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Chapter 10 - To be a Hero - Part 2
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The lance twirls, its cannons acting more like thrusters and firing at slightly different rates to make the lance spin, while the wire connecting it back to the Crusade’s hand whips like the weapon's violent tail. The grey knight it hit tumbles backwards, flashing sparks where the lance tip digs into its chest. We can hear the horrific drilling noise, even over the sound of our machine guns.
The other knights step around their stricken friend. The door is fully opened. Templar retracts his lance, rewinding it and reattaching it to his left hand. I catch a glimpse of the damage this preliminary hit has done. Nothing.
The grey knight has a crater on its chest now true, but gradually, it gets back on its feet, still alive even after that wild surprise attack.
“Grenade!” I hear someone yell, then watch as one of the guys in the second barricade row jumps like a downright athlete, grabbing the thing mid-air and tossing it back out the breech. A blinding flash ensues.
'If one of those goes off too close, it’s all over.'
Outside, the Casnels have surrounded Templar; each holds a standard rifle in one hand and a glowing golden arc-staff in the other. The rifles aren't the ones we saw plans of, for that we can be grateful at least, but even so, a regular gun in the hands of a Casnel is still ridiculously powerful. They probably have to be careful firing them. They may not want to destroy their base, but would the Crusade survive even one direct hit?
As though to test my theory, two of them fire on either side – the Crusade dodges one blast, but the other hits it atop the shoulder – the blast is like white-hot platinum; it carves an instant hole into the Crusade's shoulder blade, and when it passes, it leaves behind a glass, crystalline substance. That’s just how hot these guns are firing, so hot that the grey camouflage paint all across the mech’s body peels away, leaving the Crusade its usual silver and white colours, bar for that glass-like shoulder crater.
It's what we'd call a glancing blow normally. The arm should still work, yet the hole left in the shoulder by such a passing hit is profound.
The white giant with its billowing red cape stands alone on that grassy field, under a sea of stars up above the dome’s transparent ceiling.
“Mark! Fire!” Gros commands once more.
Throwing back that grenade bought us a few seconds, but soon the enemy, a dozen of them covered head to toe with black body armour and dehumanising helmets, are trying to get past us once more.
A guy retreating from the forward barricade gets shot in the back, falling placidly against the cold metal crates of the middle barricade. His comrades are forced to push his newly made corpse out of the way.
Let the empty mag, my fifth, fall to the ground, insert the new one, pull back the slide, press the stock to my aching shoulder, aim, fire.
I feel myself rapidly becoming numb, my actions are more mechanical, my mind almost trance-like as it carries out these duties while catching fleeting glimpses of the giants duking it out beyond the breach. Eight mechs surround the Crusade, a complete circle. Perhaps the pilots are conversing?
It has crossed my mind that the grey knights may very well be an attempt to recreate an old failed project. If what Gros told me last night is true, then the Crusade was made what it is by TSU. In a way, it could be seen as these Casnel's forebears, and honestly, it looks like it.
The Crusade is modelled to be more of a holy knight, with long rectangular section, bucket helmet, white, grey silver and red colours – The grey knights surrounding it are more medieval, with domed heads, round pauldrons, and a rustic grey colour.
The Crusade is also taller, by around five metres in fact. Mechs have been getting shorter, but the Crusade was made long ago. It towers over the grey knights, but what good can that height do exactly?
The talking, if that’s what they were doing, is over. The eight all raise their rifles with an almost ceremonial cadence. Moving its left leg back, bending low with arm outstretched, Templar makes his play. In a single flush movement, he uses his vastly superior reach and swings his lance in a wide arc, hitting six of the eight in a single move!
Before the two not hit can react, he pounces, quite literally ‘bonking’ one away with the flat of that same lance before stepping right up the eighth, none other than the one hit by the spinning lance attack earlier. I watch as they panic, perhaps still shaken from that earlier surprise attack. They go to move both their sword and rifle, but they succeed with neither.
Thrusting that flaming calabar blade of his perfectly into the dent from before, Templar carves out the grey knight’s heart in an inferno of sparks. The screeching of calabar against armour, you can not even imagine the sheer noise; nothing describes it. And just seconds later, it stops, and a veritable fountain of hydraulic fluid and oil comes gushing out as the sword is pulled free, and the grey knight slowly falls backwards, collapsing to the ground with a flat thud.
The Crusade turns around, swiping its sword, and stains the grass all around. The other seven slowly return to their feet, the lance attack not having done any damage, simply knocking them over.
No, not seven. Another Casnel, the one hit hardest in that mighty swing, is staying down.
“Heh-heh-heh!” Gros laughs grimly beside me while reloading his weapon, “If those we fought yesterday were the alpha model, then these are the beta, but they’re still test models. Still missing the processors we stole and who knows what other bits and pieces, like say, the proper safety gear to prevent a pilot banging their head and falling unconscious when knocked over!”
It seems as plausible an explanation as any. Of course, it means Casnel number seven might get up again at any point should the pilot regain consciousness, but who cares? For now, it means the numbers are down to six on one! He can really do–
“RPG!!”
The cry comes too late. We were foolish to focus on the mechs and not ourselves. The rocket-propelled grenade scores through the breech and slams into the middle barricade. Both defenders there are sent into the air. One falls with a dull impact, his head pointing the wrong way. The other is blown apart, his torn-up arm falling not far from me with a horrible squelch.
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“BASTARDS!!” Gros yells and, with that fancy rifle, shoots through the smoke of the weapon firing and hits the enemy gunner right in the head. The man and his RPG fall backwards slowly, but nothing is over yet. A whole group comes flooding in, thirteen guys, some coming straight for the third and final barricade, a couple sprinting to pick up the fallen ordinance.
I fire and score a long line against one guy's torso. He falls, his hands trying desperately to reach for the weapon. One last shot, and I've killed him. To my side, Johnny – hand still in a sling – manages to land a shot with her pistol on another would-be avenger.
Finally, from nowhere, Gros throws a grenade of his own. It lands a couple feet outside the breech, going off immediately; it shreds shrapnel into the attackers who'd made it inside while also blowing up the RPG. The two men left at the third barricade soon mop up the remaining attackers of the assault.
I didn't know we had any grenades on us. No, perhaps Gros always had one on him? Him being the sort to always carry such a dangerous thing doesn't seem so unreasonable with all I've learned in the last twenty-four hours; perhaps it had some meaning to him? Whatever the case, it buys us more time.
We've averted another fatal blow, but now we're down to just one paltry barricade, two guys with machine guns and full body shields at it, and behind them, the three of us. Five defenders are now all that is left to guard the ship's heart.
Outside, too, Templar’s ‘luck’ is starting to run thin. One pilot getting concussed and another being taken out by his sheer skill was a start, but that has only made the other six more wary. Their formation is tighter now; they come in waves, a quick slash, then they back away to let another take their place while yet another comes from behind. Templar's teardrop shield mounted to his right forearm barely blocks a rifle shot of that brilliant platinum shade. It’s the third or fourth he's deflected that way. Against regular enemies, that shield could hold for an obscenely long time, but against Goighnui-fueled weapons, score lines are already appearing along it.
A shower of sparks erupts as, again calabar greatsword and golden arc-staff clash. Another enemy closes from the side. Templar fires off his lance like before; it soars toward the incoming grey knight, but this time, it doesn't land. In an impressive show of skill, the knight grabs the incoming missile underarm. Its legs dig trenches through the ground as it is pushed back, but it takes no damage. Before Templar can retract the lance, a different Casnel comes in and cuts the cord.
The loyal melee weapon falls to the floor dully; all that returns to Templar is the long, thick cable. Another rifle fires from behind the Crusade, heading straight for his back. He dodges at the last second, and the bolt of lightning keeps going and going until it strikes the sky.
The dome takes the rifle blast, and the dome holds.
Is there any hope left if that didn’t blast through it and create us a hole, what will?
The sky turns a strange colour as the reinforced glass of the ceiling above us struggles to absorb the intense heat of the stray rifle bolt, but nonetheless, the structure made to house potentially millions of people is not so easily destroyed. The multicoloured sky holds mockingly.
Another enemy comes from Templar's side. Hunched over, they try to ram their sword into his waist, perhaps hoping the giant will be stunned temporarily from losing his primary weapon – And yet, without hesitation, without even looking, Templar swings his right arm back and smashes his shield into the attacker, squashing its domed head before the surprise attack gains purchase.
This particular grey knight goes tumbling. Yet a moment later the much-abused shield crumbles to dust, having absorbed too much heat and shattering from the blunt force usage. Lance cut loose, shield reduced to nothing – Six enemy Casnels, standing around him, ready for yet another wave of attacks.
We are faring no better. The enemy simply keeps coming, soldier after soldier tries to flood in, throwing their lives away so flagrantly, a mountain of corpses is building, and they just keep coming, so dedicated to their cause, to our destruction.
'Perhaps they'll pile so high it'll block the breach for us' – I think to myself grimly, but there is no mirth nor disgust at my own cruelty. I have no idea how many I've killed now; I leave the ninth mag to fall to the ground, load the final one, and pull back the slide one last time.
The others must be about to run out, too. It's not just Templar who is almost out of weapons.
And then, “Get Down!!!”
My view of the outside disappears, replaced by an old, broad man, arms and legs outstretched. Before I can even think, there is an utterly blinding light. All becomes white except for the man, a black silhouette of my boss, a deafening explosion.
The light recedes, though my ears keep ringing for thirty seconds or so. Then the man falls forward, and without thinking, I catch him. But his height and weight are too much for me, and we stumble together into a heap on the metal floor.
I groan a little, then look down on Gros... His back is filled with shrapnel. Jagged, grizzly silver shards line his uniform dyed red with quickly escaping blood, he coughs and more escapes from his throat onto my lap, where his head now rests.
To my side, I hear Johnny let out a sound of anguish. I turn to see her collapse, out cold, I hope. Gros, I guess, took the full brunt of a grenade for us both and yet a single piece still managed to hit the already injured apprentice.
Only I was fully saved. But why?
“G-Gros...” I whisper weakly.
This man, rough-spoken and short-tempered, sometimes a great teacher, sometimes a terrible drunk, a self-described war criminal – someone I think I might even hate – has just taken a grenade for me. If he isn't dead in my arms, then any one of those shards could well have severed his spine.
Last night, Gros made sure I had a drink on my eighteenth, a common tradition, you drink with a parent on your eighteenth. Maybe just a total coincidence, or perhaps he knew I had no family to save that drink for.
Gros just gave his life for me.
“Stupid kid...” he mutters. My eyes go wide, and I almost reach to pull a particularly long and gnarled piece of shrapnel out before thinking better of it.
“Chief!” I say back pathetically.
His left arm somehow moves. It reaches out, probably intending to grab me by the shoulder or collar, but lands on my knee instead. His grip is still surprisingly firm. Through gritted teeth stained red with his own blood, he begins to speak of all things;
“....I fucked up, sorry...... You just remind me of too many other starry-eyed fools who got killed...” he starts before coughing profusely, blood splattering all over me, his grip on my knee tightening even more.
“........telling you all that was pointless if I don't tell ya the soppy stuff too..... Kid, he and I are monsters, but we weren't born that way, and we don't have to die that way, get it? To be a hero or a villain. To be a good person is just--” Another fit of coughing, this time his grip grows weaker.
His eyes roll back, “.....stupid kids.” Chief Gros passes out.
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