April 20, SY 2150 — 17:02 GCT
Time Since Operation Start — T+6:52:10
If anything, the voices got worse as time went on and the further that CALIBARN moved throughout the Underground Labyrinth.
"Conta—" The Para-RAID cut as an explosion rocked the hallway — a Processor from the F-Platoon had been caught unawares by a Legion unit.
"Scatter!" The Witch ordered, and the Reginliefs scattered as best they could through the hallway that they were stuck in. "CALIBARN Leader to Vanadis HQ— We've been ambushed! No visual contact yet!"
The platoons that were the furthest away from the rear pushed forward, towards the atrium ahead of them. The remnants of F-Platoon stuck out the fight, attempting to suppress the enemy that had startled them. While the remaining Platoons scattered to move defensible positions.
"What the hell?!" Someone shouted over the Para-RAID. "Where the fuck is it?! This should be a straight shot!"
"Keep your eyes up." Guel responded.
"There's…. Something moving along the walls…" Crossbow spoke as they huddled behind debris in this corridor, their 88mm canon peaking around the debris.
"Ease up, Crossbow, it's just your—" Charlie-3 spoke before getting cut off by their Reginleif exploding in a shimmer of pointed blue light.
Someone shouted, and pulled their Reginleif away from the explosion, before getting cut up in a similar shimmer of blue light. "Wh-what?!" They gasped as their Reginleif's legs were severed with the pointed light, and they collapsed to the floor. Their Reginleif unable to move, and caught out in the open, was, in just a moment, cut-through with one of those beams of blue light, and there were no more communications from that Processor. The Processor inside, Echo-3 — "Diesel" — was killed in the instant the laser cut through her cockpit.
"All units, retreat!" The Witch ordered, yanking the control sticks of the Reginleif to the side, and darting further down the hallway, away from the bisected CALIBARN squadron.
The remains of Foxtrot Platoon was near the rear of the retreating formation as they sprinted down the hallway, firing their 30 millimeter auto-cannons as they did, sparks flying in myriad directions as they peppered the entire hallway with 30mm rounds. None of the rounds seemed to hit their mark as they rounded the corner, the shimmering lasers skimming their armor plates and scorching them, but not damaging the Reginliefs in any worrying manner.
"Anyone got eyes on the thing?!" Cupid shouted, panicked by the sudden ambush.
"Move forward…" The voice of her dead Handler lamented, the voice feeling like it was growing ever closer — but from an indeterminate direction.
They stood now in an atrium, that had a center that was carved out, and led downwards towards deeper levels than the one they stood on.
Wraith, a Processor in Alpha-Platoon, darted in front of the corridor, beaming her targeting laser and IFF receiver down the hallway as she did. In the second it took for her to dodge across; a piercing blue light shot through the corridor, and pierced her Reginlief's rear legs — causing her to lose balance, and skid, rather than slide to the other side of the atrium that they had retreated into. "I'm good!" She shouted over the Para-RAID. The sounds of her unbuckling her harness, to try and evacuate her busted rig, could be heard over the resonance. The passive radar pinged with a contact, that quickly dissipated.
"Foxtrot! Give me a barrage down the hallway. Turn your fire-rates up to the max!" The Witch ordered, and the Foxtrot platoon instantly complied, leaning around the corners of the hallway, and let loose volleys of rounds as fast as they could. "The rest of you, spread out, prepare for contact! Alpha and Bravo! Hold behind Foxtrot, and we'll engage in CQB if we can!"
As the Reginleifs began to move, Foxtrot-3 exploded as it was cut down the middle, and the laser cut through the glass panes behind her, shattering them. "Shit!" Foxtrot's leader, Rhino, shouted, as she adjusted her firing angle. The Witch watched as she dodged behind the wreckage of Foxtrot-3, the rounds fired by Foxtrot start to spark in the middle of the hallway, where something shouldn't have been, or at least didn't appear to be. "Foxtrot! Fall back! Charlie, give me a blade barrage!"
"Aye!" Tomcat responded, and from across the Atrium, a volley of M-9X missiles launched from Tomcat's Platoon, and the missiles raced through the hallway, one getting cut through by a laser, the missile in question had barely entered the hallway, and the laser seemed to be that much closer to the entrance to the atrium.
"Alpha! Bravo! Put your targeting lasers on full blast! Whatever it is controlling these lasers has to be tiny, if we've not—"
Immediately, as she was giving orders, lasers started to blast through the atrium, from all manner of angles that shouldn't have been possible in this space, unless the unit controlling the laser bits was already in this space.
"Fuck!" Someone shouted, and The Witch flicked her eyes towards movement, as she saw Redline, a Processor from Guel's platoon — dart forward in front of the hallway, and swing with her high-frequency blades — but the swing missed, and for a moment, The Witch thought she saw the form of a humanoid target dodging away — but in the very next moment, her rig was sliced through with multiple lasers at the same time.
Echo platoon, seemingly scattered and confused but aware of the same thing that The Witch saw, darted towards the hallway, firing their machine guns towards the spot that The Witch had seen. Two of the other units swung at the spot, and again The Witch saw a humanoid form — this time, she was prepared for it — flicking on her targeting laser for long enough to blast the form with a burst of the invisible laser, and she got a return on her targeting computer. Despite that, however, she watched as Echo-4 — a Processor with the Personal Name of 'Crossbow', seemed to be pushed away by something nearly invisible. But yet, the air distorted around the impulse that shoved her, tossing Crossbow through the air, and falling down the atrium's center. There was the sound of a scream over the resonance, and then something like a crunch as The Witch assumed Crossbow made impact with the ground. She wanted to wince at the sound, but her mind was focused on the moment in front of her.
Already, in the time that had they had been engaged by whatever Legion unit was ambushing them — they had lost a quarter of the Processors that were in CALIBARN, even counting those from Delta who were on the surface.
"Shit, shit!" Someone shouted, and the Witch made note of the voice that it was — Charlie's Leader, Tomcat — and she saw a flurry of bullets pepper the wall in front and above her. She flicked both her eyes, and her controls to the side.
"Vanadis HQ to all Processors! Commence retreat!" The voice like a silver-bell, belonging to Colonel Milizé ordered. "CALIBARN retreat to your six o'clock!"
"Unable!" The Witch said, as she darted around the atrium, doing her best to stay mobile, and dodge the lasers that were shimmering throughout the space. "Legion at our six and twelve!" A Processor's rig exploded — its machine guns rocketing away from the husk, the purge charges having been triggered, and their force amplified by the explosion of the Reginleif. That had been Charlie-2 — Oni.
"Move forward…" The voice seemed to grow more constant in her ears as she continued to dodge about the atrium.
"There are no other options, Aerial!"
"Shit!" She shouted, "Tomcat! Bravo will push forward with you, break through those Amaise! Alpha will hold!"
"Roger!" Tomcat responded, turning his fire down the hallway where the Amaise fired from.
"Everyone else, push down that hallway! We're getting the hell—" The Witch was cut off as a laser passed in front of her, yet didn't harm her or her Aerial.
She dodged backward, on reflex; the only thing keeping her alive.
She flicked her eyes, as she dodged again, and kept pushing towards where the rest of her Squadron was fighting on two sides. Someone would narrowly dodge a laser, and someone else would fire their 88mm cannon at the spot that the laser had emerged from, only for the round to pass through that spot almost instantly, without hitting anything.
"We're through!" Someone shouted, and the Witch whirled around to face her Squadron as they began to race down that hallway that had been designated as their path to retreat. She started to sprint towards the hallway, before getting cut off by another flurry of lasers.
"Witch! C'mon!" Guel shouted, his blip on her IFF screen retreating down the hallway.
"God dammit!" She groaned through gritted teeth. "Where are you, you bastard?!"
"Move forward..." The voice sounded like it was practically on top of her, in the cockpit with her — breathing down her neck.
It was as she dodged another flurry of lasers, that something knocked her off her feet, sending her tumbling towards the hollow center of the atrium that she stood in. She tried desperately to fire a wire anchor to stop her fall, but saw as the wires the anchors were attached to, were severed by the lasers — she continued tumbling down to the lower levels.
It was a split moment, but Guel saw the blip of The Witch's Reginleif, disappear off his IFF tracker. "Shit!" He shouted, expending a charge of his pile-driver, to terminate a Grauwolf that was threatening to unleash hellfire on CALIBARN as they made a fighting retreat through the Legion. "This is Darilbalde to all units! Aerial just disappeared off of IFF! I'm taking command of CALIBARN. Continuing retreat!"
There was no point in going back to try and find The Witch — if she had been taken out by that unknown Legion unit, there was likely nothing left of her body as her Reginleif would've exploded or been cut up by the laser attack, the same as the others. And if she hadn't? And simply had been knocked out? It's not likely that CALIBARN in its nearly half-defeated state could do anything to help her, especially if this was a Headhunt by the Legion. And if it was a Headhunt? The Legion would have already gotten to her by the time they turned around, and went back for her.
"Copy that Darilbalde." The Colonel responded. "Please continue forward for twenty seconds, and then make a break to the right, you should be on an upwards slope!"
"Roger!"
Guel sincerely wished that if The Witch was dead or to die — that it would be from her rig exploding, or maybe the fall killing her instantly, and not any other possibility.
April 20, SY 2150 — 17:05 GCT
Time Since Operation Start — T+6:55:00
She couldn't have been out for longer than a minute. But in a battlefield, a minute's lapse of consciousness could be fatal. She started back to wakefulness, to find that she wasn't dead, even though her head and neck felt like death from the fall. In front of her, stood nothing at all, yet in the moment that she woke up she reflexively grabbed the control sticks of Aerial, and jammed them to the side, dodging away from a flicker of laser beams from the invisible Legion unit that had shoved her down here and was still trying to kill her, obviously not being content with only having seen Aerial stop moving for such a short period of time, some part of it's coding urging it to either confirm the kill, or retrieve her head.
She quickly surveyed the area that she had been dropped into — a nearly pristine lower shopping level — the only thing indicating that it wasn't just closed for the evening, was the layer of dust that seemed to lay atop every surface in this place — and had been kicked into the air from her fall — and the ruined husk of the other Reginleif that had been shoved down here, Crossbow's Reginleif. The Witch barely had any time to register that it was her Reginleif, or that it wasn't moving — or making any manner to correct itself, instead laying on its side, its legs unmoving, and there was no indication from its Para-RAID indicator that its pilot was alive. Likely, her neck snapped when she landed on her side, killing her instantly. But the Witch had no time to mourn the loss of a comrade in this fight. She urged Aerial to dodge a laser beam — only for the Reginleif's controls to feel sluggish, and instantly that blue beam of light cut through the dust of this level, tearing through Aerial's left-rear pile driver, discharging all of the gunpowder in its stores, and sending an alert through Aerial's systems. The Witch dismissed the alert with a reflexive control input as she dodged away from that laser before it could damage anything else on her Reginleif.
She clicked her tongue as she urged Aerial through that action. Its control systems groaning under the strain of having taken the fall, and now the actions that she needed it to perform in order to survive. Yet it complied, letting her dodge away from the attack that would otherwise have pierced the canopy, and killed her.
She did her best to appraise the situation in front of her — the enemy was invisible, and its attacks nearly unpredictable, yet she'd survived them with minimal injury. Her only backup on this level was likely KIA. The dust was starting to settle on her rig, and was obscuring parts of her optical sensor. Her Para-RAID had been disconnected when she'd fallen, and it would take precious reaction time away from her to try and reconnect it. There was no trace of the enemy that was attacking her. She wasn't even sure that it was in the same space as her, and yet, she had to fight it anyways. That was her only chance of surviving.
As if acting on instinct, she darted forward, charging towards Crossbow's dead Reginleif. Spinning around at the last possible second, and using the momentum that she had built up, to slam the deadened pile-driver against the Reginleif. At the same time, scanning the dust around her for any sign of movement. Sure enough, within a matter of moments, that sign appeared. Dust moving in a way that indicated something passed through it. Swirling and dispersing as the air currents those particles rode upon were disturbed by the movement of something unseen.
It was an impulse, a proactive movement, rather than a calculated action. Something that The Witch did on impulse, something that likely made it possible for her to survive this. She lunged at that disturbance in the air, slashing at it as her allies had done in the space above her, but instead of slashing vertically just at the space she had seen — she cut horizontally, swinging wide in an attempt to clip whatever it was that had made the air flow in such a particular way.
Her blades didn't find purchase in the armor of the unit attacking her. But the high frequency vibrations did come into contact with something.
With a fluttering of butterfly wings, and the inaudible sound of some of the Eintagsfliege dropping to the ground — the shroud was torn away from the unit attacking her. The Eintagsfliege that had been affected by the high frequency vibrations of her blades fell to the ground, their wings torn to shreds from the vibrations, and the rest simply peeled away from the Legion unit that she had now put on the back foot by tearing away its optical camouflage. She darted away as a laser beam cut through the air, aiming for her once again.
Her Para-RAID made a sound, and there was an incoming connection.
"Lieutenant Mercury, report." The silver-bell like voice of the Colonel, her commanding officer, ordered, her voice tinged with worry at the state of the Processor.
Aerial prowled while the Legion unit did its best to circle it, as if understanding that the time for the deadly dance was not yet. "I've engaged the Legion unit that ambushed CALIBARN on the upper levels. It's roughly three meters tall, and seems to have no onboard weaponry, and fights using auxiliary laser units."
"Confirmed, Lieutenant… What's your status?"
"I'm fine, just my head hurts like hell."
"And your unit?"
"Damaged left-rear pile-driver. Primary and secondary armaments still armed."
"Understood, please engage this New-Type unit, and return to base as soon as you're able. We have backup headed your way."
"Roger that, Colonel." She flicked her wrist against her controls, disconnecting the Para-RAID as she did.
The two units, Aerial, and this Legion continued their circle, neither engaging one another.
The Witch inside Aerial, with its bone-colored armor and plating, side stepping like a mechanical spider. Its armor scorched and burned in places from taking glancing blows from the Legion on the upper floors.
This New-Type of Legion unit, walking on two legs, as if it were a person in the kind of armor that the armored infantry wore, rather than using the hexa or octapedal legs that the other Legion units used. Its silver armor glinting in the light that filtered down from above. Instead of where a head with a face would be, was a blank faceplate — with protrusions like antennae sticking out from where its face should've been. It was almost ornate in its creation, made with the care for making it look as human in form as possible, The Witch imagined so at least.
"Move forward." The voice of the ghost of Miorine Rembran urged her. The Witch grit her teeth at the voice, unsure of any possible way to make it through this moment. Any possible way to keep moving forward, despite the fact that the unit that had stolen her voice was standing now in front of her.
She wanted to run, to leave all of this behind, and to try and find some other way to live — to never hear this voice again. To never face the reality which was too painful to bear. But still, could she really run away from this? After all the Legion had taken from her — friends, loved ones, the dreams and ambitions that she didn't ever have a chance to actualize or realize for herself. Comrades, trusted warriors, and their desires and goals, all stolen by these inhuman machines. And now, even Miorine too. There was nothing in her heart that didn't scream in anguish at this fact.
"Move forward." The voice that rung in her ears said, once again — like a signal to start the fight between the two units — Aerial lunged forward at the Legion unit, which gracefully back-stepped away and commanded its laser units to fire again. The Witch dodged away, using her forward momentum to jump upwards from where the beams of light would've impacted her, and then kicked a nearby pillar to get distance between her and the laser units. In terms of raw mobility, both Aerial and this Legion unit seemed to have about the same prowess. But The Witch was sure that there would be some benefit to making a unit as small as this new-type, if it was supposed to be some kind of match for her. Why else would this unit have separated her from her Squadron? Unless knocking her down here was less an attempt to separate her, and more of an attempt at killing her in the same way that Crossbow had died.
No, it seemed unlikely that this unit had tried to do something would've damaged her head if at all. Disabling her unit would've made more sense, and every attack that she had dodged away from, seemed all the more interested in disabling Aerial, rather than flat out killing The Witch in one fell swoop.
Meaning this was certainly a Headhunt. That this unit would do its best to retrieve her head, and do the utmost to disable, rather than outright kill The Witch.
"Is that it, huh?" She grinned bitterly as Aerial slid to a new position, dodging away from the lasers that pursued her through this space.
The Legion unit made no reaction to her question — no indication at all that it was or wasn't trying to dismember Aerial just to retrieve her head. How could it? There was no way for the dead to hear the living, much less answer the questions that the living had.
She dodged behind another pillar, this time adjusting how she slid behind it, and kicked at it with Aerial's left foreleg, instantly seeing cracks run through the pillar, she triggered that leg's pile-driver, the gunpowder charge detonating, and the rod of the pile-driver shattered the pillar. Instantly, she flicked around — kicking the pillar as it crumbled, and sending chunks of it flying in the direction of the Legion unit, and dodging away before the unit could figure out what her next move was. The dust from the pillar cracking and being sent flying from her kick, rapidly filled the space with dust, making it hard to see. But in doing so, it worked both ways. The size of this Legion unit meant that it couldn't possibly have better sensors than the Amaise units did, and even the Amaise would have a tough time seeing through the cloud of dust that had been kicked up by her destroying the pillar.
She quickly dodged behind another pillar, as laser beams tore through the dust as far as they could make it, before being dispersed by the dust in the air. Essentially reducing those laser bits to nothing more than close-quarters defense weaponry.
The Legion pulled the bits close to itself, and made a sweeping motion with its arm unit, the bits sweeping through the space in the same direction and speed, as if attached to the unit's arm like a shield. That motion swept the air, pushing the dust away, and increasing the range at which its laser bits could attack with. But it had taken precious time away from searching for Aerial in the dust, and this had given The Witch an opening that she needed. She darted forward from the dust cloud, closing the distance within a second — giving the Legion barely any time to react. It held its arm forward, as if commanding the laser bits to form a shield, but not fast enough.
The screaming of the high-frequency blades permeated this space as they swung down on the unit, and found purchase in the raised arm, even as the Legion dodged backwards, trying to create distance between it and Aerial.
The arm was severed near where the elbow would've been, and the unit dodged backwards even further, not reacting like a part of it had been cut at all. It wasn't human anymore, how could it react like a human would?
"Move forward… Move forward… Move forward…" The voice that she had heard, repeated. The words that she rang familiar, but she didn't know why they were. Words that had no place in her mind until this point, but were something that she had done none the less.
"Move forward…" Until this very point, where she was now facing down the ghost of the voice she so longed to hear agzain, but could not find in the ruins of the Republic, or in the ranks of the Federacy. That familiar voice, the one that had urged her to keep fighting, that one day she might actually be free from all this torment and pain that living in the Eighty-Sixth sector had brought.
"Move forward…" Until she was forced to kill every Legion that she came across.
"Move forward…" Until now, until she was now needed to kill Miorine too.
The bits of the New-Type Legion swarmed around it, tracing orbits around the core of the unit like miniature moons, all with their own deadly capability. She had seen it dismember and dispatch her fellow Processors, and had managed to incidentally lead it away from the rest of the Squadron… But now that she was faced with it by herself, she wasn't sure how to fight it— her instincts, for once, were failing her. She didn't see a way through this, to find a way to keep moving forward.
There was no reaction between either of the two units that stood in the ruins of this battlefield, instead it was more like an urging that drove them both forward in tandem. A Duel like any other, where the first indication of movement from the other would mark the start of it. A death dance, that the two were now locked in, with no way to escape than the death of the enemy.
The Witch darted forwards, and the Legion danced away, in its place, the bits swarmed forward like a shield to protect the main unit, the laser beams threatening to spring forth as the Witch attacked. It was a simple enough gimmick, to make sure that the enemy never reached or could damage the control unit of this Legion attacker.
She readied her blade, and slashed at the bits, connecting with one in mid-air, cutting through it like a knife through butter, and sending sparks flying as the high frequency blade tore through the metal of the bit. Instantly, the sharpness detection system of the blade screamed to life, notifying her that the blade that she had used to cut through the bit had been damaged, its sharpness withered by the material used to build the bits of this Legion unit. She purged the blade with a flick of her controls, the explosive bolts throwing the blade away as she darted back to safety, away from the reach of the bits, which didn't fire on her, despite having the advantage at this range.
Even her blades were now useless to her in fighting this ghost. There was nothing else for it, except to attempt to get close enough to the central part of this Legion unit, and attempt to take it down with her pile drivers. That would require navigating through the lethal laser array that the unit controlled, somehow getting close enough to deal the finishing blow. Even then, it's likely that she'd only get one chance at getting that close — and it may be the last chance she'll ever get to survive.
No fire support, no allies to help corner this enemy. Only one chance to attack with the pile-driver at the Legion's core. All that's left between The Witch and her destruction is her own skill at fighting. Her skill at piloting her Reginleif.
She thought to herself, as she dodged back into the dust cloud that hadn't been completely cleared away, that if she were to try and make it through this — that she would have to make a gamble.
The Witch darted through the dust from the broken pillar, and in a split second, turned Aerial's turret to face where she knew Crossbow's Reginleif lay quiet, and in the next moment hoped that Crossbow would forgive her, wherever she might be. She pulled the trigger.
A High-Explosive, Anti-Tank shell tore through the space, rocketing from the turret of Aerial's 88 millimeter cannon. Unseen to the Witch, but falling in line with her gamble, the Legion unit registered the incoming shell, but realized that it was not headed for the unit, instead it was headed for Crossbow's Reginleif. The unit turned around, commanding the bits to act like a shield for the main unit, as to not be damaged by the explosion or shrapnel that rocketed from it.
It was in that moment, that the unit simultaneously realized its mistake.
She rushed the enemy in it's correction. It whirled around to face her, and tried to raise its good arm to control the laser bits to act like a shield. But it was too late to respond, the bits just ever slightly too sluggish to react to the disorientation from the explosion of Crossbow's Reginleif. She closed the distance, and with her right foreleg, tackled the Legion unit — simultaneously discharging and purging away the pile-driver before the Legion's laser units had a chance to attack her in her proximity. It was a gamble, but if she was fast enough, she would be able to evade the lasers shortly after purging the pile-driver. She had no way of knowing if she had managed to damage the Legion attacking her or not.
For a split second, the power in the Reginleif flickered, and she wondered if she was about to explode as one of the power-packs were cut through.
The power died in Aerial, and she waited for her death to come, confident that her gamble had failed.
It never did.
The voice in her ears was silent.