((I feel that there is going to be one more roll... and I fear that roll. I really, really do. Because that last roll is the that will decide whether the bombs fell in time, or too late.))
The black die will get you all, some day. But perhaps today isn't that day. Perhaps.
The team gathers together in the cockpit of the freighter; it's not much more than a small, almost disappointingly bland room deep in the guts of the ship, with large video screens and several terminals arranged around the circumference. Konrad sits in the captain's chair and initiates an emergency take off, overriding the half dozen safety warnings that plaster themselves across the display screen. The ship groans, engines roaring to full from a cold stop, manipulators clicking on and tearing the mass out of the vessel while leaving the matter unchanged, and the support cradle half retracts, half tears apart as the ship ascends out of it. Slowly, and with great effort, the ship climbs towards the clouds. The gravity manipulators keep the team's feet planted firmly to the deck as the external camera footage rotates towards the vertical. In the distance, the massive amp overload has finally died down and has been replaced by nothing but a great crater and the circular lattice of black rods. The lattice is rotating, spinning at high speeds. It's so fast that they can't see anything but a vague blur; considering the size it must be moving several times the speed of sound.
White electrical discharge leaps from the spinning lattice, arcing out like lighting to the ground. In the center of the blur a small point of black appears. It grows, expanding into a sphere, a floating drop of ink that ripples and flows in a haze of lighting and white fire. The droplet falls upward, disappearing into the clouds above. A shockwave rolls out across the sky; The clouds blacken, like water stained with black dye, and transform. The sky becomes a black sea of iridescent oil, flowing and roiling, waves breaking against nothing and spraying jetsam of twitching shadow. Down through this sea emerges a half dozen falling stars; the burning engines of enormous bombs streaking down towards the surface of the planet. And behind them, rising like a new island out of the inverted sea, is the slowly spinning form of the Black Pyramid, wreathed in flame and thunder. The ground beneath it burns black and disintegrates , a shockwave of dissolving reality spreading out around it. The bombs strike the surface and the side monitors become nothing but a blinding white. The front monitor shows nothing but the black, liquid, alien sky; a black sea they are diving head long into. It grows closer. The black waves reach for them. The surf swirls. Deep within, they can see something: swollen red points of light, dying suns, crimson glowing luminescence, molten flows of magma. The heart of a god which does not care, the gaze of an eye which does not even see them.
They disappear within.
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Topic: Mission 21: Uncanny Valley (Read 47151 times)