As I stared at the shadows drawing closer toward me I searched for signs of Mugi. My thoughts drifted to the worst-case scenario as their main target became me. Where was Mugi, who had kept them busy up until now?
Mugi was safe. He had hunkered down in the iron chunks of a collapsed building. They are called the “perfect living creature” but Mugi couldn’t actually fly through the air. (Well, he could actually fly a plane or spaceship. He was probably better at it than we were.) Until we had found our way through the wreckage, Mugi had been bounding from building to building as he engaged in battle. That may have been why the damage was so widespread, but it wasn’t really Mugi’s fault. Really.
The shadows were getting close. Ship sensors were buzzing, the LEDs on the targeting screen flashed brightly. As I pushed down the lever with one hand, I laid a finger on the blaster trigger with the other. Yuri had dropped her altitude below mine. They were flying at Mach 1 or Mach 2. I was maintaining my speed at Mach 2.
And then—a chill ran down the length of my spine. By reflex, I slapped the lever down. In an instant my flyer changed directions.
A noise resounded in the canopy. It sounded like a scream. The ringing in my ears pierced into my brain, for a brief moment everything went black. It was the power. And it missed my Shooter by a hair’s width.
As I adjusted my course I maintained my targeting. I fixed my aim and pressed the trigger button.
The red blaze from my blaster struck one of the shadows. Following Yuri’s lead, I descended. This way both of us could attack simultaneously from below.
The only problem was that the shadows came around behind us. We weren’t about to surrender yet. Surrender surely meant death, right?
For the moment we just flew around each other in circles. Even though we were equipped with blasters, and had the power to fight, there was no opportunity for a diversion.
Then a thought flashed across my mind. Mugi! Mugi was below us. We needed his additional strength.
I slowed down, inviting the invaders closer. I didn’t talk to Yuri with the communicator, but signaled to her with gestures from my cockpit. That was enough for her to understand what I was planning to do next.
I rose up and Yuri dropped.
The shadows chose to go two against one. This was slightly different than my plan. A pair of the shadows followed Yuri. Well, that’s okay. She knew how to get away.
I flew straight for the crumbled building Mugi was hiding in. The single shadow followed me closely. Off the subject, but I couldn’t help but wonder how they flew.
I couldn’t see Mugi anywhere, but I knew he was there. That was for certain.
I dropped my altitude even further. I was about five hundred meters from the ground when I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could. One weak point about the Shooter is that it can’t fly well at low speeds.
I could almost touch the half-collapsed building with my hand. The shadow fired. A new crack opened in the structure. Walls broke apart and fell like an avalanche. This building was one of the intelligence centers for United Galactica. Oof! Below it was Danp Yu’s finest fashion center and most buzzed about boutique arcade, the Heighcent Shopping Plaza. Oh, this was not good at all. It was this city’s most bustling neighborhood.
I coiled around the Central Intelligence Building. I couldn’t fire my weapons around here. I thought it might be best to get a little ways away from here.
But my thinking was ever-so-slightly too late.
It was exquisite timing. Following my Shooter circling the building the shadow tried to come around at me in a straight line, but he overshot the building and crossed into a different targeting path. This is when the scrapheap-hidden Mugi made his reappearance. It didn’t look like he could intersect with the shadow. It looked like it would escape his fate, but Mugi was faster. The power was no use. The shadow found itself in Mugi’s claws and fangs.
Torn and bitten, the shadow was thrown against a wall on the roof of a neighboring building. The shadow was a shadow no longer. It had stopped moving, and the armor was now visible clearly. There was a large rip in the armor from the chest to the abdomen, and blood was pouring out. His right arm was jutted out at an unnatural angle. Standing at the very edge of the half-destroyed building, there was no more power to resist from this one.
I turned around and got on his rear. Mugi and I both intended to strike together our killing blow.
Then he resorted to his last line of defense.
He jumped from the top of the building.
The shadow flew out pretty far. He used every last bit of energy, I guessed. He went a horizontal distance of about eighty meters. He fell right into the center of the shopping plaza. If he’d have just died quietly like that, it really wouldn’t have been a problem.
The problem was after crashing into the ground, he exploded.
A gigantic explosion. No doubt, it was from the armor.
The shopping plaza was blown away. A shopping plaza with likely several thousand customers inside at the time. There was nothing left. There was only a crater in the ground. The flames and smoke could be seen rising over one-kilometer-tall buildings.
Uwaaa—dizzy. I felt faint.
For a few moments everything went white. During that time the Shooter continued to fly, and I didn’t crash, but I don’t remember piloting for those moments. It’s a miracle that my Shooter didn’t crash due to the shockwave from the explosion.
I regained my senses thanks to Yuri’s voice from the communicator.
“Kei! Kei! Kei!” Yuri called me in that tension-filled, high-pitched voice of hers. But I wasn’t in any condition to respond.
“It’s no good! They’ll get me! I can’t get away!”
It was registering this that snapped me back to consciousness. That was right. Yuri was fighting alone against two shadows. I hurriedly examined the radar. Yuri’s mark was almost overlapped by the marks for the two shadows.
“Yuri!” I shouted, after turning on the communicator mic. “Escape to the outskirts! Go where there are no people! I’ll be right there!”
I squeezed the accelerator. Mugi should have been able to hear our conversation. He also received the radar information.
I opened up the Shooter’s main nozzle all the way.
As the name suggests, the ship took off like a bullet.