The team of lakionians and Veronika sprinted around the back area of the main entrance. They were headed for a semi-concealed adit, which was cut into a natural wall of a cliff face.
“How's the arm?” Veronika gestured to Krawl’s superficial cut to his arm. The shrapnel had made a light puncture to the white armor’s soft and flexible metal material.
“Why do you care?” He answered back and sighed when he said it as just a flesh wound.
“Here.” Parlo offhandedly hand him the healing vial Veronika had given him earlier.
She raised a curious eyebrow in his direction, but Parlo ignored her and kept his attention to their way forward.
Krawl, on the other hand, innocently applied the healing solution over the wound and nodded gratefully it instantly healed.
The walk continued down a narrow tunnel, which was a nice and peaceful pace for the change.
“This is the staff entrance, which takes us into the main office and laboratory areas,” Krawl said as he stepped up to the adit’s metal door and passed his hand over it to activate the digital lock.
It opened to reveal a makeshift corridor where the walls were refortified glass panels to display the natural shimmering Bing Verslas mineral of white with vibrant blue streaks. A mild frost caked the edges, but the air was more arid and room temperature. The floor was a gangplank of galvanized steel that wobbled on their walk. The way forward to the next entrance was a straight and short run. Krawl opened the end door to reveal the laboratory test room, which Veronika had recently passed through.
“Damn,” he sadly said over one of the corpses, which was now releasing a foul stink into the air. “We can’t leave them like this.”
“We need to focus on the living and make sure they’re safe. Then we can return to the dead to give them a proper send off.” Veronika gently said, with genuine compassion, for the loss he was seeing as a hard reality.
“You sound like a veteran. For a clone, I’m surprised.” Krawl faced her.
“I guess, you can say, I hold a lot of experiences in me. We need to stop whatever the enemy is up to, or these bodies you see won’t be the only ones.” She soberly stated, which had him nodding.
They continued to press forward through another side door of sterile white metal, which they hadn’t passed through before. Down a narrow corridor to enter into a small antechamber, where they saw Kami racing toward them.
“Kami. Where are the others?” Veronika knelt down to attend to the wolf who was panting like crazy.
“Quickly. No time. Scot is holding up the best he can. They’re in trouble.” Kami grunted and turned around to lead them out of the antechamber via a connected mine tunnel.
The tunnel opened into a vast and wide Bing Verslas chamber, where the rock walls shimmered and glowed with the mineral’s bright white and blue texture. A coolness came from the rock, but the air felt dry of moisture even slightly picking up in heat. Veronika saw Scot taking cover behind a metal crate barricade, tossing some of the loose Bing Verslas chunks with his telekinesis power. The rocks were striking some of the Concordat Special Forces ensign fodder to make them explode. Other enemy soldiers were returning fire.
Behind Scot, she saw a glass wall and chamber where civilians were imprisoned. Before the chamber’s entrance toward the far side of the barricade, Simone was twirling her tungsten staff in the air and lacing it with whatever was left of her summoning magic to call upon a flock of seagulls. They flew out of an orb portal that was swirling as a gigantic black void midair, and instantly fired flaming feathers at the enemy. The feathers exploded upon surface contact of their armor.
Her team entered the gunfight as they made their way to Scot and his cover, but they had to evade roll and duck from the skinny laser beams the enemy were shooting at them.
“What’s the situation?” She panted when she reached him.
“We eliminated a wave of troopers, but their numbers are replenished as new ensign-ranked infiltrators enter from the corridor behind their barricade.” He called up a hexagon digital view of the chamber before them, which was a sonic radar, revealing the electron emissions their guns were giving off. At least they could pinpoint their positions.
Veronika saw a swell of moving red dots near the far-side entrance on the other side of the chamber. Twenty of them and more. Even though Simone’s seagulls were eliminating numbers, reinforcements were streaming into the chamber to keep the red-dot cluster strong. She glanced to her back and counted the civilian numbers to be five scientists and workers trapped behind the window wall. They were safe for the time being. But if they didn’t eradicate the immediate threat soon, they would all die.
Simone joined them and was relieved to see Creed. “Thank Askara, you live. These fodder soldiers are armed in synthetic polymer titanium body armor. Very effective against metal shell bullets. Almost impenetrable. Fortunately, telekinesis and magic can weaken their barriers and armor resistance. ”
[The polymer material is laced with kinetic barrier electrons, making them resistant to physical impacts. Any hard shell bullets will bounce off their bodies]
“So magic explosions or plasma rounds is the only way? “
[Correct. Unfortunately, the lakionian’s weapons lack the appropriate rounds to make the impact]
System ran a scan over Scot’s rifle via Veronika’s eyes, and noted that his weapon was empty of plasma rounds.
“We’re sitting in a raw Bing Verslas chamber. There must be someway to tap into the natural energy here.”
“Of course! Their armor is using kinetic barrier technology. And we all know that kinetic energy is just moveable energy of molecules reacting to gravitational impacts to form an output. Kinetic units in armor manipulate material and external energy in union to form a shield barrier. On holsters and sheaths, a unit uses the energy as a magnetic force to hold something in place.” Simone factually rushed through her knowledge on kinetic technology.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“So, if we want to punch a hole through kinetic barriers?” Veronika prompted and groaned when she saw Simone was very pleased at hearing her question.
“Fight force with force! Ice can freeze the flow: effective for shatter. Fire makes things burn to a weakness. Strike a rock: spark a flame. Toss flame on combustible fuel: make something go boom. Kinetic energy responds to the fire’s arrangement of molecules to produce a similar response. Since both energy sources are moveable and carry the same base level of molecules, they compete for space. Fire will win, given the proper level of force applied to it,” Simone proudly said of her conclusion, whilst she was panting for breath and looking weaker by the minute.
“Right. Hence, the seagulls throwing out flaming dagger-like-feathers.”
“Precisely! But that won’t hold up in the long run when more troopers enter to make the kinetic energy swell in mass.” The woman looked about to collapse on the ground.
“Back to Bing Verslas.” Veronika said, feeling time was of an essence. And narrowly dodging plasma beams that were striking the metal crates and almost making melting holes in them, was increasing the threat level.
“Bing Verslas has its own form of kinetic energy base levels. What makes this mineral compound fascinating, is their molecular structure is mutable and non bias to external forces. Almost like an organic DNA, where external factors has the ability to alter genome sequences.”
Veronika groaned, feeling her impatience surfacing to a boiling point. “Simone. How do we use the rock to kill the enemy?”
“Well, Bing Verslas technically isn’t a rock: more of a solidified energy source. But, yes, I see what you’re after.” She explained, that by applying the same level of force on the rock would activate the energy in the mineral and cause a reaction.
“We weren’t sure if it would also explode the entire chamber. No point making things go boom if we’re going to be part of the impact area. Then Scot proved that charged Bing Verslas explodes on contact with a kinetic charged material. And in low volumes, chunks, could eliminate numbers.”
“Right, tossing active chunks at them makes them explode.” Veronika recapped.
“Like a grenade.”
She understood why Scot had resorted to telekinesis and rock throwing.
Simone looked worried when she added, “But this is gradually impacting the chamber. The mineral walls are being activated.”
The seagulls faded from view and the portal shrunk to a closed and winked out of sight. Simone’s magic had run its course.
“Then we need to end this quickly,” Veronika said to the men.
“Roger that,” Krawl said as he acknowledged the threat level. “Looks like we have to use our magic, men.”
“I thought you ran out?” Veronika cast a puzzle look their way.
“You maybe. We’re lakionians. We always have reserves.” Jorgen huffed with confidence.
She looked unconvinced, then noticed Brayan holding a small piece of hewn Bing Verslas in his hand, making it glow.
“Normally, we’d have to sleep it off to regenerate our magic after what we did. But this rock boosts our magic energy like a sugar rush.” He flashed her a smug grin.
“Whelp, save your magic. Keep it in reserves.” She waved off the idea and added, “We might need it later. Let’s figure something else out. And I guess we better make it quick because more lackeys are entering the party.”
She noted an increase of numbers to the red dot cluster on her internal map.
[Wait. We can re-shell a bullet with powdered Bing Verslas, then lace the bullet core with your remaining spirit energy like you did last time. You only need a tiny bit to make the bullet effective] System chimed into her mind.
“Do I have time for that?!” Veronika yelped when she had poked out her head from her cover and almost had it blown off with a plasma beam. Giving her every bit of incentive to pull it back to safety.
[If you navigate the bullet to explode into the middle of the cluster, it should create a chain-reaction impact that will affect the cluster]
Veronika didn’t get it, but it sounded like her best option.
“Hey Kami, cover me while I prep something fantastic,” she said to the wolf with a cocky wink.
Kami huffed and complained about weak two-legs. He nodded as he barked to cast ice shards the size of daggers at the enemy soldiers and make them freeze on impact, but were soon able to shake the freeze. Balak had Kami do it again and used the opportunity to make the frozen soldiers shatter with hard shell gunfire. The other men were catching onto this advantage: finishing off the targets Kami froze.
[That’s another way to take them out]
“Nice. Keep freezing the butts off those assholes!” She cheered them on and then went to tinkering on her bullet.
She used the back of her gun to crush off some powder on a nearby rock wall, then unscrewed the head of a bullet to empty the gunpowder: poured the powdered Bing Verslas into it. Once she resealed the bullet, she emptied the ammunition clip and reloaded it with the Bing Verslas bullet. Her heart pounded fiercely when she reloaded and cocked her cannon gun: ran her hand over the chamber and barrel like she had done the last time.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” she whispered as she took a few breaths to calm her heart rate and slip her mind into a focus on the active red dot clusters thirty meters across from her. Some of the dots were beginning to fan out. It had to be now or never.
She bravely rose to stand clear from the cover, raised her gun with one hand and locked onto an optimal target at the cluster’s center. With one pull of the trigger, she fired the bullet at the target. Using her spirit energy to navigate a clean path to it. The bullet struck successfully to make the target explode.
“Hell!” She screamed and dived when the explosion carried across to other enemy soldiers within the cluster to make them explode.
Everyone huddled behind the rapidly melting cover, which Kami was freezing to keep it at bay. The entire chamber lit up with massive explosions.
“Oh shit.” She gulped when the chamber began quaking and almost sweltering to make the air stuffy and hard to breath.
“This is your fault, this time System!” She gasped.
System went offline.
Scot commented that the enemy threat was cleared, but they had to get everyone out of the chamber that was about to collapse in on itself.
Simone stumbled to the single metal door where the prisoners were. Some of them were banging on the glass as they struggled for air.
“Stand back,” Creed said to her as he hastily fired off the door’s, fortunately, simple lock to open it.
“Mother!” Simone fell into her mother’s arms when the prisoners were freed.
“We can take the same way those Concordat soldiers were coming into,” Simone’s mother calmly said.
“The way looks clear.” Scot confirmed, when his digital scan display showed a cleared corridor.
Not taking second guesses for their exit, everyone sprinted as fast as they could up the corridor to enter a wide laboratory. Fortunately, it was empty. It seemed they had faced and defeated all the soldiers in the immediate area. Just as well. The way behind them quaked and crumbled to be closed off.