Chapter 91 – I Shall Overlook This Once, if You Prefer to Call It an Accident.

The heavy frame Yera stood between Arden and the blackness of space.

That the earlier strike had been no misfire -- that it had carried clear, deliberate hostility -- was written in every line of the confrontation that followed.

"...I am prepared to overlook this once, as an accident, if that is what you would prefer."

Letaria fixed the Yera with a cold stare from inside her cockpit. The response that came through the comm was voice only -- stripped of anything that sounded like feeling.

"Lady Letaria. I am sorry. But I must ask you to end here."

The words were barely finished before the large Photon Rifle in the Yera's right arm opened fire. Merciless bolts of light tore through the void.

"--! You are serious!"

Letaria threw Arden's thrusters sideways immediately, sliding the frame clear of the bolts' path. In the same motion, Arden brought its own Photon Rifle up in its right hand and returned fire.

But Twoin didn't even choose to evade. The Yera drove its massive shoulder armor forward and simply took the shots. Sparks scattered violently -- and the surface armor scorched. That was all. The defensive capability was as absolute as the machine's bulk suggested.

From there, the two machines exchanged fire in earnest.

The problem was plain: Letaria's marksmanship had never been her strength. Her shots glanced off the Yera's heavy plating again and again, her hit rate low from the start. Twoin's return fire, meanwhile, failed to come within grazing distance of Letaria's evasion. The exchange threatened to settle into a stalemate -- nothing but wasted energy on both sides, with no resolution in sight.

"-- Then there is only one answer. Close quarters."

Letaria made her decision without hesitation. The Photon Rifle was stowed back on the rear weapon rack; in the same motion, Arden's right arm blazed to life with the luminous blade of the Photon Saber.

She drove forward -- threading through the Yera's rifle fire in sharp, irregular zigzags, closing the distance with controlled aggression.

One more step and the saber would have its range. She was certain of it.

In that instant, her magic felt something -- a threat rushing in fast from the side, something that didn't belong.

"--!"

A cold shock ran down her spine, pure and immediate. Letaria fired the back-boosters to full without thinking, fighting the forward momentum to bring the machine to a violent halt. The frame shrieked under the sudden brake; the G-force hit the cockpit like a physical blow. Without the new Noble Lotus II, the load would have bruised something internal. With it -- and with Letaria's own resilience beneath that -- she took no damage.

An instant later, through the space where Arden's chest had just been, a massive spinning projectile passed -- heavy, silver, and gleaming dully as it rotated at tremendous speed.

"What -- a boomerang--!?"

"As I expected. It does not reach you either. Remarkable, Lady Letaria."

Twoin's murmur accompanied the arc of the returning projectile as it locked back into the Yera's left arm with a sharp clank. Her instinct had been exactly right: a large, metal boomerang -- a guided orbital throwing weapon.

She had not seen this before. In the battle against the unmanned machines, Twoin had used this weapon -- but at the time, Letaria had been fighting in a separate sector against a different opponent, and his combat style had never crossed her awareness.

It did not matter. Whatever the weapon, whatever its nature -- her magic had read the trajectory perfectly and answered it in time.

Twoin moved without pause. The boomerang was released again; simultaneously, the right hand built a wall of Photon Rifle fire. A curved, unpredictable arc from the throwing weapon; straight optical fire from the rifle -- the two working together in combination.

An average pilot would have been overwhelmed within moments, the overlapping lines of attack impossible to untangle. But Letaria met it as she met everything -- and kept evading.

"...Persistent little -- you are becoming tiresome!"

When the boomerang swung back and came at Arden from behind again, Letaria chose not to evade this time. She turned -- and in the same motion brought the Photon Saber through in a single, perfectly timed slash. The blade of light split the silver projectile cleanly in two. It detonated.

"If that is your intention -- then I shall show no further mercy, not one particle of it!"

Arden drove through the cloud of debris and smoke, closing straight for the Yera's throat.

"Then show me that power--!"

On the other side of the severed comm, Twoin too had made his choice -- and drove the Yera's output to its absolute limit.