— Saturday, February 18, AD 2130 —

“Sit… still!!”

“Shit—!” Kate dove to the side as EA’s Rail Wolf suddenly teleported above her, a scowl on her face as she made to dodge an incoming tail stab — but instead, a hypersonic projectile from afar slammed into her back and launched her straight through the hologram of the mech that had appeared on top of her. Mark immediately dove towards the mech that had fired the shot, assuming it to be the real one, but as he swung his halberd he found himself attacking nothing but thin air. In the middle of his swing, the Rail Wolf appeared behind him and slammed him to the ground under its paw, before jumping backwards to evade one of Kate’s rockets and whipping its barbed tail through the air to deflect an attack from Danielle. As its tail hit Danielle, she quickly transformed into an amorphous blob in an attempt to cling to the mech — only to fall to the ground as the Rail Wolf instantly swapped places with one of its holograms.

“Kate…!” Mark shouted in unease, raising his halberd defensively as he glanced between the different images of the Rail Wolf — it was impossible to tell the real mech apart from the holograms, just by looking at them. “We know EA’s trick, but we need a plan to deal with this—!” Mark continued, only to cut himself off as he spotted Kate rocketing toward his position, having launched herself with one of her own explosions. EA noticed her as well, with all four Rail Wolves slowly pivoting to look at her; in her hands was another massive explosive, but before she could detonate it, the Rail Wolves began turning their cannons. As Kate had figured out earlier, the cannon on all four of the mechs turned in exactly the same manner, with only one of them actually lining up with Kate — as soon as he determined this, Mark bounded forwards, halberd raised overhead to bring it down on the target Rail Wolf.

But EA proved ready; before Mark could reach the mech, its tail swung around to bat him out of the air, right as it fired its cannon at Kate and blasted her back across the yard. “Oh, come on!” EA taunted over the mech’s loudspeaker as Mark and Kate both recovered from being attacked. “You’ll never beat me when you telegraph your attacks like that—!”

In the middle of EA’s taunt, a massive block of metal suddenly appeared in the air over his mech, having just transformed from a tiny speck. In her newly massive form, Danielle allowed herself to drop onto the Rail Wolf; predictably, the mech swapped with one of its holograms, but Danielle predicted the switch and was already halfway towards transforming into her own giant mech. With a laser cannon mounted on her chest and on both of her mechanical hands, Danielle took aim at the other three Rail Wolves — while still occupying the space of the forth hologram — and opened fire, lighting up the devastated yard with blasts from her lasers. Of the three remaining mechs, only one was obviously hit by Danielle’s lasers, brilliantly lighting up its energy shields; just a half-second later, Kate blew up the entire area with an incredible explosive, generating a massive smoke cloud that obscured Mark’s dash toward the exposed Rail Wolf. And indeed, this time, Mark’s halberd connected with the solid shields of EA’s mech, bowling the entire machine to the side. But just as Mark went for another swing, a blow from behind launched him out of the smoke cloud and sent him tumbling across the yards once more.

“Damn it…” Mark muttered, quickly climbing back to his feet and resummoning his halberd to himself. He whipped around to look at the smoke cloud he had just emerged from — only to immediately be launched across the yard again as the Rail Wolf teleported behind him and whacked him with its tail, following with firing its cannon at Danielle to knock her onto her back.

“C’mon, guys! What did I tell y’all?” EA remarked over the Rail Wolf’s loudspeakers, and then teleported the mech once more to avoid a volley of Kate’s rockets. “’Gimmick’ aside, this mech has shielding on par with spacecraft! Not to mention bein’ immune to anything that could bypass the shields! So why don’t y’all just give up and leave already, huh?!”

“Bullshit, everything has a weakness!” Kate retorted, already swinging her rocket launcher around to fire on the Rail Wolf again. In that same moment, Mark lunged towards the Rail Wolf nearest to him, while Danielle aimed and fired her lasers once more at all of the visible mechs. But just as they attacked, all of the Rail Wolves disappeared into thin air, leaving Kate’s rocket to explode ineffectively in the distance. Then, a second later, the giant wolf mech leaped high out of the smoke cloud left behind by the explosive, as if it had been standing there all along; with a scowl, Kate immediately took aim at the mech and fired another rocket. As soon as she did, she realized that the hologram was most likely a feint — a realization that came too late as another Rail Wolf appeared behind her and slammed its tail down over her head, smashing her into the ground. Kate immediately fabricated and detonated an explosive on top of her in an effort to drive EA away, while also creating a smokescreen to give her time to recover. Just as soon as the smoke billowed out from her explosion, however, a rain of gunfire from above dispersed the smoke and slammed into the Rail Wolf’s shields, flaring them up brightly and drawing EA’s attention to the skies…

…where there now hung a conspicuous Frigate of distinctly SERRCom make.

While floating in the air, the Frigate turned her cannons on EA’s mech and opened fire, taking advantage of the 100mm railguns that were standard fare for SERRCom Frigates to rain destruction upon the already-devastated train yard. But as EA’s Rail Wolves began taking evasive actions, Danielle’s voice soon appeared on Mark and Kate’s comms.

«I can’t beam EA away!» she remarked in confusion. «I don’t get it, isn’t he using beaming to teleport around?!»

«Just because I can bypass SERRCom’s jammers for short-range beams doesn’t mean that the reverse is also true!» EA shot back over the comms.

“What the fuck?!” Kate exclaimed. “How the hell are you on our private comms?!”

«…Oops! Didn’t mean to reveal I could do that!»

“Which leaves us with a massive problem,” Mark muttered, leaping to Kate’s side to address her in person as they both watched Danielle’s Frigate form exchange weapons fire with EA’s Rail Wolf. “We can’t beam EA out of his mech. Danielle said that the robot she and Mote fought earlier was immune to Mote’s lightning, so we have to assume that this ‘Rail Wolf’ is, too. His shields are still holding strong, and on top of all of that, he has access to our comms…”

“What’s with the defeatist attitude, huh?” Kate snarked. “We’re the Eximius Vir! If anyone can kick this asshole’s ass, it’s us!”

“Maybe if we were better prepared. But as it stands, we just don’t have the firepower that we need! Even Danielle’s Frigate guns don’t seem to be enough!”

Kate scoffed. “Duh. Two Frigates shooting each other will still take fucking hours and hours to eat through each others’ shields. To end this faster, we just need an even bigger gun!”

“What?” Mark passed her an incredulous look. “Where do you plan to find a bigger gun—?”

Amidst Mark’s words, there was a bright flash of light across the entire base — a flash that had appeared multiple times throughout the day, a flash that had appeared so regularly that most of the combatants fighting under it had begun to put it out of mind.

It was the flash of EA’s bombardment shields, flaring up under the assault of SERRCom’s orbital bombardment.

As the light began to dissipate, Mark noticed that Kate had turned her attention skyward. “…No…” he muttered warningly, immediately realizing what she was thinking. “…No, Kate, you shouldn’t do that—!”

“It’ll be fine!” Kate countered, fabricating a new rocket launcher and pointing it at her feet. “You’re a Duratechnic, everyone else still has shields — we’ll be fine!”

“No, Kate—!” Mark moved to grab her, but before he could, she fired a rocket at her feet, using the explosion to launch herself through the skies toward the center of EA’s base. “…Shit! KATE! THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA!”

“What is, now…?” EA wondered aloud, while glancing toward Mark. He then followed Mark’s gaze to spot Kate, still sailing through the air and growing smaller with distance. “The hell is she…?” EA began to wonder, all while continuing to engage with Danielle — and then, his eyes grew wide with realization. “Oh, you’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” he shouted, immediately teleporting the Rail Wolf forwards to begin dashing off in chase of Kate. “Hey, you!” he shouted over the speakers, turning up their volume to try and draw Kate’s attention. “What the hell do you think you’re doin’?! Get back here!”

“Make me, asshole!!” Kate shouted back, and then detonated another explosive underfoot to launch herself forwards again. As she sailed through the air, EA’s Rail Wolf suddenly appeared above her, its tail whipping around towards her — though was deflected by an expert shot from one of Danielle’s guns. The Rail Wolf then disappeared, with images of it appearing amidst the buildings and alleyways of EA’s base as they chased after Kate. Now that they had left the devastated train yard, there were actual buildings and rail cars to offer cover, allowing EA to get the jump on Kate — just before she was able to launch herself through the air again, the Rail Wolf leaped out from behind a building in front of her and instantly fired its railgun at her, slamming a hypersonic projectile right into her chest and sending her tumbling backwards. But by the time the mech fired again, Mark had dove in front of Kate to take the blow, allowing her to recover and blast herself into the air again.

«To be clear, I still think this is a terrible idea!» Mark shouted over the comms as he bounded after Kate, keeping an eye out for EA’s mechs all the while. «Do you have any idea of the kind of forces involved, here? Or the fact that you’re charging into ground zero of one of the bombardment targets—?»

“Of course I do!” Kate retorted, pausing only to detonate a rocket underfoot just in time to evade another railgun shot from EA’s Rail Wolf, which was keeping up with her almost solely due to its ability to teleport. “It’s the fastest way to end this!”

«Try the fastest way to doom us all!» EA retorted, just as his mech suddenly appeared in the air next to Kate, having leaped at her from behind a nearby building. Its barbed tail swung around quickly — more quickly than Kate could respond as it spiked her downwards and through the roof of a massive warehouse. A second later, Danielle fired on the Rail Wolf again, but this time her cannon fire merely ripped through a hologram; the real Rail Wolf had already teleported away, crashing through the roof below in pursuit of Kate.

Below the roof were long lines of tall warehouse shelving, containing all manner of boxes and mechanical machinery — but neither Kate nor EA paid the shelving any mind. As soon as Kate slammed into the ground, she fabricated an explosive under her to launch herself back into the air, just in time to avoid EA’s Rail Wolf as it lunged through a towering shelf, sending a cascade of metal parts showering down on Kate. Just as with the railgun shot earlier, Kate’s energy shielding deflected all of the debris, but she could tell that her armor was beginning to run low on energy. Even more reason to end this fuckin’ yesterday! she thought to herself, all while diving to the side to evade another railgun shot from the Rail Wolf. She rolled on the ground and then sprung into a dash, putting another of the warehouse’s massive shelves between her and EA’s mech; as soon as it was out of sight, she fabricated another rocket launcher and made to shoot at her feet, only for the Rail Wolf to nail her with a railgun shot through the shelving.

As Kate tumbled along the ground, smashing through several other shelves, the Rail Wolf readily pursued her, heedlessly barreling through the shelves to close the distance between itself and Kate — only for Mark to dive down from the sky and slam into the canopy of the mech’s cockpit with his halberd. Bright golden lights filled the warehouse as the mech’s shields flared up to stop Mark from caving in the cockpit, but the force from his blow still blasted the mech’s head into the ground. Its forward momentum carried its backend over its head, causing it to flip over onto its back, giving Kate just the opening she needed to blow up the ground beneath her feet and blast herself through the warehouse’s roof and back into the skies above the base.

Once in the air again, Kate quickly spotted Danielle, who had been following the chase while remaining in her Frigate form. Immediately, Kate shouted into the comms, “Danielle, grab me! Get me to the center of the base!”

«Oh no you don’t!» EA shouted back over the comms, his mech suddenly appearing on the roof under Kate. It rolled over to recover from Mark throwing it off balance and then brought its spinal cannon to bear, taking aim at Kate and firing once — though Danielle managed to slam the mech’s cannon with a gunshot of her own, successfully deflecting EA’s aim just enough to miss Kate. Danielle then swooped down to catch Kate on her topside, all while continuing to shoot her guns at EA’s Rail Wolf, which promptly disappeared from the roof… only to appear atop Danielle, along with Kate.

“Well aren’t you a persistent little asshole,” Kate snarled as she eyed the extra holograms of the Rail Wolf that EA conjured up.

«I have to be, against a stupid-ass plan like yours!» EA snapped back as each of the Rail Wolves charged at Kate.

«Uh oh!» Danielle remarked, at which point a handful of cables suddenly leaped out of the Frigate’s hull to grab Kate by her waist. «Hold on, Kate!»

“The fuck are you—?!” Kate began to ask, already struggling against the cables as EA’s Rail Wolves took aim at her — but a second later, the Frigate suddenly banked hard to the side, practically catapulting the real Rail Wolf through the air. EA seemed to expect the maneuver, however, as the Rail Wolf immediately teleported back to the Frigate next to Kate, its barbed tail already mid-swing towards the explosive Intellitechnic. Danielle rapidly banked again, this time in the opposite direction, but the Rail Wolf’s tail swung faster — and successfully severed the cables holding Kate in place, such that the following hard bank threw both Kate and the mech into the air. “Tch—!” Kate scowled in annoyance, quickly moving to blow herself up again to launch herself away from EA, but the Rail Wolf’s spinal cannon had already locked on to her.

However, in the moment before the mech could fire, Mark slammed into it from below, having launched himself through the air with his bountiful strength. The force of his halberd slamming into the Rail Wolf’s cannon threw the entire mech off-course, allowing Kate to blow up the air beneath her feet to fly through the skies, where Danielle again caught her.

As Mark began to fall back to the ground — EA’s mech already disappearing into thin air — he turned to look to the side. Despite the massive size of EA’s base, the four had already crossed most of the space between the devastated train yard and the building in the center of the base, which now stood barely a kilometer away — a distance that was rapidly shortening as Danielle flew towards it. Upon noting this, Mark couldn’t help but frown, and quickly shouted into his communicator, “Kate, don’t do this! There’s another set of bombardment rounds en route already!”

In the distance, still riding atop Danielle’s Frigate hull, Kate passed an annoyed glance behind herself and clicked her tongue. “Well yeah, duh,” she retorted, “that’s the entire fucking point!”

«You fucking idiots!» EA snapped, his Rail Wolf again appearing atop Danielle’s hull — only for her to quickly shapeshift a massive hole for the mech to fall through. «Damn it…!» The frustration was evident in EA’s voice as he glared up at Danielle and Kate. «Don’t you remember what Athena and I said earlier? There’s fucking Nanocreatures here! Do you have any idea what could happen if you let those bombardment rounds hit the base? We’re talking nanites in the entire fucking atmosphere, here!!»

“And?” Kate retorted dismissively. “The only one who cares about this stupid planet is you. And everyone else has shields. We’ll be fucking fine!”

«Is that really true…?» Danielle questioned warily, rapidly slowing down as she approached the center of the base.

«Just another reason that this is a terrible idea!» Mark insisted. «Kate, I’m telling you, don’t do this!»

“Bah, you all sound like fucking luddites,” Kate retorted, leaping off of Danielle to fall to the building below. “Energy shields exist for a fucking reason—!”

As if to punctuate her thought, the Rail Wolf appeared in the air right next to Kate, with both its cannon aiming right at her and its tail swinging around toward her. But right before EA had a chance to hit her, Kate detonated another explosive, this time to blast her groundward — and right through the roof of the building below. Her shields flared brilliantly to protect her, offering enough illumination to light up the room she now found herself in… and the massive shield generator standing within.

«Fuck…!» EA swore over the comms — though his Rail Wolf promptly disappeared from the scene. «You’ll fucking regret this! Don’t say I didn’t tell you so!»

«This kinda seems like a bad idea…» Danielle muttered warily.

«Kate…!» Mark shouted, still bounding through the air as he attempted to reach the building himself. «Damn it! Overdrive: Immortal Slumber! Now, Kate, just listen! How do you expect your shields to protect you if your entire goal is to kill EA’s shields?!»

“That mech is a way bigger target — it’ll absorb way more force than any of us!” Kate retorted as she fabricated several large chunks of plastic explosive — complete with detonators — and haphazardly chucked them all around the shield generator sitting at the center of EA’s base. “And the Nanocreature stuff is bullshit. Don’t let EA get to you! Fucking think about it — if things really were as dangerous as he claimed, then the bastard wouldn’t be sticking around for it, now, would he?”

«Or maybe he just has some other reason to stay! You can’t know!» Mark argued.

“Just like you can’t know that what I’m about to do is a bad idea — because it fucking isn’t!” Kate declared, popping open the remote detonator that controlled all of the explosives she had just planted. “Who do you trust more — me, or motherfucking EA?”

A second of silence passed, as Mark faltered.

And in that moment, EA’s Rail Wolf burst through the wall of the building containing the shield generator, though at an angle to avoid hitting the generator itself. As the sound of wrenching metal echoed through the air, the giant mech pounced on Kate, slamming her to the ground and knocking her detonator out of her hand.

“If you know what’s good for you, then stay fucking put!” EA snarled.

Kate glared up at him, a dangerous grin on her face. “…Okay!”

“Huh…?” EA glared back at her, clearly surprised by her seemingly resigned response — until he looked over at her hand, and the new detonator that she had just fabricated within. “No, wait—!”

“Too late! FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Kate shouted, readily flipping open the detonator and then slamming her thumb down on the activation switch before EA could attempt to respond.

KRA-KOOOOM! 

---

*

Streaks of lightning shot across the sky as Mote blasted the shields of two of EA’s fightercraft, followed by sweeping Raenaros’s Chaos Cannons across them. After a second of flared resistance from the fightercraft’s shields, they finally dispersed in a chaotic shower of sparks, allowing the beams from Raenaros’s Chaos Cannons to slice through the fightercraft and cut them to ribbons.

Alright… Mote thought to himself as Raenaros slammed through the remnants of the two fightercraft, her own shields still intact. Now, how many are left…? Quickly, Mote shifted Raenaros’s maneuvering engines to bring the Corvette around in a tight circle and fly towards the nearest group of fightercraft. Mote warily watched the Corvette’s HUD as it counted the enemy fightercraft for him, and a scowl soon crossed his face as the number reached into the 40s. Despite battle raging in the skies of EA’s base for multiple hours, SERRCom had yet to achieve air superiority — in fact, were it not for Mote’s ability to instantly recharge friendly energy shields with his Electrotechnism, then the SERRCom forces would have been repelled ages ago.

It’s those damn factories that the Major found… Mote thought bitterly while banking Raenaros hard to the right to evade two incoming missiles. We ARE shooting down fighters, but they’re being replaced almost as quickly — and this base is so big, with so many factories. We’ve destroyed a few, but how is it still not enough? Just how many robots does EA need?!

Raenaros’s shields soon flared under the gunfire of two distant EA fighters, but Mote simply lashed out at them with his lightning, taking advantage of Raenaros’s Chaotic Channeling System to extend his effective range far farther than he could otherwise reach. He then snapped the Corvette’s nose upward to fly straight towards the two fighters, generating a disruptive electrical field to disrupt the two fighters and allow himself to score several more attacks. Under the onslaught of his lightning and Raenaros’s Chaos Cannons, the two fighters seemed to hold strong, and even returned fire with their railguns — but Mote’s electrical interference dulled their responses, enabling him to accelerate Raenaros to an incredible speed and simply ram straight through the fighters. The raw kinetic energy behind the ram was enough to finally break through the fighters’ shields and smash both vehicles to smithereens, their metal debris showering down on the base below.

Two down, only several dozen left to go… Mote thought bitterly, already turning the Corvette towards the next group of fighters. As he did, he allowed his attention to drift skyward; high in the blue skies above, he could see the twinkling lights indicative of incoming orbital bombardment rounds. SERRCom’s favored method of orbital bombardment was to simply fire massive metal rods out of spacecraft-mounted railguns, banking on the destructive force of raw kinetic energy to obliterate their targets. As such, the lights that Mote saw weren’t the exhaust trails of missiles, but rather the bombardment rounds lighting up from the heat of atmospheric entry.

As soon as he spotted the rounds, though, he put them out of mind — after all, the only purpose of SERRCom’s bombardment was to force EA to maintain the base’s bombardment shields. Truly destroying the base wasn’t an objective. It would certainly stop EA from being able to endlessly create fightercraft, at least… Mote mused, only to shake the thought from his head. No, the destructive forces of an orbital bombardment wouldn’t leave behind much to study. We need to disable EA’s facility with targeted strikes, if we want to study his tech and figure out where it came from. In the meantime, we just need time for CSF-1 to investigate the base… And for that, we need air superiority. Which we ARE getting, just… very, very slowly—

Suddenly, a bright flash of light filled Mote’s vision; he recoiled by reflex, but since his vision was currently hijacked by Raenaros’s neural dive system, he was unable to truly look away — somehow, the light seemed to be all around him. What the hell? That seemed like a shield flash, but from what…? Mote wondered in confusion, and then turned his attention skyward again as the bright light began to fade, revealing an incredible wave of golden static sweeping across the blue skies, seeming to stretch from horizon to horizon. …Wait… is that…?! Quickly, Mote pulled Raenaros around to look out over EA’s base… and as soon as he did, he spotted a billowing fireball and a cloud of smoke emerging into the air over a building at the center of the base. As soon as he saw that, it was immediately obvious what had happened:

The bombardment shields protecting EA’s base had just gone down.

“Shit…!” Mote muttered, snapping his gaze up to the bombardment rounds that he had spotted earlier — the fact that he could even see them was enough to know that there were mere seconds until impact. Immediately, he jumped on the comms, all while hard-banking Raenaros to the side in an effort to flee the airspace. “Mote to all forces, the bombardment shields are down! Clear the air, clear the air—!”

In the midst of his words, in the blink of an eye, the ground and buildings of EA’s base erupted, as the orbital bombardment rounds slammed into the earth at well beyond hypersonic speeds. With no bombardment shield to stop them, they instead obliterated the base in an instant, each individual round creating a crater hundreds of meters across and throwing dirt and metal debris high into the sky. Shockwaves blasted through the air, throwing Raenaros off-course and forcing Mote to fight for control of the craft all while the Corvette’s shields were pelted by the shockwaves and debris thrown up from the impacts.

And then, just as quickly as everything was thrown into chaos, the sounds of destruction ceased. Confused and panicked shouts soon began to fill the comms, but as Mote turned to look out over EA’s base once more, all signs of fighting had stopped. In their stead were dozens of smoking craters, taking the place of the most prominent buildings that had filled EA’s base — all that seemed to remain of the base were a handful of train yards and buildings around the perimeter. “Shit…!” Mote muttered, immediately bringing Raenaros around and pushing the thrusters to fly in the direction of CSF-1 and the Eximius Vir’s last known location, hoping against hope that they had survived the base’s annihilation.