“Andre!!” Kerry shrieked in unison from her open cockpit, frozen momentarily with fear before realizing the carrier was about to crash land out of view. “Sebastian!” she now roared out resolutely amidst her trembling as she strapped herself back in to launch. “Intercept while I cover the crash site! They are trying to pick us off one by one!”

A field operator’s voice then chimed in immediately after: “Five incoming heat signals! Two from five hundred meters south, three from four hundred meters north-west!”

Putting his feet to the pedals, Sebastian was now thinking of only one thing: not losing anyone else. [On it! Kerry, two of the three from the north are headed for you! I’ll get the other one!]

“Navarre, Melancon!” the operator continued. “Medevac controlled its landing just enough! Top priority on that crash site until backup arrives!”

“On our way!” Devin’s voice shouted out much to Kerry’s relief. “We just cleaned up this end! Give us a minute!”

.

.

Sam’s Axiom was still a few major city blocks away, careful not to rush too blindly as traffic wasn’t cleared out from her path she chose. But as she got close enough to pick up visual on the smoke column coming from the crash site. Self-hatred continued to deliver a firm kick to her gut, but she also knew going through those thoughts won’t save him nor will it save Sebastian or Kerry from whoever is after them. And if it wasn’t Isaiah earlier, she knew this time it had to be.

But over the next second, a different calculation crossed her mind that gave pause to her momentum. She realized there was no way to not consider Sebastian’s encounter with the Cloak real; the pilot wasn’t who they thought it was, but the machine was. And there had never been reports of a fourth, either.

“Sebastian! Kerry! He’s not trying to hide anymore! Get out of there, now!” she yelled out with exasperation, fueling her next jump forward.

“No way! Not without Andre!” she heard Kerry fuss back as she heard the approach alarm sound off, IR scans indicating two incoming LTACs on their ascent from a recent jump.

Any response back would have to wait, and with how she judged their approach, the enemy knew what it was doing. Any shot from that angle would, if it hit, send them down on top of countless innocent civilians’ heads. She instead put her shield up in anticipation of incoming fire, which ended up confirming her choice as the correct one as shots rang off of them several times over the next few seconds.

All she could now think to do was make sure her landing was still spot-on all the while keeping her shield up at the right angle. And through her descent, she was completely unaware of the effects from her Antares OS settings still at the maxed-out setting from the other day. What normally would have been noticeably dizzying went completely unnoticed as she dug her rollers into the barren lot below, smoothly but firmly rolling to a quick spin and halt, now awaiting the aggressors’ landing.

Come on, damn it! The others aren’t going to last if they slow me down too long!

She watch the two landing just beyond sight behind a block of older office buildings. This was going to be a game of cat and mouse she couldn’t afford to play. Of course they’d be trying to keep me distracted! Knowing she had no time to calculate her own approach angles, she instead debated over the next two seconds whether to ditch her armor and attempt to flank them on the ground, or to keep her heavy equipment and hope for a slip-up on their part.

No… neither guarantees anything but time off the clock! Damn it!

Frustrated at her inability to decide, she reluctantly and nervously held up her launcher in the event they made their first move. “Please, you have to listen to me! Get out of there now! We are their only targets if you couldn’t tell already!”

.

.

“Thanks for the idea!” Kerry shouted back the instant she heard the warning, realizing her best choice was not to sit there and wait for the attack. She remembered how close she was to some open fields of the Balara area she was just familiar with enough. And then she caught eye of three Ai20’s rolling around the corner in a rush. “Devin, check Andre! I will draw these two new targets away from here!”

Devin could tell where that plan was going. “No, wait! Let me-”

“-Listen!” she cut him off with a rush of fear and regret that kicked in as fast as her over-boost engines, carrying her just west of their location for the fields. “Your 30 can’t keep up with my 50 AND you don’t have the right shielding equipped to face them! They’ll eat your group alive!”

Devin paused just feet away from the wrecked but largely intact medevac, taking a few difficult breaths before swallowing the reality of the situation. He knew she had a point, and then felt further convinced once the two incoming bogeys veered west to chase her at equal speeds. “Head right back, alright?! Don’t be a hero!” he shouted back as he opened his cockpit and got ready to climb down. “Squad, cover us! I’ll keep watch until the next ship arrives! Keep those explosives scanners up and running!”

.

.

Sebastian elected to keep his close combat package equipped, hugging each building he passed as he tried to keep a watch on the IR tracker from the corner of his vision. Each time he rolled around the corner of the block he circled, the tracked target placed himself at the opposite end of the block as if it was purposefully distancing itself from him. Knowing it wasn’t a cloaked enemy with any sort of element of surprise, he decided to be the first to take a jump at it. He retracted his left hand’s weapon and pulled his shield back around, expecting gunfire once he cleared the five story building separating the two.

After letting out a deep breath, he tightly gripped the controls and rocketed upward, quick to change his angle the split second he cleared the top of the building so as to leave as little chance possible for the other side to get a good firing angle. He instead met the ear-splitting ring of the collision alarm. And instead of firing his boosters downward, he left his hands’ positions where they were and floored the pedals once more, throwing his Ap50 farther into the sky.

He almost felt the whiff of heavy alloy just passing underneath him as if he just dodged a bullet train. [What the hell!?”] And once he realized what had happened, he spun around quickly to see a larger frame than most LTACs turning mid-air in a similar fashion to stare him down. But it wasn’t the perceived stare from the unseen pilot that came across as menacing, but rather the oversized sword it gripped with both hands, pulling back as if ready to swing again.

He knew it couldn’t make an approach at those speeds, or not at least any such sudden change without the resulting G’s knocking them unconscious, and started his descent. But before he could think of switching over to his rifle, the exact unthinkable occurred, now watching the heavy monster already darting right toward him. He felt the mental kick from his lower-set Antares OS so hard that even he knew right then it was dire. Dropping his shield, he now had the weight advantage enough to increase his speed and distance himself to the point the next swing would miss as well. And the ensuing landing came far faster than calculated, sending him almost careening into an apartment building before he found himself on better footing, shedding his speed off with a sharp turn at the adjacent intersection.

[I think I found the real cloak!] Sebastian called out through a quivering voice. He didn’t realize how shaken he was until now. His fingers and toes were tingling and numb, and his breathing was also noticeably shortened.

“Shit! Damn it, hold on!” he heard Devin cry out over the line, freezing him up even more.

“Devin?!” he heard Kerry shout back amidst the echoes of exchanged gunfire.

“Shit, shit!” Devin continued with heightened urgency. “HQ! Hurry the hell up!”

“Devin! What is it!?” Kerry fussed again.

“Medics are knocked out and your pilot has no pulse! What the- his chest’s all shot up! What the fuck do I do!?”

Sebastian was now not only frozen up by the heart-shattering update, he was now once more looking right down the street at an approaching sword that he felt was the size of his whole LTAC.

He had never felt this locked up with fear his entire life, now realizing he should’ve heeded Sam’s warning. “Sam!?! Kerry!?!”

---

“Thank God the Seraphiel is working in proper order! You couldn’t’ve chosen a worse time to give that bloody thing a test run!”

Although upset at the fact Marian had stuck around against the plan, Isaiah impatiently awaited Marian’s timely updates, keeping his eyes locked on the modified Ap50 standing down the street from him, feet at the ready once any move was made.

“Look, don’t push it. You’ve got time, and things are fortunately going as hoped. Sister dear is dreadfully tied up north of you, and Melancon will need a miracle to make it out of her sortie.”

He remained silent, however, almost as if avoiding being heard by someone. He uttered not one sound since launch, with only the sound of his controlled breathing and the occasional system feedback alerts filling the air inside his cramped cockpit. The cushioning was much more heavily layered than Hexa’s standard build, almost to a point it would choke the pilot from the lack of moving space. Even the cockpit hatch seemed much closer to his face than before, all due to the thicker plating present. But the starkest contrast between it and the normal cockpit setup were the control sticks; rather than having each one tiltable on an axis like a standard joystick that sat under his hands, they were attached to a pull-type base that were set in front of his hands.

And from the outside, the Seraphiel he piloted was revealed to be heavily based off a more recent Hexa platform but with all mobility parts having been completely revamped. More bulk was added to the shoulder units to handle the enormous sword it held, and to counterbalance the inertia involved were larger thruster units strategically placed throughout the frame. Weight was saved by having no other equipment attached and no extended flight mechanisms, hinting that the frame was built to make one or two successive aerial bursts with overall limited jumping distances compared to the average Hexa model.

“Best part? No sign of Rodgers, and no movement from their Marikina HQ. Not even from their delivery site at Parañaque. Our network has no ears on her, either, so we are all assuming Rodgers flew the coop.”

Isaiah didn’t feel any sense of relief, however, and hearing that name only had him gripping the controls even tighter. And in that next instant he saw his foe’s Ap50 reach for its rifle with a lean backward as if to burst off.

But Isaiah was ready for it. His feet were already pushing both pedals to the floor as he pulled back one control stick, pushing the other forward. And as the Seraphiel pulled its sword in front, brilliant white sparks danced about in flashes as each bullet struck the broad surface as if it were a shield. And with no fear from taking any direct hits, it closed in on the Ap50 with rapid ease.

---

[What in the hell-?!] Sebastian growled in panic, unable to fathom what contraption the unknown model was utilizing as its shield and main weapon at the same time. And he had seen how rifle rounds acted against various types of shields, and none of them ever reacted in that way before. But the next sound he heard awoke the deepest paralyzing fear yet, and it came to the tune of crackling plasma arc energy. The backside of the sword lit up in a blinding blue fashion, now close enough to pull back for a swing.

That sound. That sight. That was always the last thing seen by anyone who survived it before, and they were few in number. Stories from Dani, stories from Renzo, and even stories from Sam. He knew he was about to be next, and it would take outside help to free him from his locked-up joints.

The Antares OS, as much as Sebastian had forsaken its presence this evening, rudely reminded him of just that, sending a shockwave through his nerves and nearly forced his wrists and ankles to work.