The enemy closed in.

  Lawrence looked for any opening he could find, but there was none. He peeked at his radar—and that’s when he saw it.

  “What?” The bewilderment escaped his lips. Did he hallucinate it? He did a double-take. It was a single, blue blip on the lava-red radar. It blinked, and every time it appeared, it appeared closer to their position. His heart rate skyrocketed. He opened his visor to draw in heavier breaths.

  “What is it, Mengde?” Boris asked. “What’s got you spooked?”

  The cat had his tongue, all he could do was search frantically for their savior. But there was only the steel ocean of gray Tacomas on this localized hellhole.

  “L-lieutenant!” Luke cried.

  The first of the Tacoma broke rank, photon sword drawn. Then another, and the stream of them bore down on the trio.

  “I’m not about to die like a dog, not here,” Luke said. He answered their charge with his photon naginata, a wide arc prepared.

  “Hold it, don’t rush in!” Boris said. “Mengde…!”

  Luke clashed with the Tacoma. Boris burned his verniers to support the kid.

  But Lawrence stood there frozen. The gun emplacement above sent tremors with every salvo.

  A golden meteorite crashed in the far back of the Tacoma rear.

  Lawrence only laughed in relief.

  “A little help over here?” Luke gasped as he yanked his joysticks aggressively. “Have you lost your mind, old man?”

  “Look, cowboy—over there!” Boris screamed. “Get back, get back!”

  “What?” Luke was forced back by Boris. Then—“No way!”

  It dashed from Tacoma to Tacoma; none the wiser what had unfolded. Half of them dead before the survivors broke off as the carnage swept over them like a terrible, all-consuming typhoon.

  Lawrence merely laughed himself to a stream of hot, relieving tears.

  “Is, that what… who I think it is?” Boris’s voice too deflated.

  “It’s the Yellow Typhoon!” Luke said, astonished.

  Lawrence trembled, unable to process the manslaughter he witnessed before them. They were saved.

  Victoria tore through the Tacoma battalion with ease Lawrence could only dream of. They literally never had a chance to counter her—their young industrious lives culled by dual cerulean naginatas.

  He was shocked to his core. Relieved, but terrified he didn’t even have to consider ever facing her in combat—and he quickly suppressed the thought. There’s no knowing Victoria picked up his thought in the hurricane she unleashed—it was nearly impossible not to—but at the same time, he loved Victoria, his guardian angel: And the thought of troubling her with such a fear scared him just as much.

  “You two, pull back and neutralize that gun emplacement, I’ll assist Vic,” Lawrence said, coolly.

  The two obeyed without a word as they raced past him.

  “I’ll handle the big gun—old man, you just handle any lousy Tacoma who try to get in my way,” Luke said.

  “You said it cowboy,” Boris said.

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  Most of the Tacoma were still focused on Victoria, they fired in a symphonic panic as Lawrence’s thrusters went into maximum overdrive. He pulled the trigger in a string of dashes and jumps as he took hip-fire shots at their backsides. His vision briefly stunned by the flash of spontaneous implosions and met back to back with the burnished bronze K?mpfer.

  A line appeared on his overlay, and it expanded into a blurry portrait that quickly stabilized.

  Lawrence wanted to cry tears of joy again, but he only grinned. It was the Valkyrie blonde beauty herself. Utterly fatigued, but Victoria all the same.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting, darling,” she heaved.

  “I knew you’d come,” Lawrence croaked. Their surroundings bloomed, and he saw that the others had overdone it on taking out the gun emplacement. One of them launched an orange flare.

  A dozen Tacoma who didn’t fear death encircled Lawrence and Victoria.

  “Care for a dance?” Lawrence said.

  Victoria smiled meekly. “My pleasure, love.”

  “Let’s make it a quick waltz and scram,” he said.

  They broke off and charged. Lawrence’s thrusters risked burnout, but he didn’t care. He slashed to force the nearest Tacoma to parry, then unleashed the last round he had in Kaz’s shotgun. Quickly, he swapped it out for the bazooka and side-dashed aggressively, his world a blur at first until he slowed down.

  He ducked as a Tacoma stabbed overhead, and counter-thrusted his naginata into its chest. Lawrence reversed away as his foe was consumed by an inferno.

  Victoria’s onslaught was no laughing matter. She whipped the enemy with such lightning speed that to a mere mortal like Lawrence, it seemed they truly spontaneously combusted when the Yellow Typhoon whiffed past them.

  The enemy ranks—what even remained of it—lost their appetite for battle. They turned tail by the numbers for either the deployment hangar or over hills.

  To the Imperium MT pilots misfortunate and young enough, last of their bloodline kinda men and women—facing Victoria Schwarzenberger, the ‘Yellow Typhoon’, ‘the Confederate Battle doll’, the ‘Confederate Witch’, the ‘Yellow Reaper’, and so on—you’d better pray to god you lived a good-enough life until then, and even so, if you lived a shitty life and hoped for a definite end, this was the way to benefit your Emperor the most.

  He had no sympathy for the lot. They obeyed orders to gas a completely innocent colony of millions, and the gall to drop it into the orbit of Ben Nevis, a planetary settlement of billions. Who was he to care about the fate of such scum? How many hundreds were slain by his hand now?

  Boris and Luke regrouped after it was evident the coast was clear. Lawrence was the first to hail Victoria after the last of the enemy was gone. It was a portrait of his princess—she was exhausted but Lawrence got down to business.

  But before he could even say a thing, two more K?mpfers zoomed overhead—no doubt Friederika and Frank!

  They waved at him. All of the portraits blinked onto his screen simultaneously—the surviving members of the Yilan’s MT corps.

  He looked over them all; everyone except for Friederika and Victoria on their fourth sortie—these two on their seventh.

  He stroked his chin. Were they aware of Kaz’s fate? Lawrence wasn’t sure, but he gathered his courage to address them.

  “We’ve lost Morrison, and now . . . I saw before my very eyes Commander Jasmin killed.”

  Frank hunched over. His fists cupped on his visor, he shook under his various seat belts. Lawrence felt bad for the boy, and even more guilt he couldn’t console him at this very moment.

  Lawrence cleared his throat. He continued: “Sergeant Schwarzenberger . . . You will act as deputy commander of the 13th MAV.”

  Victoria didn’t answer. She reclined in her seat, tired gaze somewhere else.

  “Maybe I should take over as vice commander,” Friederika protested.

  “If anything, I’ll call the shots,” Boris said. He glanced at her from his monitor. “You’re in a pretty bad shape yourself, Kiki.”

  Friederika pouted, but said nothing.

  Lawrence thought it over. “Can it: dying isn’t exactly on my agenda, and I can’t expect any of you to hold it together if that were to happen. But Boris is right on one thing, Kiki, you and Vic are too past your limits to be juggling around these jar heads. If it comes to it, I’ll consult with the Yilan about it.”

  He glanced at the rest: “We’re done here, let’s bail before they come back crawling for more.” his eyes glued to Victoria and Friederika—“if needed, I will request some recuperation for us. If he needs some other turrets taken out, he’ll just have to phone another mothership to do the dirty job for him.”

  “You said it, boss,” Boris said.

  “I’m not sure he’ll take no for an answer,” Friederika said. She sucked on a carton’s straw.

  “Worth a try, ain’t it?” Luke said.

  Lawrence gave both Victoria and Frank look-overs. The urge to hop on over to either came over him but resisted the idea for now; they needed to head back to Utah first. But before that, he needed to do something about the deployment hangar.

  “Lance Corporal Atrides, do you have any mine strips still?” Lawrence asked.

  “Huh? Oh… yes, sir.”

  Lawrence nodded and continued: “If you have any bazooka warheads loaded, dump a round or two in there, and finish the job off with the mines. With that flair, and if we’re lucky, some Shinra teams will take care of the rest.”

  “Aye, sir.” Luke crept over to the deployment hangar.

  “Corporal Wellington, cover him.”

  “Way ahead of you, boss,” Boris shadowed Luke.

  A smoke chimney erupted from the hangar. The two came back.

  “Shouldn’t we stay here?” Boris asked.

  Lawrence picked up fresh signatures: they were friendly. Lawrence waved his gun at Shinra teams who came in aboard the familiar brick-shaped carryall that appeared over the gun wreckage.

  “I’m almost out of ammo here,” Luke answered. “No way I’d be a tunnel rat in there with just a sword.”

  “Kid’s right,” Lawrence said. “In our state we’re too beat; leave the ratting to the Shinra.”

  “Good point,” Boris said, “back to Utah we go.”

  I've been reading this story since it's one of the rare space opera stories on here. Though it's billed as a litrpg, the stats are pretty minimal. The mecha actions are impressive, far more than I could ever hope to accomplish. I've read up to chapter 28 and have been studying it as much as I've been enjoying it as a reader. Overall It's well-written and honestly just blows me out of the waters with its prose and quality, so please give it a read and support the author. If you fancy yourself stuff like Mechwarrior, Dune, and Muv Luv Alternative, it's defintely worth a try.