I'll Let This Be My Answer
After a violent series of maneuvers, the Harrier's beam rifle spat fire.
The green lance of light punched clean through the right shoulder and knee joint of the Chronos Bugbear in succession.
The massive frame lost its balance, staggered, and slammed into the wall of a dilapidated factory building in a shower of sparks.
All that remained was the finishing blow.
I lined up my sights on the center of the Bugbear's cockpit—the one that could no longer even move its gun barrel.
The instant my finger settled on the trigger, a flicker of hesitation crossed my mind, and the emergency rescue channel forced itself open.
"S-save me! Please... don't kill me!"
The terrified voice of a rookie pilot.
I asked coldly,
"Why are you here? Who sent you?"
"I-I... my name is... anyway! I don't know the details either! I just... received a deployment order from Nesis. They told me to recon this place—said it was a simple recon mission! I had no idea a fight like this would break out! This isn't fair! Please...!"
Nesis?
Nesis Corporation—Icarus's rival megacorp.
Before the information could even settle in my head, a piercing alarm screamed through the cockpit, and blue beam-rifle streams poured down like a storm from an unexpected direction.
"Gyaaaaah!"
The pilot's final scream hadn't even finished before the Bugbear took the merciless beam barrage dead-on, erupted into a massive fireball, and exploded.
The comms cut out instantly.
I lifted my head and glared toward the direction the beams had come from.
New machines emerged atop the rubble of collapsed buildings and from the darkness beyond.
Sleek, refined frames—utterly different from Chronos's crude Bugbears—yet somehow cold and oppressive in their design. Nesis machines.
Static from an unencrypted channel bled into the Harrier's wide-area comms receiver.
The Nesis mercenaries' chatter.
Meat shield? I felt a cold fury settling in my gut as I clenched the control sticks.
"You bastards."
With the burning wreckage of the Bugbear at my back, I wrenched the Harrier's output to maximum.
The Harrier shot forward like a bolt of light.
The Nesis machine that had just been bragging about smashing me charged in as if it had been waiting, spraying beam-rifle fire.
Fwoosh! Fwoosh!
Blue beam streams sliced through the Harrier's afterimages.
With Kinetic Flow active, the machine slipped every attack and used the enemy's own charge speed against him, closing the distance in a heartbeat.
His panicked voice crackled over the comms.
I drew the energy sword mounted at the Harrier's hip.
A beam blade blazing with fierce blue light.
Without a shred of hesitation, I swung it straight into the oncoming Nesis machine's torso.
Shhkkt!
With a dull, tearing screech of metal, the Nesis frame split cleanly at the waist—upper and lower halves shearing apart.
A single strike. The upper half coasted a little farther on inertia before erupting into a fireball.
Shocked voices from the other Nesis mercs flooded the channel.
I could feel their movements dull for a fraction of a second.
But the situation was still the worst it could be.
I'd just dropped one Nesis machine, yet the battlefield remained packed with countless Chronos mercs and Nesis elite units.
Then Yuna's urgent voice cut in over the allied channel.
Doctor's voice was just as strained.
Titan's Atlas must have been under concentrated fire—his rough voice came through the channel.
Yuna seemed to reach a decision and shouted,
Yuna's urgent retreat order rang through the channel, but I didn't move.
I looked from the burning Bugbear wreckage to the Nesis machine I'd just bisected, then to the enemies pressing in from every direction.
Through the chaos of the comms, I called Doctor's channel.
Twenty or more.
A number our four could never face head-on.
Yuna's judgment was correct—but I opened the team channel again.
Shock flooded Yuna's voice.
I replied shortly and closed the channel.
Then I ignited the Harrier's boosters to maximum once more.
The machine lunged forward as if hurled, charging straight at the nearest enemy cluster.
Fwoosh! KRA-KOOM!
Beams, solid rounds, and a missile barrage filled the space ahead of me. I wrenched the sticks like a madman and dove straight through the gaps.
The Harrier skimmed past the shells by the thinnest of margins, dancing through the storm.
Alternating beam rifle and energy sword, I shredded two approaching Bugbears in an instant.
But that was as far as it went.
Attacks poured in from every direction until even pure evasion was barely enough.
Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded by three Nesis machines and a swarm of Bugbears.
The radar was nothing but red warning lights. One Nesis unit leveled the heavy cannon on its shoulder at me.
Nowhere left to dodge.
"Damn it!"
PAAANG!
A slender blue flash streaked down from the sky like a falling star and blew the cannon barrel clean off the Nesis machine aiming at me.
Yuna.
Even while engaging other machines, her Silvera hadn't lost track of my movements for a second.
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KOOM!
With a ground-shaking roar, Titan's Atlas charged in from the side as if to cover me.
The twin shoulder gatling guns and missile launchers on the Atlas belched fire, dumping indiscriminate saturation fire on the enemies around me.
Several Bugbears exploded and went down in moments.
Titan's booming laugh filled the channel.
He seemed to have already forgotten Yuna's retreat order—if anything, he looked like he was enjoying himself.
At Titan's hearty shout, Doctor answered calmly.
While Titan's Atlas poured out insane volumes of fire and drew the enemy's attention, I drove the Harrier into the gaps of chaos he'd created.
At Doctor's warning I yanked the machine into a hard turn and dumped flares.
Behind me, half a dozen missiles detonated in a rolling thunderclap.
Using the recoil of the evasion, I slipped straight into the Nesis machine's flank and carved through its arm with the energy sword.
As the disarmed Nesis unit staggered, a missile from Titan's Atlas turned it into a massive fireball.
Titan crowed with satisfaction.
At Yuna's sharp cry, a blue sniper beam from her Silvera punched clean through the cockpit of a Chronos custom unit that had been charging a heavy particle cannon.
Even while relocating, she was still precisely eliminating the battlefield's critical threats.
We fought by covering one another's gaps.
When Titan shoved the front line forward with his massive frame, I slipped in with high mobility to disrupt and destroy.
Yuna sniped high-priority targets or secured our escape routes, while Doctor constantly analyzed enemy data and provided electronic warfare support.
The impossible situation seemed, little by little, to find a precarious balance.
But that balance didn't last.
Doctor's voice turned urgent.
Through the dust clouds of the battlefield, a single machine appeared—one utterly different from the other Nesis units.
Sleek crimson-black armor. A silhouette even sharper and more oppressive.
Above all, its movement was on another level entirely.
The crimson-black machine wove between allied and enemy frames like a ghost.
It slipped Titan's gatling barrage and, without hesitation, punched through the cockpits of two Chronos Bugbears that had simply been in its way.
Overwhelming skill and ruthlessness that made no distinction between friend and foe.
Titan snarled through gritted teeth.
The crimson-black machine paid Titan's rage no mind whatsoever and turned its head toward the high ground.
In an instant it deployed the heavy beam cannon mounted on its shoulder.
Almost the same moment I shouted, Doctor yelled,
KRAAAAAANG!
A beam far more powerful than anything before slammed directly into the rocky outcrop where Yuna had been.
A massive explosion hurled stone fragments in every direction, and the position where Silvera had stood completely collapsed.
I shouted urgently.
After a brief silence, Yuna's voice came through, laced with static.
Her voice was composed, but ragged breathing mixed into it.
In that interval the crimson-black machine slowly turned its head, looking from me to Titan and back.
Through the helmet visor, I could almost feel the pilot's cold gaze.
For the first time, a transmission came from him. An arrogant, ice-cold voice.
The crimson-black machine deployed sharp-edged energy shields in both hands and began walking slowly toward us.