This was the first time Kira had witnessed the sheer power of the Beam Magnum.
A single shot had obliterated a Nelson-class ship, and even units merely grazed by the residual high-energy discharge were destroyed. It was a weapon completely antithetical to Kira's combat philosophy.
"Don't just stand there, Kira!" Roz frowned, glancing at the Freedom, which seemed momentarily paralyzed. "If you can't bring yourself to strike them down, then coordinate with Cagalli to drive the ZAFT ship away!"
With that, the Unicorn swung its left arm, swatting away a Dagger that had tried to close in with a beam saber. Its shield flipped slightly as the beam saber on the Unicorn's left forearm deployed; the white-hot blade pierced the Dagger's cockpit without hesitation.
The density of the battlefield's barrage suddenly spiked. Many Daggers, unable to dodge in time, were struck and disintegrated into a cloud of parts. The Nahel Argama had just snapped a Drake-class ship in two, and the deployment of its eight wired funnels pushed the suppressive fire to a whole new level.
"Understood!" Kira took one last look at the three remaining Earth Alliance ships and slammed his pedals. As a high-mobility unit, the Freedom blurred across the battlefield, heading straight toward the Minerva.
Seeing the Freedom brazenly cutting through the combat zone, two Daggers attempted a pincer maneuver to intercept it. However, with two flashes of light, Kira piloted the Freedom to draw its beam sabers, effortlessly slicing through the head sensors of both machines. The Freedom then performed a barrel roll, evading a flurry of beams directed at its back.
Behind the two blinded Daggers, a third, undamaged unit was holding its beam rifle steady, firing relentlessly at the Freedom. Clearly, upon seeing a specialized unit like the Freedom, this Dagger squad had coordinated: two units would sacrifice themselves to stop it, while the third struck from the rear. Trading two mass-production units for one custom ace was a bargain.
Unfortunately, they had vastly underestimated the Freedom's speed. A blue, snake-like beam suddenly swept through their machines. Seeing the searing light erupting from their teammates, the squad accepted their end in silence. They vanished in a bloom of fire.
This was but a footnote in the chaotic battle. To Roz, the destruction of a few Daggers wasn't even worth mentioning. He squinted as the Armed Armor BS finished its cycle, reconfiguring its form once more.
Because the Armed Armor BS was directly connected to the suit's reactor rather than using E-packs like a standard Magnum rifle—and because the weapon was more delicate—Roz had disabled the "burst charge" mode and slowed the Magnum charge rate to prevent system failure. However, in standard operation, it was more than enough for most scenarios.
Noticing the Unicorn's transformation and remembering the shot that deleted the Nelson-class, the remaining Daggers began a desperate charge toward the Unicorn. But under the suppressive curtain of the Nahel Argama's funnels, they could only watch helplessly as the Unicorn fired another Magnum shot.
This time, Roz targeted a Drake-class showing its broadside. The purple-red high-energy beam melted through the ship's armor like a hot knife through wax, detonating its magazine. The ship snapped in half amidst a violent explosion. The pressure differential sucked the crew into the vacuum, where they instantly became crystalline blossoms of frozen blood—a truly gruesome sight.
As the Armed Armor BS reverted to its neutral state, Roz suddenly felt a premonition. He jerked the control stick back.
The Unicorn performed a backflip just as four blue-and-white machines—slimmer and faster than standard Daggers—approached while firing. These machines were far more agile; two of them raised spiked shields to form a mini-shield wall, while the other two took cover behind them.
When the shield wall took a hit from the Armed Armor BS's standard beam, the two "tanks" discarded their damaged shields. The discarded shields tumbled away, glowing along jagged fracture lines before exploding. The two lead blue-and-white machines drew beam sabers and charged the Unicorn, while the other two used the explosion's smoke for cover, boosting their altitude to provide fire support.
Such seamless cooperation suggested an elite Earth Alliance ace squad. Roz made his decision in an instant.
"Unicorn!"
As if responding to his shout, the blue UI of the panoramic cockpit was flooded with crimson. The pilot seat reconfigured instantly. In less than two seconds, the austere, almost saintly Unicorn split its armor open, revealing the burning red core beneath. Even the shield and Armed Armor BS shifted to expose glowing red Psycoframe.
With nearly double the thrusters now active, the Unicorn's speed became incomparable. In a move that seemed baffling to the Alliance pilots, Roz discarded his shield and retracted the Armed Armor BS to draw a beam saber from the backpack.
Then, the impossible happened. The shield, which possessed no visible propulsion, suddenly accelerated on its own. It deployed its integrated beam shield, intercepting every shot from the fire-support units.
With his flanks protected by the flying shield, Roz slammed the pedals. The Unicorn transformed into a streak of red light, charging the two lead machines. Realizing their support fire had been neutralized, the two Alliance pilots didn't flinch; they swung their beam sabers in a coordinated pincer strike.
Roz boosted the output of his beam saber. The blade lengthened significantly, its edges flickering with unstable, "shaggy" energy as the shaping field struggled to contain the massive power increase.
The Unicorn reached out with its left hand, its movements a blur of precision, and crushed the hand of the blue-and-white unit lunging from the left.
As the Unicorn's fingers tightened, the enemy unit's hand was reduced to a mangled heap of scrap metal, and its menacing beam saber flickered out of existence. Simultaneously, Roz swung the Unicorn's right-hand beam saber toward the unit attacking from the right.
The pilot on the right ignored his comrade's plight, pushing his blade toward the Unicorn's midsection. However, the high-output blade of the Unicorn was significantly longer; before the enemy's saber could even graze the Unicorn's armor, the blue-and-white unit was sliced diagonally in half and erupted into a fireball.
The unit pinned by the Unicorn's left hand attempted a desperate final strike, raising its shield to use the integrated striking spikes. Unmoved, Roz triggered the beam saber on the Unicorn's left forearm. The blade hissed to life and punched through the enemy's abdomen like a hot knife through butter.
Roz released his grip and snapped the Unicorn's left arm upward in a fluid motion, bisecting the machine perfectly.
"Damn you... White Devil..."
The curse, a final transmission of a dying soul, echoed faintly in Roz's mind.
On the other flank, the psycho-shield that had been harrying the remaining two fire-support units saw its opening. It tilted upward sharply, launching two missiles from its underside toward the targets.
The two blue-and-white units raised their shields to intercept the incoming projectiles. However, the missiles detonated prematurely, releasing "shrapnel" composed of concentrated particle beams. These beams formed two circular "kill zones," drenching the machines in a rain of light.
Faced with this inescapable wall of fire, the leading unit instinctively threw itself in front of its comrade. While the individual beams were thin, their piercing power was immense. In a heartbeat, the lead unit's shield was shredded, and its head sensors were riddled with holes.
The protected unit survived mostly intact. But before the pilot could breathe a sigh of relief, a nightmare materialized.
A beam saber blade suddenly erupted through the torso of the mangled unit in front of him, sliding upward in a smooth, lethal arc to split the wreckage in two. Through the widening gap of the exploding ruin, he saw it: a machine glowing with a malevolent red light, staring him down.
The pilot felt an overwhelming sense of dread, as if he were being watched by a predator from another world.
The Unicorn charged through the bisected remains, letting the wreckage explode in its wake. The lone survivor discarded his beam rifle and drew his saber.
"Aaaagh! Die, White Devil!"
Driven by sheer terror, the pilot screamed and charged. They knew there was no escaping the Unicorn once it revealed its red glow. Though his hands were trembling on the controls, he chose to die in a charge rather than be hunted down like a coward.
The moment the machines met, there was no struggle, no clash of wills, and no tactical maneuvering. The blue-and-white unit was simply cut in half by the Unicorn with effortless grace.
As the final unit vanished into a cloud of debris, the pilot's dying scream lingered in Roz's thoughts. The psycho-shield glided back smoothly, docking with the Unicorn's left arm and locking into place.
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