CHAPTER SIX: "You can't Hide from me child"
2:30 PM
120 Miles NorthWest of Selene
Onboard TSA B.E.S.T. FORCE Aircraft: DEEP SKY
Altitude: 40,000 ft
As it would turn out, to Fate's mild amusement. The Deep Sky was Roland's biggest, and leanest callback to his home on Earth. The scrapped B-1b Lancer had been taken from the Boneyards located in the Southwestern United States one very foul day when the weather made it impossible for the local forces to notice a large TSAB transport Circle being used to haul it up to a cruiser. Roland still owed Admiral Lindy a good number of large favors for the whole stunt. Back at the base, Roland, Don, Martin, and a swarm of Mechanics in on the little project spent upwards of eight months overhauling and upgrading the aircraft. In fact... The list of work was so extensive that Roland admitted the vehicle was essentially completely replaced, and that the only thing it really had in common with the original, was the shape, the copilot's seat, and a plate on the ceiling inside that had originally been part of the verticle stablizer fin that held the aircraft number. (It had been kept out of respect for the original vehicle.) But it was still an order of magnitude cheaper than trying to design a new craft from scratch and have it built.
All in all, it was a completely new and advanced aerospacecraft compared to the hulk they'd started with. The hull had been pressure sealed and replaced with materials that could withstand the stresses of leaving the atmosphere and vice versa. The engines were replaced with TSAB cruiser heavy thrusters. It even had modifications to use a moderately efficient magic generator for power. The most important overhaul however, was the bomb-bay, or lack there of. The bomb-bay doors had been removed and the hull sealed there. The deck there had been replaced with a command and control suite not too far from what the AWACS were carrying, and the extra space accomidated for hauling people rather than bombs. The back had been cut open and turned into a sealing boarding ramp. Since he couldn't use it as a bomb truck... Roland had turned the craft in the fastest Light Mage Deployment Vehicle in the TSAB. A glorified transport. His decision to name it the Deep Sky stemmed from a CD of a band with the same name, and that he'd even picked the song RIDE as the vehicle's theme song out of the fact that's what he'd be doing on it most of the time.
And when Roland said thirty minutes, he meant it. No sooner were they clear of the runway and the landing gear retracted did the pilot pull the nose back hard and threw the drives right to max. He had essentially thrown the entire aircraft into a long sub-orbital arc, clearing the atmosphere for a few minutes at the top. Reentry was smooth, with the help of TSAB standardized barriers for such trivial issues. In fifteen minutes, they'd cleared well over seven thousand miles and crossed over into the southern hemisphere of Mid-childa. As useful as a JF-704 helicopter was for light deployment, it was just a snail compared to a craft who's orginal intent was, as Roland put it... 'a deep penetraiting high speed killing machine'.
Why the General had such a craft? He'd shrugged off the question. Things could be done with transport circles and cruisers, or point to point via fixed facilities. In the end, it was Nanoha who suspected correctly. It was just plain COOL. And all Generals had their toys. Regius had his Einharijar project, at least until it had been totaled by the numbers and Gias himself killed. It was reasonable that Roland's 'cool toy' would be something both useful, and nostalgic to him. Of course, in retrospect, it didn't help the Archipeligo's transport facility was a pile of rubble.
After leveling off at forty thousand feet, the Deep Sky had participated in a series of shallow S turns, bleeding off speed systematicly until they'd dropped down to the more respectable low mach threshhold. It had only taken twenty minutes for the initial sub-orbital arc, but they were still a few hundred miles out, and the General didn't want a sonic boom from hell causing all kinds of trouble as they approached the populated areas on the Southern Continent.
"I hope you don't mind my tagging along on your mission here," Roland stated in an apologetic tone to Hayate. He was stationed at one of the AWACS styled C&C terminals squashed into a corner of the hull. "This kind of thing is your jurisdiction in terms of experience."
Hayate shook the appraisal away with a smile. "Don't be silly. Having a few extra eyes on a mission's always useful. I would be a fool to refuse an offer to help. Besides, it's not like I could stop you... Sir."
"The chain of command is to ensure the quick and efficient flow of information and instructions," Roland responded with a grimace. "Not to throw one's weight where it doesn't belong. This is your job, not mine. You're in charge."
Of course, he silently admitted, outranking everyone here had its perks when he had to push to get the right action done at the right time.
"Seven Minutes!" the pilot interrupted.
"So... why am I here again?" Crash asked nobody in particular,
"Because I said so," Roland responded automatically.
"Is there any point to it?" Crash asked.
"Because I said so," Roland repeated.
"How about a purpose of some kind?" Crash was getting vexed trying to get the General to justify dragging him along.
"Because I said so, because I wanted it to be, because it is my perogotive, my call, and my will," Roland made it final.
Crash breathed an extra loud sigh of frustration and sat back in his chair, staring deadpan across the small isle at Signum, who in turn sat with an ever present stoic look on her face as if nothing in the world could bother her. Whatever reason Roland had towed him along on their little venture would remain his own, and further probing would simply result in PT, which was not something he'd like to embarass himself with in front of some of the TSAB's best Aces.
Hayate watched the quick exchange with mild amusement as Crash tried without success to probe what the General was up to. Of course, it was plainly obvious from her point of view. Ever since her conversation with him in his office, it was clear as day and he made no attempt to hide it. The General was a true soldier, and wanted some frontline action as much as Nanoha wanted to drag Crash away and train him until it nearly killed him. He wanted to get out and help a little bit, even if he could do next to nothing but provide a sounding board for ideas. He'd been working that Test Facility island assignment so long now that he was probably getting a little stir crazy. Any reason to come out of his hole and strut his stuff. People were so easy to read sometimes. Perhaps it was just because she'd spent so much time as an investigator.
"Okay," she stated, turning to Nanoha, Fate, Vita, and Signum. "Just like we've done hundreds of times before, same routine, but with a twist."
Hayate blinked up a small Holoconsole.
"The Selene Magical Power Facility is a large complex consisting of Eight mana reactor buildings and their cooling towers set up in formation matching a standard Mid-Childan Magic circle. The main generator building is located in the center where the Mana Focal Point is. The entire Facility rests on a location where many of the Ley-Lines on Mid-Childa cross, making it one of the highest output power facilities on the planet. This plant alone supplies power to the entire southern continent as well as the city of Selene itself."
From a birds eye view, the satellite photo of Selene Cental Power did look like an oversized magic circle made of buildings. A scale marker on the display showed the whole thing was a kilometer across.
"HQ thinks this may be the work of a Terrorist Organization known as Sektor 21, who are well known for their violent attacks on magic based power complexes throughout Administrated Space. The only confusing part for them seems to be the use of a wide area AMF field, something they didn't have before. If it IS Sektor 21, they probably utilized the AMF to hide their attack on the power facility. After all, this is the first time they've struck on Mid-childa itself, and this would be the most ambitious attack ever recorded."
After a moment, she closed the window.
"However, they may not have known just how complicated the complex was. The facility is still generating power, it may be redundancies, it may be a trap... so let's be careful down there okay?"
"Five Minutes!"
Roland put his hand up to a headset he was wearing and issued instructions.
"Mav, bring us down to five thousand feet and come in over the lake. Be ready to equalize pressure for air deployment."
"Roger that sir," came the response.
They felt the Deep Sky roll, and the familliar sensation of stomachs trying to escape through their mouths met them as the vehicle went inverted and dropped its nose, falling gracefully into a dive. The arteficial gravity kept everyone from losing their seats, but the dampening was turned down so they experienced a rare and unsual sensation of gravity pulling from two seperate directions. Like an overpowered roller coaster, the aerospace craft dove below the clouds at high speed. After a few seconds, another roll put everything right side up once more as they continued to lose altitude.
"It's not a fighter Mav," Roland advised. "Don't fly it like one."
"Roger sir," the pilot stated. "I'll keep that in mind."
After a few a few more seconds of diving, they felt the gentle tug as the nose came up to a more level position.
"Angels Five," the pilot stated. "Leveling off."
"Okay!" Nanoha stated suddenly. She felt like getting things rolling. "Since we don't know where to start, I think I'll head in with Fate and check out the central generator center first. If they failed to shut the plant down the first time, they may be trying to finish the job, and that would be the place to hit."
Hayate nodded. "Take Signum and Vita with you. There's safety in numbers. I'll hold here and be ready with Rein and Shamal to back you up."
Nanoha and Fate nodded.
"Coming in over Lake Celcia. Three minutes to drop zone."
The deep sky shot over a large lake, most likely caused by glacialization thousands of years ago in the southern hemisphere. It was the perfect location. Asside from the Ley Lines converging as Hayate had stated, the proximity of the Lake provided a virtually unlimited supply of fresh water for both cooling the mana reactors, and for domestic use. It allowed the engineers who designed the power facility to scale the plant quite liberally. The mana reactors were arranged in the formation of a magic circle, and the main generator building was placed in the center, maximizing the amount of mana-to-energy conversion that could be pulled based on the mathematical mana focal-point calculations that Mid-childa knew best, and then boosted a hundred fold by the saturation caused by the Ley Lines. Coupled with the kilometer wide layout, it produced enough energy every day to provide for the total energy needs of the entire TSAB back to its founding day. Or at least, it could at maximum capacity, or so the numbers stated. However, it's actual energy loading was substantially less by many orders of magnitude. Yet, this did not reduce the facility's sensitivity. And as a prime target for terrorists, it was extremely well guarded and considered impossible for mere terrorists to successfully attack.
At least, until the attackers learned a new trick.
"Two minutes!" the Pilot called out. "Coming up on transition envolope."
There was no mistaking the feel of being in an AMF. Even the weakest magic sensitive could describe the sudden chill down the spine, momentary vertigo, and the seeming sense of lethargy that coincides with the weakening of their magical link. It was like having ample energy one moment, and suddenly having it yanked away the next. Normally transitions were slower and less intense, but coming in at just under Mach One made the gradiant feel more like a sudden impact.
When Jail's drones had been using AMF, it required a massive number of them working in concert to produce an envolope of any considerable size. And then the only other large area AMF had been produced by the Cradle. The wide area AMF that they had entered was a new variety.
The field itself was known as the Anti-Magilink Field, and would impare the magical links used by common Mid-childan and Belken magical styles. A strong enough field could even completely disable a mage's ability to use magic at all. However, the properties of the field seemed to reduce the overall strength of the link rather than just cutting it off. So strong mages can remain active, though at reduced performance.
For the Aces, they'd long ago learned how to counter weak AMF, and dealt with it almost without thinking about it. Crash however, had never experienced anything like it, and found the sudden chill and lethargy disturbing. So much so that he shuddered visibly in his seat.
"First time experiencing AMF?" It was Signum, with an almost calculating tone. "You get used to it after a few minutes."
"Felt like I just got the wind knocked out of me without ever being hit," Crash shook the feeling off as best he could, but just couldn't lose it. Roland, with about as much magic potential as a ball of string, continued to stare unflinching at a display.
"Just focus a little and use your will to boost it," Nanoha stated, with an approving nod from Hayate and Fate. "That should get rid of the sensation, though you will be working with less energy than you normally could."
Crash nodded, but he almost felt taunted as he formulated a sarchastic response within the confines of his own mind. 'Easier Said than done... Focus she says... boost it with your will she says. How the smeg do I do that?' He may have incredible combat potential and funky luck, but Crash was still a C rank mage in terms of plain magical skill and power. Most of what he'd demonstated was AI and armor assisted, doing the mental work for him while he operated on his instincts and reflexes.
Despite the Charade, Vita didn't miss a beat and sighed.
"Imagine yourself surrounded by a glowing light, and then make it grow brighter."
Crash blinked...
"Oh."
"Yeah," Vita scoffed. "Oh."
After a few seconds, Crash managed to force the sensaton away.
"Thirty Seconds!" Mav called out.
"Alright!" Roland snapped up. "Opening the rear hatch!"
There was a clunk and a hiss as the cabin did one last pressure equalization before the hydraulic ramp at the back started to lower itself down. It was blended well into the hull of Deep Sky as to not disrupt the natural Aerodynamics of the frame. With a hollow metallic boom, the ramp stopped, letting in the dull roar of the passing air outside as Deep Sky bled off more speed, easing off at a nice three-hundred MPH.
"Anyone need JMPI Ed?" Roland cackled from his console.
Nanoha, Fate, Signum, and Vita looked at the General in a confused manner as they quicky rose and moved over to the ramp.
"Twenty seconds..."
Nanoha grabbed an overhead hand rail and moved to the edge, overlooking the pristene blue sky and sparkling lake.
"Ten.... Nine... Eight..."
"Watch your backs," Hayate advised. Nanoha nodded.
"Six... Five... Four..."
"We will," Nanoha nodded.
"Two... One..."
And Nanoha threw herself away from the hand rail and out the back of Deep Sky, followed immediatly by the other three. Their bodies lingered in the slipstream for only a moment before they broke through the air current and began hurtling towards the ground five thousand feet below as the roar of Deep Sky dropped into the distance to be replaced by the roar of rushing air.
It was a breath-taking sight to behold. Sprawled out below them, a kilometer across, the Selene Magical Power Facility lay waiting. The overhead photos and schematics didn't do the facility justuce. Arranged like an eight pointed magic circle made of buildings and landscaping, it sat on a slight artificial penensula jutting out into Lake Celcia, the Ley Lines crossing over the surface of Mid-Childa coming to a focal point directly in the center. Where there wasn't buildings, there was the green of grass or trees, and the blue of ponds and fountains, keeping in Touch with the Focus of Mid-childa trying to promote their green thumb where in contrast it had failed to take hold in places like Cranagan. It held a beauty of its own from the artful, yet practical application.
From this altitude, it was impossible to see exactly what, if anything, was going on, it seemed peaceful.
[STAND BY READY]
But that was merely an outward appearance, and lingering in freefall wouldn't change that.
"Raising Heart," Nanoha called. "SET UP!"
-BING-
[SET UP]
"Mission START!" Roland snapped, activating a stopwatch, then spun to his console and began typing furiously.
"Opening primary communications channels as well as preparing backup communications channels, ECM, ECCM... all go. Rein, get on the wide band and link us up to MIDSAT DELTA, Shamal, access thermal-optical sensors arrays and begin a systematic grid-by-grid search pattern, check for anamolies such as heat masses and the like."
"What are you doing?"
Roland paused and looked at Hayate, then blinked. The question was an honest curiosity.
"Establishing a Battle Network," he nodded. "You said I could help, so I'm helping."
"Isn't all that a little overkill?" Hayate asked.
"There's no such thing as OVERKILL," Roland stated with a sudden, disturbingly haunted look. "Only, OPEN FIRE, and RELOAD."
And it was gone just as quickly as it came.
"Uh, sir..." Crash managed force his way into the situation. "I don't think we're at war here, there's no need to set up like we're going to fight one."
"Oh, we're at war all right," Roland responded as he typed furiously. "We're at war with ignorance itself. Though we may not be under attack from people trying to kill us, we do battle with the demons of nescience, clashing our wit against a wall of unfamiliarity in a siege against the very pits of oblivion for the prize of information most enlightening. No matter what the situation, knowledge is power. And I LIKE power. The people of southern Mid-childa probably like power too, and want theirs to be on tomarrow as well. So if I can keep that power flowing by going the extra mile, I'll do it."
Crash could only sweatdrop and suppress an uneasy laugh.
"I'll just shutup now..."
After a pause, and a nod from Hayate, Shamal and Rein quickly followed suit, establishing an effective communications and information network running from Deep Sky, out to all the mages, and linked up to MIDSAT D and relayed back to RF6 HQ, and from there, back up to the network and all the way back to McGreggor, where the Maidens slapped everything up on the Master Situation Monitor while they began compiling the data.
"Alright," Roland concluded. "Network's up. Lt. Col. Yagami, it's your command."
Hayate nodded.
As the Deep Sky orbited the area, Nanoha and fate were the first to make a gentle touchdown on the rooftop of the Central Generator Building. There was no sign of activity on the outside, or anywhere on the Grounds as far as she could tell. Vita and Signum spread out to circle the imediate area around the building itself.
"Touchdown on site," Nanoha crackled over the radio. "And not a soul in sight anywhere."
"Are you sure?" Hayate's voice crackled back. "There should be someone... anyone even. That facility employs over five-hundred workers and at least that amount of security mages."
"Could be hiding indoors out of sight," Vita responded. "But I can confirm there was some kind of attack. There's a trashed Type I drone over here."
"There's a breach in the wall on the south side," Signum added. "Looks like explosives of some kind judging from the scortch marks."
"Check inside," Hayate instructed. "But be on your guard."
Nanoha and Fate nodded at each other and lept over the retaining wall on the south side of the building, half-jumping, half-flying to land lightly on the grass near Signum, who stood inspecting a blast hole in the wall large enough to drive a truck through, literally. Vita came down next to them a moment later.
"Nothing else nearby," she concluded.
"Must have been a one-sided fight," Signum nodded, stepping forward. "But there's nobody around."
With a light bound, she lept into the hole and landed in what would have been a hallway. Fate followed behind and fanned out to the left, and then Vita to the right. Nanoha brought up the rear, and after a quick look, they began to move into the undestroyed section of the building.
As they rounded a corner, they began to hear the steady humming of the generator room.
"Generators are still going," Nanoha advised over the radio. "Nothing interesting here."
"Keep searching," Hayate instructed. "Check the Focal Core room, it should be in the middle of the building."
They followed the circular hallway down, and found another hole blasted in the wall, this one with the remains of a type I drone scattered everywhere. Whoever had attacked knew where they seemed to be going. Following a few more blast holes through the building interior and into the center, they found the Focal Core. Vita entered the room first, and suppressed a curse, her reaction quickly earned the company of the other three, who had mixed reactions.
The Core room was, a mess, to put it lightly. Several security mages lay dead almost right at the blast point, obviously killed by the explosion. Many more lay scattered about the room, killed in a variety of manners ranging from what seemed to be burns, to slashes, to being crushed under partially collapsed peices of concrete where the floor from the room above had come down. Many more lay in crumpled heaps as if something had driven a battering ram into them. It looked as if the entire scene had been one dramatic and failed last stand.
"This was a massecre," Signum's eyes narrowed at the carnage. "Who or whatever killed them was so strong they couldn't even put up a fight."
Nanoha suppressed her own shudder as she looked around, her eyes falling upon a mage that seemed to be the local captain... He seemed fine up until you got to his head, but then... oh dear.
"Type One drones couldn't do slaughter like this," Fate stated as she followed Nanoha's gaze. "There are too many bodies here with fatal head contusions and too many of the injuries seem to be blunt trauma rather than slashing or burning weapons typical of a drone's laser or manipulators."
"Combat Cyborgs?" Signum queried.
"There could be more we never accounted for," Vita nodded.
"It's a possibility," Hayate's voice crackled on the radio. "We've been discovering bits and pieces of Jail's widely distributed legacy for years. I wouldn't be surprised if we found another ultimate end product of his work."
"But that wouldn't make sense," Nanoha interrupted.
"What wouldn't?"
"Why would Scagletti, a firm magic user, let any part of his work go to a group who, according to records, hates Magic in general?"
Roland, at his spot watching a video feed of the mess in the core room, quickly tapped a button.
"Run that past me again," he instructed. "Just how deep is this hatred?"
"Sektor 21," Nanoha's voice crackled back. "Is one of the most imfamous organized terrorists organizations on record. They have a fanatical following of people who hate mages, were hurt by mages, or just hate the TSAB in general."
"To date," Hayate continued. "They're one of the largest consumers of black market weapons out there, and they use that to fuel a guerilla war of sorts with the TSAB. As with what we're finding here, their favorite target is mana fueled power facilities since these are such high profile, and high value targets of oppertunity."
"For a terrorist organization," Rein came into the conversation next, the screen blinking past her at high speed. "They're quite well organized, and their logistics are rather amorphous, making it hard even for the investigations department to track them down reliably. Most Sektor-21 agents captured are just fanatic lunatics trying to take their hatred out on anyone with magic abilities. There have been over three hundred documented suicide bomber incidents across dimensional space since the official opening of the record on S-2-1 thirty-three years ago."
"I better read up on this," Roland muttered darkly, blinking up a secondary panel. "For a pesky terrorist organization, they've suddenly gotten ahold of some pretty good toys to be pulling jobs like this."
"That's what bothers me," Nanoha's voice crackled back. "If what we're dealing with is the magic hating Sektor Twenty-One group, what are they doing with stuff that's very heavily leaned on Magical research?"
"Which begs the question," Hayate continued. "Are we really dealing with Sektor Twenty-One? Or someone trying to give the impression of Sektor Twenty-One?"
"The other alternative is hypocracy," Signum crackled in her own thoughts. "Terrorists aren't known for playing by even their own rules if they can use something to their advantage."
"But then, if it IS," Hayate returned the ball. "Why is the power facility still functionally in tact after such a lopsided victory?"
"And ergo," Signum continued. "What kind of nasty toys do they have that we should be worried about? And who's supplying the Toys?"
As Signum said that, Vita looked around again, and noticed one of the dead technicians was leaning up against the core itself, a trail of blood leading all the way across the room as if they'd dragged themselves while bleeding to death. It only took a moment of inspection at a distance to notice there was something in each of his hands. With a quick, almost skip across the room, she quickly moved over to the core and examined the hands. One hand was clutched around a deformed block wrapped in a black material. The other was gripping something that had frayed wires. One of them crossed over into the black block, the other was obviously pulled free.
"I got something," Vita snapped. "Come take a look at this..."
Nanoha bounded over quickly, stepping carefully over a few bodies as she went.
"I think we have a hero," Vita nodded solemnly. Fate and Signum joined Nanoha next to her and looked down at the once techie.
"Let's find out who this one is," Nanoha stated, and carefully reached forward, intending to get an ID card.
"DON'T TOUCH HIM!!!"
Hayate nearly jumped out of her skin as Crash shouted in her ear, having jumped out of his seat in the process.
"Don't touch him, don't touch ANYTHING!" he continued. Roland was staring intently at him from the outburst when he nodded to him. "Sir, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
Roland looked at the image. Looked simple enough, dead mage, disarmed detonator, squashed black wrapper that said 'M112' in yellow lettering just where it could be seen...
"C4," Roland scowled. "Add that to the list of shit they've gotten ahold of. Bastards."
"Yeah," Crash nodded. "But I think something's wrong with the block."
After a few seconds as Roland tried his best to examine the scene, Nanoha's voice crackled back.
"It's empty,"
"Hol-E shit," Roland scowled, seeing it as well. "It is, good eye there young lady. You too Crash."
"I've nearly been blown up by that stuff two-hundred and thirty-seven times," Crash scowled. "I know what it's supposed to look like."
"Indeed," the General paused, searching the image. "But if it's not in the wrap, where is it?"
And his eyes fell on the blood-stained base of the Core itself, and for the first time, he noticed the odd texture that the technician's head was resting against, unnoticed at first compared to the smooth steel thanks to the discoloration. Oh, clever move.
"F-kkin' Booby-trap," he growled. "His head's sitting right in the stuff. The body is probably the trigger, or sitting on the trigger. Move him and you blow yourselves and the entire building to smitherines in a spectacular way."
Hayate examined the image. Roland was right. Some kind of putty-looking material, covered in blood, was behind the technician's head. Just barely noticable, was a thin wire dropping down near his neck, looking almost like hair. If moving him was the trigger, the blast would have breached the Focal Core, and the resulting energy release would create an explosion that would have destroyed the building, most certainly killing any mage reguardless of ability. It seemed almost perfectly made for taking down a high class mage. Make it so only strong mages can really get in, then set a trap that would complete the 'mission' AND kill the mage (or mages) at the same time. The appearant disarmed explosive and detonator was a decoy meant to throw investigating mages off just enough for them to make a mistake of moving the body... and BOOM!
This just got more interesting.
"Seal the stuff," Hayate ordered. "We better search the rest of the facility for more traps. I think this pretty much answers if they're still around."
As she recived an affirmative response, she rose from her seat and moved towards the back ramp.
"Where are you going?" Roland asked.
"I'm heading down there," Hayate responded, transforming in a flash. "We need more eyes on the ground to find the cause of the incident."
"You think it's wise to do that?" Roland crossed his arms, as if asking her to weigh her actions. Hayate smirked.
"We stand a better chance of finding the problem this way," she stated. "It's more logical. I want you to cover us from up here, if you have any suggestions, I'm open to them... Sir.
Roland nodded, spinning around to hit a button on his console.
"In that case, take Crash along with you," he instructed. "That'll make it even so you can pair off, and he's the one who caught the trap just now."
"What?!" Crash snapped, grabbing one of the hand bars and taking a step back. "Oh no way! I'm not going down there!"
Roland's head came around as he looked back. "Don't tell me you're scared of a little creepiness?"
"Scared?" Crash laughed, then turned serious. "I'm not scared!" He looked at the monitor where it projected an image from Raising Heart showing the body of the dead tech as she placed a seal on the C4. "I'm terrified."
"Oh, don't be a wuss," Roland shook his head. "There ain't nothing down there but AMF, Mages, and corpses. You're not going looking a fight, just going down to investigate the situation and find out of there are any more nasty traps."
"With all due respect," Crash shot back. "It's finding one I'm worried about. Or finding out what caused the corpses. Because I don't want to be one of them!"
Hayate crossed her arms behind Crash, waiting for someone to make up their mind. She had an investigation to run... And wanted to know what to plan for sometime today. Roland noticed and tried to apply a little more pressure.
"Utter nonsense," he stated.
"Nonsense?" Crash sputtered. "My gut says otherwise. And I'm sure you remember what exactly happened last time my gut told me something wasn't right."
Roland spun around on his chair and put both his hands on his knees.
"There's no Cyborgs or anything like that down there wanting to swarm you," he stated. "You'll be just fine. Better in fact, than the mages with that power armor in an AMF."
"You don't know what might be down there any more then-URP!!"
Whatever Crash had been planning to say was abrubtly cut off as Hayate, fed up with the argument, decided to take matters into her own hands. Yanking Crash by the collar of his uniform shirt, she hurled him backwards with more magically enhanced strength than her stunted frame would betray to the average passer by. Before Crash really understood what had happened, he found himself uncerimoniously tossed out the back of the Deep Sky into open air, and instantly dropped out of sight.
Roland, Rein, and Shamal stared blankly as Crash, along with his argument, became a moot topic. After a few seconds, the General turned his eyes to Hayate.
"I would never have thought of that one."
"I have kids," Hayate shrugged.
"He is older than you, you know," Roland replied.
"So is Vita," she continued. "Doesn't make a difference to me. Kids will be kids."
And with that she jumped off the ramp and out of sight.
"MOTHER HUBBARD!" Crash snapped as the air roared past his ears. It took a few seconds after he'd dropped from the back of the Deep Sky to realize exactly what the short mage had done. The girl probably knew exactly what she was doing when she decided on it, but he could at least answer honestly next time on a test if if ever asked the question 'Have you ever been thrown off of a plane?'
As he tumbled, Crash silently labelled Yagami into one of a few catagories he had, this one of the jokester. Of course, this joke wasn't funny.
"NOT FUNNY AT ALL!" he roared over the wind.
"What's not funny?"
It was Hayate, her hair an odd color, and she was diving along side him, inverted, her strange set of black wings were pretty, yet creepy. Crash blinked silently at her once as she looked 'up' (down really) at the ground below them.
"You should probably transform before you get too low or you'll have trouble slowing down in that armor."
And with that, she began to slow her own descent, leaving Crash to plumet towards the ground. Maybe transforming was a good idea.
"Battery?"
[PRIMED]
"Uh... engage, very quickly."
[ENGAGING!]
There was a flash of light, and Crash found himself wearing the now familliar Olympian Armor. With the roof of one of the Mana Reactor buildings coming up to greet him rather quickly, Crash decided Hayate's advise was indeed the epitome of all wisdom, and used his flight power to brake his fall.
...
Nothing.
Why wasn't the armor slowing down?! WHY?! It was capable of turning on a dime, manuevering at high speed, and coming to sudden stops with the gravity assisted- ...Oh.
Crash remembered one very important fact.
The gravity drive took forty-five seconds to complete the cold start warm up process.
"OH SHI-"
Hayate cringed as Crash went straight through the reactor building rooftop with the force of a small bomb, ripping a hole in the reinforced concrete like it was made of shoji screens, like the walls in some buildings back home. Without hesitating longer, she quickly flew down to the top of the hole and looked in, fearing that her method of stopping an argument may have had very adverse consiquences. As the dust started to clear, she heard the sound of shifting rubble, and then a crackle on the radio.
"I feel... Pain. Good. That means I'm still alive."
She breathed a sigh of relief and jumped down into the hole.
Crash was busy digging himself out from the shattered concrete and powder around him as she touched down. Asside from the grunts of pain he was making, there looked to be no physical damage to him.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm a masochist... I LIKE smashing through four feet of reinforced concrete at terminal velocity," he sputtered through his headset, but kept it off the open channels. "With friends who throw me out of planes, at the rate we're going I'll be dead before an Enemy gets to take a shot at me. Why don't we just have my eulegy now and save the trouble later?"
Hayate blanched at the scathing remark, glad her friends weren't able to see it. Crash in the mean time, finally cleared himself out of the rubble by lifting a large chunk of concrete, and tossing it asside. Then he paused.
"Great, HUD's out again..."
After slapping the side of his helmet a few times, the transparent screen blinked, and came back to life.
"Phew... Battery, run a silent diagnostic."
While the AI did the self check, he looked around the room, then to Hayate.
"So where'd I land anyway?"
"Reactor Building Four," Hayate nodded to him. "Southeast side of the complex closest to the town."
"At least I didn't land on anything sensitive," he looked around. "I hope."
A brief diagnostic summary blinked up on the inside of his Heads Up Display, Grav Drive Anomally, probably from Impact... ETA to functional time, thirty minutes. Lovely. Crash looked back up the hole he came through. Four foot thick reinforced concrete ceiling, then two floors where he'd blown straight through. They must have been on ground level now.
"Do you hear something?" Hayate asked. Crash turned, looking around. Maybe he DID land on something sensitive. Great.
"Probably just the mana reactor," he waved it off, hoping to any diety that would listen he was right.
"No," Hayate turned and walked into another room. "Mana reactors don't pulse..."
Crash turned the input gain up on his helmet, there was definately some kind of low pulsing sound.
"More traps?" he suggested helpfully as he bounded off his rubble pile. "I like to not set one off..."
And they both found what appeared to be the source of the noise. A capped off cylinder about Hayate's size, with an antenna sticking out of the top sitting on a tripod that looked like it folded up into the sides, was methodicly pulsating under its own power in the corner of the next room. The low pulsating thrum it was giving off seemed almost soothing.
Hayate's first thought, considering the explosive trap Nanoha took care of, was BOMB. But at the same time, her gut instinct said this was something different. Crash started to walked forward to give it a closer look, but remembering previous events, he instead, opted to radio the others.
"Hey guys, we got something over here you might want to see," he began. "We're over at Reactor Building Four on the souteast side. Fastest way will be in through the skylight."
"The reactor buildings don't have skylights," Vita's non-plussed response returned.
"Building four underwent renovations in the last few minutes," he responded. "We're one room over from the skylight."
It only took the other four a minute or two to get over to the Mana Reactor Building, and down through the new 'skylight' as Crash had dubbed it.'
"Renovations," Vita shook her head. "Funny..."
Signum whistled at the hole as she passed down through it to the bottom floor, eyeing the damage with a calculating eye. As she touched down behind Nanoha and Fate, she kicked a small piece of the crumbled concrete to the side.
"What do you make of this?" Hayate asked. Nanoha and Fate walked over to what seemed to be an unspoken 'safe distance' from the small pod.
"Think it belongs here?" Fate asked. Of course, considering most of the equipment in the mana reactor building consisted of panels, and items bolted to the ground, the tripod mounted... Pod Thingie, seemed oddly out of place in a back corner.
"What do you make of it sir?" Crash asked over the wide channel.
Onboard the Deep Sky, Roland inspected the Video feed intently.
"Looks like some kind of portable transmitter to me," he shrugged. "Transmitter for what, I don't know. As far as the networked intel goes, not a single transmission's gone in or out since this whole thing began."
Crash crossed his armored arms and walked up to the device. Signum made a motion to stop him, but Hayate blocked her with a shake of her own head.
"Riddle me this," he pondered alloud. "If I punch it... will it simply stop working? Or blow us all to Al Hazred?"
Nanoha sweatdropped and laughed uncomfortably. "I don't think that's the best idea right now."
Crash shrugged. "I don't really want to anyway... I like being alive."
Up on Deep Sky, Roland laced his hands together under his chin, on a nearby console, Rein suddenly straighened up visibly as she noticed something on her display.
"Shamal, look at this," she motioned. The short haired blond shifted from her own console and gave a quick look, and then her eyes widened as she opened the radio link.
"Crash, back up," her voice crackled.
Crash blinked, then backed up several paces from the object. After a few more seconds, her voice crackled again. "Okay, step closer..."
Crash obeyed.
"Now back up again..."
"Do the hokey pokey," Crash muttered in annoyance, but obeyed.
"Now you Nanoha," Shamal's voice crackled. "Same thing, twice."
Nanoha complied, and after a few moments, Shamal quickly cycled through the rest of the group.
"You got something?" Roland asked as the support mage worked with Rein on their consoles. Shamal silently nodded as she took advantage to the link to the main processing systems back at RF6 HQ and the Maidens at McGreggor. After a few seconds, a clean data set showed up on her monitor.
"Got it!" she announced. "Local AMF field density increases sharply just two feet from the unidentified object. It's pretty uniform beyond that, but it spikes when you get right up to it."
"AMF Projector," Hayate shook her head. "I should have known."
"Well," Roland crackled in. "At least it's not a bomb."
"Like the hero really wasn't a hero but a decoy," Crash rolled his eyes. "Riiight. How do we know this isn't a double decoy?"
"To be fair," Nanoha Shrugged. "The explosive alone wouldn't have been enough to do anything, I've been hit with bigger."
"But an exploding focal core would have certainly done it," Hayate critisized. Nanoha laughed it off quickly.
"Maybe."
"So now what?" Crash asked suddenly.
"I think it's rather obvious," Roland's voice crackled. "It's producing the AMF... AMF slows us down. Let's shut it off."
"Exactly!" Hayate nodded in agreement, then turned to the pod, and frowned, heaving a sigh out with her next sentence. "How do we do that?"
A quick glance to Nanoha got merely a shrug, Fate similarly drew a blank. The pod, seemed to have no external interface. Perhaps it was remote controlled by radio signal or-
"SMASH!!!"
They all jumped as Vita pulled Graf Eisen out of the remains of the pod, which sparked and burst into flames for a moment before falling apart harmlessly. Crash took a step back as Vita turned a non-plussed look at them all.
"Universal Off Switch," she quipped.
"I think it would have been a better idea to take it in-tact," Crash nudged. "To see how it works and all..."
Vita turned an unimpressed scowl on him.
"We're not here to find how it works, we're here to unscrew the problem."
Crash sighed as the deceptively young looking mage swung her warhammer back onto her shoulder. Was she always this critical under stress?
"I personally would have liked to know how they got the AMF to behave so uniformly over long range," Roland crackled back. "It would help us for pinpointing them in the future."
"You may still get your wish there sir," Shamal's voice followed. "The AMF is still active, though it seems to have weakened by about one-eighth."
There was a sound distinctly like a sigh coming from the General.
"Great... If my mathematics are what they used to be, that means we got seven more of those things hiding anywhere in a ten kilometer diameter area."
"Unfortunately."
Up on the Deep Sky, Roland put his hand on his face as he thought. His gut instinct was violently against a house to house styled search of the entire facility and the surrounding town. With so many places to move and hide at the disposal of a potential enemy, Urban Warfare was a soldier's worst nightmare. Surely Hayate realized this too. She was a rather smart girl after all.
"Okay guys," her voice crackled. "We're going to have to split up and perform a complete area search if we want to find those things."
God dammit...
"I disapprove," the General announced into his headset. "A search in this environment is way too risky."
"All due respect sir," Nanoha's voice came back a little surprised. "I think we can handle a little risk..."
"I think he's right," Crash's voice cautioned. "We're talking about an area that's seventy square kilometers in size."
"Significantly less," Reinforce snapped up from her spot. "Remember that the center of the AMF is over the facility. Even if they managed to control their transmitters quite well, their distribution has to be pretty evenly spaced and within at least two kilometers of the facility in order to keep the field centered because of the lake. Too far apart, and the field center would move inland away from the plant."
"Never the less," Roland turned to the AI. "That's the worst possible environment for ambush. We should call in more backup and wait before searching."
"We can't do that Sir," Hayate's voice crackled. "The AMF may be reletively passive, but nobody in the area can effectively operate in it like we can. At best we could pull my Forwards, but we're looking at transit time for them since I gave them the day off, and that would only give us four more people."
Roland swore, sitting back in his seat and scowling at the unforgiving logic of the situation. It was one of those things that had irked him since he'd been in the TSAB. The distribution of Power was ludicrous at times. Yes, a good mage was worth an armored batalion. Then again, most of the stock mages had about the effectiveness of a civilian police officer. With the distribution of power favoring, single, strong mages, the strategic planning could be tailored to the vulnerability that brought up. A loss in terms of a single mage of any decent level was potentially catastrophic. And the trouble with mages, is that despite being flying tanks in terms of firepower, a lucky hit or good sneak attack could still kill them as easily as any other human. It was the same problem that had ultimately driven Gaias Regius to an Early Grave. This situation and environment absolutely reeked of the potential for dissaster. But Hayate knew her job better than he knew her job...