A Sinner's Eden-Chapter 170 - EVO

'Right. Feels like that was ages ago, back before we had the kids,' I admitted, remembering being shoved into a rustic pressure chamber to see how long I would last. 'They did so many tests on us, forgive me if I forgot one or two.'

We reached our latest target, stopping in front of a guarded door. It was quite obviously intended to hold off people with strength mutations, meaning there was something important behind it. Like the central electric hub we identified on the plans we found earlier.

Luckily, my present was more than big enough. There was no need to waste time busting down the door.

“Hey, ho! Can you hold this for a moment?” I shoved the heavy bomb at the closest guard, practically forcing them to hold it for me. At the same time, I let go of the timed trigger, activating it in the process. Having appeared out of nowhere from the guardsmens' perspective, they didn’t quite know what to do with the heavy ordnance which was handed over to them so freely.

Then we were flash-stepping again, running down the corridor while I was laughing.

'I swear, I could do this all day long. Never gets old!'

'I still think what you are doing isn't funny,' Astra messaged back while the pressure wave of a huge explosion followed us down the corridor. Three seconds were just enough for most people to realise what I shoved into their arms. Disarming the bomb was out of the question.

My ears popped again as we stopped at an intersection between two main corridors.

'We should find a different ammunition depot and top up on explosives,' Astra suggested.

'I would rather go outside the ship and take a look around,' I suggested. 'The corridors are rather empty since the deck tilted. And as you said, my ears feel blocked. We should check how high we are.'

We took one of the stairways, quickly ascending between decks without meeting any resistance.

A locked bulkhead at the top proved to be the only obstacle, but this one hadn’t been designed to withstand a juggernaut’s power. I busted the lock, and a moment later we were standing on the ship’s upper deck. It looked like it was one of the upper observation platforms I had seen earlier from the outside.

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Holding onto the guard rail, I took a look around and realised the idea to check our height hadn’t come early enough. Because the ground was far, far away. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but this gave me an uneasy feeling. Better not to concentrate too much on that.

“Wow!” Astra stepped up next to me, grinning from ear to ear. “I have never been so high up before. It is beautiful.”

The ship had broken through the uppermost cloud layers, and we had a magnificent view of the distant northern coastline and the horizon’s curvature. Tirnanog’s sun was unforgivingly bright, but my attention was drawn nonetheless to what looked like a lattice-web of something like sparkling lines covering the sky. The lattice spread out from the sun and gradually faded out like rays of sunshine. Only that couldn’t be!

It looked… unnatural. As if looking at the sun through a spider’s web.

Was it some kind of orbital construction? Maybe an orbital web of wires could look like this from a distance. If so, it still had to be massive to be seen with the naked eye. And I couldn’t remember seeing anything of this sort with the telescope back at Mount Aerie.

Although I never looked for it. If the telescope wasn’t focused on something stationed in orbit, it might be missed.

I narrowed my eyes and squinted, trying to make sense of the glittering mesh which covered the world in a low orbit. Seeing it at all was not a given, but the distant sun shone just at the right angle to reflect the light off of whatever this was.

“What is that glittering mesh around the sun, Astra?” I pointed. “I thought the colonisation efforts never managed to get anything to space.”

Back on Earth, the night sky was covered with countless satellites. They were easy to spot with the eye if you knew what to look for, but I had never heard of something similar. What could be the purpose of such a structure?

Astra joined me in staring at the strange phenomenon. “I don’t know. Maybe it is just a play of the light? As far as I know, the colonisation efforts never went far enough to consider setting up a space industry. Earth shut down its support long before.”

I harrumphed in disbelief. Light phenomena were occurring between atmospheric layers where hot and cold air met, often observed over water or in deserts. Maybe they could also happen in the sky, though I wasn’t sure of that. Admittedly, I wasn’t an expert on all the different appearances such phenomena could take on, nor had I observed many myself.

The most I personally witnessed was what looked like water or a reflective surface on asphalt when it was a particularly hot summer day back when I was a child. Only for the water to disappear once I came closer to investigate the strange puddle.

From the top of my head, I knew optical distortions, magnifications, and reflections of distant objects were possible, but none of the pictures I had seen online looked anything like this. The phenomenon was too perfectly curved as if this mesh was enclosing the world. The lattice network seemed too regular to be a light phenomenon caused by the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, I had no more time to study whatever this was, because the sound of labouring breathing was ascending the stairway behind us. Someone was having a shitty time at this elevation.

I turned, readying my spetum, but it turned out there was no need for it.

The heavily armoured Zacharias clone, who had been following us, was practically crawling up the stairway. He was on his last leg, making me wonder whether he was truly so committed to hunting us down that he would ignore the ship’s situation, or whether his was a distraction. He was still dragging a stupidly huge warhammer along, but I seriously doubted his ability to lift the thing at this point.

Astra readied the array of javelins she was usually carrying on her back and shot them over the crawling clone’s back the moment the speedster came up the stairway.

The timing was perfect, and the speedster who tried to use his brother’s noisy entrance as a distraction was met with a wall of pointy steel. Due to the narrow corridor, dodging was impossible, resulting in the speedster being nailed to the wall, followed by an electric discharge that shook and cooked his body.

It was an execution, leaving little room for a comeback.

The armoured clone found a sudden surge of power and rushed to his feet.

Despite the miraculous recovery, the clone’s movements were sluggish, allowing me to duck beneath the enclosing arms.

I had shifted my spetum to the side, unwilling to test the blade against full body armour that looked like it could withstand the jaws of a firehorn. At most, I would have damaged my weapon.

As soon as my shoulder hit the clone’s lower chest, I put all the effort I could muster into my legs while pushing him upwards with the shaft of my weapon. The clone’s charge turned into a neat, low trajectory over my head and continued over the guardrail.

He disappeared beyond the ship’s hull as I turned, following him with my eyes. As soon as he was gone, I bent warily over the guardrail, expecting some kind of comeback. But very much unlike a good movie monster, all I found was a body tumbling freely through the air, headed for the ground.

“That was anticlimactic,” I commented. “Looks like they really couldn’t deal with the height. But why were they chasing us to this extreme? They should have abandoned the ship.”

Astra retracted he javelins, allowing her victim to slip to the ground. There was no question that he was dead. Unless someone could survive being spiked through the eye into the brain and then be set on low microwave cooking.

“I have a feeling we will learn soon enough why Zacharias was so committed. Maybe he already wrote off all the resources he invested in this operation, and all the damage he could do in the process was just a bonus to him?” Astra suggested, not sounding too convinced of her theory.

“It sounds plausible, but I still don’t get why he would keep chasing us long after his clones lost the ability to put up a proper fight,” I countered, then returned my attention to the distant horizon. Another mystery of this world to be solved. Hopefully, as soon as we get access to the rumoured facility beneath Thich City.

I shook my head. “Anyway, we should get back. I see no point in wasting more time on this ship. It is out of the fight, and even if the few personnel who remain on board manage to get it back under control, it is doubtful whether it will be able to affect future battles. Unless we find something truly vital, I doubt we can bring it down completely.”

Astra looked around and nodded after a moment. “Let us get back and see whether we can help the others.”

She took my hand and together, we flash stepped off the observation platform.