Blood ran slowly down Youri's forehead, a thin red line slipping past his eyebrow and dripping onto the edge of the console. One of the earlier shockwaves had slammed his head into the cockpit frame hard enough to crack its inner padding, and the world was still ringing inside his skull. But he didn't feel it. Or rather, he no longer cared. Pain had become distant and muffled, like a sound heard from underwater, and the alarms screaming across the cockpit had long since blended into the background noise of the battle. Warnings flashed endlessly across the panels in front of him — structural damage, power fluctuations, actuator failures, cortex overload. None of it mattered. His eyes were locked on one thing. The Hound.
The battlefield around them had become a graveyard of machines and ships, wreckage spinning slowly through the void. Inside that storm of debris the two Orbitons went on moving at impossible speed, carving violent arcs of light across the darkness — NOIR burning crimson, the Hound blazing orange. They collided again. The Trident slammed against NOIR's blade with a shockwave like a thunderclap that shook its battered frame violently and spread fresh cracks across its armor. Youri forced it forward anyway. NOIR twisted sideways and fired both forearm lasers at once. Twin crimson lances tore toward the Hound. Larsen rolled his machine aside with precise control, letting one beam pass harmlessly beneath the Trident while the second scraped across his shoulder armor and sent molten fragments scattering, glowing briefly before they faded into the dark.
Sweat was running down Larsen's face now, and his breathing had grown heavier as the strain of holding the Hound at such extreme output caught up with him. But the excitement in his eyes hadn't faded at all.
The Hound lunged again. Its tail snapped out like a living spear. Youri saw it coming and spun NOIR backward just enough for it to graze his chest plating instead of piercing the cockpit, though it still carried enough force to send him tumbling. He recovered at once. His thrusters roared as NOIR stopped its spin and accelerated straight back toward the Hound with its crimson aura pulsing violently as the cortex went on pushing past every safe limit. "Come on," Youri whispered.
They clashed again and again. The Trident spun through the void like a blazing storm of blades, every swing strong enough to shatter a warship's hull. NOIR answered with rapid bursts from its shoulder cannons and forearm lasers, weaving through the attacks and striking whenever an opening appeared. To the distant Terrian ships still watching, it looked less like combat than like two cosmic forces colliding over and over, the battlefield flashing ceaselessly with bursts of crimson and orange. Youri blocked another strike and answered with a close-range blast that took the Hound in the torso and drove Larsen back several meters. He followed at once, bringing his blade down toward the Hound's shoulder joint, but Larsen twisted at the last possible instant, so that the blade carved deep across the armor instead of severing the joint. The Hound answered instantly. The Trident slammed into NOIR's chest with brutal force and spread more cracks through its weakened armor. Youri coughed as the shock rattled the machine. And still he didn't stop. NOIR fired its cannons again. The Hound dodged one beam, blocked another and launched itself forward with the Trident aimed straight at NOIR's core. They collided again, and again, and again.
Minutes passed like seconds, each strike pushing both machines closer to their limits, until inside the Hound, Larsen wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. NOIR should have fallen long ago. Its armor was shattered. Its systems were failing. Its pilot was obviously injured. And yet it kept coming. Every time Larsen pushed forward, NOIR met him head-on again. Relentless. Unyielding. Like something that refused to die.
Then space rippled. A massive distortion tore open behind the battlefield. Youri noticed it first, Larsen second. Within moments the colossal warship had come out of it once more, its vast shadow stretching across the battlefield as it settled behind the Hound, the panels along its sides sliding open to reveal rows of enormous cannons. A familiar voice cut into the channel. "Alright, Larsen. You've had your fun. But the mission's done. Time to come home."
Inside the Hound, Larsen let out a slow breath and glanced one last time at the battered NOIR. Then he chuckled. "Guess that's the end of it." And the Hound began to drift slowly backward toward the warship's open docking bay.
But Youri saw it, and something inside him refused to accept it. "No…" It came out as a whisper. And then NOIR moved. It exploded forward with everything it had left as Youri forced the cortex to maximum one final time, crimson energy erupting violently from its frame as every thruster ignited at full power, and it shot toward the retreating ship like a blazing meteor. The warship's cannons fired at once. Massive plasma blasts tore across the void at him, and the Hound swung to intercept with the Trident sweeping across his path. Youri didn't slow down. He twisted through the incoming fire while one blast tore away what was left of NOIR's left shoulder and another struck its damaged leg. Still he pushed forward, past the Hound, straight at the warship, and fired everything he had — forearm lasers, shoulder cannons, every weapon the broken machine still had. The crimson beams slammed into the ship's shield and lit the void with violent explosions as it flared brilliantly and swallowed them.
Behind him, the Hound came back. Larsen boosted forward and slammed the Trident into NOIR's side and knocked it away from the ship before it could fire again. The two machines collided once more, but this time NOIR was too damaged. The Hound swept the Trident aside and struck with its tail. The blazing spike shot forward. Youri tried to move, but the cortex had reached its limit, and the tail pierced straight through the cockpit armor and stopped inches from his chest. Metal screamed as the armor cracked open around him. The ACX-01 cortex finally failed. NOIR's systems died all at once, and its crimson aura faded. Youri's vision blurred. Blood ran down his face as the cockpit filled with smoke. His hands slipped from the controls. The world went dark. NOIR went completely still, floating silently in space, impaled on the glowing plasma tail.
On the warship's bridge, Dellor watched it on the main display, and for a moment he said nothing. Then he leaned back a little in his chair. "…Indeed," he said, with quiet admiration in his voice. "He truly is a monster."
Behind him, the docking bay doors closed as the Hound slid into the ship. The warship began to glow once more as the distortion returned, and a moment later space rippled and the vessel vanished into the darkness, leaving the broken NOIR drifting alone among the wreckage it had fought so hard to protect.