He could have—and should have—gone after her. With the Unicorn's thrust-to-weight ratio, even if the other side had activated the Voiture Lumiere Thruster, he could still have intercepted her before her mothership recovered her, provided her energy was running low. Even if he had to seize her with the mechanical arm, even if he had to cripple her limbs, he should have brought her back by force.
For one brief instant, the NT-D system had nearly activated on its own under his violent emotional fluctuations, but he forcibly suppressed it.
Even if he brought her aboard the Archangel now, what would happen then?
Reason doused his impulse like ice water. There were no medical facilities or specialists aboard capable of treating someone whose memories and mind had been manipulated so deeply.
Flay's mental core was now entirely made up of false hatred and command codes implanted by the Earth Forces.
In her mind, Xia Ya, Kira Yamato, and the others were all "demons" who had to be killed.
If he forcibly brought her aboard and confined her in this cage called "protection," where nothing could be done, there was no predicting what her extremely unstable mind would do.
Maybe she would damage the ship. Maybe she would attack the others. And worst of all... rather than be captured and humiliated by the perverted enemies she saw them as, she might very well choose mutual destruction, or simply give up and end her own life.
The current Flay—with that look in her eyes, with that manner of someone determined to burn herself to nothing—was very likely capable of doing just that.
It was precisely because he had thought of those suffocating possibilities that Xia Ya could not make the hand gripping the controls push forward another inch. Forceful action would only