Chương 58: Chapter 51 - The autopilot is strictly optional

Chen Yi and Yukiko Tanaka. Exactly the people I wanted to see. Or well, the leash I desired to have. I realized what was going on. Cassandra wanted to make sure I didn't have any unsupervised time, so pretty much since the moment I left floor 27, I was either asleep, with her, or watched by other climbers. And it had a taunt in it too, try to avoid them and see what happens. I could almost hear her saying it in the back of my head. I walked to them with a raised hand.

"Yo." Chen filled most of the doorframe. Shaved head, Tribunal armor with all the ornamentation of a load-bearing wall, warhammer resting across his shoulders like a yoke.

"Trust me. This is not a pleasure." Yukiko stood half a step behind him, black hair cut level at the jaw, katanas at her waist, face giving away its usual nothing.

"On all sides." As she said that, she sneakily motioned behind her for me to come closer. Interesting. I walked to them and stretched an arm to shake hands with Chen. He got it, shook my hand, and naturally used the movement to pull me so close that our chests nearly touched. Yukiko moved as if to hug me, but it was to conceal Chen's left arm. He pulled a metal and jade cube out of his pocket and pressed its side. A dark green field deployed around us, wrapping us in a pretty tight bubble. He took his earpiece out.

Yukiko mirrored him.

"We were told you'd be filled in."

"I am very filled in." And so was Cassandra after last night.... damn it. I had to stop thinking about her.

"That makes it easier," Chen said.

"This distortion barrier will last two minutes. At most."

"Right," I said, "So, what's the plan? I'm under tight supervision, to say the least."

"We know." Yukiko reached underneath her jacket and pulled out what looked like a heavily Japanese-themed beacon, just smaller and thinner.

"Take this with you, and do not let her see it. Deploy it on any Paradise floor you get to." I narrowed my eyes.

"Any preference?"

"We don't know." Chen's jaw tightened.

"Paradise floors are 32 to 34. Henrik confirmed it. Nobody gets them assigned."

"And Zhao is already on floor forty-one," Yukiko added.

"We don't get those three floors." But I could get there because the traditional climbing path was always to the next floor. I took the beacon and hid it in an inside pocket of my suit. Straight next to the thumb drive from Henrik.

"Thanks. I'll need the cube too." I motioned at the cube. Chen narrowed his eyes.

"Why?" They didn't know Cassandra could get into the tower. Of course they didn't. That gave me blackmail potential. I smirked. Yes, she could kick me out, but I had something I could rat her out on. I was back in the game.

"I suspect Paradise might be hooked up on the pod interface. This distorts it, right?"

"Yes." He handed me the cube.

"Six hours of self-recharge for one minute of effect."

"Got it." I pocketed the cube.

"How are things down on Earth?"

"Tense." Yukiko leaned a bit back.

"Nobody knows if Cassandra is lying or not."

"And nobody knows what to do with either," Chen added. Right, because no one could prove anything. Me neither. And even if they could, then what?

"Okay. Now what?"

"Now we get you to the local trial," Yukiko said.

"You are the only way to get to floors 32 to 34."

"And in spite of all the things you are." Chen pushed out half a smile.

"You are not in league with Paradise. I don't care if you win. I want Paradise to lose." Oh, yeah, that was the one thing I could agree on. I grinned and turned off the cube by pressing it in my pocket. Chen stepped away, so we could both breathe a bit.

"This way." We headed that way. Chen led us toward the hangars. The silence among us felt strangely comfortable. Sure, we had our differences, and I was around when both of them got zeroed, twice. But we had a common enemy we agreed on without reservations. That superseded everything else. When I saw the sign of the trial manager's office, I motioned to them to stop. I walked into the office. They waited outside. The trial manager's office smelled of ozone and stamped paper.

A gaunt man sat behind a desk drowning in forms, and behind him hung a brass orrery of the belt. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Hey," I said.

"I'm here to register for the trial." He looked up without pleasure.

"Name."

"Damian O'Connor."

"Origin floor."

"Six." He scribbled it down.

"Party size."

"One." The pen stopped.

"Solo attempts require a waiver."

"How much is it?" He produced the form with the speed of a gunslinger.

"Registration is one silver. The waiver is another five." He added a second stack of documents and slid both across the desk.

"At your own risk." I signed away all claims regarding death, dismemberment, decompression, spiritual erosion, and something called acts of the covenant. I found a golden coin in my pockets, which I handed over after I signed both documents.

"Keep the change." He took the coin.

"Would you like to loan a spacecraft?"

"How much?"

"One gold for cargo ship. Five for an old fighter jet. Ten for new fighter jet." Sure. I produced ten gold coins. He took them and handed over an access card.

"The jet will fly itself to the hangar in twelve hours." I took it.

"Thanks." I walked out, joined the others, and we continued on our path to the hangar. Chen grunted when I rejoined them.

"I was looking forward to stealing a spaceship."

"Tsk tsk tsk," Yukiko said.

"That's minus five social credit." We both snorted. We entered the hangars. They spread over an unreasonable distance, hosting hundreds of ships. People moved everywhere, but none of them paid any attention to us. Almost all of them looked like a maintenance crew. The rest were maintenance managers. I held out the card.

"24C-3." We looked around. Yukiko pointed at the nearest plane.

"18B-2." We went to search. After a solid half an hour, we found the plane numbered 24C-3. It looked like a mixture of a fighter jet and a giant, steel shoebox. Space didn't care about aerodynamics, so all ships looked like boxes. At least this one had a hint of wings with extra thrusters. We walked to its side. I pressed the card against a scanner, and the plane lit up to life. The door on its side opened. We entered. The plane looked like it had seen its better days a decade ago.

More than a bit of rust, peeling paint, and some parts of the interior are clearly missing. We crossed the deck and stopped by the cabin. One spot for the pilot, one for the copilot who controlled the auxiliary weapons. No third seat. We all exchanged glances. Yukiko glanced at the seat.

"I'm a decorated pilot of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. Chen nodded.

"I'm a Harbin Institute of Technology graduate in mechanical engineering." I motioned them both to the seats, stepping aside. My greatest technical accomplishment was parking my grandmother's car, which had no cameras or sensors, without scratching it.

"I can summon you a succubus cheerleader." They both snorted, sitting down. They strapped in, tapped their way around the buttons, most of which they clearly recognized, and Chen pressed the button to close the door. Yukiko activated the comms.

"24C-3, permission for liftoff." The comm buzzed back.

"Permission granted. Make sure the auto-assistant is functional." One of the screens in front of Yukiko showed Auto-assistant operational. She pressed a few more buttons, pulled a little lever, grabbed the control stick, and we started lifting off. The auto-assistant clearly did most of it, as the ship moved mostly on its own. She moved the control stick a few times, even jerked it a bit. Didn't do anything. With an annoyed glance, she turned to Chen.

"Can you turn the thing off?"

"No." He looked around a bit and kicked a compartment under the control board. He leaned down, looked inside for a moment, reached in, and disconnected a cable.

"That should fix it." The notification on the screen turned into Error, auto-assistant dysfunctional. Yukiko moved the control stick a bit, and the plane responded.

"Thanks." We flew out, speeding from the ship. I had to catch myself from falling. Funny how completely ineffective I was in this situation. Astarielle and Ashy had only direct attacks, so all they could do was to destroy our own ship. They'd have fun with that, but it wasn't what was needed. And Elsha was the answer to everything, but at a mana cost I literally couldn't afford right now. Not anytime soon, with 73. 5 million mana to my name. From inside, the asteroid belt looked pretty damn scary.

Thousands of rocks tumbling in absolute silence, floodlights carving cones out of the dark, tether lines of glowing ore strung between rigs like someone had tried to decorate the void and given up halfway. Yukiko flew the marked lane out past the last rig, hands quiet on the controls. Then we cleared the final tether line, and she stopped flying like a rental.

The skiff rolled between two house-sized rocks with maybe a wingspan to spare, cut thrust, drifted through the shadow of a third, and came out the far side already aligned on a new vector. No wasted burns. No corrections. We followed the chit's etched orbit deeper. The Persistent Margin shrank to a smudge of light behind us. Rocks drifted past, some cracked open like eggs and mined hollow, one wearing the skeleton of an abandoned rig like a crown.

Then our floods brushed a fissured rock, and something pale moved inside the crack. Yukiko killed the floodlights. Too late. Massive, pale moths came out of the fissure in a soundless spiral. Wings the size of doors, dust shivering off them where our dying light touched, a dozen, two dozen, rising off the rock and turning toward us like compass needles finding north.

"These don't look friendly," I said. She quickly tapped a few buttons. Chen did too.

"Weapons engaged. Ready to fire." I held myself tighter, finding a nice position by a steel beam. One of them landed on the canopy. Up close, the word moth stopped being funny. Its underside covered half the glass. A mouth like a coiled drill, a fringe of feelers, wing-dust settling into the canopy seams. Something began to hiss. A seal alarm chirped in a bored tone. Hull integrity notice. Surcharges may apply. Yukiko shook her head.

"Fire." Chen pressed a few buttons on his control panel. Point defense machine guns engaged. The plane only lightly shook, with no sound coming in. But bullets tore the moth apart. Yukiko pulled the control stick hard. She rolled us toward a tumbling slab of rock, matched its rotation for one heartbeat, the entire universe wheeling around as I did my best to hold on to the steel beam. We got to the side of the moth swarm. Chen pressed more buttons, moving a knob. The ship's main cannon fired.

A projectile hit the moths, exploding, incinerating half of them. His fingers danced over the board. Yukiko banked hard to the side. The point defense machine guns roared. As we flew around the moths, bullets tore through them. We kept just the distance where the bullets were effective, but the moths couldn't touch us, spinning around the swarm. The fire whittled the swarm down to nothing. Chen stopped the weapons.

"All targets neutralized." [ENEMY DEFEATED —VOID MOTH (x17)] [Drops: Void Moth Wing Membrane (Uncommon) (x6), Moth Void Dust Sac (Common) (x17), 3 silver, 12 copper] The loot materialized in a neat pile on a nearby asteroid. Well, the tower system had to vacuum clean that for us. We flew on. I stabilized my feet, watching ahead. I was the only one who could see the trial for locals. Yukiko methodically took us around asteroids. After a while, I spotted one that didn't fit.

One asteroid didn't spin and had a massive arch in its center. I motioned there.

"Drop me off there, please." Yukiko turned the plane. With careful precision, she lowered the plane to the Asteroid. When we got close enough to the ground, a blue bubble shimmered around the area, wreathed the ship. Local artificial atmosphere. We landed, and Chen had the side door open.

"Good luck," he said flatly. Yukiko spared me a nod. Thanks. I got off the plane and headed for the arch. Faint, white light shimmered inside. Definitely the trial.