I shouted as we bolted from the office.
The calm after the storm—no… I couldn’t use such an everyday expression. That didn’t have enough gravitas. I mean, this place was destroyed. The walls were blown to pieces, the floor was full of holes. The hallway was a rubble exhibition. In some places you could see through the holes all the way to the blue sky. Ah—nice weather today. This was the kind of day you should go for a hike with your boyfriend. And then maybe a trip to a fancy hotel, some quiet time… just the two of us…
“Kei!” Yuri shouted.
Back to reality. There were four black shadows in front of us. The three invaders and Mugi.
Wham!
The floor gave way. My legs buckled under the alternating big and small tremors. Like waves in the ocean, what comes in must go out. I didn’t feel like I was in a building’s hallway at all. The horizon was moving diagonally. Someone grabbed my wrist. The floor was swept away like sand. My legs hung in space.
I found out what happened afterward. Mugi and the Army of Shadows (who came up with that?) engaged in a fierce battle. The swirl of excess energy they gave off smashed through the Headquarters building.
All of the walls facing the main street below collapsed. That is to say, the building was basically split in half. If Yuri hadn’t grabbed me by the arm I would have fallen as well. Many thanks, Yuri. I forgive you for eating my Kirschtorte the other day.
“Kei!” Yuri called after pulling me up to a still-standing area of the hallway. “Let’s go to the roof. There are Shooters up there.”
Shooters! Really? There are Shooters on the roof?
Simply put, a Shooter is a small, one-person, highly maneuverable fighter ship. It was actually designed by a WWWA research facility to fight enemies in powered suits, so it is incredibly fast and turns on a dime. The shooter was an experimental craft and Yuri and I were asked to do some test flights. We got to try a couple out one time. During that trial Yuri and I ended up completely destroying an entire heliport.
The same model Shooter was on the roof. Using it, we could match the speed of the shadows. But the building was half destroyed. We wouldn’t know if the Shooter was in flying condition until we got to the roof.
Yuri and I ran deep into the still-standing half of the headquarters. There was an elevator that went directly to the roof. Of course, there was no guarantee it was still running. Either way it was fine.
Next to the elevator were the stairs. We could climb them to the eighty-fifth floor. We might die along the way, naturally.
Our prayers were answered when we discovered the elevator was somehow still operational. This elevator was designed for emergency use. In case of fire or earthquake all the other elevators shut down, but this one was set to run in the most extreme conditions possible. And it was still going even after what just occurred…
Yuri and I jumped into the elevator. No shadows followed. It seemed the intruders and Mugi were engaged in quite a fight. For some reason, I had a really bad premonition about the outcome, but I did what I could to squash any negative thoughts in my mind.
We arrived on the roof and went to the heliport.
Wow! This was really something. The heliport had been split in half. The aircraft hangar was right near the edge of the split. The edge was crumbling a bit, but the hangar itself looked all right.
Yuri went to open the hangar door. But it was no use. It wouldn’t budge. The entire archway must have bent, jamming the door closed. Yuri cut the door open using her ray gun.
There were three Shooters inside. Since they were still experimental prototypes, their respective fuselages were painted in different but equally eye-catching colors. One was scarlet red, another was yellow, and the third flyer was painted lime green. But they weren’t just painted with one color each. Each had a garish two-tone striped pattern. Great advertising for a paint store!
Thinking about it for eighteen seconds, I chose the scarlet flyer. Yuri slipped into the yellow Shooter. The cockpit was pretty cramped. I’m 171 centimeters tall and weigh 54 kilos. My measurements are 91-55-91. Yuri is 168 centimeters tall and she weighs 51 kilograms with body measurements of 88-54-90. In the Shooter you lie on your stomach using an air cushion for body support, but this was a little rough. My chest and rear were squished in and my legs were too long, so it hurt my knees. My waist was too thick. The test pilots must have been some rail-thin little squirts with long torsos and stumpy legs.
After checking the fuel gauge, I lifted off. No problem. I had about thirty minutes worth of fuel. Yuri followed behind me.
The Shooter looks a lot like a shark without a tailfin. The wings don’t look like wings. The waist area is curved, and that curve gives great lift and power to the vertical propulsion. The range of motion is possible through the high level verniers located all over the fuselage. If you can take the G-forces, it’s possible to do a one hundred eighty degree turn at Mach 5. Its weapons are two compact blasters. Little in size, but not in power. A smaller-sized building could be reduced to rubble in one shot. When we were testing the Shooter, we didn’t know about the blasters, and that’s why after one shot the heliport was wiped off the planet’s surface.
We danced in the blue sky.
At a high speed and a low trajectory we began our search for Mugi and the three shadows.
It wasn’t hard to track them. We really didn’t need to look very hard. There was a trail of fire and smoke that led us to them. And all the buildings in their path had been destroyed. The streets had been smashed and air cars, buses, and trucks were in all states of disarray. Most vehicles were on fire. Here and there were some half-standing buildings still burning, but hardly enough worth mentioning. The city was noisy with sirens and emergency alarms as well as the chatter of curious onlookers. Now and then the sound of an explosion filled the atmosphere.
I responded with a pointed curse. The bad premonition I felt earlier had come true. If you can predict only one thing, you want it to be that innocent civilians will not be hurt or suffer damage.
Lyonesse is the home planet of the WWWA. There are three main continents and the WWWA has major institutions established on all of them. On the main continent of Aradia is the city of Danp Yu, where the Headquarters are located (and which were getting torn up before our eyes) and is a bustling metropolis where important goings-on happen day and night.
The WWWA (or Worlds Welfare Work Association) is not a private corporation. It’s also not a foundation. It is a public utility to the over three thousand planet-states spread throughout the galaxy that are recognized as official members of United Galactica. Accordingly, on the WWWA planet of Lyonesse, there wasn’t a single so-called non-government civilian. They are all employees of United Galactica. Every individual, from the manager of a drugstore to the kid at the register at a hamburger shop either came from one of the United planet-states, or was hired and registered for a specific job on Lyonesse.
However, that’s what made this situation even more volatile. We’re Crime TCs, and are also employees of United Galactica; we appear to some as combatants. The majority of people living in this city were civilians. None of them could be happy about the danger we were putting them in. We needed to capture the shadows as fast as possible and gain control of the military force they were using.
“There they are!”
I heard Yuri’s voice over the communicator as I saw her ship fly over my canopy and then descend. She was thirty degrees to my right. Not to be left behind, I hit the accelerator lever.
I blasted to Mach 2.
Suddenly the skyscraper in front of me began to break apart. It looked a lot like the chief’s desk when it went to pieces. The floors just above the center of the building were splitting into small chunks and coming apart. At that spot the building broke into two.
That’s it!
The battle must be happening on the other side of this building. I could see the triangle formation of the evil shadows.
And then they looked directly at me.