during this period that resources were offered through trade by a universe from another dimension.
However, the people of that universe demanded enormous payments from the Federation and requested experimental subjects selected from among Federation citizens.
For the inhabitants of that universe, human experimentation was an everyday practice, and they were fascinated by the prospect of conducting experiments on people from another universe.
When the Federation refused, they responded by blocking trade routes and engaging in military provocations.
Then, fifteen years ago, a passenger vessel traveling through space was suddenly attacked by warships from another dimension. Its crew and passengers were abducted.
The Federation immediately demanded the release of those who had been kidnapped, but the people of the other universe refused. Worse still, they began indiscriminately deploying thermonuclear weapons against planets.
The Federation could not remain silent in the face of such actions. It quickly launched retaliatory strikes, using dimensional ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, and war between the universes erupted.
When Balsky was still a child, he was driven from his home planet by a toxic attack.
The substance was far too devastating to be called a mere poison. On a world once covered in lush greenery, no plants could grow, and five billion people perished.
He barely managed to board an evacuation ship, but his parents remained behind and lost their lives.
Since then, his homeworld had ceased to be a planet capable of sustaining life, and he remained forever without a homeland.
Having no other path left but that of a soldier, he enrolled in a military academy that took in orphans. There, he was selected to become a pilot of a Mobile Dimensional Traversal Weapon.
Designed as a bipedal humanoid combat machine, the weapon was equipped with a dimensional transfer engine capable of breaking through dimensional barriers.
It also possessed a hyper-engine that allowed entry into hyperspace and faster-than-light travel.
For power, it utilized an annihilation reactor, enabling virtually perpetual operation.
The addition of an auxiliary AI allowed the machine to be operated by a single pilot.
Dimensional travel meant breaking through the wall separating one universe from another.
It was like forcibly smashing through the wall of a room to enter the room next door.
Because such an act was so reckless, even the slightest mistake could cause a pilot to fall out of the dimensional tunnel and become lost forever in the space between dimensions.
If one was lucky, the machine would explode and death would come quickly.
If not, one would suffer eternally in the dimensional void.
"We will soon breach the dimensional barrier. Prepare for impact."
The AI spoke in a mechanical voice.
When entering another universe, the machine had to collide with a kind of wall known as the dimensional barrier.
Upon impact, intense dimensional resistance was generated, destabilizing the craft.
Many rookies had lost their lives at this stage.
But Balsky passed through the barrier smoothly.
And so he entered another universe.
The instant he emerged from the dimensional tunnel, he was thrown into a region of space filled with countless explosions.
"Do not break formation!"
The squadron commander shouted over the communications channel.
Balsky followed the formation.
Ahead loomed a colossal battleship estimated to be ten billion kilometers in length.
It was so immense that it no longer resembled a ship at all—it looked like a wall stretching across space.
Carrier-based fighters swarmed around the enemy fleet like insects.
Balsky joined them.
At this point, he no longer knew whether victory in this war was even possible.
Nor did he understand its purpose anymore.
Only the memory of his homeland, as he had seen it in childhood, drifted through his mind.
[Into the Fires of War] — End