Akane knew the agency name. They called themselves detectives, but they were just bounty hunters. They generally operated in pairs, a lead detective and an assistant. Even now, no official police force operated in the outer planets, so the bounty system was used to entrust matters to civilian hands. Any number of companies had sprung up to collect these bounties. The Rise Detective Agency was one of the bigger ones.
“Hey there! I’m a 1st rank detective, Minerva Ibrahim!” an enthusiastic voice came from the screen. It was a transmission from the Cruadín. A lady with dark skin and long blonde hair appeared on screen.
“And I’m a 1st rank assistant, Nanase Steinbach.” This assistant appeared to be quite a downer. A girl with unhealthy skin, and short white hair. Her eyes were fixed on a point about 30 degrees too high, like she was seeing a ghost.
“Wanted criminal, Akane Yomokura!” Minerva cried, gesticulating dramatically. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of hijacking the Samidare! Surrender at once!”
“Hardly the time for that! Earth already collapsed,” Akane pointed out, ignoring the charge.
“Whether the Earth burns or the Sun explodes, I see my jobs through!”
“Well, ain’t you a loyal dog. Sachii, stick a seiyuu nuke in this bitch.”
“Roger that!”
The missiles with Inori and Sanou were fired at the Cruadín. But the Cruadín fired more missiles, and before they could cause a fusion reaction they were vaporized into Jupiter’s atmosphere.
“Ha ha ha! Struggle all you like, plebeians! You can never compete with a true elite!”
“We’ve tested into the 99th percentile.”
“Damn it! Retreat!”
Their opponent was skilled and well-prepared. They were at a huge disadvantage. The only path forward was to retreat and regroup.
“Retreat where?”
“Computer, map of Jupiter!” Akane quickly scanned the screen, thinking. “Got it, to the red spot!”
The red spot. The largest storm on Jupiter. Three times the size of Earth. It had maintained its current shape for hundreds of years, spinning without end, untold energy stored within.
Sending a ship into the red spot was tantamount to suicide. But Akane wasn’t acting without a plan. In the storm, the winds would render the opponent’s missiles useless. And her ship would put up less wind resistance than the larger one, giving them a small advantage. Inside the red spot, they might be able to lessen their current disadvantage.
Trying to shake the Cruadín, the Samidare hid in the clouds, racing towards the red spot. The closer they got, the harder the crosswind buffeted them. Hail the size of cannon shells slammed against the ship, the pounding of it echoing through the interior. It was all they could do to keep the ship stable.
Orange and white clouds became scarce while red tints increased. According to the computer, this was caused by phosphorus and organic matter rising from the depths. They could no longer see the Cruadín at all. If their opponent had lost sight of them as well, that was ideal, but they couldn’t count on being that lucky. They were pros. They undoubtedly had top class detection tech.
There was a flash of light to the Samidare’s seven. It was the Cruadín’s nuclear missile. But the impact was weak, negated by the storm. Akane’s plan was paying off. But this also proved the Cruadín had definitely not lost track of them. At this rate, they were likely to catch up.
“Power up the aether rotors!”
The aether rotors extended into the extremely thick atmosphere of Jupiter. This caused an immediate increase in resistance — they were in danger of losing control of the ship’s stability. Akane was rolling the dice big time. Inside the red spot, the winds hit the sides of the ship. The rotors could turn that sidelong force into forward propulsion. She was trying to turn the red spot’s storm force from an impediment into acceleration.
With zero visibility, they began moving faster and faster. Akane and Sachii were slammed against the wall. The faster they went the worse the damage taken from any obstructions. All action creates an equal reaction.
A giant hailstone struck one of the rotors head on. The Samidare began to spin. Still Akane held fast to her mic, sounding the aether. The ship spun like a washing machine, but she gradually started recovering control over the gravity.
“Senpai! Light ahead!”
Another missile exploding? No, that wasn’t it. Everything ahead of them was brighter.
They were getting close to the eye of the red spot. The red spot was a giant whirlpool, and like any typhoon, there was a calm at the center.
The Samidare burst out into the eye of the red spot. The storm died away, like it had never been there at all. Far above them they could see blue skies. A column of light poured down from the sky above.
Behind them was a wall of clouds the size of a planet. Like paint flowing in a stream, red-tinted brown and orange clouds were flowing to the left, interrupted every now and then by smaller eddies.
Far ahead of them was the other wall. It was so massive it appeared to be rather close but was actually as far away as the Indian Ocean was wide. A number of different red flows all blurred together at this distance, the borders between them lost. The opposing clouds were flickering with light like a Christmas tree with a glitched battery. Each one of those light bulbs was a thousand times the strength of lightning. If that gives any sense of the scale here.
“Senpai, what next?”
“Wait for the Cruadín. The moment they pop out, hit them with a seiyuu nuke.”
“Aye-aye!”
Akane’s entire strategy revolved around locating her opponent first. Laying in ambush in the stable eye and hitting the Cruadín hard the moment it emerged.
Fifteen minutes later, there was movement in the clouds. The clouds swelled up from within, and a cigar-shaped object emerged.
“There! Fire that missile!”
It was their last seiyuu nuke, the pod with Midokawa aboard. The fusion activated before the opponent could respond. A direct hit! When the explosion cleared, there was nothing there. Had they been completely vaporized?
But then the Samidare’s side was gouged out by a physical shell fired from somewhere.
“Too bad! My compliments on an excellent plan!”
“I suppose that’s the best we can expect from someone so average.”
Crap! It was the Cruadín, not vaporized after all! Both the detective and her assistant were totally fine.
“Ha ha ha ha! Are you surprised? That was just a decoy!”
“A common technique for anyone as advanced as we are.”
The Cruadín had made a duplicate of itself out of carbon nanofiber, flying this decoy via a rocket engine. The pros had seen right through Akane’s plan.
“Which will it be? Surrender, or death? Time to choose.”
The Cruadín hit the Samidare with another volley.
“Yikes! Senpai, what’ll we do?”
“This! Sachii, hold onto something.”
The Samidare’s interior lost all gravity. The ship went into free fall.
The Cruadín remained parked above them, so the gap between the two ships widened. Akane had killed the Samidare’s gravity control. The massive gravitational force of Jupiter was stronger than any engine.
The Samidare’s death defying bungee jump seemed to freak the detectives out. Unable to treat their own lives as cavalierly as Akane did, they descended slowly, maintaining gravity control.
Meanwhile, the Samidare was going so fast adiabatic compression sheathed them in fire.
“Eek... Senpai! We’re gonna melt!” Sachii’s hands were flapping all over, in a panic.
“Don’t worry!” Akane said, giving her a hug.
The Samidare continued to drop inside a ball of fire. Several hours of falling, and the red spot’s swirl was still there, the red clouds still moving in the same direction. However, the light had changed. It was gradually growing darker. As the air pressure grew, the aether volume lessened, and the light energy grew correspondingly weak. Eventually...
“The ship’s temperature is starting to drop, Senpai!”
This contradicted the combined gas law, which stated that temperatures rose with increased pressure. According to that law, as pressure grows, the frequency of aether friction would grow larger, and as a result, temperatures would rise; but it was now known that at pressures over a certain limit this no longer applied. At approximately three million atmospheres, matter forced all aether out of the air, and the higher the pressure grew, the lower the temperature became. As the Samidare headed to the depths of Jupiter, it passed the breaking point for the combined gas law, and the temperature lowered enough to avoid melting. That had been Akane’s goal.