—Requiem!
Author's note:
The military parade looked amazing... That laser weapon made me picture a Gundam's head.
The Final Battle
The allied forces had scattered, but many countries still had substantial forces in space.
Earth had been cut off by Odin's Spear. Even with Quantum Communication, damaged equipment meant no one could send orders from Earth to space.
So the first thing Inori Yuzuriha and Kira did upon reaching space was assess the situation.
"We don't have time to assemble everyone," Inori Yuzuriha said. "Given their current positions, I suggest sending most of the units to defend these sectors and prevent the forces from outer space from joining up."
"Epimetheus is in a solar orbit, but it isn't actually that far away. On its original trajectory, the asteroid would have passed through the Earth-Moon system."
Epimetheus was trailing Earth. Its orbit could never perfectly match Earth's naturally, but artificial corrections could keep it in near-synchronization.
On its original trajectory, the asteroid would have entered the outer reaches of the Earth-Moon system.
A slight external adjustment to its orbit would change everything.
"Epimetheus is somewhere between ten and several dozen kilometers across, if I remember the observations correctly..." Kira had looked up the data after Inori Yuzuriha told him about it. "That thing would probably be even harder to take than the Messiah fortress."
Astronomers had once observed Epimetheus because its orbit lay close to Earth's. Once they established that it would not enter Earth's orbit and pose a threat, interest in it had gradually faded.
If someone turned an asteroid that size into a fortress, it would be enormous—practically a space colony.
"So we have to—before that happens—"
Take Requiem!
"...This is the Archangel... Please respond if you copy."
Another transmission came through.
"Miriallia!"
"Kira! Inori! Thank goodness!"
Miriallia