***Tirnanog, Thich Flagship***
***Magnus***
'I think they are pissed,' I ssaged Astra as we fled from the two clones who had been chasing us through half the airship. They tried to stop us from finding more sabotage opportunities, but it didn’t work out for them. The large vessel had too many corridors, and we had already learned that as long as we stuck to using the wider corridors, there were always at least three intersections, leaving us always with a good escape route.
Both clones were quick to find us once we made our presence known, but they weren’t fast enough to force us into a confrontation. So far, running away hadn’t been a problem.
'Maybe we should just stop and fight them? Running away is getting boring,' I suggested while playing with the improvised ti trigger on the bomb I was carrying. The thing was the size of a small barrel, and lugging it around while on the run wasn’t easy. I rigged up several explosives after finding the ammunition depot, but this one was sothing special.
As much as I wanted to hold it back for a special target, carrying it around made tired.
That one of the Zachs was a speedster didn’t make it any easier. Luckily, the speedster clone didn't dare to engage us without his brother, who was built like a tank and decked out in heavy armour while carrying a warhamr.
'Just keep running for as long as you can. We keep going like this for as long as possible, since the situation is in our favour,' Astra replied over the UI. During the high-speed chase over the last few minutes, using the UI had turned out to be easier than trying to talk the normal way.
'The last bomb you set off did sothing,' she continued. 'The deck is tilted upwards, and the air pressure is changing. If this keeps up, those bastards might suffocate without us having to lift a finger. I am also not too keen on fighting an ancient without so serious backup. Don’t you rember the last ti we fought?'
'Won't we have the sa problem? With the air, I an?' I sent back, reluctantly admitting that Astra had a point. I barely survived the last encounter with Zacharias, but we also grew a lot since then. And as far as I knew, that particular clone of his was killed. The thunder eel’s mutation was also amplifying our power output, and Astra and I learned a few additional tricks. I had also made it a point to train against any decent practitioner of Precognition I could find.
Thankfully, we were closing in on our next target, aning I would soon be rid of my burden.
'Don't forget the underwater adaptation we got,' Astra pointed out. 'It's not just underwater breathing, but enhances our resistance to pressure changes. It also allows us to last much longer without oxygen than normal people. Don't you rember all the tests we did with Thalia back at Mount Aerie?'
'Right. Feels like that was ages ago, back before we had the kids,' I admitted, rembering being shoved into a rustic pressure chamber to see how long I would last. 'They did so many tests on us, forgive if I forgot one or two.'
We reached our latest target, stopping in front of a guarded door. It was quite obviously intended to hold off people with strength mutations, aning there was sothing important behind it. Like the central electric hub we identified on the plans we found earlier.
Luckily, my present was more than big enough. There was no need to waste ti busting down the door.
“Hey, ho! Can you hold this for a mont?” I shoved the heavy bomb at the closest guard, practically forcing them to hold it for . At the sa ti, I let go of the tid trigger, activating it in the process. Having appeared out of nowhere from the guardsns' perspective, they didn’t quite know what to do with the heavy ordnance which was handed over to them so freely.
Then we were flash-stepping again, running down the corridor while I was laughing.
'I swear, I could do this all day long. Never gets old!'
'I still think what you are doing isn't funny,' Astra ssaged back while the pressure wave of a huge explosion followed us down the corridor. Three seconds were just enough for most people to realise what I shoved into their arms. Disarming the bomb was out of the question.
My ears popped again as we stopped at an intersection between two main corridors.
'We should find a different ammunition depot and top up on explosives,' Astra suggested.
'I would rather go outside the ship and take a look around,' I suggested. 'The corridors are rather empty since the deck tilted. And as you said, my ears feel blocked. We should check how high we are.'
We took one of the stairways, quickly ascending between decks without eting any resistance.
A locked bulkhead at the top proved to be the only obstacle, but this one hadn’t been designed to withstand a juggernaut’s power. I busted the lock, and a mont later we were standing on the ship’s upper deck. It looked like it was one of the upper observation platforms I had seen earlier from the outside.
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Holding onto the guard rail, I took a look around and realised the idea to check our height hadn’t co early enough. Because the ground was far, far away. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but this gave an uneasy feeling. Better not to concentrate too much on that.
“Wow!” Astra stepped up next to , grinning from ear to ear. “I have never been so high up before. It is beautiful.”
The ship had broken through the uppermost cloud layers, and we had a magnificent view of the distant northern coastline and the horizon’s curvature. Tirnanog’s sun was unforgivingly bright, but my attention was drawn nonetheless to what looked like a lattice-web of sothing like sparkling lines covering the sky. The lattice spread out from the sun and gradually faded out like rays of sunshine. Only that couldn’t be!
It looked… unnatural. As if looking at the sun through a spider’s web.
Was it so kind of orbital construction? Maybe an orbital web of wires could look like this from a distance. If so, it still had to be massive to be seen with the naked eye. And I couldn’t rember seeing anything of this sort with the telescope back at Mount Aerie.
Although I never looked for it. If the telescope wasn’t focused on sothing stationed in orbit, it might be missed.
I narrowed my eyes and squinted, trying to make sense of the glittering sh which covered the world in a low orbit. Seeing it at all was not a given, but the distant sun shone just at the right angle to reflect the light off of whatever this was.
“What is that glittering sh around the sun, Astra?” I pointed. “I thought the colonisation efforts never managed to get anything to space.”
Back on Earth, the night sky was covered with countless satellites. They were easy to spot with the eye if you knew what to look for, but I had never heard of sothing similar. What could be the purpose of such a structure?
Astra joined in staring at the strange phenonon. “I don’t know. Maybe it is just a play of the light? As far as I know, the colonisation efforts never went far enough to consider setting up a space industry. Earth shut down its support long before.”
I harrumphed in disbelief. Light phenona were occurring between atmospheric layers where hot and cold air t, often observed over water or in deserts. Maybe they could also happen in the sky, though I wasn’t sure of that. Admittedly, I wasn’t an expert on all the different appearances such phenona could take on, nor had I observed many myself.
The most I personally witnessed was what looked like water or a reflective surface on asphalt when it was a particularly hot sumr day back when I was a child. Only for the water to disappear once I ca closer to investigate the strange puddle.
From the top of my head, I knew optical distortions, magnifications, and reflections of distant objects were possible, but none of the pictures I had seen online looked anything like this. The phenonon was too perfectly curved as if this sh was enclosing the world. The lattice network seed too regular to be a light phenonon caused by the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, I had no more ti to study whatever this was, because the sound of labouring breathing was ascending the stairway behind us. Soone was having a shitty ti at this elevation.
I turned, readying my spetum, but it turned out there was no need for it.
The heavily armoured Zacharias clone, who had been following us, was practically crawling up the stairway. He was on his last leg, making wonder whether he was truly so committed to hunting us down that he would ignore the ship’s situation, or whether his was a distraction. He was still dragging a stupidly huge warhamr along, but I seriously doubted his ability to lift the thing at this point.
Astra readied the array of javelins she was usually carrying on her back and shot them over the crawling clone’s back the mont the speedster ca up the stairway.
The timing was perfect, and the speedster who tried to use his brother’s noisy entrance as a distraction was t with a wall of pointy steel. Due to the narrow corridor, dodging was impossible, resulting in the speedster being nailed to the wall, followed by an electric discharge that shook and cooked his body.
It was an execution, leaving little room for a coback.
The armoured clone found a sudden surge of power and rushed to his feet.
Despite the miraculous recovery, the clone’s movents were sluggish, allowing to duck beneath the enclosing arms.
I had shifted my spetum to the side, unwilling to test the blade against full body armour that looked like it could withstand the jaws of a firehorn. At most, I would have damaged my weapon.
As soon as my shoulder hit the clone’s lower chest, I put all the effort I could muster into my legs while pushing him upwards with the shaft of my weapon. The clone’s charge turned into a neat, low trajectory over my head and continued over the guardrail.
He disappeared beyond the ship’s hull as I turned, following him with my eyes. As soon as he was gone, I bent warily over the guardrail, expecting so kind of coback. But very much unlike a good movie monster, all I found was a body tumbling freely through the air, headed for the ground.
“That was anticlimactic,” I comnted. “Looks like they really couldn’t deal with the height. But why were they chasing us to this extre? They should have abandoned the ship.”
Astra retracted he javelins, allowing her victim to slip to the ground. There was no question that he was dead. Unless soone could survive being spiked through the eye into the brain and then be set on low microwave cooking.
“I have a feeling we will learn soon enough why Zacharias was so committed. Maybe he already wrote off all the resources he invested in this operation, and all the damage he could do in the process was just a bonus to him?” Astra suggested, not sounding too convinced of her theory.
“It sounds plausible, but I still don’t get why he would keep chasing us long after his clones lost the ability to put up a proper fight,” I countered, then returned my attention to the distant horizon. Another mystery of this world to be solved. Hopefully, as soon as we get access to the rumoured facility beneath Thich City.
I shook my head. “Anyway, we should get back. I see no point in wasting more ti on this ship. It is out of the fight, and even if the few personnel who remain on board manage to get it back under control, it is doubtful whether it will be able to affect future battles. Unless we find sothing truly vital, I doubt we can bring it down completely.”
Astra looked around and nodded after a mont. “Let us get back and see whether we can help the others.”
She took my hand and together, we flash stepped off the observation platform.
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