As the colony began to loom large in my vision, I began accelerating backwards relative to my forward velocity. I was still flying through space at more than 1,000 km/h relative to the colony when the colony's guns entered the range of my bazooka.
I put my bazooka's crosshairs on a position that I suspected held one of the colony's main guns. Bright beams of glowing particles emanated from that small fast-moving dot with enough regularity to make me think pretty sure that there was a particle cannon somewhere in that area. I tried to mark the position with my targeting system, but I was going way too fast for the system to keep up.
Honestly, I probably shouldn't have bothered taking the shot, but something deep in my amygdala wouldn't let my eyes stray from that one spot. I decided to eyeball it. My thrusters cut, and I spent half a second tracing the path of the particle cannon. With the bazooka at a 45° angle, I squeezed the trigger, and a rocket shot forward.
There wasn't any time to see if my rocket hit its target. After taking three seconds to take a shot at the colony, I activated a few switches and disabled a few limiters. The throttle on my front-facing thrusters slammed open, and I began to accelerate backward at more than 9 Gs.
The crash harness pushed hard against my shoulders, and a great pain shot through me. That was going to leave a bruise. In hindsight, there was a reason why fighter jets only accelerated in a certain direction.
Oracle Squad slowed to a comfortable 100 km/h relative to Wathort Colony. We must have been less than three kilometers away from the colony's outer hull. It was only when we had closed to such a range that I realized the colony was absolutely bristling with guns. Most of the guns were such low caliber that they wouldn't even dent a Zaku's armor, but there must have been six functioning particle cannons and more than a dozen anti-ship turrets within firing range of my squad. At the very least, they were all firing at the Zeon fleet at that moment.
[READY TO FIRE]
A deep sigh came through the commlink as Oracle-3 said, "We made it. Thank God."
Speaking quickly into my comms, I said, "There's no time to talk." The crosshairs of my bazooka lined up on a particle cannon. "We need to take out those guns before they realize we're here. Oracle-3: start eliminating those particle cannons. Oracle-2: keep a lookout for any Saberfish."
I took the shot, and the particle cannon I was targeting exploded in a flaming ball of molten shrapnel a few seconds later. That action seemed trivial to me in the moment, but there must have been more than a dozen people stationed at that gun.
[READY TO FIRE]
In the time it took me to fire one rocket and load another one, two other particle cannons were disabled by 175mm HEAT rounds from Oracle-3. The H&L SB25K was an anti-ship weapon, and the recoilless rifle was much better suited for this particle task.
One of my rockets vaporized a particle cannon as Oracle-3 put a HEAT round into another one. Ramos took a shot at the last remaining particle cannon, but his shot went wide.
[OUT OF AMMO]
As those words appeared on my HUD, Ramos's panicking voice said, "The guns are turning!"
"Evade! Evade!" I shouted into my comms as I shot forward at more than 9 Gs.
I had heard that people were supposed to start blacking out at such a high acceleration, but the speed just woke me up.
Within moments, the space around Wathort Colony was filled with tracer rounds and the occasional particle beam. The fire was concentrated on the approximate location where Oracle Squad had been a moment before. Due to our small size and the significant number of Minovsky particles we were emitting, they weren't able to get a lock on us.
Still, the storm of bullets seemed completely impossible to evade. I could hear it as numerous small-caliber bullets struck my Zaku, and I knew it would only be a matter of time until the bigger guns got a lucky hit on me. If I retreated from the colony, they would just have an easier time hitting my Zaku, so I decided to do something that, on paper, might have seemed counter intuitive.
I began burning toward the colony at a steep curve. After a few seconds, I was flying just a few meters away from Wathort's gargantuan hull at more than 300 km/h. Instantly, the bullets stopped zipping past my head, and the danger of being shot was suddenly replaced by the danger of slamming into the colony at the speed of a bullet train.
Splitting my attention in two directions, I loaded a new magazine into my bazooka as I frantically used my thrusters to maneuver around spires and antenna jutting out of the colony.
[READY TO FIRE]
The reload was completed just in time. The particle cannon, still aimed upward toward Oracle-2 and Oracle-3, rose quickly ahead of me. I popped a shot off without aiming. The particle cannon was so close that I didn't need to lead my shot at all.
The last particle cannon exploded in a fireball of destroyed metal, and I quickly accelerated away from the colony to prevent Oracle-1 from flying through the cloud of shrapnel.
As I moved more than a hundred meters away from the colony, I made myself a target. One of the anti-ship turrets was located a few hundred meters away from the last particle cannon, and it spotted me as I flew past. The barrels swiftly turned in my direction, and I didn't know which one of us would be faster.
Once more, the fear of death filled my core, and my teeth clenched in a rictus grin. The only thing that mattered in that moment was me and that turret. Either it would be destroyed, or I would die. I felt alive, and I knew I wanted to live more than anything else.
[READY TO FIRE]
I jerked my arm forward and fired on instinct alone. The anti-ship turret exploded, and more than a dozen lives were taken so that I might live.
Cackling laughter escaped from my lips as I shouted two words into the commlink, "I'm alive!"