Chapter LXXIX: Live, love, lost.
1700hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.
"Let the world stop turning, let the sun stop burning, let them tell me love is not worth going through. If it all falls apart, I will know deep in my heart, the only dream that mattered had come true. In this life, I was loved by you." Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, In This Life.
"You're brilliant in battlefields, show brilliance now/With permission I'm your bodyguard, shall I become king and usurp it?/Duty or love, it's the same to me/I've the prowess to serve of attack you my love/My life and soul is your take it, O mighty warrior." Dheera Dheera Dheera, from "Magadheera."
Mina and Amy ran. They ran because their lives depended on it. They ran because they had no choice. The sounds of gunfire behind them signified that the final battle was beginning, and that Serena, Lita, and Raye were doing everything that they could to buy them time. Within eight minutes, they had covered a kilometer, and showed no signs of stopping anytime soon, their pace fuelled by their adrenaline (and emergency rations).
Lita opened up with the HK417 that Mina had left behind, at about 500 meters. She lined up a shot at an approaching youma…they all looked the same though. There were no leaders, just programming attributes that told the UGVs to attack whomever. She took the shot, killing the UGV.
She wondered why the naval guns weren't opening up, or why no planes were flying overhead to drop bombs on the very exposed targets.
"Sir, look!" A staff officer pointed at the monitor. "Gunfire, over by that riverbed."
That got everyone's attention quickly. "Get me USCINCSOC," COMUSNAVCENT said to the comm officer. It took a second, but they got Overlord on the line.
"Overlord, do you have any units in that region, over?" COMUSNAVCENT asked the general on the JSTARS aircraft.
"Uh…" Overlord hesitated for a moment. He knew it was the SAILOR team, trapped by the thousand or so youma. "Standby, Admiral, over."
"Ma'am, USCINCSOC, for you," COS said to the President. Sighing, she picked up the phone that her COS was holding. She could see the action on the screen in front of her, and it was not looking good for her in any regard.
"What can I do for you, General?"
"Madame President," Overlord asked over the secure line. "This thing is spiraling out of my control. I have COMUSNAVCENT asking me about a stranded group engaging about a thousand or so enemy UGVs, and they're going to start asking more and more questions unless we do something about them."
"What do you suggest?"
"I'm going to pass it off as a PMC unit that's under attack by their own machines. Make it somewhat ironic."
"Do it. Just make sure that they don't know any more about the SAILOR unit."
"Understood."
Overlord turned his attention back to COMUSNAVCENT. "General Williams here, Admiral," Overlord said very calmly, confident that he had a handle on the quickly degrading situation.
"Go ahead."
"Admiral, I have no units operating in that area. From what we can gather, they're leftover PMC units under attack their own UGVs. After their CIC was disabled, that must have sent them off."
That relieved COMUSNAVCENT. Now the President's order was making more sense. Better let their own machines kill the bastards, then mop up whatever mess they left behind.
"Understood General, thanks for the heads up."
"Who was that?" the J-2 asked.
"It was General Williams, the person in charge of SOCOM. He's up there in a JSTARS plane, keeping watch over the special operations units on the ground."
"What did he say about that unit?"
"It's not ours. Just that PMC got itself in over its head, and now being consumed fighting the creatures of its own making."
That brought a slight smile to the J-2's face.
"How very ironic, Admiral. Kind of like the Terminator."
"Oh very much so. I would prefer the story of King Diomedes, who was fed to his own man-eating mares by Heracles, but to each his own." He readjusted himself in his chair, trying to get comfortable after a long day of action. "I actually did see that movie when it first came out." COMUSNAVCENT sometimes reminded the rest of his staff that he was quite older than most of them.
"Of course sir, that one was a classic."
A staff officer looked up from his display. "Admiral, I have two members of that group splitting off and making a run toward the sea."
"They're not going to make it far," he casually observed.
Mina and Amy had covered another kilometer when a burst of machine gun fire rippled in front of them, sending up dirt and bits of rock into their faces.
"Amy, keep running!" Mina yelled to her, firing her shotgun from the hip at several approaching youma. She only managed to hit one of them, sending it careening over backward and out of the fight. The other youma fired their machines guns in reply, their bullets zipping past and impacting all around them.
"Dammit!" Mina cursed. They hadn't gotten very far, and now the youma were closing in on all sides. They just needed to keep moving, that's all.
"I got you covered!" Amy yelled to her, firing her P90 at an approaching youma.
Mina pushed herself up from the prone position and continued running, shoving in some more shotgun shells into her gun, then turning around and kneeling, firing off slug rounds at the UGVs. Amy ejected her magazine from the P90 and fished around for another one; it was the last one she had. Oh well. She fired the entire thing off at two distant youma, managing to at least wreck their treads up enough so they couldn't continue. It bought them some time at least.
The two of them leapfrogged across the plain, heading up some steep hills, continuing on their path toward the ocean.
Lita fired the HK417 again and again, hitting youma left and right. They just kept on coming, and at 300 meters they opened up with their own machine guns, their bullets zipping through the air and riddling their crude fortifications that they had built in the last hour or so.
"Motherfuckers!" Raye cursed. She had Lita's M249, and was firing indiscriminately by holding down the trigger and spraying bullets all over the place.
"Raye, you're not going to hit anything like that!" Lita said loudly to her. She was wasting fucking ammunition when they needed ever round to count.
"They're all together!" she yelled back. "Doesn't matter if I aim or not!"
"Just keep firing!" Serena said. "We have to buy Amy and Mina enough time!"
"Huh, they actually made it pretty far," COMUSNAVCENT commented, watching the battle continue on. The vast majority of the UGVs seemed to be homing in on the three of the soldiers, who were shooting at everything that moved, but a couple dozen had split off, and were engaging the two other soldiers. They were making a run for it, trying to get the coast, presumably to surrender. "I'm impressed, they're extremely determined. If they want help…maybe we'll give it to them."
"But POTUS said not to do anything."
"That was for offensive operations. In self-defense, now that's a whole different ball game. Plus, they're not covered by the Geneva Convention, so we have no obligation to help them, whatsoever."
"You're not going to shoot them if they do surrender though, right?" That prospect made the J-2 very uncomfortable.
"We could, technically. They're 'unlawful combatants,' but I'm not that cruel. We'll just let them rot in Gitmo for the rest of their lives."
"Sounds good to me."
They kept watching the screen, and they saw the remaining soldiers on the ground fall, one by one.
The HK417 clicked empty. Lita checked for spare magazines; there were none.
"I'm out, I'm out!" she yelled.
"Get the spare machine gun in the buggy!" Serena yelled, firing her M4 CQB-R at an advancing youma. It went down, tumbling town a small mound with the rest of the UGVs that had been destroyed beforehand. They still kept coming. Five more UGVs scrambled up in its place before being destroyed by a long burst of fire from Raye.
Raye, from a small mound, was firing Lita's machine gun as fast as she could. In the back of Raye's mind, she remembered a prayer that the nuns at the school had taught her. She hadn't really thought of it until now, but its words resounded in her head as loud as the machine gun she was firing.
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."
The machine gun clicked empty. Raye reached for another magazine, switching out the empty one for the last one that she had. She depressed the trigger and continued firing into the massive hoard of mechanical beasts besieging their position. She made sure that every burst counted, every round that she fired would find its mark. Spraying and praying didn't make much sense now when you were running low on ammunition.
"Where there is hatred, let me sow love."
Lita ran over to where the other machine gun was, in the back of the buggy. She wrenched it out with her hands, ignoring the screaming pain in her left arm. Quickly, she ran back to her position behind some rocks, and plopped the gun back down. She hated everything that had happened to them up to this point. The cowardly politicians, the idiotic corporate executives, the dumb-as-nails JSDF, and now the backstabbing Americans. And they were the causalities.
"Where there is injury, pardon."
The pain in her phantom arm screamed even greater now as the recoil from the machine gun rattled her whole body. The M60 fired a heavier round than the M249, but the results were more devastating. Youma after youma fell to her machine gun, sparking and billowing flame from their ruined carcasses. Bits of metal and wiring scattered the riverbed, analogous to the guts and flesh that would have been left behind if they were fighting humans.
"Where there is doubt, faith."
Panic momentarily hit Serena as she destroyed another youma trying to outflank their position. Two more rolled over a sandbar, only to be destroyed by a grenade she had tossed right after destroying that youma. Reassured that temporary crisis was over, she turned back to chopping down the waves of approaching UGVs to her front.
"Where there is despair, hope."
Out of the haze, Lita could see a small UAV drone hovering above. Maybe it was a leftover Nakanishi one, but she guessed that the US military was watching the entire scene unfold. Goddamn them. They were watching their inevitable fate, all from the comfort and safety of their boardrooms and bunkers, pointing at vague outlines on a map and condemning good men and women to death.
"Where there is darkness, light."
As the rays of sun slowly dipped beneath the horizon, Serena thought that the dream she had earlier was coming back to haunt her. How she missed those good old days, even if they were not good at all. Ejecting a magazine from her M4 CQB-R, she fumbled for a spare one. Three left. Better make them count. The long shadows of the setting sun slowly started to cover the battlefield in its murky opaqueness, leaving the combatants to soldier on.
"Where there is sadness, joy."
Lita smiled bitterly at their situation. It was so far removed from when they woke up in the "top secret" medical facility some six months earlier, when they were promised many things, things that would never materialize or come to pass. Like all other things, like all of the promises made, they would disappear into the ground, trampled into dust by the stampede of youma slowly making their way toward them.
"O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;"
"I'm not going to make it!" Raye shouted over the din of battle. She fired her grenade launcher rapidly, expending all six chambers in a matter of seconds. A group of tightly packed youma blew up in a spectacular fashion, sending their parts everywhere and cooking off the ammunition they stored inside of their metal shells. Raye looked for more grenades; there were none left.
"We will persevere!" Serena yelled back, over the radio. "We will make it!"
Thanks Serena, Raye thought to herself, knowing the blatant lies in Serena's words. But unlike the U.S President or the Japanese PM, it was not a lie of malintent, but a lie to instill hope and courage in a situation rapidly turning against them, if not completely against them already. Raye dropped the MGL and got back to her machine gun.
"To be understood, as to understand;"
Serena knew that this was going to be it for them, despite what she had just said earlier. She had hoped that no matter the chances, they would at least make it out on top, prevailing against all the odds. At least they could have the comfort of hope, betraying them in their last moments as the youma swamped over their position, with the US military and their allies standing around, doing nothing. At least this last stand would go down in the history books…oh wait, they didn't exist, so it wouldn't even get the luxury of a footnote. Serena ducked behind some rocks and drew her sidearm, what little it would do against those UGVs.
"To be loved, as to love."
Raye felt several bullets hit her right arm. There was no pain, just the inability to move said arm.
She could see the blood start to pool underneath her body, the dark red fluid staining the ground as it leaked from her body. Lita saw her go down, and dropped whatever she was doing to see if Raye could be helped. Bullets snapped around her heels and whistled through the air, but she kept running. Lita slid next to her, and grabbed her hand.
"For it is in giving that we receive."
Raye handed Lita her last magazine from her M16A4. Her machine gun could take those magazines, what little it would do her now. Lita didn't even have time to look down at Raye's crumpled and bloody body, not even time to mutter a quick goodbye. Yeah, Raye could be an ass at times…well, almost all the time, but that wasn't the point now. Raye was going to die…and for what reason? Because it was politically expedient? Because it was their turn in life? Because they had drawn a bad deck of cards? That was bullshit. Lita picked up her machine gun and ran back to her original position. She continued to fire the machine gun until the magazine was expended.
"It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,"
A youma got a lucky shot off on Lita. A 40mm grenade detonated right behind her, riddling her back with shrapnel. She screamed out in pain, but continued to pull the trigger with her good hand. Another grenade, and then another grenade exploded next to her, sending her flying into a small ditch.
She thought of all the times that she had been a complete ass herself, only looking out for number one, pouting in corners, beating up the losers at school, bitching about how she was never going to get her own uniform…yeah, that paled in comparison to what was going on now. It was time to make peace with herself. In a last gesture of defiance, she took out her Mk23 and fired it again and again at the youma that approached her, firing their machine guns wildly. A youma somehow went down before Lita succumbed to a hail of bullets that quickly put an end to her life.
"And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life."
Serena was firing her sidearm at an approaching youma, no more than twenty meters away when she felt the bullets hit her. They penetrated her armor, through her often-repaired organs and flesh, through her now weak and frail body, worn down by almost two weeks of fighting. There was no amount of healing solution that could repair that sort of damage. Serena slowly tumbled through the air, seeing the dark haze of the battle stream over them.
"Amen."
Serena lay down on the ground, her blood spilling out on the hard ground, never to stand up again. All that she had been though, all the sacrifices that she had made, for country, for her friends, for her freedom…all for naught. As she closed her eyes for the final time, she thought of the good times and bad, the tears, the laughter, the hope and joy she had felt with her friends. Finally, poor Darien flashed through her mind, one last time. She died with a small smile on her face.
Raye felt the life slowly draining from her, and the prayer ended in her mind. She thought that she would be going to join her grandfather now. It would be alright now. The long nightmare was over.
"Goddammit, can anyone hear me?!" Mina screamed into her radio. She fired several more rounds from her Glock 26 before it clicked empty. She reached for a magazine, and realized that it was her last one.
"Last mag!" she yelled to Amy, who was trying to boost the signal in any way, shape or form so that maybe somebody could rescue them…they were desperate. Even if the President had given orders for them to be terminated, they would have been easily shelled or bombed by the fleet or their planes. But that hadn't happened. So someone perhaps had a heart after all.
They were trapped in a small gulley, with the sea to their backs, and a couple of dozen youma advancing to their left, right and center.
"Grenade out!" Amy said, tossing a frag grenade from her tactical vest to some UGVs on her right. The small explosion disrupted the automated formation, and managed to kill several of them. But more just took their place. Amy threw another grenade on her vest before realizing that it was her last one. She ducked back behind a large rock to try to communicate with anyone…someone.
"This is…this is…" Amy faltered for a moment. They had no formal callsigns, besides the now extremely stupidly sounding "SAILOR Mercury" and "SAILOR Venus." Goddammit, why did she have to come up with those names away? "We need some help! Please, for god's sake, we need some assistance! We're under fire by dozens of enemy UGVs, and we will die if someone doesn't come and help us!"
Amy swung around to fire a couple more rounds from her MP5-PDW. She fired a long burst at a youma, but the small caliber bullets were largely ineffective.
"Somebody please help us!" was her last words into the radio.
Several rounds from a UGV snapped into her right shoulder. Amy cried out before several more riddled her chest, penetrating the body armor she was wearing. She fell to the ground.
Mina looked over at the sound of Amy's cry, and saw her friend and lover falling toward the ground.
"Amy?! Amy!" Mina screamed. "No!"
She forgot that she was transmitting over the radio.
Aboard the USS Carl Vinson, Mina's frantic babbling finally got through. One of the radio operators picked it up and was horrified to hear a screaming girl on the other side, pleading for help.
"Sir, we're getting something from the island, it's being broadcasted in the clear."
"Put it up."
"Somebody, please help us!" was the radio message. There was some more incoherent babbling before a recognizable message got through.
"No…Amy…please…don't die…don't die…" It was a voice of a girl. That shut up almost everyone instantly.
"Where is that coming from?" COMUSNAVCENT asked the radio operator.
The operator triangulated the signal. "It's those two people that we saw running off."
"Oh sweet Jesus." COMUSNAVCENT felt a pang of guilt. Maybe he had been too quick to judge. It certainly reminded him of his family back home.
"Amy…please…no…" The UAV feed showed the girl cradling the body in her arms, sobbing. The CIC became very quiet, just like when the missiles had been first fired from the island. But this was different. This was the other side of humanity. This was the side of people that military men and women tried to push away, because it would affect their job performance and their duty. That was not a bad thing. But this was too much. After seeing days of piled up bodies on the TV screen, with thousands killed in the United States alone following the terrorist attacks, and their brethren mercilessly attack slaughtered in the first engagement, and now their entire battle…no…no, this was the breaking point. There was no rhyme or reason to this. Who were they? They didn't care. All they saw was a broken woman…no, a child. Someone who was scared. Someone who was frightened out of their mind.
Was it a trap? Perhaps. But there was something else in the fleet that day, in the CIC of the Carl Vinson, the Harry Truman, the John C Stennis, the destroyers, the cruisers, the amphibious ships, the fighter planes, the AWACS, the JSTARS aircraft…there was a spirit there, that said "No." "This will not happen ever again." "We will protect the innocent, and destroy the injustice in the world today."
The President was back in the conference room, looking at the entire drama unfold. This was bad. Very, very, very bad. The other three members of the team were done for, having been killed off by a barrage of bullets and grenades by those UGVs, but these two would not die.
"Madame President, it's the Admiral of the fleet. He asking if he should send in rescue teams."
President Hamilton put her head between both of her hands. Shit, shit, shit. Her control of the operation was slowly starting to slip away from her grasp, and there was nothing she could do about it.
"Put him on, I want to talk to him directly." The COS gave her the phone receiver.
In the CIC of the Carl Vinson, POTUS made herself clear.
"This is the President, do not attempt rescue operations," she said in a tired, but stern voice. It had also been put up on the speakers as well. This was damned important information after all.
"Confirm that," COMUSNAVCENT said to his J-2.
"Madame President, please confirm that you do not want us to start rescue operations," the J-2 said back to POTUS over the secure phone line.
President Hamilton closed her eyes and breathed in…and out. Must not lose temper, she thought to herself. "Yes, that is correct."
Everyone was looking at the screen, with the two girls on the ground, one of them cradling the one in her arms, sobbing and babbling incoherently into the radio as the remaining UGVs advanced in for the kill. The silence in the CIC was deafening.
COMUSNAVCENT motioned for the J-2 to give him the phone receiver. He did so, handing it over to the Admiral.
"Are you absolutely sure?" COMUSNAVCENT asked the President.
"Admiral, are you questioning my orders?" POTUS said to him, her voice rising a little bit. "You are not to rescue that group down there, whatever you do."
"Madame President…" COMUSNAVCENT started to say, but was cut off by the President.
"Goddammit Admiral, are you questioning orders from your commanding officer?" It might not seem much, considering the amount of swearing that had been going on today, but for the President to berate an officer like that…well…that wasn't a good sign.
"Absolutely not, Madame President, just making sure, that's all." It was official; the President had just lost her mind there. She wasn't telling them something about the situation on the island. Fine. They would just have to rescue these two girls then.
"Get a rescue section in the air. Helicopter escort and everything. Don't we have an AC-130 patrolling around somewhere?"
The J-2 nodded in response. "I'll ask the Air Force about that."
"Make it quick. It looks like their position is going to be overrun."
POTUS heard all of that. She was turning red, trying to keep all of her anger in check. "Admiral, what are you doing?" she hissed into the receiver. "I gave you a direct order to…"
The comm officer in the CIC terminated the conversation with POTUS.
"Looks like we lost her," he sarcastically said. "Must be some atmospheric interference."
"Of course," COMUSNAVCENT agreed stoically. "Must have been that."
On the flight deck of the Carl Vinson, several SH-60s powered up and started their takeoff procedure, along AH-1Z Vipers, who were going to provide one last CAS mission.
"Dragon 1-1, flash message, over." The AWACS plane had just received new orders from COMUSNAVCENT for a support operation on the island.
"This is Dragon 1-1, receiving, over."
"We're directing to a CAS mission on the south side of the island, break. Civilians or noncoms, probable Nakanishi employees are trapped and are under attack by UGVs, break. Danger close fire mission. We'll send you the coordinates, over."
"Understood AWACS. Out."
The AC-130U received the coordinates from AWACS, and banked to the left in order to reach the AO.
"Ready to fuck some shit up?!" the pilot yelled back to the rest of the crew.
"Hell yeah," the Fire Control Officer replied.
"Tell me about it," the TV operator added. "This'll make Western Russia look like a friggin' cakewalk."
In the main body of the AC-130U, gunners loaded the 105mm cannon, prepped the 40mm Bofors cannon and the 25mm Gatling cannon. The 105mm M102 howitzer was (obviously), originally used by the US Army during Vietnam and thereafter, and was lightweight enough to be carried by a helicopter. The more compact design made it perfect for the AC-130 gunship, which improved on the previous incarnations, the AC-47 and AC-119. Those planes, while extremely effective in suppressing infantry and light vehicles, was not so great in destroying tanks or other heavy materiel due to them only having machine guns or Gatling guns on their planes. The answer then became, "Let's stick a howitzer on a cargo plane and see how that works." And it worked splendidly, for all intents and purposes. The autocannon, the 40mm Bofors, had even a longer history than the M102 howitzer, dating back to the Second World War. It was ironically a popular anti-aircraft weapon, effective against low to medium flying aircraft, and its large caliber made it good against infantry as well. Fast firing and accurate, the USAF had tried to replace it with something more modern, the 30mm Bushmaster cannon, but those had failed several tests, shelving that project. The Bofors stayed.
Finally, the blistering fire of the General Dynamics GAU-12/U Equalizer25mm Gatling cannon was used on soft targets, firing about 4000 rounds a minute to blanket entire city blocks with their shells. Only one was on the AC-130U, and one was enough. The original AC-47 carried ten .50 M2 Brownings or three 7.62mm M134 miniguns (not unlike the one that Mina had used during their escapades in Virginia), but again, those guns were not as effective against armor. This one gun was probably more effective than all of them put together, and when fired in conjunction with everything else…well, there wasn't anything left.
"Alright…let's see what's up…holy shit!" The TV operator couldn't believe what he was seeing down there. "Enemy…what are those again?"
The gunnery chief sent a quick message to the AWACS. "AWACS, advise, we're seeing lots of…it looks like robots, over."
"Dragon 1-1, those are enemy Unmanned Ground Vehicles, break. Consider those hostile and to be destroyed, over." Overlord had sent some data to the AWACS aircraft about an hour earlier when the special operations units had first encountered them.
"Roger that. Let's go to work y'all!"
The TV operator took a good look at the target rich environment in front of him. He selected the most juicy looking target, a group of about twenty UGVs, all clustered together. Their automatic programming bunched them together, and they were homing in for the kill on the vulnerable civilians. Not today, you fuckers, the operator thought. Even if they were Nakanishi employees, there had been enough killing for one day. Time to end this.
"Target the large group of UGVs about one hundred meters away from the personnel," he said over the radio.
"Fire the 105," the gunnery officer instructed.
The operator logged the location, distance, time to target, wind speed, aircraft speed, terrain, and a host of other factors to get the 105mm round as close as possible to the target. "Fire!"
"Away!" The gunner depressed the firing mechanism and a 105mm shell flew the kilometer or so distance to the target. A shell was ejected from the breech of the gun, and as quick as they could, another 105mm shell was rammed into the gun.
"Gun ready!" the gunnery team in the back of the hold reported to the operator.
"Firing!"
"Away!" Another round zipped through the air and exploded another formation of youma, taking them all out.
Mina was oblivious to all of this, with the crashing of artillery shells, the thump-thump-thump of the Bofors, or the ripping of the Gatling cannons; all she could focus on right now was the dying Amy in her arms.
"Amy…can you hear me?"
Somehow, through all that gunfire and explosions, Amy opened up her eyes to see Mina's face over hers'.
"I can hear you," she slowly said, conserving the last of her strength.
Amy smiled weakly at Mina, her small voice trembling with the pain and agony she was fighting back. "I'm sorry that it had to end this way," Amy whispered to Mina. Tears rolled down both their cheeks.
"Amy…I love you," Mina replied to her, caressing her blue hair as the sound of the AC-130U filled the air, coming back for another attack run.
There was a pause as Mina and Amy tried to savor their last moments here on Earth. The ground was rocked by another explosion as a 105mm shell detonated nearby. It was followed by several smaller explosions as the Bofors thumped away.
Amy blinked away the tears for a second, trying to make light of the situation. "Mina…Mina…I'm sorry," she quietly said, in her timid voice that made her sometimes unintelligible sometimes. But Mina could hear her loud and clear on this day.
Mina hugged Amy tightly, burying her head into her right shoulder, ignoring the blood that was coming out from the wound there. "Don't be sorry Amy. You have nothing to be sorry for."
Amy slowly shook her head, in a way that it almost felt like she was nuzzling Mina. "No, Mina. It's something…something that I've been meaning…"
"Shh…shh…" Mina continued to stroke Amy's hair in the last moments in her life.
"Mina…I…"
Mina stopped stroking Amy's hair and looked at the face of her lover.
"What is it?"
There was pause that seemed like it lasted for ten thousand years. Amy finally confessed to what had been eating away at her heart for all this time.
"It wasn't going to work out."
Those words made Mina's heart stop.
"Amy…what?"
Amy could see Mina's soul shatter into a thousand pieces. But she couldn't leave her without knowing the truth. It was that mind versus heart thing again; Amy thought that by telling the truth, in a logical fashion, that she could at least leave Mina with a sense of what she felt after all this time.
"I'm sorry. It wasn't going to work out between us. It...it just wasn't."
Mina couldn't stop staring at Amy.
No…no…no…no…no, no, no, no, no, no no no no no no!
It wasn't supposed to end like this! Why?
"Amy, what do you mean?" Mina shook her firmly. "What do you mean by that?"
"I'm truly sorry Mina. I am."
The light faded from her eyes, and the last bit of strength left her. She went limp in Mina's arms.
Mina would have screamed out, anything, something. Nothing came out of her mouth though. All she could do was stare mutely at the limp body of Amy in her arms. She wanted to die, it hurt so much.
In the AC-130, they could see that their work was done here. The remains of about one-hundred youma littered the ground, no thanks in part to the massive firepower that was onboard the gunship.
"This is Dragon 1-1 to AWACS," the pilot said over the radio. "All hostile targets have been suppressed, the AO is clear, over."
AWACS seemed pleased by that statement. "Roger that Dragon 1-1. RTB, out."
"That was amazing," the TV operator said to his crewmates.
"So beautiful man," one of the gunners replied. "Much better fucking things up in real life than on a video game."
"Heh." The TV operator thought that this was probably one of the better missions he had been on, and they were certainly going to get a kick out of the combat footage back at base.
Dragon 1-1 banked left and continued on its flight path to base.