Chapter 181: The Banner of the Rising Sun

"Back on Earth, there was this one time a country right next to Japan claimed they had nukes, and man, it was a whole thing. I forget the name, but they were definitely on the 'Do Not Invite to Parties' list... Whoa, that last bang was a big one."

A sharp crack echoed from somewhere in the distance. Taro lay flat on his back in the rear seat of the Chi-Ha armored vehicle, silently praying that the sound meant another WIND unit had just been turned into scrap metal.

"Most people were terrified the things would actually fall on their heads," Taro continued, staring at the ceiling. "The news was full of experts talking about radiation radiuses, blast zones, shockwaves, and how maybe we’d be okay because their aim sucked. But honestly? All of that was total crap. You don’t drop a nuclear warhead on the ground. Blast waves? Shockwaves? You’re never gonna see ‘em."

Taro squeezed his brain, trying to wring a few more droplets of data from his sponge-like memories.

"High-altitude nuclear explosions, right? So, basically, the way we’re using them now is the proper way... though saying there's a 'proper' way to use nukes feels a bit gross. Maybe 'effective' is better?"

Marl glanced back from the passenger seat. She was still sealed inside her Armed Suit, just in case. Koume was behind the wheel, similarly armored up. In this environment, the suit’s Anti-Electronic Attack Function was basically the only thing keeping their brains from being fried by the lingering interference.

"Depends on the goal, I guess. It’s the Compton Effect, if I remember right. Look, you and the girls probably know the physics better than I do. The point is, you pop a nuke at high altitude, and you get an EMP that hammers everything in a thousand-kilometer radius. When your hit-zone is that massive, aim literally doesn't matter. You just need to get it 'up there.' You lie and say it's a satellite launch passing over a neighbor’s house, and then—boom—you’ve just deleted their entire electrical grid."

Taro closed his eyes, trying to conjure the streets of his old hometown. He wasn't even sure if the image in his head was real or some half-remembered movie scene, but he felt a weird twinge of nostalgia anyway.

"No fireballs, no wind. Just every electronic device within a thousand miles turning into a paperweight. PCs, cars, planes in mid-air, hospital gear... if it isn't shielded, it's dead. The power grid vanishes. Communications go silent. Total infrastructure collapse. The buildings stay standing, but since you can’t move food anymore, everyone starves. Honestly, it probably kills dozens of times more people than a ground-level hit ever could."

Taro let out a dry, self-mocking chuckle and sat up. He checked the monitor displaying the view from the front of the vehicle. Light was finally filtering in. We must be at the exit of the escape tunnel.

"Forget the history lesson. What about the Base? If the Ladder Base is toast, we lose the game."

Taro popped the hatch of the Chi-Ha and leaned out, squinting through the grit at the distant silhouette of the facility.

"Aw, hell! It’s a mess! Look at that place! It looks like someone took a point-blank shot at it with a beam cannon!"

Marl’s voice drifted up from the cabin, dry as the desert outside. "That would be because you were the one who shot it, genius. Remember? Point-blank? With a beam cannon?"

The Ladder Base was a wreck—scarred, battered, and looking like it had been through a trash compactor. But from this distance, it at least seemed to be standing. Whether its delicate internal mechanisms for the Orbital Satellite Elevator still worked, however, was anyone’s guess.

"...................."

Taro watched the facility in tense silence. The sandstorm made everything a blurry mess, but he kept hoping to see something. Even seeing a WIND soldier would be better than this agonizing uncertainty—at least then he’d know they’d lost. He’d hoped he’d incinerated every last one of the bastards on the surface, but he knew the ones hiding underground were probably crawling out of the woodwork right about now.

"............Ah."

A tiny sound escaped his throat. Something was moving on the roof.

"What? Move over, let me see!"

"Hey, hold on! It looked like something moved... Wait, quit it! Two people can't fit in here!"

Marl tried to wedge herself into the hatch beside him. Since both were wearing bulky Armed Suits, there was zero "romantic" physical contact—just the awkward, metallic clanging of two giant canned hams trying to share a single hole. Taro twisted his body, trying to find a way to make room while wondering if he should be annoyed or relieved about the lack of tactile sensation.

"Move! I can’t see a thing!" Marl complained.

"I’m telling you, it’s dangerous! The underground units might have breached the roof!"

Despite the bickering, both of them kept their eyes glued to the facility. Taro narrowed his eyes inside his helmet, trying to force his HUD to zoom in further.

"............Yeah. I definitely see something."

Several black shapes were swaying on the roof. They flickered irregularly against the sky. Taro’s first thought was that they were WIND units looking for a way inside, but as he watched, the movement changed.

"............Yes!"

His heart did a backflip. He threw both hands up in the air. The shapes on the roof gathered in one spot and began to hoist a long, rectangular object. It caught the wind, fluttering violently.

"We did it! Marl, look! We did it!"

The fabric whipped frantically in the sandstorm. Despite the grit and the distance, the design was unmistakable. It was a logo Taro knew better than his own face.

"I see it! I see it! We actually won!" Marl screamed.

"We won! Suck it, you overgrown calculators! We won!"

Both of them stood half-out of the hatch, throwing their arms up in a "Banzai" pose. They hugged each other—or rather, their suits clanked together with a sound like a car crash—and roared with joy. They stayed like that for quite a while, mostly because they had managed to wedge themselves so tightly into the hatch that they eventually had to be pried out by a squad of Cyborgs.

Waving proudly over the battered roof of the Ladder Base was a flag bearing a logo styled after the Hinomaru. It was the Rising Sun Corp Flag.

The roof of the Ladder Base, previously a scorched wasteland, was rapidly becoming crowded again. Shipping containers were being dropped into place, materials were being stacked high, and scaffolding for repairs was already rising into the sky. Staff members swarmed the area with the kind of frantic energy usually reserved for the middle of a firefight.

"Stay sharp! There are still hostiles underground! And hey! Put that sentry gun repair on the back burner! We don't have any ammo for the damn things anyway!"

Alan was barking orders like a man possessed, and the staff were scrambling to keep up. They carried weapons in one hand and tools in the other, their faces a mix of exhaustion and the light-footedness that only comes with survival.

[LADDER ADHESION CONFIRMED. FIFTEEN SECONDS TO JOINT LOCK...]

Koume’s cool, synthetic voice rang out over the base’s speakers. Every worker on the roof stopped what they were doing and looked up. The Coupling Mechanism—the heart of the entire facility—began to hum, generating a massive surge of plasma and magnetic force. It reached out into the sky, snagging the "Ladder" that had been drifting aimlessly in the upper atmosphere.

[...THREE... TWO... ONE... COUPLING COMPLETE.]

The connection between the ground and the stars was restored. A roar of triumph went up from the facility. People were cheering, dancing, and hugging. Alan was still screaming at everyone to keep their guard up, but absolutely no one was listening to him.

"When you look at it like this, it’s almost poetic," Phantom remarked. He was standing on a corner of the roof, his eyes scanning the horizon for trouble.

"Totally," Taro replied, standing beside him. He dragged an empty crate over and sat down with a heavy sigh of relief. "It finally feels like we actually pulled it off. We kept it safe."

"At a high cost. But yes, it was worth it."

Taro thought of the men they’d lost and offered a silent prayer. Phantom’s short, clipped response was all the eulogy Taro needed.

"Do you think those things will come back?" Taro asked, looking down at the ground. The sand was already burying the remains of the explosion that had cleared the surface, hiding the holes where the WIND had emerged.

"Who knows? If I were a betting man, though? I’d put my money on 'no.'" Phantom was idly fiddling with a set of dog tags—likely belonging to one of his fallen "Outsiders."

"I like that answer. You got a reason for it, or are you just being a sunshine-and-rainbows kind of guy?"

"I don't know about 'rainbows,' but think about it. Even a buggy, malfunctioning AI can understand when a place is a deathtrap. We haven't seen a single one of them since Operation Aurora began. They have enough logic to avoid a slaughterhouse."

"Fair enough. I’ll take it. Better than wondering when the next wave is gonna pop up."

"It’s more than just a guess, Taro," Phantom said with a faint smirk. "They’re tactical. They’ve been harassing NASA for years with calculated moves. To them, we just revealed an 'Unknown Superweapon.' They aren't going to make another big move until they’ve figured out how to counter it."

"Counters, huh? That sounds like a headache."

"Don't lose sleep over it. At least for the ground units, independently developing a counter for our ECM is effectively impossible. An EMP is one thing, but our ECM?"

"Wait, really? Why?"

"The EMP from the nukes is just radiation-based electromagnetic waves. They can probably figure out how to shield against that by reverse-engineering the gear they stole from NASA. It might take them a few years, but it’s doable."

"Right, NASA has nukes and power plants, so their stuff is already hardened against EMPs."

"Exactly. But the Carrier-based ECM is a different beast entirely. Taro, do you know what those units emit instead of standard radio waves?"

"Well, I live with a gear-head and a girl who literally is a computer, so... Oh. I get it. Yeah, they're screwed."

"Precisely. Those units utilize Drive Particles. There isn't a single other piece of technology on Planet Nuke that uses Drive Particles besides our own equipment. For the WIND to invent that from scratch? They’d need thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years of R&D."

"So as long as we keep churnin' out ECM Generators and don't let the enemy steal one, we're golden?"

"The outlook for Planet Nuke is looking very bright indeed. Tanks for the offense, ECM for the defense. With those two pillars, humanity is going to win this war sooner rather than later."

Phantom gave a sharp nod and gestured toward the horizon with his thumb.

"Of course, tanks and ECM only work where there's room to breathe. We’re going to have to tell the NASA folks that it’s time to pack their bags. Their future isn't in a hole in the ground—it's out here."