Episode 158

After touching down on the scorched soil of Nuke, Taro and the gang took a grand tour of the elevator base—affectionately dubbed the "Ladder Base"—which doubled as their primary inspection site. The place was outfitted with every amenity known to man, but aside from the mountain of miscellaneous crates stacked in every available corner, the interior felt exactly like a spaceship.

"Calling it similar is an understatement," Taro remarked. "It’s literally just the same damn thing."

He traced his hand over the Takasaki Heavy Industries logo etched into the wall. Seriously, Takasaki can churn out anything from a starship to a space station without breaking a sweat. Talk about corporate overkill.

"The interior is set to a crisp 1G, and if you ignore the support pillars and outer hull, it is a spaceship," Marl said, her nose crinkling with a smug snort as she pointed at a pile of supplies. "Look, they even use the exact same components!"

"Oh, totally," Taro replied, though in reality, he couldn't tell one space-bolt from another. He’d picked up a fair bit of ship-lore during his travels, but he wasn't about to win a trivia contest against Marl’s obsessive knowledge.

"So, people are already living here, right? How’s the vibe? The outside world looks like a literal dumpster fire, so I figured folks might be getting twitchy. Any weird incidents or mental breakdowns?"

"Not at all, President," an aide replied. "We’ve got staff who spent years on windowless ships. They aren’t the kind of softies who get homesick just because the view outside is a bit... dusty."

"Good to know. Reliable bunch... Ah, so that’s why."

Taro stepped aside as a cargo transport trundled past them in the cramped hallway. He finally realized why the place looked like a hoarder’s paradise.

"Unlike in space, you can't just leave your junk floating around wherever you want. And since the hallways are strictly two-dimensional, logistics must be a nightmare."

The concept of things staying down was a basic law of physics back on Earth, but to the current Taro, it felt like a revolutionary discovery.

"So, not everything is a carbon copy of space life..." Marl whispered, her fingers nervously cinched around Taro’s sleeve. "Just checking, but we’re not going to have a massive earthquake or anything, right? Magma isn’t going to burst through the floor and melt us all?"

Taro looked down at her anxious face and let out a dry laugh. "Don't sweat it. Neither of those things happens that often. I haven't heard anything about this place being a volcanic hotspot, and the tectonic plates are supposedly behaving themselves. Besides, if it were that dangerous, nobody would live here."

"Are you sure?! Look at it out there! If a hole opens up, the sand will get in! What do we do then? Sand, Taro! Sand!"

"Yeah, it’d be a mess, but... it’s just sand? Since when did you become a desert-phobe?"

Taro spent the next few minutes soothing Marl’s sudden fear of the great outdoors as they chatted their way to his assigned quarters. After a fifteen-minute trek, they arrived at a room that looked suspiciously familiar.

"Well... this is underwhelming."

His new room was a literal Block Module from the Plum, brought down via the Orbital Satellite Elevator and plugged into the base. Naturally, the interior was identical to his shipboard cabin. The only sign of the journey was a bag of snack chips he’d forgotten to secure, which had unceremoniously exploded across the floor.

"Still, you gotta hand it to standardized Block Modules. Space, ground, ships—they work everywhere."

Taro flopped onto his well-worn sofa and scanned the windowless room. There was absolutely nothing new to see, but the mere thought of the vast, wretched planet stretching out beyond those walls gave him a bizarre, tingly sensation.

Technically, I should be more used to living on a planet than in a vacuum, but... Huh?

A notification pinged on Taro’s BISHOP. It was an email marked with the highest priority level. I thought we were supposed to be on break, he grumbled inwardly, but he opened the file regardless.

[REGULAR SIGNAL DETECTED WITHIN ATMOSPHERIC NOISE]

"Regular signal, huh... If it were Pulsar radiation, Koume would have flagged it already. What have we got here? Might as well try to decode this while I’m bored."

The planet was currently being hugged by a massive, radioactive sandstorm. Aside from the wired connection to the Plum through the elevator shaft, any wireless comms were usually devoured by the static. Taro wondered if some WIND remnants were lurking out there, but he set the BISHOP to work on noise reduction while he started tidying up the room.

"Gah! The juice in the drawer leaked! Are you kidding me? This was that expensive wooden desk Dean gave me... If Liza finds out, she’s gonna—WAIT, WHAT?!"

His internal monologue shattered into a verbal scream as he stared at the holographic display in mid-air. He jumped, accidentally knocking over the juice he had just started to clean up, but the sticky mess was the last thing on his mind.

"An SOS? From who? Where? What the hell is going on?!"

Buried deep within the decoded static was a string of characters for "SOS," using the standard Galactic Empire distress protocol. And it wasn't a fluke—it was being broadcast on a relentless, desperate loop.

"No way. This has to be a joke, right?"

A single, terrifyingly plausible possibility crossed Taro’s mind. He shook his head, his rational side screaming that it was impossible, but the idea was far too tantalizing to ignore.

---

"Survivors? You’re suggesting people actually survived that orbital firestorm?"

Alan looked at Taro like he’d grown a second head. "It’s more likely a WIND trap," he added bluntly.

"Even if it is, we can't ignore it," Taro shot back. "Either way, we have to verify it. If there are WIND units out there, we need to deal with them. It’d be a real tragedy if our brand-new elevator got trashed because we were too lazy to check a signal."

The room went silent as everyone nodded in grim agreement. Since Marl was busy helping with the facility setup, the conference room consisted of Taro, Alan, Koume, and Phantom.

"That is a fair point," Alan conceded. "Can we pinpoint the source?"

"I’ve got a rough heading and distance, but that’s about it."

"Hmm... Phantom, what’s your take?"

Phantom, who had been stoically tinkering with his mobile terminal, looked up. "One way or another, we need more intel. Fortunately, the Plum can provide Ground Attack support with kinetic rounds, but we can't exactly carpet-bomb the entire hemisphere to solve a mystery."

Alan fell into a pensive silence.

"Oh, wait," Taro interjected. "Beams lose power in the atmosphere, don't they? Are they totally useless?"

"Not entirely," Phantom replied with a straight face. "The refracted beams would cause the local air temperature to skyrocket instantly. They make for excellent, albeit expensive, space-heaters."

"That means they're useless! That is the worst cost-to-performance ratio for a heater in history!"

Taro snapped back reflexively. He realized a second too late that he was bickering with the formidable Phantom, but the cyborg commander just let out a rare, amused chuckle.

"Fine!"

Alan barked the word as if reaching a final verdict.

"We’ll organize an Investigation Unit. It’ll take some time to prep, but let's get a plan on paper."

"That’s the spirit! You used to be in Land Combat, right, Alan? This should be right up your alley."

"If I had the weapons, sure. But that’s the snag. How are we supposed to get the gear?"

"Wait, what?" Taro blinked. "Can't we just buy it on the market? They sell freaking battleships there!"

Koume turned toward him, her expression pitying. "Mr. Teiro... who on earth would have a use for Land Weapons?"

"Who? Uh, the military? Don't you guys do ground wars?"

"If you lose control of the space around a planet, the world is finished, Mr. Teiro," Koume explained. "The enemy can drop whatever they want, wherever they want. If they cut off interstellar trade, the planet withers away. At that point, ground resistance is just a waste of time."

"When you put it like that... okay, I guess. So, what? Is Land Combat just for counter-terrorism or something?"

"Precisely. Though Mr. Alan is the expert on those specifics."

Both Taro and Koume turned to Alan. He was muttering to himself, deep in thought, but he nodded when he noticed their expectant stares.

"Yeah. It’s less 'counter-terrorism' and more 'specialized combat for inside space stations.' Because of that, the gear has a ton of restrictions. High-penetration rounds are a no-go, for instance. You don't want to accidentally punch a hole in the station's hull and vent everyone into the void."

"Yikes... Okay, hold on. So you’re saying you don't even have tanks?"

"A 'Tank'? What is that? Some kind of Armored Vehicle?"

"I mean, yeah, it’s armored, but... are you serious?" Taro was starting to panic. He’d banked on Alan and Phantom being experts, but he hadn't accounted for the total lack of ground-warfare evolution.

Is this why the WIND took over the galaxy so easily? "A tank is, you know... a massive armored box with a giant cannon on top that moves on Caterp—wait, that’s a brand name. Uh, Crawler Tracks. Don't tell me you don't have those either?"

"We have Continuous Tracks, obviously," Alan replied. "They’re standard issue for planetary development Work Vehicles."

"I see... Well, this is gonna take some work."

Taro began scouring his fading memories of Earth, desperately trying to piece together everything he knew about land-based warfare.

---

A sandstorm. It was the undisputed ruler of this planet, and it was currently screaming against ten men trundling across the parched earth. The gale was powerful enough to toss a normal human into the stratosphere, yet these men marched forward with unshakeable, heavy steps.

"Captain! It should be right around here!"

One of the men, clad in a bulky Armed Suit, bellowed over the roar of the wind.

"Good! Deploy the gear! Move fast! I want to see a new record!"

The man addressed as Captain—Phantom—issued the order, and his veteran subordinates blurred into motion. These were the same elite soldiers who had fought alongside him during his legendary rampage against the Empire. Every single one was a top-tier warrior.

"Deployment complete! Activating Sonar Radar!"

The manual claimed the assembly took an average of seventy-five minutes. These men finished it in twenty. They stood in a silent line, waiting for the machine to ping.

"……The noise is filthy, but the echo is solid. There’s something down there, alright. A massive underground cavity."

Phantom studied the radar readout, his mind racing. As Cyborgs, they could shrug off the storm, but the looming threat of the WIND kept him on edge.

"Captain, what do ground-type WIND even look like? I doubt they fly in this soup. Do they crawl?"

"Who knows? They might move in ways we can't even imagine. The sphere is the most stable form for matter, after all. For all we know, they get around by rolling."

Phantom threw out the joke to lighten the mood, then decided it was time to pull back. Taro had given him strict orders to prioritize safety, and staying on guard against an unknown threat in a zero-visibility storm was exhausting work.

"Let’s move. Nothing good comes from overstaying our welcome."

Phantom signaled with a broad sweep of his arm and led his team into a run. It would be a two-hour sprint back to base, but for them, it was just a light jog. They could have used a wasteland transport, but nobody wanted to drive a vehicle in a world where you couldn't see five feet in front of your face.

After the men vanished into the dust, the Sonar Radar continued its lonely, unmanned vigil. Eventually, the sun dipped below the horizon, and the dim world was plunged into total, suffocating darkness.

Suddenly, the ground right next to the device pulsed. Sand trickled down like an hourglass as a mound formed, revealing a strange, metallic object—a long, thin protrusion that looked like a periscope.

"……………………"

The metal stalk rotated, its "eye" twitching left and right as if scanning the horizon. It paused for a single, haunting second, then retracted back into the depths of the sand without a sound.

---

Author's Note: I accidentally uploaded Episode 159 (which was supposed to be for 7/3) early due to a scheduling mistake. I am extremely sorry for the confusion... orz