Siege on Helsinki, Part 1

Athena spent all of her time in the mecha bay inside of the flagship Eternal, where she was assigned to by her superiors. It was one of the strongest flagships the Separatists had.

The sound of metal clashing and the hissing sound of welding accompanied her time there. With the size of a mecha being only around 5 meters tall, the flagship housed hundreds of them in its mecha bay, just enough to ensure the floor won't collapse under the weight. Each one of them had to be maintained regularly, which made it incredibly rare for the place to have a peaceful time.

But she didn't really mind. After all, all those noises helped her drown her sorrow and distracted her from her pain.

Most of her time there was focused on repairing and improving her mecha, but in the rest between those, she spent it on a trip to the past. She knew it was unhealthy, but she couldn't help it. Every time she had free time her mind just wander to him, and how both she and her lover were betrayed and left to die by the Federation.

She had no photos or videos she could stare at. All she had of her dead lover was the image embedded in her head and her memories of their time together. Sometimes tears rolled down her cheek, but they were luckily hidden underneath her mask.

One day, as she was resting on her pilot seat, a voice called out from down below. She peeked down to found out it was her commanding officer, a man with short black messy hair. It was the third time they talked to each other outside of battle, the first time being when he was introduced to her and the second one was on her first mission.

"Athena!" he called out.

After making sure her blue plain mask was still covering her face, Athena jumped down from her mecha's pilot seat and onto the ground, right before her commanding officer.

"We got a mission. We are going to attack Helsinki to take the-"

"I don't need all this crap. Just tell me what the mission is about, what I'm going to do, and be done with it."

The officer couldn't help but let out a sigh. Her attitude never changed. Cold and distant from everyone else. As much as she was a valuable asset to the Separatists, she was also a pain in the *** to work with. She rarely followed orders and sometimes even went off on a bloody rampage on Federation territory.

"Your mission is to help the ground units secure one of the Federation's main cities," the officer said, cutting out all the explanation he had planned to tell her.

"Got it," she said before climbing up into her mecha's left legs and returned to her spot from before on the pilot seat.

"One more thing!" her commanding officer suddenly shouted, "The Federation is said to have a new ace pilot, but no one knows how dangerous he is, so be careful!"

When there was no response from the female pilot, he just gave up and walk away.

The news about a new pilot didn't faze her. She had fought against countless ace pilots of the Federation, and none of them were an actual threat to her. In the end, only one person could match her in a battle, and that person was dead.

What mattered to her more was how much taking the city would hurt the Federation. She remembered Helsinki as a mining planet, highly valued by the Federation. She wondered how they would react if they lose it.

Everything around her suddenly shook for a brief moment, a sign the flagship just entered jump speed. While waiting for the jump to finish, Athena decided to take a nap. It was a dreamless nap, and a couple of hours later, the alarm was sounded, signaling to the flagship's inhabitants that it was going to soon enter the battle zone.

Athena, awoken by the sound of the alarm, sat properly inside her mecha and placed a helmet on her head, synchronizing her neurons to the machine. After the sync was completed, her mecha door closed and her mecha started moving. Her body stayed motionless as the order from her brain that used to move them around was rerouted to her mecha, allowing her to move them around as fluently as her own body.

She watched all of the mechanics and non-essential personals rushed out of the hangar to avoid being sucked out to the void of space. She then walked past some of the other pilots, internally cursing them for the time it took them to just get into their mecha.

After all of the pilots were in their mecha, the hangar door opened, revealing that the battle had already started between cruisers of both sides. Before the door was even fully opened, Athena already turned on the thrusters on the back of her mecha and launched herself out.

"Athena! Regroup with the rest before landing at the given coordinate!" she could hear her commanding officer ordered her through the comms.

"No need. I'm going in."

"At-" he tried to stop her, but she cut off her communication before he could speak further. In the end, the other soldiers were just slowing her down. She could do it all by herself.

Her mecha shook violently as it went through the atmosphere. Thankfully her mecha was made with the latest technology, allowing it to minimalize the turbulence and the heat generated when going through the atmosphere.

As she was falling down the sky of the brown planet, she suddenly remembered a glimpse of her memory.

It was her first time entering Earth's atmosphere. All new pilots were trained there.

Back then, she was barely a pilot. That's why she panicked the moment her pilot room was filled with the color of red. Her lack of preparation also severing the communication between her and her trainers down on the base.

While she was frantically opening up her manual to find something that would help her, a black mecha suddenly swooped in from behind her and moved to her front. The mecha used its body to protect her mecha from the heat.

She remembered that day not only because she almost died, but it was also the first time she met him.

"Don't worry! We got this!" said the pilot of the other mecha through the speaker on his mecha.

Thanks to the coolant gas the black mecha shot out from its shoulders, they landed, well, crashed onto the ground safely. Albeit their mecha was badly burned because of their improper initial entrance to the atmosphere. She heard the pilot of the mecha that saved her got his back burned quite severely, so she visited him at the hospital. She thought he was going to be angry at him, but he just sat there with a grin on his face. When she apologized, he said that the burn wound was nothing and he was just glad that she was safe.

She was in awe at his bravery and kindness, but not in the falling zone, yet.

"Don't mind it! Anyway, the name is Taki. You?"

"I-I'm Luna."

"Nice to meet you, Luna," Taki smiled.

The landing of her mecha awoken Athena from her daydream. She was surprised none of the AA guns fired at her as she was falling. Thought it was probably because of the other black-red mecha standing before her.

"I have been waiting for you Athena," the enemy mecha said as he drew two long swords from his back.

"So you're the new pilot of the Federation," Athena replied, pulling her katana from the back of her mecha.

"The name is Ares, and I'm here for your head."

The enemy mecha wasted no time to wait for her reply and launched itself towards her. They traded blows a couple of times before Ares managed to slash her hand a bit. She must admit, her enemy was more ferocious than the other ace pilots.

Difficult, but still beatable.

The two mecha jumped around, trading blows after blows, barely hurting each other. They were evenly matched, and Athena couldn't help but feel something felt familiar from the enemy's fighting style the longer they fought.

She was so absorbed with her fight that she forgot about the whole war. The first wave of Separatists soldiers fell from the sky, and Ares was forced to jump away as the soldiers landed around Athena. They immediately spotted Ares.

"E-Enemy mecha! Charge!"

"No! Stand down!" Athena yelled.

But the soldiers ignored her and kept charging at the enemy mecha. Ares could easily take care of them, but his fight was with Athena, not with them. A rotating machine gun popped out of Ares's left shoulder.

"Shield!" one of the soldiers screamed, but they were too late. The rotating machine gun didn't need to rotate first like its predecessor, and instead immediately started firing as soon as the trigger was pulled. In mere seconds, all of the Separatists mecha soldiers were gunned down. Only Athena popped out the shield from inside her mecha's left-hand wrist in time.

"Are you that scared to fight me?" Ares taunted.

"Tch, don't be arrogant. We were just warming up," Athena shouted while still hiding behind her shield.

After the brief insulting session, Athena store back her shield, and the two returned to trading blows. But both sides weren't going to play clean. They wanted to kill the other.

Ares jumped away from her, then used his rotating machinegun to fire at her. She blocked it in time once more using the retractable shield on the back of her left-hand wrist.

Before they could finish their business, hundreds more mecha landed around Athena. The separatist army had finally landed. Ares once fought against a horde like that, but someone was there beside him. But now with her gone and Athena on the enemy side, Ares knew that he had no choice but to make a retreat.

"We will meet again, Athena," Ares said before rushing off, avoiding the Separatists' fire as he retreated.

Athena turned her communication back on.

"Athena! Are you okay?!" her commanding officer immediately shouted through the com.

"Shut up, I'm fine."

"The pilot you just fought, it was the new ace pilot wasn't it?"

Athena didn't answer. She felt ashamed for not being able to kill Ares. Her perfect record of defeating or forcing anyone she fought to retreat was finally stained.

"This would be tough... For now, move in with the army to secure the city."

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