Here it is the fifteenth Chapter of rebuilding Earth. I hope you have enjoyed your holidays and I hope you like this chapter.
AN: Titan AE doesn't belong to me.
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"Milord. Escorts one and two destroyed!" Informed one of the bridge operators. "Several contacts on the radar!"
"What!" Lelantos shouted in disbelief as he looked at the operators. He looked to the side and activated the lateral cameras on the side from where the enemy laser had been fired. A fleet of 60 or 70 ships was heading their way apparently lead by a human ship similar to those they had been attacked. His eyes widened as he realized what had just happened, he hadn't just lost two more ships, he had lost the battle.
"Give me the exact number of ships on that fleet." He said with a raspy clearly affected voice.
"Eighty ships milord." his subordinate replied.
"What is the status of the rest of the fleet?" He asked as if he hadn't made a decision yet.
"Escort three is fine. The rest have taken different ammounts of damage one of them is only 10% operative"
Lelantos growled, in these conditions, a hard task wouldn't cut it to describe the situation they were in, the enemy had not only caught them by surprise and overwhelmed them with their numbers. They had also caught them divided something that made it extremely hard to tetreat with all his remaining ships.
"Which ships are able to reach light speed with their current damage?" Lelantos asked.
"Just three my lord. The other three wouldn't survive the jump to lightspeed in their current state." His subordinate replied with a questioning look.
"Then tell those three vessels to retreat, tell the remaining three to engage and cover our retreat." Lelantos said. It was the only option, three damaged ships wouldn't do much against a fleet of 80 enemy ships but then again, they only needed a few seconds.
And so, the few ships that could make the jump began to retreat as the others began to cover their companions. The Least damaged from the three engaged the three human vessels as the other two fired all their weapons at the enemy ship. Lelantos closed his eyes as he thought of Hyperion's reaction when he reported this.
"Milord, the Lightspeed engine is ready" the engine room reported through his communicator.
"The other two ships are ready as well" the communications officer told him.
"All ships retreat!"
After a few moments only damages still battling ships remained.
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Korso, Akima, Lin and the rest observed the scene before them with a mix of surprise and relief as the new seemingly friendly fleet took care of the enemy fleet's remnants. The battle was over in less than a minute. Korso looked at Gronk who had stopped inputing coordinates on the computer.
"Have you cancelled the jump?" he asked the weapon's merchant. The Akrennian smiled.
"Of course I did. A warp engine is an expensive thing and it takes time for it to recharge! I don't like to waste energy!" The akrennian replied. "But anyway it seems you've got some powerful friends."
Korso observed the Valkyrie flying at the front of the fleet that had just saved their lives and smiled.
"That we do" he said. A second later he heard Cale's and Kate's voice over the radio.
"Korso, Akima, Lin! Are you guys ok?" asked Cale with a concerned voice
"Korso here, don't worry kid, we are just fine" he replied, hearing Kate sigh in relief.
"Who the hell are those guys?" Korso heard Michael ask. He smiled he knew perfectly fine what that fleet was although he had thought it lost to the Drej many years ago soon after the fall of earth.
"They are a ghost of the past, something that shouldn't even exist anymore." Korso replied. "That's an space exploration and colonization fleet, it is composed of a large colony ship and several escorts vessels, they are from earth."
"Earth!?" Cale asked incredulously as Akima, Lin and Kate remained silent since they all knew or had heard of the existance of those kinds of fleet even if they were surprised they still existed.
"That's right" said Stith over the radio. Korso smiled as he heard his old friend and looked at his former ship fondly.
"Stith! And I thought I would never hear that beautiful voice again." He joked. "I see you have brought company."
"Shut up!" Stith replied with hostility on her voice. She hadn't forgiven him for his betrayal just yet and didn't tolerate his joke as she did before. "These are members of the Mantrin's confederacy second fleet." She explained. Korso smiled it made sense now.
"Mercenaries huh?" He thought to himself. "I see" He replied as the rest of his companions remained silent hearing to the conversation. "And who is the leader of this so called 2nd Fleet? To whom do we owe our lives?"
"To me" sounded a woman's voice over the radio. Korso's face went white as he heard the voice. It wasn't a voice he had expected to hear anymore. "You haven't changed a bit. Have you, Little Joe?"
Kate and Lin chuckled at the nickname and Akima looked at Korso containing her laugh.
"Who is that woman?" she asked.
"My elder sister." Korso replied really slowly. "Emily L. Korso."
"What!?" the rest of the group asked at the same time.
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Two hours after the withdrawal of the titan fleet Korso and his group's escape pod was rescued by the allied fleet's flagship. The two escorts that had accompanied the "Victory" to the space station were too damaged to be repaired so the crew was also evacuated towards the ship. Cale and Kate were also invited to join as they left the "Victory" on the capable hands of Nate and Callarr.
There was one thing everyone agreed as they were driven through the colony ship by car towards the captain's home. The ship was amazing. It was divided in two parts, the ship which was a large war space cruiser, where the crew of the two unusuable ships were resting, and the colony which was basicaly a city surrounded a really thick transparent dome that had it's own artificial atmosphere. According to the crew member that drove them around the ship and the colony could be separated during short periods of time during combat but the captain had decided that the level of danger wasn't so high that they needed to do so this time.
When they finally reached their destination on one of the residential areas everyone got off the car. Cale looked around scanning the place searching for something, a fault, in a place that seemed so perfect. He found none. Kate pointed her finger towards the east of the city where a proud occidental style mansion stood.
"For a moment I thought that was the captain's home." She said. The officer chuckled.
"It's a very common mistake." He replied. "But that's the mayor's house."
"Isn't the captain the mayor of the city?" Akima asked.
"This is a city of 3.6 million people." Came a voice from the captain's door. " I don't have the time to deal with the affairs of the city and also lead the fleet." Everyone looked towards the door to see a tall brunette woman, seeming slightly older than Korso but really attractive, speaking to them. She wore a grey uniform and military boots. "Or so they higher ups on earth said once." She added grinning. The officer that had accompanied them there saluted his superior which she returned. "Good job. You may return to your post."
The man turned around after saluting again, got in the car and drove off. Everyone but Korso stared at Korso's sister without saying anything, the shock from learning of Korso's family and still taking in the details from the colony said nothing. Korso on the other stared at her for a few seconds like he wanted to make sure she was real. He hadn't been really impressed by the colony ship structure since he knew about it already but to see a sister he had long thought dead made unable to react. It wasn't before Stith appeared behind his sister that he and everyone got over their different states of shock.
" I think it's the first time I've seen him so quiet." The mantrin said jokingly. Korso clenched his fists trying to control his emotions, the happiness, the relief, the anger, as he spoke, he didn't notice Gune passing by him and hugging Cale.
"How?" He asked in a neutral voice.
"How what?" His sister asked.
"How are you alive!?" He asked letting his emotion rule him a little.
His sister flinched a little at his tone but didn't look away. "Like you have I fought to stay alive. But it's a rather long story you may want to enter."
Korso doubted for a moment as everyone looked at him. He felt Gunie take his hand. He couldn't help but smile when he stared at him with a child like expression. "Korso coming?" the grepoan asked. Korso smiled at the grepoan genius and looked back at his sister.
"Ok, but I expect a full explanation." He said. Everyone relaxed visibly as they entered the house.
His sister smiled.
"Well then I suppose I should introduce myself." She said looking at the rest. "My name is Emily Laura Korso, Captain of the Seventh colonization fleet. Nice to meet you"
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The captain's house was a completely normal house with a completely normal decoration which, actually, made Cale and the rest relax a lot although not confident enough to speak yet, especially with all the tension between Korso and his sister still on the air. Emily brought some coffee and cookies like the perfect host as they all sat around a table in the living room. Like before it was Emily the one to speak first.
"Well I should explain how I survived. When the drejs began attacking human colonies and fleets most of the colonization fleets were sent to the furthest corners of space looking to colonize new planets so that the humans would have a place to escape to in case earth was destroyed." She began. "However it wasn't easy, most known inhabitable parts of space where already inhabited in no small part by humans and the thoughts of the war back home always distracted us from our objective, which combined with the knowledge of the titan program and the increasingly powerful drej's attacks on our fleets made surviving our number one priority." She stopped for a moment to breath as the rest took in the information. "After we received news of the earth's destruction we kept in touch with the other eleven colonization fleets for awhile but we eventually lost contact with most of them, we know for sure that the fourth and and eleventh fleet are still around but we do not know anything about the rest we assume they were destroyed."
"Where were all this time?" Korso asked. He seemed more calm now.
"We fought our way through hostile territories until we reached the Mantrin Confederacy's territory. They allowed us to settle there in exchange for our fleet's services as a mercenary force." Emily said.
"So you fight for the Mantrins now?" Cale asked. Being the first one on the group to speak to Emily aside of Korso, Stith and he supposed Gunie.
"Technically but not anymore." She said with a serious expression.
"What do you mean?" Kate asked.
"When we signed the contract with the Mantrin confederacy it was agreed that if humans ever found or created a planet to call their own we would return to the human side." Emily replied. "But the Mantrins haven't honored their word. They hid the creation of New Earth from us to prevent us from leaving. We didn't know about it until Stith told us a week ago."
Korso looked at the Mantrin. "So what did you do to get away from the mantrins afterwards? I suppose they didn't take it too well."
"We did nothing." The Mantrin replied. "It was Mr. Wong."
"Mr. Wong?" Lin asked looking surprised. Like it was her mission she reported everything the group did to her father and allowed him to carry out whatever plan he had but she didn't know he had contacts in the Mantrin Confederacy. Nothing should surprise her anymore though when it came to him she thought.
"Yes" Stith replied. She obviously didn't like what had happened and didn't hesitate to make her discomfort known.
"That man negotiated with the mantrin council in a way I didn't see anyone do so before. He managed to convince them to let us go and buy some military hardware for New Earth." Emily explained. Everyone was silent as they received the news preocupied about Mr. Wong's intention but Cale decided it didn't matter, as much as he didn't like Mr. Wong this mysterious fleet attack had made him see they needed all the help they could gather to defend their new Planet. He smiled and tended Emily his hand.
"Welcome to the New Earth Defense forces." He said. Emily also smiled.
"It's good to have my old job back." She replied shaking his hand.
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Lelantos knelt before Hyperion with his head down not daring to look up from the floor. To do so at that moment would mean his immediate execution. As he had expected his commander had not taken well the news of his defeat and the loss of seven titan ships. He had tried to explain to him that damage had also been dealt to the enemy with the loss of an space station and leaving two of the human ships useless but Hyperion would have none of it.
"Don't you dare camuflage your failure behind those little achievements." Hyperion said furiously. "Ten ships! I gave you ten titan ships and you've failed to bring me a victory. You've not only returned with only three titan ships one of which is in need of repairs."
"But milord they had reinforcements! Has this new fleet not arrived I would have been able to take out some of their leaders!" Lelantos tried to defend himself.
"Yet you sounded so confident before you departed." Hyperion said coldly. "I would have thought you would have taken them out before the reinforcements arrived."
"Milord. We may have underestimated the human capabilities" Lelantos said. "The next time I..."
"There won't be a next time Lelantos! That was our chance to attack the human leaders now Lord Cronus has ordered us to stand by for the time being." Hyperion replied fury still clear on his voice even if he tried to keep the coldness he had regained shortly before, he had contacted him earlier to inform him of his defeat, the titan lord hadn't sounded angry but what he had told Hyperion had hurt him more than any physical injury. "He said he would think about sending someone over here. Someone from the other race to control things here."
Lelantos looked at his lord who seemed upset. "Milord why does lord Cronus colaborate with these individuals? They don't seem worthy of our trust." He asked.
"They are not. Lord Cronus is just using them for the time being." Hyperion replied. "Now return to your post and report to me if anything useful happens in New Earth."
"What about my punishment milord?" Lelantos asked. To anybody else the question would have sounded stupid. Many among the human or titan races would have just walked away and do their job better so they were forgiven. But Lelantos knew Hyperion well enough to know the titan Lord didn't forgive and he certainly didn't forget. He thought it would be better to receive the punishment now. Hyperion smiled evilly.
"Tell me Lelantos you are right handed right?" He asked. The other titan nodded but before he could make a move Hyperion had closed the gap that separated them and had his sword unseathed. "Then you don't need your left arm" he added as he severed his subordinate's left arm and Lelantos roared in pain.
He returned to his former spot and looked at Lelantos over his shoulder. "May this serve you as a lesson and keep in mind that the next time it won't be your arm what I'll cut. Now go before my mercy runs out."
Lelantos slowly got up pressing his right hand to his injury and looked at his lord with hate before slowly going out of the bridge.
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So what did you think? Please leave a review if you liked or disliked it. The colony ship is based on the colony ship from the Macross franchise. Until next time.