A blast of concentrated red energy and matter exploded out from the cannon and towards the metal door. The transport rocketed backwards, its recoil dampeners unable to halt the laws of physics altogether. Ahead, the blast connected with the metal door and punched an enormous hole through before dissipating on the ramp ahead, its energy spent.
The hole was large but not large enough for the transport. Vas didn't care. He pressed forward on the wheel, willing the vehicle up to speed. It had done enough. It could push through the weakened metal now, surely.
Outside the hissing grew softer as the beams struggled to stay on target with the movement of the transport. The guards were screaming something. Vas paid them no mind, pressing the wheel forward as far as it would go. He needed force to get through the gate. This thing certainly had the mass he needed, but did it have the acceleration?
The transport hit the metal door with a bang, easily parting the rest of the heated metal and gliding up the ramp, barely a scratch on its front.
Vas roared in triumph, skidding the transport left to follow the road. Ahead of him, a few guards on the floors above fired at the mobile machine, but they couldn't keep the heat concentrated enough to punch through. Vas veered right this time and through a much smaller gate. Like a bear in a paper cage, the transport shredded through the exterior defenses and let itself, and Vas, onto the streets of Tella proper.
He was free. Now he just needed to get off the planet. There was only one man who would do that for him, and Vas knew where to find him.
---------
A Railgun round fired from one of Creighton's men dinged the side of his transport as Vas drifted through Tella's streets. A few moments later, a Beamer fired by a 19 carved a line on the transport's left side. To his right a building exploded into a nova of plasma before collapsing, debris falling on his roof but sliding off without so much as a dent.
Vas pushed the transport forward through it all, past pockets of fighting here, there, and everywhere. Tella was at war.
He heard garbled communication from Tella security over the transport's comm as he clumsily maneuvered through the planet's narrow streets. Creighton was almost certainly dead, killed in an explosion that had gone off simultaneously to the attack. Since then, three of his advisors claimed the title of successor, splitting the Order's leadership. The men and women were scrambling, given simultaneous orders to attack and to retreat, to shoot without prejudice or mind civilian casualties.
The 19's, on the other hand, were organized. They had seized the mansion and were using it as a base of operations. The Order's men were being pushed out and away from the city's center by Vik's team of fighters. The 19s were less equipped than the Order's men, but Mar had planned this five years out- every detail optimized and refined to the letter. In the moment, it all seemed like it was going to work, his whole plan playing out as he predicted... except for one detail- the Peacekeeper.
Vas listened intently for any news of Talian, or his role in this. He'd as yet heard nothing mentioning him or anything that could be him. He was out there, though, that much was certain.
Vas' route took him around the edge of the center, behind most of the ongoing combat, down streets he knew well. It took him past a store, long-abandoned, where he once asked a kind man for food. There was an emblem, faded by now, on its door- a hand reaching towards a shining jewel. It was a reminder. Vas kept driving.
The streets opened a little and Vas could get a clean look to his right. He saw fire and smoke, beams of light and bursts of sound. Above it all, he saw Creighton's glass mansion, just the Governor's mansion now, he supposed. The rotund, blond man was dead now, a small pleasure in all this misery.
It could be Mar's mansion soon. The small, mousy haired man with his hungry eyes and fiery words, sitting in Creighton's chair once he'd made his deal with the Order.
It was an evil building, Vas knew, no matter who was there. He wanted no part of it, or the fight for who would live there. It wouldn't change where everyone else lived.
As his hate filled eyes glared at the mansion, something peculiar began to happen to it. The glass began to ripple and... bend?
He blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. Each time checking to see if he'd seen it wrong. He hadn't. The mansion was moving, changing.
First, a piece of the roof flew upwards, stopping and spinning some twenty meters above the mansion. Then, another piece joined. Then another. Then the roof fell off altogether, collapsing upwards towards a point somewhere in the air.
Slack-jawed, Vas watched glass rip from the windows, curtains tear from their drapes, tables and chairs lift from the floor. Talian was finally making his move.
Ahead of him, the fighting stopped, the smoke, light, and noise fading to nothing, blown out like a candle by one enormous groan. One by one, piece by piece, floor by floor, the mansion ripped upward. There were people in there, screams drowned out by that enormous groaning as the foundations themselves ripped from the ground. It all fell inward and around one point in the air above the building, circling and circling, orbiting ever towards the center.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
Vas knew somewhere a man was raising a black hand and pointing to the sky.
The crunching began next, as the materials compressed in on themselves, towards where Talian willed them. It was like the mining rig, but at a scale a hundred times larger. The power, the sheer,incredible power of it all forced Vas to stop, to stare. The city joined him. There was no fighting, no skirmishes. The chair they'd been fighting over was gone, consumed by an amorphous blob in the sky.
It was spherical now, rather like a small moon. And, like a moon, it was rough and uneven. Instead of craters though, it had the remnants of columns and tables, statues, and fountains.
The crunching had stopped, the force pushing it inward reduced, but it didn't fall. What was the mansion started to rise, slowly but surely, until it began to block Tella's artificial sun. Gradually, the horrible moon covered the warm, artificial yellow, casting a red shadow over the city, a rather poignant symbol, a monument to divinity. Talian did have a certain poetic sensibility.
The city was suddenly quiet, the busy streets more smoke than fire. Talian had ended it in an instant, five years of planning, of build-up, washed away with a casual display of real power. The mice had turned to finally fend off the cat only to discover the exterminator.
Like he'd just been dashed with cold water, Vas broke from the reverie that held the city captive and pushed the wheel forward. He really needed to get off Tella.
His transport was one of the few things still moving in the domed city. He maneuvered around spectators standing still in the streets and alleys, staring in awe at what the Peacekeeper had done.
There was a part of Vas tempted to join them, to stop the car. He'd seen a glimpse of god, the curtain of divinity opened just a tad, and he suddenly wanted to fall to his knees, like the rest. The mining rig was something. This was... something else. But there had always been something different about Vas, an ability to keep going, and he did, even now.
He needed to get to Karney's clearing, to Sri, or he would die here.
The clearing, a leveled warehouse, was where most smugglers entered in and out of Tella. It was a flat area on the edge of the city and away from most prying eyes, both obvious advantages, but it had another. It was under the only Skygate in all of Tella not controlled by center command. In times of unrest, like now, the whole dome was put under lockdown, all the Skygates in or out closed. Karney's Gate was different. Its connection to central was broken or severed, controlled by a local hub, rather than the central one.
For obvious reasons, this was invaluable. It wasn't always used, or even often used. Most smugglers preferred to use other gates by simply bribing their way in. The rates were cheaper and they didn't want to draw too much attention to the clearing. In special cases though- a smuggler was in trouble, or they were bringing something they really didn't want the Government to know about- the clearing was an enormous resource. If there was a city-wide lock down and a Peacekeeper on Tella, it was a certifiable lifeline, Vas' only lifeline.
He pushed the wheel further, bursting past long abandoned warehouses and willing the bulky transport to speeds he wasn't sure it could handle. When Tella was at war he'd needed this thing, but now he wished for the simplicity and speed of a Tri-Wheel. He needed to get there fast. He and Sri had cut a deal. Every scrap Vas had saved in exchange for a ship off Tella in case things went South. Things had gone South a long time ago, but Sri was a friend, and honorable despite his other flaws, he would stay. He'd said he would. Every other smuggler would have left the airfield, but Sri would be there.
Vas turned to his right and caught a glimpse of that horrible moon, casting night on the city below and a horrible question into his mind.
In the same situation, would he stay?
Sri would assume him captured, locked up in the tower. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't be wrong.
It hit Vas then. He knew exactly what he would do in Sri's position. He would take his ship, his crew, and go. He would have gone a long time ago. Sri would do the same thing.
He reached the alleyway that led to the flat clearing, the only one around for miles. He leapt from the transport, knowing full-well the first reaction any smuggler would have to it. Before he ran, he remembered to turn around and grab the satchel from the passenger's seat. There was something to that book, the something he'd always wanted before he left Tella. Now he just needed to leave.
Suddenly aware how much everything hurt, he ran, as fast as he could. In a half-minute he burst from the alley and into the open clearing. He turned left, towards where he knew Sri's ship would be.
It was gone. Sri had done the same thing Vas would've.
He fell to his knees, defeated. His ticket expired. He'd been too slow. They'd hunt for him now, once the government was placed back in power,and they would find him. That was the thing about a domed city. There were only so many places to hide.
As he thought up potential solutions, his eyes accidentally found one- a miracle. There was another ship on the far side of the airfield- some absolute lunatic, moronic, wonderful Captain hadn't left yet.
He watched the ship for a second, genuinely stunned it was there. A mid-sized smuggler's vessel, with a crew of perhaps seventy to eighty. Squinting, he saw some movement on the outside of the ship.
He saw men and women, dragging containers up and into the cargo hold. There were barely any left. With a start, he realized. The last ship off Tella was about to leave.
Vas started running.