~January 14th, 136 AH~

~Joint Base Akra, Reiter Garrison~

As it turned out, the first mission debrief of Zelen Athelstan’s career was exactly the sombre affair he’d pictured in his mind.

For one thing, there were far fewer attendees than had been at the start. None of the Corpsmen were here, busy as they were setting up an FOB at the newly secured location in Korak Valley. And of the seven Reiters that had sat in on the briefing, only five still remained.

The Vakta brothers, along with Captain Eero Leino, callsign ‘Handles’, formed the same trio they had at the briefing, though none of them spoke a word as they waited. Zelen sat—or rather slouched—several rows behind them, all by his lonesome, without a Captain Vasseur with whom to share furtive eyerolls. The other absentee was the PT-geared triceps-dipper, Captain Otaga Shiranui, who’d been a casualty during the assault on the main objective.

The only one among them that appeared unaffected by the mission was Major Makiri Shiranui, who sat in the same corner of the room, with the same crumbling paperback in hand.

Zelen couldn’t discern Spindrift’s countenance: eyes tilted onto his book and obscured by locks of hair that fell past his shoulders. But he just couldn’t imagine that anyone—even one as mean and battle-tested as Makiri Shiranui—could be so nonchalant, hours after his own brother had died. It only seemed to confirm his suspicions that there were more than a few screws loose inside the mind of the killingest Reiter in history.

Or did he have it the other way around?

Not for the first time, Zelen wondered if he was the one with the problem. Was he the one with the loose screws? For having taken Captain Vasseur’s death as hard as he had? For having succumbed to debilitating panic out on the battlefield?

Perhaps, in order to be the Reiter all of Akropolis expected him to be, he needed to be as callous as Makiri Shiranui.

The door swung open, and in marched the squat figure of Colonel Zhao. The Reiters in the room barely reacted, and even Zelen—far from saluting the man—neglected to straighten himself in his seat.

“Right, let us begin then,” Colonel Zhao drawled, with the hint of a sigh behind his voice. The older man did look more exhausted than two days past, with fresh bags under his eyes that spoke to sleepless nights. Zelen acknowledged this, but found that he couldn’t muster any sympathy.

“First, a message from the General. He congratulates the group on another successful mission. The FOB in Korak Valley will go a long way toward stabilizing our campaigns in the Eastern Quadrant. All of your contributions are noted and appreciated, and your respective families can expect substantial tribute bonuses to come through in the coming days.”

The group remained silent and largely motionless, but Zelen couldn’t help but sit up just a little straighter.

Tribute bonuses. In the emotional whirlwind of the last 48 hours, he’d forgotten that missions as a Reiter came with monetary compensation for associated families. This would be Zelen’s first contribution to the Athelstan coffers—his first real opportunity to repay the faith his father had shown him eight years ago.

But even as he tried to imagine Gerech Athelstan’s nod—or perhaps even a smile—of approval, his mind’s eye filled instead with the sight of a broken Eidolon: limp within an enemy’s shadowy embrace, with black smoke rising from its central chassis…

He shuddered and swallowed back a wave of nausea. Surely, General Duodecim had more to say about the mission than the money rewarded to the surviving Reiters. What of the ones who didn’t survive? What of Captain Vasseur?

And yet—

“Now, onto the performance parameters,” Colonel Zhao said as he turned on the overhead projector.

Up on the screen appeared the names of all seven Reiters that had participated in the mission, along with a heading that read: KILL COUNT.

Here, finally, the room stirred into activity. The trio in front of Zelen all shifted in their seats and exchanged looks. Even Makiri looked up from his book for just long enough to steal a glance at the screen.

Zelen didn’t share in the enthusiasm of his fellow attendees, but he perused the information anyway, mostly out of a morbid sense of curiosity.

SPINDRIFT | 77

TRIPOD | 48

HANDLES | 33

MISTBREAK | 28

GLASSWING | 26

KINGFISHER | 19

AMPHIBIAN | 12

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

As the rest of the room broke into a lively debate, only Makiri and Zelen stayed quiet. Makiri’s reasons for reticence were scrutable only to himself, but in Zelen’s case, he simply didn’t trust himself to speak.

For if he’d tried, the first words out of his mouth would be lamentations about Amphibian’s position on the list. The only reason Captain Vasseur had the lowest kill count—even lower than Zelen—was because he’d drawn enemy fire so his junior could finish off the Iacula.

And… because he’d died halfway through the mission.

Zelen never understood the Akropolitan obsession with Reiter kill counts, and his stance hadn’t changed after one full mission. What did it matter if someone had killed 77 or 12 Syntropy? Two men had given their lives to serve the last bastion of humanity, and yet, the significance of their last moments on Earth had been reduced to numbers on a projector screen.

The lowly position of Captain Vasseur’s callsign, along with the meagre number beside it, felt to Zelen like a grave insult. Simmering with an unfamiliar anger, he barely registered the words that flew across the room as his fellow survivors argued about objectives and phases during the mission that had been most favourable toward racking up performance parameters.

Eventually—thankfully—Colonel Zhao moved onto other matters, “As you all know, we encountered an unidentified enemy unit during this mission.”

Hearing this, Zelen’s stomach lurched anew. He swallowed again and forced himself to look at the projector screen, where a new sheet now listed characteristics and tactical considerations pertaining to the eight-legged monster that had claimed Captain Vasseur’s life. For the second time this meeting, Zelen confronted the sterilized and codified version of the horrors he’d experienced on the battlefield.

“Based on advance reports from Major Shiranui,” Colonel Zhao continued, “this unit is now registered as terranean mobile weapon JS-06, designation ‘Voras’. The relevant data has been forwarded to the Spiegel network, but I recommend that each of you review this information yourselves and commit it to memory.”

On this count, at least, Zelen and the Colonel could see eye to eye. He had no intention of ever repeating yesterday’s humiliation. The next time he and Voras met on the battlefield, the reaper’s name would be Kingfisher.

The next time… The thought of a ‘next time’ nearly brought on a third wave of nausea, before Zelen firmly bit down on his trepidations.

And that was when the whole room fell silent. For at that moment, Makiri Shiranui put down his paperback and raised a long sinewy arm—like a giant caricature of a proto-Reiter cadet asking to go to the bathroom.

“Ye—yes, Shiranui?” Colonel Zhao stammered, clearly taken aback. “What’s on your mind?”

“This Voras now marks the third time in as many missions that I’ve personally encountered an unidentified enemy unit.” The way Makiri spoke mirrored his piloting prowess: quick and efficient. “The Syntropy is always evolving, yes, but we can’t ignore a distinct recent uptick in their production and tactical diversity. Our intels have never been perfect, but these days, they’re almost always wrong. It doesn’t change what I do, but I’m curious about the General’s thoughts on this trend and his plans for addressing it.”

“Right… erm…” Colonel Zhao stalled, clearly unprepared. “The General… is aware of this, erm, trend, of course, and there’re active discussions about it at the highest levels. In fact… yes, the General himself will be calling an assembly in the… in the coming days, to address this very issue. Does that—?”

The older man looked uncertainly toward Makiri, who in turn picked up his book and went back to reading.

As Zelen watched this exchange intently, he was overcome with the strange sensation that pieces were falling into place upon an invisible puzzle. He intuited—though not with any degree of precision—that a second conversation had taken place simultaneously as the one that had been verbalized. Makiri hadn’t gotten the answer he’d asked for, but he’d achieved what he’d set out to do, all the same.

Despite their history, Zelen found himself manifesting a newfound admiration for the killingest Reiter. And as he eyed the back of Makiri—face hidden behind long locks of hair—he thought that perhaps there was more than one way to mourn a brother.

And as it turned out, the debrief didn’t end without acknowledging the dead after all, for Colonel Zhao’s last words before he dismissed the group were:

“One last thing. The memorial services for Captains Otaga Shiranui and Ambrose Vasseur will be held in the Horsemen’s Square at 0900 tomorrow morning. They’re open to the public, but full dress uniform is expected of all military personnel. All cadets and commissioned officers of the Reiter Regiment have been granted half-day leave… so, I expect all of you to attend.”

~January 15th, 136 AH~

~Middle Akra, the Horsemen’s Square~

Despite its location in Middle Akra—that confluence of newly elevated Sehermenschen and Essentials that had come into some status via commercial or social means—the Horsemen’s Square was home to some of the most impressive sights in all of Akropolis.

Four giant stone statues—a rarity in Akropolis where nearly every public installation was made of long-rusted metal—cut imposing figures at each corner of the square, joined by rows of synthetic greenery dotted with imitation white lilies.

The statues, of course, depicted the Four Horsemen of the Resistance: Ernst Athelstan, Apollo Duodecim, Nayuta Vakta, and Mutobi Shiranui. They were the original Sehers that had saved humanity from total extinction, before going on to form the four pillars of the Tetrarchy.

One of Zelen’s earliest memories was being dragged to the statue of his great-great-great-great-grandfather, as his father Gerech solemnly—if somewhat awkwardly—impressed upon him the weight of history he must shoulder as a bearer of the Athelstan name. As a young child fresh off his Ascension Standard, he’d looked up with bright eyes at this stern-looking pilot that stood upon the open cockpit of a first-generation Eidolon. He remembered turning those same bright eyes toward a father he barely knew, and making a promise that his ten-year-old self barely understood.

He'd returned to the Horsemen’s Square on plenty of occasions since then, and each time, more of that light had faded from his eyes. This place that was meant for sending off Akropolis’s departed had ironically become a meeting place of sorts for young Zelen, convenient for reuniting with family members he’d barely gotten to know over eight years. For these memorial services for prominent soldiers were some of the few times during a year where a proto-Reiter would be allowed out of the garrison.

Even today—decked out in the charcoal grey of a Reiter dress uniform—Zelen had come to the square, not with his family, but with his regiment. And the man that stood beside him at the foot of Ernst Athelstan’s statue was not his father, but his comrade-in-arms Megha Vakta.

As members of the public streamed into the square with heads bowed and conversations kept to a respectful minimum, Zelen found his eyes and mind wandering, until an elbow in the ribs snapped him back to reality.

“What?” He turned to Megha, slightly annoyed.

“Look.” Megha kept his arms folded behind his back but pointed into the crowd with his chin. “That’s her, isn’t it?”

Zelen frowned and followed his friend’s gaze, until he saw something that made his heart skip a beat. He’d forgotten all about it, but of course, the Athelstans weren’t the only people he could run into at the Horseman’s Square—especially given the profile of one of the soldiers being honoured today.

There, dressed in mourning black and standing with the tallest people in the entire square, was the weeping figure of Asena Shiranui—another in a long list of ‘family’ Zelen barely knew.