Twisting and twirling in the night sky, wrestling left and right, attacking, defending, and exchanging blows, the two ace pilots dueled it out amidst the desert sand. Ryck was much slower than Spade-77, but he compensated it with having the two reinforced shields on both shoulders and relatively thicker armor compared to the skinny, skeletal-like, but very fast Hawk. Having thrown away his communications headset, Ryck had no intention of getting out of this fight alive, and he was very sure of it.
He charged the Hawk head-on at first, boosters at full throttle, but sorely missed Spade-77 as he quickly launched to the sky. Ryck did not turn around then. He hit the ground, rolled, and took a 40mm rifle from a downed enemy Arclight, which laid lifelessly in the ground, a hole firmly in its center. He turned around and discharged a couple of rounds at the airborne Hawk, in which he dodged with ease. He launched after Ryck once again, but, knowing he had the bigger gun now–and with every shot a potential hit, and with every hit a potential win due to the lack of armor the Hawk had–he tried his best to stay at a safe range. He boosted away, and opened fire at the enemy, carefully placing his shots as he did.
There were twenty-five shots in a full-loaded magazine for the Arcturian 40mm AFU rifle, but as the rifle could not synchronize with the Dagger’s systems, he had no idea how many rounds were left. He kept firing, carefully, in single shots, hoping that one would hit. When he came in again, he quickly denied him a hit with his beam sword and launched away, going on top of one of the downed Destroyers. He quickly lowered his firing sights. He had to get a lock, otherwise he would just be wasting his rounds. In order to do that, he had to be as far as possible to not be hit by his beamsword, which, by all means, was a one-hit kill.
As Spade-77 came towards him, the targeting system began to sound. Three beeps. Then the beeps became faster, but before it could perfectly lock-on to the quickly advancing Hawk, Spade-77 came out of Ryck’s field of view. Ryck swore. The detection system rang from the left, and Ryck turned his unit to the left and saw him.
Spade-77 was there, charging, beamsword raised high. Ryck, ignoring the targeting system now and aiming by instinct, fired.
The round flew to the Hawk, and as if in slow-motion, he could see the yellow tracer flinging itself to the Hawk’s left shoulder, blowing the pauldron away and kicking the enemy out of balance. Ryck quickly boosted himself away and assessed the situation as fast as possible while the Hawk wasn’t up. He could see two large trails of smoke through his night vision near the compound, which seemed relatively untouched. He gave a sigh of relief knowing that it was the enemy Arclight. As the blood ran high through his head, he tried to calm down by taking care of his breathing. He was sweating, despite the controlled temperature of the AFU.
Spade-77 then went up again, launching at him, going to the side, and trying to charge him at his flanks. Ryck lowered his visor. The Hawk sped up, the blue flames from its thrusters paired with the black from the damage coloring its path. The Hawk’s specialty was its high speeds and acceleration rate, perfect for an ambush and particularly deadly for pilots with low experience fighting them. However, Ryck had just learned, if one maintained a fixed position and stayed far enough to track the Hawk’s movements, managing a lock, the Hawk was relatively ‘manageable’ to fight, even for slower units like the Daggers. He followed his movements, trying to get a good fix on the targeting visor. Spade-77 twisted and twirled around, doing zig-zags and near-impossible, high-G acrobatics to avoid the lock, but Ryck kept him firmly in his sights. The lock-on mechanism started.
“Come on… come on…”
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The circular cursor went over the target. Slowly, it became steadier. The beeps went faster. Spade-77 charged. In astounding swiftness, the Hawk attacked the Dagger with a quick thrust using the beamsword. Norican felt a turbulence, a hard, fatal crash on his left side. The cockpit lights were out, but, saved by his quick reflexes, he was flinging wildly to the right. Damage indicators show that he had lost both his left arm and leg, and was pushed away both by the afterblast of the high-speed Hawk and the explosion caused by the damage. However, in that millisecond between being blown away and hitting the ground, Ryck squeezed-in his field of view on the targeting visor, and the lock-on system rang. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
He saw him. Spade-77. Right in front of him. He squeezed the trigger as deep as he could, and the rounds came at him dense and hard. Six rounds, the cannon fired, and all six rounds went right into Spade-77’s unit. It broke his right arm and his left, along with a hit on the thrusters, burning its rear side and leaving one engine operational. Before any harm could be done, Ryck ejected from the Dagger, launching into the air, a good chute opening above him. As he landed, he saw Spade-77’s terrible effort of escaping, flying as high as he could in a trail of smoke and fire and a speed Ryck could not imagine being possessed by an AFU. As it flew over Waypoint WHITE, there was a secondary explosion on the disarmed unit, and after that, the craft started to descend to the ground, culminating in a terrible crash and burn just one kilometer south of the compound.
He did it, Ryck thought. I got the bastard.
As he laughed, seeing the night stars and the glowing, beautiful ringed planet of Ghalzar over the night sky, he coughed. There was a warm, sticky substance going out of his system. Blood.
He looked down. There were shards of metal and glass all over the left side of his body. On his chest, he was impaled by a large steel splinter, probably coming from the hard crash he had with Spade-77. He was bleeding all over, and losing blood real fast. The steel splinter seemed to have gone through to his lungs.
And I thought smoking would’ve killed me.
He looked up to the sky once more, knowing that he was just as good as dead now. He admired the mysterious shape of the stars, the perfect illumination of the distant, twinkling astronomical objects. He tried to hold a cough in, but he couldn’t. Blood went all over the sides of his face.
“Didn’t plan to go out living anyway.” He said to himself. He chuckled, but ended up in coughing and gurgling his own blood in his throat. “Fuck…”
He felt weak. He had lost too much blood. He put a hand to the splinter to take it out, but it was no use. He would’ve lost more blood anyway. He thought of Sophie. He didn’t love her, but he wished he had, and considering their closeness, it would’ve been one hell of a relationship. But you did get to screw her, right?
Yeah. Fuck yeah. He grinned. When his eyes were nearly out, the tunnel vision enveloping his world, he heard a loud, whistling sound going above him. He could see their distinctive figures, flying low and fast. Daggers?
They zoomed past him. There were six or seven of them.
Then came the sound of rotors, coming from Aronsen Gladiators. One by one, they flew over his dying eyes. Reinforcements.
We actually did it.
We actually fucking did it.
His life played in front of his eyes. His childhood, his parents, his brother, him running from home, college, the Royal Marines, 187 Squadron, Alan Alnuik…
Sophie Deschamps.
He let it go. Knowing that his objective was complete, and with Sophie’s beautiful blue eyes, her soft lips, and her passionate voice in his mind, Warrant Officer 2 Ryck Norican, Hrasvleg Royal Corps of Marines Fleet Air Arm, assigned to the Royal Navy’s 187 Defender Squadron, closed his eyes. He remembered her warm, assuring touch. The look in her eyes when they were together. The way she talked to him, as if he was hers.
With the calming thought, he took his last, final breath.
He died in peace. No more philosophy, no more metaphysics, no more religion. When the world turned a silent, peaceful, black, he knew that he was dead, gone, another lost soul in a limitless universe.
***
ns 15.158.61.20da2
