~March 21st, 140 AH~
~Sector Capricorn, southeast corner of Vallemor Desert~
Akash Varana attuned to the battle from the safety of his worker Eidolon, far from the line of fire, either hostile or friendly.
“Swarm of Hornets flying in from the north,” Zelen’s steady voice broadcast itself. “Jaegers, you have visuals?”
“Already on it, big guy.”
A cluster of surging signals represented Feray Geyik and her team of Jaegers. Moments later, the radio crackled again, this time with a third voice, youthful and audibly shaken.
“All Hornets eliminated, Lieutenant sir!”
“Well done, Tino. And uh… just Zelen would suffice.”
“Understood, Zelen sir!”
Akash found himself smirking despite himself, not only at Jaeger Tino’s fresh-faced exuberance, but also at Zelen’s calm leadership. There’d been a noticeable shift in the young Reiter’s demeanour—ever since the town hall from several days ago—and the effects had evidently carried over to a live combat situation. For now, Akash could only speculate as to the source of the improvement, but he was grateful for it nonetheless.
A marked spike in Graeme O’Riordan’s signal yanked Akash’s attention back onto the battle at hand. He waited with bated breath to hear the update, but the persistent strength of the signal told him that his Panzer friend—one of the Apfel Alliance’s oldest recruits—had made it out okay.
“We’re within range of the Kentavros’s armaments, Lieutenant,” Graeme now spoke into the radio, voice composed if a little strained from effort. “And I’ll need a hot second to recharge my shield.”
“Cian, cover for Graeme while he’s on cooldown,” Zelen said, then paused briefly before adding, “Asena, could I leave this one with you?”
“Don’t ask, Zelen,” the Kurator in question retorted, but the accompanying flux in her signal told Akash that she’d already moved toward her objective. “You’re the commander. So, command.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll keep that in mind,” Zelen quipped, with enough of a bounce in his voice that Akash could hear his smile. Then the young man turned all-business again as he elaborated on his command, “Feray, peel off and provide ranged support.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!”
Akash shook his head, even as his smirk widened. Bad enough that they can’t settle on a consistent form of address; now they’re even calling him by the wrong rank!
Joint Forces veterans would have a fit if they could listen in on this wild west of a radio exchange. And perhaps they wouldn’t be entirely in the wrong. Akash wasn’t blind to the fact that there was real value to structure and procedure, and perhaps there were still plenty about the Joint Forces his Alliance would do well to imitate.
But… for now? For now, he indulged in a smirk of his own as his [ALLIES] joked with each other in the heat of battle. He pictured the smile on Zelen’s often brooding face, and convinced himself—if only for a moment—that he’d done right by the younger man.
There would come a time, likely in the very near future, where the Alliance would need Zelen Athelstan to be Kingfisher above all else. For now, however, while he still could, let him bask in the sincere warmth of a ‘Zelen’, a ‘Cap’n’, or even a ‘Lieutenant sir’.
Once again, a prod from the Nexus brought Akash back to the reality of battle. It came as a disturbance in Jaeger Tino’s signal, which was odd, given that he should’ve been on standby.
“Kentavros is down,” Asena’s slightly breathless update came through then. “All immediate threats eliminated… as far as I can tell. Should we head back, Zelen, or…?”
Hearing this, Akash was caught in two minds: relief that all his [ALLIES] were safe again… and frustration that they hadn’t found what they’d been looking for. As such, it was with more mixed feelings that he received Zelen’s next ‘command’.
“We’ll keep pushing,” the Reiter asserted. “If the intel’s accurate, the Vendetta unit should’ve been attached to this group of Syntropy. And there’s no better training dummy for simulating Eidolon-on-Eidolon combat. We’ve got to take full advantage of this opportunity.”
Akash was in complete agreement, of course. But that didn’t stop his misgivings from rising to the fore. He ran a quick ‘scan’ over his [ALLIES], and noted once more that at least one signal among them had been less than equanimous in its response to Zelen’s words.
“Zelen,” Akash spoke through a private channel that was meant only for two pairs of ears. “Just reporting in to say I’m… slightly concerned about Tino. Whether due to inexperience, overeagerness, or most likely both, he’s noticeably agitated. I think you’ll see also that his Reserves are diminishing faster than everyone else’s. Might we… ask him to pull back? Sit this one out?”
Zelen took a moment before giving his answer—his only bit of hesitation on the day. “No. This is as much about strengthening our weakest links as it is about gaining relevant combat experience. We push on as is. But… I’ll be sure to keep an eye on Tino.”
Akash too hesitated, then said, “Understood.”
Perhaps sensing that his Gaertner companion wasn’t fully convinced, Zelen added, “Five minutes, Akash. I know longer engagements aren’t feasible in our current state. If we don’t run into more Syntropy within the next five minutes, I’ll call off the mission.”
“Understood,” Akash said again, trying to inject more confidence into his own voice, if only to put his ‘commander’ at ease. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything else of note.”
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He switched off the private channel and leaned back in his seat, sighing uneasily as he did. Despite what he’d just told Zelen, he knew that once the fighting got hectic—as it must against an enemy of Vendetta’s caliber—the Nexus-mediated signals would be too confused even for [ALLIANCE] to interpret, let alone translate into a verbal report. If and when his [ALLIES] ran into a Vendetta unit, all Akash could do then was wait and pray…
… And pray he did.
Akash’s lips moved incessantly and soundlessly as he turned his entire focus onto the Nexus’s nebulous language, rather than the data that streamed into his HUD. With the combatants now locked in a fight for their lives, radio chatter was minimal. All Akash had managed to gather was that the Panzers had developed a protective field over the entire party, that the Jaegers took pot shots at the Vendetta to whittle down its armour, and that the two finisher-enabled Eidolons—Zelen’s ES-V and Asena’s M-024—waited for their moment to swoop in and end the fight.
Despite the danger that now threatened all his [ALLIES], Akash couldn’t help but to pay special attention to Tino Lluvia. On this occasion, he’d ‘housed’ the young Jaeger’s signal in the back of his occipital lobe. The nerves that attuned to this portion of his brain now burned with excruciating pain, inflamed by the same desperation with which Jaeger Tino sought providence from the Nexus.
And then… relief. The pain was gone in an instant, leaving nothing in its wake.
No, Akash’s lips quivered soundlessly. No! Don’t do this… please!
But no sooner had he been flooded by grief for Tino’s death, was Akash once again beset by the agony of the young man’s existence. Tino was back. In more pain than ever, but undoubtedly alive. As if Akash had merely imagined the man’s momentary erasure from the world.
The fighting ended as abruptly as it’d begun. His [ALLIES]’ signals attenuated one by one, subdued by sheer exhaustion rather than any real sense of relief. Yet two signals among them only continued to rise in intensity. One sat in the back of Akash’s occipital lobe. The other was at its opposite end: foremost of his frontal cortex. Zelen.
“Akash, we need you to come quick!” the commander yelled into the main channel, absent his earlier calm. “Tino’s been hit!”
Akash moved before Zelen had finished speaking. As if in direct counteraction to the Reiter’s wavering confidence, the Gaertner now shed all of his hesitations, having been called into action in his area of expertise.
Thankfully, the injury only looked worse than it was, certainly to laymen, and especially to the young patient himself. A stray round had taken out a chunk of Tino’s cannon-form Eidolon, shrapnels from which had embedded themselves in the pilot’s chest. No involvement of vital organs nor major arteries, however. The Jaeger might be out of action for a few days, but he’d live.
Even Akash’s ‘first aid’ consisted mostly of reassurance rather than life-saving care. He took Tino’s shaking hands in his, felt the fear that tautened the skin, and accessed the restless Meridians underneath. Along with simple and frankly meaningless words of comfort, the Gaertner let his patient’s pain and fear leak out and seep into his own body and mind.
The discomfort was intense but only temporary. Soon it would fade into the walls and crevices of the Gaertner’s own Meridians, to be gradually resorbed over time by the Nexus. Akash knew himself to be stretching the limits of a Gaertner career’s longevity, but he also knew that this was no time to give up on what he was best at.
Once Tino had calmed down and accepted the robustness of his own life, he was even well enough to keep flying on his own. There was still a hole in the Eidolon’s chassis that needed repairing, but the trip back to the Caverns would be short, and the party didn’t anticipate more hostiles on the way.
Akash hung back from the rest of the convoy, now listening only with his ears. [ALLIANCE] ate into his Reserves as much as any instance of active Seherschaft, and it was time to give himself a break, lest he himself become the party’s latest casualty.
The chatter was back on the radio, along with the bounce in everyone’s voices. Akash listened with fondness in his heart, but try as he might, he couldn’t resummon his earlier carefree smirk.
During a rare lull in the conversation, he took the opportunity to speak directly to Zelen, again through a private channel.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked softly, with an unintended, almost deferential tone. “You’re the one that saved Tino Lluvia from certain death.”
Zelen was silent for several beats. Then, “I’m not sure that I’d call it ‘certain’. Given we’re in this reality now, where Tino is alive and well.”
Akash shook his head, himself momentarily awed into silence. When he spoke again, he did so slowly, choosing his words, “From one Einkunster to another, have you given much thought to your own… potential? My powers only seem to give me more anxiety, whereas yours… it feels as though anything could be possible, as long as you will it.”
Anything. Any victory in any fight. Any outcome to any war. Any future of any world, no matter how broken and desolate. Akash of course didn’t say these things, as he’d chosen his words carefully.
But even Akash’s curated appraisal sat uneasily with the young Reiter. After another pause, Zelen remarked, “I can’t say that I’ll ever grasp how my Einkunst works. But… I do sometimes wonder… if what I’m doing isn’t so much creating a future as choosing a past to settle on.”
Akash frowned, not quite understanding. “I do consider myself something of a philosopher, Zelen, but you’ll have to lead me by the hand on this one.”
“I don’t understand it myself,” Zelen murmured, speaking as much to himself as to his companion. “I just sometimes have this thought in my head. That everything that was, is, and ever will be… are already written in the stars. Encoded into the Nexus, if you will. And all I’m doing—all anyone’s doing, for that matter—is playing out what we’ve always been destined for. I just happen to have the ability to see and feel the destinies that had already played themselves out in another reality—for another Zelen, on another planet. See these realities… then promptly forget about them again, once I’m back in my own.”
Akash said nothing, a philosopher’s curiosity winning out over a philosopher’s need to insert himself into every conversation.
“It’s like… there’s a line in the sand,” Zelen went on, propelled by the momentum of his own thoughts, “and no matter what I do or try, I can’t touch or cross that line. Because the moment I do, the line breaks down, and reality along with it. I can only… explore within the boundary of that line… no matter how badly I want to see the shape of the world beyond it. Does that make any sense? It’s okay if it doesn’t, because it barely makes sense to me. My point is… there are limitations to my powers. Or at least, I’ve yet to find a way to break through them. I guess, in that sense, you and I are alike, Akash. My Einkunst makes me plenty anxious too.”
Now Akash was well and truly lost for words. What could he say to a man that had yearned for and lost so much? When the man himself could barely measure just how much he’d lost?
Within vaults of Bone rested the Mind’s secrets. And no matter which way the Meridians branched, they could never reach pain that was so well-hidden.
Yet, even as Akash tried and failed to offer meaningful words of comfort to a young man who needed them, Zelen Athelstan surprised him with the bounce in his voice.
“But… I don’t think that means I should give up exploring. Because even if everything’s already written in the stars, I found at least one reality where Tino’s alive and well, and that counts for something, doesn’t it? So… let’s keep going, Akash. Let’s keep pushing ourselves. See how far we could go, what futures we could uncover for ourselves… and who knows? Maybe at some point, I’ll even find a way to cross that line.”