Max found himself replaying the battle from an observer's position, looking down on himself from above, like a guardian angel for the doomed Mecha squadron.
The Legion Class Mecha, equivalent to the Super Heavy Mecha of this lifetime, stood far less proud and noble than it had a mere hour ago. Now, the shining golden hull was completely scorched black and covered in the blood soaked mud of the riverbed where the rest of his Regiment lay.
They had been ambushed by the enemy. That Max knew, but when he tried to see who they were, his memory seemed to turn unnaturally hazy.
"Fortify the riverbank. The Capital stands at our back, and the planetary barrier is up. Nothing is coming in or out until the fleet arrives, or the city falls." He heard himself order his troops.
How he wished he could turn back time and change everything. What came next had haunted his memories for the remainder of his life.
The riverbank was never fortified. Instead, the city's barrier had come back online behind him, locking his unit outside the ring of mountains that surrounded the Capital, standing knee-deep in a raging river that guarded the only way in or out of the valley.
In front of him, the infamous Ion Storms of Canton raged, preventing anything from leaving the ground by more than a hundred metres, while the horizon slowly blackened with a wave of enemy forces uncountable in their millions.
One hundred men. That was what he had with him. One hundred Mecha outnumbered a million to one, with two days to hold before the rest of the fleet would arrive.
They were dead, there was no doubt about that, as the unit daubed themselves in the bloody clay from the riverbank. The best that they could hope for was to drag this out so long that the enemy wouldn't be able to breach the barrier before the fleet arrived.
But who was he kidding? Once they were in contact with the barrier, they could set up a phase matching array, and they would be able to open a way through in a matter of hours without ever taking down the Capital's barrier at all.
There were no munitions left for the artillery, even if it hadn't been destroyed in the last wave of attacks. There were no Command Mecha left, the last of their officers were ashes inside the ruined cockpit of the Emperor Class Mecha Dalimond, which lay against the stone face of the cliff behind them, safely encased in the Capital City's barrier.
As the last Sergeant left alive, the force had turned to Max as their leader.
"What can we do, Top?" The Pilot of the Mecha beside him had asked, Max recalled with a sad fondness, as he watched the black tide of the enemy approach.
"Well, as heroes of the Crusade, we are gifted with two ways to die. We can die tired, or we can die as tired cowards." Max had laughed at the question.
"Rah." The unit had responded as one.
Then the air shimmered, and the first of the enemy had teleported in.
Energy Beings, Max suddenly remembered. The Ten World's Crusade had been against the Energy Beings.
The black monstrosities of this battlefield had been able to warp space around them and teleport into battle, which was why the planetary barrier had been vital to keeping them from flooding the world with reinforcements.
Max was unable to wake up from the nightmare, or even move a muscle, as he watched the worst day of his past life play out in front of him.
For five hours, they fought in the sunlight as the number of defenders slowly dwindled from a hundred, to ninety, to seventy-five.
Then, night had fallen.
In the dark, it was harder to see anything, and most of the Mecha fought on instinct, using their Disruptor Blades to destabilize and effectively kill the energy beings as they appeared.
Between the oppressive darkness and the Ion Storm, Max was fighting blind, only able to see what was within the glow of his weapons as he put his back to the barrier to avoid being ambushed.
Eight hours of darkness had felt like an eternity inside the Mecha, and they didn't feel much shorter this time, as Max's viewpoint switched to the inside of his cockpit as the darkness swallowed everything in his memories.
Then the sun began to rise, and Max recalled how he had been fighting on instinct alone, not a thought in his mind. But now, from the outside, he could see it. The Three Heroes, standing shoulder to shoulder against the barrier as the sun rose.
This time, he could see the tide of shadowed enemies, and think about what came next.
The blinding light of an orbital strike, as the fleet arrived early and wiped the massed armies of energy beings from existence.
A hundred thousand Emperor Class Mecha had descended to the surface in front of Max, clearing the enemy from the river valley with brutal efficiency.
Then, he saw her for the first time. The God Machine, Gloriana. A hundred metres tall with the firepower to eliminate star systems in the blink of an eye. The Mecha which would make him a legend and end the long war.
Or so Max had thought at the time. Now he knew better.
The war had never ended, the Gods and their minions had simply retreated and waited for the mortal species to forget about them.
Max woke with a start as the memory ended, and found Nico staring directly into his face while a large black cat slept on his chest.
"Good morning, sleepyhead. Care to explain what happened? You just passed out and nothing we did could wake you up. Your brain activity was off the charts, though. Was it something from the ship?" Nico asked.
"Yes and no. Not from the ship in a direct sense, but the ship triggered a flashback memory to my past life. Better sit down, this is going to take a minute to explain."
