The Red Comet
With a roar of raw engines, the Imperial Guard's Orcalen Flugel units shot from the hangar like shells from a cannon.
When Jincheon had first come to their aid, the Guard's mechas had been little more than scrap — armor cracked and scorched, teetering on the edge of total ruin. Thanks to the supplies plundered from the pirates, they had been restored, if not perfectly, then well enough to fight. And with ammunition and materiel finally in hand, the Guardsmen steeled themselves, determined to vent every humiliation they had endured.
But the disparity in force was overwhelming.
On their side: a single battleship and roughly twenty mechas. Against them: two battleships, three cruisers, eight destroyers, and seventy mechas. Even that count had been reduced by the enemy's need to maintain an encirclement. The rebels had almost certainly called for reinforcements. Fail to break through quickly, and they would be crushed beneath the weight of numbers pouring in.
Both sides had spotted each other, but neither was yet in effective range. They began closing the distance, each formation advancing toward the other.
"I will say this once more," Eirin's voice cut across the fleet-wide channel. "We must break through this star system if we are to access the Hyper Lane Network."
She had already laid out the rough plan, but pre-battle adrenaline had a way of erasing details. A reminder was in order.
"Their numbers are large, but they are local forces at best, and the majority of their mechas are D-class. The fact that they advance so boldly means they believe they can take us whenever they please."
Then she drove the point home, stoking the Imperial Guard's fighting spirit.
"Show them why the Giranlek Imperial Guard is the finest force in the Empire!"
No answering cheer came over the comms — but resolve settled hard across the faces of every Guard pilot and every crewman in the combat command center.
Meanwhile, Jincheon and his companions, launching alongside the Imperial Guard, took stock.
"Small-scale, but not so different from the pirate war," Jincheon said.
"Right. Different scale, same problem — we're outnumbered."
"But we won't get the same lucky break we did last time."
The Kelkata race's tendency toward easy provocation had handed them a swift victory against the pirates. The nobles of the Giranlek Empire, however, were mostly Giranlek themselves — far less susceptible to taunts. On top of that, every noble had undergone biological modification that sharpened their minds well beyond ordinary limits. At the very least, they would perform competently.
The upside of a small-scale engagement was that ace pilots could swing the entire battle by themselves.
"Look at it this way — this is our first official fight. Everyone get your heads on straight."
They had helped the pirates, sure, but no one serious would listen to a pirate's boasting. And when they had aided Eirin's group before, the enemy mercenaries had been so weak it barely counted. This was different. Most of the opposing mechas were D-class, but they were regular military. Win or lose, someone somewhere would be recording this.
In other words, this battle was the first time Jincheon's group would be formally introduced to the wider galaxy.
As the two forces closed, the enemy formation shifted. The ships that had stretched left and right in a long line re-formed into a box directly across the Rastold's advance path.
Concentrated fire on our battleship. Classic.
It was the textbook attack formation for a superior force facing an inferior one — extremely vulnerable to flanking attacks from either side, but Eirin's group had no reinforcements coming. The enemy could afford the extreme posture.
How will they break this?
Jincheon found himself looking forward to the opening ship-to-ship exchange, curious what the Rastold Silverion would show. He had seen plenty of pirate battleships, but ships had grades the same way mechas did.
"Fools! You're worse than the mercenaries!"
Eirin felt genuine fury rise as she studied the enemy formation — no evasive posture, just a commitment to concentrated fire, the opposite of the mercenaries who had harassed them when supplies ran dry.
"You dare oppose the Rastold Silverion — the Empire's final bulwark — with those numbers? And you call yourselves nobles of the Giranlek Empire? All power to the main cannon!"
The Rastold Silverion was the last wall standing between the Emperor and annihilation whenever the Empire faced true crisis. Precisely because of that role, debate still raged even within the Empire over just how powerful the ship truly was. Until now, sheer enemy numbers had forced them to flee. Now, with no choice but to break through head-on, Eirin issued the order in cold fury.
The two fleets drew closer, still short of ordinary effective range.
One might wonder what "effective range" meant in frictionless space — but ship-to-ship gunnery distances stretched across thousands, even tens of thousands of kilometers. Without targeting systems, a miss of a single millimeter at the muzzle would send a shot wildly off-target by the time it reached the enemy. Effective range in space combat meant the distance at which targeting systems could reliably put fire on the enemy.
"Charge at one hundred ten percent!"
"All hands, flash protection! Quasadrion Cannon — fire!"
At Eirin's command, a beam of violet light erupted from the Rastold Silverion's bow.
"Huh? Already?"
Jincheon turned, eyes tracking the cannon's muzzle as the main gun fired well short of standard engagement distance. The shot slammed into one of the enemy battleships, punched through its shields, and struck the bow dead-on.
A colossal explosion tore the vessel apart.
"What?"
"Did that battleship just blow?"
"That was a battleship, right? Not a destroyer or a cruiser?"
Jincheon's group erupted over their private frequency, stunned as the enemy capital ship disintegrated under the Rastold Silverion's main gun.
"Those mercenaries — they didn't mean to, but the only reason they held any advantage was because they never tried a head-on fight with that thing."
The mercenaries who had arrived first and hounded Eirin's group had no reason to slug it out. They had focused entirely on evasion and buying time. Even they probably never imagined that caution had been their lifeline.
Belated return fire began from the enemy ships — but their targeting systems were clearly a grade below the Rastold's. Most of their shots swept past without landing, scoring empty space around the flagship.
"Charge!"
The moment gunnery opened, Beatrix ordered the full assault and led from the front. A mecha unit's tactical objective never changed: destroy or break through enemy mechas and harass the enemy ships. Four mechas remained near the Rastold Silverion for defense; the rest drove toward the enemy. The units left with the flagship might have seemed the safer assignment — but once mecha combat began in earnest, they would learn just how dangerous and critical that role truly was.
"Hahahahaha! The Red Comet of this world is me!"
At the charge order, Jincheon opened every thruster and rocketed forward at tremendous speed. The g-forces slammed his upper body into the seat back for an instant as his strength briefly failed — then he flooded his body with Inner Qi and simply ignored the pressure.
The eye-catching red Gareld streaked toward the enemy at a speed no other unit could match. Beatrix watched, lips pressed tight, expression sour.
Why was a Calsorn relic wasted on a lowborn like him…!
She believed the only reason he could survive that insane velocity was the Calsorn Empire artifact he carried — and she was certain that if the relic had been hers, she would have performed several times better.
Whether Jincheon knew her thoughts or not, he had already broken formation alone, racing toward the enemy by himself. Enemy mechas rose to meet him, pouring every weapon they had into the intercept.
"Hahahahaha!"
Jincheon snapped the Gareld through sharp curves and full-body spins, casually slipping every shot. He spun the machine in a wild full rotation, dodged an incoming laser, and answered with a laser rifle shot of his own at a conspicuous target.
The pilot never imagined anyone could land a clean hit under those conditions. He never even began an evasive maneuver. The shot struck true, and the mecha detonated.
"Wh-what is that thing?!"
"It's fast!"
The enemy reeled at the red Gareld's movement. It was no exaggeration — by the time they lined up a shot, the machine had already cut in a completely different direction.
"Hmph. Just more grunts. Nothing special."
Jincheon weaved and juked, picking mechas apart one by one. Given the stakes, he wasn't playing around this time. Enemy units bloomed into fireworks at a rapid clip.
Then new mechas appeared — different in design from the Imperial Guard's, but sharing the unmistakable silhouette of knight-type frames.
"Everyone clear out! We'll handle that one!"
Three knight-type mechas, each customized without any unifying design, closed on Jincheon at speeds far exceeding the ordinary units. They understood that while the Imperial Guard mechas mattered, the Gareld tearing through their lines at impossible velocity was the greater threat.
"Knight-class, huh? This should be fun."
Knights of the Giranlek Empire were permitted to modify their mechas however they saw fit. From the outside, the result looked like a mismatched rabble — but the customizations tailored to each pilot's habits and strengths made them far superior to ordinary operators.
Jincheon fired his laser rifle at the most conspicuous of the three. The knight raised a round shield and casually nullified the beam.
Different reaction speed.
It wasn't the anti-beam barrier on the shield that changed Jincheon's expression — it was the fact that the pilot had blocked the shot at all. He hadn't reacted to the laser itself. He had read the rifle's muzzle and the gathering light, and moved in advance. Ordinary pilots couldn't do that, which was why they had been exploding under Jincheon's fire.
Biological modification. Or cybernetic augmentation.
Reflexes beyond normal human limits. Jincheon grinned. Finally, someone worth fighting.
He stowed the laser rifle, drew the 95mm machine gun, and sprayed fire across all three knights. They moved as if they could see the bullets in flight — shielding critical points, slipping aside, taking no damage at all.
"Pin him down so he can't fly off!"
"Don't let him slip past us!"
The knights openly treated Jincheon's fly-like mobility as the primary threat, pouring fire to restrict him. Like the Orcalen, they carried lances capable of both close and long range, firing lasers to pin his feet.
But superhuman high-mobility maneuvering and absurd accuracy were not the whole of what Jincheon brought. He preferred close combat. He was a man who enjoyed killing enemies with his own hands — a berserker in all but name. The only reason he had been fighting at range was efficiency. Closing with every grunt one by one would burn through the mecha's resources too fast.
"I found someone interesting — you think I'm wasting time on the small fry?!"
Jincheon answered their blocking fire with a shout and charged straight at them.
"Fast!"
The knight he targeted reflexively opened distance under the impossible high-speed approach and thrust his shield forward. Ports opened in the shield; a swarm of micro-missiles spat out toward the Gareld. Jincheon shot them down with the machine gun before they had covered half the distance, every one of them.
He was still driving in on his chosen target when —
Killing intent!
Two-hundredths of a second before the high-heat warning even sounded, Jincheon felt the murderous will and blasted thrusters, killing the Gareld's momentum. A sniper laser carved through the air along the path he had been about to take. A second pulse of killing intent hit him; he dumped thrusters harder, tipping the machine backward and diving low. A thick laser beam scythed through the empty space where he had been.
"Damn it! Nothing lands!"
"How is he that quick?!"
"Stay calm! Don't give him an opening to attack!"
Aside from the engines, the knights' custom mechas were on par with the Gareld. And the three of them had clearly trained together — they pressed Jincheon with steady, coordinated pressure.
Meanwhile, the rest of both forces entered effective range and opened fire.
"Die, traitors!"
Failure here meant death for everyone. The Imperial Guard, throwing every resource they had left into the fight, attacked as if reclaiming every humiliation suffered for lack of supplies.
Explosions bloomed across the void. The numbers favored the rebels, but B-class mechas against mostly D-class opposition meant the Guard held the edge in the exchange. The enemy's goal, however, was never to win a straight fight — it was to buy as much time as possible. While the gunnery duel raged, more than twenty mechas peeled off and swung wide toward the Rastold Silverion.
"Ignore them! We deal with the mechas in front of us!"
Beatrix trusted the Rastold's performance and committed fully to the enemies before her. What mattered in this battle was not reducing the enemy mecha count — it was stripping the enemy ships of their ability to pursue.
The instant Beatrix made her decision, the enemy ships entered effective range and laid down a web of main-battery fire. Unlike the earlier scattered misses, this was a coordinated fire net aimed squarely at the Rastold.
"Evasive maneuver — starboard!"
Dodging every main gun was impossible. Eirin threw the Rastold into the path of the cruiser and destroyer fire rather than the battleship-grade beams.
Massive lasers no mecha could produce slammed into the Rastold's bow. Shields flared and held, absorbing the barrage. But it was far too early to relax. The flanking mecha force had closed on the Rastold and opened fire at point-blank range.
"Anti-air batteries, open fire! Keep advancing! We cannot let them pin us here!"
Eirin ordered the intercept and drove the Rastold forward. It was a small-scale war, but in moments every unit was moving toward its own objective, and the battlefield dissolved into chaos.
Those who needed every second they could buy. Those who needed to break through as fast as possible. Two forces with opposite purposes crashed into each other.