Episode 40

It was a grotesque sculpture, looking for all the world like a mad giant had gone on a rampage, forcibly crushing every piece of junk in sight. Within that tangled mess of scrap, several points of light flickered. Lasers spat, sparks flew, and various bits of metal were processed one after another as they moved along a bizarre, conveyor-like apparatus.

"Hey, Teiro. I’ve got a bad feeling I’m looking at something I shouldn’t be seeing right now," Alan’s voice crackled through the comms.

Mechanical arms snatched up nearby debris and slammed them onto a WIND hull that was already nearing completion. Immediately, a swarm of other arms appeared to pin the parts down, likely riveting them into place. They repeated a relentless cycle: move, stop, move, stop.

"I’m with you, Alan," Taro muttered. "I mean, seriously, who was it?"

Thousands of arms worked in frantic unison, adding new parts to a ship lashed to a thick mooring pole. Rod-shaped things were shoved in haphazardly; plate-shaped panels were slapped on with no rhyme or reason. It was impossible to tell if anything was actually properly attached.

"Whoever said the WIND were just some half-baked failures who played with scrap... I’d love to see them work as a subcontractor for this factory."

The factory complex sat exposed to the vacuum of space, a collection of hollowed-out rectangular prisms performing various tasks at irregular, chaotic intervals. In one spot, purple and blue light flared in every direction—likely refining Razor Metal for beam weapons—while right next to it, what looked like scanning antennas were being bolted together. This was a place clearly not built for human observation or movement. It looked like the kind of environment where a human would be crushed or vaporized in seconds.

"Hey, Squall. Look on the bright side," Bella teased. "Now you’ve got another reason to offer up a prayer to the big guy upstairs."

"Don't joke around, Bella... but damn, I didn't think I'd be saying 'Amen' twice in such a short window. Hey, Mr. Teiro. What’s the play here?"

"What’s the play? You’re asking me?" Taro sighed. "We can’t just leave it here. We don't have to wipe it off the map, but we should at least put it out of commission, right?"

"I'm in," Marl added from the side. "It’s definitely a factory, but honestly, I can't tell if that's all it is. Since it wasn’t designed for humans to use, I have no clue what I'm looking at. For all we know, it’s a factory that doubles as some kind of superweapon."

"Koume agrees, Mr. Teiro. It is highly probable that fuel reserves and power reactors are housed within. Given its sheer mass alone, it poses a significant threat."

Taro nodded at their input. Bella’s voice piped up again: "Should I head over and take a peek?"

"No, Bella-san. I respect any Iron Hearts pilot who’d even think about getting close to that thing, but let’s play it safe. We have no idea what it'll do."

Taro engaged the beam turrets through BISHOP and took aim at the massive structure. They were still at a safe distance; even if the thing blew sky-high, they wouldn't be caught in the blast.

Okay, now... where the hell am I supposed to aim?

The thing was too huge. It was so asymmetrical and chaotic that Taro had no idea where a critical hit might land. He glanced at Marl, but she just shook her head.

"Don't look at me. If we spent a few years researching it, I might have an inkling, but I’d rather leave that to the specialists," Marl said, her face twisted in a grimace as she stared at the display.

"Yeah, fair point," Taro replied. He decided to just pick a spot and hope for the best. He reached out to the monitor on his seat and tapped a section of the structure.

[LOCK-ON IMAGE AIMING: 30%]

The BISHOP system began its lock-on sequence based on his visual designation, but the percentage climbed with agonizing slowness. It was an unprecedented delay, likely caused by the enemy’s jamming device.

"Ugh, this is taking forever... Alright, locked!"

Taro initiated the analysis of the encrypted lock-on scan and completed it in a heartbeat. Having figured out the patterns of the jamming cipher during the previous skirmish, cracking it now was child's play.

"Firing numbers one through four—wait, what!?"

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, the entire megastructure began to vibrate violently. It started shedding parts like it was undergoing a localized structural collapse.

"Mr. Teiro, I am detecting a massive surge of drive particles from the target," Koume reported, her voice as calm as ever.

"Drive particles?" Taro blinked.

"The subatomic particles emitted during an Overdrive jump!!" Marl screamed. "Teiro, look!"

On the main display, the structure was now shrouded in a ghostly, pale blue haze. Instinctively, Taro executed the firing function, unleashing beams toward the structure just as it began to exhibit the "stretching" effect typical of a warp jump.

"Open all ports up to number eight! The railgun won't charge in time!"

Eight lances of light erupted from the Plum II, scorching the hull of the large-scale structure. Vaporized steel erupted in explosions, creating spheres of white fire. But even those explosions began to stretch and distort—

"No way... Jumping with something that big? Is that even allowed!?"

With a flash like a bolt of lightning, the massive structure vanished. Taro stared blankly at the empty void where the factory had been, now filled only with drifting debris.

"DON’T JUST STAND THERE GAWKING! TRACK IT!"

Bella’s roar was so loud Taro nearly fell out of his seat. He clapped his hands over his ears, snapped out of his daze, and barked at Koume, "Calculate the jump destination, now!"

"One moment, Mr. Teiro... The destination is interstellar space, 0.4 light-years away."

"......Huh?"

Taro let out his twentieth cry of shock for the day. Marl leaned forward, eyes wide. "That has to be a calculation error, right?"

"You can't jump that far with just an Overdrive," Marl continued. "That’s impossible unless you’re using a Stargate!"

Taro frowned, humming to himself. Then, a simple, terrifying answer dawned on him. "Oh. I get it."

"You get what?"

"It’s exactly what it looks like. They didn't just find a Stargate. They ate one."

Everyone in the bridge turned to stare at him.

"I mean, it’s not technically impossible..." Marl mused. "Now that you mention it, they did say that small Stargate bound for the research station went missing, didn't they?"

"Miss Marl, I have that in my records as well," Koume added. "However, even if they acquired the hardware, the question remains how they could integrate it into a ship so quickly."

"Right," Alan chimed in over the radio. "There's no way. Stargates are controlled by BISHOP, and the WIND can't use BISHOP. At best, they'd have to jury-rig a manual mechanical interface, but that would take a massive amount of time."

The three on the Plum II nodded in agreement.

"Well, whatever the case, we need to report this to the military. Let’s get—wait, damn it. We’re out of range for a link to Central."

"True," Marl said. "We need to burn it back to Delta immediately and hand over the sensor logs and hull data."

"Hmph... Alright, Teiro. Send a copy of the data to me," Alan proposed. "I'll floor it in the Stardust and get there first. You guys focus on contacting the Doctor or helping defend the station if things get hairy. Any objections?"

No one argued. Their immediate course of action was set—and the race was on.