Lest they take Vengeance

Standard technology was still in the works, but communications had gone dark. People were sure to begin panicking. Especially the military garrison of the town as they lost all contact with Veskar High Command. They couldn't even watch television or call their neighbors.

So all of the military police and garrison members returned to their respected buildings to regroup and assess the situation. Vycter could see all this happening as the white dots were all moving to the police station and the town's main garrison.

"What the hell is going on!?" The town's garrison commander asked his two top lieutenants who had panicking expressions. They couldn't explain what was going on as they had no intelligence.

Though they had a good thought of what had caused it. Or at least why it had happened. "I think this is retaliation for opening fire on the civilians who were protesting, sir." The female lieutenant stated. She had short crimson hair and a cybernetic arm with a realistic silicon cover. "However I think we're playing right into their hands. The only reason they would want to block all communications is if they're trying to do something." Folding her hands behind her back and erecting her posture a bit more, increasing the overall intensity of the situation.

"You mean… They're going to try and attack us? We just wiped the floor with over fifty people…" The other lieutenant stated with a hint of morose feelings in his tone. He clearly didn't approve of the order he had been given. The order to fire.

The people who had been living in that Cathedral hadn't been strangers. Many of the people in the garrison knew them, either as passing associates or close friends. While some of them were definitely fiends and alcoholics, or even druggies. He never expected that he would have to one day shoot them down.

They were at war for god sake, and all of a sudden instead of shooting the enemy, he was firing his rifle into a crowd of his own people. Would a sane government approve of this? Was there a such thing as Sanity?

The Commander of the Garrison let out a light sigh and cleared his throat. "According to the military police at the station near the market place. There was sightings of drones within the vicinity of the protesters. Then mysteriously afterward, they all disappeared… They couldn't figure out where they had gone." Rolling his fingers on the desk in front of him impatiently as his brain was wrecked with questions that lacked refined answers. "It's likely they were in the Cathedral. The people wouldn't blatantly disobey military orders without a trump card." The man paused, he knew that there were people at the front gates. They would intercept anyone who was trying to leave.

However he didn't know how many individuals plotted this scheme, let alone what they were capable of. They lost all their electronic eyes and equipment that relied on external connections.

"They might try to escape in order to get some footage we don't know about to the public…" The Commander clenched his jaw, almost cursing himself as he kicked the desk. "We should get ready to raid the Cathedral. We can't let them escape, otherwise it'll be all our heads."

The Lieutenants nodded, the female soldier quickly making her way out of the garrison's headquarters front doors. She was acting liaison between them and the military police. All she needed to do was get to the Station and inform them to begin joint operations since they had no communications.

Soldiers began to equip themselves with flares that could be used to signify certain protocols which enabled them to interpret simple orders. This would help with a wide scale operation involving a large facility with an unknown about of possible armed combatants.

However just as she was only a few steps out the door, she heard the sound of glass breaking. "Hm?" She turned to see that the second story window had a nice sized hole in it.

"It's a Drone!" Came a shout from in the room.

Getting wide eyed, the Lieutenant went to run back into the building. "Fuck!" She cursed outwardly, but before she even reached for the door, an ear deafening explosion sent her flying back, barreling about on the ground like a tumbling weed before hitting the curb.

Blood was coming out of her ears from the sound, nose from the head trauma and a light gash on the side of the head from where she had landed. There were plenty of scratches, and the silicon cover of her machine arm was torn, revealing the cybernetics.

The entire building was engulfed by green and white flames which were extraordinarily bright, the water sprinkler systems which were still operationally were only making it worse. The more water that was put upon the fire, the more fire there would be.

Zuk stared out the window of the precinct in the direction of the explosion. His mouth was wide open. The Garrison had barely any time to mobilize, their liaison hadn't even come to check in per protocols should the military garrison lose contact with the military police.

"That's one hell of a retaliation… And a distraction. Jeez." That's when he noticed there were many more drones in the air than before. His jaw immediately fell to the floor as he stared at the sky, walking out of the Precinct. "Recording again?" He wondered before looking at the other officers who were walking out of the building to assist in rescue and firefighting efforts.

…

Hours earlier Vycter had purchased two more drones, however one of them was equipped with an enhanced form of Greek fire bomb, a lost recipe from ancient times on Earth. While it was relatively expensive, it was definitely something that would be used for a good distraction. He doubted that they'd know how to fight it immediately and cause even more damage, which they were trying to prevent.

After he had sent them out, he met with the rest of the people who he had indoctrinated into being his followers in the catacombs.

"Why the hell are we down here? It's creepy!" Kayelin yelped as she brushed against an old casket which was partially open and covered in cobwebs. It was rather evident that these catacombs were much older than the newer looking Cathedral. These almost seemed ancient in retrospect.

There were plenty of creepy crawlies, many of which Vycter couldn't identify, but it seemed Ceilia knew exactly what they were.

She was able to help Vycter by informing which ones he should go near, or walk into. Some of them were poisonous. There were even some giant spiders down there, but compared to the smaller ones, they were much more harmless. It seemed that they were called rat spiders since they literally only ate rats and decaying flesh.

"We'll be out of here pretty quickly, but our trek is going to take longer than usual. Are the explosives ready?" Vycter asked her, Kayelin nodded. Originally he had ordered for Kayelin to create false barricades and set explosives which would level the building in the event of a raid taking place before they were prepared to disembark.

Once they reached the eastern wall of the catacombs a few levels down, he began warping the wall similar to how he had done so in the mountains. He began using his ability to carve a path which was two meters wide and three meters high. He dug ten meters at a time as he kept stepping forward at a moderate speedy pace. The runaways and deserters kept up with him relatively close since they couldn't see.

The only plus was the walls themselves were smooth, flat. Even if they brushed against them, all they would get is a little dirty. Moments later, Vycter purchased a handful of cheap little florescent flashlights and started to pass them out amongst the runaways, while keeping a red camp lantern for himself.

He lead the people through the path he was making. Once they were a kilometer away, there was a sudden sound of an explosion as the rigged explosives meant to destroy a possible raid, brought down the oversized church and buried the catacombs.

This was only the start of the two day march under the ground until they reached the mountain they had built their forward base upon.

…

When the Cathedral exploded the imaging array was able to pick up the appearance of the town once more.

"It's back!" One of the officers monitoring the situation reported aloud for all in the room to hear. Everyone frantically gathered around the holographic projector, but what they came to see would make them pale.

The Garrison and the Cathedral were up in flames. There were no noticeable distortions this time. It was as if a small set of isolated battles had gone on at each of the locations. However the fire at the garrison was what troubled them the most. While they were able to regain communication with the precinct, they quickly found out that only one survivor was found at the garrison who was put in critical condition due to the shockwave.

The only other surviving soldiers were individuals who were guarding the entrances of the town and didn't leave their posts. This was also strange. The people who had been in the church after the retaliation were completely gone. The imaging radio wave satellites couldn't find any traces of corpses within the rubble.

"What… the hell?" Commander Helyn blinked several times. There had been well over three hundred garrison members in that town alone. More than three quarters of them had disappeared in a matter of moments.

According to the highest ranking military police officer on the seen the Cathedral was not subject to a battle, but more so that it sudden exploded without explanation. It was also hypothesized that they used drones to bomb the garrison headquarters.

The confrontation between the unknown group and the garrison wasn't even direct.

"Ma'am, I am beginning to believe all these actions are premeditated. As if he had actually planned these things out before executing them, or more so, before arriving at the town." This was the assistant of the Commander who spoke. He had been silent for the last several meetings which had occurred.

This time however the Chancellor was also absent. He had returned to the capital city on the planet surface to take direct command of the forces there. However it didn't seem as if he was going to bother mobilizing for this as the majority of their main forces were in space to defend against and attack invading forces at will.