Chapter 2
'The Scarlet Scourge'
Bela's 'Jubilance' soon faded as she stared out at the scene before her. As she had fought one Casnel, the other had taken its subordinate and gone to intercept the Mithril.
Guaran and Wiseman had clearly given the effort of a lifetime alongside the ship's own defensive weapons; however, they had been quickly overwhelmed by the enemy's sheer numbers. Bela knew the risks of her drug, had experienced the pain before of becoming intoxicated in it to the point of missing everything around her, and yet she’d let it happen all over again.
Absently, she started the trip towards the wreckage of her home vessel. She hazily grabbed one of the passing syringes that had been dislodged in the earlier attack.
The faded words "Enhancer" and "Issue of the Abhailien-Revolutionary Knight’s Brigade Division" were embedded on it. She plunged it into herself without further thought.
She pondered that the radio must have been busy with noise this whole time, yet she’d heard none of it, not the cries for help or the death howls of final passings.
The Mithril lay in scattered ruins, a riddling of energy fire having lazily obliterated the warship. The lax remains of her comrade's Heavy-Vijaiks accompanying their home's remains. Scattered amongst the discarded metal plating and lifeless corpses, she spotted her new query, her new prey.
The enemy was made up of four unscratched Ogre units with their bulky frames and spiked shoulders and a couple of other units - some old MBT-Mk2s like the ones her comrades had piloted only minutes ago - as well as the remaining Casnel, 'Unit 05'.
The second injection’s effects began to take hold, and she readied herself for the arduous task ahead - 'No one kills my subordinates without paying the fine,' - she thought to herself but knew deep down it was nothing but bluster; she couldn’t possibly take on such odds.
Even as she wallowed in such thinking, the drug effects started to block all thoughts of fallen allies out and leave only the enemy. The second dose of the drug was coursing violently through her veins, blocking out sensations one by one, narrowing her field of vision until just the enemy remained. Bela let the Scourge free.
As she placed a hand atop the control stick, ready to go to work, a voice interrupted her concentration; "Oi, you in the red machine. Surrender a'right? Got orders to bring at least one of you in and, well, ‘made a bit of a mess of these other two," the voice uttered in a gruff tone, with just a hint of palpable pleasure towards the act of taking lives.
'Bela' grinned ruefully. The communication had come over an open channel, but it was clear it hadn't been from a surviving ally. She flipped the switch to open her reply, starting her sentence with something of a crooked laugh; "You sound pretty young, boy; ain't you afraid of what I just did to you, buddy?" she asked in a cold slur, it had taken an effort to speak with the drug taking effect, but she’d felt compelled to all the same.
The reply came without hesitation, "Heh, that idiot was a rank amateur; no glory in talking out a machine that poorly operated even if it was a Casnel!"
Bela had been expecting him just to repeat his surrender order, but his cocky arrogance excited her. The flurry of battle hurried her blood once more - all around, her allies lay slain due to her carelessness, her lack of leadership and ability to protect - but at that moment, none of it seemed to matter one bit as her lamentation towards her fallen comrades continued to fade silently away.
There was sport to be had.
****
Letting the G-force ram into her once more, Bela began her approach at Mach speeds. She spun and weaved through the vacuum of debris-filled space. Deftly dodging the cacophony of counter-fire both from those she approached and the enemy warship left in her dust. With the gap closed, she drew forth her Calabar, the large chainsaw-bladed sword glowing as it revved up.
With a seemingly pre-planned accuracy, she flung the heavy sword forward, cartwheeling straight into one of the hapless Ogres. Piercing its outer armour, the machine flailed backwards; Bela made use of the break-in fire to close the last of the distance between her and the quintet of enemy machines. Pulling up only at the very end so that her mech's feet collided straight with the already damaged enemy like a stepping-stone.
Said enemy was now even further off balance; she clambered with the handle of the sword then boosted her machine downwards - Both dodging more incoming fire and dragging the Calibre blade like a guillotine through the green mecha's armour - and of course, down on top of the helpless pilot inside, killing the man instantly as his cockpit enclosed around him like a metallic tomb.
Not safe to stop Bela began her next maneuver. She threw the sword again, out from one mech towards another with shocking force. Unluckily for her, the blade had hit the second enemy much less effectively - yet it was still enough to allow her hulking red-machine to skirt behind the enemy unit in an almost elegant gliding motion, like that of a murderous ballerina.
The Casnel and remaining foes were forced to watch as their own fire careered into an ally, exploded brilliantly.
Bela broke from her temporary cover, "That's two!" she snarled and continued to move side to side inside her cockpit with energetic synergy, as though in time to the rapid dancing movements of her mech - her safety belts and straps long made obsolete.
Once more, she carried towards the three remaining enemies, ducking and striding like an enraged gundog through a field filled with rabbits. Finally, the enemy cottoned onto her movements. A line of well-placed fire escaped Casnel '05's rifle, colliding straight into Bela's right leg, which in turn exploded vibrantly in a show of orange fire.
Undeterred and with a high degree of momentum carrying her, the crimson fighter continued onwards. Now getting too close for the Casnel to try another shot, it seemed to panic. The sleek black machine reached out and grabbed the nearest Ogre before essentially shoving it out in front of itself;
"Do something you idiots; what sort of wingmen are you?!" the enraged voice of the Casnel's Pilot roared over the still-open radio lines.
Pushing the Ogre to the fore served its intended purpose of blocking Bela's path, but not for long. Without ever considering swapping courses, Bela drew her remaining arc-staff.
The Ogre fired its weapons desperately but Bela's Vijaik was faster, arc-staff cutting a line straight through the underprepared Ogre and out the far side. The machine erupted its way to an explosive oblivion.
"Wh-where'd that bitch go!?" cried out the enemy 'leader'.
Bela had made use of the enemy explosion for cover, a leg missing and some damage taken to her machine's cameras by that last set of close-range flak; many would have taken now as an opportunity for a hasty retreat or more cautious tactics. Instead, Bela laid a hand gently over her eyepatch; 'And where would I retreat to exactly?'
From its perspective, the last remaining enemy Ogre floated back to back with the Casnel, searching the copious debris of the battle thus far for signs of the enemy machine.
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Then he saw something glint, a mech’s head. Rapidly focusing his cameras, he caught sight of the Heavy-Vijaik closing in from what was to him upside down.
Without time to react, he watched as his foe ‘reached down’ and grabbed him by the helmet. What followed was a serious impact as the Bela's red Vijaik grappled and wrapped itself around the Ogre’s back, raising an arc-staff up to the cockpit menacingly and turning both machines to face the Casnel.
"Heh, heh, HEH, didn't expect this to be so much fun, missy! Gotta admit you ain't half bad. One more kill makes five, you'll be an ace!" the snarky voice of the Casnel pilot croaked over the radio.
'Bela' grinned broadly at the idea of this being only her fifth stolen life, "Ha! I've been called an ace since you were still in diapers, punk," she replied lazily, ready to enter the fight's final stage. The drug was wearing off enough that her mind was starting to clear; she’d need to finish this quickly.
With the Ogre rendered useless in its current conundrum, the remaining duo of fighters hung lifelessly for a time, eyeing each other up and waiting for the other to make the first move. The standoff held like this until finally, the Casnel made its choice.
With barbaric laughter raging over the comms, Unit-05 fired straight at the chest and, by proxy cockpit, of his own ally's machine.
Then he fired again.
And again.
----
The betrayed mecha went up in flames, the energy rounds penetrating through it and into the Heavy-Vijaik behind. An explosion followed, but to the Casnel pilot's surprise the red Vijaik held in one piece - admittedly ablaze, but not exploding, with no sign of an exposed cabin.
Evaluating the situation as quickly as possible, the Casnel Pilot opted that the Vijaik must simply have thick frontal armour and made ready to finish the battle.
For her part, Bela glanced around at the myriad of flashing warning signs and other arbitrary equipment. That last attack had rendered her machine all but immobile, and had the Vijaik been a normal design - with its cockpit in the torso region - she would have surely lost.
'Luckily', the cabin for the Heavy-Vijaiks could be unusually found in the head of the machine.
'Didn't expect him to go as far as to blast his friend like that. Tch guess that's it then' - Bela lamented to herself. Of course she had a plan, she always did - she probably always would.
When the Casnel moved in to finish her off, she could eject the escape pod, using her machine’s destruction as cover, hoping that the fresh debris field behind them would mask her escape.
'The only snag is, why bother? How many pilots have I sent off to their deaths now?'
Her early injections had begun wearing off. In a matter of moments, the cloud of battle began to lift, and her sense jarringly returned to her. The reality that she was the only survivor remaining from a force under her command once again - at last hit home as she sat in a graveyard of her recently deceased comrades.
Casnel 05 made one last move. With a loud battle cry from its pilot, it surged arc-staff first straight through the red Heavy-Vijaik’s main body.
Bela held her hands on the eject lever; if she pulled it too soon, the enemy would surely see her, too late, and she'd be caught in the explosion. The enemy sheathed his sword, its work done. The torso of the Vijaik flickered brightly.
The Casnel drifted back away to better observe its handiwork.
A few more moments passed. Bela stared out, contemplating the value that would remain in her life should she choose to escape yet again, to be the last one standing once more.
Then it flashed past her eye, spotted in the corner of her camera feed, almost dreamlike, the names scrawled in white on the dying Heavy-Vijiak’s shoulder - names with no one to remember them - soldiers who'd receive no parade.
She pulled hard on the eject lever. From his perspective, the Casnel-Test pilot saw the final explosion of the good ship Mithril's lead machine - unaware of the small red escape orb jettisoning out behind the dazzling scene.
The battle had ended.
￡￡￡￡
Bela floated silently through the wreckage of her short-lived home. Occasionally, there were heavy ‘thumps’ as pieces of debris glanced off the sides of her small life pod.
After what felt like a few minutes of contemplative silence, she collected up the needles and other miscellaneous artefacts that had fallen from her glove box and replaced them back inside.
She held on to one in particular. Rather than a syringe, it was a small cylindrical plastic tablet tub. The colour of its plastic faded, and the instruction label had long since smudged and torn away.
She taped with her free hand at some of the instruments available to her, but they unsurprisingly had taken such a beating that she couldn't even be entirely sure the escape pod was still airtight. The auxiliary camera had failed, so there was no outside view. Her monitors had all gone dark.
With this in mind, she opened her helmet's visor with little hesitation. Satisfied that her cabin was indeed still holding air, she gulped a tablet from the small pot before laying back into her chair and watching her hands slowly stop shuddering and her ears finally stop ringing.
Half-heartedly, she flipped the encrypted distress signal on one of her keyboards.
'Now to wait.'
It would be years before the full details of what would one day be known as 'The Remembrance War' found their way to the official history books. Overshadowed by the momentous inciting incident of the war - Glas-Noa-Ni and the theft of three Casnels - what became dubbed "The Skirmish of the 4th" would be listed as a relatively minor incident in most textbooks.
Despite the rather unusual destruction of a Casnel seemingly being of fairly historical note, in truth, TSU made large efforts to prevent that news from becoming publicly known; with the destruction of the entire present IAFS force, no one would be willing to officially document the story in the years to come.
Those who dug a little deeper would of course, find some information on the skirmish: The names of the warships present and the presence of Casnels would never truly be wiped entirely. Furthermore, one might even be able to find the names of both the captain and field commander of the vessel 'Mithril' - though both are listed as dead - and that's only If you dug hard enough.
However, due to IAFS being a somewhat ad-hoc rebel group, no full records or staff listings would be created; as such, to even the most intrepid of historians, the names of most of the crews on either side of the battle became considered lost to time. No one has to date thought it worth the effort to investigate such a minor incident thoroughly.
There would be no plaque. No military funeral. No bodies to send home. Simply a footnote in the books of future Space-farers to come:
*8 - Another battle would take place on the 4th day of the year TA-424 (Just three days after the 'Glas-Noa-Ni incident') between IAFS and TSU-s forces. Both en route to resupply their respective flagships (IAFS's Tradech and TSU-S's Egypt).
The total destruction of the IAFS vessel 'Mithril', and all her crew was the result of this brief skirmish.
Footnote Extracted from the book: 'Military Strategy of the Third-Era - Years 0400 - 0450
Published in the year TA-470
