I know that I promised the bad would start, and technically speaking it has, but it was actually really hard to keep this from turning into a curb stomp!
CH 4
Honda cycled different camera feeds through the command center's panoramic display. Every image was the same. Spidercrabs and Tekkamen tearing the base to pieces. They were taking their sweet time about it too. Systematically demolishing every aboveground structure they could find. Eventually they would breach the lower levels and find the people in the shelters. For some reason, they had left the Blue Earth's launch ramp in intact. Odd considering it was a big, fragile target. If it were only the Spidercrabs on the field, he might think it random, but not with Tekkaman Evil and his new friends here as well. They left the launch ramp alone for a reason. Maybe, just maybe, the Space Knights could find a way to turn that overconfidence against them.
"Commander Freeman, please respond!" A com window opened and showed the face of a young officer in Earth Defense Force uniform.
"The Commander isn't here, son. Let me route your call," Honda offered.
"There's no time. Brigadier General Colbert has begun the countdown to the Fermion Missile launch!"
Honda's blood ran cold. That was the single most destructive weapon every built on Earth. "Do you know the target?"
The officer leaned closer to the camera and Honda could see the sweat on his brow and his trembling lip. "The Orbital Ring! Please, you have to find a way to stop hi…" There was a sharp sound and lad spasmed, before falling out of frame. In his place was Brigadier General Colbert, holding a smoking pistol.
"You, Space Knight!"
"I have a name, General." However much Honda personally despised the man, he would respect the uniform. That didn't mean he would be treated like a lackey by someone who wasn't in his chain of command.
"Be a good messenger and tell Freeman to keep up the good work. I'm launching the Fermion Missile in twenty minutes and I'm counting you, Space Knights to keep the Radam distracted until then." Colbert actually saluted.
"But destroying the ring…." Colbert terminated the connection, leaving Honda staring at a black screen. "He really has lost it."
***
Brigadier General Colbert surveyed the operations center of the launch facility. The room buzzed as soldiers went about their duty in an orderly, precise, military manner.
"Main nozzle…. GO."
"Engine compartment... GO."
"Guidance telemetry and receiver… GO."
"Liquide oxygen tank… GO."
"Electric turbine… GO."
"Stabilizer… GO."
"All systems GO, sir!"
"Good." Colbert acknowledged. With one strike, Colbert was going to turn the war. There would be some casualties as trillions of tons of shattered Orbital Elevator
* fell to Earth, but did that really matter in the long run? What were the lives of a few hundred million weighed against the survival of billions? Why couldn't the weak fools in the government or Freeman's Space Knights see that? He was about to save the world!
***
"Son, the Empire of Avalon stands with you. 'Possible' just got a whole lot bigger."
D-Boy stared at Gordon for a moment, feeling as though something profound had just happened, but he wasn't exactly sure what that was.
Freeman added that datum to his growing knowledge pool about these strangers on his base. Gordon's claims to have healed D-Boy and Miyuki seemed rather preposterous, but the change in Miyuki's vitals was rather strong support. And then there were his two associates, specifically subordinates. All accounts describe their powers as wildly different from anything Freeman had observed in working with D-Boy, and from each other. Each could kill Spidercrabs with ease, and Sho was able to stand toe-to-toe with Radam Tekkamen. Gordon himself was far more than he appeared and that made Freeman more than a little nervous, but there was something else. His story of triage on a planetary scale was unfinished, yet everyone in the room had reached the same conclusion, without the words being spoken, suggesting some kind of psionic ability...
His chain of thought was broken when his personal com unit chirped. "Yes?" Whatever the caller said made Freeman freeze for a moment, but only a moment. "I understand. Fit Pegas with the booster."
Noel spun around. "What's going on, sir?"
"Honda has just informed me that Brigadier General Colbert is going to launch a massive missile at the Orbital Ring in nineteen minutes. The shockwave will shatter the ring and the debris from the elevators will devastate everything fifteen hundred kilometers North and South of the equator."
"Is the launch from Earth Defense Force Space Command headquarters?" Masaki asked. Freeman nodded. He looked at Gordon for a moment, who gave no reaction, then spoke. "I'm not fast enough to get there in time, and even if I did, I don't think I have the firepower to knock a missile like that down. Sho?"
Sho shook his head. "I take it out, if I could hit it but I won't get there in time."
Freeman turned to the young man who had long been Earth's only hope. "Tekkaman Blade is the one who could both get to the launch site and stop the missile. Will you go, D-Boy? I'm sure it will be hard for you to leave your sister's side…"
"Go. Go, Big Brother."
"Miyuki, I can't…."
"I'll be all right. I
am alright." She spun her brother around and gently pushed him toward the door.
"What about Evil and the others?" Aki objected. "They'll be on you in a heartbeat."
"Not if I take the Blue Earth out first and lead them away." Noel offered.
"They won't touch my brother." Miyuki promised. "I won't let them."
"Are you sure you're ready for this, Little Sister?"
Freeman made eye contact with Gordon who cocked his head at Sho and Masaki. Both were standing ready, as if waiting for orders. "She won't be alone, D-Boy. Noel, prepare to sortie in the Sol Tekkaman. Sho, Masaki, can we count on you to provide a diversion while D-Boy intercepts that missile?"
"We are at your service, Commander."
"Before you go…" Gordon took hold of Miyuki's hands and concentrated. The room crackled with static electricity for a moment before Miyuki gasped sharply. "All I did before was stabilize your transformation and repair most of the cellular damage. You're healthy but you weren't in any shape for a fight. A quick transfusion of life force should get your through the next few hours. You'll have a hell of a hangover in the morning, but that will give you the strength you'll need." Then he reached out and tapped Noel on the forehead. "A psychic download of the manual for your new armor."
Noel blinked for a moment, then shook his head. His eyes grew wide as he seemed to process the information Gordon had just given him.
Satisfied that Miyuki would be okay, D-Boy sprinted for the Hangar, with Aki trailing close.
"What you said before, about freeing Shinya…"
"There's more to it than me just waving my magic wand, Miss Aiba. The process takes time and the Radam parasite in each Tekkaman will resist. It will have to happen one at a time, and I'll need help restraining them for the process."
Freeman considered letting Gordon keep talking, in the hopes of gleaning more clues but there were too many lives hanging in the balance. "D-Boy will have a flight time of about ten minutes with the booster module on Pegas. That means he has to launch within the next six minutes. Noel, move to high ground so you cover D-Boy if anything tries to pursue him. Once he's clear, provide whatever support you can against Evil and the others. Miyuki, avoid contact with your brother. Until Gordon has the time to do whatever it is he's going to do, he is still Tekkaman Evil, and he will show no mercy. Sho, Masaki, I don't know enough of your abilities to properly direct you, but Noel will be your field commander. Follow his instructions."
Noel eyed the two dark haired men. They nodded and he nodded back. "Let's move."
Freeman was now alone in the hospital room with Gordon. It was an oddly comfortable silence before Freeman asked a question. "But you do have a magic wand."
Gordon simply smiled.
***
Tekkaman Evil surveyed the battlefield below. The sprawling Space Knight headquarters was slowly being reduced to rubble. Normally this would please him. It was a shame that his sister, Rapier chose to side with their traitorous brother, but no matter. Her life was forfeit the moment she made that choice, either by his hand, or as her body slowly broke down under the strain of being a Tekkaman. Despite her betrayal, he still held some affection for her. It would be better if she died by his hand. It would be more merciful than the option.
With Axe, Lance and Sword now free of their pods, the Radam Tekkamen out-numbered Blade, four to one. Two to one while Rapier still lived, but that was only a matter of days at the most. It was doubtful that she even had the strength to transform any more. Evil didn't need any help to kill Blade. No, that was something he could and would do all by himself. The others were still useful. They freed him up from having to lead the Spidercrab armies, at least on a local level. It allowed him to focus on the larger strategic picture, or the personal one, if his brother ever showed his face.
But Evil wasn't pleased. Blade had withered under the relentless attack of four enemies until he made one too many mistakes. Axe and Sword had pinned him to the ground. Pinned like a butterfly on the table. All Evil had to do was let gravity take its course and Blade would have been dead. Then something interfered. What or whoever it was strong. Perhaps stronger than a Tekkaman, though its energy weapons didn't seem powerful enough to penetrate Sword's armor. Those blades were another story.
"Evil! Has there been any word from Lord Omega?" Evil turned as Lance alighted on flying platform. Evil turned to glower at his compatriot. It took a special kind of dislike to glower through the armor of a Tekkaman. He hadn't liked Lance back when he was plain old Shinya Aiba. Taking service with Lord Omega hadn't warmed the relationship.
"Return to your sector, Lance." Lance didn't move, except to shift his weight, favoring his injured leg. "Do as you are told, until you are told to do otherwise."
Neither man moved. "I answer to Lord Omega. Not you."
Evil gripped his lance tighter, and shifted his weight. Lance as still flat footed. A quick strike would end this man's complaining, or end the man. Evil was still deciding when Lance stepped back. Axe hovered about a hundred meters to the side. Sunlight glinted off the exposed Voltekka emitters on his chest.
Sword rose to hover behind Lance. "Save it. All of you. Once Blade, Rapier and the new one are dead, the lot of you can go have pissing contests in the snow for all I care." Her voice was just as hard the armor they all wore. "Until then, stay on plan. Axe, Lance, flush them out. Evil, stay here on overwatch."
Lance drifted away before arcing back down to the surface. Only when Lance has turned away from Evil did Axe return to the work of destroying one of the last bastions of human resistance.
"Thank you, Sword. Your intervention saved that fool's…" Sword silenced Evil by whipping her staff across his face. The blunt end posed no risk but the force of the blow was a shock, in and of itself.
"Save it!" she hissed. "Your temper would have cost us a quarter of our strength, at a time when cannot afford to be weak. We all serve Lord Omega. "
Evil stroked the scuff along his faceplate. "We all serve him, but you are the only one who loves him."
Sword was saved from answering by an explosion. An arrow of violet energy rocketed skyward. Neither Sword nor Evil had a chance to react before the arrow passed between them. The edge of the arrow clipped Evil's floating platform, shattering the Radam creature's wing, sending it spiraling to the ground.
"It seems there is still some life left in you, Little Sister."
Rapier hovered a hundred meters above Sword and Evil. "I won't let you hurt anyone else, Shinya." She pitched over and rocketed down on Evil.
The attack was simple enough. Rapier's single sword limited her options as far as attack of defense. After a few exchanges, Evil would allow her to knock his lance from his grip. She would show mercy, at which time he would deploy the secondary blades from his pauldrons, and gut her like a fish.
Except Rapier didn't attack him. She banked almost ninety degrees and slammed into Sword. Sword gave a cry of surprised and Rapier went into a power dive, holding Sword in front of her. The armor of a Tekkaman was incredibly durable. After all, Blade survived falling from orbit, but being slammed head-first into bedrock was still enough to leave Sword seeing double.
"Impressive. Most impressive." Evil dove on his sister, cloven tipped lance glinting in the sunlight. Miyuki stepped backward, gracefully taking her out of danger, leaving Evil to impale the granite at their feet. Her riposte was lightning fast and Evil struggled to parry with one end of his weapon stuck in the ground. Abandoning the lance, Evil applied a quick blast from his thrusters to create some separation. Flexing his shoulders caused his pauldrons to detach, and slide down over his fists. Long, thin blades snapped out. Miyuki parried his first two thrusts, and she countered when he was just a heartbeat slow resetting after his third thrust. Her blade rode on his as he recoiled, her tip coming around to threaten his face. Evil smiled inside his mask. He brought his other blade up, around and down, clamping her one blade between his two. He lifted the clinch high, taking her weapon off line with his body before he whipped one of his down at her. The slash would be weak but it should be enough to penetrate her armor. Wounded animals were always so much more interesting to hunt after all.
It would have been enough to penetrate her armor, if the strike landed. Instead his arm was still raised to strike, and he couldn't move it. A hand with a grip like iron held his vanbrace. It was the interloper! The same one who had cheated him out of Blade's death.
"I thought the plan was for me to handle Evil?" the stranger asked.
Miyuki slouched in embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I got caught up in the moment." She hopped backward before taking to the sky and arcing towards where Lance was supposed to be.
"This is a family affair. You aren't invited!" A slash with his free blade forced the stranger to let go and step back. "I would kill you for your earlier interference." Evil bent his knees, lowered his body, brought one blade up in a high guard, kept the other low. "You shouldn't give me reason to prolong your death."
Something about the tilt of the stranger's head conveyed a sense of disbelief, despite his expressionless, insectile face. "Threats? Really?"
Evil launched into a brutal series of attacks. He limited himself to thrusts, intending to use the speed advantage of linear attacks over the circular techniques his opponent's elbow blades would dictate. That was the plan.
In a move that made Evil's jaw drop, the stranger managed to turn a parry into a bind, trapping Evil's blade between his upper arm and his elbow blade. The bind was so tight Evil couldn't even pull free. A short kick knocked Evil's feet out from under him. Gravity pulled him down to one knee at the same time the blade lock torqued his elbow up at an awkward angle. Even as he was falling, he saw the stranger summon another of those energy balls from the device at his waist.
The sphere flew off to the side as the stranger flew in the opposite direction. It took Evil a moment to realize what had happened. Sword happened. She swung her staff like an oversize baseball bat and knocked the stranger flying. He sailed four or five meters through the air before hitting the remains of a concrete wall. Sword charged before he could recover but she was cut off by a hail blue-green energy blasts. Scanning back along their trajectory, Evil found their source. It was the human in blue and white armor. That cut rate Tekkaman knock-off was barely an annoyance. Its weapons were little more than a pretty light show against a true Tekkaman. Then the energy globes rained down on him.
The first few blasts cratered the ground around him but one hit his shoulder, driving him back to his knees. He felt that! He felt it and it even hurt a little bit. The heavy armor on his vanbraces was proof against this new attack but he could only guard so much.
Sword struggled to her feet, when the stranger conjured yet another of his energy balls, this time using both hands. The ball glowed noticeably larger and brighter this time. Unable to dodge, she took the hit on her forearm. He heard her scream even over the sound of the explosion. She clutched her wounded hand in shock.
"Withdraw!" Lord Omega's telepathic call boomed in Evil's head.
Evil hesitated for a moment. Instead of taking to the sky, he flew toward Sword, grabbing her as he past. Only then did he put every ounce of speed into his ascent. He and Sword were supersonic within fifteen seconds of leaving the ground. Lance and Axe joined them almost immediately. Blue sky gave way to black a little over a minute later.
***
D-Boy ground his teeth as he rode Pegas back to the base. Miyuki was strong and healthy but Shinya lived up to the name Tekkaman Evil. He wouldn't let Sho or Noel or Masaki distract him from killing her. "Faster, Pegas, we need to go faster."
"Negative. Throttle at maximum. Safety systems disabled. Engine failure immanent." D-Boy didn't care what anyone said, he would swear there was a tinge of regret in Pegas' robotic voice.
"ETA to base?"
"Twelve minutes to Command Center airspace. Catastrophic engine failure in six minutes."
D-Boy growled. He couldn't pace or cross his arms or indulge in any of the normal nervous ticks of an impatient person because it would hurt his aerodynamics.
"Recommend you proceed alone."
"Throttle back to safe speed and catch up when you can." D-Boy leapt from Pegas' back and burned his own thrusters as hard as he could. "And thank you."
"Roger." Pegas reduced power to his engines and fell behind D-Boy. The shockwaves of his master's wake were intense, but nothing Pegas couldn't handle. "Your ETA is now eleven minutes, thirty five seconds. My ETA is now 49 minutes."
D-Boy lacked his partner's patience. Minutes felt like hours until he finally crested the last mountain range and the base came into view. Almost every above ground structure was reduced to smoking rubble. There were no signs of life in any direction. No Evil, no Noel, no Miyuki, no one.
Milly's cheerful voice broke his panicked train of though. "Welcome back, D-Boy!"
"What happened? Where is everyone?"
"Everyone is in the break room outside Hangar 6. It seemed like as good a place as any."
"A place for what Milly?"
"A celebration. We won!"
*The detonation of the missile would vaporize part of the ring near the impact point and send a shockwave propagating both directions around the ring. These shockwaves would tear the ring apart at the joints between sections. I'm assuming the ring was built similar to modern ship building, in that sections were prefabricated, moved into position and joined together. In general most sections would stay in orbit. Sections to the west of the impact point would experience some retrograde thrust and move to a lower orbit, but for the most part, the ring would stay up there. It would create one monster of an ablation cascade! The major loss of life would come from the four elevators, which are tensile structures, held up by the orbiting ring. Without the centrifugal load applied by the ring, those elevators, will act like 30,000 mile long baseball bats, smashing everything to the west, and a fair bit North and South.
