Chapter 19 - Casnel Killer

  TA419 - 21/04,

  Orbit of Bhaile, TSU Defence Platform 1, Home Fleet, Left Flank.

  Throughout history, few forces as elite as the battalions of The Scarlet Scourge and The Trice Hawker did battle to death without it being recorded as something historic.

  That was not to say their battle on the final day of the Remembrance Incident was anything but impressive. Elton had personally trained his twenty-five loyal pilots; they were a collection of the very best within TSU, all lesser aces in their own right.

  Scarlet's battalion was a younger entity perhaps, but had much more field experience. Each member, from its lieutenants Jasta and Manfred to its most junior pilot, a young lad called Tomo Chujits (who would go on to receive an aces title following this battle), had fought in over a dozen skirmishes these last few months alone, and most of them in the gruelling first war.

  Where Elton's forces drew strength from his understudies’s fierce loyalty and discipline, the 'Scourge Battalion' relied on experience and bonds only a battlefield can form at such speed.

  Khopeshs and Vijaik-Specials danced across the sky. Blades clashed, rifles arced beams through the night sky. But today was a day of a great many notable battles and deeds. A day of legendary Casnel-Killers being born. While those two noble battalions might have gone unrecognised by time, their leader’s duel most certainly did not.

  The Scarlet Scourge's mighty battleaxe roared in its outrageous swing. The thing was nearly as tall as its wielder and must have weighed a stupid amount, but here in space, it was weightless, although most certainly not impactless.

  Elton's shorter and slimmer G-Type had already dodged two such close-quarter slashes. While he'd become known for his marksmanship lately, no S-tier ace would allow themselves to be lacking at close quarters. Even so, this third strike finally made contact, slicing into the G-Type's backpack, the large box on its back that provided his railgun extra energy and ammunition.

  Without hesitation, the ace discontented it; a moment later, The Scourge's axe had cleaved the box in twain. Another second, and it would have been lodged in his back. Elton didn't panic; this much was to be expected, and the backpack had been a disadvantage close-up anyway. Besides he still had two shots left and no other damage taken.

  The Chevalier, on the other hand, was much worse for wear. Elton had scored its shield with his first attack and then destroyed a leg. One could argue legs were of mute value in space, but he knew his enemy was not above throwing a kick and that the Chevalier type had plenty of thrusters and balancers built into each appendage. The battle was clearly in his favour.

  Inside her cockpit, Scarlet was sweating profusely. She watched her monitor as the enemy drew an arc staff, ready to better block and redirect her hits no doubt - she didn't dare hope that just destroying its battery unit would entirely disable the railgun that had so easily severed one leg of the Chevalier.

  Her cabin was anything but quiet, her radio feeding in the muffled sounds of two dozen little battles happening around her. Normally, command would have fallen to Jasta, in fact, it had. When two Casnels did battle, the idea of any distractions was absurd, yet Scarlet left her radio on. How could she not at least hear them? Hear her men dying.

  This hadn't been the plan. They'd forced their way into the enemy lines, yes, but the appearance of Elton's battalion had entirely halted them. If they tried to run through the enemy ranks, sowing chaos, the elite units would make easy pickings of them. Thus, they had to face them head-on like this, but that was a serious problem. With each minute that passed, the regular mechs in the TSU defence lines filled in.

  Scarlet's subordinates weren't just fighting Eltons, they were fighting a growing number of MBTS and other regular defenders. The number was already over two to one.

  "Kaori is dead!" someone yelled.

  "Fall back to point delta, keep your composure," Lt.Jasta's voice called back.

  Scarlet didn't know what to do. As a leader, there was only one option: if retreat and advance were both cut off by Elton, then Elton would have to die, and only she had that power. Kill their leader, and it would shake the enemy enough that they could punch through and resume the mission. They might not survive but they could go down causing havoc - but only if this man got out of her way.

  Except... was that really in her power? Scarlet was just Scarlet. She was no Magi, no naturally talented wunderkind. Second-ranked of The Five Great Aces? A fluke, surely, a bizarre coincidence. Mock battles, not real combat, had decided those rankings. A mistake.

  Her wirey, bloodshot eyes drifted towards her glovebox, towards the drug that could change all this. That moment was supremely foolish. Elton's G-Type raised its railgun; Scarlet barely dodged - no - her cockpit shook mightly with the impact as one of the Chevalier's arms disappeared at the elbow. Elton wasn't done; his machine dashed in and swung its arc staff.

  Off her balance, Scarlet reacted on instinct rather than reason, raising her battleaxe defensively. The arc staff cut straight through its shaft.

  "Sorry, everyone," a terribly faint voice spoke.

  "Manfred!!" Jasta roared.

  Despite what had just happened, Scarlet's eye betrayed her again and drifted to the side monitor in time to see the Khopesh of Lt.Manfred run through by a Vijiak-Special.

  She hadn't known Manfred that long, not really. A couple of months as her tactical officer, a great admin. A mild-mannered man with plain looks and little rounded spectacles. His death was befitting, maybe; he didn't manage to take his foe down with him - it took a single blade through the mech’s chest to end him - a plain and unremarkable death for a man of the same qualities.

  A stranger still, really. But then again, how long did you need to fight side-by-side life-or-death battles with someone for them to become important to you?

  Scarlet's hand punched the glove box, grabbed one of the syringes within, and a second later made contact with exposed skin. The change took mere moments. Her Chevalier's remaining hand grabbed the greatsword from her back.

  Touch receded. Smell seized. Hearing faded. Taste was a distant memory. The Scourge's vision contracted to just the central monitor. Her body hunched over the control shafts, and her adrenaline flowed dangerously free. The battle began anew...

  ****

  Something was going very wrong. Elton had successfully taken his enemy's arm and weapon. He'd been loading the last 'bolt', ready to send it straight through the Chevalier's chest and finally end this - finally, prove what he’d always known about his skills - when suddenly the battle changed entirely.

  The Chevalier was swinging its remaining greatsword with obscene abandon. Massive heavy swings and slashes over and over, all head-on, all without a second’s pause between the next. Elton grappled with his controls as he was forced into total retreat, using both hands on his arc staff to try and redirect each hefty blow. He was taking damage, small cuts were appearing all over the G-Type. It was taking everything he had just to protect his cabin and the railgun.

  What had changed? Was this martial skill or just brute force so violent you couldn't find an opening?

  An odd thought crossed his mind. Near the end of the war five years ago, all sorts of rumours had spread about what Abhaile was doing to try and stave off defeat. Strange, esoteric mechs and Fortresses with designs that didn't make sense. Scorched earth tactics that didn't bear imagining - and drugs.

  'Enchancers', a drug containing liquid Goibhniu no less. 'The Magi Maker' some had called it, although that name was stupid in Elton’s opinion; it didn’t make someone a Magi. Then again, facing the possible results, he was starting to understand the misconception…

  It supposedly shut down parts of the wielder’s brain; their senses bar sight, rammed endorphins and adrenaline through their bodies with reckless disregard for user safety. It sent soldiers and pilots both into an insane, blinding, raging berserker flurry and then usually killed them of a heart attack.

  Was he facing a berserker-fucking-Casnel?

  "No way," he murmured, a bead of sweat tricking down his stoic face, "Ah hey, watch ou--"

  It happened so fast he could barely speak. As the Chevalier's endless torrent of blows poured down, Elton had slowly moved backwards as he warded them off. One of his subordinates had drifted between them, focused on their own fight. The greatsword cleaved it in two. A single slash meant for Elton, the little Vijaik-Special simply split in half.

  Elton was an angry man by nature. He felt anger more often than any other emotion. Angry when coffee went cold, angry when machine parts were delivered late, and especially angry at any who dared to act better than him - but at that moment, as the Special exploded, as the red-streaked Knightley form of the Chevalier charged right through the explosion - another slash already hammering towards him - Elton felt a fear he'd almost forgotten himself capable of, and saw his life flash before his eyes.

  <<<<

  A piano cord rings out through the classroom. It is a beautiful sound, followed by a symphony that is as graceful to listen to as the student playing it is skilled, but it lasts only a few all-too-brief moments.

  ****

  The fighter jet banks hard to the left, clouds pass by as a white blur, as a trail of fiery bolts scrap past where it had been only a moment ago. A whoop erupts from the crowd at this daredevil spectacle.

  Two simulators butted up end to end, liked some overdeveloped arcade game. A massive screen across their sides for the audience to watch. The combatants: one chief instructor, George Elton, and an out-of-her-depth cadet, her long brunette hair swaying with her movements, sweat glistening off smooth pale skin.

  "Man, couldn't he cut her some slack," a crowd member muttered.

  "Elton? Not with a woman," another said next to him.

  "Oi, watch it. He rules this base, you want his attention on you next?"

  "Point ‘talkin'. But geez, man, she's just a kid."

  "They always are..."

  The simulator booth grows more fierce by the second. The slightly pixelated depiction of Elton's black fighter jet and the girl's silver danced through the digital sky. Elton hadn't even broken a sweat as his machine barrel rolled past a bead of fire. These machines were made for two; piloting them solo, simulator or not, was already an achievement, but the instructor seemed outraged more than impressed.

  The girl hadn't been a cadet for long; her physique could barely keep up with moving the controls, never mind the manoeuvres involved, but something strange was occurring - the reason such a crowd had gathered.

  Every time a shot was lined up, seconds away from a game over, the girl would dodge with inhuman timing. It was almost as though she could see or feel a second or two into the future - but of course, that would be ridiculous, right?

  Elton's black plane closed in, its machine guns blazing. The cadet pulled the control levers back, and her white jet seemed to turn 180 in the sky, with shells scraping off its side. A missile fired out from its undercarriage. Even Chief Elton couldn't dodge that; the near point-blank missile struck his machine.

  "GAME OVER"

  The girl flopped back in her chair, exhausted. The room took on an awkward air; some gasped or nodded in admiration, but none cheered - how would Elton react?

  "That was an illegal move!" the instructor snarled. He was on his feet and towering over the cadet’s booth in seconds. His fist slammed the headrest just above her. He leered in close.

  Shocked and exhausted, all the cadet could do was recede; the booth had a wall on the opposite side. She was trapped.

  Elton was a tall and exceptionally well-built man - his cold face seemed downright predatory - "That turn in an actual jet would have left you unconscious, cadet. Total fail."

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  He leaned in uncomfortably close. People began to shuffle out of the room; no one needed to see this again.

  "That'll do, gentlemen," a firm voice called out, striding from the back to the booths. Red-faced, Elton turned to assess the intruder, looking all but ready to rise to the challenge, but the speaker's rank badge gave him pause - an Admiral.

  "Sir," Elton said almost sarcastically, "Just educating the cadet here, Sir."

  "Yes, I can see that Chief. I'm here to see your base commander. Would you be so kind as to take me there?"

  "Me, Sir? Would the cadet not be more appropriate."

  "Perhaps, but I have chosen you," the bald-headed admiral replied with a slight smile.

  "Very well, Sir..."

  ****

  As Elton marched two steps ahead of the stranger admiral through the clean halls of the base, he could feel his anger lingering. The girl had dared to try and humiliate him, first by denying his gracious advances, now with an illegal move. Who was this space-forces admiral to get in the way of his business?

  Still, it wasn't worth a shouting match with an officer, beside he could already see the Commander's office at the end of the corridor. He could have another 'chat' with the cadet later - the admiral, however, had different plans.

  "For such a talented pilot, it is a shame you are wasting your time here when the war has never needed your kind more. Why is that?"

  Elton stopped dead, "Huh?!" He as good as growled, turning around to face the admiral more like some punk than a soldier.

  "I came here to acquire two pilots. Are you amiable to this?" the Admiral went on unfazed, all business apparently.

  Elton blinked, "Me? Why not wunderchild back there?"

  "I would have liked to bring her on board, too, but she has already requested a transfer. Well, it's not a total loss; with my authority, I know a test project that could use someone with intuition like hers. Still, I'd rather not return with neither of you."

  Elton scoffed, "I've no interest."

  "Quite, if the fact your fellow man is dying by the millions out there was of any concern, you'd of already stopped hiding in here."

  "Right," Elton shrugged, "Every man I send out of here to space is dead in weeks. What good are outdated jet fighters against those mecha things the enemy has? Only fools would take that job."

  "And you think yourself safe here? The Western continent is entirely lost to the Abhailein invasion. The East is in constant battle, and even the South has begun to see action," the Admiral added plainly.

  "So what, Central Bhaile will never fall - and if it does, well, it'll be the last at least."

  "Don't you want to beat them? Not for the sake of others or patriotism, clearly not - but have you no pride in your skills?"

  Elton furrowed his brow. This Admiral was a tall man; his suit fit well, and his posture was perfect despite clearly being an older guy - but his manner was strange. Elton got the impression the guy would push his buttons as far as he could, and if Elton still refused, he'd just shrug and move on.

  'Like, a really chill gambler? Are admirals supposed to be like that? No wonder we’re losing this war,' he mused.

  "Your file had a sample of your piano playing. It was quite good, I would say, although I’m no expert in the field. But you quit; why was that, Elton?"

  The Chief Instructor blanched, thoroughly taken off guard, "None of your damn business is why," he barked back.

  "Yes, I suppose not. But I ask, will piloting be the same? We are losing now, but not for much longer. Projects are underway; we will have better ships and fighter craft soon. Until then, however, I need pilots who don't die every time they go out, who can build up real experience so that when our mechs finally come, I still have people left to pilot them.

  I think you could be a leader of that. But if messing around with girls is more fun, if you're willing to skip the opportunity to play on a real stage all over again, so be it."

  The Admiral strode forward, past the befuddled Elton and up to the base commander's door, "If you decide you're interested, do get in touch."

  At the start of year TA413, two long and bloody years into The First War, two pilots departed Brasaka training base with very different destinations.

  While the girl would go on to be remembered as the pilot of the First Casnel - the spearhead that would turn the whole war around for TSU - even they were not alone in that last year of the war. Many other TSU pilots would rise up under that spearhead, The Trice Hawker and his many students and subordinates, foremost among them - finally doing battle on a real stage.

  >>>>

  George Elton wanted to be the best. He had always wanted that. He wanted people to see him, and have no doubt he was the ultimate pilot, the most outstanding soldier. So what if he was scared?

  The Scourge was probably scared, and that plebeian Donald Moncha probably had moments of fear, too. That young girl who'd scorned him, sitting inside the First Casnel, had without question been terrified. Be the best? Scared couldn't even be considered a road bump on that path.

  The massive, gaping cleave of the greatsword was still coming. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. His men and other defenders overwhelmed the Scourge’s dwindling group all around them. His own machine drifted backwards, far, far too slowly to entirely dodge this next hit.

  He had one shot of the railgun left. The Chevalier would not give him any more easy openings, and if anything, he felt that was only right and proper. There was no way to know if its berserk state would run out before it found one in him or cut down more of his men ‘by accident’. He had to take a risk, force an opening of his own.

  The Trice Hawker grinned. It was time, at long last, to become a legend.

  She no longer heard or felt or smelt or tasted or anything but glared at her single foe - and that was good; that felt right. The cacophony of radio voices, of her men dying one by one, didn't register; their cries for help, for leadership, didn't break through.

  Some handful of units had retreated. Some contact with Kigen had been made, but he was too far away. Jasta’s mech had been destroyed. The battle line had fallen. She was the only person still fighting here.

  None of that registered at all.

  Her sword clattered down one more time. Chipped and straining with exertion, it no less faithfully smashed into the G-Type's narrow shoulder blade. The demonic grin on the ghostly face of the Scourge widened. The blade cut in and in, its flaming chainsaw teeth slicing through that mighty Goibhnui armour until it pierced the surface and found purchase on cheaper material inside.

  All the while, the G-type rose its arm. The barrel of that mighty cannon began to glow blue.

  A single voice broke in. The drug was beginning to just slightly wane, a second dose would soon be needed. The voice had been calling for a while; the old man's mech was gone. He was floating in a life pod that any stray round could eviscerate, but all his desperate words were for the girl he'd once mentored, "--OGDE SCARLET," Lt.Jasta yelled beneath a face of tears.

  Perhaps she did, or maybe the berserker simply moved all her thruster rightward to add more force to her sword, dragging through the Type-G, getting closer and closer to its cockpit.

  Either way, it was just enough.

  The sword fell from the once regal mech's hand, left behind still wedged deep within the enemy. The railgun fired. The brilliant lighting bolt bored deep and seared a terrible gouged hole through the Chevalier's passing midriff.

  A second earlier, it would have crippled it, no doubt.

  The Scoruge’s mech, short two limbs and then some, floated on inertia. Its thruster having cut-out midburst from the impact. It came to a stop just a few yards from the equally mauled G-Type.

  A small orb floated up to it, and as the Enhancer drug faded, the ‘Great Ace’ absently used her machine's remaining hand to cusp the life pod. The duel was over.

  Her mind was still too blank to evaluate if the greatsword had breached Elton's cabin, but it had surely disabled the machine, having cut diagonally from the shoulder, all the way to where a person's heart would lie.

  For her part, things weren't much better; no weapons left, two limbs, and a chuck of her lower torso gone. Around the red Chevalier knight - curling into a fetal position of sorts that seemed so strange for the raging Casnel that had been a minute prior - was a half-dozen Vijiak-Specials and growing - an execution squad.

  But she had done it. She had beaten a Casnel...no, the drug had, of course. She'd just been along for the ride. Her senses returned in a jittery mess of lapping sensation, and Scarlet drew her remaining arm in, bringing Jasta's life pod close. She'd at least get to join her fallen men soon.

  Elton was 'lucky' to be alive, or at least he was choosing to take it that way. His gambit to let the out-of-control enemy hit him and then railgun her point blank had ended with mixed results. A cockpit was on par with a mech’s engine regarding armour, and the cabin hadn't been breached. If it had, he would have died instantly from the heat, or the vacuum of space or just plain old being crushed. The sword had reached the second to last layer of defence and stopped there.

  The cabin was smaller now. It naturally contracted against such physical force. It had crushed his leg completely. He couldn't bring himself to look at it, but he knew for sure he couldn't feel it anymore.

  The compression had also loosed a chunk of metal from the walls. It had impaled him. He was ran through, pressed against his chair. He was somewhat confident his spine had been cut. Perhaps Bailey Mechanics had rushed the Casnels out a bit too fast. Or, he reasoned, maybe it was a mark of quality he was alive at all with fifteen metres of chainsaw buried in his machine...

  He was fading fast; he knew that. This was undoubtedly lethal, but it was lucky for one very good reason - he would get to watch.

  Most of his computer screens had given up the ghost, damaged by the vibration of the chainsaw cutting inwards or disconnected from their systems, but one monitor - linked to the unique scope he used to aim with - was still streaming.

  He could see the red Chevalier, an arm and leg torn off, most of its waist gone thanks to his last shot; its remaining leg was barely still attached. Around it was a beautiful site, a growing number of his finest men, men who had now survived a battle to the death with a battalion of equal strength - and heck, was that the Louisis Van woman he’d saved at the start of this fight? Perhaps she’d take the spot of one of his fallen subordinates after this was over - all told, he didn't mind admitting they'd all made him very proud.

  "Sir!"

  "Major!"

  Despite the pressing situation, Elton’s subordinates cried out, a genuine tone of grief. Elton strained his aching body to reach for the soundboard. The impaling he’d suffered wasn’t getting any better on its own, blood rapidly pooling out; "Shoot her now," he murmured as loud as he still could.

  He wasn't an overly sentimental man by nature, and the numbing effect of the extreme pain hardly aided that. He knew it was over for him, but he could at least watch the blasted enemy ace who got him go up in flames first - in some ways, that didn't seem like such a bad way to go, he’d proven at least, to be on her level, that had to count for something.

  Surrounded by TSU’s finest, no backup left, The Scourge's machine stood no chance. His men began to level their weapons at the battered Chevalier. A half-hearted smirk crossed the ace's lips.

  And then, what looked like a lance, spun through the air and crippled one of the Viaik Specials.

  "What--"

  Suddenly, a knightly mecha wielding a longsword came down hard on another subordinate, ripping open its cockpit with gross efficiency. Before long, the lance had retracted and was being used to bludgeon a third.

  "--the hell?!" Elton gasped. It had all come out of nowhere for him. In a way, just like The Scourge, he’d been wholly engrossed on one enemy. He had let the rest of the battlefield fall away. That had been fine; his men were the best, their machines were newer and had higher specs, and their numbers were vastly greater with the supporting defence line units.

  He hadn’t needed to micro-manage this battlefield, and so he’d never even looked for reinforcements - never even known Remembrance had a small reserve fleet from which had launched a lone mech.

  The mech differed from the Chevaliers, but was seemingly related to them. Longer flowing armour plates, cross iconography and a smooth dome-shaped head. A holy knight of sorts, a paladin.

  Thoughts raced through Elton’s mind as his men screamed in anguish on the radio, as others tried to rally back, and more still issued desperate orders in his place, to no avail.

  All around him, it was collapsing. Despite its size, the knight moved blisteringly fast, barely slower than the berserker Scourge had, but without the damage or blind frenzy. This was controlled; the lance blocked fire and unleashed its own back, the sword cleaved machines in half, and the single red eye inside the helmet was constantly moving, constantly blocking with inhuman speed and finding new targets to crush, to annihilate.

  Elton’s life's work, the battalion of elite fighters he had personally trained and maintained since the last war. They'd been weakened by The Scourge’s forces, out of formation as they made a net around her. They'd let their guards down to grieve for him, not seeing a mech come out of nowhere. He knew there were a dozen reasons and excuses like that for what was happening; none would change the fact. The appearance of one single anomaly was now overturning the battle they had won here, all while their hard-won prize, The Scarlet Scourge's head, was escaping them by a hair's breadth, literally floating away on the handful of functional thrusters she still had.

  Finally, the holy knigh-- No, Elton realised with a horrific spark of recognition - The Knight Templar, just one more of the people who’d once stood above Elton, who he’d had such a need to be greater than - turned its attention upon him.

  Elton’s mind had gone blank. Templar risen from the dead as far as he knew, yet another ace of legends and clearly one more who still stood above himself. The Scourge was saved by her former master; he couldn’t even have her. He couldn’t even claim second place.

  The Thrice Hawker was an angry man, egotistically at times, arrogant - though many would argue with good reason - but not one for hysterics or outbursts when the time came. He stared into the red eye of his executioner filling his entire view screen - the same red as The Scourge's, no less - and uttered one final phrase, "Well fuck you."

  The view screen shattered as a lance’s tip came through it, skewing the man within the cabin.

  While most on all sides would record this moment for being the bizarre return of the long-thought-dead Knight Templar, as well as a brief moment of Remembrance pushing the TSU home fleet’s lines back - as said Knight ran rampant through the forward Vijaik defence lines - a few would note it for another reason - the first death of a hyper-lethal, S-tier pilot in the war that would soon to be known as the ‘Remembrance Incident’.

  Considering the sheer presence of top-level aces in play throughout this short conflict (the most present for a single battle in history), it is then true that for just a moment in time, George Elton achieved his goal in one small way, recorded forever as the first among them to fall.