chapter 215

In my hands was a baseball-sized sphere. Bringing it closer to my eye allowed me to see the craftsmanship of this dangerous weapon. It was one of the many nuclear bombs inside the large cluster bomb. This one barely weighed 80 grams, but its approximate yield was 43 megatons.

It was one of the more powerful nuclear bombs that were inside the cluster bomb. Most weighed more than this, with some even passing the one-kilogram mark. The shell was extremely cleverly made to trigger the bomb and to be able to absorb a lot of damage from incoming fire.

It also didn’t help that they had some sort of anti-scanning residue on them, which would have made them even harder to target. FH approximated that we would have been able to destroy 90% of the bombs, even after all of these defensive measures.

It would have meant that the station wouldn’t have fallen from this attack, but the damage would have been extensive. That explained why my sixth sense didn’t seem to want us to attack the cluster bomb itself.

A smile came to my face as I looked across the room. We barely had enough nano machines to cover all the bombs, and even now they were having trouble dealing with the radiation they were giving off. This was a bit too much to bring into the power core, but I’d think of something to do with all of this.

Allowing the bomb to be taken by the nano machines, I also had them scrub me clean of any radiation that radiated from that bomb and this room in general. FH made a door appear for me, and I quickly stepped through it, with it closing behind me as fast as it had opened.

Why some of those bombs were so light was that they had higher-ranked radioactive materials gathered from some portals or mined from a really mana-saturated location, like a tomb world.

They must have spent decades, if not centuries, collecting this much from the wrecks of this system, preparing to take over the station. Bob hadn’t managed to calculate or even estimate the market value of what we had managed to get. Some of these materials were basically priceless. Its crazy they were going to be used as fuel for bombs so weak. Such a waste.

My nano machines were currently working overtime, dismantling the bomb structures and then shielding the radioactive materials while turning that into power. The problem was that this needed a lot of nano machines that we were running low on. My own supplies were basically empty.

Making more would take time, but we were pretty sure we could now fully run the ship silently if needed. That meant we wouldn’t have to use a fusion reaction to power the ship, which would make us infinitely harder to detect.

A few quick calculations showed that we could now make a truly devastating railgun projectile using the higher-ranked materials. That would be a devastating weapon that hopefully we wouldn’t have to use.

We already had the materials needed to change our main railgun so it would also be able to fire hard light, which would be another incredible boost to our combat power. That would have been incredibly helpful in this war for the system. Time was ever cruel to us all.

This displayed version was copied from a chapter the author publishes on the NovelPhoenix site without consent.

Most ships capable of fighting were out there making sure the campers could never rise again. We, on the other hand, had managed to slow down after our attack during the last flyby. Our successful disabling of one of the engines on the Campers' flagship meant that they were now caught in a desperate battle with the Overseer’s navy.

“FH, I want us landed on the station an hour ago. Bob, get the shell over the front of the ship as soon as possible and get the ship fixed from any battle damage that occurred,” I announced to everyone as soon as I entered the command centre.

“Sam, Dean, Lola, we have a mission. As soon as we land, we’ll make contact with Melly and sneak into the place the recon drones found that is the most likely location where they are keeping the ark her people made.”

“We aren’t going in loud?” Sam questioned, a bit of disappointment in his voice.

“Not at the start, and hopefully not at all, but we will have a full complement of our combat forces nearby. I don’t want any surprises, as that individual who seems to be in control of that place… well, something is off with them, and I do not like not knowing.”

“Understood, Captain,” everyone said in near unison.

“A bit off, but good effort,” I said with a smile to cut the tension.

FH was handling communications with the station and the overseer. I nudged her to remember to emphasise that the war wasn’t over yet. If the station remained in lockdown, it would help us with the sneaking-about part.

I myself started to review all the footage our recon drones had been able to capture. The extent of the underground passages on the station was immense. The original ships that made up a large portion of the inner workings of the station no longer had any of their original walls or corridors in place. Everything had been torn out and rebuilt.

Whenever I saw a large data line, there was a small twinge from my inner self, like there was something I was supposed to do with it, but nothing came to mind. It would be idiotic to try to tap into that, as the overseer would most definitely be able to trace it back, and he would definitely not be happy.

We had a bit of goodwill with him thanks to us saving the station, but I was hoping to use that for the inevitable fallout of getting that ark. That drug organisation really did have way too many combat-orientated individuals. Why the overseer allowed them to operate was beyond my understanding.

We landed safely enough, and the first thing I helped do was identify all the battle damage we had received. The outer surface of the ship needed to be immaculate. Anything else would raise our risk of destruction while entering the side dimension.

The damage itself wasn’t too bad and was easily fixed by the drones. Bob already had everything handled, with our production facilities currently being cracked open like eggs so the finished parts of the shell could be taken out and assembled onto the ship.

My expertise was only needed at the very end, and that could be done in a vacuum.

“Captain, I managed to get our forces deployed to help keep the market near the target secured. Reading between the lines of what they are saying, if you or any of our heavier hitters appeared, it would not be appreciated.”

“Not to worry. We will be entering the maintenance tunnels of the station at one of our production facilities. We would only have to surface if something went horribly wrong.”

Sam and Dean got the rest of the forces ready and marching towards the market square. Lola and I suited up as well and used the mayhem of hundreds of drones and huge pieces of the shell moving around to sneak out of the ship and into one of the cracked-open factory buildings.

“Are we all ready?” I asked everyone as we stood above a maintenance hatch that had been cut open.

“Always, Captain,” Dean said. Sam echoed him, and Lola nodded.

One by one, we jumped in, letting the darkness envelop us. All of us were able to see in the dark, but only if there was at least some light. Technically, I could see using echolocation, but I wasn’t that confident in my capability to do so during a critical mission just yet.

We moved as fast as we could while keeping ourselves as silent as possible. The recon drones had done a lot of work figuring out how these maintenance tunnels connected and where they led.

It was a bit awkward moving, as all of us needed to crouch down a bit, Lola the least out of all four of us. As we got closer to our target, I could finally securely connect to the communication device that Bob had delivered to Melly.

“Go to utility closet G85 on subfloor two.” That was the message I sent.

Now all we had to do was hope that she was actually awake. We might not need her to accomplish getting the ark, but hopefully we could get her out of here with us as well. If we didn’t, Bob would never let me live that down.