Countergambit

Victoria pushed the abilities of the Yellow Typhoon in extremis. She could barely contain her grip on the dual joysticks. Each lift-off, every jump, was a skull-rattling moment of blanketed whiteness.

The rapid motions stopped when Victoria sensed the first sign of a burning hot mental mosaic tug in her matrix field. Then, this isolated mental mosaic grew at an exponential rate. It surged through her Neo sapiens matrix.

Victoria brandished the laz rifle and discharged precision shots repeatedly. Her gun belched disced shots of sheer death; her trigger finger ached from the intense pressure. Every shot seemed harder and more difficult to squeeze—there was no shortage of the foolish willing to toss away their priceless lives for a worthless cause.

“But that isn’t just it, isn’t it?” Victoria asked. With each shot she took, Victoria checked one man’s ambition. The laz rifle ammunition box ran dry. “If you were Neo sapiens... you would understand and see through the lies!” Victoria’s Yellow Typhoon rushed off her debris cover and slammed into another one. The panoramic panel feed flickered presently. It was only one less forlorn mental mosaic to worry about: a Sarissa rammed into her previous cover. Victoria saw the enlarged orb of explosion and held up her shield to absorb the rain of debris.

But Victoria had to kill them—the fates of several hundred good men and women depended on it, all to trump one sick monster’s fantasies. “You’re following a demon... all of you!” Victoria screamed.

I will stop you, she said to herself. The Yellow Typhoon reached for its combat backpack and pressed a button on the bottom right of the boxy compartment. It dispensed a fresh magazine of laser batteries. Here I am, here I remain! She shouted inwardly to herself, you will not pass.

Victoria had no idea of the method behind telegraphing her own thoughts to others, but it was her declaration to Churchill regardless.

The Yellow Typhoon lunged out of cover with such g-force it rattled Victoria’s skull, her vision blurred. Victoria had her Mobile Trooper reach outward with its shield arm and unleash the hook. It landed further in the debris field, and the Mobile Trooper swung on the cable through the carnage. The exoskeleton rattled and rang in Victoria’s ears. “Don’t let up now, Yellow Typhoon!”

Victoria squeezed with such intensity on the trigger joystick that she was gravely concerned it would snap any moment. The strain on her finger was overbearing. It didn't matter how many Sarissa pilots Victoria slew; there were always more. Victoria found it increasingly daunting to kill.

She retracted the grapple hook, stalling just in time to avoid a Sarissa fighter zip past her with such velocity it made Victoria see double from the aftershock.

The Sarissa’s mosaic of hatred went muted not long after. The pilot squandered his life without purpose onto debris. She felt no crying from such souls; only the scorching determination to fulfill their duty as a loyal Imperium subject to the bitter end.

“Why... why must you throw your lives away so easily?” Victoria said, she seethed. The emotional willpower needed to snip short the industrious lives of these unapologetic souls blunted her mind. “I’m not a battle doll... I’m human, just like you, so why? Why can’t you see what you’re doing isn’t worth dying for?”

Jonathan von Churchill, Black Prince... I will kill you! Victoria said internally, the anger and grief was a cocktail that fueled her fury for Jonathan, and ostensibly enchanted her Neo sapiens prowess. I will kill you with my own two hands. I will give you such a death not even the domains below will accept you. You want a battle? Come and get it!

Her spatial matrix, already strained as it were, was warped by such powerful, disgusting, probing pressure. Victoria cried out and thrashed in the cockpit. When she regained composure, she was eclipsed by dozens of Imperial Star Dreadnoughts. “Churchill’s last waltz?” Victoria asked, dumbfounded. “Does he intend to abandon Zeta? Then...” Victoria watched in horror as the shadow of Zeta fast approached Farragaig and the beautiful blue planet of her homeland, Fasnakyle. “Can the Fourth Fleet succeed after all?” She slammed her armrest, and the rage boiled. Her spatial matrix was reaching critical mass.

Heavy Tominosky particles made using the Mobile Trooper's targeting system unreliable. In frustration, Victoria brushed aside the targeting system and tapped into her prowess as a Neo sapiens instead.

The Yellow Typhon hid behind an unusually large debris. Victoria powered down the machine. She reclined in her chair, taking deep breaths. The vibrations rocked the cockpit violently, but she remained calm. Victoria fell into a trance: she steepled her hands.

“Hear then the great dharani, The radiant peerless mantra—“Zeta’s surface assault squadron bombarded the debris field in hopes of flushing out Victoria. The aftershocks jerked her floating seat around. The Mobile Trooper itself had huddled against the debris wall. Victoria continued unfazed: “The Prajnaparamita Whose words allay all pain; Hear and believe its truth!” Victoria relaxed her hand muscles. She breathed in deeply and sighed. Victoria opened her eyes and reached to power on the Shinra Mobile Trooper. “Then let’s give them a waltz they won’t forget!”

The Yellow Typhoon rumbled alive. The fully three-sixty degrees panoramic optic panels fizzled and revealed the cosmic stars as strips of photon tracers slashed through the black canvas of the void.

Victoria had the Yellow Typhoon leap hard off cover and propelled closer to the incoming fleet. Sshe wasted precious laz gun shots to punch holes through debris when she knew she was reaching critical g-forces and couldn’t sway fast enough. She shot out the grapple hook and sensed when the hook latched on to the closet Star Dreadnought, one that seemed slightly bigger than the others.

"Capital ship?" Victoria said. She swung under the Dreadnought's underbelly but determined that the armor plating was too thick. Victoria pondered if she should've targeted the bridge instead. But then, a new opportunity presented itself: “Assault carrier! There it is!” Victoria vined through gaps in the point defense, taking potshots at gunnery turrets when applicable.

Victoria peeked at her ammunition bar: it was nearly empty. “I need to save the rest for that Mobile Trooper Carrier,” Victoria said between clenched teeth.

She considered tossing the gun aside, as there was no time to reload but held on to it presently. Victoria performed intensive maneuvering around a hail of concentrated point defense and escaped the worst of it to reach her objective: the exposed launch tubes protruding from the Assault Carrier, a Super Star Dreadnoughts of sort. Victoria brandished the laz gun and discharged the remainder of the laser disc shots into the belly of the beast. She raced away just as the carrier was engulfed in an immense explosion: the cries of hundreds of cries of anguish and pain haunted Victoria all at once. Victoria got as far as she could before the shockwave knocked her out of control.

“No!” Victoria screamed. She shielded herself as the Yellow Typhoon slammed into asteroid debris. An airbag sprang out from the console terminal—then it deflated.

Caught in a whirlwind of daze, the Mobile Trooper cockpit went pitch dark. Victoria tried to restart the Mobile Trooper but to no avail.

“Yellow Typhoon, don’t give on me now,” Victoria said, her voice soft, it teetered on breaking. “Yellow Typhoon, hey, get up! You can’t give up on me yet. Get up! Get up!” She frantically slammed the dual levers needed to force an emergency reactivation of the Mobile Trooper.

Presently, Victoria continued the attempt to no avail, each more desperate and forceful than the last.

Tears wet her cheeks. She shook her head violently, she tried to suppress a wail. “Wake up, dammit! You’re letting everyone down... why can’t you get up for me, Yellow Typhoon? We still have work to do... we can’t rest yet!” Her voice strained and choked on tears. The tremors around her became more pronounced: her spatial matrix was going completely haywire.

“I don’t want to die. We still need to see Lawrence, Friederika, and Frank... we can’t let them all down, can’t we? Please,” Victoria was overcome with tears, “we just have one last job to do... Yellow Typhoon! I don’t want to die!”

She curled up as the brunt after-force of a blast rumbled the Mobile Trooper alive. The spacial environment flickered on. The Yellow Typhoon performed a hard roll into space. Something huge whipped past her: Victoria performed a U-turn maneuver with the shield up: Several shrapnel ricocheted off the thing. She landed on debris hardly the size of a tree chunk. Victoria dispensed another laz canister and reloaded the laz gun with it. She took several deep breaths, her attention trying to read the enemy’s next telegrammed movement.

“Tacoma? No,” Victoria brandished the gun and preemptively fired where she knew the foe would emerge from. To her shock, the mobile enemy darted to the right and into cover. The shot was completely off the mark!

“What the hell, it’s... you, isn’t it?” Victoria said. She glanced off to her left and probed the battlefield that now unfolded. But nothing was concrete, she felt neither Frank nor Friederika, but she felt the burning determination of Lawrence. She slammed the armrest.

Friederika... please, wherever you are, stay safe! I’m coming for you. I will! Lawrence... I’m sorry.

Victoria turned her attention back to the enemy at hand, and now Victoria had visual confirmation it was indeed the Mobile Gear Walpurgis. It unleashed a broadside bombard of lancing laz shots and Victoria had no doubt this was her true enemy: “Churchill,” Victoria said, her voice flat.

A foreboding Tyrian purple hung over the Mobile Gear Walpurgis wide and long like draping curtains. Victoria experienced firsthand the furnace of mental mosaic in all its energy form: Churchill’s burning devotion to his Emperor Mikhail the Fifth shook Victoria to her core. She shriveled in her seat, overwhelmed, outmatched, by the raw materialization of his intent to carry out his will.

Then she experienced it. A transparent overlay was projected in front of Victoria: she saw the gradient silhouette of a large, muscular man. She saw a net shimmer between them. The net grew larger—its threads not like lines but ribbons thicker than any Victoria’s ever seen.

Victoria reached out for it—but then laz gun fire made the tachyon net rescind and disappear. The skirmish had caught up to them as Imperial Sarissa and Tacoma squadrons ripped and teared into their Confederate Hoshiga and Shinra counterparts.

The Mobile Gear Walpurgis was gone.

Victoria was left stunned by god's grip. Victoria was able to relax as the skirmishing thundered away. To Victoria's surprise, she received a hail from Lawrence. The Yellow Typhoon reached out to establish wired communication with Lawrence’s fighter craft as it steered to a stop.

“There’s no convincing you to return to the Yilan, is there?” Lawrence asked, the anger curled at his lips. His left brow twitched.

“He’s retreating to Zeta,” Victoria said. “I have to follow him.”

“So he was a Neo sapiens after all,” Lawrence said, he slammed the side of his cockpit in anger.

“A man like him is too dangerous to live,” Victoria said, she shook her head. Victoria bumped the Hoshiga with her rifle butt and pointed at Zeta. “This is the end, Lawrence. It’s all or nothing,” her tone was stern. She gripped the joysticks.

After several moments of silence, Lawrence relented: “I’ll rendezvous with Friederika, and we’ll figure out our next move from there,” Lawrence said, “Victoria... I will come back for you, I mean it—so stay alive!”

Victoria saluted Lawrence. “I’ll look forward to that date when this is over, love.”

The Yellow Typhoon and the Fool of Chizan parted ways.