The battle had begun as multiple pockets of fighting spread across the battlefield, with the UNS ships sustaining damage as the UNS Toronto started to take severe damage.
Over a hundred sentinel fireteams were flying across the battlefield, taking on as many of the enemies as they could.
However, things were becoming very apparent; the UNS were outmatched.
"Fireteam Beta Unit 04 Osman Ganim Age: 29 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Delta Unit 10 Ralph Dimos Age: 22 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Zeta Unit 05 Blake O'Brien Age: 25 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Theta Unit 08 Vanessa Mantilla Age: 22 Status: Deceased"
The UNS Eternity was monitoring their losses, and the list just kept on going. They were completely outmatched against this opponent.
"Fireteam Iota Unit 07 Myra Frasier Age: 24 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Tau Unit 06 Layla Byrne Age: 27 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Gamma Unit 15 Domingo Velazquez Age: 18 Status: Deceased"
"Dammit..." Captain Aurora said. She then turned to her communicator and said, "Lena send Fireteam Epsilon to give Fireteam Gamma some assistance against Enemy C."
"Understood ma'am." Lena said on the communicator.
Lena relayed the orders to Eleonora, who sent her entire team to help Fireteam Gamma, who was given the directive to attack one of the enemy ships.
However, quickly afterwards, one of their members was quickly sniped and killed.
"Fireteam Epsilon Unit 06 James Wilson Age: 21 Status: Deceased"
"SNIPER!" Eleonora yelled out in a panic.
Each member of Epsilon started to break off and make the sniper focus on other targets.
"Dammit, we can't get to Gamma; Sniper has us in their sights." Eleonora said to Lena"
"I can find them." Lily said on the comms. "Draw out their fire until I can pinpoint the sniper; I'll take cover on the UNS Eternity until I get a shot.
"Are you sure, Lily?" Scarlet asked.
"Yes, I'm sure I can do it." Lily replied with confidence.
"Alright, we just need to draw him out, right?" Serenity said.
"Yup, I got this..." Lily said.
Fireteam Epsilon started to spread out and separate from each other, causing the sniper to have to focus harder on hitting one of them.
Lily, from the distance, saw a sniper hiding behind a piece of debris on one of their ships.
"Got you..."
Lily shot her round directly at the target, destroying the head of the enemy machine and causing its body to explode.
"This is Lily; the target is down; Epsilon can resume the directive."
Lena relayed the message to Aurora, who was still on the ship, seeing the ever-growing casualty list continue to add more and more names; however, some names were all grouped together, which shocked her.
"Fireteam Iota Unit 01 Leandro Aguilar Age: 32 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Iota Unit 06 Joel Reynolds Age: 25 Status Deceased"
Fireteam Iota had just lost its squad captain, Leandro Aguilar, who was no stranger to combat, but losing him told the story that Aurora already knew.
"We can't win..."
Then she heard on her comms, "This is the UNS Toronto, Mayday! mayday! All the engines are down. Escape pods are launching... The bridge is currently cut off due to the flames. This is Captain Keen...signing off."
Aurora looked over to the side of her ship as she watched the UNS Toronto explode, leaving no survivors remaining on the ship. Aurora noticed a few escape pods that had made their way from the ship and made the order, "Fireteam Eta, go save as many escape pods as possible and bring them on board the UNS Eternity!"
"Yes, ma'am." Fireteam Eta captain Aliyah Nicholson said.
"Captain!" One of the bridge hands said. Fireteam Epsilon and Fireteam Gamma have reported they are beginning their operation to destroy enemy ship C."
"Good. Let's hope they succeed." Aurora said.
Fireteam Epsilon along with Gamma made their way across the ship; however, the ship's defenses weren't allowing them much room as one of the turrets destroyed one of Gamma's sentinels, killing the pilot.
"Fireteam Gamma Unit 06 Callen Sims Age: 28 Status: Deceased"
Serenity made her way near the engines on the back of the ship; she figured if she destroyed the engines, she would leave the ship defenseless.
"Serenity, launch them now!" Scarlet yelled out.
Serenity pressed a button in her sentinel cockpit, which unleashed a missile barrage directly into the engine, causing the engines of the ship to shut down as they caught fire.
Aurelia noticed that one of their ships was now defenseless and shutting down.
"Hmm...I may've underestimated some of them..." she thought to herself; however, she still didn't move from her seat as she continued to observe the battlefield.
Fireteam Epsilon continued their assault on the now-defenseless ship as the UNS Kyoto and UNS Eternity also focused fire on the ship, causing massive damage to it, which eventually led to its destruction.
"Ma'am, we destroyed Enemy Ship C." Lena reported to Captain Aurora.
"Good now focus on ship B." Aurora said.
"Ma'am, this is Fireteam Omega Captain Caelon Thompson." a report came on Aurora's comms.
"Caelon, what's happening?" Aurora asked.
"There's a new enemy...we can't...stop it..." Caelon said.
"Caelon, what do you-" Aurora said before being cut off by a scream before a new report appeared on her casualty list."
"Fireteam Omega Unit 01 Caelon Thompson Age: 31 Status: Deceased"
Fireteam Omega Unit 06 Patrick Grant Age: 25 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Omega Unit 09 Kiandra Waters Age: 22 Status: Deceased
Fireteam Omega Unit 14 Nakao Nanao Age: 18 Status: Decased"
"OMEGA, GET OUT OF THERE!" The Fireteam Omega handler yelled on the comms.
The remaining members of Fireteam Omega retreated as fast as they could until they were back near the UNS ships.
"Get me a visual on this new unit!" Aurora ordered.
Soon the screen showed an enemy unit that stood above the rest. The machine was colored white and black, with light blue designs around it.
What Aurora couldn't see was who was inside of it.
"Maybe it's time I stretched my legs out a bit..." Aurelia said from inside her personal knight.
*UNS Eternity*
"This is Fireteam Zeta; we will engage the new unit to cover Omega's retreat." Aurora heard on the comms.
"Good focus the best you can, and make sure not to make any mistakes...this enemy is extremely dangerous.
Fireteam Zeta all attacked Aurelia's knight in full force, but Aurelia was left unfazed.
"Now good enough." she said with a smile on her face.
After only half a minute of fighting, Aurelia had killed three members of Fireteam Zeta, including the fireteam's vice captain, causing them to retreat away from her as well.
Aurora had to make a grave choice here; her fireteams had taken massive casualties, and from what she could tell, it was the same for the other UNS ships; even the UNS Marseille and UNS Kyoto had suffered damage and didn't know how much longer they could remain in the fight.
"Captains...I'm putting forward a vote to abandon the mission and retreat back to our system." Aurora said.
Each of the captains put in a vote, and by unanimous decision, the ships decided to retreat from battle and ordered all knights to retreat back to their ships.
Most fireteams didn't have a problem doing this; however, Fireteams Gamma and Epsilon were the farthest from the ships.
They did their best to cover their retreat, but it wasn't enough.
"Serenity, do you have any explosives left?" Tyler asked on comms.
"No, we used them all on the ship engines." Serenity replied.
"How much ammo do you have, Scarlet?" Lily asked.
"Not enough." Scarlet replied.
"Eleonora, what do we do?" Tyler asked nervously.
"Full retreat, run as fast as we can." Eleonora replied.
And so it was that Gamma and Epsilon retreated as fast as they could back to the UNS ships; however, they weren't leaving without a fight as the unit Aurelia was piloting appeared right behind them and chased them down.
"We could use some prisoners." Aurelia said with a smile, I want to ask some things.
Aurelia wanted to learn more about Earth but also didn't want to torture them either, as she still had kindness in her.
Aurelia raised up her unit's right hand and launched what seemed to be an electromagnetic pulse at the group, which hit some of the units in the back of the pack.
"Six total enemies were captured" Aurelia said. "Perfect."
* On the UNS Eternity*
"Ma'am, we have most of the units that aren't dead accounted for." one of the pilots said.
"Most?" Aurora asked.
"Yes, several members of Fireteam Epsilon have not reported in...do we wait?" the pilot asked.
"Which ones?" Aurora asked.
"Epsilon units 01, 07, 09, 10, 12, and 13." the pilots said.
"Dammit..." Aurora didn't want to leave them, but she had to choose the lives of the many over the lives of the few. This was a painful dilemma, but she had to do it.
"Retreat now." Aurora said putting on a facade, looking emotionless.
"Yes ma'am!" The pilot gave the order to the other ships that everyone was ready.
One and another each of the UNS ships left, leaving the six pilots alone in space.
Each of the UNS pilots who were captured was taken to the capital ship of the fleet, where they were placed on the ground inside of the hangar.
Eleonora looked over to her other captured squadmates, Tyler, Serenity, Scarlet, Lily, and Sakura. They were worried about each other since, as far as they knew, nobody had been captured and lived to tell about it.
"What's going to happen to us?" Eleonora thought to herself. Her entire life, she heard of the atrocities inflicted upon the prisoners of war. It would make death preferable.
It was then that a beautiful woman with long silver hair and blue eyes walked over to them with a smile.
"What is she smiling about?" Eleonora thought to herself.
"Tisak temona intigran roosam." the woman said.
Soon, each of them was taken to the same room, which was located in the prison.
Aurelia looked over to one of the guards "I think I should talk to my sister...after all, that boy of her's is from the same place as them..." she said, holding a tablet with updated information on who Ren was.
"I wish to meet him."
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