~October 17, 137 AH~
~Sector Sagittarius, somewhere west of the Manukyan Fault~
Zelen Athelstan pointed his metallic phantom toward the western horizon and the death that awaited beyond the planet’s haze.
His naked eyes, even when enhanced by the Nexus, could spy only the desolation that stretched in all directions: cracked barren earth, ashen-grey from 140 years of decay and contamination. He saw no signs of life—whether organic or synthetic or otherwise—so he waited patiently for his mirror to fill in the blanks.
Target acquired. Air defense system FB-03, designation ‘Ildfugl’. Sending target location to your monitor. How will you proceed, Zelen?
This was instantly followed by a red marker appearing near the upper edges of the radar. Soon enough, a swarm of red dots surrounded the arrow, showing what Zelen already knew: the Syntropy themselves had deemed the Ildfugl a high-priority asset, thus gracing it with the proportionate amount of protection.
Despite the now confirmed reality of the danger he was about to fly into, Zelen’s first reaction was to smile.
“I see you’ve finally dropped the callsign, Silon.”
A slight pause, which almost felt human in its hesitation.
Was that inappropriate? I could still call you Kingfisher if you wish.
“No, no. I prefer this,” Zelen Athelstan, callsign ‘Kingfisher’, hastily reassured his Spiegel. Even after all their time together, she could still be rather obtuse, in that endlessly polite way of hers.
Hers? Zelen still wasn’t quite sure if his Spiegel was gendered, but Delta-Upsilon’s Nexus-mediated voice certainly sounded like a young woman’s. After a beat, he added, “Like I said before, callsigns are just for show: a relic of Old Earth that doesn’t hold much meaning anymore. Out here where the radio signals don’t reach, I’m just Zelen, and you’re—”
He didn’t finish the thought, mostly because he was suddenly unsure how to. Did his Spiegel even have a name she preferred to be called by? He’d taken to calling her Silon for brevity’s sake, but he’d never stopped to wonder if she even liked the nickname. Speaking of, could Spiegels even like or dislike—
Focus, Zelen, Silon cut in, as if she’d sensed that Zelen’s daydreaming tendencies were about to derail the mission. Ildfugl, 1.8 klicks, bearing zero-two-seven. How will you proceed?
The Reiter shook himself out of his inane reveries and examined the HUD again. If his eyes didn’t deceive him, the swarm of red dots had already gained in number and density. It seemed the enemies had also become aware of his presence and intent.
A Syntropic air defense system and a swarm of drones to protect it. Practically speaking, that was what the red arrow and dots represented, but to Zelen, they also signified something beyond—a possibility that ever lurked beyond the planet’s haze.
Death.
He knew not when he’d become so fatalistic. His obsession with his own mortality was unbecoming in someone of his youth and vigour, let alone a Reiter tasked with humanity’s salvation.
Yet, as surely as he sat nestled within the labyrinthine machinery of his Eidolon’s cockpit, and as surely as red dots filled the screen that represented the outside world, Zelen saw death etched across the scars upon ashen-grey earth.
Death wasn’t the only possible outcome to what he was about to undertake. But it was certainly one of them. Always one of them.
Stifling a sigh for reasons unclear to himself (what did he have to hide from his mirror?), he spoke into the Nexus, with words meant only for his Spiegel’s ears.
“Warm up the thrusters. Left arm [GATLING]. [CLUSTER LAUNCHER] on both shoulders. And… let’s go with [BARDICHE] for the right arm.”
No shield?
“Nah, speed is the key here. Maximum firepower, and we’re not stopping until the railgun is down. Besides, gotta let the Panzers back home earn their keep, don’t we?”
There was a slight delay as the unknowable forces of the Nexus gathered and flowed into Zelen’s Eidolon, with Silon as their unseen guide. Zelen subconsciously eyed the pale blue bar that lined nearly the entire length of the right edge of the HUD. As the Eidolon’s transformation ran its course, just over half of this blue bar turned white.
Energy Reserves are down to 45%, Silon announced rather needlessly, then added rather helpfully, which translates to an estimated ten minutes of combat time. Would that be enough?
Zelen gave a performative shrug of the shoulders for no one’s benefit, even as he became painfully aware of the pounding inside his chest.
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“Only one way to find out.”
The Reiter kicked off against the floor of the cockpit—or at least made to kick off.
In reality, his entire body was encased in rusted machinery that filled with hyperviscous Anamnium gel. His legs didn’t actually move inside this metallo-fluid prison, but the Eidolon responded all the same, activating the thrusters and roaring into the air to mirror its pilot’s conscious intent.
This dissonance between complete immobility and powerful dynamism was something that had taken years of proto-Reiter training for Zelen to get used to. Indeed, he still wasn’t totally comfortable with the accompanying sensory whiplash.
Nevertheless, the Eidolon flew at frightening speed, leaving a contrail of smoke as its heavy metal frame singed the very air. By the time it cut through the haze that covered the erstwhile horizon, its Reiter could see death without the aid of a radar.
The swarm of red dots were now upon Zelen. But instead of dots on a screen, these were lightweight sentry drones SB-14, designation ‘Hornet’. And as the Eidolon flew within range, the swarm buzzed and turned in unison, their monocular optics gleaming lurid red despite the overcast skies of Sector Sagittarius.
Zelen had never seen an actual ‘hornet’ outside of a cartoon logo he’d found on a faded Old Earth book. What torn and tattered pages remained of it had featured photographs of sleeveless muscular men reaching for the same orange ball. The cartoon ‘hornet’ emblazoned across the men’s chests had looked menacing enough in its own right, but it had nothing on the synthetic monstrosities that presently surrounded Zelen and his phantom.
Droves of Syntropic Hornets peppered the Eidolon with bullets fired from an extension to their bellies, where their stingers should’ve been. Zelen himself felt the impact as nothing more than skin pricks, but he was well-aware of a green vertical bar on the left edge of the HUD that ticked down at a steady rate.
With the press of a button embedded into a glove-like component of Zelen’s metallic prison, the [CLUSTER LAUNCHER] on his right shoulder whirred to life and fired into a dense clump of Hornets. The initial explosion split into six more grenades that took out more Hornets in the vicinity, leaving an entire patch of sky clear save for smoke and haze.
Zelen did the same with the left shoulder, clearing another group of Hornets with satisfying efficiency. Then, while the [CLUSTER LAUNCHERS] went into cooldown, he squeezed the trigger that was wrapped within his left hand, giving the Hornets a taste of their own medicine with a sustained burst from [GATLING].
Six cyclic barrels spun and fired, raining destruction upon the Syntropy. By the time the [GATLING] neared its overheat state, the right-sided [CLUSTER LAUNCHER] came back online, followed closely by its left-sided counterpart.
It was a time-tested rotation that had served Zelen well on more than several past missions, including a Hornet-infested scenario that had been nearly identical to this. As the sky cleared and the redness on the radar shrank, the young Reiter swelled in confidence and grew into the fight: relishing the destruction of his enemies. Even the thought of death quickly faded from the hidden recesses of his mind.
Incoming! A female voice cut through the frenzy, clearer in its warning than any other stimuli that flooded Zelen’s consciousness. Engage lateral thrusters, to your left!
The Reiter obeyed, trusting fully in his Spiegel as he had since the moment of their Tethering. Sure enough, as he kicked sideways to his left and the Eidolon responded by thrusting in the same direction, an enormous beam of energy—tall and wide enough to have swallowed the Eidolon whole—shot straight through where Zelen had been just a moment ago.
So, Ildfugl had entered the fray. Leaving his thanks to Silon unspoken, Zelen quickly readjusted the direction of his thrust, this time elevating himself above cloud cover. And in the stratosphere above Sector Sagittarius, Zelen finally came face to face with the main target of his mission.
Ildfugl—the Syntropy’s latest generation in air defense design—was, for the lack of a better word, an aircraft, though Zelen didn’t need an Old Earth education to surmise that it defied every law of aeronautics known to man.
For one, the thing was an absolute colossus, its main body a nearly perfect sphere that could’ve fit fifty Eidolons inside it. To both sides of this sphere jutted rows upon rows of hefty symmetrical projections that collectively served as its ‘wings’, though just how the whole ungodly contraption managed to stay in the air was a mystery beyond Akropolis’s best scientists, let alone a bullet-slinging soldier like Zelen.
Yet Ildfugl’s most ominous feature was its giant railgun, embedded into the hollowed-out centre of its spherical body. Only the very end of the barrel poked out at Zelen, but he could see—even with his naked eyes—a fresh maelstrom of energy buzzing and roiling within its depth, already charging its next payload.
Death.
Death came screeching back into the fore of Zelen’s consciousness, but his body—and in turn his Eidolon’s metallic mechanisms—could move faster than his mind. He kicked off again, and dove head-first toward the open barrel.
You’re directly in its line of fire, Silon informed him with a calmness that failed to rub off whatsoever.
“I know!” Zelen yelled, unnecessarily loud. “And I’m going to stay in its line of fire until the last possible moment. I’m counting on you to bail me out again!”
He continued his unbending thrust, willing the Ildfugl to commit to its lock-on. At the same time, he pointed [GATLING] straight ahead, and let the [CLUSTER LAUNCHERS] on both shoulders go at the same time.
The bullets and grenades hit, adorning the sphere with lukewarm fireworks, but leaving no visible damage, deflected as they were by the invisible armour that coated the behemoth. In any case, Zelen hadn’t placed high hopes on them. For what this David-on-Goliath job required wasn’t just firepower, but also surgical precision.
As he flew directly toward the giant synthetic maws of death, he squeezed the trigger in his right hand, activating [BARDICHE] for the first time this fight. A razor-sharp cleaver of Nexus energy enveloped the Eidolon’s right arm in its ghostly blue glow. Zelen then tucked this blade close to his centre of mass, lest its excess drag slow or alter his flight.
He knew the moment to strike, and where to land the blow. Just beneath the outer rims of the barrel, where the railgun slotted into a massive cavity upon the sphere, was a patch of armour thinned out by the earlier barrage from Zelen’s ranged weapons. If he could duck beneath the payload and slice through this sliver of vulnerability in one go, that would give him the best chance of destroying Ildfugl from within.
For that, he needed to trust in his training. He needed to trust in his own instincts.
He needed to trust in his mirror that shone from the hazy beyond.
Now, Zelen!
Zelen Athelstan, callsign ‘Kingfisher’ and a Reiter tasked with humanity’s salvation, kicked and swung as his entire vision filled with blinding light.