A Sinner's Eden-Chapter 172 - EVO

***Tirnanog, Aerie Flagship***

***Magnus***

I watched with clenched teeth as another bomb fell, shredding one of Thich City’s defensive entrenchments. It had taken five attempts to hit the target once. The others destroyed random buildings, which was a bad ratio, but couldn’t be helped.

The fleet was currently far above the enemy’s capital, making it hard to aim accurately, but we were also far out of reach of any air defence. The commanders weren’t ashamed to abuse our complete air superiority because none of the allied clans wanted to lose one more person than necessary to this war. All of them had already paid a higher blood price than they wanted.

And now the Thich were the ones to suffer. Whether they were just the lowest slave or the average hard-working citizen. There was no parole till the clan’s walls fell.

I lowered the spyglass and locked my arms behind my back while I considered the four huge craters which marred the city, larger than anything our airship bombs could do.

When the fleet arrived, Jakob Lang decided to trigger the bombs which Gunnar planted in each of Thich’s main ammunition depots. It was one hell of a wake-up call for our enemies and quite satisfying to watch, considering my uncle was currently fighting for his life. One could say he had paid back our enemies tenfold for the death of my parents.

The hatch door behind me opened, and Vanya joined me on the observation platform. She looked down at the ravaged city with a curious expression, seeking to know what had my attention down there. “You dislike the decision to soften them up till there is nothing left to stop us from taking the palace?”

I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It is the rational thing to do. I was part of similar decisions in the past, as you might know. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. But I already decided that whoever stands between me and my revenge would have a bad day. The people down there could overthrow their leaders and capitulate any time to get out of our way.”

“It is easier to tell yourself they could do such a thing than see it done in practice.” The girl frowned and looked down at the city, showing a disturbing lack of empathy for her age. “If a random soldier were to suggest treason, it would earn them a quick death.”

Intellectually, I knew there were reasons for her behaviour. Hell, she wouldn’t be the leader of a clan if doing what was necessary was beyond her. I had known her for long enough to tell that there was a lot more to Vanya than her age. Still, I couldn’t quite reconcile her appearance with her coldness in this case.

Considering Isaac was on the same track of fast development, I only hoped we could protect him from the harsh reality of adulthood for a little while. I would hate to see him in a similar place as Vanya before he at least grew up physically.

“The people down there know no mercy will be given, considering the extent of this conflict. We have to crush the Thich,” she mumbled. “None of the clans would let them be after what they pulled.”

“Crush?” I asked.

“They broke the peace treaty between the clans, violated the Old Camp’s neutral status, collaborated with Earth, started a quite dubious genetic experiment program with the exiles who were given to their care,” she elaborated. “According to the treaty, any one of these digressions should spell the entire clan’s end. There is no middle ground to be misinterpreted. Following the letter of the treaty, it would be justified to drop incendiary bombs on them till there is nothing left of Thich City. The only thing that’s even more fucked up is that there is still Vier to deal with too. Their fleet should be mostly gone, but we can’t move on and pretend they weren’t a part of all this.”

“So you will kill all of them?” I tilted my head and watched another set of bombs fall.

Vanya sniffed. “Not all, but most. The leaders for certain. Hanging some of Zach’s clones from the wall would certainly demonstrate to the survivors how serious we are. And on another note, it is not like Aerie can shelter even more people after you took in most of Jeng’s survivors. The wormgate was a blessing, or we would already mourn the loss of clan Jeng by now.”

She paused. “I suppose Hochberg can take in whatever slaves survive. Carefully, of course. I have no desire to create a Thich subculture amongst my people. If we take some in, a firm hand will be needed to sort out any agitators. I heard Aerie had issues with some of Earth’s insurrectionists who were left behind after the war. I feel no desire to have such a group lurk in Hochberg and cause trouble years down the road. Maybe we can split any survivors up, having the smaller settlements take in a few at a time. If we spread them out far enough, the smaller clans should be able to absorb a sizeable portion of the survivors. Though it might take some harsh words for them to do so. Nobody wants monsters outside their walls and insurrectionists within. But no matter how much leniency we decide to show once we know with how many people we have to deal with, the ‘Thich’ will be a cautionary historical tale for future generations. Another lost clan.”

I harrumphed and kept watching the bombardment. She was right that taking care of the survivors would probably prove impossible. Heck, I heard daily complaints of how thin stretched Aerie’s infrastructure was after absorbing most of Jeng’s survivors. People were already concerned about food shortages during the next winter. Adding even more people from Thich and Vier would probably end in a revolt.

I sighed, wondering whether it was possible to put off crushing Vier. Maybe we could flood them with Thich’s survivors and let them deal with the moral dilemma. After all, the Thich were their allies and therefore their responsibility.

No matter how long I pondered the topic, no easy answer came to me.

Seven hours.

That’s how long it took until the military commanders felt it was time to land troops. By then, there was nobody left on Thich City’s surface structures to give us any opposition.

Of course, the fortress’s city’s hive-like design meant there would be plenty of survivors within the deeper parts of the city.

Unlike previous operations, Astra and I were held back while soldiers from Aerie and Hochberg secured the city. It took them a whole day to root out the last resistance and secure the palace, but eventually, both Astra and I descended to the city with a delegation of the alliance’s finest.

We were fully armed and decked out in our finest gear.

Jeng’s head paladins, Astra’s parents, together with Vanya and her bodyguards. The whole expedition was additionally protected by a whole group of hunters from the twelfth strata.

Including all the alliance’s members was as much a political move to show all of us would take responsibility for what would happen to Thich as it was meant to have witnesses from all factions present.

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Once we landed, I dismounted Loopsfast together with Astra. The drake had flown us down, since command was still wary of bringing a large airship too close to Thich City. Just in case there were still active defences which posed a threat.

“They didn’t hold back.” Astra turned to look over the wrecked city. “It looks bad, but considering we spent most of Aerie’s ammunition reserves, including what we could resupply through the wormgate, it is impressive that the city is still standing.”

I harrumphed. “I guess it deserves to be labelled a fortress city. They could have held us off a lot longer if they kept back their airships, but I guess Zacharias wanted all or nothing.”

We gathered in front of the palace-like structure at the top of the fortress city, then slowly advanced inside, led by one of the soldiers who had already cleared the building for us. Guards were posted every few metres for protection, while others cleared out debris and the dead.

Judging by all the dead and the damage to the interior, I could tell that the palace had not been given up willingly by the last defending Thich.

The upper part of the palace held a huge entrance hall with a gaudy throne. It was where Zacharias held court like some king, if the surviving staff members were to be believed.

From there, we were quickly led down a set of corridors which descended deeper into the palace, ending in a seemingly endless downward spiral. It was exactly like the supposedly ‘not-corrupted’ Zacharias clone had described it.

The spiralling corridor reminded me of the tunnels which connected the various levels of Aerie’s living caves with each other. It ultimately led us deep beneath Thich City until we arrived at a large blast door, which stopped our advance. The metal frame was integrated into the bedrock and looked like nothing a human would come up with. The round, almost organic design hinted that there was more to Zach’s claims than any of us desired.

A group of men and women was trying to open it with a steam-powered grinding tool, but their advance was slow.

Wanting to get this over with, I stepped forward. “Let me do this.”

But Vanya raised a dainty finger. “If you would allow me? I don’t think that any crude methods are necessary.”

The team with the power tool was ushered to the side, and Vanya approached the door. She tapped her index finger on the touchscreen which had been installed on the door. When it lit up, she went through a set of passcodes. The first ones she tried were rejected one after the other until one phrase worked on the seventh attempt. It had taken her no time at all to guess the right code.

Teresa raised both eyebrows and regarded the Matriarch. “I don’t remember the clone telling us anything about access codes to this facility.”

Vanya shrugged and stepped behind her bodyguards, Tianna and Anajed, while the blast door slowly rolled to the side. “I profiled Zach the entire time I spent interrogating him. With an ego that big and his love for certain topics, there was a finite number of code phrases he would use.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“Homo Ultimus, because he was seeking to create the perfect human. And Summus Societas, because of the society he wanted to create. And Latin because he thought it would make him look smart. Of course, a lot more considerations went into it, but broken down to the main root causes, that is the gist of it,” Vanya explained. “It also couldn't have been something too complicated or abstract, since this should be the entrance to a research facility and people would need to pass frequently.” freewebnøvel.com

Impressed and a little frightened by the girl’s ability to understand someone so well after just a few hours of talking, I raised my spetum and slowly entered the dark corridor, which lit up as soon as I set foot on the floor. The walls weren’t concrete, but bedrock, and they looked like someone used an ice cream scoop to carve out the walls. Definitely not the work of any tool I knew of.

Wary of the strange lightblobs at the ceiling, I used the tip of my spetum to poke one. It turned out to be some jelly-like substance that sealed back up after leaking a drop of glowing fluid. After inspecting the tip of my blade, I judged it to be some kind of bioluminescent slime, similar to the glowmoss the Aerie used to light their living caves.

The corridor ended after just a few dozen metres, opening up into a large dome-shaped hall. It was filled with tanks of various sizes. Each had a control panel in front of them, which reminded me of the strange alien communication device we confiscated a few months ago.

There was no doubt about the purpose of those panels, even if the layout didn’t fit the needs of a human. They were just a little bit too high, their built too streamlined, and the buttons were spaced out too far. There were also lots of strange symbols on them, which made no sense to me.

Most of the tanks were empty, but one of the larger ones held a half-grown bat-thing which looked very much like the flying mounts the Thich had been riding. It was also hooked up to a plain old computer that was clearly of human make. Like the entrance door, it was another example of human tech being hooked up to something... alien.

It looked like the Thich found this ‘alien’ facility and had plenty of time to learn how to operate the technology.

We slowly advanced a few rows deep into the facility until we found what looked like one of the priests who had been reported to preach Thich’s beliefs. He was holding a knife to a young boy’s throat and opposing us with a cool demeanour.

He had positioned himself on the main corridor leading through the tanks, clearly seeking to prevent us from exploring more of the facility.

“If you don’t leave this facility immediately, I will kill this child.”

My eyes flicked between the priest and the child, who looked genuinely frightened, reminding me very much of my boy.

I sighed, sickened by the depravity of this attempt. Then I reached for one of my flechettes and nailed the boy between the eyes. The projectile went through the child’s brain and the priest’s chest and spine before it embedded itself in one of the empty tanks, cracking the glass.

Both dropped like they had their strings cut, but the priest was still breathing and gurgling up blood.

Vanya chuckled from behind me. “How did you know?”

I turned around and found that some of the people behind me looked shocked. “As soon as I heard about the way Zacharias makes clones, I had my people screen all the clones we had photos of. Chloe then used an AI algorithm to render all the possible appearances of Zach’s clones at various ages. Seemed prudent to know what a child-Zach would look like.”

Turning my attention back to the path ahead, I stabbed the priest with my spetum to finish him off and stepped over the bodies to finally find out what this was all about.

The path led us to another room. It was still big, but smaller than the hall behind us.

One of Zach’s clones was standing on a platform in the middle of the room while a set of rings was spinning around him like some gyroscope. Though it wasn’t something so crude. As I watched through my Second Sight, I realised what the machine was doing, and it was magnificent and awe-inspiringly simple at the same time.

Without Gaia’s lessons, I would have never understood what was happening. Though, whether intentionally or not, the avatar had equipped both Astra and me with the necessary knowledge.

Zacharias spread his arms and grinned at us. “Just in time to witness my ascension!”

Then the space within the device warped, and Zacharias was gone.

All that was left behind was a man in a robe operating a nearby console. After glancing at us, he began frantically tapping at the device, but Astra flash-stepped right in front of him and jabbed a fist right into his throat.

Several of our guards rushed forward and apprehended the man while our people fanned out inside the room.

“Can anyone explain what we just witnessed?” Etan asked after surveying the room.

“I think the best way to describe it would be: a spatial drill,” I mused while stepping onto the small platform. It offered just enough room for two, maybe three people.

“A what?” Savannah Gentry, one of Jeng’s head paladins, asked.

“A teleporter,” Astra simplified while joining me on the platform. “Unlike wormholes, it doesn’t create a stable gateway, but exchanges two volumes of space with each other.”

“Too bad for Zacharias that following him should be simple enough.” Connecting both ends of the teleport utilised the same principle Astra and I used to establish jaunt points. Only that while ours couldn’t be followed so easily without having the necessary hardware, just looking at the orientation of the magnetic fields on this device was like having a big sign with a big red arrow pointing at the destination saying, ‘This way!’”

Not needing the controls, I raised my hand, injecting the necessary magnetic field into the machinery. Since the rings were mounted quite well, only a little power was necessary to get them going.

The rings began to spin around Astra and me. As this thing worked more like a spatial drill, warping space just a bit at a time, it didn’t need the massive amounts of energy which were required for a continuous wormhole. It was brilliant, with the only flaw being the required spin-up time.

“We will be right back – with Zach’s head.”