Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 290

290 Desperate Ambush, Pt Up above, the SSS fire teams had completed their sweep and found nothing. Well, nothing except for one of the teams. They found the Spirit of Amelia.

They wouldn’t necessarily have cared, but her ramp had been lowered, and it seemed to be running on idle. The rest of the fireteams began to gather towards her nose and made their way around the huge circular floor to regroup.

Their movements were calm, and their guards were lowered.

But they suddenly jumped to alarm when the terminals on every gravity pad winked off, along with the lights and sensors on the floor itself. A few ran over to the nearest corvettes to them, and confirmed that their gravity pads were no longer active.

“Sir, power’s out in the entire warehouse,” said one of his officers.

The captain’s eyes grew wide as he realized what had happened.

“They’re in the substructure!” he yelled. “And they shut off everything! Delta team, with me! We’re gonna go down there and flush ’em out! Eta, you all stay with the corvette. Gamma, you keep patrolling.”

The captain then sprinted towards the admin booth, and was followed by both his team and delta team. Their boots made tromping noises as they ran while their two drones hovered close behind.

When he noticed that no-one was inside it, he began to run faster. It only took a dozen or so second before they finally got up to it.

.....

“They’re knocked out inside, sir,” said delta’s commander as he peered through the window.

But the captain was more worried about the door. He attempted to open it through the touchpanel on the outside, but he was locked out. Even despite security privileges.

“Blow it open,” the captain barked.

One of his teammates ran up, attached a small device to the bottom of the sliding door, then tapped a button on it. It beeped faster and faster until it became a single ear-splitting note that rang out for exactly three seconds.

And within those three seconds, nanites from inside the device swarmed out, and ate away at the door itself. By the time they were done, the door was reduced to a mere frame.

The captain quickly ran in, saw the knocked out guards, then moved straight towards the closed hatches at the rear of the room.

He fumbled slightly in the darkness, but once he located the right section of the wall, pushed it in and slid the small cover out of the way. Inset underneath the hidden panel was a circular lock with a few holes along its face.

The captain pulled out his security key, which had a series of prongs that fit exactly into the holes in the lock. When he turned it, there was an audible hiss behind the walls, and pneumatic mechanisms forced the hatches open.

“Go go go!” he told his team.

They quickly hopped into the access hatches and rapidly slid down the ladders inside.

~

Claire hovered out of the hatch from the substructure and up to the first floor quickly. Azrael came up right behind her. The drones set them down on the floor, then both of them moved into action.

Claire first looked up at the hatch above, then the terminal next to her, then the sealed door to the side, and realized they had goofed a bit.

There was no power, and no way for them to reopen the doors.

“Uh, we’re kinda stuck in here,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Azrael replied. “I figured we’d just fly up the middle with the drones’ help.”

“Oh, right! Still though – the door out’s shut tight! I sealed it before we went down.”

Azrael looked at the door itself. Although it looked relatively secure, its magnetic locks shouldn’t be working – they shut the power off, after all. She briefly wondered if they could simply slide it open

“Here, help me out,” she said.

Azrael went to the door itself, and grabbed on a small groove that ran in a circle on the door itself – just a bit of decoration. Though the grip wasn’t much, she put her fingers in it, and began to pull. The door budged slightly.

“Come on,” Azrael said.

Claire then went to the other side of the door, dug her palms into that same groove near Azrael’s fingers, then pushed as much as she could.

“Okay, one, two, threeeee...”

They slid the door another few centimeters, which gave them both a bit of hope. The two of them continued to budge the door bit by bit until there was enough space for Azrael to fit her fingers between the door and the doorway. She got a good grip of it, then pulled harder than before.

Thanks to her increased leverage, was able to slide the door aside. She stopped halfway, then panted loudly from exertion. But before she could reach out and pull the door aside some more, Claire simply slipped through the open gap, then beckoned her to follow.

So she did.

Both ran down to the center, where the two drones picked them up with their antigrav fields, then jetted up into the air. They sped up the completely open middle section at incredible speed, which caused their hearts to thunder in their chests.

“Is this how Raijin feels when she flies?” Claire said happily. “This is amazing!”

It only took a few seconds for them to get up to the 13th floor, right where Amelia was... and were immediately confronted by the fire team guarding it.

“It’s the Ravens!” said one of the SSS guards.

“Oh hell!” Claire cried out in response.

The two cottonball drones quickly let them out of their antigrav fields, then flung a series of electrical bursts at the guards and their drone.

Claire rolled on her shoulder, got right up near a couple of them, then blasted the two with her SMG. The ultrasonic waves rattled their bodies, and caused them to stumble and stagger from the chaotic barrage.

At the same time, Azrael shot her stun pistol at the closest guard to her. He had taken a few zaps from the drones, but went completely rigid when her shot struck him squarely. He tumbled over as his body shook from the electricity.

This allowed the two drones to focus solely on the enemy drone. They hammered it with electrostatic shocks over and over again until it completely powered down and fell to the ground.

The fight didn’t exactly go unnoticed – the last SSS fire team was across the way when the fighting started happening. They began to run back around the moment they realized their team was down.

Without skipping a beat, Azrael and Claire ran up the ramp and into Amelia, the two drones flew in right behind.

After a few moments, the ramp raised up just as the airlock sealed itself with a satisfying HISS.

~

Xylo skated backwards as she fired bursts of her rifle downrange. Her bullets struck the Peacekeepers squarely, even though they all wove evasively.

And as she left heavy dents on their armor, her sniper cannon charged up to the maximum. Once it hit its peak, she fired at a dish tower just as she passed it, and tore a giant hole where it had been slagged and weakened.

As it started to fall down in the direction she was headed, Xylo spun back around, and switched her thrusters to the rear. She then pushed her throttle to the maximum, and rushed away with incredible speed.

She ducked slightly and slipped just underneath the dish, right before it struck the ground. Pieces of metal that broke off from the dish flew in every direction, and even hit Xylo as she sped away.

Her pursuers were forced to veer left and right as the dish collapsed right in front of them, and made a barrier between them. While they changed direction, the Photon Ray burned their internal modules, just a little bit.

Enough for the pilots to smell hints of burnt ozone.

One was a little too slow in getting out of the powerful photonic ray, and his modules cooked from the inside out. He pushed his mecha to go faster as warnings and alerts spilled across his MFDs, but it only went slower as the systems began to overheat and overflow.

It came to a complete stop only centimeters away from the shadows, where its meltdown began.

All systems came to a sudden halt once the coolers hit their limit. And once the energy shielding dropped, the pilot was annihilated by pure Photonic energy. He never even had time to scream.

In another quadrant, Lucifer fired a burst of charged bolts at the closest tower, right into the gouges and beam scarring. The plasma slagged the weakened titanium, and caused it to crumple inwards.

The dish crashed down like so many others, even as ze sped towards the next tower.

Weapons fire from the Peacekeepers pursuing hir raked across the ground next to hir. But they were too far away for Lucifer to care. Their crippled targeting ensured they were practically harmless.

The Peacekeepers were hardly worth caring about.

Instead, ze performed another active ping, then reviewed the updated intel Raijin provided. Ze noted that more than a third of the towers had collapsed, many of which were near the center.

Even better news, more towers were still falling. If they could topple a few more of them, they could cause some serious damage to the entire district.

Ze then highlighted another dozen towers, then sent it off to the rest of the Ravens.

“We take those down,” ze told them, “then we get out – fast!”

Lucifer fired another couple of bursts at another tower, and tore through a few of its weakened spots. The damage caused this one to tilt over as well, and crash to the ground.

As the Ravens tore apart the Photon Tether, power all around the district began to wane. Buildings with incredibly high energy usage suddenly found their energy input dwindling, and began to tap into their own emergency power banks.

But without anyone inside to manage the flow of power, they simply began to empty out and go dry.

Lights inside of the many offices and warehouses and habs and hospitals and entertainment venues began to flicker and fade. Terminals began to shut off as their power reserves wound further and further down.

Everything inside the district demanded energy, and the more the Ravens tore things down, the less power there was to take.

Then, the power to critical systems began to wane. Transport vehicles that were still running along the grid simply deactivated. Hoppers careened into each other from the sudden loss of control. Since they were unable to stop without power, transport pods crashed into each other inside the tubes.

The climate controls in every building began to fail, and things cascaded from there. All automated operations began to cease, until eventually the entire district went dark and still.