mess, it was flattened. She would lose the foot, I was sure. “Stay here.” I saw her winching from the pain of it.
She handed her MGS to Mirsa, “You’ll need this, it has the fortress’ maze plan.” It was said through clenched teeth as Saltris fought the pain. The Gloosa warrior strapped it onto her wrist.
We headed down the hallway. Honest to god, the building was built like a castle. The windows were all cathedral type stained glass. The stone walls had elaborate tapestries that depicted the wizard’s perceived battles. At the one that showed the destruction of Gloosa, Mirsa walked over and slit it with her big knife.
“Don’t.” Walter exclaimed. “He probably has sensors everywhere. I’m confusing him as much as I can, don’t add to it!”
“Come on,” I carefully took off my suit keeping my heavy gloves on. The acid was still eating away at my suit slowly. I noticed through the small window openings near the ceiling that the rain had stopped. We’d already raised our helmet shields so we could see much better. We took our grenades and rifles. “Lead the way, Mirsa.”
We followed her to a set of stairs. We climbed them two at a time, coming up on another landing that led to the second floor hallway. It was here that the battle sounds could be heard; shouting and shooting. I tried to call my troops but the helmet cell wasn’t working inside the fortress. I had to trust they were following the plan.
Shrieks were filtering into our helmets. “That sounds like children,” Walter cried.
“Yes, he surrounds himself with children to protect himself,” Mirsa told him. “He thinks of them as collateral damage and counts on our humanitarian sense not to shoot.”
It brought my computer geek up short. He started to head towards the noise of the battle. I grabbed him. I saw the horror on his face. He hadn’t been told children would be in the equation. Higher ups didn’t think he could handle it.
“Think of the millions of children he’s killed and will kill,” Mirsa told him.
“Where is he?” I turned to my tech expert. “Snap out of it, our team is counting on you.”
He was crying but he looked down at his tabloid. “He’s actually in his third floor lab, his hologram is on the second floor fighting our guys.”
I knew that was how the wizard had fooled previous assault teams. They didn’t know they were fighting a shadow and after Alderon killed them all, he Jumped out escaping to another far off sector, castle and all. One of the last team’s commanders had enough sense to report the hologram just before he died.
We went up the next stairs, Mirsa looking at the MGS. “Third door,” she quietly said.
We literally tiptoed down the hallway. A light green glow was emitting from the room. We turned into the lab. Lights were flashing on all the walls as huge computer terminals took up most of the space. I had no idea what the printouts on the screens meant. In the middle of the room was a small bearded man. I kid you not that he was dressed in a bright blue robe with a tall pointed hat on his head. He was laughing as he was battling with a holographic screen showing my troops on the floor below. “Ah, so you learned to kill children,” he was saying to the screen. He thought of this like a computer simulator game.
“Stop,” I yelled at him as I ran towards him. I could see he was scoring some hits to my team.
He looked startled and then turned his attention to us, settling on Walt. “Ah, so you brought a wizard with you. Time to say good-bye. Well done, I must say.”
“Stop him, Wally, stop him,” I shouted over to my tech guy.
“I can’t,” Walter said, as he frantically fiddled with his computer.
Mirsa, however, could. With her rifle blaring she ran toward the wizard. He put his arm out, touching buttons on his wristband. A force beam hit her, spinning her around. She had a surprise for the murderer, however. As she was falling - her other hand held a machete. It cut his wrist right off. His control panel made a clinking sound as it hit the ground.
The look on the villain’s face was one of total shock. He looked down at his hand as if he was wondering what had happened to it. Blood was flowing freely all over his fancy outfit. “Bitch,” he yelled at her, “I’m glad I’ve made your race extinct.”
The whole castle was rumbling, he was going to Jump out probably to a far out sector of the galaxy.
Mirsa rushed over picking him up and rushed over to one of the castle’s balconies. He screamed and fought but he was no match for the fierce Gloosa warrior.
I ran after her. “They want him alive,” I yelled, but if she heard me it didn’t matter. She threw him off right into the claws of one of the scorpion machines. The operator not realizing it was his boss caught him and cut the wizard in half.
“That’s for Gloosa!” she shouted down as he fell.
“Shit,” I cursed. What was command going to say? Imagine my astonishment as my high tech guru came over and threw the wizard’s wristband off the balcony. The tiny spiders rushed over, eating the arm and crushing the wrist control. “What in hell’s name did you do that for?” I grabbed his shirt, shaking him. The Federation could have used that.”
“That’s the problem, Sir,” he told me
My cell worked now. I called into headquarters. “We successfully got him. Unfortunately,” I told my commander, “he committed suicide, Sir, before we could stop him.”
Both Mirsa and my computer guy smiled.
“You know, Wally, you destroyed one of the highest tech machines ever built,” I told him.
“It’s Walter, Sir.”
Underwater Troubles
“How many charges have you left to place?” echoed faintly in Liri’s ear.
Damn, how many times Liri had asked tech support to fix her diving suit’s communication hookup? The sound seemed to bounce off her clear diving hood and then resonate twice in her ear. Sometimes the sound system completely shut off. She had complained to Command several times.
“I have three protons left to place, Sir. How are Henri and Mel doing?” The Lieutenant hoped her commander heard her answer.
Bucker did because he answered her question, “Lieutenant Lapointe has ten left to go and Lieutenant Zinis is already done. Don’t hurry though; we need to correctly blow this dome. The aquatic engineers won’t even be here for a couple of hours. The demolition crew just got here.”
“Yes, Sir, copy.” This time the sound came over perfectly. She swam over to her subaquatic jet. Grabbing onto the handle, she straddled the saddle and gunned it. Her next charge was going near the top of the roof of the dome. The glow of the small research city’s lights below helped the Navy Seal’s eyesight to see clearly where the next charge was to be placed.
Liri got off, swimming over and attaching herself to the outside with a power suction cup. The hand-held instruments pointed her to the exact spot. All together there would be close to fifty proton explosions. The proton energy was enough to shatter the city’s clear dome cover and demolish everything underneath.
She took a moment to look down into what was once a bustling top-notched research facility. Not for the first time, Liri wondered what had happened? Now it was totally devoid of human life, the population having been evacuated. Pretty soon it would be no more as the deep ocean currents scattered the debris into the nearby bottomless abyss with the help of the aquatic excavators.
Here on planet Cassie, the landmass had all been used up. The researchers would have to rebuild any replacement facility in the ocean somewhere else. Being a navy seal, she had spent time down below in the facility’s test area. Her last time there she tested a new breathing apparatus for Deep Ocean diving. Seen from above, the village looked smaller. The gray research buildings, the modern good-sized townhouse dormitories, the shops used by the close knit scientific community, even the luscious parks with their recreation fields seemed little from up on top. Of course, the dome’s thick glass slightly unfocused everything below it.
Liri next had to set a charge near the bottom. Heading downwards, the diving suit gave her
all the vital information for diving conditions. On the face part of her bubble appeared the water temperature 8C, the depth 101m, the prevailing ocean currents and any large sea life that may be swimming toward her. Other than the small schools of brightly colored fish, right now, all was quiet. The demolition crew, with their enormous aquatic bulldozers, was silently waiting. Besides Henri Lapointe and Mel Zinis, Liri was all by herself. Their sub headquarters was over a mile away, clear of any repercussions of the blast.
Turning around, she surveyed the surrounding area. With the glow of the facility, the immediate landscape was visible. The dome had been built on what they called Ligin’s offshore shelf. It was a stable part of Cassie’s biggest Ocean that lay off their Asie Continent. The nearest underwater village was over a hundred miles away.
When she was done setting her last charge, she rode over to Henri Lapointe. “Can I help you?” she affectionately touched his arm. They had been romantically involved now for several months. They had to keep it quiet as upper command would definitely disapprove and would transfer one of them.
“No Cheri,” he drawled. Henri was from the glamorous far off planet Terria. Although he spoke Federation Common Speech, his accent was quite prevalent. He spoke with slow melodic words that endeared him even more to Liri. Falling for someone who preferred museums, art, detective novels and classical music surprised her since she was