287 Desperate Ambush, Pt Azrael and Claire ducked into the admin booth through the open doorway from one side, which took the two guards inside completely by surprise. The guards reached for their sidearms, but were too slow to react.

Claire stepped forward decisively and fired her SMG first.

Rapid waves of ultrasonic energy pulsed at the two guards, and completely bombarded their minds. Signals between neurons were completely frozen as they were struck over and over again by Claire’s SMG.

The rapid-fire ultrasonic waves bombarded them relentlessly, and caused their minds to spiral further and further into a delirious haze.

Azrael followed up with a couple of quick stun pistol shots that struck them both squarely in their chests.

Electricity arced out from the point of impact, sank through their armor, and down into their bodies. Both guards fell to the ground and twitched uncontrollably as electricity coursed through them.

Azrael crept up and remained out of sight as her drone arms extended out and over her shoulders. Then, with quick and precise jabs, injected each of them with a potent sedative. The drugs coursed through their bodies rapidly, which eased their spasms and made their bodies go completely limp.

More importantly, it kept the both of them knocked out for hours in a deep and hazy sleep.

While she took care of the guards, Claire shut the door behind them and sealed it. Then she crept over to the terminal, angled its screen down slightly so she could see it from below, and went through its menus carefully.

.....

“No lockdown controls here,” she said after a while. “System says all controls are in Operations in the substructure way below us.”

“Nothing ever comes easy, does it?” Azrael replied. “Is there a hatch down, though? If the admin could go up from here, maybe we could go down.”

Claire tapped through a few more menus before she nodded. Instead of replying, she simply opened up the hatches that led down to the admin booth below them. They both peered down and indeed saw a small access tunnel with a ladder set alongside.

It was a long way down. 30 meters, to be exact.

“That’s so much climbing,” said Claire. “It’ll take us forever to get to the bottom... And imagine how long it’ll take to climb back up. I mean, that’s a dozen floors between us and the bottom.”

Raijin’s two cottonball drones hovered into view, and chirped at them. One of them quickly picked up a datapad using its antigrav field, flew a figure eight around Azrael and Claire, then promptly put the datapad back down.

The two nodded in understanding. Then grinned when they realized they would be able to fly like Raijin did.

The drones quickly picked up the two women, then went down the access hatch. They flew down with a moderate speed, which filled the two with thrill and delight. Although their trip was only about five seconds long, it still felt incredibly fast to them.

Definitely much better than climbing down. Both gained a massive appreciation for why Raijin flew or hovered almost everywhere they went now.

Flying was freeing.

Once they got to the floor below, they found an administrator at his terminal, along with a couple of his personal guards off to the side. Before any of them could react, Claire shot another ultrasonic wave from her SMG and completely stunned the two guards.

At the same time, Azrael zapped the administrator with her stun gun. He too was frozen from electricity, and fell to the ground and twitched violently. The two guards joined him on the floor after the drones shot them with their own charged blasts.

Like the floor they came from, Azrael treated the three SSS employees and knocked them out completely while Claire closed the door and sealed the booth.

Afterwards, they shut the hatch behind them just in case, and then opened up the hatches to the floor below.

“Ready for the next floor?” asked Azrael.

She raised her pistol up with a steadier hand as Claire nodded in agreement. Then with the help of Raijin’s drones, the two flew down to the floor below and continued their mission.

~

Streams of bullets chased after the Ravens as they sped northwards down the wide highway. They peppered the highway itself, along with the buildings all around. Some even struck the many hoppers and vehicles that swerved and stopped at the side of the roads, and tore them open violently.

Those inside them were reduced to little more than chunks of meat and streaks of blood.

The Ravens themselves wove left and right and evaded as much fire as they possibly could, but the Peacekeepers’ attacks were practically relentless. It escalated further once they started firing rockets from their shoulder-mounted pods.

They joined the bullets and utterly blanketed the area around the Ravens, and pummeled the titacrete with explosive force. Some hammered the buildings all around and blew massive holes in the walls. Some tore apart the hoppers that weren’t shredded by their gunfire. And some struck the many walkways and sideways around the buildings, and blasted apart the people standing outside.

Entire crowds of people were blown apart by the devastating explosions, which caused utter panic to unfold in the streets. People ran away from the blasts in every direction as they screamed for their lives.

historical

But their blood painted the ground nonetheless.

Freya was immediately angered by the Peacekeepers’ absolute carelessness, and complete lack of respect for human life. Whether it was due to That Idiot’s influence or an absurd adherence to some law didn’t matter.

What mattered was that they allowed their supposed principles to override their personal morality. And that caused massive amounts of unnecessary pain.

They were all a complete waste.

“How many goddamned bullets do they even have?!” Xylo yelled out. “We need to do something about them, before they accidentally kill us!”

“We can weave through the blocks,” Lucifer began. But ze was immediately cut short by Freya.

“No,” she said adamantly. “Absolutely not. We’re not putting more people in the line of fire.”

“Are you kidding? Those people are part of the problem! They’re the ones who physically take from others! You don’t think they deserve to get theirs, too?”

“They might be culpable, but they’re not responsible. There’s a difference, and they don’t deserve to die because of someone else’s greed.”

Lucifer tsk’d loudly, then sighed.

“There should be an energy-based block somewhere north of us,” ze said. “Noticed it as we flew in earlier. Should be low-pop and heavy on signal distortion. We oughta take the fight there – would be massive in our favor.”

Raijin immediately performed a wide scan ahead of them, then noted the flow of power within their district. They all flowed from a single block a few thousand meters away from them.

“Lucifer is correct,” she said. “There is a massive power source west-northwest of us, two blocks over.”

Lucifer immediately got into a pensive state. Hir eyes zipped left and right as ze imagined their optimal next few steps.

“It’s perfect,” said Freya. “Raijin, can you send an emergency comms to that block? Get everyone to leave, asap?”

“Hai.”

“I’ve an idea as well,” Lucifer added. “It’ll help us get off this damned planet, and it won’t kill anyone on top of it. Well, any civilians, anyway. Should make you happy.”

Freya simply nodded in response.

“Tell us,” she said, to which Lucifer gave hir rough plan.

The Ravens immediately turned down a smaller highway westwards at top speed. They leaned into the turn steeply – Kali even reached down with her fingers and let them scrape against the titacrete.

Sparks flew from the contact.

Xylo and Freya were both going so fast that their turns went wide. They went so far out that their bottom thrusters very nearly scraped up against the building at the corner.

~

The emergency alert at the Photonic Tether Facility 495-Eta squelched suddenly, which sent a wave of panic through the few thousand who were gathered outside, around the block itself.

“All citizens within one block of the Photonic Tether is hereby ordered to evacuate immediately,” the emergency intelligence announced. “This is not a drill. Repeat: all citizens within one block of the Photonic Tether is hereby ordered to evacuate immediately. Failure to comply will result in death and a docking of 40 hours worth of wages.”

Some believed it might have been a joke or a prank – it seemed completely ludicrous to them. But most completely panicked. The threat of death has always been humanity’s most powerful motivator. A loss of wealth came a close second.

Regardless, everyone ran as far away from the block as they could, especially since it kept repeating over and over. It certainly didn’t help that the sounds of gunfire and explosions got closer and closer.

They ran to every available hopper and vehicle, and got the hell away from there as fast as they possibly could.

In panicked droves.

The block itself had dozens and dozens of huge dish arrays all along multiple rows inside it. The dishes themselves were flat and completely square. Each one had millions of photonic absorption cells in a mesmerizing pattern across the surface.

Every dish was exactly the same, at 150 meters by 150 meters. They were attached to a 50 meter high tower via an articulating neck at the top, which adjusted which angle the dishes faced.

And because they filled up every square centimeter, their shadows almost completely enveloped the titacrete below. Beams of light poured through the thin gaps between, like rays through the trees.

The forest was surrounded on all sides by a 50 meter high wall that dampened any excess energies that slipped in between the dishes. There were also large entrances through those walls into the block, which made it look as though it was some kind of futuristic forest grove, hidden from humankind.

And above the block was a sight to behold. A golden ray of pure photonic energy beamed down from a satellite far above.

Unlike Helios’ dyson sphere, the SSS corporate system’s dyson sphere was vastly different. Instead of a tri-ringed mega city that wirelessly transmitted energy to the solar system, this was a gigantic array of mirrors that surrounded the system’s star.

They reflected the vast majority of the system’s starlight straight into photonic array satellites in orbit around every planet in the system itself. There, in those satellites, the raw energies of the star were transformed into refined photonic energy, then beamed down to the surface below.

A network of satellites was responsible for beaming down on multiple photon tethers scattered along the surface. From there, they were stored in any number of power banks, then distributed straight to their connected districts.

By the time the Ravens arrived, only a few stragglers were still on their way out.

Not that they stopped to watch – they immediately sped straight into the dish forest, and were quickly bombarded with the excess energies of the beam. Their sensors started to go haywire and passive scans became unresponsive.

Worse, their comms became garbled and warped.

Though they could somewhat see each other’s signals, everything outside disappeared from their sensors outright. There was so much energy all around them that their sensors were all but overwhelmed.

“Stay in the shadows,” said Raijin. “The dishes will keep us shielded from the pure photonic energy coming from the relay satellites in orbit. If we expose ourselves, it will easily overwhelm our systems. I do not know exactly what will happen if our bodies are directly exposed to it. I expect it would not be pleasant.”

“And thus why we’re fighting here,” Lucifer followed up, a grin on hir face. “It’s time to fry us up some Peacekeepers.”