"What do we do now?" Elena remained speechless as she pondered on their options. "Our only option is to immediately go and destroy that missile base. Isn't that easy to tell?" Jeremy remarked.
"We might get hit from behind by the Northern Crawler forces if we just went ahead and attacked the base." Indra regained his calm as he gave his thoughts. "Then we go after the Northern Crawler."
"You make it sound like taking it down would be easy. At this point, we are faced with two problems and we can't handle any without triggering the other." They all shared their opinions.
With each new comment, a different one would be made to counter its predecessor. They were moving nowhere and their actions were only making things worse for them. The situation was almost hopeless.
"We are handicapped and are facing off against an enemy that doesn't plan on underestimating us. I didn't expect such a development." Elena thought.
Just as their conversation devolved into an argument, things could not get any worse than that, but they did.
***Boom***
The Mammoth rocked from side to side as it experienced a sudden attack. Leah rushed to the Mammoth surveillance settings to find out what had happened while the others remained tense in their position.
"Oh no," Leah interjected. That was not a good sign. "What is it?" "We are surrounded from all sides. Just like the first time."
"Hmm, so that's what the text was delaying us for. This Android bastard is cunning." At this point, most had already made the connection. Their opponent was making use of human delaying tactics and it made for a scary thought.
"How many are there?" "A little over a hundred units." Elena's expression darkened considerably. "We should get out and clear them before the Mammoth is put in danger again."
King gave his honest opinion. Nathan disagreed. "If a missile base were built, then we have to get moving before it's too late."
"Else we risk getting blown up since the Northern Crawler merely has to make us of the Scorpion units to home in on our location." Elena completed his sentence. They shared a look.
She turned away and sighed. Things were slowly becoming too difficult for her to handle. Her 'pretend' mission and she was already subjected to so much. The worst part was that this scenario was merely child's play to what happens below.
Down in the Blue planet, danger lurks at every corner which meant that she had to prepare for worst days ahead. "Nathan prepare to move the Mammoth. Leah, help him out.
"The others should follow me. We need to create a path for Nathan to navigate. We should assume we have only three minutes at most to do something before the enemy releases a missile at us. Understood?"
"Understood." They prepared themselves to head out as they rushed to the weapons vault. It gave Nathan a slight sense of déjà vu as he watched this scene play out before him.
"We should get to work." Leah reminded him as she placed an arm on his shoulder. "I was wondering. Is it possible to hack the missile base and use it in our favor?" Leah shook her head. "The question should be if we would be able to make it close enough for me to hack it."
"Hah, we are honestly fighting a hopeless battle at this point." They remained silent. Their chances of success on the test were becoming bleaker by the second.
***
"Shadow Steps : Swift hack." Victor was forced to use the martial style he had been practicing. One of the few martial styles designated only to the Spy class, he had only been able to learn the first footwork.
Each step was harder than the last. He held his weapon in both hands and took a step forward. He covered a short distance in the blink of an eye before slashing down with both hands.
In front of him was a Scorpion unit. An X was drawn over it as it split apart and exploded. Not only Victor, but all those capable of combat had also engaged the enemy.
This time a bit more organized, they tried to remain as compact as possible to avoid getting separated and overwhelmed by numbers. That would be the worst result, they couldn't afford another loss.
The area around the Mammoth plunged into chaos as Nathan sort to find an opening to escape. He had already activated the shields to avoid the poor ship crashing too quickly.
"Ocean Red style: Mosaic split." Freya's body seemed to glow a dim red as she charged her skill. She pointed at a particular area and everyone made way at that point.
"Hah." She struck forward and a red glint lot at the top of her spear. As the spear got closer to the ground, a force seemed to project from it that blew up a large space in the entrapment formation the Scorpion unit had put them in.
"Go now." The Mammoth moved as fast as it could as it followed the path that Freya had created, losing as much as fifty percent of her tachyon core gauge as a result.
Victor and Tanya moved ahead and ensured that the space did not close immediately while Indra and Elena stayed back to ensure that they were not followed.
Gary stayed with them, providing defense when necessary. The others stayed on either end of the Mammoth to protect from side attacks.
They had only gotten a few meters away when Nathan's voice floated out from the intercom and it was not with any good news. He carried the worst news.
"An ICBM is approaching our location. I give it a little over a minute before it arrives." "Shit, pick up the pace," Elena said as she hacked at the enemy at an increased pace.
The stakes were never within expectations, always one new variable to put them on edge, honestly, it was an annoying concept no one would get used to.
***
/Two hours later/
"Luckily we escaped. That was close." They had hidden in an obscure location in the valley, a little off from the area the western Crawler had used as its base.
The battle with the Scorpion units had drained most of them, thus they tried to regain some strength before the decisive battle against the Northern Crawler.
Elena stayed alone as she pondered on her thoughts while trying to figure out a way to beat the enemy. She had gotten nowhere so far.
Nathan suddenly walked into the stratagem room that she occupied and approached her. "Did something happen?" He shook his head before handing over a piece of scrap metal to her.
"What is this?" "This metal from the ICBM that we escaped from earlier."
She was not exactly intrigued by such a piece of information. "Why are you giving it to me?" "Leah and I ran some tests on this piece and the other piece that had decimated the Western Crawler and we might have made some discoveries."
Now, this was interesting information. "Tell me more." "It has to do with the volume and density of materials used. One thing common about ICBM'S is the insane amount of energy required to fuel just one to max capacity.
"Another thing to think about is the materials out into creating one. Not just any material is strong and tensile enough to resist the heat and pressure applied to it by the energy within.
"Which is why ICBMs are seen as expensive weapons." "Get to the point." Elena did not have the patience to listen to the irrelevant information. Maybe at a different time but currently she was lost and she needed something to work with.
"Oh, sorry. What I'm trying to say is that to create just one Missile, the Northern Crawler must have dedicated a huge amount of resources and they built three, maybe more.
"But I'm willing to bet that there is only one more missile left in its arsenal." Elena's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"It can't afford to focus all its resources on just building nukes. It still has to consider building ground troops and turrets for protection. Now I am forced to believe that it used as much as fifty percent of the resources gotten from the node to work on the missiles while the other fifty percent went into taking care of other matters.
"I and Leah estimated how much it would take to build a single nuke and then contrasted it with the energy node volume that we had received from Tanya on our mission to subjugate the Eastern Crawler and we realized that it would take fifteen percent of the resources gotten from the energy node to barely suffice in the building of a single nuke."