Chapter 84 – But We Are Far From Finished! The Battle Starts Here!

"Gh--!"

A short, sharp grunt burst from the simulator room's speakers.

The shockwave effect detonated, and the heavy blue frame of the military Makina Luzam was hurled violently backward. It skated across the gridded virtual space for hundreds of meters, but managed -- barely -- to hold its stance.

Two things had saved the Luzam from a critical hit. One was that this machine was an exceptionally robust military-grade Makina. The other was that in the instant before Letaria's crushing right fist connected, Ritte had managed to interpose both of the Luzam's arms as a shield.

The monitor at the control desk displayed the Luzam's armor values sparking frantically. The durability of both arms had been shaved down nearly thirty percent from a single blow -- but the main body remained intact.

"...Mm. That anomalous burst speed from Arden appears to be limited to linear acceleration -- pure straight-line explosive force. That is consistent with the data we received in advance. The direct result of Escado's excessive modifications to the old frame, it would seem."

Sean stroked his chin and offered his analysis in a tone of calm composure.

Standing beside him, Steve responded with a quiet "Mm" of agreement.

"However -- that reversal before the strike... that abnormal reaction speed defies explanation. Hmm... I confess I did not expect Ritte to be taken off guard so thoroughly, and this early."

Behind the words, there was a mixture of genuine trust in his prized protege, and a bewilderment at seeing that trust so forcefully shaken.

In Milea's assessment as well, Ritte Fon's piloting skill was not to be underestimated -- not even slightly. Compared against the battle-seasoned veterans of the Seldia vigilante corps, she stood on fully equal footing. She did not appear to surpass the corps' genuine standouts -- Grain, Ethan, and a handful of others -- in sheer accumulated combat experience. But combined with the clear performance advantage of the Luzam she piloted, her total fighting capacity was without question among the highest on this station.

It was precisely because Sean understood Ritte's ability so completely that Letaria's existence -- having driven that ability back head-on, in a nominally inferior older-generation machine -- left him openly astonished.

(And that's with the output rolled back, too... Letaria. What a frightening young woman.)

Milea held her breath and stared at the monitor.

◆

In the virtual space, inside her cockpit capsule:

Letaria watched the blue military frame pull itself back into form and fix her with a sharp, renewed glare, and let her lips part in quiet appreciation.

"So that is what a 'military machine' is. Quite impressively hard to put down."

Under normal circumstances, a hit like that delivered at that moment -- a blindside full-force strike -- should have been sufficient to collapse a standard machine's drive systems and force a complete shutdown. But the opponent was still standing.

Fast. Solid. No openings. In that single brief exchange, Letaria had felt, firsthand, the true weight of what military-grade Makina were capable of.

"But we are far from finished! The battle starts here!"

Letaria leaned forward sharply, and through Trace Mode, Arden mirrored her with an extreme forward-pitched stance.

An instant later, Arden erupted with a burst of thrusters and drove forward again -- charging directly at the Luzam with ferocious momentum.

"She closes distance in an instant--!"

In Ritte's field of view, the mass of the old-model frame was bearing down at tremendous speed.

Ritte made her assessment in cold clarity: she fired the reverse thrusters and pulled back, and as she retreated, raised the Photon Rifle in the Luzam's right arm and pulled the trigger.

A high-energy bolt of light was fired with flawless precision -- aimed dead center at Arden's chest. With Arden committed to a head-on charge, there was no margin to evade. A perfectly calculated leading shot.

But Arden moved as if it had predicted the shot -- swinging out to one side in a wide arc, slipping the bolt's trajectory without apparent effort.

Ritte instantly read Arden's new heading and launched a second shot -- a deflection shot calculated to cut off the line of movement. But in the instant before the bolt arrived, Arden shifted in a way that seemed almost wrong: it dropped its frame to an extreme low, weight redistributed in a fluid, seamless glide. It moved as if the location of each incoming bolt had been known from the very beginning.

"...--?!"

A single line of sweat traced down Ritte's brow.

The Luzam's multi-sensor suite detected no signs of Arden using heat-tracking or predictive radar calculations. Which meant it was not machine prediction at all -- Letaria herself, the pilot, was reading the firing lines in real time, on pure instinct, within this ultra-high-speed engagement.

This was categorically different from anything Ritte had known: not the obedient test data she processed at Syn-Fibra's facilities, not the simulated bouts against pilots weaker than herself. This was a different quality of pressure entirely -- something she had never felt before.

Within that unfamiliar weight pressing on her, Arden slipped through every last bolt in the net and closed to point-blank range before the Luzam's frame.

"Here I come! Photon Saber!"

The instant Letaria shouted it, a blazing blade of light extended from Arden's right arm and came down in a straight, clean overhead strike.

"Kh!"

Ritte reacted without thinking -- she activated the Luzam's own Photon Saber and brought it up from below in a rising cut to meet the blow.

In the void of the virtual space, two blades of light collided with full force. A high-pitched metallic shriek rang through the room as the clash shook the air, and brilliant particles of light scattered in all directions.

Blades locked, the Luzam's power output climbed steadily higher. But Arden -- which should have been the inferior machine by every specification on paper -- showed no sign of yielding even a fraction of ground. Quite the contrary: through the constant weight-shifting of Letaria's Trace Mode, the Luzam's frame balance was beginning, gradually, to be broken.

(If I keep defending... I'll lose--)

For the first time, a clear premonition of defeat moved through Ritte's chest. As a technician. As a representative of the Perda branch. To show such an unseemly display against an old-generation machine from the outer stations -- that was not something she could accept.

Resolution settled in Ritte's chest. She drove the Luzam's core output to its limit in a single instant, and began charging the machine's greatest weapon. She deliberately cut the Photon Saber's output, used the violent reactive recoil to push Arden back -- and then took one step forward herself, closing the gap.

"Then -- try this!"

The Luzam's right arm swung back for the blow. Every unit of energy the machine possessed converged on that fist and the generator housing its forearm. A storm of blue-white light particles spiraled and gathered, and from the maelstrom, the Luzam's entire right arm transformed -- into something that could only be called a colossal axe of light, a mass-based weapon wrapping the arm in its own brilliance.

The Perda branch's crowning achievement. The original, one and only Grave Arc.

The enormous blade of light -- carrying an overwhelming thermal load capable of burning space itself -- swung down without mercy toward Arden, to crush it flat.

But--

"-- Then I shall meet it! Grave Arc!!"

Letaria's voice rang through the virtual space and through the physical walls of the simulator room both.

Arden's right arm began blazing with fierce light, as though drawing resonance from the Luzam's own.

In an instant: a colossal blade of light, formed.

Against the axe of light descending from above, Letaria launched her counter without the slightest hesitation -- a rising slash from below, on a straight upward arc.

Two enormous mass weapons of light struck head-on.

The simulator's main monitor went entirely white.