Starship Armstrong - Season 1

Part 59 - Dragon Slayers (VIII)

Gregor and his retinue marched into the Grand Cathedral of the Ancestors, struck the head off the central idol, and declared the apotheosis of a New God.

The assembled congregants, incensed beyond concern for noble station, advanced on the party, howling for blood. The New God chose that moment, in his infinite wisdom and glory, to speak directly to their minds as he had to his first disciples. The full weight of his majesty was laid bare, and the mob dropped to their knees in worship.

Before long every citizen in the capital city had sworn themselves to the One True Church. In accordance with holy instructions from the New God, they began construction of a miraculous machine the likes of which had not been seen since the time of the ancestors.

Worshipers swarmed through the capital in a state of transcendent joy, stripping it of materials like a cloud of locusts. Every metal roof was melted, every building stone gathered up, every scrap of fuel, plank of wood, every book, every stitch of clothing, every work of art, it was all brought in offering to the New God.

The rest were hard at work constructing this holiest of machines to the New God's exact specifications, a great weapon with which they would smite the embodiment of all evil. The adversary, the other, the anathema, the devil, the monster responsible for everything wrong in the universe. The dark entity known only as Tar-Get.

* * *

Even in the heat of a crisis, with both her own life and the lives of others dependent on her next actions, Mitzner still managed to take some small satisfaction in how terrified Dr. Kang was.

She had cut power to engines and let the lander take a nose-dive towards the ground. They were high up enough that Mitzner was confident she could pull up once the missile had passed them by. However, instead of sailing past, the genius missile split into eight separate missiles, each of which reversed course and approached the lander from a different angle. Mitzner was forced to activate thrusters and rocket the tiny ship towards the ground in a desperate attempt to outrun them.

This is what terrified Dr. Kang. He had been genuinely frightened by her antics in the debris field, but this time his terror was primal lizard-brain stuff. Mitzner smiled. Worse case scenario now: she dies happy.

With the ground rapidly approaching, Mitzner had no option but to pull up anyway. She was certain that at least four of the missile would hit the ship if she did but that was still the best outcome. Mitzner pulled up hard, almost too late, and the lander struggled its way level with the ground.

The second it was no longer blasting downwards with full thrusters the missiles caught them. The three closest exploded into the front of the ship, which sent it careening off at an odd angle that caused the others to miss. That close to the ground they weren't able to correct in time and exploded into the ground.

The lander was trashed, no longer spaceworthy or even airworthy, and still high up enough in the atmosphere for this to be a significant problem. Mitzner pulled on the controlled, but they were no longer responding.

The lander fell out of the sky like the chunk of metal that it was. It came hurtling into a large field, dragging a trench of dirt behind it.

Thanks to Dr. Kang, the lander's emergency systems were operating at peak efficiency. He had even coaxed some of them into operating beyond their usual maximum capacity. Cushiony force-fields made the impact no more jarring than a sudden stop. A few bruises, some superficial cuts, no broken bones. They then immediately burnt their back-up generators out, dumping the crew unceremoniously onto the ground as the force-fields winked out of existence.

The lander, on the other hand, was dead for all intents and purposes. There was no power, and even if there was it was in no condition to fly. The missiles had blown several holes on the hull, and played havoc on the essential systems. The primary reactor was lifeless. It looked like a burnt-out husk half buried in the ground.

"I knew you were the one who was going to get me killed," Dr. Kang said to Mitzner, without standing back up.