CHAPTER 227: STAR FALL

Thirty seconds left.

The final moments before the strike. Seraph’s thumb was just over the detonation switch. Draven stood still and strong, holding back the flood of cyborgs rushing down the corridor. And Silas... Silas just waited. She had done her part of the deal. There was nothing left for her to do but watch the pieces fall.

"Vanessa, Do you copy?" Seraph said to her comms, her voice low and urgent . "We are all set. Countdown on my mark."

High above them, falling from the sky through a spinning storm of fire and plasma, Vanessa responded, her voice was a calm. "Yes Seraph. We are in position."

On Nomad’s main viewer, thier planet was no longer looking like a beautiful blue marble. It was now a fast approaching wall of brown and green. Vanessa’s countdown timer, displayed in the corner of the screen, ticked nonstop towards zero.

"The shields are dropping in five... four... three... two...."

Back on the ground, Seraph took a deep breath.

"Draven, fall back! Now!"

Draven roared in anger, smashing his fists together to send out a wave of golden energy that knocked the last group of cyborgs backward. They tumbled like children’s toys.

He turned and quickly ran into the control room just as Seraph slammed her hand down on a second trigger.

BOOM!

The strong blast door they used to get in exploded, completely blocking the corridor with a lot of broken metal and stones. They were trapped. But so was the enemy. Sometimes that’s the best you can hope for, taking your killer down with you.

"Now!" Seraph yelled into her comm.

She hit the first switch.

A deep, groaning sound came up from the gap below. The entire facility shook violently. The soft, red glow of the conduit began to pulse, turning to a bright orange. Red lights flashed all over the control room and the alarms went off.

The geothermal conduit was overloading.

Miles above, inside Nomad’s cockpit, an icon on Vanessa’s console changed from a constant red to a blinking yellow. That tiny shift in color meant everything.

"I am detecting an instability in the shield system!" she yelled over the noise of the ship entering the atmosphere.

"The shield is failing! Jonah, Do it now!"

Jonah saw it. It was a faint shimmer in the air just above the industrial complex. For a moment, there was an opening. A break in the protection around the base.

He unleashed the attack.

It made no sound. There was no huge explosion. Just a terrible release of power.

From the glowing core of Nomad, a massive spear of golden white starlight burst out.

It went down to the target.

On the ground, the sky became white.

Seraph, Draven, and Silas were thrown to the floor as everything seemed to turn upside down. Gravity became a suggestion. The blaring alarms, the buzzing sound coming from the conduit all cut off at once, leaving a silence that rang in their ears.

The Starfall Lance hit its target.

It did not cause a big explosion. It was cleaner than that, and somehow that made it worse. The huge industrial complex, where the Starfall lance hit, simply... vanished. Vaporized. Wiped away from reality.

The attack created a huge, round hole, right through the building and deep into the ground.

The white light faded, revealing a large crater with trails of smoke coming out from it. The edges were still glowing red from the heat.

And in the middle of that opening, something new was revealed.

The hidden factory.

The psychic shockwave hit Jonah shortly after.

It was not a wave of pain this time. It was a scream. Like a thousand people screaming at the same time. He was thrown back in his chair as his mind was hit with a powerful flow of raw emotion.

He saw quick flashes of terrifying images of the underground factory.

He saw hundreds of crystalline pods, glowing with a sick, green light.

He saw them beginning to breaking, with cracks spreading across thier surfaces.

And he felt the minds of the beings inside. It was the scared and confused minds of children waking up to a nightmare. They were unstable and in constant pain

The psychic connection broke, causing Jonah to gasp for air. His heart was beating fast and hard in his chest. His hands were shaking on the controls. Beside him, Ariana reached her hand out and placed it gently on his shoulder.

On the ground, Seraph and Draven slowly got up. The control room was dark and the power from the conduit finally dead. They looked at the hole in the roof above them, at the night sky now visible where a concrete ceiling had been just moments before.

They heard a slow, static noise that drew their attention. A huge holoscreen on the far side of the underground room, which somehow survived the blast, suddenly turned on. The glow was harsh after the darkness.

A face appeared. It was Julian Sterling.

He didn’t look angry or panicked. He was just sitting in a comfortable looking chair, with a smile on his face.

He looked like a man watching an entertaining fireworks display.

He clapped his hands together slowly.

Clap... Clap... Clap... Clap...

"That was Impressive!," he said, his calm voice not matching the destruction around them.

"Truly, a really great show."

He looked directly at the camera that was broadcasting his image, as if he was looking right at them. As if he could see into them. And maybe he could. Maybe he’d been watching this whole time.

"You’ve done exactly what I wanted," he said, his smile becoming bigger. "You’ve cleared out the facility. You have forced your way through the containment shields. You have cleared the way..."

He paused for a moment, and he took a slow sip from a glass of what looked like water. That casual gesture made it worse. It made all of this so much worse.

"...for the field test."