The Samidare had a lovely streamlined body marred by several thick, cylindrical aether rotors. How unfortunate. It was a painful sight, like a fish impaled on a spear.
Whirr whirr whirr whirr. The columns rotated. Aether flow was pulled in, generating light. Where the aether flow matched the direction of rotation less friction was generated and it glowed red; where the aether flow countered the direction of rotation more friction was generated and the light was blue.
Aether rotor flight was a method of generating propulsion by dipping these rotating columns into the aether flow. Why did simply rotating columns generate propulsion? The number one law of fluids, Bernoulli’s principle. This principle was a law of preservation of energy with regards to fluids. When considering a ball thrown through the air, the only types of energy worth considering are the kinetic energy and the potential energy, but in fluids the energy generated by pressure also applies. Bernoulli’s principle states that the sum of kinetic, potential, and pressure energy is a constant.
The rotating pillars pull aether in the direction of the rotation. When the aether flow and directional rotation match, the aether flow accelerates; on the opposite side, it decelerates. As the accelerating side increases kinetic energy, the pressure lessens; on the decelerating side the kinetic energy decreases and the pressure increases. A pressure gradient forms, causing the entire body to move in the accelerated direction. Propulsion is generated perpendicular to the direction of flow.
Within the solar system there was a spiral-shaped aether flow headed towards the sun. By tacking into that flow, it was possible to generate propulsion away from the sun, towards the outer planets. Aether rotor propulsion was originally a major flight mechanic, the principle by which most ships flew at the dawn of the Great Seiyuu Age. These days, seiyuu-powered flight was cheaper, so it was not often used, but it was still available on all ships as a backup propulsion mechanism.
As the sound of the aether rotors hummed around them, Akane fiddled with the beacon receiver the Dark Seiyuu had given her. The tiny screen showed what looked like a simplified chart of the solar system. A red circle indicated the Dark Seiyuu’s location, quite a long way from Akane.
“Mm? What’s up, Senpai?” Sachii yawned, sliding over to her.
Akane stared at the screen, saying nothing.
“What is that thing?”
“A receiver. The one who attacked you at the gator garden tossed it to me. Looks like she’s headed for Jupiter.”
“Oh yeah? But this ship’s headed for Mars.”
“Yeah. We’re gonna have to hijack it. First, I’m gonna kill the shit out of that asshole director and the rest of her staff. Just desserts for the way they treat seiyuu here.”
“That sounds great! I don’t think we’ve got enough lives to survive this place otherwise. Get them before they get us!”
Killing the director and staff was simple. Nobody knew that Akane had laryngeal sacs implanted all over her body. Surprise attacks left them all dead within a few hours. She shoved all the corpses in the freezer.
The seiyuu were a bigger problem. A ship like this was normally staffed with over a dozen seiyuu. Akane was pretty sure she could fly it on her own, but she preferred to leave as many seiyuu alive as possible. But it seemed unlikely any of them would be willing to cooperate with her personal vengeance quest.
The solution came in the form of Voir. All the seiyuu seemed to be addicted to the stuff, so as long as she controlled the supply, they were as good as hers.
Akane slaughtered the director and staff, stole the Voir supply, and assumed control of all the seiyuu on board. When the director died, someone had sent a mayday over a wireless comm, but with the Earth destroyed, it was unlikely anyone was listening.
On board, a new order was established. It functioned like a pyramid with Akane at the top. The aether rotors had stopped, and seiyuu flight had them speeding towards Jupiter. Seiyuu lives were the fuel for this fire. Seiyuu were pumped full of Voir, turned into mere batteries to keep the ship moving. Late stage Voir addiction led to death, as all the blood in the body become concentrated in the laryngeal sac. Before she figured out the right dosage, six of the 11 seiyuu on board died in a couple of weeks.
The gap between the Samidare and the Dark Seiyuu was slowly shrinking. The Black Swan was small and nimble, but it couldn’t match the Samidare for sheer power.
Twenty days after leaving Earth, the ship reached Jupiter.
Clang!
The ship rocked. Clunk! Again.
“Amamiyaaa! Anything we can do about this shaking?”
“Don’t think there is. It’s always like this around Jupiter.”
The screen was filled with an image of Jupiter. It was a sinister sight, like the world seen when badly drunk. Orange, yellow, brown, white, and blue clouds all swirling together, writhing, swallowing each other up. The eyes were the most unnatural spectacle. Jupiter was covered in eyes, all staring back at them. Blue eyes, red eyes, white eyes, orange eyes... Naturally, these were not actually eyes. They were whirlpools, cloud flows that looked like eyes. Even armed with that knowledge, staring at this view for an extended period of time was enough to make you feel insane. How could our solar system contain anything like this?
She couldn’t let herself go crazy now. To prevent it, Akane injected herself with Voir. This made everything exciting. The ship’s rocking felt like the beat of a rock concert.
The rocking was caused by Jupiter’s aether friction. Jupiter’s diameter was eleven times that of Earth, yet it only took ten hours to rotate. This intense rotation sent shockwaves through the aether, shaking the entire region. The light effects were as intense as the sounds. The lights didn’t appear that bright at a glance, but that’s because the light was of a higher energy than the visible spectrum. If you stepped off the ship you’d be dead in seconds.
The Samidare had followed the Dark Seiyuu’s beacon to Jupiter. Jupiter was a very large planet, but there was a limit to where people could go. If you got too close to the equator the radiation became so strong no seiyuu could ever defend against it, which meant Jupiter could only be approached from the two poles. The beacon indicated that the Dark Seiyuu was at the south pole, but the signal had suddenly cut out a while earlier. This had forced them to approach Jupiter to search for her.
Jupiter’s surface was a deluge of colors. Just as Akane got so sick of staring at them she started nodding off, an alarm rang. The ship’s computer had detected an approaching vessel. Part of the screen enlarged. A little black speck far below them became an isosceles triangle.
The Black Swan!
The ship rose towards them, and the beacon activated again. It was definitely her. The Dark Seiyuu was on board that ship. Hiding in Jupiter’s thick clouds.
The Dark Seiyuu’s face appeared on screen. She was sending an aether transmission from The Black Swan to the Samidare.
“You escaped the gravity failure. I thought you’d pull it off.”
“Wait, you knew? Are you the one who caused it to fail?”
Instead of answering, The Black Swan fired a laser beam at the Samidare. In aether-rich regions of space, beams were incredibly powerful.
The ship rocked violently. It filled with the scent of something burning.
“Fire at the stern! Closing barrier walls and extinguishing!”
“Shit! Fire a beam back at her!”
They tried to counterattack but their target had vanished from both screen and beacon. She’d fled into Jupiter’s thick cloud cover. Differences in the aether density meant light shining from Jupiter’s interior was all reflected by the outer space border. Meanwhile, light could travel from space down to Jupiter without any problems. Within the clouds you could see out, but from above them they couldn’t see inside. Akane’s ship was at a huge disadvantage here.
“Beams! Fire! Fire at will!”
“But Senpai! We’ll never hit!”
Sachii was right. The Black Swan surfaced nowhere near the clouds their beams were aimed at, attacked again, and vanished once more.
“Ship temperature rising! We’re gonna melt!”
“Right, then descend! Down to Jupiter!”
But when they approached Jupiter, The Black Swan appeared and fired another beam. They were forced to turn to avoid it. This repeated, preventing them from ever entering the clouds. The smaller ship was far more agile.