After the air convoy took off and rose into the sky, the 8 Cygnus’ and 4 Haliea’s had formed up into a solid formation that were further reinforced by several types of newly produced aerial drones. Over all the flight south were relatively peaceful given Matthew iced everything that looked even mildly suspicious and just so happened to be in their flight path
[Notice to all personal, arrival at Uliat bunker in 120 seconds, please return to your assigned seats at once]
Having entered the protective bobble of Uliat’s defenses, Matthew left the virtual world and opened his eyes as Cygnus-0004 touched down on the landing strip
“Good morning Matthew”
As Matthew opened his eyes he was immediately faced to face with Alina, she had evidently taken a seat on his lap at some point in what would be considered a very intimate. That is, if one party wasn’t almost completely ignorant and disinterested in such physical matters and the other wasn’t inhabiting an almost completely androgynous android body
“Good morning, Alina, shall we head out and take a tour of the city?”
Alina was a little disappointed in Matthew’s lack of reaction, however she knew him well enough by now that she didn’t expect to fluster him at her every attempt, even though she loved seeing her normally Stoic lover squirm a little
“Sure”
Alina got off Matthew that rose to his feet and stretched his body for a few moments, he was more than a little stiff after a 16-hour flight, but it didn’t impede him too much, standing by the ramp Ripper showed a smile and spoke
“I’ll go get the details from Doc then, enjoy yourselves~”
Then she quickly disappeared down the ramp, Matthew and Alina too disembarked and found a very different Uliat than the one that Matthew had left behind to rescue Alina. Skyscrapers over 10 stories high shot up around the city, while the style still carried the culture of Uliat, the city had been almost completely modernized since Doc had enabled her biological engineering to ensure compliance.
With this, there had been little reasons to hide in the shadows and no reasons to not scale up all parts of their industry and armed forces by incorporating their very, very loyal citizens
“I’ve never seen buildings like this before, did your home look like this too, Matthew?”
Matthew shrugged before he explained as the two walked off the runway and past the numerous large hangers and logistics terminals
“Well, not quite the buildings were taller and covered in all sorts of advertisements, oh and there were way more traffic, both of people but also of logistics androids that buzzed around everywhere”
The people of Uliat and visitors flooded the streets of the city, the crowd looked a little surreal with people wearing beast leather pants and patchwork fabric clothes walking by people wearing traditional desert gap made from synthetic fibers with bright colors
‘I am surprised there haven’t been a bigger cultural backlash… Well there might have been, but Doc clear got it locked down’
The two continued looking around the city for a bit before a stripped down military car pulled up besides them, Ripper that sat in the front seat looked over towards Matthew and briefly said
“Get in”
Alina was about to complain when Matthew opened the backseat door for her and looked at her silently, that’s when Alina noticed Matthew’s demeanor had changed completely, he had clearly picked up something from Ripper’s tone, the two sat in the back seat and Ripper quickly drove off, after a few moments Matthew asked
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“How bad is it?”
Ripper answered after a few moments
“Apocalyptic, potentially worse”
Matthew nodded, even though Alina was a little worried about what Doc had discovered she knew that this wasn’t the palace to discuss it so she kept quiet, after a few minutes of driving Ripper pulled into a large elevator that closed its doors and quickly descended into the bunker complex and after a few minutes the 3 had arrived in a large mostly empty underground hanger with half circle of sofa’s around a table in the middle.
Seeing Doc didn’t have time to greet them Matthew took a seat with Alina siting herself down next to him, Ripper sat down in the sofa across from them, after sitting the 3 waited for Doc that sat with her eyes staring into empty space above the table, she was hooked up to a heavy bandwidth neural uplink though a connector in the back of her skull. After a few minutes of silence, Alina asked Matthew over the local net
[What is miss Anastasia doing?]
‘Well she’s using quite the heavy neural uplink… It must be really serious if she’s willing to go to such lengths’
[Is it dangerous?]
‘No, not at all… However, it is very mentally taxing… These types of implants are mostly used for heavy mental rehabilitation or complete retraining of augmented military personnel, it's usually used after heavy bionic installation, but I am guessing she’s using it for a heavy data glyph download’
Alina nodded her head, given her body ran on Trerubic empire software she was quite familiar with data glyphs even though her opinion of having a large amount of data forcefully imprinted in her mind though her artificial body wasn’t especially high she didn’t argue with how convenient it was. Even though she preferred having Matthew explaining things to her, she didn’t want to ask him about each and every small thing
“Ugh…”
Doc let out a moan of displeasure as her eyes abruptly shut, and she reached up to the neural uplink and pulled it out of her skull, after massaging her eyelids and temples for a few moments she opened her eyes again and looked towards Matthew and then Alina who she showed a smile
“It’s nice to finally meet you face to face, Alina, but I am afraid we don’t have time for idle chatter right now”
Alina nodded and kept silent, then Doc looked over at Matthew as she waved her hand which brought up a holographic display of Uliat and its surrounds on a map which quickly zoomed out as Doc spoke
“I don’t know how much you remember of the general terrain and geological locations around Uliat Major, but do you remember what I told you of the Western fringes of our territory?”
Matthew dug though his memory for a few moments before he answered
“You called it The endless desert wasteland, right?”
Doc nodded as the holographic map zoomed out even more before shifting West, a few moments later the outer regions of the desert wasteland were displayed, Matthew narrowed his eyes as he stared at the map that clearly included all of their available intelligence and the glaring issue of the large void of any available data in the center of the desert wasteland. He also didn’t like how the entire wasteland were perfectly circular
“The entire desert wasteland is around 4000 kilometers across indicated from live drone surveillance, while the area of our zero information availability inside it, what I’ve named the area of denial, is around 1600 kilometers across… The reason the entire area is perfectly circular is that it is most likely caused by an outward expansion from a singe point”
As Doc finished speaking, a single blue dot appeared in the middle of the circle, at this pause Matthew asked
“Why do you call it an outward expansion? Is the area getting bigger?”
Doc nodded and continued explaining
“I will get to that in a moment… While working on our collective magic problem the hyper-computing cores indicated The endless desert wasteland as an amplifying factor and possible anchor point of the remains of The Mighty Endurance from where Wicka enforces the planetary quarantine, this would warrant an expedition on its own… But that’s not the worst part...”
As Doc fell silent, she waved her hand again which changed the holographic display, a half circle appeared about a third of the way into the center that lacked data
“This was the edge of the entire desert 158 years ago, indicated from a boarder aerial survey we ordered”
Then the holographic display changed again, and another half circle appeared around two thirds into the desert, while the line appeared a third into the area with zero data, this one was around a third into the now blank area”
“This line is from an automated aerial survey conducted 31 years ago, the map data was marked down as error since the local network lost connection to the high endurance drone before the survey was completed… At the time I chalked it up to the general weirdness of this planet, but now I understand that it was due to the drone flying into the area of denial of was destroyed”
Matthew thought for a few moments after Doc fell silent before he asked
“Is it some sort of jamming or high energy surveillance denial tech?”
“No, I am afraid it is worse… See for yourself”
Doc shock her head and the holographic display changed again to somewhat low resolution0 footage of a high endurance drone recorded from a large distance flying above a landscape that was nothing except yellow desert dunes as far as one could see. The drone continued flying for a few moments before its right wing suddenly disappeared, and it was sent tumbling down towards the desert dunes, however on the way down even more slices of it disappeared before the final chunk hit something invisible was instantly crushed into itself for a moment, being reduced to a tiny ball of metal and plastic before it was sucked into empty air and disappeared
“That’s the reason I’ve called it the area of denial, it is covered in almost completely invisible constantly shifting zones of anomalies”
Matthew felt a headache come on and let out a sigh before he asked
“And how fast did you say the desert wasteland is expanding?”
“I can’t say for sure, however the increase is on an increasing acceleration, currently the hyper-computing cores forecast show the entire planet will be nothing but desert in around 20 years and assuming the area of denial will continue the planet will be entirely consumed by the spacial anomaly hellscape in around 24 years”