Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS
The inspection of the servers had taken longer than Triezal had expected, because the firewalls meant that he would need to inspect each of the sites personally. It had been several days worth of work, and finally he had arrived at the last site, hoping to finish the job up before he could move on to his next task.
Each of the three sites had been very similar to one another, though the one underneath the rubble of the old headquarters had been more difficult to access. Other than a number of somewhat unusual system access requests by the Leader, Triezal had found nothing out of the ordinary with the systems. He had initially been suspicious that the requests might have been from Janottka masquerading as the man, but he had confirmed with the Leader himself, and they were legitimate, though the elderly Korlove had been vague about the purpose, simply claiming that he had been testing the system.
As far as he was aware, in all the years that Triezal had been present on the station, the Leader had never made such a test. It was not unique to this site, either. The other two had also noted down similar requests in their records.
There was a reasonable explanation, of course. The presence of two potential enemy Shades was a sufficiently worthy reason to tighten the organization’s virtual security. Despite this plausible explanation, a nagging suspicion had continued to grow in Triezal, one he could not ignore for much longer. After he finished clearing the sites, he intended to meet with Deuvar and discuss the matter.
What if the location the Shade was hiding was right beneath their noses? Within the very abode of their own Leader?
The idea was terrifying. If that were the case, what would their next course of action need to be? To save Kadeki? Would that even be possible for them? He was running out of time to think about the matter, as within a mere half hour he would be done with the last of this task.
While he waited for the scan to conclude, Triezal’s mind wandered, but his train of thought immediately dissipated as alarms suddenly blared, drawing Triezal’s attention. He frowned, glancing around to see if any of the workers nearby knew what it represented. Was there some sort of fire, or issue with the machine? Triezal paused the inspection, needing to know what was going on.
“What’s happening?” he asked, turning to a trembling technician.
The Jobu shuddered, but slowly regained his senses.
“That’s- that’s the alarm for an attack. It’s never happened before outside of drills. We’re being invaded, Magister. I- I have to go to my station.” He slightly shook again, before running off to his presumed role.
Intruders… that would have to be the Hadal, right? He thought. In an effort to better understand the situation, Triezal quickly drew a series of symbols, shifting the slate’s screen to show the feed of cameras near the factory’s entrance. A large group of martial artists had forced their way in, and had already killed more than one of the factory workers. He also spotted what appeared to be explosive charges being planted. Triezal cursed as he recognized some of the Seiyal. Two of the attackers were spirit refiners of the Hadal Clan. He was astounded, and not only by Juen Hadal’s rapid recovery from a brain injury.
“How did they know?” he muttered. He, and the others, for that matter, had believed that the locations of the titans had not been leaked. After a moment of logical analysis, however, Triezal realized what must have happened. Perhaps the Seiyal had attacked not because they knew what was lurking inside of the factory, but because they did not know. They might have thought this was a factory servicing the enforcers. Otherwise, they would have sent more than a mere two spirit refiners.
Triezal cursed. If he was right, this was a real problem. The factory was not as large as the headquarters had been, and it would not take them long to find the entrance to the titan’s hangar if they continued to search. The only solution he could think of would be to force them back, but Triezal was well aware of the limits of his ability. For a time, he was able to restrain a spirit refiner, but that was not something easy, and to restrain two would be an impossibility. Moreover, his equipment had yet to finish being repaired, so for the moment all he had on him was his boots and his pistols.
While he attempted to find a solution for the problem at hand, the personnel around him continued to fulfill their part of the procedures. Said procedures for such an event, he knew, was for the titan to be prepped and manned, to await the orders to either send it out or shut it down, once the precipitating conflict had ended.
Triezal glanced back at the slate, checking the current situation above. The Seiyal were now exchanging fire with the guards, and the first of the three enforcers defending the facility was about to arrive in less than a minute. If they wished for the best case scenario, of killing the attackers or forcing a retreat, their window of opportunity would soon vanish.
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Despite his initial hesitation, Triezal sprinted towards the stairs, making his way up to assist in the fight. While he had no illusions he could stall or kill them on his own, Triezal felt that he could certainly assist a force of enforcers in doing so.
He flung himself up the stairwell, clattering his way up the metal steps in a rush, hoping desperately that his presence might influence the situation. Aside from his survival instinct dragging him upwards, Triezal also hoped that he would have the chance to shoot that Juen bastard. He had not forgiven him for the outcome of their last fight.
Emerging from the concealed entrance behind the guard station, Triezal arrived after the first enforcer, running straight into a chaotic firestorm of conflict.
The factory was normally dark, illuminated only by the red hot metal within the crucibles and the glow of flickering miasma. Now, however, it was lit further by both the bright arcs of the weapons fire, as well as the heavily increased density of miasma in the area, emerging from both the enforcer and the martial artists. This was the front line of battle, a place Triezal usually avoided due to his instinct for self preservation.
On the front lines, anyone could die, no matter how skilled or powerful they were. What mattered most was luck, and Triezal hated relying on chance. He preferred situations under his control.
Having reached the field of battle, Triezal immediately analyzed the positions of the forces. The Seiyal had set up nearer to the entrance, using the heavy industrial crucibles and printers as cover against the weapons fire. Most of the martial artists were trapped here for the moment, unable to handle the combined fire of an enforcer and two squads of soldiers, at least not in a space so enclosed. However, Triezal noticed gunfire emerging from that side of the room as well, which told him that they had hired mercenaries to bolster their numbers.
That was something to handle later, however. Their numbers were smaller than his own forces, and would be eliminated given time. The larger issue was the two spirit refiners who were trying to reach the enforcer.
Triezal moved carefully, bringing himself closer to the action, looking for a convenient and well-defended place to set up. Rather than the martial artists, what he had to fear the most in a pitched battle like this one was the fields of fire of his own allies. He generally preferred to fight solo for this reason, as his agility was hampered by such a situation. Ultimately, he decided to take cover and fire from behind it like any other gunman in a firefight.
Carefully setting himself up beside a rack of oversized metal ingots, Triezal inspected Juen and Keitel, looking for shots to line up. He could fire blindly, but given the possibility they had yet to notice his presence, Triezal felt it would be best to take a perfect shot.
Keitel was acting as expected of his profile, attempting to rapidly take down the largest threat, but doing so slowly enough that his partner, Juen, would have most of the gunfire directed at him. He kept glancing over to see Juen’s position, ducking and weaving behind cover to avoid the waves of bullets as he steadily approached the enforcer’s location.
Juen was acting just as careful, but for him, this seemed out of character. The man who had acted like a mobile wrecking ball at the forward base was now this fearful of a single enforcer? He ducked and weaved through cover at high speed, occasionally smashing through a machine to make it closer to the enforcer, but he seemed overly wary of something, moving slowly and not even touching his limits. Triezal found something off about the matter. There were also slight delays to the man’s reactions to incoming bullets and projectiles flung by the enforcer, as if his senses had been dulled.
Triezal frowned, attempting to analyze the reason for the change. Had Juen not fully recovered from Triezal’s murder attempt? Given his survival, it was clear that the Redwater Sect must have treated his wound, but perhaps they had not bothered to finish the job. But if that was the case, why had the clan decided to send him for a task of this nature?
Regardless of the cause, Triezal could not help but spot an opportunity. He slid one of his pistols from the holster, carefully positioning the barrel to point directly in front of the spirit refiner’s path.
While most needed to use two hands to keep a weapon stable, the enhancements that had been embedded into Triezal’s Merris physiology from birth allowed him to hold his arm perfectly steady, and for his eye to understand the exact direction it was pointing even without looking. He rapidly fired a volley of three shots, each one perfectly on course to collide with Juen’s skull. Within the cacophony of gunfire already present in the room, there was little chance that he would hear this coming.
The bullets had been perfectly accurate, even accounting for Juen’s movements, but in practice, a spirit refiner was not so easily slain. Juen noticed the bullets when they were about two meters away. What would have been far too short a time for him to react was stretched, the shroud of miasma surrounding him slowing the bullet’s velocity enough for him to shift his head out of their way. While he had avoided an instant death, however, the spirit refiner had not avoided a pair of grazes running down his cheek, nor a small chunk that had been torn from his ear.
Enraged, Juen turned to see where the shot had originated, and the two locked eyes. Juen’s gaze narrowed, and for just a moment, from the corner of his eye, Triezal thought he saw a flash of red smoke emerge from the man’s forehead. Triezal sighed, knowing that with Juen now wary of him, such a convenient opportunity would likely not appear again in this battle. But Triezal would not allow himself to be beholden to chance. His core goal was not to kill, but to restrain.
Without hesitation, he fired again.
Internal Celan Virtual Networks: [The traditional model for a virtual environment is a computer network, a web where each node is a different machine interfacing with one another virtually. This is the model used by the Staiven, and is the nature of the Tseludian internet. Internal Celan networks, however, utilize a different design, the latter consisting of computer terminals merely serving as wireless access point to a single, large computer capable of mass parallel computation. The benefit of this design is that it is a fully closed system, and eliminates the risk of being hacked, so long as the central computer does not actively open itself to external sources.]