Beam Sabers swung out one ring of light after another, only to be shadowed and blocked by the Goddess of Liberation Gundam, which possessed equal mobility and was even more troublesome with the acceleration of its light wings.
"You really won't give up, will you? Just surrender already... Watch carefully. Your homeland is about to become dust in space."
"Like hell it is!"
Athrun shouted from inside the cockpit. Yet no desperate response could alter the physical trajectory of the advancing missiles.
In Athrun's magnified, locked-on view, the foremost nuclear missile had already crossed the final warning perimeter of the defense line. In a few more seconds, its world-destroying power would reach those neatly arrayed space hourglasses.
I'm sorry. I couldn't protect everything...
Amid the image of extermination-grade warheads closing in on PLANT and the Goddess of Liberation Gundam's interceptions so fast only afterimages could be seen, the chaotic battlefield around him seemed to slow by a thousandfold. Time nearly froze. Within that suffocatingly sluggish world, Athrun made a pale, powerless confession. He regretted his own incompetence as a red uniform.
At that moment, he let go of the controls he had been using to resist. Bloodshot veins spread through his eyes as he stared at the screen. He made up his mind that, even if he had to face death, he would witness the final second of his homeland's existence with his own eyes.
A thunderous roar tore through the boundless vacuum. From directly behind Athrun, a solid, massive beam of energy erupted alongside a matrix of hundreds of high-explosive micro-missiles. Those warheads trailing long flames overtook the Justice Gundam, which had paused in shock, and skimmed past the edge of the Goddess of Liberation Gundam's light wings. Like precisely guided surgical scalpels, they slammed viciously into the row