Operating at a high velocity, but slow enough to not destroy my body, the carriage would take ten minutes to pass through the factory. At the same time, I am sure that the Intruders have deployed, if not all of their forces residing in the factory dormitory, up to ninety per cent of their forces. The drones and flying units hovering in circles on top of us and the armed Intruders underneath that just wait for us to fall and devour us like fierce predators are closing onto us.
- Mirai, can we deploy our full-scale attack yet?
- Why not? Go ahead!
After getting permission, which I actually do not even need, I open the tablet, scroll through the archive and start spam clicking on the screen.
Above me now, there appear squadrons and squadrons of a variety of aerial units, from the instant use Suicide Drones to the heavier units that provide more powerful support such as Pyro-planes and autonomous jet fighters X128. Upon my press, all of them start firing.
Now, this is a full-scale attack. On the "sky", both theirs and our units are shot down one by one, falling from above like heavy rain, but with metal droplets. Standing firmly on the cart, I spray down the regions below the rail where the Intruders hide with a photon minigun. Black liquid splatters everywhere, tainting the already dusty atmosphere which reeks of toxic gases. Their forces also try to return our attack with waves of projectiles, but most of them are blocked with our bullets and only some barely hit our already shielded cart, leaving almost zero impact.
Despite engaging in head-on attacks, we, fortunately, receive less collateral damage. Most of the units that I can see are already downed, overwhelming the rate that the Intruders send reinforcements from the factory. However, just a bit more awareness of our numbers would be better than mindlessly deploying our units.
The cart goes past the production station and sight-seeing station, quickly passing through the closest point to the factory. While the aerial units and I are still fending off any Intruders trying to approach the cart, Mirai pulls the brake lever. The cart suddenly jolts and stops within a few seconds. The abrupt deceleration almost sends me flying off the cart, if not without the help of my footwear that attaches itself to the ground.
- Hey, at least tell me if you are pulling the brakes!
- OK, sorry. Just get your stuff ready. We will charge into the factory. I will take the lead.
As soon as the cart stops on the rail, we jump off with our weapons ready. We dash forward, towards the factory entrance, dodging the corners and obstacles and killing any Intruders blocking our path. We quickly find an entrance into the factory. Mirai goes forward and kicks the door open.
Of course, the factory operates autonomously, so what is in our sight is just the inanimate machines and devices working to process metal ores and stuff. Mirai opens the factory map from her vision, which also causes the same map to appear on my synchronised spectacles. A green light pins our destination.
- Here is the entrance to their dormitory. Let me open it. - As we find out the lid that acts like a secret door linking the udnerground dorm to the factory facility. Mirai shoots at the door, making it bounce off the floor and slide away.
- Wait a minute... It is strange...
- What is strange? - I ask.
- It does not look like this the last time I came here... - Mirai looks as confused as I am.
Well, it is not like we can withdraw now. Our existence has been fully aware by this sub-division of Intruders at Huntly Mine. If I do not make them fall silent, our very lives are walking on a plank.
We jump onto the hole, into the veil of darkness covering the place that was once familiar to us.
- Wow, this place is huge. - I marvel at the dormitory area.
- If only the interior of the dorm can change, the area should be the same. The door to the "boss" room is very distinctive, and you would immediately realise the moment you see it.
The orientation of the dorm blocks and units obviously looks as if some children are pouring toy blocks randomly on the floor. It is nowhere near the neatness that Mirai described before.
I sense a presence near me. Someone is watching us. I take out a photon magnum pistol and fire a shot into the air...
... which, intentionally, hits a flying drone that is watching us. My instincts have been trained to a point where I can sense if there is a glare at me, either a machine or a creature.
Just kidding. My spectacles register an infrared ray coming from an angle above us. It calculates the intensity of the ray, scans the background intensity and pinpoints the exact coordinates of an invisible, unidentified flying object. Since my back is facing the object, I casually take out a pistol, quickly turn around and shoot the drone with the aim assist function. The invisible barrier of the drone breaks down, making it flick in the air, before finally falling onto the ground.
- Yuusha, behind you! - Mirai shoves me to a side and fires along the lane.
Her few rounds knock down the Intruders behind, who have identified our position and are coming with arguably the rest of the troops available in the factory.
Run.
Due to the seeming randomness of the dorm blocks scattering around, there leave lots of corners. Against the large numbers of chasing Intruders, we run around the corners, peeking, firing and hiding. The corpses of the killed Intruders have stacked up around the dormitory, like little hills, and the numbers may have exceeded the number of units inside, but again, there are zero signs of stopping for these incessant waves of incoming Intruders. They are weak, but their numbers are draining our resources. And most severely...
- Yuusha, we really cannot afford to drag this longer. My battery has fallen below fifty per cent. We need to brute force this.
- OK, just do it. I can buy you some time.
Mirai is opening her tool kit and on her hand, there is a sphere. She squeezes it like a ball. Strong blasts of ultrasound waves spread through the whole dorm, reflecting and echoing through the walls and layers.
- The ultrasound would take some time to map out and find the best route. Now, we try to actively manoeuvre around the map. - Mirai puts the sphere back inside the tool kit.
We flash out of our hiding spot and finish off the few Intruders who are near us and flee away from the spot, near the corners of the dorm. Any wandering Intruders are shot down to clear the path for us. After a minute, my spectacle lights up, showing that a door-like structure is located in an adjacent corner. We push towards the corner with maximum speed, only to find out that nothing is there.
- These irritating crap! The dorm structure changes. At this rate, we just cannot find where the door is. - Mirai bites her fingers.
- Can the sphere be reused?
- Yes, but it is just that there is no use if every time we activate it, the dorm structure changes.
That is all I need to know. I take out the device we have been way too familiar with. After calibrating it to maximum range, I activate it.
Strong and rapid bursts of electromagnetic energy quickly spread through the one-kilometre square facility, immediately shutting down the faint lighting system in an already dim place. I turn on night vision.
- This should be able to disable any kind of electronic mechanism interfering with the dorm respawn. Mirai, the rest is on you.
- Electromagnetic pulse... Brilliant idea!
As soon as the sphere has been squeezed again, ultrasound signals start spreading around the dorm again. After a whole minute of not getting ambushed, maybe due to our pulse also jamming their communication system, and making them unable to exchange information to locate us, a new map has been sketched out. And as if my monthly luck allowance has been spent in this exact one moment...
- Mirai, it works! Now, jump as far as you can into the air. - I take out a rocket launcher.
- Ah, I see where this is going. - Mirai just nods unanimously and changes her agility module setting to maximum.
She grabs me and makes a thrust that pushes us ten to twenty metres into the air, propelling us forward.
- That is the door to the boss room, right? - As we fly through the sky, I point at the large structure whose only function to avoid being detected, evasion, has been rendered useless under our intelligence.
- Yep. Cannot mistake it for any other structures here.
- Then, here we go!
I lock the door as the target with the rocket launcher and press the launch trigger. A thrust rocket is fired, and its momentum sends us even higher up in the air. It collides with the door-like structure and explodes, bringing down at least a radius equivalent to a fifth the size of the whole dorm area.
The alarm is triggered and horn sounds are hooting as loud as loudspeakers next to your ear. However, the door is broken open, and there is no one to stop us anymore. Mirai opens the rear wing of her boots and activates the propellers to redirect both of us. We fly into the darkness that resembles that midnight that I swear to scrap all of our plans and barge into the factory like brainless and hungry dogs.
The mystery of the Huntly Mine, as well as its aluminium supply that is providing the Intruder's force with not less than fifteen per cent of metal supply, I will put an end to it.