Meinrad’s eyes were fixed on the hulking figure that had just fallen to his knee, the result of a bullet entering and lodging in his kneecap. A moment later, another bullet had disabled his hand. Out of everyone on the Terran side, there was only one soldier Meinrad knew to shoot so precisely and systematically and with no hint of hesitation.
Vi. She wants Sindri to feel the pain before she aims the trigger one final time at his head.
Meinrad quickly pulled out his communicator and changed his frequency to match Lucia’s. There was still time to save Sindri.
“Charlie, you’re needed at the front side of the power plant. Echo has been downed, you need to recover him and take him back to base.” he said in reference to the mess the Frei Squad was using as a temporary arena of operations.
“Copy.” Lucia said resolutely into the onboard earpiece inside her helmet as she blitzed through half a dozen Anti-Imperial soldiers with a single swipe of the knife. Lucia’s Reserve had a natural but rare imbalance, causing most of it to be concentrated in the lower half of her body. As a result she was awarded with exceptional speed. She seldom needed to use the pistol she was required to carry into battle. She was a long-ranged weapon herself. Even without a knife, she could rush through bodies and leave them as little more than red stains on the ground, but she preferred not to get herself dirty.
Remembering the map she had memorized to a tee; Lucia shifted her trajectory and made her way to the site of her injured comrade.
“Everyone run away from here, now!” she heard a young boy cry as she was less than a second from Sindri. She had to slow down long before she actually reached him, lest she crash into him and take his life as well. Such a mishap would get her court-martialed… she didn’t want to think of what would happen to her or her family if that were to happen.
“That little cunt…” Sindri swore as he winced in pain. Lucia noticed Terran terrorists darting away from her as fast as they could. They heeded the warning Stefan had given them—he sensed the significance of her ability as soon as he Detected her presence and had alerted the others.
That kid is not someone I can take lightly… I need to deal with him fast.
“Are you… just going to stand there or what?” Sindri groaned.
“My bad,” she apologised as she took him in her arms, his annoyance breaking her out of her analytical trance. “Hang on, Klaudia will fix you up.”
--
Stefan raced to reach the gates surrounding the power plant as fast as he could on his feet, his steed already tied at the fence with the other horses. That meant Vigdis and the other bodyguards had already entered the plant.
Long, thick wires ran for hundreds upon hundreds of yards, connecting dozens of metal towers to poles at each of the buildings in the depot premises. They transported invisible energy—apparently called electricity—with the support of what Stefan remembered Vigdis calling transmission towers. The fenced-in area was not only extensive but was a labyrinth of metal and lines. It took him two minutes to find a structure that looked like it could be entered safely. As it turned out, it was the control center where Vigdis, Vi, and Valto had gathered inside.
“Success!” the enthusiastic engineer cried, pulling her hand away from a switch. She fixed her earpiece to send the news back to the command centre where Jay and Anwen had remained. “Depot-011 is now partially functioning.”
“Excellent!” Jay cried through the microphone of the communication device. Vigdis could imagine him giving Anwen a strong high-five at that moment, and her smile became a grin.
“It… won’t turn on the entire facility immediately, correct?” Valto asked.
“No,” she answered. “That could take an hour. This place hasn’t had power in years so I imagine starting up will take a while.”
“Including the IPLs?” Valto asked.
“Yes.” Vigdis nodded.
“I’m… I’m so sorry…” Stefan jogged toward the dashboard where Vigdis sat in front of, Valto and Vi each standing to a side of her with their rifles ready to fire. Their muzzles jerked in the boy’s direction.
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“Hey, hey, it’s me, relax!” Stefan timidly raised his hands. Upon noticing the panting boy’s unmasked face, Valto and Vi swiftly retracted their weapons.
“Goodness sake, Stefan, you can’t just run off like that!” Valto reprimanded. “What on Earth were you thinking facing off against that freak all by yourself?”
“You think I wanted to keep watching our comrades be thrown and torn apart like that?! Was I just going to stand there and let it happen?!” Stefan snapped. It took a moment for him to realise his emotions were out of bounds, so he sighed. “I… didn’t mean to yell like that, sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Vigdis turned her head in Stefan’s direction. “You saved a lot of people. That was really brave of you. But you still went against orders. I’ll try to talk Jay down to giving you a light punishment.”
Stefan frowned and averted his gaze; his mind only concerned about why he was being reprimanded for doing the right thing.
“Stefan,” Vigdis stood up, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Even your mum started off as something of a rebel. I saw it with my own eyes. Remember that.”
Stefan’s frown nearly turned upside down, but his Detection adjured him to a need that had to be met immediately.
“Vigdis!” he wrapped his arms around the woman, bringing her to the ground. Valto and Vi felt it a moment later. That same source of unbelievably fast-moving Reserve was headed straight for the power plant control centre. Valto quickly formed a level 30 barrier to cover all four members of the party. encompassing much of the interior of the building. The double doors into the control centre flung open so hard they narrowly avoided falling off their hinges. But having no foresight of the obstacle created by Valto, the assailant crashed into the powerful construct, putting an end to her caution-fueled blitz. Lucia fell to her hands and knees, but in accordance with her training she immediately went for the pistol and knife in her utility belt.
“The power!” Vigdis cried as she got to her feet, aware of the circumstances. “Cut the power. The Titanian’s speed is useless if they have no sight.”
“I can’t keep this barrier going for long.” Valto moaned as the Reserve he used to create said construct was being rapidly depleted just to keep it intact.
Vi slammed the switch that controlled the currents in the power plant and moments later the interior of the expansive building faded into darkness. Valto’s barrier collapsed, unable to hold it for longer than half a minute. The timing was right. It wasn’t Vi’s eyesight or depth perception that had made her one of the more renowned fighters of the Black Shield, rather, it was her knack for timing.
“Shoot!” Valto cried. “Shoot at the space the soldier landed around. We need to drive them out of the building, rough them up a bit on the way out!”
Stefan pulled his pistol out and Vi readied her rifle. A moment later, three guns were blazing, creating sparks all around the building.
No… no, no, no, shit! Lucia regrettably thought as she scampered away from the gunfire in her direction. What was I thinking? Why did I have to go after that kid so soon?
She fired a few bullets in the direction her opponents were shooting from, but she quickly understood it was pointless. Indeed, entering the building with three of the Black Shield’s five strongest fighters had been a grave mistake.
Such abilities as having extraordinary speed gave rise to pride and egotism. Having been so used to blitzing through bodies on open battlefields under the full light of the sun gave Lucia little room to expect how her assaults would go had the conditions been only a little different.
Bullets whizzed over her head as she tried to stay low to the ground, looking around for where she thought she came in from. Scanning, scanning, looking for a way out… and there it was. One of the windows was open just a crack, letting in just a sliver of light.
This is my only chance.
Staying low to the ground with bent knees, Lucia scurried as fast as the legs of her hybrid body could take her. She wrenched it open and jumped out where the light of solar-powered floodlights—installed by a Solich emperor decades earlier to make for easy identification of the site in the future—flooded her eyes. She searched for gates to exit through, and she nearly missed the fact that dozens of Terran soldiers had already surrounded the perimeter of the plant.
Quietly, she told herself, and stay low. Once I reach those gates up ahead, I can just blitz through the Terrans like before and return to base.
The girl was so muted she couldn’t hear her own footsteps, and the closer she got to the gate, the faster her heartbeat became. She just needed to get back to base, and she was close. It was only a few yards in front of her.
A bang suddenly entered her ears, originating from above her head. She instinctively ducked, fearing that the soldiers in the control center had found her, or that perhaps a soldier outside the perimeter had noticed her. She looked behind her—no one was coming after her. She was confused. What was that sound then if it wasn’t a bullet that had missed its mark? And why hadn’t any other shots followed it?
No shots needed to follow it. It was far too late to realize that a powerline with just a bit of current remaining in it above her became severed, and it made no noise as it hit the ground, sending a fierce dose of electrical current into everything that touched it. Lucia’s body was no exception, her screams notifying Vigdis’s crew that their assailant had been taken out.
Vi climbed down from the window that Lucia had gone through just minutes earlier. She set her rifle down against the wall and gave a thumbs up, confirming that her target had been downed.
“I’ll notify Ivan that we have confirmed one enemy casualty.” Vigdis said, unsure of what to classify the monster that Stefan fought since his body had been removed.
Tapping around on her communicator—one of a few that was recovered from the battle in Shargara—she was disappointed to see no answer coming from the man.
“He’s being held up,” Valto suggested. “Better to call Goran.”
“You’re right.” Vigdis nodded.