Lyric kept the bombardment up as much as she could. They didn't have an unlimited supply of cannonballs but she wanted to make as much destruction as possible before night fell. There was also the fact that they needed to give the facility team enough time to do their job.
"We need to get the long boats ready for everyone that's going ashore. The one staying aboard will continue the bombardment in intervals of two hours at a time until the signal is given to completely stop." Lyric was having fun giving orders and having command. Of course when Alexandria was back she would go back to being the first mate which she very much enjoyed.
The crew went about their duty readying the long boats to be dropped into the water. The sun was setting on the horizon once it was completely down and the stars were above them they would begin to disembark for the shore. Basic weapons were loaded into the boats; there were seven in total and each boat could hold five to ten crew members. Hopefully the guard count in the city wasn't as large due to whatever fun Alexandria was having in the underground facility.
Lyric got all her gear together ready for the assault on the city. Valentina and Isa would also have their own groups to take command of. Each core member needed to get used to commanding a small group of subordinates. Alexandria I had told Lyric before that that was going to be one of their main duties once the core members were gathered together. Lyric let a devious giggle escape her lips; she hadn't been this excited for a fight in a long time.
Tyra watched from her perch as the preparations for the assault on the walled city commenced. Even though the plan had changed a bit, the new plan was going rather smoothly. The only thing left to do was reunite the facility team with the siege team. She was also going to give the signal to the flagship on when to stop the bombardment. She turned her attention to Eve since this was going to be the moment that guards were going to be on the walls of the walled city.
Eve casually walked up to the guard booth looking up to see if anyone was inside. She pulled out her knife squinting a bit against the failing light. "Of course when I'm ready to fight the guards know where to be found." Eve let out an annoyed huff as the booth window slid open.
"So you're ready to fight, you say let's see what you got." The guard stuck her head out the window, rifle in hand.
The cocking of a gun got Eve's attention as she looked up. A sly grin crossed her face. "It's about time you showed up. I was starting to get a bit lonely. Who do you think's faster, your trigger finger or my wrist?"
The guard was about to answer when a cannonball flew overhead grabbing her attention for a moment. Eve let out an exasperated sigh. “Always keep your eye on your opponent.” Eve flicked her wrist, throwing the knife into the guard’s right eye.
She screamed for a moment and then dropped to the floor of the booth dead. A bit of blood splattered on the glass with a few drops getting on Eve’s face. “Next time at least don’t get your blood on me.”
Eve jumped inside the booth through the window, grabbed her knife, cleaned the blood off using the guard’s uniform, and sat down in the guard’s chair. “Well let’s see what we have here to play with.” She looked over everything in front of her attempting to figure out how to control the cameras.
Claire sat at her work station typing away on her keyboard looking for anything and everything related to vaccines and males being able to go to the surface without a suit or temporary shot. So far she was coming up with nothing. If what Alexandria said was true there was no way to know until she was able to examine the body Alexandria had on ice.
She brought up the camera screen just to see what was going on around the facility in time to see the tail end of Veronica walking into the elevator that led up to the city. There was no telling what she did there. That is until the pieces of a wrecked machine gun came flying out down the hallway. Claire let out an exasperated sigh. “What am I going to do with that woman?” Saying the question out loud to herself kept it from repeating inside her head.
Claire clicked off the camera window and was about to get up when she spotted a folder that wasn’t properly labeled. All it had underneath was two dots and a dash in the middle. She settled back into her chair moving the mouse pointer over the folder attempting to click on it. ‘Error message: Password Required.’ appeared on her screen. “What?! How am I not able to open a folder on my own computer?” She clicked the ok button and another window popped up with a space to enter a password.
She leaned back in her chair trying to think what the password could possibly be. All the files and folders on her computer were able to be opened without a password. Claire had no clue what the password could be in this folder. If she called someone in the walled city it would most likely result in her being killed. It didn’t matter who did it but someone would kill her. Either the walled city leaders for help pirates or Alexandria for calling the walled city leaders asking for help. She let out another exasperated sigh looking around her desk for any type of note with a password scribbled on it.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The sun finally set over the horizon as Lyric and the others lowered themselves into the water and rowed to shore in the longboats. Cannon fire still flew above and the night sky was lit up with the small fires coming from the walled city. Lyric rowed with her group a wide smile on her face so ready to give some pain back to the walled city morons. Hopefully the others had not taken all the fun away. She wanted to allow herself the rush of battle.
Only the sound of the paddles hitting the water was heard close to them. Of course the occasional cannonball could be heard but the crew on board the ship was keeping to the rule Lyric gave them about when to fire.
It took them about five minutes or so to get to the shore. Everyone unloaded different pieces of siege equipment onto the shore and carried it to a clearing just out of range of the walled cities' auto turrets. Lyric had found the plans for the siege weapons in an old building a while back when she was alone. It was only now that she had the materials and manpower to build what was on the plans. “Alright everyone let’s get these siege weapons up before they decide to send guards out to deal with us.”
The crew members nodded in agreement as they began setting up the siege equipment. They were only able to bring two since any more would not allow them to bring more fighters. The siege equipment wasn’t going to take long to build so they would soon be able to bring more destruction to the walled city.
Lyric wondered when Eve was going to show up since they had been on the shore for quite some time. She figured Tyra wasn’t going to move since she most likely found the best position to support everyone. It was too dark to go look so that would have to wait for first light unless she showed up before then.
Eve had messed around in the booth for quite some time before noticing the sun had gone down. She was unable to figure anything out and wasn’t really too worried about it since she already knew how to open the gate. The sound of tools banging against something drifted through the booth window. “Oh yeah that must be Lyric and the others. I should go greet them, let's get this gate open and go do that.”
She flipped the gate control switch and jumped out the booth window. The huge gate began to open as Eve made her way to the sound of the tools working away. When she arrived the siege weapons were about halfway done. “Well it seems you brought those weapons for no reason. I have already opened the main gate and taken out the guard.”
Lyric turned to see Eve walking up. She let out a playful giggle running up and giving Eve a big hug. “It is about time you showed up. It doesn’t matter if the gate is open or not, we can still use these for other things.” She gave Eve a wink as Valentina and Isa joined them.
Eve wasn’t the biggest fan of being hugged but with Lyric that wasn’t an option. She patted Lyric on the back a bit. “Alright, it sounds like you have a plan in place. When do you want to storm the city? I know first light was the plan but with everything changing I just want to make sure. No point in getting yelled out for killing before I was supposed to.”
A playful giggle escaped Lyric’s lips. “The plan on that front is still the same. Any news from Alexandria?” She was curious since their captain had a habit of getting into trouble without letting anyone but those right next to her. Everyone else only found out after the fact.
Eve shrugged her shoulders. “If you want that kind of information you would have to talk to Tyra. She is most likely watching Alexandria right now to make sure what you said didn’t happen.” She walked over to one of the siege weapons looking it over with a curious expression on her face.
Lyric rolled her eyes. Of course Eve was correct so maybe she could do that just to ease her mind about the whole thing. “Where is Tyra at the moment so I can ask her?” She turned to Eve for a direction to walk in.
Without turning around Eve pointed to a ridge not far from them with a small amount of trees on the top of it. She was more interested in the siege weapon since she had only seen them in pictures.
Lyric nodded, making her way to the ridge. It didn’t take her long to get there at all and the flapping of wings drew her attention up to see both V and Tyra in the largest tree that was in the area. “Well you did find an awesome spot to keep an eye on everyone and everything. How is Alexandria doing?”
Tyra let out a hearty chuckle peering down the scope. “Right now they are at the elevator leading up to the city after an encounter with some guards. They opened fire on everyone with a heavy machine gun. No one on our side was hurt but the gun and one of the guards were taken out. That new person Alexandria is with has some great ability. Still not sure what it is yet.” She paused looking down at Lyric who was just standing there staring up at her. “Sorry for the long answer. In short she is fine and dealing with guards.”
Lyric blew air out making raspberry noises with her lips. “Alright I will leave you to it and go prepare to storm the city. Are we going to run into a ton of guards?” Lyric wanted to fight alongside Alexandria but it seemed the larger the group became the less she was able to do that.
“I haven’t seen a large build up of guards in the city. Either they are trying to figure out what to do or all the guards were inside the facility which means they are dead. Of course that can’t be true since I have seen some just not all gathered in one place.” Tyra let out another hearty chuckle moving her rifle around the city to see if anything had changed. “It still seems like the guards are not concerned with gathering in force to defend or attack at the moment.”
Lyric thought it was strange but at least it would make it easier to take the city. Of course there was always the possibility it was a trap. “Well I guess we will figure out what is going on when we storm the city.”
Tyra nodded in agreement as Lyric walked away going back to the others.
Claire had tried so many different combinations but still wasn’t able to get into the folder. She needed to figure out how to crack this code. Claire fixed her glasses, cracked her knuckles and started to type furiously giving the password box a workout. Hopefully she could figure it out before something else happened. Whatever was in this file could change everything for the future of this world.