The abnormal glare affected them even from such a distance.
The Archangel's monitor feed was washed in white, and light poured through the bridge's transparent windows, illuminating the interior as brightly as day.
A vast stretch of space had been lit up like broad daylight.
A phenomenon like that naturally made people think of only one kind of weapon: something capable of producing such a blinding flash.
A nuclear explosion.
As the Archangel reacted, an exceptionally shrill alarm blared, and scarlet warning text appeared on one of the screens, making everyone truly realize that this might be the deathly radiance produced by a nuclear blast.
It made no sense.
He had removed the warhead, but instead of launching it, he had detonated it in place?
"That light!"
"A nuclear explosion?"
"Impossible!"
They did not want to believe it. With Neutron Jammers in effect, and with this region certainly within their area of influence, a nuclear explosion should have been impossible.
Yet that phenomenon, combined with the absurdly high-energy readings detected by their machines, seemed to point to only one thing. Only the detonation of a nuclear warhead could produce such terrifying energy values.
It definitely could not be a nuclear blast.
If it truly were a nuclear blast, Athrun and the others could not understand why the enemy would detonate it in place.
Could it be that he believed his defensive coverage was enough to withstand it?
Then why not get closer to the Vesalius before detonating it? At this distance, the power of a nuclear warhead might not necessarily destroy the Vesalius.
Because of that, Athrun leaned more toward another possibility: perhaps the intense light itself was a special kind of attack. It might be a form of high-radiation strike.
For example, electromagnetic radiation could affect machinery and electronic components, destroying them or disabling their functions. In other words, an EMP attack.
But it did not look like an EMP attack, because his machine had shown no abnormal reaction.
Then perhaps it was an ionizing radiation attack. That would be extremely deadly, inflicting horrific damage on living organisms.
Even if their bodies seemed fine now, something could go wrong very soon.
No. That was not right either.
With such an enormous release of abnormal energy, there should have been a physical shock as well. Logically, there should have been...
What?
The light was fading. At the same time, their machines' alarms stopped, as if the enormous energy reaction they had just detected had merely been a false reading caused by system failure.
So they had no time to keep thinking about what the strong light had been.
Because once that light vanished, the truth would be reflected on everyone's retinas.
After the glow dimmed to a certain level, it stopped weakening further, but that was already enough for them to see the abnormality.
"Gulp."
Dearka swallowed audibly. Even his hands seemed to tremble.
"A... sun?"
Nicol murmured hoarsely.
Just as he said, the spherical luminous object before them looked as if a sun were hanging right in front of their eyes.
Their machines' scans confirmed that it was roughly one hundred meters in diameter. It appeared to be a crimson plasma sphere.
And beneath that sphere was the transformed fighter, holding the gigantic object aloft.
Crack, crack, crack, crack.
It was as if they could hear glass fracturing, though of course, no such sound could actually travel through space.
The reason their minds filled in the sound on their own was because one side of that miniature sun had begun to crack.
It looked as if it had been sealed inside a glass sphere.
The cracks on the side facing the Vesalius rapidly spread. Their speed was incredible, and in only a second, they had nearly covered the entire sphere.
Immediately afterward, intense light pierced through those fissures, creating a brilliant, colorful image like an aurora.
But this aurora was deadly. Their machines began sounding abnormal energy warnings again.
Then Athrun's voice roared through the channel, as though he were trying to empty every last breath from his lungs.
"Get out of the way!"
The instant his words fell, half of the glass sphere shattered and vaporized. Blinding light once again flooded their entire field of vision.
At that moment, every exchange of fire around the Archangel stopped, all parties caught by that terrifying sight.
"Wh-What is that?!"
The commander of the GINN squad on this side, Yzak Jule, spoke in a trembling voice, his pupils quivering as he stared at the scene before him.
From that abnormal miniature sun, a torrent of energy surged directly toward the Vesalius.
And when one called it enormous, that did not only refer to the sheer amount of energy. It was physically enormous to the naked eye.
It was like a dam opening its floodgates. Water would rush through a straight river channel in a surging torrent, and if the image were sped up, it would look like a beam of water shooting forward.
But in another scenario, the water would not be released through the gates. Instead, the dam itself would collapse because it could no longer bear the weight of the water it held back. The released flood would not follow the river channel. It would sweep across a vast fan-shaped area on both sides, smashing through everything.
To put it simply, the miniature sun they had seen suddenly seemed to be punctured, and its terrifying energy flooded toward the region where the Vesalius was located.
An enormous area, enough to fit over a hundred Vesalius-class ships, was swallowed by that tide of energy.
An unimaginably wide-range attack like that could not be dodged.
The abnormal strike came ferociously and vanished just as quickly. In the next instant, space fell silent.
"Nicol, Dearka, respond if you can hear me!"
Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
Only static answered through the comm channel, making Athrun uneasy, even though his optical sensors had confirmed that their machines were unharmed and had not been caught in that terrifying energy.
They had scattered far away to avoid the Vesalius's main cannon fire earlier, and they had not been directly in front of the enemy. As a result, the released energy attack had not reached them.
Still, it seemed to have produced powerful electromagnetic interference, disrupting their communications.
When he looked toward the Vesalius, he saw only a mass of fragments.
It was like porcelain smashed hard against the floor, reduced to countless shards.
Under those circumstances, it was nearly impossible for anyone aboard the ship to have survived.
Hm?
The static on the comm channel vanished, and Athrun immediately called again.
"Nicol, Dearka, respond if you can hear me!"
"I hear you, Athrun. What the hell kind of weapon was that?!"
Dearka's voice clearly carried fear. Athrun understood why.
"I don't know either."
"It was almost like a solar flare erupting."
Nicol's murmur sounded through the channel.
And that description was actually rather fitting.
"Athrun, it's attacking again!"
Those words made Athrun tense. The abnormal machine was moving toward the remains of the Vesalius again. What was it trying to do?
At that moment, a transmission filled with static came through. It was from Captain Le Creuset. He was still alive.
So that terrifying machine must have noticed that Rau was still alive and now intended to finish him off.
Damn it!
"Huh? What's this?"
"The enemy machine has a problem!"
Dearka and Nicol stared at the scene in astonishment.
They had still been unsure how to intercept it, but the enemy's booster engine appeared to have malfunctioned, leaving it unable to fly.
In that case, it could never match the speed of their machines. They could rescue Captain Le Creuset.
Wait.
If its thrust system was broken, and this was not solid ground but space, then it had no point of force to support its body's movements. It was like a turtle flipped onto its shell, able only to flail its limbs.
That meant the enemy was now a live target, helpless before them.
The Archangel.
Everyone seemed to have forgotten their duties, their minds seized by that shocking sight.
It was hard to imagine that a machine like that not only possessed a shield that looked capable of defending against any attack, but could also unleash power on the level of a superweapon mounted on a fortress.
"Murrue, what was that?"
Natarle Badgiruel was so stunned that she directly addressed her partner by name.
One machine possessed that much power.
She could not imagine who could stand against it if such machines were mass-produced.
"I don't know."
Murrue could only answer with a bitter smile.
However, she did have one theory about how that attack, which resembled an eruption from a solar flare, had been achieved.
The man named Kain had likely used the defensive shield that protected him to contain the explosive energy of a nuclear warhead.
Yes. She believed that warhead had been nuclear.
In reality, the destructive power of a nuclear warhead in space was not as overwhelming as people imagined.
After detonation, its energy spread in every direction, causing the force to diminish more quickly.
But if that defensive shield compressed the explosive energy inside a spherical space, and then opened an outlet in a single designated direction...
Then the energy that should have radiated outward in all directions would instead be concentrated into one directional blast. Its kill zone would shrink, but its power would increase.
And by focusing it in one direction, it could also reach much farther.
That was why ZAFT's Nazca-class ship had been crushed after being engulfed by energy like a solar flare.
With that level of power, perhaps a single machine could rival an entire fleet.
Suddenly, the fighter on the screen seemed about to start moving again, flying toward the Nazca-class ship to confirm whether the enemy had been completely destroyed, when a sudden problem occurred.
It was like trying to start a car, only for the engine to fail to ignite.
"Captain, this... it looks like a malfunction!"
"This is bad. Losing propulsion in space makes him nothing but a target!"
Natarle's tone was extremely heavy.
If that were the case, the enemy could simply concentrate fire on him while he remained in place.
As for that defensive ability, Natarle did not believe it could last forever. Everything had a limit to what it could endure.
Once that defense was broken, he would be finished.
And because his booster had malfunctioned, the enemy would likely get the same impression: that his machine had reached its limit.
That meant he was no longer invincible. If they launched an all-out attack now, they might be able to take him down.
Under those circumstances, he could not counterattack either.
The energy protecting him also meant his weapons would be difficult to use.
Once he fired, the energy shield would have to open, or his own attack would be blocked as well.
The enemy would certainly not let that opening slip by.
And if he did not fire, there was another possibility. The enemy might not attack him, but instead push him away, effectively abducting him.
"Lieutenant Commander La Flaga, please support Mr. Kain. His fighter's booster is disabled!"
Murrue immediately issued the order.
"Understood. I'll get there as fast as I can. You'll have to handle these GINNs yourselves. Uh, looks like they don't plan on letting me through either. What a pain."
"Miss 60, please..."
Murrue was about to ask one of Kain's companions to rescue their commander, because an enemy had drawn a beam saber and was moving to stab her commander from a blind spot.
But before she could finish, the new situation on the screen stunned her.
"What is this now, Murrue?"
Natarle stared blankly at the image.
Without propellant, he should have been like an overturned turtle, able only to flail his arms and legs, unable to right himself. He should have been a live target.
The scene before her shattered her common sense. That machine had actually made a jumping motion and avoided the backstab.
For one jump, they might have mistaken it for some other small thruster. But with the next leap, it seemed to step on some invisible wall as a support point, agilely flashing behind an enemy GINN. The machine's gun muzzle flashed several times, and that GINN melted outright, just like what they had seen in the colony.
In the blink of an eye, five GINNs were destroyed. The remaining three avoided the attacks because their mobility was superior to that of the GINNs.
No, they did not avoid everything. They were still grazed, and parts of their surfaces melted like burn scars on human skin.
"Damn it. What the hell is going on?"
"It's stepping and running through space, as if it were really on solid ground!"
Because of that, the enemy could no longer be treated as a target.
"He's probably using that defensive shield as a foothold."
Athrun gave his analysis.
"That's way too ridiculous!"
Dearka could hardly believe that a shield could be used like that. It was absurd.
If this continued, they would have no way to deal with the enemy.
Moreover, if they kept dragging this out, their own machines would likely run out of power.
"We're withdrawing. Go retrieve Captain Le Creuset!"
"That's all we can do."
"Damn it. What kind of weapon did Orb develop? This thing is supposed to be for protecting itself? Like hell it is!"
However, they discovered that the thrusterless machine behind them was gradually accelerating in pursuit.
"Damn it, this bastard can even do that?!"
Dearka's voice sounded somewhat powerless.
Logically, the enemy should not have been able to catch up. Who could have expected that bastard to use bombs carried on his own machine, detonating them at close range, then shielding himself with his defensive field so the shock waves from the explosions pushed him forward?
He was accelerating like that and catching up.
"Nicol, what are you doing?"
"Nicol!"
Both of their faces changed, because Nicol had suddenly broken away from the formation.
"Athrun, Dearka, go take Captain Le Creuset and leave. I'll intercept him!"
Leaving those words behind, Nicol moved away from his team and charged toward the enemy.
"Damn it, Nicol! Who gave you permission to do that?!"
Dearka immediately tried to turn back, but one hand caught his machine.
"Athrun, let go!"
"Dearka!"
Athrun roared at him, and Dearka understood Athrun's decision from that shout. Because of that, rage surged through him.
"You want me to watch him go off and die?"
"Then what else can you do? Go die with him?"
Those words left Dearka with no choice but to slam a fist against his control panel, no longer resisting.
He could only watch as Nicol piloted Blitz to intercept the enemy, the distance between them growing farther and farther.
Until Blitz Gundam suddenly seemed to lose power.
No, it really had lost power. The high-intensity movements required to intercept the enemy had rapidly drained its energy.
And Blitz Gundam without power was nothing but a true target.
(End of Chapter)
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