Douglas continued to lean back on the chair and closed his eyes for nearly a minute. After he opened his eyes again, they became firm again. A touch of emotion when he mentioned his daughter completely disappeared. Douglas opened the drawer and took out a brick like phone from the inside. Soon after he pressed a number and called the other side, the call went in. Douglas calmly said,
"Order all fortresses to start and go to their respective positions according to third strategic article. And let them send out all scout units to check out the lands of entire federation to check if something is different. From now on, our aviation and space command office will officially enter the wartime period."
"As you command, Grand Marshal.", in a very scientific looking room, a burly man in the blue standard uniform with four stars on each side of the collar dropped the phone and became solemn looking. He walked out from his office into the big hall full of computers, big monitors and operators. He clapped his hand and shouted, "From now on, all units under the direct order of our fourth highest command office will enter the state of wartime. Inform all major generals under our command to start their fortresses and go to their respective positions according to article three of wartime strategy. And also, let them send out all available units to check out if something went wrong in the territory of our federation. Attack permission is granted for enemy units if they're found intruding into our federation."
Operators were slightly stunned to hear the command but they didn't just pause at there and started to contact the fortresses under their command office urgently.
He walked towards the big screen showing the map of the whole federation and said to the operator sitting in front of it, "Call Major Martin and tell her to start the fort and come to the command room after she finished."
Ten minutes later, a good looking woman in uniform quickly walked into the hall and went straight to the general who was looking at the map of federation carefully. She greeted as she saluted at the same time, "Commander Clude, the fort is ready to take off at any time."
General Clude turned to look at her and smiled, "Well done, Major."
Then, he patted the operator beside them and told him, "Start the gravitational engine and take the fort off the ground after three minutes."
All soldiers and vehicles at the big military base located somewhere in the Washington State with the distance of one kilometer in radius disappeared at one point. They all entered the underground facilities through certain entrances. Then, all the buildings slowly lowered and sank into the ground until they finally disappear. Thick metal doors filled up the original places and formed a smooth metal floor. After a while, the land slightly vibrated and started to rise up from the ground and separated from the nearby land. It turned out that the entire base was a huge metal fortress hiding directly under the ground of military base. It should be even more accurate to say that the entire military base was just the upper surface of the fortress. It is not small. The height has reached nearly four hundred meters which is almost equal to the world's highest building in New York city, the stock exchange tower. It looks like a rectangular shape metal block with smooth surface on a whole. As it separated and rose from the ground, sands and dirt continued to fell off. In just a few minutes, it arrived at Mesosphere and started to stabilize.
The similar scenes are also repeatedly happening in all other states of the federation. At each state, there would be a big fortress slightly smaller than the one in Washington or at the same size took position at the Mesosphere. No more. No less. Exactly 150 big forts are floating above the sky of the United Federation of North and South America States and oversee the lands under them. Various drones and scouting vehicles flew out of the forts and started to check everything on the lands under them.
At the same time, Aryan Empire, Islands Nations Unions, African Tribes Union and United Socialist States Federation are all sending out their elite forces to get ready for way, to protect their lands and to find out what previous super earthquake did. For a while, the whole world has become extremely lively.
No matter what higher ranking people do and think, normal people are still resuming their normal day. The only problem might be the fact that the communication service are down currently for some reasons. However, local government sends out the law enforcers to guard against the civil uprising, criminals who would take advantage of the confusing atmosphere and to calm down the inhabitants. Fortunately, majority of the folks don't even care and started to resume their daily routine tasks. After all, time is money. Since nothing big happened, most of the worrying crowds just returned to their jobs while some of them took a day off to go back to home to accompany their families. As for several men catching their wives in bed with other men, these are unfortunate matters which some men cannot avoid in this open society. At most, the neighbors found out something to gossip in their boring times.
"Are sure that it would work?"
"I don't know. But there is no one out there blocking the road and investigating. So, why don't we give it a try?"
"We don't have armors on us and we will die if we got shot."
"Don't be such a pussy, Ronald. With our strong body, you will not die from being shot by 9mm bullets even if we are ambushed at that toll gate."
"Mark is right. And I don't think they have informed other people about us. Look, no signal! Moreover, do you think someone would ambush us in that half collapsed toll gate? At the worst, just drive into the roadside. We have to find another passable road anyways since the highway road is badly damaged."
It is Peter's seven men squad. They are resting at several hundred meters away from the border toll gate. Mark wanted to directly pass through it as usual. However, other people had some opinions on it. They wanted to take the dirt road route at first but they couldn't make up their mind because they didn't see any cop nor FBI agent near the toll gate. It would be a very risky move. Moreover, it is not that they have to take that road. Although the entire state borderline is guarded with a three meter high iron fence, it is still very easy for them to get through it with their abilities.
This time, they met the tough opponent and realized their strength difference. It was really dangerous. If it wasn't for them to continue the retreat while still wearing heavy armors along the way, they might have been finished by that group of heavily armed soldiers. After losing convenient communication tool, they realized that the armors have a lot of defects which need to be taken care of. As for armor's abilities? They are good; flexible, convenient mobility, and high defense. These three things are the main important abilities for them so they could survive well in the battlefield full of modern firearms.
So, after experiencing the half hour long super earthquake, crowd discussed and finally decided to go back first to stay low profile for a while. After all, who knows if they would be bombed by several bombers directly at the next time since those guys were able to move out a heavily armed soldiers to ambush them ahead or may be secretly trained units. They know that they are still too weak to contend against the big guys. Moreover, who could guarantee that the government don't have transcendence people under their wing. Nevertheless, everyone is slightly happy too. They are happy to be able to come back alive and in intact. They couldn't wait to see their beloved ones.
"I don't think that things are that simple. Haven't you guys noticed the strangeness yet?", said Peter. The crowd looked at him and waited for his explanation. Peter helplessly pointed at the badly damaged highway road and said, "Look! Do you remember the perfectly fine roads in the city? Haven't you found out the problem yet?"
Ronald bite chocolate bar and asked, "What is so special about that? Didn't it get destroyed by the previous super earthquake? Otherwise, do you want to talk about low quality construction?"