A USAF Major tasked with a mission to lead a special group of inexperienced young officers in finding out an extraterrestrial incident in the northernmost part of the world….
And when he finally reached to the very core of everything that had caused it, he found out that the true enemy was his own comrade all along!
Great… what a story!
Rushing out of the voyager through the rear hatch where I had entered from earlier, I could not shake that thought for even a little. For I had entered my true enemy's trap twice and would already be dead if it had not been for the assistance of the living creatures from out there….
My head could not think straight!
A feeling of shame, confused, and betrayed. Every single of them combined inside my brain!
No! That is not what is most important now!
The most important thing right now, is the safety of Alek and Takeshi!
Back outside again to the permafrost surface of the island, I finally began to see a couple of silhouettes in the horizon. The ground blizzard was happening again, but I did not mistake those silhouettes to be Alek's and Takeshi's.
They were both in a position of half seated, leaning against a large rock which had a curve that covered their heads from the snows blown by the blizzard wind.
Also, they still had their body armors with them….
That snapping turtle behemoth really did not kill them both then?!
Instead, it saved them from falling down to their deaths!
"Alek! Takeshi!" I rushed to the rock they were leaning against.
"Ngh… Mayor…." Alek slowly opened his eyes.
"Thank goodness… you are back. And Takeshi too…" I was relieved beyond words could describe, at the very least that turtle behemoth indeed did not kill them both.
Both of them seemed to be full of bruises, and their armors had been dent pretty seriously too like they had been falling from a cliff.
Well, they had been falling of off a similar place after all….
"Mayor… there is something you need to know…." Alek still struggled to get his full consciousness back.
"That… snapping turtle monster…. It was the one who saved me from falling further down to the abyss."
So, Alek was still awake when it all happened….
"Takeshi… Ngh!" Alek tried to wake him up too.
"He took the fall pretty badly… I saw it with my own eyes…."
That snapping turtle behemoth must have first saved Alek from the fall when we had been running away from it.
Then, while he was no longer fully conscious because of the injuries he had endured during the fall, he was left at a spot not too far from where the rest of us had fallen shortly after that.
That was when he saw us, and particularly Takeshi falling down before he was also saved by the same creature.
Since Alek did not say anything about me, I could only assume that he passed out right after witnessing the creature saving his partner from falling to his death. With that, I knew right then that I was actually the lucky one to only fall from a shorter distance.
But if that is the case, then where the hell are Yeon and Derek?!
If that turtle behemoth only saved Alek and Takeshi, then Yeon and Derek must have been left on their own….
And they must have survived somehow, but where are they now?
"Mayor… it is-"
"Where the hell have you been, Jon?" A very familiar voice called out to me right from my behind.
Slowly turning around to make sure who it was, I realized that just earlier Alek pointed his hand to the direction behind me to try and tell me that someone we knew was approaching me.
It was none other than Yeon, together with Derek….
They looked pretty much in mess just like the rest of us….
"I could ask the same to you too, Yeon…." I tried to respond him in a relatively safe way.
Or at least that was what I hoped for….
"Huh… funny. I was thinking that maybe you three were already dead until just now." He sounded to be out of breath, either because he was tired or becoming impatient of something.
Right after that… we just stared at each other. His unblinking sight started a strange tension between us….
And Derek did not help with anything either….
"What is with that look?" Yeon raised his voice a little.
I have to say something else!
"How did you survive the fall?" I tried to put on another topic.
"How about you?" He tilted his head a little, as if mocking me for my terrible attempt at changing the subject
"I was lucky enough to fall down to another cave not too high from where we had been." I responded right away.
"Well, lucky for you." He only scoffed.
"Me and him fell down hard to a river and washed away out to the shore not too far from this spot."
I knew right then that he was not in the mood for such talks….
Okay, last chance….
"Look, we need to go back to the base and regroup with everyone else to-"
"Just drop the bullshit, Jon." Yeon cut me short.
Well, that took some time before you finally begin to show your true color….
"You know where the comets or meteors or whatever they are, do not you?" He jumped right to the point.
I could only stare at him, still determining on how to respond….
"So why do not we hurry and just get this all over with-"
"NO!" Alek suddenly stood up and reached out his hand towards me.
But Yeon suddenly pulled out his handgun, which turned out to be not our standard issued Tokarev TT-33. Instead, it was an AMT Auto Mag chambered in .44 Magnum, and he fired it straight to Alek's chest!
"Aargh!!" Alek screamed in pain as he quickly fell down.
"ALEK!!" I immediately held him from falling down.
Thank goodness he is still alive! But even though he was wearing the armor, the blow from the magnum must have broken at least one of his ribcage!
I could only put Alek down on the ground gently as he became unconscious again….
"Tch. Dammit, I should have blown his head clean off when I found him earlier…." Yeon now pointed his magnum handgun to me.
The alien voyager commander was right all along! It was actually between us humans ourselves that had been trying to kill each other!
"I take it that you have already known everything that has been going on before we meet up again here?" I tried to make sure.
"You mean that friendly conversation you have with that alien leader? Yes, I do." He tightened his grip on his handgun.
It was not that surprising anymore that Yeon had somehow put some sort of a tracking or bugging device within me. Recalling various things that had happened before we drove off from the base by truck, I believed I could confirm something else.
"And the bugging device that you planted in me?" I squinted my eyes a little.
"Why do you think I agreed right away on us taking the broken compasses, Jon?" Yeon chuckled while still pointing his handgun at me.
I knew it!
Taking out the broken compass, it indeed was still rotating violently even though the sky was not red anymore, meaning that even though the magnetic field effect from the asteroid had been turned off by the aliens, the compass itself had indeed being truly broken from the start.
It was not a compass, it was a spying device disguised as a broken compass! Yeon and his unit had been planning to kill me from the start instead of planning to eliminate the terror in order to fix the abnormal magnetic field!
I immediately crunched my hand hard that the device bent and broke right away, before tossing it down right in front of Yeon's feet.
"What is it that you and your unit are actually planning, Yeon?" I clenched my fists.
"Heh… to think that you would be interested in my motive." Yeon began to explain.
The real reason for North Korea to send their selected brilliant and promising officers to join E.X.T.I.R.T was not only to provide them with the adequate preparation should an extraterrestrial terror were to happen on their country, but to also find a way if they could harness the extraterrestrial technology for themselves.
The beam rifle and beam spear, for instance. Not a single country in the world could understand yet the concept of how it could work so efficiently in storing and concentrating harvested solar energy into laser-like projectiles on such small sizes.
The applications varied, but mainly it grabbed the interest of their military, particularly the Korean People's Army Air and Anti-Air Force because of its huge potential to be used as more or less like a Direct Energy Weapon to strike any place on Earth, without any worries for nuclear radiations.
They had been looking for a replacement for nuclear missile, and the Direct Energy Weapon is exactly the perfect candidate for it.
And now, with Yeon knowing that there was actually more that could be gained from the whole operation, he set his eyes not to the beam rifles, or the beam spears….
But to the magnetic field-disrupting asteroid instead….
"Imagine… with that thing activated whenever I fly my stealth jet, I can just fly past the enemies and just blow them up with no worries of getting any counterattack, because my enemies are too busy vomiting and hallucinating." Yeon boasted what he visioned.
"Are you saying that the North Koreans are planning on a full scale invasion?" I tried to get any implicit messages.
"Ha! Well, I will leave that to your own thoughts." He took a step closer to me.
"Hell… maybe even I could just walk past them and take them down one by one as long as the disruption is still in effect."
He despised me for not sharing his vision of taking and exploiting the advantage of a whole more advanced technology that would definitely boost both offense and defence capability of any military in the world, which was something that even Derek could relate.
"Really? Derek?" I turned to his officer.
"I suppose there will always be a junior officer that does not share the same vision and mission with their General after all."
"First of all, Major," Derek cleared his throat,
"Lieutenant General Uriel Diatrich is not my Commanding Officer. Secondly, my own forces have their own agenda and opinion on how to handle such meticulous technology. So of course, naturally countless considerations and debates will take place for who knows how long."
So even the German Armed Forces too had their internal differences regarding how to handle the extraterrestrial technologies should they get their hands on one….
Things became far more complicated this way….
But one thing for sure; I have to stop these men here!
"Rrgh!" Alek groaned, trying to get up on his feet again.
"Again? Let me just off this simple-"
In such a short time, I quickly took out my handgun and fired a round straight to Derek's head before he could do it to Alek!
But… I was too late on one thing….
Yeon also fired his magnum handgun!
"HARGH!!" I suddenly lost my balance and fell hard to the ground, facing up.
I was not fast enough to dodge his shot. It did not hit the man I protected behind me, but as a result I lost something else….
Yeon… shot me right to my left eye….
"What a waste…" said Yeon, from the distance.
"Looks like I really have no choice but to call the entire force after all."
The entire force?
Does he mean he is going to call his North Korean Air Force Unit all the way here?!
I… cannot move… at all!
Apparently, he thought that his shot had me dead already. Leaving the three of us alone to freeze to death, I could hear Yeon's footsteps quickly faded away as the ground blizzard got worsened.
Is this it? This is where I will have my demise…?
Quickly losing my consciousness, I could not even tell anymore whether I was already dead or still just hanging in there….
I… urgh… why is everything suddenly go dark…?!