"Jon, about what you said to-" Ryan asked Jonathan, before he cut-off his sentences.
"Do not… talk about it right now…" Jonathan responded, still seemed to be irritated for a reason yet to be found out as he ascended the staircase quickly.
Ryan stopped his steps until I caught up with him while Jonathan did not seem to care much since he kept on ascending the stairs swiftly. When I reached him, he gave me a giving-up look on his face as he continued to ascend the stairs again. That being said, I kept on wondering on what Jonathan and Captain Quentin seemed to be arguing about earlier, as none other among the rest of us obviously did not understand even a little about it.
The three of us spent our time ascending the stairs with a solid dull and awkward atmosphere around us, without any words spoken, and not even a cough or a wheezing fatigue sound. Apparently, at that rate every of us were just too hesitant to speak out any words. With that in mind, I also wondered if the other three were doing fine without any uncomfortable atmosphere around them back at the second floor.
To be honest, I could not really keep up with Jonathan's quick steps as I had to constantly look at where I was stepping at, with the help of Ryan's flashlight obviously since the guiding purple lights were no longer turned on. It was completely different than when the mothership had not blacked out. I also came to realize that the cold autumn wind that had been blowing before could no longer be felt either.
Nevertheless, personally I believed it was indeed better that way if it would mean that none of us had any serious drawbacks with the blackout. When I came to again, I got to see Jonathan stopped ascending the stairs and seemed to be on alert about something, making both Ryan and me to do the same.
"Is something wrong?" I asked him.
Jonathan did not give any response right away, but just then he signaled both of us to stay still at the staircase, while he slowly continued to ascend it, before I could no longer see him as he kept on going up. Fortunately, we only waited for quite a short while before his head popped up right above us and signaled us again that it seemed to be safe.
As soon as the two of us had reached the third floor, I immediately realized that it had a totally different layout compared to the previous floors. The first thing that I noticed based on how Ryan's flashlight illuminated some little parts of the floor, was that it most likely to be the hangar for all of the aliens' aircrafts.
I could clearly see the octagonal shape of the whole floor, as Ryan kept on lighting the whole floor. As far as I could see, there were only seven T-shaped aircraft idling and lined neatly on both at the end of our right and left side ends – four were lined on our left side end, and the rest three were lined on our right side end. All seven of them were facing towards the wall, and it was also at that time that I could determine the rough calculation of their sizes.
From the head to its tail, the T-shaped aircrafts seemed to have the length of around twenty nine to thirty feet. I did not approach any of the aircrafts closer, but if I was to assume that the height of the third floor was sixty feet, than perhaps the height of the aircraft was close to or a bit more than ten feet.
As for the width, I only glanced at the cockpit for a while, which was obviously significantly smaller than the narwhal aircraft's, and I assumed that it was around twelve feet based on my rough comparison to its length. Their wingspans were probably around twenty four feet.
The next thing that I attempted to look at in more details was the overall shape of the third floor itself. Since it was the only floor where there were absolutely no other walls or corridors whatsoever dividing it into several areas, I had a very strong feeling that the rest of the other floors also had the very same basic structure.
As Ryan still lighted our surroundings from near the staircase, I forced myself to approach one of the octagonal sides so that I could roughly estimate the length. I kept on approaching the large gigantic diagonal wall right in front of me until I was only about ten feet away from it, before I began to walk beside it rather quickly and could finally be quite sure that it was about 180 feet in length.
I recalled about a quick method in estimating the diameter of an octagon once we knew its side length, to which I utilized it and according to the same method, the diameter of the whole mothership structure was roughly 435 feet. Once I found out about it, I told both Jonathan and Ryan on what I had just known and as expected, it put them quite jumped just as they heard it.
"435 feet? What the hell?" Ryan asked me in complete disbelief as he had his eyes bugged out.
"Hey, it is just a rough calculation based on a quick count…" Jonathan responded, with a little hint of annoyed in his tone, "Although I have to admit I did not expect it to be that large…"
"So, you do believe the size?" I replied to Jonathan by asking, as I turned to him.
"Nothing seems to surprise me much anymore at this point…" Jonathan answered, "but that does not mean that I have to expect literally anything, right?" as he seemed to confirm his disbelief as well.
When he had finished talking, he had his attention locked at the sides of the octagonal structures. He asked me if I noticed that the wall I had just approached seemed to be some kind of a very large-sized hatch, in a closed position. He also mentioned that the same goes for the rest of the other three sides, while the other four seemed to have two accesses, also seemed to be in closed positions, strongly suggesting that the third floor was also the main access to enter the mothership.
Jonathan then asked me if back at the second floor inside the weapon storage area, there was any other details displayed there aside from the power status of the mothership. I responded that I could not recall any, until I suddenly remembered that I had not told both Jonathan and Ryan that the display seem to show one block of trapezium, three blocks of rectangles, and one more block of trapezium with a triangle on top of it, before there was also a large circle above the triangle. I told both of them about it right away, as I apologized right after it.
At first, Jonathan muttered the word 'trapeziums and rectangles' twice, before he suddenly realized that it meant the mothership had five floors, including the two basement floors, as well as a peak displayed as a triangle. Ryan asked him about it, to which he responded that by knowing the amount of floors inside the mothership, we could have a rough estimation on how many aliens were still alive inside the motherhsip, or even the whole numbers of the remaining aliens.
He continued by saying that we had taken down about fifty aliens during the night where we lured them into our concrete jungle. Then, we had also taken down fifteen more when we were hijacking the narwhal aircraft on the same night. Ryan then continued that during the ambush at the hideout, we had at least took down ten aliens, including the ones inside the three T-shaped aircrafts, as well as bringing another four their demise inside the museum.
I also recalled that I took down one during the first night in the sewers, as well as another when we were at the basement boiler. As an addition, I also reminded them that Jonathan had taken down one T-shaped aircraft back on the first night with his anti-tank rifle, and since each of that aircraft must have at least five aliens inside including the pilot, that would mean another five had been taken down on that night.
Since the three of them had taken down at least thirty aliens inside each of their own resting chambers earlier, and if we were to not include any other variants casualties, then it would mean that we had taken down at least 116 aliens thus far. I told both of them about the numbers, and Jonathan was the one to give his respond immediately.
"That would pretty much explain the remaining aircrafts here…" Jonathan said.
"Because it means that there are around 35 to 40 aliens left here?" I asked him, making sure.
"No. Most of these aircrafts are merely reserves…" Jonathan responded, as he seemed to be a little more relieved then.
Jonathan told me that even though there were so many resting chambers each with one alien inside at the first basement floor, many more of them seemed to be unoccupied, which then suggested that either most of them had been taken down outside on the town, or were on the upper floors. Since the third floor was the only floor left before the peak, then it would most likely mean that many numbers of the aliens had met their demise in the first place.
Of course, it was unless they were all gathered on the peak which was a very slim possibility. He also mentioned that while he had not counted the exact amounts of the resting chambers, he was completely sure that they were more than 110, but did not exceed 130 chambers. Therefore, if we were to assume that all of the aliens had their own resting chambers, there were only fourteen of them left, again excluding the other variants.
"Wait, whoa…" Ryan muttered as his face suddenly turned happy, "That is good news for us and the others, right?"
"Apparently, yes…" Jonathan nodded once, "but we will not know for sure until we find out what is on the peak…" as he pointed his finger up.
"Okay, do you have any suggestions on what we should do next?" I asked him right away, as he began to look at each of the aircrafts more thoroughly.
"If they really are locking themselves up there to avoid us, then we will force them to get down here." Jonathan responded, just as he began to approach one of the aircrafts, and aimed his rifle.
'ZTOOM'
In an instant, one of the aircraft exploded just as Jonathan shot one round towards one of its turbine-engine weapon just below its wing, destroying it very quickly in the process while the raging flames illuminated some parts of the whole third floor. He then proceeded to destroy another, and it was not until he destroyed the third one before Ryan began to question the reason behind his actions.
"What are you trying to do?!" Ryan asked Jonathan as he began to aim for the fourth aircraft.
"We had turned off their whole power system, right?! They most likely knew by then that they are all in great danger and locked themselves up there and waited for the right time to escape! Now imagine if all of their means of escaping are all cut off! What else can they do?!" Jonathan explained to Ryan, a little bit yelling since it was very noisy with him destroying the fourth and the fifth aircraft.
Finally, after the sixth and the seventh aircraft had been destroyed, the whole third floor was pretty much illuminated enough that Ryan would no longer need his flashlight to see through the darkness. As the raging flames still lived on, Jonathan opened up his backpack and loaded seven rounds into his rifle magazine.
"And now, we only have to wait for the rest of them to come down…" I said, as I readied my submachine gun and Ryan standing by with Captain Quentin's shotgun.
In a very short while later, faint footsteps could be heard rushing down from the staircase. Both Ryan and I told Jonathan to best conserve his ammunition while we took down the remaining alien. The two of us took position where it was best to attack the descending aliens, right before three figures seen rushing down the staircase without carrying anything.
We quickly opened fire at them, and it did not even cost me half of my magazine capacity before all three of them were taken down. Apparently those three aliens were the weaker, maintenance specialist counterpart that lacked combat skills.
"Wait. Did not you say you had killed those things at the second floor too?" Ryan asked me, as we approached Jonathan again.
"Yes, four of them. Why?" I responded to him, asking him back in the end.
"Jon?" Ryan turned to Jonathan as we began to ascend the stairs again.
"Keep your guards up. Our best bet is that their trump card shit inside that large tube is the only one of their kind left now. Worst case scenario, some of them still waiting for us upstairs…" Jonathan replied to Ryan, as we stepped over the three lifeless alien bodies on the stair steps one by one.
As we continued ascending the staircase, Jonathan suddenly asked on how many ammunition rounds that we had left inside our backpacks. The two of us checked inside immediately, and quick counted the amount of rounds left inside. I told him that I had no more than 40 bullets of .45 ACP rounds left and could even be less, while Ryan said that he had about 30 bullets of 9mm rounds left inside his backpack.
Jonathan told us that he had approximately 20 bullets of 30.06 rounds left inside his backpack, an amount he admitted to be just barely enough to counter the reserved alien inside the tube should it suddenly go after us later on. Just as he had mentioned that thing to us, I felt like a little bit of a lump had grown back inside my stomach, perhaps my anxiety that was suddenly built up after realizing that we were not yet completely safe.
After some rather long while of ascending, we seemed to have reached the end of the staircase since I could not see any remaining stair steps above me. Just like earlier, Jonathan signaled both Ryan and I to stay at the staircase first to make sure the safety of the surface before he returned to us and gave the clear confirmation.
When I stepped at the peak, I realized how less spacious the peak was compared to the previous floors. Perhaps it was due to all of the diagonal walls, shaping it like a pyramid if looked from the outside that made the whole area of it would be far less than the other floors in the first place. There was nothing else of particular unusual on the peak, except for the fact that all of the control panels there seemed to still be working despite the complete blackout of the whole mothership.
There were four control panels located in four different sides at the peak, with each of them never directly neighbored another one. To put it simply, if I were to describe the locations of the control panels by using the compass, the North, East, South, and West side of the peak had a control panel each, while the Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest did not have any control panel.
"Seems they are running in emergency mode…" I said, as I pointed at one of the control panels.
"Let us find out…" Jonathan responded, as he borrowed Captain's Quentin shotgun from Ryan and aimed it towards the nearest control panel with his left hand.
'BANG'
In almost an immediate, the very same control panel burst out some purple sparks, but not to the point that it exploded before it was finally engulfed in flame. Jonathan then proceeded to destroy the second and third one before the shotgun turned out to be already empty. Ryan interrupted, and said that he would destroy the fourth panel as he aimed Captain Quentin's handgun towards the last control panel.
'BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM'
With all of the control panels destroyed, Jonathan returned the shotgun to Ryan. However, all of a sudden, a mechanical sound was heard from the top of the peak. The three of us had our attention locked at the very same point, and it was finally revealed that the pyramidal walls had begun to open slowly, in a similar manner to a flower blooming in the morning and emitted out white lights upwards. As the walls were opening, the night sky outside began to reveal itself again, and when they had finally opened up completely, there were absolutely nothing covering the peak of the mothership anymore.
"It is almost dawn…" Jonathan said.
"Is it me, or does the sky seemed to be less foggy again now?" Ryan asked to both Jonathan and I.
"I would not be surprised if it does. The remaining large aircrafts on the town have probably stopped functioning since we had shut down the power system of the mothership…" Jonathan replied.
Very shortly after, I could hear a sudden and rapid footsteps noise coming from below the staircases. The three of us immediately took aim with our firearms, when it turned out that the footsteps were coming from the rest of the other three all along.
"What is wrong?" Ryan asked, as he rushed towards the heavily panting Kyle.
"That… big thing…" Kyle said, barely with any breaths left inside her, "is coming for us…"
In almost an instant, another mechanical sound was heard from below the staircase as well, making both Della and Kyle panicked. Apparently, Ryan somehow realized that whatever it was that was pursuing them were about to come to the peak of the mothership, and so he threw all of Captain Quentin's firearms back to him, who ended up barely managed to reload both of his firearms right before the thing that had chased them arrived.
"So… this is their trump card shit, huh…" Jonathan said, as he clenched his teeth and aimed his rifle towards the behemoth.
Ryan, Captain Quentin, and I followed what Jonathan did right away. I felt a sudden tension and hard heart beating inside me as I realized that our very own survivals would be determined by the fight that was about to follow…