Mokir's start ban was now officially lifted, and all three were already rushing to their places in the pilot cabin. Oril pressed something on the side of his desk, and the entire ship suddenly lit up with blue-red light. Projected red labels of the surroundings began to appear on the large windows all around the cabin. Moreover, curved and transparent display foils now emerged from the originally flat desks of Oril and Draine, which immediately tilted slightly forward and began to display instruments for flight. Both of them could thus from now on do anything else on their panels and yet not lose the ability to immediately perform, for example, an evasive maneuver.
"Ready?" Lirin asked.
"Confirmed," came from Oril. "Control, unit J16, ship Vega, dock 14. Requesting permission to depart," Draine reported.
"Permission granted," came from the computer, and the hangar doors opened. The Vega then ignited its large engines, and they immediately tilted slightly backwards. Thanks to this, the Vega slowly flew out of the hangar into the open space full of closed gates from other hangars. It all seemed almost as if they were now standing in front of one large hollow hive.
"On your command, captain," Draine reported and emphasized the word captain in a falsely important way. "Fly," Lirin gestured with a slight smile. Draine tapped the angle of inclination of the ship and slid the speed slider on the display to the maximum position. The Vega began to rotate in place towards the sky, and when it was standing completely vertically, with the front of the ship directly against the sky, it shot out of the hangar space like lightning. And it was already high above the hangars, still higher and higher, faster and faster. Behind them, the whole city was frighteningly and rapidly receding until it was no longer visible at all. They immediately reached the edge of the atmosphere, from where they flew out into open space.
The space in front of them then began to collapse and glow as it collapsed into a funnel, into a pushed-out crack in space. The gap in space then sucked them in, and it shook them slightly upon entry. In the next moment, only flickering, radiant streaks that belonged to energy clouds filled the space around them. Large, concentrated clouds of energy were imprints of matter from real space, which was pushing its energy shadow into the space tunnel. Each larger cloud was an energy representation of a star. Depending on how much matter and energy was in the star, its energy shadow in the space tunnel was larger and denser. It was possible to fly through them, it just always shook the ship. How much depended on the mass of the star.
On FC-506, the evacuation was just ending. The last ships were rapidly taking off from the planet. Vergabein, together with the cleanup crew, boarded the very last one, and immediately after that, they all took off together. However, 11 figures in dirty suits, who remained standing on the concrete platform, looked up at the taking-off ship. "...you won't even notice it, Vekenil. Just light and nothing more," the figure at the very edge of the group was comforting the one right next to it and was holding its hand, as romantically as the suit allowed. The ship with Vergabein and the cleanup crew quickly disappeared from their sight.
By then, the Vega had appeared at the planet. Before its crew, a dark gray planet appeared, missing a large chunk, as if someone had bitten into it. What was missing from it then orbited around it like small moons. And at the same time, they also saw a convoy of yellow ships that were very quickly disappearing into the space tunnel. "Follow them! Neutralize them!" Lirin hysterically uttered, surprised by what she was seeing right now. She didn't expect to actually encounter anyone here. Oril took over the weapons.
A pair of cannons readily extended from both sides of the Vega, and Draine, meanwhile, eagerly tried to get as close as possible. But the VER-6s were very fast. The visible part of them had already managed to disappear. Oril left the shooting to the computer and was now trying to find out where those ships were going and was preparing to place a so-called "leash." Which was a special tiny drone that could attach itself to a ship even if it had its shield on. It wasn't a problem for it. It scanned the opponent's shield and created an oppositely charged field, with which it magnetically attached itself to it.
By then, panic had also broken out on board the VER-6. "Sir, they've already found us," the pilot behind the partition reported to the other passengers sitting in the back among the radiant Gorinium crates. "One assault ship. Attack on your command," the pilot continued.
"No, run away quickly, let no one attack unless they have to. We have to get out of here quickly. We mainly need that Gorinium, these don't matter," Vergabein commanded. "Will do!" the pilot announced. But by then, the first shots were already hitting the last ships in the convoy. But the VER-6s had a good shield, they absorbed most of the energy of the shots. So the Vega concentrated all its fire only on the very last ship, the one with Vergabein. The pilot reported to Vergabein: "They've targeted us, the shields are holding, but they're seriously depleting the source, soon there won't even be enough for a small jump." "Let me at the rear cannon," Vergabein decided.
The partition to the pilot cabin opened for him, and Vergabein slipped into the small cabin for two pilots. He stood behind the pilot and took a white box from a closed cabinet hung on the partition. He opened it, and inside he found 3cm wide opaque white glasses with a button on top. They looked like virtual reality glasses. So he put on these glasses, and suddenly, a bright white cannon with a radiant blue circular base from which a gradually narrowing long, semi-open barrel extended emerged from behind the smooth shell of the yellow ship.
Then Vergabein saw the surroundings of the ship from his position, because there was a small camera on top of the cannon. As soon as he looked around, he began to return fire to the Vega.
"Do you have that leash yet?" Lirin asked Oril in a hurry, watching all the ships gradually disappear before their eyes. "Sorry, it's not working. The ship is reporting an error," Oril stated desperately. "Fix it, you're the expert, fix it!" Lirin was trying. "I repeat, Lirin, it's not working. It's a direct system lock," Oril replied in an increasingly desperate tone, desperately trying to bypass it in every possible way. The stress was escalating with each flown-away ship.
Vergabein now deliberately overloaded the cannon to the maximum. And he fired the strongest shot he could. The bright blue shot lit up the darkness of the surrounding space, shining far more than all the other shots, and directly hit the Vega. But surprisingly, nothing happened. The shot visibly illuminated the Vega's shield, which deformed and dented for a moment upon impact. Apart from that, however, the shot did not cause any damage to the ship. Strange.
"So what?" Vergabein asked the pilot.
"Nothing," the pilot stated.
"Not a scratch. The shield absorbed everything. The shot merged with it in an instant," the pilot added.
"That's not possible!" Vergabein got angry and ripped off his glasses.
"Why are our weapons doing nothing to them?!" Vergabein demanded an explanation and yelled at the pilot.
"A-and I. I really don't know," the pilot stammered.
"That's not possible!" Lirin exclaimed, the entire fleet of VER-6s disappearing before her eyes. "What about the last one, have you neutralized it yet?" she asked. "Well, that..." Draine surprisingly didn't finish the sentence. "What's going on?" Lirin asked with concern in her voice. "I can't even shoot anymore, it's locked. Oril probably turned on some anti-theft mode or something with his digging in the system," the surprised Draine reported. Lirin went to see for herself, closer, what was happening. Meanwhile, almost all the ships were gone. General frustration was growing.
"Show me," Lirin said already calmly with a certain fatigue, when she was already standing at Draine's. Across his entire display, a red warning sign with small text in the middle was screaming: "Command system.Fire and system.Stalk cannot be executed. Error Tport_detect error 4, identical double signature found. Contact the nearest MSS service and stop digging in that ship." "What is this?" Lirin wondered with a certain agitation and disgust in her voice at the same time. And now even Vergabein's ship flew away. Lirin, slightly angry, swung her left hand down and immediately after that said: "Amazing, seriously... Well, nothing, at least get it back into flight-worthy condition. When I throw this on Mokir's head... Were we recording the log of system processes?"
"As always," Oril said. And the sign immediately disappeared on its own. "What did you do?" Lirin was interested. "Nothing, I haven't had time to do anything yet," Oril said with caution. "So why does it now look like it's all working again?" Lirin said a little irritably, who, like Oril and Draine, absolutely did not understand what was happening.
"I don't know..." Oril said and began to search the menus and suddenly discovered: "Oh... There are signs of life on that planet." "Unwanted passengers? At least something. They'll hopefully be able to tell us something about what was happening here. Go get them and watch out for any anti-aircraft defense, it could be active."
The discovery of potential witnesses was able to bring at least partial comfort to her great inner outrage at their failure. So the Vega headed for the planet.
On the surface of the planet, meanwhile, the remaining workers were lying together on the ground, forming a large circle with their feet together so that they also had their arms outstretched and were holding hands. They weren't dead, they were just waiting peacefully and ritually reciting: "...and Verrill will peacefully take us into his house. Verrill, eternal sun, free us from our mistakes and failures. Fill our hearts with joy and gratitude for all the good and bad that..." Their religious ritual, however, was interrupted by a sound. They all heard the sound of slowing engines from afar, which gave them hope for a moment that maybe the merciful Verrill had learned about them, had mercy, and had sent another VER-6 for them. But in an instant, instead of a VER-6, a Vega emerged, which, surprisingly, scared everyone to death.
"Dartatuni, Dartatuni! They're coming for us! Eternal sun, smite them with your light," the workers in spacesuits called out, already on their feet and slightly fearfully retreating from the place where the Vega was landing.
"Wow..." Oril said when he looked at the mining complex and the mined area. "There must have been mining here for a long time. How it doesn't give out, if it hadn't blown up, we would never have found out," Oril added. "Truly impressive," came from Lirin, but she didn't let herself be distracted by it: "Hurry up, suits, the atmosphere is unbreathable, it's thin and without oxygen. Oh, and make them transparent, it seems they're afraid. Oril, come with me, I might need someone to carry."
"Lirin!" Draine called out. "Yes?" she replied. "There are charges there, a lot, they wanted to cover their tracks before we arrived. You have little time, as I guess, like LITTLE time," Draine warned. "Then hurry!" Lirin said. And Lirin and Oril had already put on their suits in the back of the Vega in an instant and together went out to meet the figures in spacesuits. She immediately spoke to them:
"I know you probably don't understand me, and we don't even have time for translation and some long speech. So, WE WANT TO HELP YOU," she said slowly, loudly, and clearly, even though she knew it would probably be useless, and so she added quietly: "Believe it or not."
Oril and Lirin extended both their hands forward and, by repeatedly clenching their fists, began to stun the workers with blue flashes emanating directly from the forearms of their suits. Four immediately fell to the ground, and the others were terrified and started running. "No, please!" Lirin called out to them and ran after them. She moved her left fist to her body and thus flew 2m into the air, while she hit the fleeing figures with her other outstretched hand. "You carry them," she shouted to Oril. The workers were dodging very well. 3 still unstunned were already running back across the bridge to the factory. Meanwhile, Oril quickly began to lift and load all the stunned ones into the Vega. There were only two left who were not stunned, they held hands and sped up even more.
Lirin aimed at them from a distance and successfully stunned them both almost at once. "Do you want help?" Draine called out from the transceiver. Lirin landed, grabbed each figure in one hand. With the workers in both hands, she immediately headed back to the ship. "I'm done. We don't know how much time we still have, you have to fly away immediately when I tell you. Get ready," Lirin said to Draine.
Lirin clumsily flew with both stunned workers all the way into the ship, there she laid the stunned workers on the floor and immediately flew for more that were still lying outside. There were still 6 people left to board. Oril was carrying two more. Meanwhile, the countdown on the charges was inexorably approaching its end. Lirin grabbed two more and carried them quickly to the ship. She laid them on the pile with the others, grabbed the reinforcing structure, and watched Oril coming with the last two stunned ones in his hands. "Then hurry!" Lirin called out. As soon as Oril entered the ship, she called out: "Now!" Draine activated the closing of the doors and the maximum power of the engines. The ship rose into the air.
The countdown, however, had ended. The Vega was already turning its engines to fly straight up vertically. But the entire factory now lit up with a blinding white light that was spreading rapidly. Meanwhile, the Vega was already rapidly accelerating and trying to escape. The doors were almost closed, only through a crack did that bright white light from the factory shine inside. Suddenly, however, the white light was everywhere.
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