The Paragon of Eden

Neem breathed out. He hadn’t had much fighting to do since he elected to guard the Genisis Crystals. He was supposed to be ready, supposed to be unbeatable in the circumstance that someone attacked.

They must have prepared too much against a specific individual. Neem hadn’t been expecting this. An all-out attack, endlessly flowing waves of pirates, all arriving as if this was some well-coordinated raid involving every armed unit they had. Neem was drinking the ocean, trying to fend off every single enemy that came his way. They never ended. The task was impossible.

But the Angels of Dusk had to do things like this. Impossibility was for the realm of those that ruled. Neem needed to do the impossible.

And he was. All around him, there were scattered pieces of Warbacks and cruisers. He stood among them, looking at the battlefield of a hardened army. It gave him a strange thrill to know that any and all carnage that was on display was caused by him.

The one thing that he couldn’t take credit for was the destroyed remnants of the Sanctuary. His home, his friends’ homes. It had stayed hidden for so long, supporting the lineage of every Angel until the ancient Warbacks were passed down to the seven of them that remained.

Neem’s Judas crushed the codpiece of a kitbash Warback. The pirates were getting better, even starting to innovate instead of stealing. They put on a good fight. All signs pointed to one thing, however. The fight was done. They were all dead. Save for one.

The Judas was missing an arm. Its bulging, spherical features broke apart to reveal sparking, bursting technology. The stuff that had made the seven most powerful Warbacks in history had become so advanced that it barely resembled machinery anymore. It looked like plant fibers, but it was clear that there was strength and fortitude in the assembly. Neem was proud to have fought in his family’s heirloom.

The Judas stood, missing an arm, scared and dented all over, its shell falling off after the strikes it had received, its metals burning with the energy it wielded. Time was almost up. It stood, and Neem gazed from his cock pit across the dark space of destruction. There, backed by the darkness of space that did not befit the Sanctuary’s warm colors, was a Warback. A pirate one. The only one.

And it was armed to its joints in things the pirates should never have laid their hands on. This must have been the most advanced unit those subhumans had access to. It was personalized and forged by their own intent, modified from the source material provided by the Empire, expanded and improved, decorated in shredded cloth and jaggedly bent metal. It looked like a forlorn warrior, a drifter, a creature of darkness. How had this disjointed collective gained the ability to harbor such a thing?

The Judas leaped, ascending high into the air produced by the DA of the Genisis Crystals themselves. He reached the pinnacle of his trajectory, and then he headed down. The Judas was heavy, and it left a crater as it smashed into the ground.

The pirate dodged. It was fast, and possessed a skilled pilot. Whoever it was, they knew not to endure anything from the Judas.

The pirate Warback acted, dashing and stabbing the Judas with an explosive dagger. It was pirate design, but it had Empire technology at its core. The Angels had stayed ahead for so long, but they hadn’t been making as many improvements. It was only a matter of time before they were outdone by either of the two major factions.

Not yet. The dagger aimed for the open wound, but it missed. The bulbous head of the Judas quaked, cracked, and held. With a mighty maneuver, it grabbed the pirate Warback and slammed it into the ground below. The force was so strong that the ground cracked and fell through. Neem jumped and flew away in the Judas, gaining distance. That was not a good thing for his particularly close-range Warback, but he was on the defensive.

The pirate transformed his ride into a jet, flying it in a reckless pattern. It did receive damage. Almost enough to kill it. Once it landed, it returned to a robotic warrior and opened fire. It was a storm of projectiles, impossible for the Judas to avoid. Had the wound been hit, it might have spelled Neem’s end.

But Neem saw it coming. He turned his machine and braved the storm, keeping the Judas’ stump behind him. That enemy Warback couldn’t move while firing all cylinders. Getting close would hurt the Judas, but it would hurt the pirate more. Neem bet on that fact.

Neem swung a grapple, but he was too early. The pirate dodged, staying just out of reach. It had been a long fight. Too long now. The two of them bore the fruits of each other’s attacks. Both of them were close to death.

Then, the pirate Warback began to shift. It stood still, immune by the distance between it and the Judas. The exposed machinery rippled, and an aura of energy surrounded it. In a moment, all the damage was gone. Self-repairing technology. It drained a lot of the reserved energy in the newer Warbacks. Neem wasn’t betting on energy reserves, though. He was just about out.

It dawned on him. He was finished.

Not yet. He had one trick up his sleeve.

The Judas stood, proud to have endured so much. It was slow and unresponsive. It had been a reliable machine throughout the ages. It had been implemented with a design unique among the Angels. It had the power to harness the Crystals nearby and trigger an explosion powerful enough to kill anything. Even the Paragon.

The Judas did not need to move. Neem waited for the pirate to attack.

He spoke, but not to his enemy in front of him. “Hau,” he said. His voice was low and tired. “It was you, wasn’t it? The Sanctuary was hidden for so long, a pocket dimension. Only the seven of us had known. You let it out. You exposed us. You betrayed us. You wanted those Crystals, but I stood in your way.”

The pirate launched his final attack, a furious strike with his dagger.

“Was that you were doing at those pirate bases, Hau?”

The pirate stabbed the wound, but before the dagger killed its foe, Neem activated the explosion. No one would be left. He prayed the Crystals would be safe from the wrong hands.

“Hau!”

...

“Ha! They killed ’em!”

“Who? Janton?”

“No, you idiot! They killed that other guy.”

“But Janton died. His Warback was destroyed in that explosion.”

“And who d’ya think caused that explosion? Janton did! He also killed all our other enemies. We’s the only pirates that remains.”

“How’re we gonna stay that way without Janton? He was our best.”

“We pray. We pray to him, now. He watches from on high.”

Another pirate walked into the shoddy, stained room. Empty bottles littered every corner. The two in there had been repeating this argument for the past hour so far.

“Insubordinates!” Yelled their superior.

They were trying to hide with their booze, at first. Now, they were trying to hold a decent conversation, and they were failing.

“You’re wanted on guard duty.”

“Suck my cock.”

The higher-ranking and less drunk third pirate walked over to him and kicked him in the balls.

“Start by guarding yer own gems!”

“I’ll kill you… Ow.”

“You’ll kill me, you said?”

“Nah, I said… um…”

“The only one that can kill me is Janton.”

“Usin’ the lord’s name in vain? And tellin’ me what to do? They better kill you themselves!”

The third pirate unsheathed his knife. “I’ll cut ‘em off if ya keep talkin’”

The more drunk but less religious one who had been quiet during the altercation sheepishly left the room. He grabbed his gun and stumbled away, making for his quarters and accidentally finding himself in the only place his drunken memory told him how to reach: the vault that held those damn Crystals that were so important. Janton wasn’t God, but he had died for these.

The pirate couldn’t form straight thoughts. What was he going to do in his room? Sleep off the drunk, and then sleep some more. What was wrong with sleeping here? The vault was closer, after all. They didn’t need two guards guarding the place. His friend was probably done being yelled at soon anyway.

The room was grey and rusting. Pipes lined the corners as the only decoration. Patterns of bolts were fun to look at. There was silence. It stretched on for so long, and that was not right. Where were the other pirates? Had the drink finally taken him to the place beyond death?”

Two men in gas masks stormed the room. One held a compact pistol, and the other was with a large, automatic rifle. They brought in a box and stuck it onto the vault door. It started humming, and one of them came over to the pirate. He did nothing but watch. They wouldn’t do anything to him, would they?

They checked his pulse, made sure to see if his eyes could follow their fingers. They couldn’t.

The one intruder pointed his pistol at the pirate’s head, point blank, and fired.