Stumbling to his sight port, the only visibility he had left from his craft, Jack watched the colossal beam of light, like pure condensed energy shoot skyward, annihilating everything on its course. Microbombs sparked distantly along its path like fireworks during New Year's Eve, Jack knew exactly what they were, the destruction of arcanite engines. And with the size of these microbombs, he surmised that they were millions of Armatus knights and drones being obliterated by the light of punishment.
Jack couldn't imagine an all-out war between the two empires being orchestrated right in front of his eyes, never in his wild dream, it would be this scale.
He watched from a safe distance, dumbfounded by the overwhelming display of power. It was a force that seemed almost celestial, reminiscent of the gods from ancient myths he had heard as a child. His mind struggled to piece together everything that had transpired in the past fifteen minutes, a chaotic whirlwind of events that defied comprehension.
As the backup power hummed to life, faintly illuminating the scene, his puny bots flickered back to operational status. The sight rekindled his resolve. He knew he had no time to waste; he needed to find his friend before it was too late.
"Setting a shortcut to DebrisX's headquarters on Luna base, sending a distress comm until it reaches them!" He barked orders through voice command. His fingers snapped and motioned inside the mechanical glove controllers, all puny bots resumed their flight pattern and headed straight to the heart of the moon.
"...David?!... David?!" Nothing but dead silence, as dread crept and nested in the corner of his heart. His eyes throbbed and twisted with sheer terror, but he kept them fixed at the light of punishment, it didn't stop there as it swirled and shifted toward the moon.
"How long does the light travel from earth to the moon again?! 1.3 seconds?!" Before he could realise the divine light pierced through the moon like an arrow speared an apple.
The grey rock shook violently and crumbled almost in an instant, its grey infrastructure and buildings wiped out a fraction of a second later.
Suddenly, one of the lights fractured, slithering through the void like a serpent of death. It twisted and turned with malicious precision, zeroing in on his fragile bots. In mere seconds, three of them were annihilated — cleaved and fried to a crisp, their metallic shells glowing red-hot before collapsing into lifeless heaps.
"Activate shield!" He shouted a command as the engine twirled and overloaded like a roaring thunder and then blue translucent layers engulfed all of his crafts like protective shells. Another stray light chased down five more of his commanding drones, he quickly activated evasive maneuvers, but it was too late, they were blasted through and detonated into microbombs.
From Jack's keen observation, the shield took about three to five seconds to penetrate this time. He would need to use this knowledge to his advantage.
The wrath of deadly lights knew no bounds and seemingly had consciousness of their own. Another stray serpent slithered and targeted his primary vessel, the one Jack was piloting.
Luckily, Jack broke away and evaded the killing beam, he hissed air out of his nose in thrill. But it circled back and chased him down like a hungry hound with ever-increasing speed.
"Layer manuveur!" Jack roared and the remaining puny bots piled up and formed a multi-layer of protecting bodies. The light of death clawed its way through all of them, it bit through his primary bot now. Slamming into his craft, it rocked his hall as though two asteroids collided, it jerked him around causing his helmet to ram into the composite dashboard in front of him.
After less than 1 second, Jack was completely blinded by its brightness, he couldn't hear anything except his throbbing heartbeat and his panting. But he knew he was alive, breathing heavily, and bleeding from his head.
Fortunately, all of the protective shields sufficiently absorbed the damage and shredded away until only a fraction of its destructive power stampeded his hall, it crippled his engine whatsoever but he was still alive. After a while, his eyesight returned, stars burned in his retinas along with the smell of burning composite pierced his nostrils.
Before him, the moon — Luna Base, the city of a new civilisation, the culmination of two hundred years of sweat, tears, and effort — crumbled in an instant. Jack's wide eyes were fixated on the moon as it split into two massive halves, debris scattering outward like a cosmic storm. Microbombs exploded in rapid succession, followed by colossal shockwaves, each blast echoing like a final death bell. It was a vision of utter devastation, impossible to imagine. His arms dropped limply to his sides, overwhelmed by desperation and desolation, the weight of the loss pressing down on him like an unbearable, crushing force.
"No one on Luna could have survived that… All is lost, billions of people… gone just like that…" A dark thought hung heavily inside of him.
But before he could ever gather himself up, before he could even process things, the large debris suddenly crashed into his vessel, rocking his entire cockpit. His body was thrown by the kinetic force and slammed into a solid console, creating a loud meaty thud.
Then nothing but darkness… as everything faded.