Chapter 49

"Rei, can you hear me?"

Maya's voice broke the grave-like silence that had settled over Unit-00's entry plug for the last half-hour and reminded Rei just how badly her head hurt.

"Yes," Rei managed, then bit back a whimper. She sat in the entry-plug's command seat with her knees drawn up and her hands on the control sticks. The silence had been strangely comforting—it was as if the rest of the world no longer existed and she was the only one left, but it did not make her feel well.

The throbbing was getting worse, and the pain in her head was like a hammer being smashed against her skull. Her whole body ached, and had it not been for the present emergency she would doubtlessly be bedridden. Doctor Akagi and Commander Ikari were aware of her condition; if they believed she could still exercise Unit-00's combat capabilities then she saw no reason to question them. Rei seldom had an opinion in matters that did not require it. They wanted her here, so she was here.

The ride in the VTOL aircraft alone had been exhausting. By the end of it Rei had been so weak and in so much pain they had to help her down. The staging point was a wide clearing at the junction of a major highway and a railway line, surrounded by forests and hills that gave way in the immediate vicinity to towers of equipment, dozens of vehicles and hundreds of men. Further east, the road snaked up the side of a mountain like a thick gray ribbon. Tokyo-3 lay beyond it, hidden from view on the opposite slope.

Two dozen other NERV personnel had arrived at the engagement zone with her, ahead of their projected schedule. An army of vehicles, trucks and other specialized equipment was needed to assemble the rifle and to tend to the Evangelion itself, which had been transported on a train.

Unit-00 was in a sorry state; its armor was an amalgamation of blue and yellow-orange pieces hastily put together. One of its arms was still missing, and part of the lower torso had been removed, making its waist above the hips seem thin and rather frail. Maya Ibuki had commented that simply getting it operational at all was an act of supreme technical skill. The last time Rei had been inside of it the activation test had quickly become an ordeal, but the Lieutenant promised they had, in her words, "worked out the kinks."

The power rerouting was not completed in time to allow for a full test of Unit-00 on-site, or the weapon it was meant to use. Cables had been strewn hastily on the ground in order to provide electricity to all the equipment, and it seemed as though the JSSDF had assumed NERV would bring its own power source. An argument ensued between the staff of both organizations during which Rei retreated to the side of her Eva to retch, only vaguely aware that some of the soldiers were watching her.

By the time Maya had come for her she had been on the edge of fainting. The Lieutenant placed her on a stretcher and gave her an IV to keep her from becoming dehydrated.

Rei had boarded her Eva roughly an hour later, and had stayed there for what seemed like an eternity, waiting, listening to their communications for instructions, and hurting.

"How are you feeling?" Maya's voice came again, softer than before.

"Fine."

She knew from the heavy pause that the Lieutenant did not believe her.

"I'm sorry I have to place in this position, but we are out of options. I'll give you a quick briefing on what this new weapon is and how it works. Try to focus. This is important." After a few seconds, the Lieutenant began speaking as if delivering a lecture. "Plasma is a conductive assembly of charged particles, neutrals and fields that exhibit collective effects. Plasma carries electrical currents and generates strong magnetic fields, but you probably know that from school. It is the most common form of matter, comprising more than 99% of the visible universe."

Rei listened in respectful silence. She had no more than a theoretical use for any of this type of information on a weapon she was about to use in combat for the first time. All she needed to know was where to find the trigger and how to aim the rifle. She expected the Lieutenant would get to that eventually.

"Plasma is radically multiscale in two senses: first, most plasma systems involve electrodynamics coupling across micro, meso, and macro-scales and, second, plasma systems occur over most of the physically possible ranges in space, energy and density scales."

Rei pulled gently on the control stick on her right. The high-density plasma rifle felt heavy in Unit 00's arm. It was not a static weapon like the positron rifle, which was useful only when fired from a fixed position as if it were a sniper rifle. Another significant difference was the fact that the plasma rifle required a great deal of power for its firing mechanism instead of depending on power for ammunition as the positron rifle did.

The Lieutenant was still talking. "Now, in inertial-confinement fusion, laser beams or ion beams energize the inside of a small cylindrical target. X rays then rapidly heat the capsule causing its surface to blow off. The resulting force compresses the plasma fuel, usually hydrogen isotopes, raising temperatures to 100,000,000 degrees C and densities to 20 times greater than lead. This ignites the plasma fuel and produces a fusion energy output many times the laser energy input, thus yielding extremely large energy gains."

"That is, essentially, how the rifle works. It shoots a super-heated capsule of ultra-dense plasma causing a fusion reaction without any kind of radioactive residue. The technology has existed since before the Second Impact, but the JSSDF and the US Department of Defense have adapted it for use with the Eva. The only thing we've found to be troublesome is the targeting system, so most of the software that controls the rifle's own targeting has been ditched. To compensate we have hot-wired it to your Eva's own computer."

"I understand," Rei said vaguely.

"In theory, each individual round should easily produce enough energy to penetrate the AT Field. In practice, well, we just don't know," Maya said, hesitating only slightly. "This stuff is all new and untested. Do you want to go ahead and do some targeting practice?"

Before Rei could reply another sound caught her attention. The blue-haired pilot immediately recognized it as an alarm siren, a long ominous wail echoing in the distance beyond the sloping hills of their mountain outpost-Tokyo-3's general alert warning. She had heard it a hundred times in her memory and in her dreams. Never inside an Eva.

Rei knew, at that moment, that battle was upon her. Her first, and maybe her last.

"Look like I'll have to owe you that practice," Maya said unnecessarily. "Prepare for combat check-up."

Rei turned her aching head towards the western sky, the direction from which she had been told the Angel would be coming, and wondered if she should be scared. Certainly a human being would feel frightened and nervous, but she was not.

She was calm and unafraid, and she wondered if it was another sign of her lack of humanity.

If I die, the pain will stop, Rei thought. She grabbed her control sticks and pulled them towards her body. Unit-00 stood.