Sunrider Liberation Day Novelization
Jan 14, 2017 12:29:54 GMT -8
Nemjen, anon, and 4 more like this
Post by woolyshambler on Jan 14, 2017 12:29:54 GMT -8
For prior chapters in the Sunrider Novelization, please visit the Novelization on Sunrider-VN.com or on the old Hyperspace forums
Liberation Day Novelization
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1- Awakening
Chapter 2- Family
Chapter 1: Awakening
Liberation Day Novelization
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1- Awakening
Chapter 2- Family
Chapter 1: Awakening
Chapter 1: Awakening
“You do not own PACT.”
Fontana’s words echoed as the sound of his pistol’s discharge rang in Kayto’s ears, an unreal sense of numbness rippling through him as he stared at the Paradox Core’s final, static-filled transmission, eyes unfocused. Unbidden, the Prototype’s face swam up in his mind’s eye, the final look of shock and pain as life slipped from its open eyes, haughty smugness and arrogance replaced with something softer in its final moment.
Outside the Sunrider, what remained of Kayto’s shattered fleet hung uncertainly before the Paradox Core, an uneasy respite in the heat of battle as both the Alliance and PACT struggled to make sense of the Paradox Core’s last transmission. Although explosions continued to dot the sky as missiles flew past one another and lasers knifed out between the enmeshed Alliance and PACT fleets, the fever pitch of the battle seemed to diminish as the Alliance’s reserve fleets slowed their advance towards the devastation of the front line. For their part, the PACT ships seemed hesitant to press the advantage, staunchly holding in their defensive positions in sullen radio silence, undoubtedly masking the tremendous confusion and doubt rippling through the fleet’s chain of command.
“Sunrider!” Asaga’s voice cut through the stunned silence of the CIC, no effort made to conceal her surprise. “This is Black Jack, did you just hear that? That red bastard just turned on Arcadius! The PACT's starting to turn tail!”
“PACT Ryders are regrouping into a defensive cordon, Captain,” confirmed Ava, her voice laced with caution, as though scarcely willing to believe the bloodbath might be over. “Picking up a spike in encrypted PACT comm traffic; their High Command is probably in complete disarray. Incoming orders from Alliance Command; the Combined Fleet is to stand down from the advance and make preparations for emergency search and rescue!”
“No more PACT units in our AO, Capt'n... the only active signature is...”
On screen, the Black Jack's engines pulsed, kicking it closer to the last Arcadius Ryder Asaga had engaged. The Ryder's armor bore deep gouge marks where Black Jack's pulse lasers had melted through, revealing slagged components and burned circuitry; it's armatures had been cleaved clean off and its engines were scored deeply from Black Jack's anti-Ryder blades, as cold and lifeless as the space around them.
“Still reading one life sign from this Arcadius unit,” Asaga's voice sounded surprised; given the extent of the damage to the Ryder and the half a dozen hull breaches it was slowly venting atmosphere from, her assessment was a temporary one at best. “It's thready... but the pilot's definitely alive. What should we do with Capt'n?”
“Captain,” Ava turned to Kayto, swallowing her confusion and almost succeeding imposing some order on the uncertainty of the situation. “The Prototypes. Arcadius. This changes everything we've understood about the PACT and the entire war itself. We need to take that Prototype alive. The intelligence we extract from it could-”
“It... looked like her,” Kayto muttered through clenched teeth, wide eyes riveted on the devastated Ryder drifting dead in space. “Take it-” Kayto swallowed against the painful dryness of his throat. “I want her taken alive.”
“Sir.” Ava’s tone suggested she had more to say, but she merely gave him one more glance before turning to her command console, tapping in orders as she opened a channel to the Sunrider's Ryder wing. “Liberty, stabilize that wreck with your drones and prepare to tow the disabled Arcadius unit back to our hangar; the rest of you-”
“T-that's... impossible...!”
Chigara's quiet voice teetered on the edge of hysteria, quivering slightly as she grasped at the torn fabric of her reality, sounding as though she were half asleep, trying desperately to rouse herself from the nightmare. Despite the wailing of alarms and the roar of voices as the bridge crew worked feverishly to stay in control of the Sunrider's failing systems and struggling damage control, the confusion, pain, and suffering in her voice reached across the divide and pulled Kayto from his shocked stupor, anchoring him to his command and delivering a stinging blow to bring him back to his senses. Whatever else was happening, whatever their universe was twisting apart to reveal, his crew needed him. She needed him.
Springing into action, Kayto keyed the Liberty's private comm channel, cutting Chigara's transmission off from the rest of the Ryder wing and crew. A small window opened on his command console, revealing Chigara's face, devoid of color and staring with a haunted expression at Liberty's forward screens as she clutched her head, her eyes darting wildly, begging for some thread of reality to cling to.
“Something like that...! I'm the only one who survived! Everyone else...!” Chigara's whisper edged close to the brink of total breakdown.
Opening and closing his mouth, Kayto groped for the words that would reach back across the distance, that would shield her from the universe and remind her that she was not alone. Mentally kicking himself, Kayto dug desperately for the confidence and comfort which had always come so easily to come forward now and give Chigara the words she needed to hear.
“Haah.... haaah...” another voice cut in on Liberty's private channel, pent up fury and pain straining it to the point of breathlessness. “We are all the children of Diode.”
With almost deliberate slowness, a static filled image resolved on Kayto's command screen beside Chigara's video, revealing one of the Prototypes, a hand clutching the gap between the charcoal and red plates of her Ryder armor as a dark stain seeped across the fabric beneath the plates and between her fingers. Looking up, she glared at the camera and gritted her teeth against the pain, blood weeping from one temple and matting her light, mauve hair as it dripped down her chin. All around her, holographic readouts pulsed a deadly shade of crimson, warning of catastrophic damage to every sub-system in her Ryder and the rapidly dwindling life support the remnants of her Ryder were capable of.
“We're one and the same, you and I,” the Prototype continued, taunting even as she struggled for breath as her injuries took their toll and the atmosphere left in her Ryder began to thin. “Sisters.”
“NO!” Chigara screamed as dark, mirthless laughter filled the channel, anguish mirrored on both sides of the conversation. “EEAAAHHH!”
“Captain.” Ava's voice snapped from his left. “Liberty's not responding to my commands-,” her eyes narrowed suspiciously as her glare settled on his communications suite. “Captain, what's-?”
“Belay that previous order,” Kayto cut Chigara's channel before Ava could switch into it. “Bianca, tow that Arcadius unit back to the Sunrider, I want that thing in our hangar five minutes ago.”
“C-copy!” Claude confirmed, sounding off-footed and surprised. Nevertheless, Bianca's engines fired, bringing the pink Ryder into a tight arc as it launched tethers to the disabled Arcadius Ryder and began dragging the wreck towards the Sunrider's stern hangar doors.
“Captain!” Ava's furious glare pinned Kayto, unaccustomed to being left out of the loop and all the more suspicious for it. “What in the name of-” A proximity klaxon shrilled out, cutting Ava off yet again. “Alert!” Ava's focus shifted instantly, her training kicking in and shelving her complaints as she consulted her tactical feed grimly. “New hostiles inbound on our AO. Pirate forces on high burn direct intercept!”
“Aren't you forgetting about someone!?”
On the main screen, a dozen new signatures resolved, seeming to pour out of the distant fog at the edge of sensor contact, the recognizable silhouette of the Havok surrounded by a brace of pirate Ryders and a small escort of converted civilian and black market ships, the final remnants of the pirate fleet amassed at Ongess, probably crewed by their most fanatic zealots.
“Cosette!” Kayto felt his heart race again and sweat break out over his body, exhaustion threatening to overwhelm him as Cosette's tiny fleet moved to intercept the Sunrider and Alliance vessels beside them. Stiffening, he pushed aside all other thoughts and forced himself to focus on keeping his people alive in the face of the latest complication. While his fleet was desperately low on munitions and barely had enough hull integrity to stay afloat, Cosette's ships and Ryders had apparently ducked out of the thick of battle, lurking until their moment of opportunity. As much as he was loath to admit it, the pirate ships had a very real chance of finishing the job the PACT had started and sinking what was left of his fleet and the Sunrider. “All available units; regroup and prepare for defensive action! The fleet’s counting on you!”
“Roger that!” Asaga shouted, Black Jack bursting across the Sunrider's main screen in a flash of blue light. “Ryders, form up on my six!”
“You again!” Cosette's voice was a hiss of furious delight as she spied Black Jack, her Ryder pulling to the head of her own formation as it charged towards Black Jack and the Sunrider's Ryder wing. “HAHAHA! This is where it all ends! Your fleet and your Captain are going to pay for what they did on Ongess!”
“You're too late!” Asaga shot back. “The PACT's pulling out, we've captured or killed every Arcadius left. There's nothing you can do anymore!”
“I can still take you out! EAAAHHH!” Cosette shrieked, eyes wild and hair in her face as she pounded commands into her Ryder. “No retreat! Men, hold your ground! If Fontana doesn’t have the gall to stand here, then we’ll just kill them all ourselves!”
Kayto cut in on the transmission, weariness and pity coloring his voice as he tried to make one last appeal. “Cosette, listen-”
“WE’LL NEVER SURRENDER TO YOU! You’ll just have to kill every last one of us-”
“But your deaths would be meaningless!” Kayto protested, his fist curling over his arm rest. “Haven’t enough men and women died today!?”
“Better to die in a blaze than alone in a ditch somewhere… hungry… sick… used…” Cosette’s face twisted into the tortured grimace of an animal in pain as she sneered at Kayto’s appeal. “This will be the final charge of Cosette Cosmos, the terror of the stars! History may paint us as villains, but know that we stood here in defense of our home world! So that our children would not bear the horrors we did! So that no one else but us will have to dirty their hands! All ships forward! Ryders, on me! Onwards to hell!”
“Incoming! Multiple missile launches detected from pirate Ryders!” Ava’s fingers flew furiously across her holographic keyboard as a klaxon wailed through the CIC. “Radiation spike! Detecting two nuclear signals from pirate cruisers! They’re launching nukes!”
“Have the fleet come about! Minimize our forward profiles!” Kayto grimly studied the readouts of his ship’s operational status. After the beating the Sunrider had taken from Arcadius’s Ryders, nearly every section and sub-system of his ship was strained to critical failure, if it hadn’t gone offline already. With hull integrity as such, the nuclear missiles launched wouldn’t even need to hit the Sunrider to blow her to pieces. “Task our remaining flak network to intercepting the conventional ship-to-ship missiles! Give me a sitrep on our weapons!”
“Aye Captain, gunnery reports seventy percent flak network integrity,” Ava consulted the incoming reports with a long face. “Hell Dart tubes A through C offline, D through J nominal, re-arming in progress! Savior mag coil alignments are shot; I rate our accuracy at no more than twenty five percent of nominal performance. Starboard Trinities are offline; unable to re-route controls. Port Trinities intact.”
“Have Armory get our remaining Hell Darts hot on the double!” Kayto tapped new commands into his console. “Get me firing solutions on every ship within range; prepare for simultaneous missile launch. Black Jack,” Kayto highlighted the two nuclear missiles on the Ryder tac net as priority targets. “If one of those nukes even sneezes at the fleet, we’re done. I need them out of the sky; now.”
“Roger that, Capt’n!” Asaga’s voice grated with strain as Black Jack pushed forward, engines on full burn. “I’ve got the one at two o’clock. Phoenix, you’ve got the one at ten. Seraphim, Paladin; keep those pirate Ryders off us!”
“It just never ends does it?” Icari asked wryly, grimacing as she pulled Phoenix into a tight arc towards her assigned target, bracing hard against the acceleration. “My autocannons are empty… I guess there’s no choice; you owe me a drink for this one Captain!”
With a flash, Phoenix’s engines flared a brilliant blue as the Ryder cut across the cloud of missiles streaking towards Kayto’s fleet. Exhaust ports glowing cherry red as the superheated reaction mass cut a burning thermal trail across the storm of missiles, Phoenix blinded the missiles’ relatively simple targeting sensors and compelled their tracking systems to lock onto its brilliant wake.
“Redlining reactor!” A bead of sweat rolled down Icari’s temple as she mashed forward on her control yokes, leading the missiles off course. “Warranty’s going to be bust after this one…”
“Phoenix, adjust your pitch by minus half a degree,” Kayto linked his tactical suite to Phoenix’s flight computers, cottoning onto Icari’s plan. “Don’t spare the horses if you don’t want to glow in the dark after this.”
“Har. Har.” Icari’s face turned a shade paler, although whether that was from the acceleration forcing her blood downwards or the prospect of weathering a nuclear blast through Phoenix’s almost non-existent shielding and armor was unclear. “ANGEL armed! Crossing the nuke’s projected flight path; Launching!”
Phoenix’s stabilizers spread slightly as recessed plates slid back, its silhouette against the brilliant halo of its engines shifting and elongating as the Phoenix unfurled its wings properly. Becoming almost painful to look at, the wings seemed to glow as dozens of flares ignited with a pure, magnesium burn, dropping behind Phoenix and fanning out behind the Ryder’s luminous wake. The next instant, the flares seemed to multiply tenfold as a similar number chaff canisters detonated, their mirror-like contents scattering the light and heat of the flares in wild, scintillating patterns.
Streaking through the lightshow, the pirate missiles plowed through the hail of heat and light for a second before their targeting computers completely scrambled, detonating their payloads blindly through the storm, wreathing the entire volume of space with fire and shrapnel.
“Lock our sensors on Phoenix!” Kayto demanded, struggling to make out Icari’s Ryder through the interference. “Don’t-”
A hard gem-like brilliance erupted from within the inferno, sweeping outwards and drowning out the sensors across the entire spectrum, a wall of EM radiating outwards, scattering rainbow lights across the Sunrider’s shields as they crackled and rippled in resonance.
“Nuclear detonation!” Ava tapped furiously on her console. “The fleet’s unharmed!”
“Phoenix?!” Kayto practically shouted as he stabbed at the comms channel. “Scan for active IFF’s in the detonation sphere!”
“HAHAHA!” Icari’s elated whoop cut through the static. “SPEED!”
As the interference from the nuclear detonation waned, the Sunrider’s sensors snapped back onto Phoenix, very much in the clear and banking gracefully as it carried its incredible momentum back towards the pirate forces converging on the Sunrider.
“Always wanted to drag with a nuke,” quipped Icari, laughter ringing as she let go of the tension of the last few heartbeats. “What’s the matter, Captain? Lose your cool there for a minute?”
“Still one active nuclear signature, time to intercept one hundred fifty seconds!” Ava warned him before he could get in with a retort. “Pirate missile salvos are entering our defense fields; flak network tasked to maximum!”
“Black Jack, what’s your situation?” Kayto’s hands gripped his arm rests, knuckles white. “That nuke’s still coming straight at us…”
“There’s enough fire out here to walk on Capt’n!” complained Asaga, her expression strained as Black Jack’s frame shook as it shrugged its way through missile shrapnel. “Woah!”
Tumbling to the side, Black Jack rolled as it avoided several bright beams of laser light that cut in front of its flight path, forcing Asaga to divert from the nuclear missile’s trajectory.
“Pirate Ryders incoming!” announced Ava tersely. “They’re trying to cut a path for the missile!”
“No kiddin’!” Asaga’s grinding teeth were practically audible from the CIC as Black Jack continued to dodge the incoming fire, trying to break past and draw a bead on the incoming nuclear missile once more.
“Stand by for assistance.”
“Seraphim’s reactor output is climbing!” Ava shouted, projections of Sola’s Ryder flashing all manner of warning signs as her Awakening took hold. “All limits exceeded!”
In an instant, no fewer than five lances of pure white light cut a blinding path across the main screens towards the pirates, spearing their Ryders in such rapid succession that Kayto could barely blink before four of the pirate Ryders were annihilated. The fifth shot clipped one of the pirate Ryder’s engine boosters, looking like a near miss for an instant before the booster blew apart, sending the parent Ryder into a dizzying tumble before it slammed into Havok in flaming embrace.
Before the pirates could so much as reel in shock, Paladin threw itself headfirst through the explosions towards the remaining pirate Ryders as their formation shattered. Without slowing, Paladin slammed into one of the remaining pirate Ryders full on with its shield, crumpling the illegally restored frame like so much tin foil as it blasted past the stricken Havok, showering the damaged Ryder with autocannon fire.
“Black Jack! Take the shot!” yelled Kryska.
“I got it, I got it!” screamed Asaga, mashing down on her firing controls.
Shoulder lasers firing as fast as they would cycle, streaks of blue laser light knifed out into the distance as the entire CIC crew held its collective breath.
Two uncomfortable heartbeats later, a distant flash signified Black Jack’s success.
“Nuclear detonation detected,” confirmed Ava, no small relief in her voice. “No additional nuclear signals on sensors.” Amid the sea of yellow and red on the Sunrider’s status screens, several green signals flared to life. “Captain, Armory reporting ready; Hell Darts re-armed! Firing solutions locked, removing safeties.”
“Let them have it Commander,” Kayto nodded grimly at the remaining pirate ships in the distance. “Give them a taste of their own medicine.”
Outside the Sunrider, pod after pod of Hell Dart missiles launched, flash frozen clouds of propellant wreathing the ship in a cloud of fog as nearly a hundred of them streaked away towards the pirate fleet in the distance. Unlike the true warships in Kayto’s fleet, the pirate fleet ships were ill equipped to survive against the wall of missile fire they found themselves facing. With almost deliberate slowness, the Sunrider’s Hell Darts began to impact on the pirate ships’ green hulls.
“Intercept rate less than thirty percent; salvo making contact now,” Ava’s voice was pitiless as she poured over the tactical feeds coming into her console. On screen, the pirate ships began to break apart as dozens of missiles hit home, burning through layers of armor and blasting the scavenged ships apart deck by deck. “Multiple good hits; all targets in our AO sunk or removed from play; I’m detecting a significant reduction in incoming fire.”
“A-arggghhhh!!!!” Cosette’s scream echoed over the comms as she fought with her controls, her cockpit a bloody red as Havok reeled from the impact of its subordinate Ryder, tumbling blindly, wreathed in flame. Whether the scream was for the devastation wrought upon her fleet, Ryder, or both was entirely unclear. “Everyone left… form up." Cosette's voice was breathless with fury. "Time for one more pass!”
“It’s over Cosette!” Asaga blurted over the comms, pivoting Black Jack and squaring off against Havok as it stabilized, sloughing off burned and damaged armor and ejecting the spent missile launchers attached to its shoulders. Behind it, Cosette’s two remaining wingmates slotted themselves onto escort positions on her flanks. “Surrender so we don’t have to kill you all!”
“Hahaha…” Cosette’s quiet laugh heaved with morbid amusement. “Like I said… No Surrender! Havok is far from finished! This fight’s not over yet!”
Engines brightening with pent up fury, Havok lunged forward towards Black Jack with surprising speed for a Ryder of its tonnage, seemingly freed of its heavy armor cladding and all the more agile for it. Without hesitation, Havok leveled its rotary machine cannon at Black Jack like a charging knight’s lance, the massive gun rotating and picking up speed for a moment before cutting loose, spent brass blossoming into vacuum and leaving a trail behind Havok as it barreled forward with its two escort Ryders in close pursuit, lasers firing.
“Eaaahhhh!” Black Jack staggered as Havok’s high explosive rounds detonated around it and on the Ryder’s reactive armor plates. Gritting her teeth, Asaga slammed her controls forward, gunning Black Jack towards Havok’s formation. “Don’t… mess… with me!” Asaga shouted, her Ryder shaking like a thing possessed as it plowed forward against the hail of gunfire, bullets ricocheting off its armor and the flat of its blade, drawn and held at the ready.
“Foolish Villain.”
Asaga’s voice deepened, filled with burning wrath and potency as her face hardened, tightening into a harsh mask of righteous fury.
“Captain!” Ava struggled to make sense of the telemetry from Black Jack’s sensor suite. “Asaga’s Awakening again! Black Jack’s reactor output is off the charts!”
Black Jack’s exhaust thrust seemed to intensify by an order of magnitude as it suddenly veered off it’s head-on approach to Havok, dodging the incoming laser fire as it rocketed away at an impossible angle, ignoring the laws of physics and inertia.
“W-what!?” Cosette struggled to bring her gun back to bear, but Black Jack’s maneuvers were too much for her heavy Ryder to keep up with.
“You cannot soothe your conscience with excuses.”
Without warning, Black Jack’s trajectory changed at a whim once again, this time angling the Ryder straight for one of Cosette’s wingmen. Before the pirate could even react or begin to change course, Black Jack cut down from above, its anti-Ryder blade slicing through the entirety of the Ryder as though it were made of wax, leaving the explosion of fire and metal in its wake.
“T-tsch!” Cosette gritted her teeth, swinging her Ryder in a wild arc and firing at Black Jack in a desperate gesture as the impossibly nimble Ryder jetted to the other side of her formation. “What would a Ryuvian Princess know about poverty!? What would she know of desperation!?”
“Irrelevant.”
Pulse lasers strobbed as Black Jack seemed to reappear behind Cosette’s remaining wingmate, burning through the Ryder in an instant and melting it into a twisted effigy of what it was before slapping aside its remnants mercilessly with the flat of its anti-Ryder blade and blasting off into the distance.
“Your hands are soaked with blood. Your mind is as malignant and twisted as your deformed body. Your words are empty and hollow. No mitigation. No justification. No claims to the greater good. Justice shall be done to all. I am your judge and arbitrator; my sword, your fate.”
Black Jack swiveled, thrusters burning like twin suns as it arrested its incredible velocity in an instant and flew straight for Havok as though in joust, lasers glowing with a cruel, harsh light.
“Just what- AARRRGGGHHH!”
Havok recoiled horribly as Black Jack’s lasers burned past it, one beam slamming into its shoulder and deforming the armature below as it sawed downwards, military grade armor flashing and boiling away like paper to a flame.
“Cosette... Yield!” Kayto shouted as Black Jack streaked towards Havok, anti-Ryder blade gleaming at the ready. “Surrender to us and I’ll listen to what you have to say. You’re not the only one fighting for the Neutral Rim!”
“Y-you…” Cosette’s voice cracked at the edges, fear breaking through beneath the agony, Black Jack’s approach reflected in her wide eyes.
“Asaga, STOP!”
“E-eh!?” Asaga gasped, wrenching her controls at the last moment as Black Jack’s blade flashed forward, dropping her Ryder’s course and causing her Ryder’s blade to miss Havok’s torso and reactor by a hair-raising margin as it sliced across the Ryder’s midsection, cleanly cleaving the Ryder in two.
“ARRGH!” Cosette screamed again, barely audible over the wailing alarms on her end of the transmission as Havok’s stabilization thrusters on its “legs” flickered with uneven thrust, detonating and rocking the stricken remnants of her Ryder.
“O-oh! W-what am I doin’?” Asaga shook her head, trying to clear it, sounding utterly confused as though waking from dream. “E-ehh!?!? W-what the hell happened to Havok!? It’s completely wrecked!”
“She doesn’t remember?” Ava asked under her breath as she furrowed her brow. “Asaga’s powers helped us out of a tight spot with Arcadius, but if she can’t control them…”
“Another problem, another time,” Kayto felt a lifetime’s worth of strain and tension begin to leave his body as a migraine began to settle in its place. On the tactical screen, the the space around the Sunrider and her fleet pulsed clear, all hostile contacts sunk or neutralized. “Everyone, stand down, all Ryders, return to the Sunrider. Black Jack, tow what’s left of Havok. Alert Security; let them know we have a second prisoner en route to the hangar.”
Pressing a hand to his temple, he slumped in his captain’s chair. With the Paradox Core secured and the PACT fleet preparing for retreat, the Battle of Helion was essentially over, and yet, as he stared out at the hundreds of wrecked hulls and sunken ships scattered across the battlefield, he felt utterly drained, as far from victorious as he could imagine.
***
Fontana surveyed PACT fleet from the observation deck of the Vae Victus, hands deep in the pockets of his greatcoat. Almost immediately after assuming command of the PACT fleet, his orders to begin preparations for an organized withdrawal from the system had been heeded, willingly or not, the fleet beginning the processes of recovering their Ryders and lifepods. Although most of the fleet’s captains had accepted his authorization codes and command, a significant fraction of the fleet had maintained a sullen radio silence since his initial broadcast revealing his or the prototypes’ treachery, depending on how one chose to align themselves. Fortunately, the late prototype’s plan to sacrifice the entire fleet to detonate the Paradox Core had done little to refute his claim that both Arcadius and the ideals he had once stood for had been corrupted, a significance not lost upon the captains who had pledged loyalty to his command.
Closing his eyes and exhaling explosively, Fontana’s hand clenched into a fist around his pocket watch. How many PACT men and women had given their lives for that monstrosity’s hubris? How many worlds had wept blood and sweat in toil to the perversion of their own ideals? If only he had the courage and wisdom to act sooner… But the mantel Arcadius had left to the Revolution would now be his to carry; he had failed that charge until now, but no longer.
Drawing the pocket watch forward, he clicked it open on reflex, studying the face of the antique device for a moment before turning his attention to the scene before him once again, his fleet’s warp drives beginning to spool as they prepared for warp. Although technically withdrawing from the battle, the PACT fleet had arguably dealt two blows for every one taken against the Alliance. Majority of the wrecked ships between the two fleets bore the emerald colors of the Alliance beneath shattered metal and burned armor. To their credit however, the Alliance men and women had a conviction and courage he’d never known from the Imperials during the Revolution.
“Vennasar.” A bridge officer saluted crisply as he stepped onto the observation deck. “Our ships have performed an orderly retreat; we’re prepared to warp on your command.”
“Thank you,” Fontana frowned, keeping his eyes fixed on the crimson fleet surrounding him. “Order the fleet to withdraw to rally point Omicron.”
“And the Paradox Core, Sir?”
Fontana scowled at the structure in the distance as it hung above Helions fiery surface. Undoubtedly, even as they spoke, the Alliance fleet was advancing on the weapon, eager to lay claim to the prize they had paid thrice over for in blood. The sacrifice of good men and women for the ambitions of those above them never ended, but in this regard, the PACT had been equally blinded.
“Even in its disarmed state, I would be loath to allow the Alliance Imperialists to seize control of the Core. No doubt they would seek to create Cores of their own if the means was made available to them. Have your men made the preparations?” asked Fontana, sparing a sideways glance towards his subordinate.
“Yes sir! My men have rigged explosives throughout the Core to detonate on your command. All ships have now retreated safely away from the perimeter.”
“Good.” Fontana clicked his pocket watch shut with an air of finality. “Send the signal. The PACTs future was never wrested from the past; it was won in the present. The galaxy has no need for a weapon that would tear the very fabric of time itself.”
“Understood.” The woman beside him nodded and raised her cuff to her lips, relaying the command. “Detonate the explosives!”
“...” Several heartbeats went by as Fontana looked towards the Core in expectation, a rising sense of wrongness intruding on the moment as he turned to his officer, who looked no less disturbed. “...What’s wrong!?”
“The explosives are not responding to the signal!” The woman wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, consulting a readout on her bracelet. “We’re being jammed!”
“By whom!?” Fontana’s jaw locked, instinctively knowing the answer already. “All the prototypes should have been destroyed!”
“Sensors resolving the countersignal; the prototype’s mindstream network is still active!” The officer made a gesture, causing the observation deck’s displays to leap forward towards the source.
“Tsch!” Fontana clenched his teeth, glaring at the Sunrider’s profile. “That ship again… It seems our destinies are intertwined…”
“Shall I inform the fleet to re-engage Vennasar?”
Fontana stared out at the approaching Alliance fleet with a cold gaze, swallowing his anger and disappointment. “No. Enough men and women have lost their lives for that accursed station today. We’ve already disarmed and dismantled the critical components. It will have to be enough. Order our fleet to withdraw immediately, captain.”
“Vennasar.” The captain saluted and stepped back.
All around him, flashes of light and the rippling of space began to enshroud his fleet as they began to transition to warp, disappearing from the system in the blink of an eye. With a heavy heart, Fontana fixed his eyes on the Paradox Core and the scores of Alliance ships descending upon it until the view disappeared into darkness as the Vae Victus followed her fleet into the dark.
“Shields… what have you done...?”
“You do not own PACT.”
Fontana’s words echoed as the sound of his pistol’s discharge rang in Kayto’s ears, an unreal sense of numbness rippling through him as he stared at the Paradox Core’s final, static-filled transmission, eyes unfocused. Unbidden, the Prototype’s face swam up in his mind’s eye, the final look of shock and pain as life slipped from its open eyes, haughty smugness and arrogance replaced with something softer in its final moment.
Outside the Sunrider, what remained of Kayto’s shattered fleet hung uncertainly before the Paradox Core, an uneasy respite in the heat of battle as both the Alliance and PACT struggled to make sense of the Paradox Core’s last transmission. Although explosions continued to dot the sky as missiles flew past one another and lasers knifed out between the enmeshed Alliance and PACT fleets, the fever pitch of the battle seemed to diminish as the Alliance’s reserve fleets slowed their advance towards the devastation of the front line. For their part, the PACT ships seemed hesitant to press the advantage, staunchly holding in their defensive positions in sullen radio silence, undoubtedly masking the tremendous confusion and doubt rippling through the fleet’s chain of command.
“Sunrider!” Asaga’s voice cut through the stunned silence of the CIC, no effort made to conceal her surprise. “This is Black Jack, did you just hear that? That red bastard just turned on Arcadius! The PACT's starting to turn tail!”
“PACT Ryders are regrouping into a defensive cordon, Captain,” confirmed Ava, her voice laced with caution, as though scarcely willing to believe the bloodbath might be over. “Picking up a spike in encrypted PACT comm traffic; their High Command is probably in complete disarray. Incoming orders from Alliance Command; the Combined Fleet is to stand down from the advance and make preparations for emergency search and rescue!”
“No more PACT units in our AO, Capt'n... the only active signature is...”
On screen, the Black Jack's engines pulsed, kicking it closer to the last Arcadius Ryder Asaga had engaged. The Ryder's armor bore deep gouge marks where Black Jack's pulse lasers had melted through, revealing slagged components and burned circuitry; it's armatures had been cleaved clean off and its engines were scored deeply from Black Jack's anti-Ryder blades, as cold and lifeless as the space around them.
“Still reading one life sign from this Arcadius unit,” Asaga's voice sounded surprised; given the extent of the damage to the Ryder and the half a dozen hull breaches it was slowly venting atmosphere from, her assessment was a temporary one at best. “It's thready... but the pilot's definitely alive. What should we do with Capt'n?”
“Captain,” Ava turned to Kayto, swallowing her confusion and almost succeeding imposing some order on the uncertainty of the situation. “The Prototypes. Arcadius. This changes everything we've understood about the PACT and the entire war itself. We need to take that Prototype alive. The intelligence we extract from it could-”
“It... looked like her,” Kayto muttered through clenched teeth, wide eyes riveted on the devastated Ryder drifting dead in space. “Take it-” Kayto swallowed against the painful dryness of his throat. “I want her taken alive.”
“Sir.” Ava’s tone suggested she had more to say, but she merely gave him one more glance before turning to her command console, tapping in orders as she opened a channel to the Sunrider's Ryder wing. “Liberty, stabilize that wreck with your drones and prepare to tow the disabled Arcadius unit back to our hangar; the rest of you-”
“T-that's... impossible...!”
Chigara's quiet voice teetered on the edge of hysteria, quivering slightly as she grasped at the torn fabric of her reality, sounding as though she were half asleep, trying desperately to rouse herself from the nightmare. Despite the wailing of alarms and the roar of voices as the bridge crew worked feverishly to stay in control of the Sunrider's failing systems and struggling damage control, the confusion, pain, and suffering in her voice reached across the divide and pulled Kayto from his shocked stupor, anchoring him to his command and delivering a stinging blow to bring him back to his senses. Whatever else was happening, whatever their universe was twisting apart to reveal, his crew needed him. She needed him.
Springing into action, Kayto keyed the Liberty's private comm channel, cutting Chigara's transmission off from the rest of the Ryder wing and crew. A small window opened on his command console, revealing Chigara's face, devoid of color and staring with a haunted expression at Liberty's forward screens as she clutched her head, her eyes darting wildly, begging for some thread of reality to cling to.
“Something like that...! I'm the only one who survived! Everyone else...!” Chigara's whisper edged close to the brink of total breakdown.
Opening and closing his mouth, Kayto groped for the words that would reach back across the distance, that would shield her from the universe and remind her that she was not alone. Mentally kicking himself, Kayto dug desperately for the confidence and comfort which had always come so easily to come forward now and give Chigara the words she needed to hear.
“Haah.... haaah...” another voice cut in on Liberty's private channel, pent up fury and pain straining it to the point of breathlessness. “We are all the children of Diode.”
With almost deliberate slowness, a static filled image resolved on Kayto's command screen beside Chigara's video, revealing one of the Prototypes, a hand clutching the gap between the charcoal and red plates of her Ryder armor as a dark stain seeped across the fabric beneath the plates and between her fingers. Looking up, she glared at the camera and gritted her teeth against the pain, blood weeping from one temple and matting her light, mauve hair as it dripped down her chin. All around her, holographic readouts pulsed a deadly shade of crimson, warning of catastrophic damage to every sub-system in her Ryder and the rapidly dwindling life support the remnants of her Ryder were capable of.
“We're one and the same, you and I,” the Prototype continued, taunting even as she struggled for breath as her injuries took their toll and the atmosphere left in her Ryder began to thin. “Sisters.”
“NO!” Chigara screamed as dark, mirthless laughter filled the channel, anguish mirrored on both sides of the conversation. “EEAAAHHH!”
“Captain.” Ava's voice snapped from his left. “Liberty's not responding to my commands-,” her eyes narrowed suspiciously as her glare settled on his communications suite. “Captain, what's-?”
“Belay that previous order,” Kayto cut Chigara's channel before Ava could switch into it. “Bianca, tow that Arcadius unit back to the Sunrider, I want that thing in our hangar five minutes ago.”
“C-copy!” Claude confirmed, sounding off-footed and surprised. Nevertheless, Bianca's engines fired, bringing the pink Ryder into a tight arc as it launched tethers to the disabled Arcadius Ryder and began dragging the wreck towards the Sunrider's stern hangar doors.
“Captain!” Ava's furious glare pinned Kayto, unaccustomed to being left out of the loop and all the more suspicious for it. “What in the name of-” A proximity klaxon shrilled out, cutting Ava off yet again. “Alert!” Ava's focus shifted instantly, her training kicking in and shelving her complaints as she consulted her tactical feed grimly. “New hostiles inbound on our AO. Pirate forces on high burn direct intercept!”
“Aren't you forgetting about someone!?”
On the main screen, a dozen new signatures resolved, seeming to pour out of the distant fog at the edge of sensor contact, the recognizable silhouette of the Havok surrounded by a brace of pirate Ryders and a small escort of converted civilian and black market ships, the final remnants of the pirate fleet amassed at Ongess, probably crewed by their most fanatic zealots.
“Cosette!” Kayto felt his heart race again and sweat break out over his body, exhaustion threatening to overwhelm him as Cosette's tiny fleet moved to intercept the Sunrider and Alliance vessels beside them. Stiffening, he pushed aside all other thoughts and forced himself to focus on keeping his people alive in the face of the latest complication. While his fleet was desperately low on munitions and barely had enough hull integrity to stay afloat, Cosette's ships and Ryders had apparently ducked out of the thick of battle, lurking until their moment of opportunity. As much as he was loath to admit it, the pirate ships had a very real chance of finishing the job the PACT had started and sinking what was left of his fleet and the Sunrider. “All available units; regroup and prepare for defensive action! The fleet’s counting on you!”
“Roger that!” Asaga shouted, Black Jack bursting across the Sunrider's main screen in a flash of blue light. “Ryders, form up on my six!”
“You again!” Cosette's voice was a hiss of furious delight as she spied Black Jack, her Ryder pulling to the head of her own formation as it charged towards Black Jack and the Sunrider's Ryder wing. “HAHAHA! This is where it all ends! Your fleet and your Captain are going to pay for what they did on Ongess!”
“You're too late!” Asaga shot back. “The PACT's pulling out, we've captured or killed every Arcadius left. There's nothing you can do anymore!”
“I can still take you out! EAAAHHH!” Cosette shrieked, eyes wild and hair in her face as she pounded commands into her Ryder. “No retreat! Men, hold your ground! If Fontana doesn’t have the gall to stand here, then we’ll just kill them all ourselves!”
Kayto cut in on the transmission, weariness and pity coloring his voice as he tried to make one last appeal. “Cosette, listen-”
“WE’LL NEVER SURRENDER TO YOU! You’ll just have to kill every last one of us-”
“But your deaths would be meaningless!” Kayto protested, his fist curling over his arm rest. “Haven’t enough men and women died today!?”
“Better to die in a blaze than alone in a ditch somewhere… hungry… sick… used…” Cosette’s face twisted into the tortured grimace of an animal in pain as she sneered at Kayto’s appeal. “This will be the final charge of Cosette Cosmos, the terror of the stars! History may paint us as villains, but know that we stood here in defense of our home world! So that our children would not bear the horrors we did! So that no one else but us will have to dirty their hands! All ships forward! Ryders, on me! Onwards to hell!”
“Incoming! Multiple missile launches detected from pirate Ryders!” Ava’s fingers flew furiously across her holographic keyboard as a klaxon wailed through the CIC. “Radiation spike! Detecting two nuclear signals from pirate cruisers! They’re launching nukes!”
“Have the fleet come about! Minimize our forward profiles!” Kayto grimly studied the readouts of his ship’s operational status. After the beating the Sunrider had taken from Arcadius’s Ryders, nearly every section and sub-system of his ship was strained to critical failure, if it hadn’t gone offline already. With hull integrity as such, the nuclear missiles launched wouldn’t even need to hit the Sunrider to blow her to pieces. “Task our remaining flak network to intercepting the conventional ship-to-ship missiles! Give me a sitrep on our weapons!”
“Aye Captain, gunnery reports seventy percent flak network integrity,” Ava consulted the incoming reports with a long face. “Hell Dart tubes A through C offline, D through J nominal, re-arming in progress! Savior mag coil alignments are shot; I rate our accuracy at no more than twenty five percent of nominal performance. Starboard Trinities are offline; unable to re-route controls. Port Trinities intact.”
“Have Armory get our remaining Hell Darts hot on the double!” Kayto tapped new commands into his console. “Get me firing solutions on every ship within range; prepare for simultaneous missile launch. Black Jack,” Kayto highlighted the two nuclear missiles on the Ryder tac net as priority targets. “If one of those nukes even sneezes at the fleet, we’re done. I need them out of the sky; now.”
“Roger that, Capt’n!” Asaga’s voice grated with strain as Black Jack pushed forward, engines on full burn. “I’ve got the one at two o’clock. Phoenix, you’ve got the one at ten. Seraphim, Paladin; keep those pirate Ryders off us!”
“It just never ends does it?” Icari asked wryly, grimacing as she pulled Phoenix into a tight arc towards her assigned target, bracing hard against the acceleration. “My autocannons are empty… I guess there’s no choice; you owe me a drink for this one Captain!”
With a flash, Phoenix’s engines flared a brilliant blue as the Ryder cut across the cloud of missiles streaking towards Kayto’s fleet. Exhaust ports glowing cherry red as the superheated reaction mass cut a burning thermal trail across the storm of missiles, Phoenix blinded the missiles’ relatively simple targeting sensors and compelled their tracking systems to lock onto its brilliant wake.
“Redlining reactor!” A bead of sweat rolled down Icari’s temple as she mashed forward on her control yokes, leading the missiles off course. “Warranty’s going to be bust after this one…”
“Phoenix, adjust your pitch by minus half a degree,” Kayto linked his tactical suite to Phoenix’s flight computers, cottoning onto Icari’s plan. “Don’t spare the horses if you don’t want to glow in the dark after this.”
“Har. Har.” Icari’s face turned a shade paler, although whether that was from the acceleration forcing her blood downwards or the prospect of weathering a nuclear blast through Phoenix’s almost non-existent shielding and armor was unclear. “ANGEL armed! Crossing the nuke’s projected flight path; Launching!”
Phoenix’s stabilizers spread slightly as recessed plates slid back, its silhouette against the brilliant halo of its engines shifting and elongating as the Phoenix unfurled its wings properly. Becoming almost painful to look at, the wings seemed to glow as dozens of flares ignited with a pure, magnesium burn, dropping behind Phoenix and fanning out behind the Ryder’s luminous wake. The next instant, the flares seemed to multiply tenfold as a similar number chaff canisters detonated, their mirror-like contents scattering the light and heat of the flares in wild, scintillating patterns.
Streaking through the lightshow, the pirate missiles plowed through the hail of heat and light for a second before their targeting computers completely scrambled, detonating their payloads blindly through the storm, wreathing the entire volume of space with fire and shrapnel.
“Lock our sensors on Phoenix!” Kayto demanded, struggling to make out Icari’s Ryder through the interference. “Don’t-”
A hard gem-like brilliance erupted from within the inferno, sweeping outwards and drowning out the sensors across the entire spectrum, a wall of EM radiating outwards, scattering rainbow lights across the Sunrider’s shields as they crackled and rippled in resonance.
“Nuclear detonation!” Ava tapped furiously on her console. “The fleet’s unharmed!”
“Phoenix?!” Kayto practically shouted as he stabbed at the comms channel. “Scan for active IFF’s in the detonation sphere!”
“HAHAHA!” Icari’s elated whoop cut through the static. “SPEED!”
As the interference from the nuclear detonation waned, the Sunrider’s sensors snapped back onto Phoenix, very much in the clear and banking gracefully as it carried its incredible momentum back towards the pirate forces converging on the Sunrider.
“Always wanted to drag with a nuke,” quipped Icari, laughter ringing as she let go of the tension of the last few heartbeats. “What’s the matter, Captain? Lose your cool there for a minute?”
“Still one active nuclear signature, time to intercept one hundred fifty seconds!” Ava warned him before he could get in with a retort. “Pirate missile salvos are entering our defense fields; flak network tasked to maximum!”
“Black Jack, what’s your situation?” Kayto’s hands gripped his arm rests, knuckles white. “That nuke’s still coming straight at us…”
“There’s enough fire out here to walk on Capt’n!” complained Asaga, her expression strained as Black Jack’s frame shook as it shrugged its way through missile shrapnel. “Woah!”
Tumbling to the side, Black Jack rolled as it avoided several bright beams of laser light that cut in front of its flight path, forcing Asaga to divert from the nuclear missile’s trajectory.
“Pirate Ryders incoming!” announced Ava tersely. “They’re trying to cut a path for the missile!”
“No kiddin’!” Asaga’s grinding teeth were practically audible from the CIC as Black Jack continued to dodge the incoming fire, trying to break past and draw a bead on the incoming nuclear missile once more.
“Stand by for assistance.”
“Seraphim’s reactor output is climbing!” Ava shouted, projections of Sola’s Ryder flashing all manner of warning signs as her Awakening took hold. “All limits exceeded!”
In an instant, no fewer than five lances of pure white light cut a blinding path across the main screens towards the pirates, spearing their Ryders in such rapid succession that Kayto could barely blink before four of the pirate Ryders were annihilated. The fifth shot clipped one of the pirate Ryder’s engine boosters, looking like a near miss for an instant before the booster blew apart, sending the parent Ryder into a dizzying tumble before it slammed into Havok in flaming embrace.
Before the pirates could so much as reel in shock, Paladin threw itself headfirst through the explosions towards the remaining pirate Ryders as their formation shattered. Without slowing, Paladin slammed into one of the remaining pirate Ryders full on with its shield, crumpling the illegally restored frame like so much tin foil as it blasted past the stricken Havok, showering the damaged Ryder with autocannon fire.
“Black Jack! Take the shot!” yelled Kryska.
“I got it, I got it!” screamed Asaga, mashing down on her firing controls.
Shoulder lasers firing as fast as they would cycle, streaks of blue laser light knifed out into the distance as the entire CIC crew held its collective breath.
Two uncomfortable heartbeats later, a distant flash signified Black Jack’s success.
“Nuclear detonation detected,” confirmed Ava, no small relief in her voice. “No additional nuclear signals on sensors.” Amid the sea of yellow and red on the Sunrider’s status screens, several green signals flared to life. “Captain, Armory reporting ready; Hell Darts re-armed! Firing solutions locked, removing safeties.”
“Let them have it Commander,” Kayto nodded grimly at the remaining pirate ships in the distance. “Give them a taste of their own medicine.”
Outside the Sunrider, pod after pod of Hell Dart missiles launched, flash frozen clouds of propellant wreathing the ship in a cloud of fog as nearly a hundred of them streaked away towards the pirate fleet in the distance. Unlike the true warships in Kayto’s fleet, the pirate fleet ships were ill equipped to survive against the wall of missile fire they found themselves facing. With almost deliberate slowness, the Sunrider’s Hell Darts began to impact on the pirate ships’ green hulls.
“Intercept rate less than thirty percent; salvo making contact now,” Ava’s voice was pitiless as she poured over the tactical feeds coming into her console. On screen, the pirate ships began to break apart as dozens of missiles hit home, burning through layers of armor and blasting the scavenged ships apart deck by deck. “Multiple good hits; all targets in our AO sunk or removed from play; I’m detecting a significant reduction in incoming fire.”
“A-arggghhhh!!!!” Cosette’s scream echoed over the comms as she fought with her controls, her cockpit a bloody red as Havok reeled from the impact of its subordinate Ryder, tumbling blindly, wreathed in flame. Whether the scream was for the devastation wrought upon her fleet, Ryder, or both was entirely unclear. “Everyone left… form up." Cosette's voice was breathless with fury. "Time for one more pass!”
“It’s over Cosette!” Asaga blurted over the comms, pivoting Black Jack and squaring off against Havok as it stabilized, sloughing off burned and damaged armor and ejecting the spent missile launchers attached to its shoulders. Behind it, Cosette’s two remaining wingmates slotted themselves onto escort positions on her flanks. “Surrender so we don’t have to kill you all!”
“Hahaha…” Cosette’s quiet laugh heaved with morbid amusement. “Like I said… No Surrender! Havok is far from finished! This fight’s not over yet!”
Engines brightening with pent up fury, Havok lunged forward towards Black Jack with surprising speed for a Ryder of its tonnage, seemingly freed of its heavy armor cladding and all the more agile for it. Without hesitation, Havok leveled its rotary machine cannon at Black Jack like a charging knight’s lance, the massive gun rotating and picking up speed for a moment before cutting loose, spent brass blossoming into vacuum and leaving a trail behind Havok as it barreled forward with its two escort Ryders in close pursuit, lasers firing.
“Eaaahhhh!” Black Jack staggered as Havok’s high explosive rounds detonated around it and on the Ryder’s reactive armor plates. Gritting her teeth, Asaga slammed her controls forward, gunning Black Jack towards Havok’s formation. “Don’t… mess… with me!” Asaga shouted, her Ryder shaking like a thing possessed as it plowed forward against the hail of gunfire, bullets ricocheting off its armor and the flat of its blade, drawn and held at the ready.
“Foolish Villain.”
Asaga’s voice deepened, filled with burning wrath and potency as her face hardened, tightening into a harsh mask of righteous fury.
“Captain!” Ava struggled to make sense of the telemetry from Black Jack’s sensor suite. “Asaga’s Awakening again! Black Jack’s reactor output is off the charts!”
Black Jack’s exhaust thrust seemed to intensify by an order of magnitude as it suddenly veered off it’s head-on approach to Havok, dodging the incoming laser fire as it rocketed away at an impossible angle, ignoring the laws of physics and inertia.
“W-what!?” Cosette struggled to bring her gun back to bear, but Black Jack’s maneuvers were too much for her heavy Ryder to keep up with.
“You cannot soothe your conscience with excuses.”
Without warning, Black Jack’s trajectory changed at a whim once again, this time angling the Ryder straight for one of Cosette’s wingmen. Before the pirate could even react or begin to change course, Black Jack cut down from above, its anti-Ryder blade slicing through the entirety of the Ryder as though it were made of wax, leaving the explosion of fire and metal in its wake.
“T-tsch!” Cosette gritted her teeth, swinging her Ryder in a wild arc and firing at Black Jack in a desperate gesture as the impossibly nimble Ryder jetted to the other side of her formation. “What would a Ryuvian Princess know about poverty!? What would she know of desperation!?”
“Irrelevant.”
Pulse lasers strobbed as Black Jack seemed to reappear behind Cosette’s remaining wingmate, burning through the Ryder in an instant and melting it into a twisted effigy of what it was before slapping aside its remnants mercilessly with the flat of its anti-Ryder blade and blasting off into the distance.
“Your hands are soaked with blood. Your mind is as malignant and twisted as your deformed body. Your words are empty and hollow. No mitigation. No justification. No claims to the greater good. Justice shall be done to all. I am your judge and arbitrator; my sword, your fate.”
Black Jack swiveled, thrusters burning like twin suns as it arrested its incredible velocity in an instant and flew straight for Havok as though in joust, lasers glowing with a cruel, harsh light.
“Just what- AARRRGGGHHH!”
Havok recoiled horribly as Black Jack’s lasers burned past it, one beam slamming into its shoulder and deforming the armature below as it sawed downwards, military grade armor flashing and boiling away like paper to a flame.
“Cosette... Yield!” Kayto shouted as Black Jack streaked towards Havok, anti-Ryder blade gleaming at the ready. “Surrender to us and I’ll listen to what you have to say. You’re not the only one fighting for the Neutral Rim!”
“Y-you…” Cosette’s voice cracked at the edges, fear breaking through beneath the agony, Black Jack’s approach reflected in her wide eyes.
“Asaga, STOP!”
“E-eh!?” Asaga gasped, wrenching her controls at the last moment as Black Jack’s blade flashed forward, dropping her Ryder’s course and causing her Ryder’s blade to miss Havok’s torso and reactor by a hair-raising margin as it sliced across the Ryder’s midsection, cleanly cleaving the Ryder in two.
“ARRGH!” Cosette screamed again, barely audible over the wailing alarms on her end of the transmission as Havok’s stabilization thrusters on its “legs” flickered with uneven thrust, detonating and rocking the stricken remnants of her Ryder.
“O-oh! W-what am I doin’?” Asaga shook her head, trying to clear it, sounding utterly confused as though waking from dream. “E-ehh!?!? W-what the hell happened to Havok!? It’s completely wrecked!”
“She doesn’t remember?” Ava asked under her breath as she furrowed her brow. “Asaga’s powers helped us out of a tight spot with Arcadius, but if she can’t control them…”
“Another problem, another time,” Kayto felt a lifetime’s worth of strain and tension begin to leave his body as a migraine began to settle in its place. On the tactical screen, the the space around the Sunrider and her fleet pulsed clear, all hostile contacts sunk or neutralized. “Everyone, stand down, all Ryders, return to the Sunrider. Black Jack, tow what’s left of Havok. Alert Security; let them know we have a second prisoner en route to the hangar.”
Pressing a hand to his temple, he slumped in his captain’s chair. With the Paradox Core secured and the PACT fleet preparing for retreat, the Battle of Helion was essentially over, and yet, as he stared out at the hundreds of wrecked hulls and sunken ships scattered across the battlefield, he felt utterly drained, as far from victorious as he could imagine.
***
Fontana surveyed PACT fleet from the observation deck of the Vae Victus, hands deep in the pockets of his greatcoat. Almost immediately after assuming command of the PACT fleet, his orders to begin preparations for an organized withdrawal from the system had been heeded, willingly or not, the fleet beginning the processes of recovering their Ryders and lifepods. Although most of the fleet’s captains had accepted his authorization codes and command, a significant fraction of the fleet had maintained a sullen radio silence since his initial broadcast revealing his or the prototypes’ treachery, depending on how one chose to align themselves. Fortunately, the late prototype’s plan to sacrifice the entire fleet to detonate the Paradox Core had done little to refute his claim that both Arcadius and the ideals he had once stood for had been corrupted, a significance not lost upon the captains who had pledged loyalty to his command.
Closing his eyes and exhaling explosively, Fontana’s hand clenched into a fist around his pocket watch. How many PACT men and women had given their lives for that monstrosity’s hubris? How many worlds had wept blood and sweat in toil to the perversion of their own ideals? If only he had the courage and wisdom to act sooner… But the mantel Arcadius had left to the Revolution would now be his to carry; he had failed that charge until now, but no longer.
Drawing the pocket watch forward, he clicked it open on reflex, studying the face of the antique device for a moment before turning his attention to the scene before him once again, his fleet’s warp drives beginning to spool as they prepared for warp. Although technically withdrawing from the battle, the PACT fleet had arguably dealt two blows for every one taken against the Alliance. Majority of the wrecked ships between the two fleets bore the emerald colors of the Alliance beneath shattered metal and burned armor. To their credit however, the Alliance men and women had a conviction and courage he’d never known from the Imperials during the Revolution.
“Vennasar.” A bridge officer saluted crisply as he stepped onto the observation deck. “Our ships have performed an orderly retreat; we’re prepared to warp on your command.”
“Thank you,” Fontana frowned, keeping his eyes fixed on the crimson fleet surrounding him. “Order the fleet to withdraw to rally point Omicron.”
“And the Paradox Core, Sir?”
Fontana scowled at the structure in the distance as it hung above Helions fiery surface. Undoubtedly, even as they spoke, the Alliance fleet was advancing on the weapon, eager to lay claim to the prize they had paid thrice over for in blood. The sacrifice of good men and women for the ambitions of those above them never ended, but in this regard, the PACT had been equally blinded.
“Even in its disarmed state, I would be loath to allow the Alliance Imperialists to seize control of the Core. No doubt they would seek to create Cores of their own if the means was made available to them. Have your men made the preparations?” asked Fontana, sparing a sideways glance towards his subordinate.
“Yes sir! My men have rigged explosives throughout the Core to detonate on your command. All ships have now retreated safely away from the perimeter.”
“Good.” Fontana clicked his pocket watch shut with an air of finality. “Send the signal. The PACTs future was never wrested from the past; it was won in the present. The galaxy has no need for a weapon that would tear the very fabric of time itself.”
“Understood.” The woman beside him nodded and raised her cuff to her lips, relaying the command. “Detonate the explosives!”
“...” Several heartbeats went by as Fontana looked towards the Core in expectation, a rising sense of wrongness intruding on the moment as he turned to his officer, who looked no less disturbed. “...What’s wrong!?”
“The explosives are not responding to the signal!” The woman wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, consulting a readout on her bracelet. “We’re being jammed!”
“By whom!?” Fontana’s jaw locked, instinctively knowing the answer already. “All the prototypes should have been destroyed!”
“Sensors resolving the countersignal; the prototype’s mindstream network is still active!” The officer made a gesture, causing the observation deck’s displays to leap forward towards the source.
“Tsch!” Fontana clenched his teeth, glaring at the Sunrider’s profile. “That ship again… It seems our destinies are intertwined…”
“Shall I inform the fleet to re-engage Vennasar?”
Fontana stared out at the approaching Alliance fleet with a cold gaze, swallowing his anger and disappointment. “No. Enough men and women have lost their lives for that accursed station today. We’ve already disarmed and dismantled the critical components. It will have to be enough. Order our fleet to withdraw immediately, captain.”
“Vennasar.” The captain saluted and stepped back.
All around him, flashes of light and the rippling of space began to enshroud his fleet as they began to transition to warp, disappearing from the system in the blink of an eye. With a heavy heart, Fontana fixed his eyes on the Paradox Core and the scores of Alliance ships descending upon it until the view disappeared into darkness as the Vae Victus followed her fleet into the dark.
“Shields… what have you done...?”