The Paragon of Eden

Part 6

Neem breathed out. He hadn't had much fighting to do since he elected to guard the Genisis Crystals. He was supposed to be ready, supposed to be unbeatable in the circumstance that someone attacked.

They must have prepared too much against a specific individual. Neem hadn't been expecting this. An all-out attack, endlessly flowing waves of pirates, all arriving as if this was some well-coordinated raid involving every armed unit they had. Neem was drinking the ocean, trying to fend off every single enemy that came his way. They never ended. The task was impossible.

But the Angels of Dusk had to do things like this. Impossibility was for the realm of those that ruled. Neem needed to do the impossible.

And he was. All around him, there were scattered pieces of Warbacks and cruisers. He stood among them, looking at the battlefield of a hardened army. It gave him a strange thrill to know that any and all carnage that was on display was caused by him.

The one thing that he couldn't take credit for was the destroyed remnants of the Sanctuary. His home, his friends' homes. It had stayed hidden for so long, supporting the lineage of every Angel until the ancient Warbacks were passed down to the seven of them that remained.

Neem's Judas crushed the codpiece of a kitbash Warback. The pirates were getting better, even starting to innovate instead of stealing. They put on a good fight. All signs pointed to one thing, however. The fight was done. They were all dead. Save for one.

The Judas was missing an arm. Its bulging, spherical features broke apart to reveal sparking, bursting technology. The stuff that had made the seven most powerful Warbacks in history had become so advanced that it barely resembled machinery anymore. It looked like plant fibers, but it was clear that there was strength and fortitude in the assembly. Neem was proud to have fought in his family's heirloom.

The Judas stood, missing an arm, scared and dented all over, its shell falling off after the strikes it had received, its metals burning with the energy it wielded. Time was almost up. It stood, and Neem gazed from his cock pit across the dark space of destruction. There, backed by the darkness of space that did not befit the Sanctuary's warm colors, was a Warback. A pirate one. The only one.

And it was armed to its joints in things the pirates should never have laid their hands on. This must have been the most advanced unit those subhumans had access to. It was personalized and forged by their own intent, modified from the source material provided by the Empire, expanded and improved, decorated in shredded cloth and jaggedly bent metal. It looked like a forlorn warrior, a drifter, a creature of darkness. How had this disjointed collective gained the ability to harbor such a thing?

The Judas leaped, ascending high into the air produced by the DA of the Genisis Crystals themselves. He reached the pinnacle of his trajectory, and then he headed down. The Judas was heavy, and it left a crater as it smashed into the ground.

The pirate dodged. It was fast, and possessed a skilled pilot. Whoever it was, they knew not to endure anything from the Judas.

The pirate Warback acted, dashing and stabbing the Judas with an explosive dagger. It was pirate design, but it had Empire technology at its core. The Angels had stayed ahead for so long, but they hadn't been making as many improvements. It was only a matter of time before they were outdone by either of the two major factions.

Not yet. The dagger aimed for the open wound, but it missed. The bulbous head of the Judas quaked, cracked, and held. With a mighty maneuver, it grabbed the pirate Warback and slammed it into the ground below. The force was so strong that the ground cracked and fell through. Neem jumped and flew away in the Judas, gaining distance. That was not a good thing for his particularly close-range Warback, but he was on the defensive.