Chapter 27 – Please, Arden… Hear My Wish…!
Three Makinas launched from the Serpent traced their separate paths across the dark.
Ahead: three raider craft in formation.
Anchoring the rear: a heavily armored machine with an intimidating bulk. In front of it, a mid-weight and a light-weight escort drifted in loose coordination, waiting for prey.
"...Miss, Fal. You see their formation?"
Zein's voice came through the comm, steady as ever.
"The heavy armor in back is the leader. Holding position for now--watching. We clear the two up front first. Miss--can I leave that fast light-weight to you?"
"Gladly! A fly that does nothing but dart around--I shall swat it from the sky!"
Letaria fired Arden's thrusters without hesitation. Dark purple light carved through the stars.
"Good. Fal--I'll provide cover. Put down the mid-weight, cleanly. Then we take the leader together."
"Got it, boss! Watch me!"
◆◆◆
Inside the raider's cockpit, something had gone cold.
The pilot of the light-weight unit watched the dark purple machine closing on his monitor and shouted in a shaking voice.
"B-Blang! Hey--that Makina--isn't that--?!"
From the heavily armored machine at the rear, the leader's voice came back low and certain.
"...Yeah. No question. Different colors, but that signal, the movement--that's the cosplay woman who wrecked us. Twice."
Blang's fingers tightened on the controls.
"Heh--luck's finally turning. This thing needs a field test, and her head's the perfect prize. Listen up--I'm not the same as I was. Vigilante elite, whatever--with what I've got now, I don't lose."
◆◆◆
The battle detonated.
Letaria drove straight at the light-weight. The enemy broke into evasive motion--but Letaria's eyes had already read where it was going.
"Useless! You cannot escape me!"
Arden's speed outstripped the light-weight entirely, and Letaria's magical perception closed every possible exit before it could be reached. The instant the enemy banked right, Arden's fist was already there waiting.
"This is your reckoning! Grovel!"
The impact wave spread through the void. The blow shattered the armor; the light-weight machine went dark in a cascade of sparks.
"Damn--this isn't what we were told! Ejecting--ejecting!"
A rescue pod shot clear. Several beats later, what remained of the raider machine detonated into scrap.
Meanwhile, the mid-weight Fal was engaging proved to be something else. Rattled by the light-weight's instant destruction, it was still fighting with technical precision--using drifting debris as cover, dragging Fal into a grinding exchange of fire. It was outclassing her on pure skill, and Zein stepped in without delay.
"Better than it looks. Fal--I'm using missiles to channel it. Hit wherever you predict it runs."
"On it!"
Zein's precision-guided missiles detonated to cut off the mid-weight's retreats. Cornered, the enemy took the only evasion it had left.
Fal's shoulder cannon fired.
"--There!"
Direct hit. The mid-weight turned to fire and came apart.
◆◆◆
"Now for that ugly leader--"
The moment Letaria moved to reposition, the black filled with light.
"Not bad, little girls! But you're nothing but the appetizer for my real power!"
The six-barreled Gatling mounted on Blang's heavy-armor machine opened up.
A storm of rounds--and the wide dispersion, which should have been a flaw, became a trap instead. It wove a net around Fal's machine, closing every angle she tried to take.
"Ah--?! My machine--attitude control--!"
Impact after impact struck Fal's frame. Armor shredded. Alert indicators flashed red.
"Fal!"
Zein's shout. He brought the long-range Photon Rifle around and put a shot directly into Blang's chest--a clean hit.
But--
"Ha! You think a pop gun like that bothers me?!"
Blang staggered--and held. Anti-photon coating on the armor--specialized plating that scattered and dispersed beam energy.
"Anti-photon armor--?! Fine--then this!"
Zein pressed with missiles, but Blang shrugged off the worst with his shields without pausing his Gatling. Fal's damage indicator climbed into the red.
"Fal--!"
Letaria drove Arden to full output and broke into a charge.
But she saw it immediately: at this speed, direct contact would crush Fal's damaged machine under Arden's mass and momentum. Not a rescue. An execution.
(What do I--if I brake hard, I won't reach her in time--but if I don't--!)
The worst outcome flashed through her mind.
In that instant, her concentration passed some threshold she had never crossed before. Her consciousness, her magic, poured through Trace Mode into Arden's OS--
(Please, Arden... hear my wish...!)
As if in answer, Arden's drive tone changed.
One moment before collision.
Arden moved with a precision that had no business existing at this speed--killing momentum without surrendering velocity, and gathered Fal's machine in, gently, as though catching something fragile.
Then it slipped sideways through Blang's storm of rounds by a margin that left no room for error and vanished into the shadow of a debris field.
"...What--you--"
Fal stared, wide-eyed.
The damage was severe. But the critical systems had held. Zein was already moving to collect her and provide cover.
"...You have made a very serious mistake."
Letaria's voice through the comm was cold. Sharp. Unlike anything she had sounded before.
The anger of someone whose companion--she would not admit the word yet, not quite--had been hurt.
And beneath that: something fiercer still. The fury of having been forced to put Arden, her beautiful Arden, through that kind of desperation.
"You have ruined my homecoming, and you have dared to threaten the life of my friend. For that--you deserve nothing less than everything I am about to give you."
Around Arden's frame, magic shimmered--rising like heat off the hull.
The eyes of Letaria Adeniam burned gold. An anger she had never shown before.