Interzeit: A Space Opera (27 page)

Deimos
tries to parry, but misses en
tirely, the plasma spear smashes
through his left arm. The sword dies into sparks as the whole arm seizes. Bai Hu pulls the arm outwards, straining it.

“You think you have what it takes to finally kill me?”
He
asks placidly.

The remaining blade on his right arm swings overhead, threatening to smash the mech’s helm. Lei
pushes him away by the torn
arm, the whirring laser slash goes wide
.
She yanks him back, smashing
him against the energy shield.

Shielding plate
s
crack and burst, shattering off Deimos, revealing a muted gray metal underneath. The edge of the shield digs into Deimo’s face. The sharpness cuts from underneath, the face sparks with relenting hot metal.

He swings low, the red arm vents energy. The blade bites into Bai Hu’s leg, chewing against the bottom of the shield, He lifts the warmech up, Bai Hu boosts against the attack in resistance.

Seizing the moment, Deimos rips its arm free, spinning out from Lei’
s deadly grapple. He focuses on
his
remaining blade, angling behind it, assuming a duelist
’s
repose. He extends it out, the furthest point in front of him, waiting, testing the space.

“You can’t win now, just come quietly.”
Lei states

She hears nothing in return, deep syncopated breaths leak over the comm. channel from his cockpit.

“Miss,” Basil switches the tactical network to her forward view. Large laser blasts careen within kilometers of them. The heavy guns have come in range of each other. The two fleets fan out in dispersed parabolic trajectories. The
crowd of ships encase
them in a globe of metal juggernauts arcing towards an inevitable clash in all directions.

As
Deimos
predicted both sides have
sizable escort ships flying in direct trajectories towards their duel.

“We don’t have much time,”
he
says finally.

“Then let’s finish this.” Lei shouts immediately,

Deimos lunges forward, straight into Lei. She deflects the blow forcefully and stabs in retaliation. The green blade flows
and
parr
ies
smoothly, rolling the momentum up. The blade and plasma spear clash, sparking, Lei’s own momentum lifts her spear arm high.

Deimos boosts around the exposed left side, the blade turns down, as does
her
spear, but
she
fails to catch him. Flying past
,
Deimos
rakes
her sides
, ripping open a large breech in the hull.
Lei turns
quickly, and almost rotates into a foll
ow up strike to Bai Hu’s heart
.

She clangs away the attack, lifting her spear across strongly. Lei bats him away angrily with the shield, forcing the distance. He deflects
her slow strikes
, but drifts inevitably away. She continues this assault, slowly letting the shield out on its attached chain, pushing him further
out
.

Finally with one swinging bash
, she feels the chain, it slacks out to the sweet spot
in her leverage. I
nstead of pulling it back, she swings the chain in a loop, slinging the shield edge down into her opponent.

Deimos pulls back from the
blow,
the edge scraping plates down the center of the mech. Bai Hu increases the pace of the
attack, throwing large
arcing slashes at him, switching direction, spinning and relentless.

He tries to move in, and evades left, narrowly missing a deadly spear thrust. She swings the deadly whir
ring disc around its narrow
orbit. After a powerful wind up, she tosses it, spinning
it
up from under him.

Deimos, shifts its guard, pulling the sword arm back. The frenzied disc loops over him, singing his
hull as it travels, He throws his mech’s left arm into the rising chain. It catches against it, bending swinging the blade back around.

It cleaves through Deimos’s left arm viciously, guillotining it off the mech.
Pulling
the blade forward, he slashes up at the temporarily knotted chain, ripping the shield away from its constraint. It whirrs away spinning like a flying saucer.

Deimos dashes forward quickly on her exposed left flank. He swings hard, Lei barely pivots in time to parry it, the spear and blade locking tightly in struggle against each other.

The momentum starts to favor
Deimos
, the spear bending
slowly out of the way. Screaming she fights against it. Bai Hu’s free arm bashes into the cockpit forcefully. She smashes it over and over, cracking through the outer hull. She slips the slash in the turmoil, and her array of deflector plates light up, spinning around into protective electrical shell.

“I see you for who you truly a
re now
Max
.” She taunts, “You are formless
. When I look into you I see nothing, there is not a pilot, not a man, just a black
shell
. Now die.”

The deflector plates launch into him one by one. The first wave stuns him, the next restrain his movement, soon the things cover his hull completely, electrical shocks, cours
e
around the metal harshly.

Lei raises her spear for one last victorious attack.

The green blade dissipates suddenly, the arm pivots, locking in harmoniously. From
his wrist
launches
a
energy bolt
, its crackling power sails outwards. It
flies
just so, curving just the right amount as it courses forward. It moves deftly passed her spear, flowing inwards. I
t makes contact with the heart
with an understated kiss. Then melting through, it brings fire, expanding everything inside out, ripping out and outwards.

She’s there when it happens. It screeches through her perfectly. The traveling sun sheers through all possible resistance, returning her to dust, and that
approaching infinity
.

The fire within the cockpit is unstable, and the whole mech rips itself apart in a fiery explosion. It alls goes then, all mixed together, reformed into something new and foreign, a stranger to itself
.
I
t drifts apart toward its infinite regression.

Deimos bears himself thro
ugh the fire. With the remaining arm
he pushes forward,
dismantling the intercepting ships in small order. His own pull along side him, forming a protective perimeter.

“
This is Kales
Marik
, f
orm the runners up on me,” He broadcasts to the Vice Admiral, “I’m ready to break through.”

The
Skyking
flows down the layers of the atmosphere. The second time in recent memory its form has shadowed over the land. Izanami runs through her briefing reports as quickly as she can during the trip. The craft trembles as the air thickens, each layer buffeting her, resisting her entry more and more.

The memos from the cabinet are quite detailed, emphasizing the urgency of her assistance at every opportunity.
The numbers of belligerents range widely. There are small guerilla bands of soldiers intermingling with the civilian populace, attacking and melting away since early the evening prior.

After failing to assassinate Executor Maxelus, the former heir and prince, Septis Calatian, started a larger coup. The core threat of the coup is Septis himself, having made off with a new model war mech, “Tystrophanes II”,
with
his
Kuipterra
n
defectors. A
cruise
r
by the name
“
Nazer
”
, along with a dispatch of one hundred and fifty (estimated) highly trained
Kuipterra
n security specialists form up the core of the group.

The intelligence report states
that the rest of the rebels are simple
opportunists with their own varied assortment of grievances. Once the central
resisto
rs in the rebellion are removed, it is expected that the groups operating under their umbrella will begin collapsing as well.
It contains a list of targets ranked in ascending priority of elimination.

1. Small street to street terrorist guerillas
   
2. Anti-vehicle squads, and cybernetic saboteurs
   
3. Heavy guns, aircraft, drones, and robotic soldiers (automated)
   
4. Heavy guns, aircraft, drones, and robotic soldiers (piloted)
   
5. Kuipterra
   n and Martian security forces
   
6. The cruiser class ship, “Nazer” and all ancillary crew and vehicles
   
7. Septis Calatian, and the stolen craft “Tystrophanes II”
   

Checking the live tactical network, she finds that the three highest
priority targets are
centralized over the Planetary Cabinet facilities in
north
Carpentaria. A mysterious group is holding them i
n check. Their tact labels go from
“
EDF
Unit 2” ranging all the way up to “EDF unit 12”

Outside of central Carpentaria, the forces are not well delineated from one another, areas of “control” seemingly washing back and forth in tidal tremors, expanding and retracting towards and away from one another.
The EDF units surrounding the cabinet are attempting to restrict this flow closer to the cabinet, seeking to cut them off from the
Kuipterra
n defectors.

A classic siege, Iza studies the perimeter closer, finding an upswell in reports of rank 3 to 5 priority targets, enclosing around the far side of the Cabinet. Suspecting a pincered break through, she sets her sights there for landing, shifting through the stratosphere slightly, to make the appropriate compensatory movements.

Falling lightly into the pla
net, Iza rips through the higher
sky now, the strong embrace of Earth, ushering her downwards faster and faster. She begins
to pull up, the jets hiss
, pushing away from the planet’s grasp.

She evens out just over the lower clou
ds of the troposphere. The tactical system
reports several dozen enemy combatants mustering together, she approaches them swiftly.
Ten kilometers, nine, eight
, then…

She drops out of the sky quickly, firing a burst of shots from her rifle. The white black pattern over Vee’s hull shimmer
s
in the twilight, breaking up her form. The bolts rain down from above, scattering a platoon of armored carriers.

Two missiles fly in on her three o clock, She barrels gracefully, allowing them to pass over, they twist around, redirecting themselves to her. Landing, she bend
s
under them as they sweep past by. The metallic back of Skyking in a deep bend, she aims behind her, detonating them with a rifle blast.

The explosion rocks more fleeing soldiers, small humanoid drones come ambling at her, giving cover for the escapees. Their weak weapons ricochet off of Skyking, Iza sheathes her rifle, and extends her multitude of heated blades. They extend from her sides, glowing and conducting. She blasts off, skimming along the ground.

She smashes her leg into the ground
, ripping and tearing a fissure in her wake. The ground buckles, flinging all the little life forms along it careening to their death. More drones appear, firing more missile volleys. Iza boosts out of the way, leading along in a trail behind her. They follow her hopeless while she continue her rampage into the unsuspecting rebels.

Smoke rises from the ground, seeming to seep from the Earth itself. Covering the
ir
own escape, Iza rakes the covered spot with her finned blades without mercy. The patches scream out collectively and are silenced. Continuing she hits another. Instead of screams, there is a a metallic screech, instead of silence there is an uproar.

A blast erupts out of the ground sending her flying, skidding and rolling. She digs into the earth dragging to a stop, when several of the remaining missiles finally hit home, rocking her. As she climbs to her feet, a cannon blasts smashes directly into her cockpit, rocking the hull in cacophonous tremors.

“No more games!” She yells to herself, ripping her rifle back out.

She skirmishes quickly on her jets, turning and banking, so quickly, the death she doles out flashes like lightning. The ebb and flow continues, moving gracefully, a pause, her eyes tighten search, acquire, fire, and move, breaking back into the liquid dance of fire and metal.

The stimu
lants ri
se, the feeling pumps
out her heart, slinking outwards, filtering into every last extremity. Her fingertips tingle, as they flash along her controls. It is a performance, one of her finest. Like her races, or the training, she dashes along perfectly. It’s hard for the mortality of the event to steal its way in. The drugs buffer her, insulating against the death and the reality of her actions.

They
are
all machines and ants from this
height,
she skims along firing, and slashing. Stomping and thrashing them, like the exterminator she is. Death is the ultimate performance, and spectator. It
awaits
patiently and impatiently towards its victims.

Its touch is uneven, and erratic, but final and total. The end of all sensation, it is swallowed into the void, the drive towards it invisible, until now. To Iza, lost in the bloodlust, she finds her drive for death, that which was hidden from her this entire time reveals itself.

She notices
the ants scrambling towards a bunker, smiling madly she stands over it. Some try to sting
her,
others continue inwards, others
flee away, taking their chance
in the exposed storm of battle. Slowly she trains her gigantic rifle straight down. Aiming, she crunches the barrel into the ceiling of the bunker. Closer than point blank, painless annihilation at the push of a button, her trigger finger itches for the release.

A beam soars, focused and vibrant it blasts through the rifle, ripping it to shreds. The beam continues forward smashing into SkyKing, throwing her through the air. The ground and sky cycle and orbit in loops as she goes.

The beam scalds her at all angles as she tries correcting herself. She finds the momentum angle soon enough corkscrewing along the ground. As she slide to a stop, she drops flat, dunking for cover from the intense beam.

The attacker leaps into the air, its dark frame blends into the deep blue sky. Black, wing-like fins, along a deep purple frame, A single eye on its face, it glows red, and then blasts another punishing beam forwards.

On her guard now, Iza skirts out of the way, weaving around the warmech.

“The prince himself,” She mutters.

She enraptures him into more poor shots, dodging through the leading beams with a lifetime of practiced grace. She sees a
missile coming in behind him, and she smiles sharply. At the last moment, he shifts aside
,
blasting it as it travels past.

The bright detonation blinds Iza temporarily, as the smoke clears, she catches a glimpse of the beam traveling back to the origin point, it tracks
along the horizon, the
bright orange explosion mushrooms upwards into the sky.

Turning his attention back to Iza, she drifts around him slowly, anticipating the next shot. Instead Tystrophanes stands immobile, like a sentry, simply watching her move with its tracking eye. Its hands completely at its side, it mocks her.

Finally it does move, taking small steps towards her, impossibly slow, she leaves him in her wake. He continues this mockery, and i
n
short order Izanami has decided to make him pay
for his arrogance.

She wheels around suddenly, swing
ing
a powerful bladed kick straight into his chest. It lands with a solid crashing, the blade penetrating deep. The mech seems motionless, disabled
.
.

Tystrophanes
shifts, revealing the blade trapped
in its upper shoulder. Its arms reach and grab the stuck limb, locking it tightly. S
eptis shifts his legs, striking
, sweeping the other leg out from under her.

In a moment
of
panicked free fall, Septis boosts strongly, zipping her into the air by the leg. They’re already hurtling together before she comes to her senses. She twists away from his grasp,
with
full power, her main rockets fire, ripping away from his grip.

As it loosens, there is a terrible noise. The eye fires,
a
burning beam crashes against her
rockets, and
an
explosion of fatal implications shakes, flaming along Iza’s back. Her rockets destroyed she dangles, squirming by the leg, hanging precariously in the mid-troposphere.

There’s a light pinging as he hails her comm. channel. She stares at
the request
furiously, trying with all her might to jerk free of her captor.

Tystrophanes
produces a large handle from its side. A giant blue energy blade crystallizes out of it, materializing together slowly, then all at once with a lightning flash.

Almost clumsy in one giant hand, he angles it lightly
towards the cockpit. Hanging upside down, thousands of meters from the Earth, Iza finally relents.

Septis’s narrow face appears, “Surrender now interloper, or perish.”

She stares at him with impotent
fury,
he mirrors it back, eyes narrowing to
a
predator
y
optimum.

“Why do you fight me? Who sent you?”
He asks

She remains silent, resisting.

“Very well,” He says, clattering on his controls.

A small controlled beam shoots precisely against the thick cockpit
hull,
it burns through at a slow intentional pace. It continues, soon Iza sees the red glow appearing on the interior.

“Fine!” She says finally, “I surrender!”

“Good,” Septis says, “Why have you come? And from where?”

“I’m ace pilot Izanami Sato, she-demon of the lunar wasteland.”

“The moon…the cabinet, did they send you?”

“All peoples are bound to protect the ca-“ She starts reciting a childhood pledge from rote memory. She continues along, when Septis interrupts.

“Enough!” He says, “The cabinet has deceived you all! I was ther-“ His head snaps to attention, viewing an incoming object on sensors.

“Damn!” He yells
, his mech pivots, facing the incoming bogey.

Tystrophanes releases the leg, it dangles momentarily, the blade still embedded, but soon slips free.

Pulling the great blue blade in front of his guard, h
e clashes with a bright purple
emitter blade. The two lock and crackle. Nol and Clara, push
and
crash into him fiercely, the momentum of terminal velocity launches him towards the ground.

Losing no time, Nol boosts into a swan dive.

“
Izanami
!”
He screams, hurtling towards the tumbling war mech. He grabs her, pulling up, they start tilting towards an upwards trajectory when they crash along the skyline of Carpentaria. They sheer throught the tops of several dozen buildings, crunching everything underneath.

He opens comms with her, “Are you alive?” He asks frantically,