Chapter Twelve—Righteous Vengeance

With the mech’s jets burning loudly, Ichiro angled the machine down and pulled the trigger. With an explosive scream the rail gun fired.

The escort truck at the back of the convoy exploded in a plume of fire and smoke.

As the convoy halted, Ichiro flew alongside the trucks and armored vehicles to the front. The doors to the lead vehicle opened and four men got out. They started firing at him.

Ichiro switched on the anti-personnel machine guns to take them out when suddenly a high-pitched whaling sounded. The cockpit flashed with red lights.

He pulled the sticks to the left and the mech banked hard, narrowly missing anti-vehicle ordnance that flew past him. The onboard camera system tracked the streamer of white smoke and identified the weapon as an MK-II Ground to Air rocket.

Stepping on the thruster pedals, the mech ascended as bullets cracked against his armor. He thought that rocket had come from the armored vehicle two cars back.

The convoy was now swarming with soldiers, all aiming at Shiro.

But the mech was impervious to small arms for the most part.

The alarm went off again and he stepped on the thrusters, pulling the mech left, then right when two more rockets came up at him.

They both missed and he opened up with his machine guns, explosions and wet splashes of red erupted among the soldiers firing up at him.

He locked a missile onto the lead car and fired. The missile’s thrust scorched through the air and the lead vehicle exploded, sending the men around it flying off the ground.

Surely they were dead.

As he continued opening up with the machineguns along the line of soldiers standing between the vehicles, their bodies exploding in mists of red blood and severed limbs, they started breaking.

Men turned around and ran in every direction.

Once the soldiers had almost all gone, he lessened his thrust and landed with a thump onto the road behind the caravan. In his gel-cushioned mech seat, Ichiro barely felt the impact.

Pushing the sticks forward, the mech dutifully stamped along the road. He turned and angled himself beside the convoy.

There were still soldiers about when he opened the cockpit with a hiss of pressurized releases.

Ichiro unbuckled his safety harness, pulled his katana forward from where it was tucked behind the seat and lunged out and into the road beside the flaming cars in the back.

Walking with his blade in hand, he glanced about for any sign of enemy soldiers as he bent and took up an assault rifle in his left hand. Weapons fire erupted from the side of the road and Ichiro crouched as the bullets hit and ricocheted off the burnt-out vehicle between him and the soldier.

Once the bullets stopped cracking in his direction, Ichiro reached over the top and fired two shots, taking out the soldier.

The transport truck was abandoned. When he approached, he saw Harlan and Joji. He used his katana to cut their bindings. As they were freed, the two men lowered their own gags.

“Ichiro!” Joji said, his voice hoarse. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“You can fly a mech?” Harlan asked.

The two men were wide eyed and still in shock as they glanced about the wrecked convoy—at the bodies and the blood.

“The others are all dead,” Ichiro said.

Joji and Harlan looked at him, pain and sorrow in their eyes.

“I am sorry.”

They nodded. Joji glanced down at the road, while Harlan clenched his fists. “I want to kill these sons of bitches!”

“I’m meeting up with John,” Ichiro said. “He will take us to his resistance camp.”

“Is that why they attacked?” Joji asked. “Are you in the resistance, Ichiro?”

“I… I wasn’t,” he said. “But I am now.”

Joji nodded. “Take us.”

“Yes!” Harlan snapped. “I’m coming too!’

Ichiro told them the exact location where to meet them and the two men took off over the hills, holding their newly acquired assault rifles awkwardly. It was clear Harlan and Joji were untrained in fighting.

They will learn. Their new hatred and need for vengeance will inspire them, will dutifully crack the whip until they are as hardened as I am.

They could not go together, because Ichiro wasn’t going back to meet them or John. He wasn’t going to join the resistance—not really.

He had something else to do.

What happened next would reverberate throughout every resistance camp in Paradaisu. If Ichiro died—then it will have been worth it.

With his friends… with his family gone—he had nothing else to lose.

Standing in the rain, he glanced up at the grey sky, his fists clenched over his rifle and sword. Then his chin lowered, his eyes coming back to the agile flight-mech standing in the road.

He got back in, then pulled up a map of the Shimajima islands—more specifically of the location of Governor Baila Madison’s palace—the Shinju Palace.

Checking his fuel reserves, he cross referenced the mech’s travel capabilities and realized he would come up short.

He looked at the map again and saw a fuel depot eighty kilometers from his final destination.

One last stop.