The Vanguard

Visual representation courtesy of Frontier Trust.

The Vanguard fired a short pulse from his aft microverniers, causing his battered machine to drift lifelessly towards the planetoid, its robotic limbs reluctantly being pulled along by the forces of inertia. Devoid of motivation and drained of energy, the previous consecutive skirmishes had accumulated into a maelstrom of deadly conflict involving thousands of combatants from all sides. When the dust settled, only one machine remained.

The Vanguard, however, was not free from injury.

As the event horizon of the planetoid inched into view, the Vanguard could make out specks ringing the cosmic structure, looking like tiny lights circling a sphere cut from marbled orange. As he continued on his course, the Vanguard could see that the specks had begun to move: shifting from their seemingly irregular positions into tiered arrangements that grew tighter, more organised and more recognizable. He winced as he tried to recall the specks’ formation – now a wedge-shape with the pointed end facing the Vanguard – and looked up to physically discern the image with his biological optics as the realisation finally dawned.

An armada on an attack vector.

Putting his thrusters into reverse to compensate for the forward inertia, the Vanguard slowed his crippled machine to an almost complete stop and diverted substantial amounts of power into the machine’s long-ranged sensors to regard his adversary that now stood in his way.

There were hundreds of capital ships: frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, supercarriers as well as an enormous battlecarrier that undoubtedly served as the flagship for this impossibly-formidable armada. As the entire fleet moved into position with perfect synchronicity, the Vanguard could spot the telltale lances of azure thruster exhaust as dozens of humanoid machines not unlike the Vanguard’s launched from their parent warships and took up defensive positions within the main formation.

Vindictive-class combat visages. Beam claymores. Kinetic repeaters. Disruption fields.

Once the Vanguard reached a mere 10,000 kilometers from the deployed armada, all of the Vindictive-class combat visages unanimously unsheathed their beam claymores, slender fingers of angry red energy lancing upwards and culminating in sharpened points as the visages themselves poised for battle like so many ancient samurai. Their motherships prepared for war themselves: giant tri-barreled cannons were raised from concealed positions, kinetic accelerators hummed with energy as their prongs lit up with bluish energy and thousands of warheads showed themselves from the equal number of launchers that manifested from the warships’ hulls. Then they just stayed there. Not one vessel moved an inch, not one visage flexed a servo.

It was as if the armada was taunting the Vanguard, daring him to take another step.

He hung his head low. He was too tired, too exhausted from the previous battles. The Vanguard drew his own weapon from its hip holster, a well-worn and heavily damaged laser katana whose emerald blade flickered in and out of existence like a faulty light, its energy cell too drained to even sustain the blade in standby, much less coalesce the light into a lethal weapon.  

Right now, the Vanguard could not hope to defeat even one Vindictive-class combat visage, never mind the planetary assault fleet it came with. He had to retreat for now, to rearm, to relearn. As he turned to make his departure, he put his long-range sensor to its maximum output, and managed to catch a glimpse of the one thing that will give life to his battered soul. Even behind three meters of titanium armor and plexi-glass, she still looked as radiant, as beautiful as ever.

The Vanguard smiled. He will be back for her, and when he finally returns, even the Imperial Defense Fleet would be powerless against him. He will tell her what he must, tell her his most concealed and secret thoughts, tell her that he exists because she does.

But not today.