"What...?"
Sutherland froze as if struck by lightning. His last hope was completely erased by that puzzled reply. Flay Allster had refused communications—she was clearly an Extended subjected to Blue Cosmos's highest level of mental conditioning, their sharpest sword. Why would she refuse an order?
Only those who knew nothing of the truth were confused. On the bridge of this warship, Sutherland alone—one of the few higher-ups who knew exactly what kind of mental conditioning and memory alterations had been inflicted upon Flay Allster—correctly grasped the reality of the situation. This was no simple communications failure or battlefield insubordination.
Flay Allster had betrayed them.
"That little bitch... AAAAAAAAH!!!"
He clutched his head tightly in both hands, his fingers nearly digging into his scalp as he let out a beastlike, hysterical howl. What was going on? The brainwashing procedures of those military-industrial complex experts should have been flawless! If she had betrayed them, that meant she had regained her memories—but under such deep mental conditioning, how? How had she recovered them!?
"The Archangel is approaching!" The radar operator's shrill scream, like a funeral bell, interrupted Sutherland's impotent fury.
"Wha..."
Sutherland jerked his head up. Only then did he realize that their enemies here had never been limited to those monster-like mobile suits.
There was also a warship—the Archangel, the vessel that had created miracles in countless battles and was known as the "Unsinkable Ship"!
The overwhelming slaughter efficiency of the enemy MS had drastically reduced the size of their fleet in an extremely short time. Amid their panic, they had completely neglected the deadly threat posed by this old nemesis.
The main screen's optical feed was forcibly switched, and the familiar snow-white giant warship filled the entire display. The Archangel's two Lohengrin Positron Fortress-Breaker Cannons had fully opened their firing ports.