Mission 14 - Windup, Wavering Hearts - Part 2

  TA419 - 20/04,

  Remembrance Dreadnaught ‘His Majesty's Axe’, Hangar Bay.

  Kiyo Kigen sat, legs folded, sword laid in front of him, before the stationary Chevalier Unit 001. The tall Casnel had been 'parked' leaning on one knee, arms loosely draped. Its head unit, with the pointed U-shaped helmet and flattened face, looked downwards as though making eye contact with the silent Kigen.

  "My Lord?" Lt. Benson called softly, entering the otherwise empty hangar.

  Kigen turned to his old companion, "Evening."

  "The men would like a speech, Sir," Benson said. Kigen sighed; it seemed that sneaking out of the gathering hadn't granted him much reprieve. He had hoped Admiral Agiatate’s speech alone would be enough.

  "Always speeches. Is a warrior truly suited to such things?"

  Benson’s weary old face smiled shyly, "Soon, my lord, that's all they'll want. After tomorrow, the whole of space will be united behind us. We shant be underdogs no more, and the people will want their hero."

  "Their 'hero', huh," Kigen muttered the alien word. Turning to look up at his mech again, "What sort of hero wages a war against civilian stations and merchant ships, I wonder. Strikes down others more noble, all with underhanded tactics..."

  Benson took on an expression that almost made Kigen laugh. It was an expression of offence not at Kigen but at whoever had put such a depressing thought into his lord's mind. It was a very contradictory look, but one Kigen had come to appreciate as the ultimate proof of the man's endless loyalty to him.

  "My Lord, I have known you since the day you were born, watched you grow into the finest of men. The people we cut down are not so innocent; their actions fund and propagate the occupation of our people, the tag of a soldier or not. They all willingly benefit off the suffering of Abhailen-blood.”

  Kigen nodded, "Aye, that's true enough," he noted that Benson made no comments on how they went about fighting other warriors: Either he felt no such respect for any of their enemies, or even he, deep down, believed the likes of the audio-attack or striking down already defeated foes, to be despicable tactics.

  "You know, Benson, they say the First Casnel and its pilot began to merge near the end of the fighting. I've seen the documents stolen from TSU, of course. It's speculated that the pilot didn't need controls by the end; their machine could feel and interrupt their thoughts.

  They estimate a few more months of fighting, and the human might have merged with the machine."

  Benson looked lost, "Did Casnel's have that sort of tech five years ago?"

  Kigen laughed, "Do they now even? No doubt TSU and our Admiral both have probably looked into it. All officers are the same when presented with an opportunity--" Benson frowned at that, but Kigen didn't give him a chance to cut in, "--but no, the answer is simpler. It's just the metal, Goibhnui."

  "Do you feel some, I guess, 'connection' with your Casnel, Sir?"

  Kigen laid his hands on his blade, sliding the curving shape out of the sheath a short ways.

  The ceremonial sword of the Kigen school was a mere decoration; its last kill had been in some family feud a couple of hundred years ago.

  Each member of the school had their own blade separate from it for actual combat, or had, in the last two family heads’ cases… Still, the blade had Gobhnui in it and was well-maintained. Did he feel anything from it or the Casnel?

  Kigen reattached it to his waist, slapped his knees and sprang up, "No, sadly, but the First Casnel was a different beast after all, and it assisted its pilot for a whole year rather than the few months I've spent with this Chevalier. Even so..."

  It was almost wholly subconscious, but Kigen found himself reaching out and touching the mech's leg.

  Benson was starting to look concerned, "Perhaps your Magi rating should be retested, Sir?"

  Kigen laughed with a smile, "Ha! I haven't gone mad just yet, old friend."

  Besides that, Kigen felt Magi testing was often a fruitless endeavour. Until the war, Magi had been something relegated to history and superstition. Their re-emergence meant the science around them remained in its infancy. The tests could mostly detect two things; Magi sensitives - people effectively with a capacity to develop further - and full-blown Magi. The tests could seldom identify powers or strengths of said abilities.

  Of the Five Great Aces, Kigen, Seth and Apahte were all sensitives with no greater powers to speak of. Kigen didn't discount this; in his experience, it had led to him being able to sense when true Magi were around him, which could be life-saving.

  Throughout the many small raids, he'd sensed several Magi, though only two had not fallen to his blade - one was the Admiral's daughter, Miss Oames - the other had been piloting one of the TSU Casnels. Kigen had been moments from slaying that one but got interrupted. As far as he knew, it was still out there.

  True Magi like Sesha, the tests showed as such (though, were incapable of actually identifying her empathy-based power).

  That left just the Scourge. It was a sudo-secret that Scarlet had a very rare result from the Magi testing - a definitive, without question, negative. The Scarlet Scourge, second-ranked of the Five Great Aces, had no Magi potential whatsoever. She was completely, mundanely, normal.

  Aside from this potentially mudding her 'brand power' as one of the five ‘godly’, untouchable aces, were it to get out, Kigen often envied this. Scarlet was pure in a sense, a warrior with no advantages but those she had built herself through endless training and experience.

  Scarlet often seemed to be the only person who didn't realise that. Perhaps after tomorrow, they'd have more time to talk, as old friends instead of comrades.

  "What do you think she was like, that Magi inside the First Casnel?" Kigen asked, a faraway look in his narrow eyes.

  Benson shrugged, "An enemy, Sir. The greatest of them all, I suppose, if you were to pinpoint any one person who 'waylaid' our dream, it would be them."

  Kigen smiled fondly on the man. He wasn't stupid; Benson was an excellent soldier and sub-commander, a great retainer to boot. He was simply straightforward. Wasting time contemplating Goibhnui and Magi enemies would hardly help him serve better.

  "You're not wrong. They were awfully young, though, to destroy the four-hundred-year dream of a planet. Did you know they were the only Bhialein on the Cheval De Troy? The rest of that crew was from a Nation-State; they were people born off planet Bhaile, just like us."

  "Yes, well," Benson shuffled a little, his perfect at-attention posture looking uncomfortable, not that he'd drop it if Kigen asked, for Benson, that was standing at ease, "If we made any mistake last time, it was certainly the act of not uniting the people of space wholly. But this time, we will rectify that. It will be all against Bhaile, not just our people."

  "Quite right," Kigen replied.

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  The First Casnel. Even his Chevalier wouldn't have compared to it. Made with such an insane amount of Goibhnui at a time when only it had the likes of energy rifles and arc-staffs.

  It didn’t feel like a real part of their world, but rather some mythical figure that could only have existed in a fiction - and yet it had been all too real. It had taken twelve months for their forces to create a machine that could fight it to a draw, and even then, both it and The Golden Meteorites machines had ended up destroying one another. The result had been far too late in the war to make a difference. Had the Meteorite, the one ace people suggested might have been even better than Kigen, not gone all in on a suicide deathmatch using a specially made Fortress class - would the First Casnel still live? Would it have gotten even stronger, merged with its pilot, into what exactly?

  These forces they played soldiers with, metal that could cause people to develop into espers, where did it come from, Kigen wondered. What was it really? Abhaile, a planet rich in untapped Goibhniu, TSU had started this war when they'd suddenly demanded mining rights over half the planet - what was it they'd wanted if not that Goibhnui, and why did they want it before they had even thought war in space possible?

  Kigen shook his head roughly. Maybe the Chevalier, just like the sword at his waist, had started to connect with him in some strange, intangible way. Or perhaps that was just the customary fondness of a warrior for his ‘partner’.

  Maybe Benson was right, and his Magi potential was expanding, giving him more powers with which to fight dishonourably against the less fortunate.

  It could wait. It could all wait just one more day.

  "A speech, was it, Benson? Very well, let us rouse the troops one last time, shall we?"

  ****

  TA419 - 20/04,

  Remembrance Dreadnought ‘His Majesty's Axe’, Observation Deck.

  "Yo," a woman with a wild crop of crimson hair, The Scarlet Scourge, called out.

  Sesha Thoth turned her gaze away from a long window looking out into space, doing her best to 'look normal'; "Scourge, nice to see you here."

  Scarlet nodded. They had both come from the final meeting between the officers of Remembrance and, likewise, the last council of the Five Great Aces. It would be their last meeting of this war. Should they succeed and meet again, it was doubtless some would be missing. It had been a solemn but determined affair. Most others would be gathering across the various ships of the fleet, giving speeches, a little drinking, whatever it took to keep morale higher than expectation. Sesha would soon return to her vessel to do the same, but her legs had absently taken her to the flagship’s observation deck, a small circular room of large windows staring out into space, positioned on the highest point of the giant metal manta ray. There was nothing of use here, just a stellar view of the final frontier.

  The second-ranked drew a hand through her shaggy hair, "Well ah, I mean as fellow aces, wait nah not that. Just as people, as two officers at least - I wanted to say sorry for your loss, that's all," The Scourge bowed her head slightly.

  It took all Sesha had not to let her mask slip. Raising one hand to cover her mouth, her lower lip trembled. Perhaps to Scarlet, it came off as an arrogant gesture, even mocking, but it was anything but.

  Scarlet's hesitancy wasn't unusual; the two weren't really connected or anything. They'd first met during the trail bouts to decide the placement of the Five Great Aces, and even then, they'd had no match. They'd fought one battle together, the two of them and Kigen in three Vijiak Heavys and a lone Type-A filled with the very best, led by... by Commander Abey. That had been the attack on Vanadis at the end of last year, where this had all started, just months ago in reality.

  The Scourge had lived up to everyone's hopes and earned the title of second-ranked beyond any doubt. The sinking of Platform 3, her chief glory, but never been deployed alongside Sesha since that first time.

  And so past that, it was only rare meetings like this. But Scarlet was right, whether as the sole two women in the top ten bracket of pilots, or as officers, or just as people - her little, minute gesture of solidarity was fitting.

  "Thank you, that means a lot. He would have found it an honour coming from you," Sesha said once she managed to rein her lips in.

  The second-ranked smiled like a wolf, teeth gleaming proudly, "Nah, he wouldn't. That dude thought all aces were mad! He was a good man like that. Sorry again."

  Sesha was taken aback that Scarlet would know that much. The Scourge had been absent, a lone agent for most of the five years up to now. Had she gleaned that much of his character from just one or two missions with the man?

  "Anyway, I gotta bounce. See you on the other side."

  "Ah yes, same to you. A-- Scarlet, I mean, let's meet up after this and get drinks some time," Sesha decided first names would be laying it on a bit thick, but she didn't regret making the offer.

  Scarlet beamed again, patting Sesha on the shoulder as she passed by, "Hell ya, ladies night out for sure."

  Sesha should have headed out after that or even walked back to the shuttles with The Scourge and talked lightly some more. Instead, she stayed still, staring out the small window for a while longer.

  "Ma'am?" a young man's voice called out.

  "My, I am popular today, it seems," Sesha replied, turning with a smile to face Hearst Khufu. Others oft called Khufu her protege - and while she'd never admit it to avoid favouritism - of all her many students, he was, without doubt, her pride and joy.

  "Ma'am, forgive my rudeness, but have you been crying?"

  Sesha almost broke. She could feel fresh tears well but held them back. She couldn't possibly show that to anyone, least of all one of her students.

  Student? When had he grown up, tall and toned, his hair longer than she would have allowed it, styled and in a cyan shade of all things. He was plainly handsome, if a bit boyish. He'd noticed she'd been crying when The Scourge hadn't, she wasn't sure who that said what about exactly. Or perhaps Scarlet had just been more tactful in leaving it out.

  "Commander Sef Abey, he passed away," Sesha said after a moment.

  Khufu looked genuinely shocked, “I wondered why he missed the meetings today…”

  That made sense to Sesha. Sef Abey had not been someone. Had he been an admiral or an ace pilot, he would have been mentioned, given an honourable minute of silence at today's meetings. But he wasn’t.

  All her students had training alongside all Abey's. As the chief pilot instructor and the chief Special-Ops instructor, the two had early realised that the plans Agitate and Kigen were making would rely heavily on pilots and infiltrators, and so they'd combined forces. For five years, they'd cross-trained, shared budgets and tips and supported one another. He always acted as cynical as Scarlet described, but he had also been Sesha’s best friend, something she only realised now.

  'A Magi empathetic, and yet I understood myself that badly?'

  To have friends in their line of work was cruel indeed.

  "...He wasn't needed tomorrow. He had completed every mission tasked of him and died with honour. My battalions will fly to make sure that isn't betrayed," the words were a struggle, tearing at her throat, but if she was going to stay strong in front of her pupil, she had to be this way, "What of you, Hearst?"

  To his credit and another vote of confidence for his newfound maturity, Khufu seemed to pick up on her signal and go with the conversational flow, telling her of his and his squad's deployment in tomorrow's battle.

  Was it the war that had made him this way? She didn't dislike him maturing into a man, but the transformation from a cocky child a couple of years ago was startling to Sesha. He'd ranked in the top ten pilots, a remarkable achievement for someone with no field battles.

  Like everyone in the organisation, he had faced a couple dozen raids these last few months. Moreover with the third and fourth-ranked guarding the Magi Cabal, he was being given greater responsibilities in their place. Was this how maturity was meant to be found, she wondered.

  "-- and so I'll be leading defence battalion three, ma'am, under Commodore Kigen and Supreme Commander Agaitate’s direct command."

  "Good, you've made us proud," Sesha said, and she did mean it in earnest. She hesitated; what she wanted to say could be seen as a great mark of dishonour in a culture like theirs. Nonetheless, she couldn't bring herself not to, "Lieutenant, come back alive. If you don't live, then no amount of honour will allow you to see the world Kigen seeks to shape. I trust you won't let me down."

  To her relief, Khufu smiled - a grin that hadn't been changed by his newfound maturity - a cartoonish grin that ruined his handsomeness in the face of slightly crooked teeth, but made him far more real to Sesha. He saluted brightly, back straight as a board, hand perfectly placed, just like they'd thought him, "Yes, Ma'am!"