Interzeit: A Space Opera (28 page)

“Yea,” she says, her breathing strained.

“How bad is it?” He asks seriously.

She feels her side, pain shoots several volleys around her nervous system.

“I think…” She wheezes, “My ribs are broken, I can keep going though. I can…don’t…worry.”

He nods to himself, draconic, fully of bloodthirsty resolve. He pulls free his rifle, and drops it at her feet.

“Don’t let me die out there Iza.” He says sternly.

The orange and black war
mech stares into her for a moment. The six false eyes scanning coldly, the one true optic seems to burn into her with a laser of an entirely different sort.

She nods in return, and he breaks communication.
Turning the
EDF
-01
launches back into the air, whipping its purple blade back into life.

While flying back to his enemy, a strange communication arrives. Not recognizing the call sign, Nol accepts anyway. A familiar voice inquires into his presence on the battlefield. Nol mulls it over, contemplating for a moment, then he realizes its owner.

“Byron?” He finally speaks, pulling him up on screen. The ginger looks as faded and dead as ever.

“Tomson…” he mutters, “I should have known you’d be hear. My sources told me you had been arrested?”

He smiles, “I was. Are you he
r
e
to help?”

“Are you?” He asked, “We’re locking down the perimeter around the cabinet, seems like you provoked the prince from his tower.”

“Steal your glory?”

“Damn right,”

“Come get it back then,” He smirks, flipping him off.

Byron grits his teeth, disappearing from the video screen. Nol slows, Tystrophanes awaits him, floating in the air, blade hot, eye charging.

“We’ll pincer him,” he tells Byron, “Draft in behind me.”

He doesn’t respond, but he sees the craft sneaking up to his elevation, trailing behind.

Nol takes a deep breath, and hails the Prince. He accepts, Nol tries to get the first word, but Septis beats him to the punch.

“Ready to surrender?”

“
I don’t surrender.”
Nol
assures him

“Unfortunate, you will die like the rest of the dogs then.” He spits venomously,

“Keep your eye on the birdie,” he mutters and cuts Septis off.

“Clara? Clara?”

“Yes Nol,” she asks,
“It’s already done.”

“That’s
…the dodge trajectory?”

“Yes, we have it all in hand now.” Her face appears in the clouds for a moment, smiling sinisterly, the foggy mouth speaks, “Let’s kill this asshole.”

Clocking up to higher speeds, Nol raises the bleeding violet blade over his head, dashing through the air.

Septis
shifts his stance, twisting the blade, raising it parallel to his face. The blue edge emanates in front of him, tracing outwards from the mech’s one charging eye.

It fires quickly, Clara responds, lifting them up in a sharp arc. T
he jets cut as
they spin and twirl to
Tystrophanes’s
back side. The
y
both turn and strike, clashing powerfully. Septis pulls back, and slams the blade again, pushing
Nol
back forcefully. Nol’s jets kick on, pushing back into the clench.

Nol sees Byro
n’s yellow—
black mech, pause a safe distance away from them. A powerful beam rifle shot, flies towards Tystrophanes. He is distracted by Nol’s slashing offensive, but Nol notices
that
Byron has lined up the shot directly. Two birds with one shot, the powerful blast will impale the both of them.

Nol transmits to Septis, “One moment, so sorry.”

“Nol…” Clara says concerned.

He disengages, spinning them both away from the beam. It passes between them sizzling. He dashes towards Byron quickly, Septis waits watching them carefully.

“Nol!” She barks, he feels he
r
resist his will, worming painfully in his brain.

“Agh! Shut up Clara!” He yells,

He snaps to a stop besides Byron.

“Nol?” he asks innocently.

Nol sees that he
h
as an
emmiter
strapped to his side, in the same place as the
EDF
-01
. He rips it from his side lighting the purple blade in his off hand. Byron pulls away, but Nol catches him perfectly. Swinging both violet blades, he slices both arms off at the shoulders.

“What are you doing?!” He asks in a panic, turning and fleeing.

Silently, he shoots blasts from the emitter, raking his back, crashing him in the ground.

“Stop! We’re on the same side!”

Nol lands on the ground, kicking the mech flat against the Earth.

“I know it was you,” Nol says in a whisper, he hears Clara protest, but suppresses her voice, “You tried to set me up in training.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Stop! You’re a madman!”

“I’m on my own side Byron, just like you.”

He opens a scissor around the writhing mechs midsection. Pressing a foot into it, pinning him, he closes the scissors roaring. The blades rip through the mech, eviscerating it.
He kicks the legs away, and the whole thing starts exploding violently.

He turns around, walking slowly back to Tystrophanes, calm within the metal storm raging around them.

“Nol, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“You don’t know
,
you’re not even real.” He says angrily,

She goes quiet. He pings Septis again,

“Well?” he asks, “Shall we finish this?”

Septis nods stoically, a less petulant mind state seems to have taken him. Tystrophanes drops from the sky, landing harshly, cratering the ground. Standing his ground, Nol trudges slowly towards him. He considers firing wildly at him, and dashing. However, he sees the glow of the charged eye, and thinks better of it.

The last trace light vanishes behind the horizon. Nol’s vision takes on a hyper colorful saturation as the sensors reconstruct the darkness into a palpable form. The sky turns electric blue, the colors of Tystrophanes dance, hyperactive purples and greens meshing into one another. The blue blade shifts up to a blinding white.

Nol looks down at himself, the orange burns and swirls around his body like wildfire.
He mutters a name to himself quietly, he laughs, a crazed feeling flows through him warmly, something tightens in his perception. He syncs in deeper with the mech, with Clara, holistically becoming.

“What did you say?” She asks demurely.

“Moloch,” he says finally, “That’s who we are Clara, who I am. The demon. Moloch.”

She says
too much
nothing. He picks up speed, running, stressing the limits of the actuators within his obsidian legs, “We destroy, because we are made to destroy. A fire that does not feed dies!”

He unleashes a flurry of strikes at Septis. He blocks and moves, in avoidance, Nol’s purple blades catch and strike through, opening up his guard, slipping in
,
threatening the lethal stroke.
Clashing, stabbing, slashing, Nol pushes him backwards.

Long counter atta
cks weave through his blades. The
synchronicity with the machine heightens everything.

The blades swing in slow motion. In, out, around, it all slows, Nol continues to count ahead on the beat, racing against the calm stance of Tystrophanes to the finish line. No battle can be innocent, Nol’s heart grows cold as the mayhem erupts in greater and greater terrifying quality.

Atrocities, things he once viewed as such, diminish. The o
nes on the ground burn and die in
their fate
s
. All moments leading to one ending, a united front against nullity.
Their right to live is superceded by the right of the powerful to kill, and the killing evolves and multiples as more grab for the gun.

Hovercrafts, tanks, cannons, they try to interfere, in the chaos neither pilot can determine whose side they are on any longer. A blast comes through, interrupting their dance, their fates sealed. Together they kill the bystanders, a sickening dark nobility pact forming as they fight through the night.

A message, I will kill you, and only I will kill you. No cheap tricks, or false victories. As the fight wears on these formalities prove to Septis’s advantage.

Their mechs are endlessly vital, capable of fighting until the end of time. Their techniques cannot endless
ly
evolve however. Septis parries a double overhead strike, following up with a broad stroke to the chest.

Nol feels it coming, boosting backwards. Even still, the blade cleaves through the hull, hot gas and fluxified metal sprays over him. The pain breaks his focus momentarily, taking him outside of Moloch, and back to himself. The initial sizzle fades, and seals against his skin. The dull pain shifts
,
pulling him
back
in.

He feels the machine say, Clara say, they all say. The body must be destroyed, and he falls even deeper into the machine, not in spite of pain, but due to pain. Its lessons breaching and burning his inner sanctum.

He breaks up the fight, alternating swings and blasts from his two emitter blades. The asymmetrical attack is immediately effective. Nol slashes and blasts through the plate
s of Tystrophanes,
wittling
the
metal layer by layer, digging into what lies at its core.

Tystrophanes counters, the eye beam fires, then splits, diffusing into a plasmatic spray, raining down on Nol and the battlefield as a whole.
The burning beams lances around, singing the earth in large linear patterns, tracing wildfire on all flammables through the quickly self-destructing city. Nol answers backing firing rapid blast through the storm. The
y
rip up Tystrophanes, unable to defend
himself
or move with the beams splitting as they are.

“Fuck it,” Nol says, diving into the array.

As he closes in, one of the small beams grows whe
n touching him
, ripping through the mech’s upper chest. Flashes and reports of system failures ping through Clara’s system. Nol slams Tystrophane’s blue blade harshly, flinging his guard up into the beam. It channels into the blade directly, and grows erratically, then exploding.

The explosion rocks them backwards, crushing into the ground. The smoke and debris kicks up, covering the area in a brown fog. It
’
s interrupted quickly, fire from different angles pelt inwards, attempting to silence one or both of them in a hail of fire. Nol rolls out of the blast zone, staying low.

He sees Tystrophanes rising. Its back is turned to him, facing the debris, lost still. It surges through Nol, the feeling, his feeling, Clara’s feeling, Moloch’s feeling, they know, all know together at once. This is it, the moment, the opportunity, without chivalry or honor, but here it is none the less.

He leaps to his feet, lunging. Both blades go live, and strike forwards. He screams bloodthirsty, desperate, pleading with death for swiftness. They sink in, impaling
his enemy through the back. The sparks and fire flies, and Tystrophanes seizes up, shocking itself in pain.

Nol pulls upwards, ripping the out the tops of his shoulders. The lacerated tears rip open wide, bending. The
circuitry,
and mass of actuators pour out of the wound like internal organs. The machine guts spill, the metal of the arms bend under their own unsupported weight, tearing the wound wider. The limbs fall helplessly to the sides, hanging on with fragile tenacity.

He receives a communicae. It is Septis, Nol expects surrender, but gets the opposite. His face his hot, exhausted, and angry.

“Do it! Kill me dog! Finish me off!”He demands it of Nol, begging him for death. It feels tainted, almost masochistic, but Nol must oblige. There is a pleasure and consent in the act, all the hands of the machine tie together as he forms a lethal scissor around the mech’s cockpit.

Suddenly several missiles fly into him from the side exploding. Enraged, and annoyed, Nol quickly rebounds, lunging
to their origin point. He hears
a faint voice crying out.

“Escape now my lord!” It says.

Nol brings the blade low to the ground, Moloch’s face skims it as well, getting low like snake or lion preparing to pounce. To get a close look at the interloper, what he finds paralyzes him completely.

Wearing the strange spaceman suit, black and white. His pale skin and narrow face, it is dreadfully familiar. Through the eyes of rage and fire he still relents. It is Polystratus among many soldiers armed with rockets.

“Kill him Nol!” Clara demands, but still he hesitates.