I was back in my body.
“…my own children. Continue keeping Boralura in your minds. The Absolute God is your father. The Absolute God is the king of the new world…”
The speech was still going. As his robe whipped in the wind, the master fervently delivered his words.
Yuri and I both sighed and looked at each other. My body felt listless. My brain felt like it had shut down.
“We are done for,” said Yuri softly. “It’s never been like this before. We can’t even tell what our visions mean.”
She was right. We had experienced a lot of firsts. The enormous power we’d run into two times was a first. Also, going into a trance just from the tips of our fingers touching was a first. I mean, if we could be sent into and out of trances so easily, we would never be able to return to a normal life. Oh yeah, and we had never seen a vision so clearly before. Usually it would have finished about the time we saw the Angel of Chakra. No, even that was more concrete than what we usually see. But, well… that’s fine, though. The real issue was that even though the vision was really clear, we still didn’t know what it meant. This alone was exhausting.
My head felt like it was full of nothing but air. My vision grew hazy. My ears were ringing.
Of all these, the ringing was the worst. It sounded like a metallic “Kee—” but really loud. And it wasn’t letting up. Even worse, just when I thought it might be fading away, the volume actually went up.
I shook my head as hard as I could. Yuri seemed to be in the same condition as her long black hair was all disheveled as she rotated her head around her neck over and over. I glanced and noticed that the Children of God were also suffering from the same problem. Some were grabbing their ears, and others were shaking their heads. What the hell was going on? Huh? Was it not my ears ringing? Could it be a real metallic noise we all heard?
The master was gazing up to the sky. He appeared to be in a state of confusion. His eyes darted around.
I looked up at the sky, too. I couldn’t move my head back very far, so I couldn’t see the entire sky.
The sky was still filled with same gray-white fog. It had lowered in the sky, and the wind was whipping it around in a giant circle.
The metallic sound got more and more intense.
But I couldn’t see anything. All I could see was the fog. It was the same for the master, as his gaze jumped back and forth searching over the sky.
The sound grew into an explosive roar. Thinking about it, it reminded me a little of a Shooter, the highly maneuverable one-person flyer. Only louder. No way… There’s no way.
“Ah!”
Without thinking a yelp had escaped my lips.
The fog broke.
Right above us.
At first I thought the clouds were making black shadows, but it turned out to be a silver ship, and it was flying at a ferocious speed.
A highly maneuverable flyer. It wasn’t a Shooter, but there was no mistaking. It had smallish wings and a flat fuselage. It was moving too fast for me to see its exact type or any markings.
One by one more fighters appeared. The fog was pockmarked with holes. On top of that three saucer-shaped ships fell through the clouds. Could these be command ships, or maybe some kind of transport? They were much bigger and moved slower than the fighters, and flew in a spiral pattern as they dropped altitude.
All of the flyers flew outside my range of vision. The sonic boom rattled my eardrums. I heard the roar continue from my rear right to my rear left. I could hear them banking.
Eight fighters flew over my head.
They then quickly turned around to come back. They were at a lower altitude than before.
They pounded the ground with laser cannon fire.
Not where the believers were assembled, but in an area of the plaza where no person stood exploded in fire.
This was a warning shot.
The shockwave thundered through the ground.
A blast of air hit us diagonally from above.
I wouldn’t call it painful.
More like almost deadly.
This repeated a total of eight times.
It was getting hard to breathe.
Next the saucers came lower. Above the plaza two of the saucers had round openings in their centers open up.
Then olive-drab painted tanks descended from the saucers. They had giant beam cannons attached to them. But after getting a better look, I could see these weren’t tanks. I realized that after they fired their repulsor rockets to slow their decent. Along with the cannon, they had what looked like arms and legs. In what would be their hands each carried a larger version of a hand blaster.
Their purpose became clear.
These were mobile infantry. Not any mobile infantry, but the unrivalled high-speed mecha-powered suit variety of mobile infantry.
But.
This couldn’t be true. I couldn’t believe what I saw. What were these infantrymen doing on the remote mining planet of Chakra? If the GNP of a planet-state is low, they can’t support a standing army. In those cases they are dependent on the United Space Force. From the two saucers four mobile infantrymen descended, two per ship with open doors. Don’t disparage the fact there were only four of them. Four of these were the same as the strength of tens of thousands of normal military troops.
“Rakshasa!” screamed the master, turning from the sky to face his followers. “Go! Take care of those pagans!”
With a collective whoosh the fifty armored warriors to the rear of the believers stood up. Ooh! The armored warriors are called Rakshasa. If they were the same as the “shadows” that attacked Danp Yu then the mecha-power suits should have pretty even odds, even if it was fifty versus four.
The armored warriors dispersed. They broke into groups of about ten, and split into five different directions. They had obviously practiced this before. These miners must have a lot of free time. The unarmed believers made a run for the Mine # 16 tunnel. It was pretty far, but inside was safer than outside here once the battle started.
“Take care of these lawless maggots that anger our god,” the master yelled angrily. “Realize the incredible power of Boralura!” cursed the master as he glared at the saucers in the sky.
One of the fighters set his sights on the master, and dove down at a very high speed.
The master noticed the flyer.
Eventually he poked a finger out from under his robe.
The fighter was right in front of him. From what I could see he had taken him.
The master pointed his finger at the fighter.
From the laser cannon blasted a bright beam.
The tip of the master’s finger grew bright.
The match-up lasted less than a second.
The flyer went up in flames. The master stood there, calmly. The beam from the cannon which could tear a spaceship to pieces in seconds never reached him.
The flyer was blown back about three hundred meters into the sky as it exploded into a ball of flame.
This was no fight.
The master was too powerful.
However, in the meantime one of the mobile infantrymen had snuck up behind the master.
The hunched over mecha-infantry had quickly moved into the plaza at the moment the fighter and the master clashed.
The fact that I noticed it at all was complete luck.
The explosion had spread debris in all directions. Worried that he might get hit by a piece, I had looked over in Jeff’s direction.
That’s when I saw the mobile infantryman right next to him. His beam cannon was lined up with the master. His hand blaster was also extended and ready. The master, who had plucked the fighter out of the sky as if he had been shooting fish in a barrel, had left the defense of the temple to the armored guard, and they hadn’t noticed the mobile infantry penetration (at least that’s how it looked from here).
The mobile mecha-infantryman’s finger squeezed down on the large scale blaster trigger.
The master spun around.
Just as the hand blaster fired.
The master lit up.
This time it wasn’t just his finger. It was his whole body. It was the same as we’d seen in the tunnel. His robe and mask began to shine.
The mobile infantry was blown back. Thrown to the sky, the mecha-armor was broken into a thousand pieces through the white light. The hand blaster and laser beam barrel rolled away from their target. The pulverized armor glowed a crimson red as it melted, and with no mercy or forgiveness the operator’s body burned in the sky. The bright blast hit Jeff.
The frozen-stiff Jeff was thrown back from the energy blast of the bright light.
Suddenly he was wrapped up in this conflict. He couldn’t move on his own, so he couldn’t get away. He was still paralyzed.
He was slammed onto the stone plaza.
“Jeff!”
My heart was almost beating out of my chest.
“Worthless insect!” shouted the master.
His robes fluttered as he glided across the stone plaza.
He was headed straight for the entrance of the temple.
“I will crush you under my heel!” he spat out with fury and glided off.