Chapter 115 – You Fall Far Short of That, I Am Afraid

The deep-purple Arden faced off against the massive red Makina.

The pressure radiating off the machine piloted by the raiders' leader was formidable.

"Casually turning the tables on Blang, and rumor even has it you took down some kind of giant activation weapon... it seems that wasn't such an exaggeration after all."

The large machine leveled its right-arm heavy Photon Rifle and left-shoulder heavy cannon at Arden together, and before he'd even finished speaking, unleashed a merciless flash of light.

"...!"

Letaria's sharp, split-second intuition read the line of fire completely, dodging by the barest hair's breadth. Without missing a beat, she pressed forward in a straight line, closing the distance to the large machine.

"Truly, what a thoroughly tasteless man you are!"

"Can't run this line of work otherwise, now can I!"

Shouting that, the leader's machine activated the large gatling cannon mounted on its other shoulder in the same instant, unleashing an unbroken hail of solid rounds.

It was a density of heavy firepower only achievable through the large machine's sheer bulk and capacity.

Arden wove and turned, carefully shifting position so the transport ship and the drifting escape pods never fell along the line of fire, watching for an opening to close in.

"You are... persistent, are you not!"

The wide, looping trajectory she chose to divert the fire away from behind her.

It was a choice made to keep the escape pods out of harm's way, but in exchange, the strain of sharp turns at such extreme speed piled up, and the load on Letaria's body climbed steadily.

Watched from an external monitor, it would have looked like behavior well beyond anything a human body should be able to endure.

The leader's voice, confident at first, began to show creeping traces of panic and disbelief.

"What kind of speed is this...! How is a pilot even surviving this much G-force...!?"

Slipping into point-blank range in an instant through that extreme maneuvering, Arden closed the gap.

Letaria summoned a blade of light from her right arm without hesitation.

"Wide open! Photon Saber!"

A sharp, single stroke. The blade of light swept through in a diagonal cut, cleanly severing the leader's large Photon Rifle, arm and all.

"Tch!"

But the man was a battle-hardened veteran leader. From point-blank range, he fired the remaining shoulder gatling in a zero-distance sweep.

Judging that pressing further could turn into a mutual kill, Arden immediately pulled back, abandoning the follow-up and putting distance between them.

"Terrifying stuff... but how about this!"

Even having lost an arm, the leader's machine recovered its stance instantly, quickly switching the shoulder cannon's mode over to a different weapon system.

That instant -- a sharp alarm shot through Letaria's senses.

(...What's coming out of that cannon is a wide spread of scattered rounds... a "shot-gun"!)

"Ngh...!"

Letaria snapped Arden into a rapid turn, threading through the widely scattered shotgun spread and the gatling's relentless barrage with masterful precision.

"Honestly, didn't expect it to go this far! But this thing's a hell of a lot stronger than some outdated activation weapon -- let's see how long you can keep running!"

The leader's machine kept pouring on the relentless barrage.

Letaria continued her evasive maneuvers, but the bigger Arden's movements grew, the more a heavy sense of dread welled up in her chest.

(...This will not do. If I keep making such large evasive movements, I risk catching the transport ship or the survivors in it eventually...!)

As if seizing on that momentary hesitation, a massive cluster of shot bore down right in front of her. If she moved widely --

"Dodge!!"

As if answering Letaria's own fierce will, the "Extension Cruise Booster" units mounted on both of Arden's shoulders erupted with blinding light.

The mass of rounds, on a direct collision course, was forced aside with thrust so fast it defied the eye.

The overwhelming force of that sudden thrust sent crushing pressure through the cockpit, warping Letaria's vision. But she forced the shock down through sheer will.

"...! With this... I can do it!"

Letaria gritted her teeth and began her charge toward the large machine once more.

"I'm not letting you get any closer than this!!"

The leader's machine, eliminating every blind spot, unleashed both shoulder-mounted gatling and shotgun at their absolute limit simultaneously. A wall of fire blanketing the entire space.

Move the machine as little as possible while still reliably slipping through that barrage -- the answer Letaria settled on was a brutal one.

"I can get closer!!"

Arden fired both shoulder boosters simultaneously -- not toward her direction of travel, but directly sideways.

In an instant, Arden slid sideways through space.

Then, before the next round could even reach her, she fired the opposite booster this time.

By firing both shoulder-mounted extension boosters in short, explosive bursts, she achieved a perfect "right-angle shift" that seemed to completely ignore her own mass and the laws of physics.

Sliding in a straight line, snapping at a perfect right angle, threading the gaps between rounds with the absolute minimum distance traveled.

--But the cost was severe.

The G-force from that instantaneous, inertia-defying right-angle turn hit Letaria with pressure that exceeded even Arden running at full speed through open space.

"Gnnh...!!"

Enduring the shock, she slipped back into her opponent's guard once more -- and this time, perfectly.

"Impossible...!!?"

The leader let out a cry of disbelief at maneuvering that defied the physical limits of tracking, utterly unfollowable.

Right before his eyes, the deep-purple machine drew its Photon Saber.

"--This ends now!!"

A flash of light tore through space.

The blade, swept through in a single horizontal stroke, cut clean through the large red Makina's heavy armor, splitting its massive frame cleanly in two.

"Your machine, and your skill, fall far short of even that 'outdated activation weapon,' I am afraid."

Letaria murmured, her back to the exploding wreckage of the machine.