An explosion erupted in the sky as a black plane was hit. The fireball plummeted to the ground and landed on one of the major cannons, sending soldiers fleeing.
The fog grew even thicker as it mixed with dirt in the air and smoke from burning fuel tanks.
I didn’t move. Panic had frozen me in place. It was a surreal scene. Ahead of me was a chaotic battlefield with fire being traded between the ground and the sky. Behind me was a swirling forest of humongous silver pinwheels that looked like something out of a CGI-heavy music video.
Though they were taking massive hits, the cannons continued to fire, and the missiles were still being launched. There were far too many of these weapons for the attackers to take them out completely. The Retros, or whatever they were called, had been repelled before. The multiple wreckages outside of the fort were proof of that. It gave me hope that SYLO might just have the firepower to send them back to whatever gate of hell they came from.
It was a moment of relief… that didn’t last long.
At the very moment I told myself that none of the planes would get through, one of the planes got through. A black shadow shot by overhead. It was going for the gold—and not in a noble, Olympic kind of way. Another plane shot through, and another. Had the defense completely broken down? Was this the end?
The three black planes hovered in a triangle pattern over the repository building, just as I’d seen them do when they targeted Quinn’s boat. Whatever this weapon was, I remembered that it needed the strength of three planes working together to function.
I wondered if Granger was in the repository.
A straight beam of light shot from beneath one of the black, ray-like planes. It was quickly followed by beams from the other two planes. The lights joined together, gained intensity, and shot toward the repository as one combined beam…
…only to be reflected back into the air!
The purpose of the windmills was suddenly clear. The whirling fans acted like mirrors, reflecting the deadly beam of light. The spinning wheels effectively gave the fort 100 percent protection. The combined, powerful beam of light from the black planes was diffused by the mirrors, sending harmless streaks of light scattering haphazardly. The windmills were not only reflecting the light, they were breaking it up.
It didn’t stop the black planes from firing. The unified beam moved away from the vault building, searching for an opening in the defense.
It failed. The spinning wheels continued to deflect the deadly light.
The weapon had been neutralized.
The event didn’t last long. When the three planes stopped to hover over the repository, they became easy targets.
With three quick blasts, multiple missiles were launched from the center of the fog toward the interloping planes. Each one found its mark, and all three black jets were obliterated. The explosions were so powerful that the only thing left of the planes was ash that blew away on the breeze. As with the plane that was shot by the drone, when the power core of these planes was hit, the result was stunning. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of fuel would create such a devastating explosion. Could they be nuclear powered?
Whatever the case, the windmills had done their job. As long as the black planes were kept outside of the perimeter, Fort Knox would be safe. Granger would be safe too.
I guess you can’t have everything.
The attack didn’t slow down. If anything, the barrage picked up, as if the Retros were encouraged by the fact that some of their planes had gotten through.
I got my senses back and continued to run. I quickly sprinted out from beneath the safety of the spinning windmills and found myself in the middle of the artillery.
A cannon was fired so close to me that I was afraid the sound had ruptured my eardrums. As it was, my ears rang so loudly that I couldn’t hear a thing. I staggered a few steps but had the sense to look up in the direction that the cannon had fired.
A flaming plane was falling out of control, headed straight for me.
I had two choices: run or die.
I ran up the road, headed deeper into the fog. A second later the burning plane fell like a dead bird in the center of the road not twenty yards behind me. When it hit it must have exploded into a million pieces of flaming junk that flew past me. Unlike the planes that had targeted the vault, its fuel core hadn’t exploded. If it had, I would have been incinerated.
I didn’t know what else to do but keep running for my life. I knew the general direction I needed to go to get back to the dirt moat, but there was no way I could run in a straight line. I was surrounded by twisted pieces of metal that had once been trucks or missile launchers.
As many wrecks as there were, there were twice as many weapons still firing. The noise was insane. Though the battle was in the sky, I felt as though I was in the middle of it.
I passed a few soldiers who had been injured and were crying out for help. I stopped at one soldier who was bleeding from the eyes. There was nothing I could do for him but help him to his feet and guide him to one of the trucks where other soldiers were taking cover.
Once he was with them, I ran on and tripped over another soldier. This guy wasn’t moving. He was beyond wounded. He didn’t need my help.
Seeing the dead body brought the battle into focus. It wasn’t just about machines shooting at each other like some Xbox adventure. This was about people getting killed. But the Retro fighters weren’t taking the same risk. They were unmanned. The people controlling them were probably miles away in the comfort of an easy chair as they played what would seem to them like a video game.
For the people on the ground, it was no game.
I couldn’t believe I was actually taking SYLO’s side. It must have been because I was in the same danger as the soldiers.
I kept running, though I was nearly blind and constantly choking on the smoke. The ground rumbled each time a black plane unloaded its energy cannon. A few times the impact was so intense that it knocked me to the ground. Once I nearly ran into a missile launcher that I didn’t see until I was almost on it. Still, I couldn’t weave through cautiously. The longer I was in that fog, the better chance there was of not coming out.
Finally, after a lifetime of running and dodging, I sensed that the smoke was clearing. I was almost through! It made me run even faster. I was still on the road, so footing was good, though I had to be careful not to run into any of the hundreds of pieces of hot shrapnel that lay scattered everywhere. I finally blasted out of the fog…
…to witness a sight that was even more intense than the one I had just come from.
The night sky was alive with black planes and the bright tracer rockets that targeted them. I thought I would be safe once I had gotten away from the artillery. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was now in the drop zone where the black planes were falling and crashing. The ground was littered with bits and pieces of the downed fighters, with more hitting every few seconds.
This was an all-out assault. There were more planes blown out of the sky in the few minutes since the battle began than we had seen on the ground when we first drove in. They kept coming, too. The planes swooped through the sky like skittering moths trying to reach a tempting flame. There were so many that I was surprised they didn’t fly into each other.
All I could do was run and hope that I wouldn’t get hit by a falling chunk of flaming metal. I left the road and took a diagonal course across the width of the dirt track, headed toward the Explorer.
The sky was lit up by tracer rockets and flaming jets. It seemed as though the SYLO defenders were doing their job, keeping the Air Force planes from getting close enough to target the fort. I wondered how long they could keep it up. The Retros were throwing everything they had into their assault.