Chapter 53 – These Are Treacherous Waters.

Far from Seldia, in the lightless abyss of the debris field.

Grain, captain of the vigilante corps, sat in the cockpit of his machine Shuel and stared hard at the sensor readouts surrounding him.

This was the same sector where Letaria and the others had rescued Blang's crew only days before. With only the information from the old data chip he had recovered, locating the specific coordinates in an expanse of debris this vast had been nearly impossible. But by cross-referencing the detailed topographic data and combat footage that Letaria and the others had recorded and brought back, Grain had finally traced his way to this cluster of derelict structures. Somewhere beyond, deeper still, at the bottom of the dark where no one went - that was where the source of it all had to be.

"...Even so. No unmanned machines moving to intercept."

Grain refreshed the sensor readings with care. Not a single moving shadow on the console. No trace of the Makinas that had relentlessly driven the raiders to the brink - no trace of the smaller units that had come at them from the abandoned facility. Only broken scrap metal and rock, drifting in perfect silence. A complete world of wreckage and death.

In the unnerving quiet, Grain moved through the structural diagrams from the data chip on his cockpit console, cross-checking them against the buildings before him one by one.

And then, at the deepest recess of the sector, the target structure finally entered Shuel's main camera.

"Bingo."

He said it quietly. As a precaution against every contingency, he placed a low-power position beacon tuned to the corps' encrypted frequency in the shadow of a nearby debris chunk. It would be the only waypoint for anyone who followed him in.

He steeled himself. Shuel advanced slowly into the ruins.

◆

The interior of the structure was in worse condition than the outside had suggested.

A vast research facility that had once, by all evidence, used Makinas for some kind of classified operation. Collapsed ceiling sections and severed heavy cables drifted in the gravity-free void, motionless and strange. The coordinates the data chip had pointed to lay at the very center of this sprawling complex - a single point at its deepest level.

Shuel advanced with its shield raised, wary of ambush from any shadow.

Eventually the path led to what had once been a massive security bulkhead - wrenched completely apart along its seam. Grain guided Shuel to the gap and looked through.

What he saw stopped his breath.

"...What is this..."

Even Grain, for all his steadiness, could not hold down the cold that hit him at the sight.

Enthroned in the darkness of a vast open cavern was a red-black form of mass so far beyond any standard-use Makina that comparison was almost meaningless. A silhouette all brutal weight and heavy armor - unknown weapon systems protruding from every part of its frame. This was something that differed from present-day Makinas at the level of first principles. Makinas, in origin, were extensions of industrial power loaders. This was not that. This had been born purely for combat - a complete mobile weapons platform.

The right course was to withdraw, conduct a thorough investigation. He knew that.

But if this thing started moving toward Seldia the way those unmanned machines had - what then? Old design or not, a mobile weapon was a different category of problem entirely. The casualties, the damage to the city - his imagination supplied the picture without being asked and sent ice down his spine.

(There is no guarantee this thing stays dormant. ...Then there's only one option.)

Grain tightened his grip on Shuel's control stick and forced the output setting of the prototype Photon Rifle he had brought to its absolute limit.

The load on the machine would be severe. But a single shot at maximum charge, landed correctly, would be enough to deal fatal damage even to this behemoth. If he could drive it clean into the reactor core, complete destruction in one shot was within reach.

The barrel of the Photon Rifle blazed with light. The energy charge sequence began.

The countdown to destruction had started.

In that instant --

From a space that should have been dead, a cold electronic voice rang out without warning.

"-- Intruder detected. Lunect Protocol interference risk: high. ...Initiating elimination sequence --"

It was androgynous - and strangely, almost luminously clear. A voice.