The Starblight went rampant over the defending forces of Alsium Two. Though it had been less intelligent from the outset, it grew more intelligent over time. More of the Starblight’s mass shifted to become mobile frames, as if in a twisted mirror reflection. Dark, shadowy shapes that mimicked the mobile frames of the Federation.

  The Starblight’s mobile frames were just as deadly as actual mobile frames. As opposed to the Starblight’s various misshapen horrors, both flying and on the ground, the new forms the Starblight had taken moved with similar speed and power. And the formed particle rifles that the Starblight’s mobile frames formed were just as deadly as a barrage of dark, black beams sliced apart and cored mobile frames across the entirety of the Alsium Two.

  It had become a free-for-all between the Starblight, the Settlement Front Alliance, and the Federation; everything and everyone was fighting everything and everyone else. In the distance, the Starblight, which had avoided the Settlement Front Alliance since they had shown up, had also turned on the dark and purple mobile frames as well. The strike force of Settlement Front Alliance mobile frames had become trapped as the Starblight blocked their pathway out of Alsium Two to Alsium One.

  If what he heard in his mind of Bridges and Trois’s conversation was correct, it seemed that this attack by the Starblight was premeditated by the Settlement Front Alliance. And it seemed that whatever the Settlement Front Alliance had tried to do to control the Starblight had failed.

  Some of the Starblight’s mobile frames came their way.

  Aster pushed his mobile frame forward, the old Exan lumbering forward, picking up the particle rifle and shield that had fallen from his mobile frame’s grasp from Trois’s earlier attack. He thrusted his mobile frame off from the ruins of Tigata city up into the darkness of the battlefield as black proto particle beams struck through where they just were.

  His head began to ache. He put a hand to his head.

  “Aster,” Selenia said, in the adjacent cockpit seat next to his. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” Aster said, shaking it off as he thrusted backwards with the legs of his mobile frame as some of the Starblight’s mobile frames closed in. He held his shield forward to cover himself as he fired his particle rifle, though the Starblight’s mobile frames easily dodged it as they outmaneuvered him to his side, and the dark, black proto particle beams came his way.

  His eyes widened.

  Aster gritted his teeth as he barely managed to turn his machine. The old machine couldn’t keep up with his movements! One proto particle beam struck his mobile frame’s legs, blowing it up. Another struck the side of his mobile frame’s chest, rocking his mobile frame’s cockpit with explosions as he desperately returned fire as quickly as he could.

  Aster heard a scream to his side. He turned his head in panic. “Selenia!”

  Selenia coughed in pain. “I’m fine!” She held a hand to her side. A part of the cockpit to her side had blown up, and a sharp metal fragment had embedded itself in her side.

  Aster banked his mobile frame as hard as he could, making both himself and Selenia grit their teeth at the hard, sudden force. His backpack thrusters had been damaged with that hit, but he tried as much as best he could to maneuver. The Starblight’s mobile frames were fast, but predictable. There was no real intelligence behind its movements aside from mimicking what it had seen from the Federation’s mobile frames.

  Aster shot through one, followed by another. The Starblight’s mobile frames dispersed apart in black energy.

  More of the Starblight’s mobile frames came at them, but were shot to pieces by a pair of mobile frames that came to their side.

  “Aster!” Arnis said. “Are you alright?” His mobile frame stood in front of his own, covering his.

  “I’m fine,” Aster said. “But Selenia’s injured.”

  “I’m okay,” Selenia breathed heavily. “I’ll be fine.”

  “We need to get you both to the Rakaila,” Garrod said as his mobile frame came right up to Aster’s own. “The crew’s almost got the warship operational again.”

  In the distance, the Rakaila itself seemed to be coming back to life again.

  “I’m not sure if we can make it over there,” Aster said, assessing the mess of a situation with the Starblight and Settlement Front Alliance’s mobile frames.

  More reinforcements from the Rakaila streamed around them.

  “Then we’ll cover you,” Garrod said.

  Arnis’s mobile frame took off in the distance, where Bridges, Trois, and some of the other Settlement Front Alliance’s mobile frames were trying to hack and shoot their way through the Starblight that blocked their route of escape from Alsium Two to Alsium One.

  “Arnis!” Garrod said. “Get back here!”

  “I’m not letting those Settlement Front Alliance bastards get away!” Arnis replied. “Especially that silver one!”

  “Arnis!” Aster said, over the comm. “Be careful! That mobile frame’s strong. And Trois is piloting it.”

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  “Trois?” Arnis said, halting his mobile frame. “That little runt from the Rakaila?”

  “Bridges and Trois,” Selenia said, coughing. Aster turned his head to see that her silver clothing had turned red. She looked a little pale. “They’re piloting those mobile frames. They’re actually from the Settlement Front.”

  “So what?” Arnis said. “Even if they were operatives from the Settlement Front. It doesn’t matter!”

  Arnis shot forward, closing in on the Fancenra, a tall silver mobile frame with angular wings, dodging dark purple proto particle beams as he drew a particle saber, intending on getting into a melee with the mobile frame and rendering its remote weapons ineffective. He clashed a dark red particle saber against the Fancenra’s dark pink particle saber claws, the slivery sheen of the silver mobile frame reflecting the fires of Alsium Two in a dark red-orange glow on its form, making it seem like some kind of hellish demon.

  Aster gripped his mobile frame’s control sticks tightly. As much as he wanted to help his best friend, Selenia didn’t look well at all. She was losing a lot of blood. Nor was his mobile frame up to task. He sent his mobile frame towards the Rakaila while Garrod covered him.

  A sudden roar sent shockwaves across Alsium Two. In the distance, waves of dark proto particle energy rippled outward from the towering Starblight beast. It was sent all over Alsium Two, a kind of aura of particles that smothered the battlefield.

  His mobile frame began to lose power as his cockpit displays flickered, the interface overlay distorting. He checked his controls in a panic as other mobile frames across Alsium Two were suffering likewise, losing power and falling from the air. The Rakaila itself, which had made tentative steps to rise again, fell abruptly back down into the earth.

  “Hang on!” Aster said, trying to ease his mobile frame’s descent as it crashed and landed into one of Alsium Two’s burning forests. The impact rocked the mobile frame. And Garrod’s mobile frame had been lost somewhere else that he didn’t know.

  Aster turned his head. He gripped Selenia’s shoulder as she coughed blood into one of her hands. The mobile frame’s reactor slowly shut down around them, the cockpit turning dark. “Selenia!”

  Selenia smiled and chuckled weakly. “You worry too much.” Her voice was weak. “At this rate, everyone here is going to be dead soon, right?”

  Aster opened his mouth, then shut it. Selenia wasn’t wrong. Even if they made a run for it to the Rakaila and made it there, the Starblight seemed unstoppable. And help wasn’t going to arrive in time. Whatever the Starblight did, it seemed as if it were some kind of EMP that took out the proto particle reactors.

  Aster held a hand to his head as his headaches intensified. It was as if he could hear the screams and cries of desperation and death taking place across Alsium Two at this moment, from defenceless mobile frame pilots to soldiers and civilians. It was going to be a one-sided slaughter if nothing was done.

  Selenia held out her bloodied hand to the side of the mobile frame’s control console attached to the side of the pilot chair. She closed her eyes. The next moment, silver energy and light radiated out from her, illuminating the cockpit. She glowed with her silver radiance, the light of the moon, the silver proto particle coming from her, the key defining trait of her family as had been passed down through her family, through the centuries and millennia. It grew with intensity as the energy seemed to flow from Selenia to the mobile frame through her hand.

  Aster’s eyes widened as the mobile frame itself lit up with the silver energy, coming back to life. Power returned to it. More than returned to it. The mobile frame itself seemed to get a second wind. As if it had gained a new life.

  Selenia coughed weakly as she chuckled, concentrating and directing the sliver energy that came from her into the machine. “Who’s a glow stick now?”

  Aster chuckled grimly as he held Selenia’s bloodied hand, then quickly thrusted his mobile frame upward with its backpack thrusters. Through his cockpit’s display, he could see that the entire mobile frame was glowing silver, radiating that silver light like a star in an empty black sky. The mobile frame was unnaturally fast. It was like his mobile frame had a reactionless drive.

  Aster fired off his proto particle rifle as they cut their way through the Starblight to the Rakaila, reaching it. and Selenia’s radiance concentrated itself into it, firing off massive beams that seemed as if they would shatter the proto particle rifle apart with every blast. It cut through swaths of the oncoming Starblight.

  Selenia yelled as she directed more of her silver energy into the machine, and a shockwave of silver energy burst out in shockwaves from the old mobile frame. Similar to what the great, towering Starblight monster had done, the sliver energy went through all over Alsium Two, seemingly dispelling what the towering Starblight monster had done earlier.

  Mobile frames all across Alsium Two came back to life.

  The warship Rakaila itself came back to life. The warship slowly rose into the air, firing whatever weapons it could alongside other mobile frames that did likewise.

  Aster grinned at Selenia, who returned it weakly to him. It wasn’t over yet. Though they were still losing, they had hope.

  Yet the Starblight was attracted to the silver energy that came from his mobile frame like a moth to a flame.

  The great towering Starblight monster in the distance turned itself facing him. It roared defiantly. And it didn’t back down as its own dark proto particle energy grew in intensity. It interacted in weird ways with Selenia’s own silver proto particle energy. Whatever it was doing, the Starblight was reaching some kind of crescendo.

  Aster’s head pounded at him. A flash went through it. It was going to fire another one of those massive proto particle beams! Aster held his mobile frame’s particle rifle outward, as Selenia concentrated more energy into the mobile frame they were in.

  “Selenia!” Aster said, turning his worried gaze over to Selenia. “Are you—

  “Don’t worry about me!” Selenia gritted through pained teeth. “Just take it down!”

  It seemed Selenia had realized likewise.

  Dark proto particle energy grew in intensity, forming into a ball of furious spiky energy where the horrific Starblight monster’s mouth was.

  At the same time, silver proto particle energy gathered in front of their mobile frame’s particle rifle, likewise, forming into a ball of furious spiky energy.

  Aster fired his proto particle rifle off at the same time that the giant Starblight creature did.

  The two great beams of proto particle energy, massive in size, collided against one another, dark black against bright silver, as the energy sank into each other, causing a reaction that began sending shockwaves that distorted time, space, and reality itself.

  Aster’s eyes widened. The reaction. It was akin to a smaller Astral Nova. The dark and silver energy began to swirl into one another, down into an infinitely small point.

  The next moment, a great wave of darkness and light burst out from it, consuming everything.