Yellow Typhoon's Counterattack
It truly was a hopeless predicament to be in. His entire radar oozed red with enemy combatants. There were brief hesitations where one too many close calls courting death in the face prompted him to turn back. But he didn’t. He couldn’t turn back now, he needed to save Victoria—and Frank. Valhalla or the grand old Styx river, he was coming for them both.
He sliced through space, blasting his way through Imperium frigates. He would dive-bomb, losing consciousness for brief moments as he would reach their vessel’s immediate vicinity, then coast along it at supersonic speeds. Lawrence’s trigger finger, stiffened by the speed, barely able to keep his pressure on the laz gun trigger—but he couldn’t fire it, not yet. He needed more time.
And just as he neared his long arduous run along the imperial frigate, only then did Lawrence squeeze down with all his heroic might, down as fiercely as he could on the trigger button. His laz gun belched a steady, green thread which cut through the thick, titanium armor like it was nothing, and in a way it was. At point-break range there was no way a Rutherford Field was going to withstand even the maz laz cannon of his humble Hoshiga.
Lawrence wasted no time slamming down on the accelerator lever, his vision blurred white with stars. His skull rattled as he pushed far beyond typical endurance of tolerating a Hoshiga’s upper ceiling on g-force speeds. The Imperium frigate he took down was a mere pop in his rear-view monitor. Then—nothing. Hundreds of souls hurtled down the river Styx.
Lawrence’s Hoshiga pulled off dramatic maneuver after another to avoid the intense, web-like shots of laz gun threads, patch-worked at his inconvenience. Lawrence was forced to work overtime for his pension. He zipped through the seemingly inescapable odds, their efforts to stall him from catching up with the Yellow Typhoon whose ongoing carnage was no sideshow for what remained of Zeta’s escort fleet.
The further he followed in the wake of the incredible goddess’s rampant rampage, Lawrence faced counter-attacks the likes he’s never seen. “She wasn’t kidding,” Lawrence said. “They’re getting desperate, and… and… that just means… one more push!” Lawrence plunged his Hoshiga straight for the starboard of a larger Dreadnought. He fired off missiles at its external Rutherford Field generators, and after achieving a direct spectacle of exploding successful hits, he dropped several neutron munitions on her and dashed away.
As he pulled away from his strike, Lawrence spotted what remained of its desant troops as they moved out. They poured out of the fallen mother ship, hornets coming to extract revenge. More were joined by reinforcements from nearby fast trimmed ships. So massed, so dense the glistening, burnished armor of Tacoma and Sarissa shone. All around Lawrence, they continued to pour out of the ships. But he remained steadfast in his resolve. But one thing he remained sure of: “Not having Boris or Charlotte here means I have nothing to worry about! I’ll take on all you bastards myself—you want a piece of her; you’ll need to get through me first!” A sound of grinding came from the fighter’s teeth. His eyes blazed forth in searing points of fire, unbearable grief came surging through his heart, and now, bursting with rage against the devils of Jonathan von Churchill, Lawrence advanced forward and with dogged resistance. His fury knew no equal!
“Is this all that’s left of you fascist bastards?” Lawrence roared. His anger whipped away at Imperium numbers, hurtling them without regard to a one-way ticket down the river Styx. Piece by piece, Lawrence clawed his way like a tiger out for his lavish dinner. Were his foes no better than wild hogs? No, his opposition mere kittens. Lawrence’s fury was like a precision axe coming down on a wood piece left without mercy, skinning it slowly by the thread. “I thought this was the best of the best—the Imperium’s cream of the top?” Lawrence was sure he squeezed short the lives of countless pilots by now. His finger was quickly numbing, fury fed his energy. He remained undaunted and ever vigilant, as he followed mad suit for the Yellow Typhoon. He was making progress because he saw her call-sign blink in and out of the radar dome. Tominosky particles made it practically unusable in the precious few seconds he was afforded glimpses of it; as a bait to keep his momentum, a sick joke dangled by the Gods no doubt.
Among the enemy he spotted one in peculiar; Lawrence grinned. He recognized her from a skirmish over Ben Nevis. “The Black Blitz,” Lawrence said. He shifted forward in his seat, a brief respite for his gunner hand. He stretched and massaged his hand as reasonably and firmly before he grasped the joystick again. His Hoshiga rocked violently as he dodged well-placed shots. The Black Blitz zipped past him from above. He jerked over his cockpit, searching where his foe had went among the asteroids. “You, with the gall to go against my onslaught,” Lawrence said, “pity the ones whose sons and daughters stand up to me in war!”
The littering of violent asteroid paths made navigation in this dogfight difficult, yet Lawrence raced through it, another well-placed shots too close for comfort made Lawrence nearly bank out of control against the violent solar waves and meet an untimely demise against any one of these celestial rocks. Lawrence aimed to phase through the torrent, the ace shots made Lawrence sweat a curtain of bullets as he burst through the raging rapids.
The instant he did, Lawrence executed a emergency stop, and steered his ship further down the stream as his pursuer exited the same channel he did. Lawrence let loose burst coil shots of pure plasma, it speared through space, and struck the underbelly of the Black Blitz. The pilot was instantaneously vaporized by super condensed, unimaginably hot plasma energy. Her Sarissa lost control and slammed into the face of an asteroid. Lawrence had no time to celebrate the end of many Hoshiga pilots slain by such a ruthless reaper—as the solar winds became the embodiment of cosmic rage. And perhaps even so, the last surge of angry released by the Black Blitz.
More Sarissa pilots caught up, no doubt to avenge their fallen ace. Lawrence continued his relentless charge. He took down the point-man MAV and made the survivor break off and race off in a frenzy. Lawrence couldn’t help but smirked, but ultimately pressed on.
It was turning into a desperate battle between star fleets. A devastating melee of ships, star fighters and mobile troopers. No more war at a distance. The fight was being brought back to the enemy, to their shores—to their ships. His allies were catching up to him, but the distance was still a long ways off. “Those additional Tacoma from before are going to cause a serious hurt for the Fourth Fleet, no doubt,” Lawrence said, mumbling under his breath. His mind raced with thoughts far beyond his pay grade. “Well, at the end of the day, more of old Johnny’s sicko loyalists will be culled from this world.”
Somewhere deeper in the pockets of the asteroid field was a immense daisy-chain of explosions. Lawrence lost which direction he was supposed to be headed, and beelined for the vicinity as a chance to investigate if it was Yellow Typhoon’s doing. He came across scattered remains of a Imperium convoy of Tacoma and dreadnoughts.
That’s when he sat, alerted in his eyes, focusing on a sub monitor where the Yellow Typhoon sat, huddled against a asteroid. But he couldn’t contact her; the Tominosky particle jamming made it impossible.
He flew the Hoshiga past her, and charged directly at the underbelly of a Imperium Star Dreadnought, he plunged one missile after another into its open hangar and bolted past it. For good measure, he strafed the Hoshiga sideways, riddling its bridge with republican energy of pure death.
He left in his wake a stark remainder of republican determination. Lawrence switched gears and raced to begin another attack run on the Dreadnought behind it. He danced through the red barrage of laz threads, and accelerated to the maximum he humanly could, but Lawrence still pushed it one at a time, to make it to achieve inhumane speeds.
He targeted the Rutherford Field generators, and expertly plunged a hot thread of pure plasma through the Dreadnought, instantaneously killing or maiming any who happened to be caught in its stroke along the ship.
Lawrence banked as hard as he could, barrel-rolling away as the Dreadnought and her crew of eight hundred were instantaneously robbed of a future, of a bulb crushed, their man and womanhoods spirited away to the ever-cramped House of the Dead.
And no sooner did Lawrence achieve insurmountable odds did he see a blur of a comet race past him—the shock-waves swept him aside, as the maneuver came at such a surprise he couldn’t humanly react in time. Finding himself crashing back to reality and experiencing the roller coaster of having his Hoshiga discarded so freely, Lawrence lamented: “The Black Prince is here, but will he share here the same fate as his most devout dogs?”
Lawrence circled around his position, unaware where the Yellow Typhoon and the Walpurgis were at. There was a vibrant exchange of laz fire to his right, and he rushed in only to be thrown back by a shock-wave, the Walpurgis had launched away, he blasted off between asteroids, and made his way towards Zeta. The tiny little almond nothing more than a pebble in the vast cosmic waves. It was a mere silhouette against Fasnakyle. Farragaig lie in ruins.
Lawrence quickly parked his Hoshiga next to the Yellow Typhoon. He unbuckled and slammed the button to open the canopy. He jumped out and made way for the Yellow Typhoon: Victoria offered no resistance.
“Vick!” Lawrence screamed. He screamed her name again—thrice, to no avail. Finally, the armored hatch uncurled outwardly. Lawrence leaped for it immediately. He planted one leg in, but otherwise sat there in the open hatch. There was a strong solar wind which nearly knocked him over: He kept a firm grasp on the overhead hand rail.
Victoria looked like an absolute physical mess. She was far beyond a condition no one be envious of, barr the most crazed of workaholic junkies.
Lawrence’s heart sank, but it did more than sank, it shattered. Like a priceless, treasured pearl or gem, it shattered into millions of meaningless pieces.
“Vick,” Lawrence said. A croak. His knees buckled; he half-stood, floating there outside her cockpit. “Please... Vic, it destroys me seeing you like this.”
Victoria gasped, and Lawrence threw himself at her. She was too weak to even resist him now. “Breath, Vick,” Lawrence said. He treated her like a very delicate doll, terrified of hurting her kept him from touching her too much. But, she just seemed so, so frail... Lawrence’s grief caught up to him. It emboldened him, challenged his rationality. What was he to do now?
“I... I have to follow him,” Victoria said. She was exasperated. She was strewn along, hooked by the bait that was her Neo sapiens powers. Lawrence was torn in two, does he fight fight fate and drag Victoria to safely? He found himself arrested, overwhelmed by bitter medicine he didn’t want. This was her reality, but he wanted so much to be hers. She was too married to this war—to this conflict without end. To be with her was to be the husband of the reaper incarnate.
Lawrence simply couldn’t accept the truth. That Johnathan von Churchill, the Black Prince of the Imperium was a Neo sapiens. It was almost fated the two of them will have to come face-to-face, one-on-one in mortal combat one way or another. It was a Queen vs Queen situation. One will live, and one will have to die. But why did it have to be Victoria?
“This is the end, I promise, Lawry,” Victoria said. She gasped, taking deep breaths. His head was already racked with migraines so what difference did it make if she probed him, now or not? He wanted her to know his genuine concern for her. He wanted her to reconsider her actions. This was simply going too far even for him to catch up on. He bowed his head, wrestling agency from her grip on joystick for his hands. He couldn’t pry her away from her duty. What use was protesting?
“D-don’t... make me promises you can’t keep,” Lawrence said, his voice stuffed with agony. He resiliently avoided shedding tears in front of Victoria.
“It’s all or nothing now, Lawry,” Victoria said. Weakly, she reached to mess with the wet patches of hair sticking out along his helmet line. “It’ll still be a date, darling, I promise you.”
Lawrence relented. He lifted himself up, and reached forward to plant a kiss on her lips. He pulled away, heavily restrained by the Hoshiga gear and slipped on his equally bulky helmet. Lawrence saluted Victoria until he could no longer see her. The hatch closed under him, and he watched as she blasted off once more for Zeta. He drifted through space, alone in his thoughts. His comms were spammed with calls from Friederika, but he felt he could spare no energy to answer her.
She rushed ahead with the main force, but Lawrence found no adrenaline to rush with the blazing storm ahead, the violent energy to soon consume them all. After a while, Lawrence slapped both sides of his helmet. He flipped on his booster belt and made way for his Hoshiga. The time had come. The endgame of this flash-point was now at hand!