Kolme had collapsed out of exhaustion, still in the footwell with his back now pressed against the base of the chair, panels still open, wires splayed around him – He stared up at the monitor screen with dread in his heart.
Emilia had just taken a serious blow, the loss of one of her Casnel's arms – But now something new caught his attention – The Fluchtig was moving the wrong way.
“Wh-What the Hell are they doing!!” Kolme exclaimed in sheer disbelief.
Ever so slowly the battered warship had been making something of an escape but now it had changed course, it was moving closer to the mech battle, heading straight for it in fact.
Kolme watched on his screen as the 4 mechs, the three Mleue and Emilia herself, all turned their mechanical heads to observe the surprising site – As though the machines themselves were as bemused.
Then it sprang.
The Fluchtig's cannons had been pulverised one by one during its grand escape from the reformed TSU-s fleet – And yet against all odds, one single gun barrel out of a pair, flared to life and with a shot to beat all others, taking the nearest Mleue completely by surprise – A bolt of pink lighting erupted into it – A moment later, at long last, one of the three enemy ace Vijaiks fell.
“Holy Shit!” Kolme shouted earnestly, the shot had been remarkable impressive – But it was short lived, in the next moment the bedraggled cannon that had fired it, exploded, as though that single shot had taken all the warship had left to fire – And yet the massive iris shape of the Am-Fluchtig didn't slow down, it kept coming, surging forward.
The other two Mleue now reacted more appropriately, with one immediately ditching the dual with Emelia to go face down the Fluchtig – That's when the Grey IAFS's Casnel made its mistake;
“No don't!” Kolme roared, but no one could hear his plea.
Emilia turned to stop the Mleue and in that single moment the third enemy closed the distance – Its thin precision arc-staffs, one on either wrist, cut through the unguarded, open back of the Casnel – In response it jerked and shuddered, as though trying to resist the inevitable but it was no good – The moment had passed – The blades gouged out the cockpit with in and the Casnel of Lt.Commander Emilia Sheen fell silent.
“Nooooooooo!” Kolme groaned, he reared up, grabbed either side of the monitor in his hands – But it meant nothing, he could do nothing but watch.
Mleue number two, unimpeded drew a similar rocket luacher to one Emilia had destroyed earlier, off its back – The Fluchtig passed by, still functioning anti-air craft guns reaching out to the stars, desperate streaks hoping to hit but it was no good – The enemy dodged with ease, lined up the large weapon it held and fired – then It fired again. And Again.
The hexagonal dome atop the Fluchtig, battered and bruised as it already was – The place Kolme and his squad had spent those long months training and living together, defending with all their might – Shattered.
Tears in his eyes Kolme reached for a control board, with a morbid compulsion the camera zoomed in – He could just about make it out, the bridge of the Fluchtig – Now exposed to the open air, Kolme saw a dozen bodies floating, completely blackened and lifeless.
Just as he thought his heart would crack, his eyes caught onto one figure, holding on against the vacuum of space to a railing next to what had been the Captain's chair – It was too far away for Kolme to be sure, the figure had a spacesuit on aswell, one that had been brutally seared to their body, but in some fashion Kolme knew it must be Nate Novel.
Commander Nate, a man Kolme had originally thought an incompetent fool who could be easily manipulated to make his own life easier – Had quickly become a close friend, one of the few officers, few leaders Kolme truly respected.
The helmet of the little man clinging to the railing for dear life, had many score lines running through it.
Kolme shook his head slowly, “N-no, please.” He spoke in little more than a whisper.
Crack
The helmet failed, in an instant the atrociously burned figure, let go of the railing and was claimed by the void of space as all air left his lungs.
It wasn't over of course, the two remaining Mleue reunited and soon fired more rounds – This time into the main ship itself – Slowly a chain of explosive reactions began to run along the massive length of the Fluchtig, gun ports engulfed in flame, cracks and buckled metal – Melting sections and collapsing hallways – Slowly the Fluchtig's main body split in two, both sides falling away from each other, the shattered main dome hanging above them both – The Am Fluchtig sank.
****
Silence had fallen over a solitary cabin on a particular edge of space. It was lit only by a dim red glow, some from the warning lights in all directions but also from the large main screen, a red tinted screen.
Another thing in that lonely place glowed red, a small light on a switchboard – Its label indicating it to be an open communications channel of some sort – That channel now broke the peaceful rest of the cabin;
“Hello, Hello? Come on anyone in there? Your machine looks pretty ok, better than all the rest around here anyway – Come on?”
Clunk
A dull sound of metal on metal, the red-tinted monitor offering a clue as to its origin – A gleaming, angular, golden mech appearing on the screen, one arm touching creating a contact link – The almost human portioned face of the gold mech seemed to speak to the silent cabin;
“Seriously what happened here? There has got to be nearly a hundred Remembrance mechs out here but I didn't think those guys had arrived yet – Did you beat them all yourself? And these lilac coloured ones, type-Ds right? That's no joke, who are you?
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Your machine hasn't even taken any direct hits so you must be seriously good.”
A pause.
“Hmmm, guess I should try a heat scan, your machine is ok but maybe you left it behind? Or died inside.
Tch, thought so, gonna take a minute to do with all the interference – If there is someone in there who can hear me, just give me a second ok? But really, you must be an ace right?
----
Hey that over there! Couldn't be, an old Calabar blade? Ha well I'll be, don't see those too often anymore – Though I've heard she still uses them, massive greatswords – Giant chainsaws in the shape of swords is very her sty-- No, no you couldn't be – I mean your machine is red but that's far from unique – That blade though and all these defeated machine, it can't be?”
“No, no – The Scarlet Scourge isn't likely to fall in a place like this, no chance. But then.... She was meant to be here, with the Fluchtig now right? Could it really be her? Oh the scans done!”
“...... Nothing, so either its empty in there or the pilot passed away – I ah, I guess I hope you aren't her then, I suppose that's a little cruel to say – Well whoever you are I hope you can rest in peace, looking around here you certainly earned a warrior's honour today – Farewell friend....”
Clunk
The metal hand moves away, the contact link breaks – Silence once more falls over the small space and the bright gold machine moves out of the monitor's view – The place is bathed slowly in only red once more.
Time passes, auxiliary batteries fail – Following the wishes its mistress left behind, the machine falters, wiping itself clear of data, its black-box corrupts.
The monitor fails, the lights fade one by one – The Vijaik breaths its last as the glimmers of remaining energy leave it – Silence falls and the machine goes to meet with its partner.
****
Kolme Nilas had collapsed back into his chair, not bothering to tidy the cradle of exposed cables at his feet – His eyes stared vacantly at the main monitor – At the drifting wreckage of the battleship Am-Fluchtig, the corpses of Nemos and Emilia's Casnel mixed in for good measure.
In what one might call a 'stroke of luck' it seemed the battered remains of his machine, now little more than a front row viewing platform to the destruction of his home, was being ignored – Plenty TSU-s Vijaik squads had passed him by, but none had seemed to identify him as any sort of threat, perhaps thinking the machine's pilot long dead.
He had even caught glimpses of TSU-s warships passing to boot – On there way to reclaim the Weapon no doubt – Of course he couldn't move his viewing angel, so he couldn't actually see what was happening – But had he wanted to he could guess:
Right now the Weapon was being charged and turned, right now TSU-s would be boarding the control centre, hundreds of injured IAFS soldiers would be holding back the invasion in every corridor, using fragile bodies to slow the advance by even a second – Right now the Tradech and its two remaining Casnels were probably doing their best not to meet the same faith as the Fluchtig.
It would be a race of sorts, would the weapon fire and wipe out TSU-s first, or would the last dregs of IAFS be overrun.
But Kolme didn't care about any of that, his glassed over eyes simply stared blankly out.
A tremendous force knocked the Neo-C, the sheer impact causing it to spin – And for a few brief seconds Kolme got the full perspective of the battle's final moments. The Grand Weapon fired a second time – The TSU-s fleet was overtaken in an instant, waves of golden energy washing over warships and mechs alike, obligating all in paths – At the same time the Weapon too began to erupt, its incomplete shell unable to take being fired for a second time, began to collapse – The explosives The Tristian Fleet had so painstakingly laid out began to react to this sudden crumbling of the weapon's superstructure – One explosion at a time the fireworks display of a generation began.
But Kolme didn't see it for long, for his camera shattered from the influx of heat and he was left with nothing but a blank screen. But he had seen enough – The godly beam coursed straight through the TSU-s fleet and into No-Man's land – The thousands waiting for rescue on all sides, whether it be as prisoners of war, or still hoping for their IAFS comrades to come find them – Perished right along side TSU-s – Any lingering hope that Sabban or Hoki were still out there faded from Kolme's already broken mind.
It was, in a manner of speaking a 'victory' – TSU-s was wiped out instantly via the Tradech's use of the weapon, but in exchange it had cost the lives of all those aboard both the control centre and of course the Fluchtig – In truth the only survivors would be those who had headed for the Tradech.
But it was still surely a victory – The TSU-s fleet, all that was left of it gone in the blink of an eye and the Grand-Weapon itself slowly collapsing – IAFS had finally won, wiped out TSU-s.
The Fluchtig's wreckage and by proxy Kolme Nilas, were not in the line of fire, but they were also not far from it.
Blind to the outside as he now was, Kolme simply had to feel the pressure to know that he was not out of the danger-zone – The heat from that ridiculous energy blast caused what little systems his machines still had, to violently explode – The old man was thrown across his cockpit as impacts rocked his whole machine – But Kolme Nilas didn't much care any more – In fact he might well of welcomed the Weapon finishing him off.
The second and last firing of the Weapon was a sight none who saw it would ever forget – But history itself would remember this day very differently. For as the Tradech, sole survivor of IAFS retreated and the handful of TSU-s ships not destroyed limped away – There was one more force that arrived shortly thereafter.
While it would go on to be recorded as the last day of the 'conflict' between The States-Union-special-Branch and the Independent Alliance of Free States – As the 'Battle of the Grand-Weapon' – Most ordinary people would learn of it as an entirely different day, as the day Remembrance's grand-commander Omaes Agagite would claim that they had been the sole victory of the battle – Remembered as the day that Remembrance declared war on Bhaile, sparking a conflict so much grander in scale, costing so many more lives, that it would entirely overshadow the IAFS and TSU-s 'petty' squabble – It would come to be remembered as the first day of the Second War of Abhailen Independence.
But for those who truly witnessed it, the struggle of IAFS to make the world just a tiny bit better, to sacrifice so much in the mere hope others might live a little happier – That sight marked the very end of their struggle.