2 Days Later
– Firdia, Skydiath 8,
8034 –
(Monday, February 10,
2110)
“Less than half an hour until
arrival, sir!”
“This is it, Nimalians…” Chief
Captain Peter Krick muttered, “I’d hoped that the first Nimalian trip to Earth
would be under more peaceful circumstances, but, well…”
“This is a really bad time to be
dealing with civil conflicts,” Kevérin responded, his arms crossed.
“That’s easy for you to say;
you’ve been dealing on the galactic stage for centuries. We Earthians only
started dipping our toes in interstellar travel fifteen years ago, and SERRCom
itself is barely ten years old,” Krick glanced back at the Nimalians wearily,
“This was bound to happen sooner or later. It’s just our luck that it had to be
sooner.”
“Um, if you don’t mind me
asking…” Kaoné spoke up uneasily, “…exactly what are you talking about?”
The Earthian Captain sighed and
stretched before fully swiveling his commanders’ chair around to face the two
members of Hero Machina. “Basically, it’s a power struggle. One of the nations
on Earth is throwing a fit that it doesn’t have the authority to do what
SERRCom does – that is, pretty much everything that has anything to do with
anything outside our solar system. So they’re waving their dick
around and trying to get SERRCom to rise to the bait so they can beat us down
and show the rest of the world that they can do our job better.”
“This sounds like it should be
easy to deal with,” Kevérin replied, “You’re the ones with the spacecraft;
I’d say it’s pretty clear who the boss is. Besides, I thought SERRCom started
out as a joint international organization, surely there’s a better way of
handling this than force.”
“I wish there was, but the
Americans aren’t really happy that their 150 years of power was abruptly cut
short because some random alien races stepped in and decided that Earth needed
a different organization to represent it,” Krick snorted, “…at least, that’s
how the government is behaving.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Alright… let’s back up to ten
years ago. First encounter. I think we dialed one of the CSA planets…
regardless, as soon as the CSA realized that we Earthians existed, they swooped
in and demanded that we create a unified representative body to, well,
represent us. They didn’t want to have to deal with over a hundred individual
entities for a single planet – that’s what lead to the creation of SERRCom.
The thing is, the CSA forcing us to create SERRCom like they did was basically
holding a gun to our heads. Everyone was running scared – out of nowhere, these
super-advanced aliens who had already colonized a quarter of the galaxy were
demanding things of us, so who were we to say no? We didn’t want to risk bad
first impressions or, worse, being attacked and wiped out. It wasn’t until a
couple years later that we realized that the CSA wouldn’t actually attack us,
and ever since then the more powerful nations on Earth have been trying to
lobby themselves into positions of interstellar power, all while SERRCom is trying
to keep hold of the reins. Which wasn’t hard, since we’re the ones dealing with
all you advanced races, but now…” Krick frowned, “…I don’t know how – probably
because they have the Interstellar Gate, I guess – but the Americans got their
hands on an Ayas.”
“You mean, the guys who’re upset
that SERRCom is in power?” Kevérin questioned.
“Yeah. They must’ve found
it some time ago, too, because they only just recently revealed a massive
network of anti-orbital railguns that all hook into the Ayas for power. They
almost took out one of our Frigates before it jumped away.”
“Wait, anti-orbital railguns?!”
Kaoné exclaimed incredulously, “And you’re just going to exit FTL on top of
them?!”
“Don’t worry; they’re of no
threat to the Genesis. This
Battlecruiser was created by the Master Ayas itself, after all, and it’s got
all kinds of advanced tech. Plus its technical specifications have been
classified; there’s no way the Americans could’ve accounted for it when
designing their weapons.”
“Then why can’t you just bombard
the shit out of the bastards?” Kevérin suggested.
“Because of politics,” Krick
chuckled bitterly, “This is what I meant earlier when I said that ‘this was
bound to happen’. America is challenging SERRCom on its power. If we fuck this
up, then they’ve got the support of the rest of the planet on their side, and
at that point we’re screwed. There’s at least another five or ten years until
SERRCom can be self-sufficient, so for now we have to rely on funding and
personnel and material support from Earth. So we can’t just fire on them.
They’d play that up as meaning that we’re rejecting Earth and we’ve sold out to
the aliens, and they’d use that to kill SERRCom and take over themselves.”
The Pyrotechnic snorted. “That
sounds ridiculous.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t, but
it’s what they’d do, and the bad thing is, it’d work,” Krick sighed, “So we
need to disable the anti-orbital gun-network and extract the Ayas with as few
casualties as possible. If we can do that, then it’d show the rest of the planet
that we’re in control, and that America has nothing on us. We’d make them look
like fools, and it’d give us enough support to remove the Interstellar Gate
from American soil and move it to someplace safer, probably the SERRCom space
station that’s slated for construction here soon. Which is another reason to disable the railguns...”
“So you’re saying that we’re
here solely to help out in a petty power struggle.”
“Heh, I’m sorry this isn’t
something more glamorous, but that’s how it is,” Krick shrugged. “But I’m
serious when I say that we do need you. More worrying than the development of
the anti-orbital guns is the fact that the Americans also managed to develop
some sort of technology that jams the Genesis
beaming systems. Well, it’s more like they prevent us from getting a lock on
anything, but it’s essentially the same, since if we can’t lock onto an object
or location then using the beaming systems isn’t safe.”
“What does that have to do with
us?”
“Because the entire gun network,
especially the Ayas housing center, is covered by this jamming tech. In order
to infiltrate it we’d have to send in teams the conventional way, but we can’t
match America’s strength on the surface of the planet. Especially not when it
comes to power projection over a mountain range, which is where the Ayas is;
this ship’s guns are too powerful for small-target bombardment, and while we
can certainly tank the anti-orbital guns, I’d prefer not to get so close that
they can score guaranteed hits. We need someone who has enough power on their
own to easily disable armor and aircraft. …We need Chaotics.”
“…And no Earthian is a Chaotic,
so you need our help,” Kevérin nodded understandingly, “Alright, so basically,
you want to send us down some distance away from the Ayas and then we’ll blast
our way to it and retrieve it, taking out any guns we see along the way.”
“With as few casualties as
possible, yes.”
“Sounds like your Overdrive will
come in handy, then,” Kevérin remarked, glancing sidelong at Kaoné.
“Yeah, this mission doesn’t
sound hard at all,” Kaoné agreed, “I don’t think this should take very long.”
“I hope it won’t,” Krick
smirked, “The sooner we get this done, the better.”
“Definitely,” Kevérin nodded,
“We can barely afford to waste our time here. If we get the Ayas and access to
this ship out of it, though, then it might just be worth it.”
“Remember that you don’t get to keep the Genesis,” Krick quickly pointed out, “And me and my crew will still
be manning it. But yes, if you help out SERRCom here, then helping you back is
the least we can do.”
“Sounds like a plan,” the
Transfer Captain turned toward the bridge exit, “My team and I will suit up
now. Once we’re ready, just beam us down and mark our maps; we’ll take care of
the rest from there.”
“Got it, Captain. Good luck down
there.”
“Ha,” Kevérin snorted,
“Hopefully, we won’t need it.”
* * *
4 Hours Later
“It’s so cold…”
“Just stick with it,” Kevérin
glanced back at Kaoné, “Our armor has climate control, so you won’t get
frostbite or anything.”
“You say that…” the
Materiatechnic looked around herself wearily at the snow-capped mountains
surrounding the small cliff Hero Machina was currently standing on. “But… it’s
below freezing out here.”
“It is the middle of Earth’s winter, and we are halfway up a mountain…” the Pyrotechnic shrugged.
“Of course it’s easy for you to
shrug it off, you can create your own goddamn heat,” Vélunis scowled, peering
into the distance through the scope of a sniper rifle, “You should make us a
fire. That’ll warm us up.” He then glanced conspicuously at Kaoné. “…Better
yet, set her on fire. She’ll probably burn longer than rocks and snow.”
“Hey!” she protested before
grabbing some nearby rocks, transmuting them into firewood, and dumping them at
Vélunis’s feet. “There! Firewood. There’s no need to try and burn me.”
“A little cold won’t hurt you,”
Kevérin countered, “We can’t afford to start a fire here, anyways. We already
don’t have arctic camouflage, so the last thing we need to do is create a free
light and heat source for the Earthians to lock on to.”
“Implying that our armor doesn’t
create heat,” Vélunis deadpanned.
Kevérin glanced back at the
other members of Hero Machina. Kaoné, Kievkenalis, and himself were all wearing
their Chaos Armor, but Vélunis and Wilkas were stuck with lower-grade
electrical armor, due to the lack of fitted Chaos Armor.
“They actually do create heat,”
the Pyrotechnic turned back to the rock face in front of him and began
cautiously searching for footholds, “But it’s a level of heat that I can
mitigate. I could do the same for a fire, but then that’d defeat the whole
purpose of creating a fire in the first place.”
“Shouldn’t we be focused on
finding the base?” Kievkenalis interjected.
“What do you think we’re
climbing this mountain for?”
“Why are we even climbing?”
Wilkas questioned, glancing over at Kaoné. “You’re a Materiatechnic, right?
Just make a platform or something.”
“We need to be as stealthy as
possible until we actually find the base,” Kevérin refuted, “If they sound the
alarm before we get too close then we’ll have to go through a lot more people, and
Kaoné’s Overdrive will only help so much if there’s crowds of people and blast
doors in our way.”
“Sounds reasonable enough…”
Vélunis muttered, still peering through the sniper scope, “…if they hadn’t
found us already, at least.”
“What–?” the Pyrotechnic’s eyes
widened in alarm as Vélunis suddenly fired his rifle, the noise echoing down
the cliffs in front of them. A small burst of light could be seen in the
distance before Wilkas jumped forward and knocked a cannon shell out of the
air, sending it flying into the cliffs to the bottom left.
“Where are they?” Kevérin
demanded.
“Point defenses, over a
kilometer northeast,” Vélunis reported before firing another shot.
“Chaos
Assist,” Kievkenalis called, “…they found us already?”
“No time to wonder how,” Kevérin
scowled, “Kaoné, do it!”
“Overdrive:
Conflict’s Judge!”
Vélunis suddenly flinched back
as the rifle in his hands sparked and fell to pieces. He turned toward Kaoné,
confused. “What just–?”
“It’s her Overdrive,” Kevérin
cut in, “Now, Kaoné, make us a platform and fly us over there!”
The Materiatechnic quickly complied, transforming the ground under the
five Chaotics into steel and then lifting it up into the air. The Pyrotechnic
stared out into the distance toward where the cannon shell originated while the
remaining three Chaotics of Hero Machina clung to the platform, unprepared for
the sudden airlift.
“We have no choice but to find the base as quickly as possible, now,” the
Transfer Captain continued, “C’mon, Kaoné. Let’s go!”
* * *
“…Visual scans indicate that one
of the anti-orbital railguns has been destroyed.”
“Already?” Krick frowned,
shifting in his chair as he looked up at the holographic displays at the front
of the bridge, “We beamed them down not even an hour ago… where was the gun?”
“It was on the southern inner
emplacement perimeter, roughly around 44 degrees north and 109 degrees west.”
“They’ve barely moved at all,
but I guess that’s to be expected in the mountains…” Krick grumbled to himself,
“They’ve moved enough to enter the jamming fields, though, so we can’t contact
them now… it’s do or die.” He then raised his voice to address the entire
bridge. “Do the scans show anything else? Unit mobilization? Raised heat
emission from activating defenses? Energy transfer?”
“…Sorry, sir,” one of the
officers replied, “We aren’t picking up anything. The remaining anti-orbital
guns have begun moving, presumably to target us, but they’re the largest
emplacements we can track. The communications and lock-on jamming is
interfering with our ability to detect heat emission, as well.”
“Then they’re really on their
own… …Alright. Initiate the cloak and move us down to low orbit over the
coordinates of the destroyed gun.”
“Wait– sir, we’re being hailed.
…It’s President Zhou.”
“Oh?” Krick raised his eyebrows
curiously, “What does he want?”
“There’s no info tag
accompanying the request, except that it’s an audio-only line.”
“Ha. I’d bet this has something
to do with his precious railguns,” the Captain snorted, “Alright, maintain our
orbital position and hold the cloak order for now. Open a channel to my
headset… let’s see what he has to say.”
Krick leaned forward, resting
his elbows on his knees as he waited for the communication connection. Mere
moments later he heard a couple beeps in his ear as the comms officer waved to
him; waving back, he tapped his earpiece to open the line. “Greetings, Mr.
President.”
“Good day to you as well, Chief
Captain.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,
what brings you to contact me? I’m sure someone in a position such as yourself
would find it more productive to get in touch with General Dowley instead–“
“Excuse me, Captain, but I’ve no
time for your snide remarks,” the President cut in impatiently, “I’m sure we
both know why I’m contacting you.”
“Do we?” Krick questioned
innocently, glancing up at the real-time scanner readings, “I’m not sure what
you’re talking about.”
“You mean to tell me you have
nothing to do with the destruction of one of our orbital defense platforms?”
“Well, now that you mention it…”
“I have no time for your games,
Captain. Do you realize that this is an act of war?”
“And firing on one of our
Frigates wasn’t?”
Krick smirked to himself when
the President failed to immediately respond.
“…You must understand, Captain,”
Zhou finally continued, “We did not intend to hit, or even fire on one of
SERRCom’s Frigates. That was just a test of the defense platforms’ capability.”
“And you just happened to almost hit a Frigate sitting
in stable middle Earth orbit?”
“Yes.”
“You just happened to almost hit a 75-meter target sitting nearly ten
thousand kilometers above the Earth’s surface?”
“I am aware of the size of
Frigates and the altitude of MEO, Captain. I maintain that the incident was
unintentional.”
“All due respect Mr. President,
but cut the shit. We both know that you’re lying through your teeth. Now tell
me what you want so I don’t have to talk to you anymore.”
“The nerve–! I can see to it
that you never set foot on American soil again!”
“Do you think I care? I haven’t
even set foot on Earth in the past
three years. I answer to General Dowley of SERRCom, not you.”
“You–!”
“Now, is that it? Surely you
didn’t call just to threaten me.”
“…No, it’s– it’s not. …I must
apologize, I did not mean to… anyways. About the defense platforms.”
Krick glanced up at the scanner
readouts again just in time to see that a second railgun emplacement had been
destroyed. The Nimalians are really
moving now. Let’s hope they’re keeping the minimal casualties objective in
mind… “Alright, what is it?” he turned his attention back to the
communication.
“I’d like you to withdraw your ground
team.”
“And what do we get out of
that?”
“A… truce. And a public apology.
We won’t try to get in SERRCom’s way again.”
“You want to trade your
anti-orbital weapons for words?”
“I’m afraid it’s all I can offer
at the moment.”
“How about handing over the gun
emplacements to SERRCom?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’s SERRCom’s job to
protect Earth from interstellar threats, and I’m fairly certain that
anti-orbital weaponry follows that goal pretty well.”
“…I will consider it, if you
withdraw your team immediately.”
“I would consider doing so as
well, but as we both know,” Krick smirked, “the entire area is blanketed in
jamming fields. I can’t contact anyone down there. So if you want me to
withdraw anything, you’re going to need to shut down the jamming.”
“That’s nonsense. How can I
trust you won’t use the opportunity to bombard the whole area?”
“Sir, if it’s orbital
bombardment that you’re worried about, you should know that a jamming field
won’t stop us. The only reason I haven’t opened fire already is because there
are innocent men and women down there risking their lives for a political
dick-waving contest. And I will continue
to withhold the Genesis’s orbital
bombardment rounds for that very reason, unless you do something as egregious
as opening fire on a SERRCom ship again.”
“Should I take that as a threat,
Captain?”
“It’s a warning – and I’m sure
Dowley would say the same. Now I’ve had enough of your pleading, so if that’s
all you have to say, then I have work to get back to–“
“Wait, Captain! Surely there’s a
way we can work this out?”
“It’s all up to you,” Krick
shrugged, the indifference working its way into his voice, “SERRCom has little
to lose from this situation.”
“You stand to lose the support
of every civilized nation on this planet, and with it, all your funding and
manufacturing power.”
“’All’ is an
overstatement.”
“…Grant me an audience. Let’s
work this out in person. I can even send my people to your ship, and we can
negotiate on your ground.”
The Captain paused for a moment,
surprised by the President’s sudden and charitable offer. “…You want to send a
negotiation team onto the Genesis?”
“If it will work out the situation
with the defense platforms, then yes, I am willing to do so.”
“…Hold that thought for a
minute, please.” Krick quickly tapped his earpiece, muting the connection as he
turned to look again at the scanner readouts. What does he want… the captain thought to himself, he must have ulterior motives. Why else
would he contact me and not Dowley? How did he learn about the Nimalians so
quickly, anyway? And why the hell did he suddenly offer to send a team to the Genesis? This smells fishy as fuck, but I can’t
find the rotten fish itself… Several moments later he finally turned to one
of the bridge officers. “Close the bulkheads around receiving airlock 7A and
send a suppression team down to guard the entrances.” As soon as the officer
acknowledged his order, the Captain tapped his earpiece again to unmute the
communication. “Sorry about that, Mr. President. I just had to check some
things first.”
“Your answer, then?”
“…I’ll do it. Assemble a team
and I’ll beam them up. But understand this, Mr. President – if they try
anything fishy, I will not hesitate to terminate them and report the incident
to General Dowley.”
“Yes, of course, Captain. I
would never dream of doing such a thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I will go do
exactly as you suggested. I will be back in under half an hour.”
“…’Never dream of it’, he says,”
Krick muttered to himself after the comm channel cut out, “…We’ll have to see
about that…”
* * *
BANG!
The meter-thick steel door
sealing the entrance to the mountain base was suddenly knocked inwards,
completely severed from the wall as it fell over. Wilkas immediately stepped in
and began looking around at the entrance bay as Kevérin stared on in disbelief.
“So much for being stealthy,” he
sighed irately.
“What’s the point of being stealthy?”
Wilkas countered, turning to look back at the Transfer Captain, “We’ve already
been detected.”
“Yeah, we just need to get the
Ayas and get out,” Vélunis agreed.
“It would be better if we could
find out the actual specifications behind the railguns,” Kevérin countered,
“And if we could find out where they found this Ayas. I’d like to know how all
this was put together under SERRCom’s nose.”
“Whatever we do, we should
figure it out soon,” Kaoné urged, glancing toward a small group of confused
Earthians standing at the far end of the entrance bay, “My Overdrive will wear
out soon, and if Cooldown doesn’t happen then, then it’ll definitely happen if
I use it a fourth time.”
“Strictly speaking, we don’t need your powers beyond your Overdrive,”
Kievkenalis pointed out, “the four of us can do just fine.”
“Way to make me feel useful,”
the Materiatechnic pouted.
“She has a point, though; we
need to act fast.” Kevérin paused for a moment to think before continuing,
“Alright, Kaoné, you’re with me. We’ll look for the control room and see what
we can do from there. Kevken, Vélunis, Wilkas, I want the three of you to find
the Ayas. Will you be able to sense it, Kevken?”
“Once we get close enough,
probably.”
“Then that’s it,” the
Pyrotechnic declared, narrowing his eyes as the Earthians in the room suddenly
fled and alarms began to sound, “…We covered a lot of ground since the last
time Kaoné used her Overdrive; there might still be intact weapons here, so be
careful. Otherwise: split!”
“Chaos
Assist! Chaos Detect!” Kievkenalis shouted as he dashed forward ahead of
Vélunis and Wilkas. He waved to Kevérin and Kaoné as they burst through a wall
in the opposite direction and then turned his attention down and to the left,
tracking several distant silhouettes as they descended through space. “…Over
there!” he pointed at the wall, “There’s an elevator shaft! The Ayas is
probably in the lower levels!”
Without wasting a moment Wilkas
thrust his fist forward, pulverizing the wall and opening a hole into the hallway
behind it. Vélunis jumped through, summoning two pistols out of thin air before
quickly scanning the hallway and firing on a defense turret before it could
fire on him. As soon as he did so several more alarms began blaring before the
walls in the immediate vicinity suddenly exploded; the three Chaotics avoided
taking damage only due to Kievkenalis anticipating the action and calling out “Chaos Deflection”. The three quickly
stumbled out of the smoke, only to see several rocket turrets staring at them
from down the hall. Wilkas immediately jumped forward as two rockets were
fired, obliterating one of the rockets with his shoulder as Vélunis sniped the
other out of the air. Kievkenalis fired several Chaos Cannon shots
down the hall at the rocket turrets as Wilkas tore out a section of the steel
wall and used it as a shield while rushing down the hallway, Vélunis and
Kievkenalis in tow.
“…Right here!” the Chaostechnic
exclaimed, slamming his fist against a large steel door, “The elevator’s here!”
“Got it,” Wilkas nodded before
tearing into the door, ripping it open with ease. The three Chaotics paused to
stare down the large, dark shaft – the bottom was too far down to be seen.
“…This must be a freight
elevator,” Vélunis observed, noting the width of the door Wilkas had torn down
as well as the depth of the elevator shaft.
“If it is, then maybe it goes
all the way down to the bottom of the base,” Kievkenalis squinted in an attempt
to see through the darkness, but to no avail. “We’ll likely encounter less resistance
if we go down the shaft, too.”
“Well sure, and I know I can survive that drop,” Wilkas glanced
back at the other two Chaotics, “but what about you guys?”
Vélunis glanced up the shaft,
tracking the elevator cable with his eyes until finding the motor at the top.
He then glanced back down the shaft and sighed. “I’ve got an idea,” he
grumbled, “Won’t be fun, but it should work…”
* * *
“Hands in the air!”
Kevérin burst through the wall
after cutting his way through the steel with heat, two blades of flame
extending from his hands as he held them threateningly in front of him. He then
allowed the flames to dissipate and his hands to fall to his sides as he
glanced around the room confusedly.
“…There’s no one here,” Kaoné
observed quietly after entering behind Kevérin.
“This doesn’t make any sense…”
the Transfer Captain scowled, snapping his eyes from empty console to empty
console, from vacant workstation to vacant workstation, and eventually to the
massive window at the front of the room that allowed a wide view of the snowy
mountains. He cautiously approached the nearest workstation before sitting
himself in front of it and activating it. “…This is the control room, alright,”
he muttered after fiddling with the computer for a short while, “So why is no
one here?...”
“It’s a good thing, though,
right?” Kaoné questioned, “We don’t have to worry about hurting anyone this
way.”
“I don’t know about that,”
Kevérin refuted, “These stations are clearly meant to be manned. This entire base should be manned, but we’ve only
run into primitive security bots and defense turrets, aside from those
Earthians back at the entrance. I don’t like this one bit…”
“Well, what are we supposed to
do about it?”
“I’m not sure if there is anything we can do about it. Not without
learning more…” the Transfer Captain glanced across the room before jumping up
and seating himself at another console. “First things first, let’s disable the
jamming fields and get in touch with the Genesis.”
“Can you do that?”
“Please. Earthian computers are
far more primitive than 200-year-old Citan tech, and I hacked the Teghica
computers with ease. This’ll be a walk in the park. …There. See, I have access
already.”
Kaoné watched the Transfer
Captain work for a few moments before she turned her attention to the room’s
window. Far in the distance she could see one of the anti-orbital railguns,
mounted into the side of a mountain and pointing straight up into the sky.
“Overdrive: Conflict’s Judge…!” she muttered, only for nothing to happen. My powers are still on Cooldown… I guess
that’s to be expected after using my Overdrive three times in a row, huh…
“There, field’s down.”
The Materiatechnic glanced back
at Kevérin and then approached his console. “Are you going to contact the Genesis?”
“That’s the plan,” the
Pyrotechnic nodded, “…hah, good thing Earthian interface protocols are
well-known. Their stuff is so primitive, trying to hack it from scratch might
actually be more difficult than hacking Citan computers. Everything’s put
together so… so…”
“Confusingly?”
“I’d say haphazardly. Or
ignorantly. Or just stupidly.” He shrugged. “Anyways, contacting the Genesis…”
Kaoné jumped in surprise as the
sound of static suddenly filled the room before being replaced with a soft,
dull tone. Moments later the tone disappeared completely as Captain Krick’s
voice boomed through the room. “Captain… …that you?”
“It is,” Kevérin nodded, though
the gesture was lost on the audio-only connection. “I just disabled the jamming
fields. We haven’t found the Ayas yet, though.” He paused for several moments
in anticipation of a response, but glanced at Kaoné confusedly when the
Earthian Captain failed to reply. “Captain?”
“––gerous! We’ve been Bo–– …Damn
bastard couldn’t keep his word, they’v––“
“What–?” Kevérin leaned forward
tensely, surprised by the low quality of the audio connection. “Captain, the
line’s cutting out, I can’t make out what you’re saying! Captain?!”
“––trap, the anti-orbital
network–– a setup –– get out of there!”
“The hell?” the Transfer Captain
stared at the console in front of him with a mixture of confusion and
irritation, “What do you mean, trap? What’s going on–?!”
“Uh, Kevérin…” Kaoné spoke up
warningly, warily pointing out the window, “The, the gun…”
“Huh…?” the Pyrotechnic looked
up just as the Railgun in the distance began to move, lowering its barrel
toward the horizon before slowly swiveling toward the control room. “…Well,
shit.”
“We need to get out of here–!”
“Way ahead of you!” Kevérin
jumped out of his seat and turned toward the room’s entrance, but the two
Chaotics were barely able to so much as exit the room before the entire
structure suddenly collapsed, the entire control room and the area around it
crumbling to the mountaintop below.
* * * * *
==================== End of Chapter 56 ====================
* * * * *
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