Era of Madness

The mistakes you can't fix 7

John and Clark met again as the latter exited his ship, exhausted but intact. As the others went to meet their friends or families, the two of them simply stood there for a moment, cuddling. Then, they went to a cafe, one that floated above the city thanks to Fefnir tech, and sipped on a coffee each. They discussed about life, what they'd do after, but also meaningless little things. In a tale, that would have been where the story ended.

But if life had ever been a tale, then it was never the kind to let peole have a happy ending. That's why days later, the worst happened: the planet underwent a massive attack from one of the Paradise Council' spatial float.

The simple but clean buildings, the small gardens, the carefully organized infrastructures, they were all part of what made the planet a home for humans. And now, the planet was drown under the attacks.

[Alert! Alert! Enemies ships have successfully damaged the Outercoat! Every fighter is called to get in position and stop them, and every non-fighter is called to take refuge in one of the specially equiped bunkers and, in case of lack of proximity with these, in any structure fully protected by high level Fefnir technology! This is NOT an exercize! Again, this is NOT an exercize!]

Immediatley after the broadcast was made, John's first reflexe was to look for Clark, but the latter was nowhere around. Then, in panic, he tried calling him, but he wasn't answering the call. Understanding that Clark was probably fighting in this exact moment,John could only come to one conclusion: he had to help too.

He didn't go to one of the bunkers, and instead went to one of the few buildings nearby that were fully protected by high level Fefnir technology... and more precisely, a control tower. The moment he was allowed to enter, he rushed toward one of the most performant supercomputers, activated the digital board and started typing:

"Time to get to work" he said, more to cheer himself up than anything else.

First, by managng the communication, he got a global understanding of the situation: somehow, a float of the Paradise Council, composed of a few dozens spatial ships led by a large saceship, more than three times the size of the city John was in, almost two-thousands square kilometer large.

He quickly got an understanding of their attack strategy: At first, they had concentrated their attacks, via anti-matter rays, to create a large breach in the planet's Outercoat. Then, while the float of spatial ships entered through the breach, wreaking havoc across the planet, the large commanding spaceship was staying behind to coordinate the attack from behind.

Or so was what someone would've thought at first sight, but John quickly realized the spaceship had another goal: damaging the Outercoat even more, so the planet's atmosphere would degrade in consequence. That way, the spatial ships wouldn't suffer too much, but everybody that wouldn't manage to take refuge quick enough would die, and every structure that didn't have the necessary protection would be destroyed. In this moment, while everyone was distracted by the spatial ships, the spaceship was undoubtably the biggest threat.

John shared the information as much as possible, but quickly found out that hacking through the spaceship's system would be everything but easy. After several minutes trying in vain, he and every Cifer member trying to hack into the system realized that conventionnal methods wouldn't work, at least not quick enough.

John thus changed his method and transmitted the others a message: now, he'd lead the digital attack and they'd follow. He turned a deaf ear to the protest, and started using exclusive methods from Earth. And to the surprise of everyone else, it actually seemed to work a lot better. John, though, didn't pay it any attention and kept focusing on his work, pushed forward by one thought: every second where the spaceship was still damaging the Outercoat was one more chance that Clark would die.