Chapter 6: Angel Attack

Chapter 6: Angel Attack

Death was a distant memory for humanity, conquered long before their transformation into Angels. Their descendants had only perfected immortality further, turning death into little more than an inconvenience.

Golden particles coalesced in the center of the Revelation 228-9's sanctuary. They spun and wove together, forming sinew, bone, and flesh from pure light. Lucifel's body materialized above the altar, suspended momentarily before settling gently onto the cold marble surface. Her chest heaved with a sudden, violent intake of breath.

The Birthing Cloud completed its work and retreated into the Battle Mantle's systems, leaving Lucifel naked and trembling on the altar. Her golden eyes snapped open, pupils dilating as consciousness returned in a disorienting rush. She grasped the edge of the altar, steadying herself against the vertigo that always accompanied resurrection.

"Damn it," she whispered, her voice echoing through the impossible space.

The interior of the Battle Mantle defied physical constraints. Though the mech stood only twelve stories tall from the outside, its interior stretched like a vast cathedral. Vaulted ceilings soared hundreds of feet overhead, adorned with intricate frescos depicting the fall of Earth. Stained glass windows lined the walls, each pane filtering ethereal light through scenes of humanity's exodus to the stars. A rich crimson carpet extended from the altar down the central nave, its deep red reminiscent of freshly spilled blood.

Lucifel sat up, examining her new body. Her fingers traced the locations where bullets had torn through her previous form. The skin was unmarred, perfect. She flexed her muscles, testing each system methodically.

"Physical reconstitution complete," she muttered. "Memory intact."

The phantom pain of her death lingered like a bad dream. No matter how many times she experienced resurrection, the sensation of dying never grew easier to bear. Each death left its own psychological scar, invisible but ever-present.

She slid off the altar, her bare feet touching the cool marble floor. With a thought, she activated her Halo. Golden light shimmered around her head momentarily before spreading downward, weaving a sleek bodysuit over her form. The mesh material adhered to her skin like a second layer, providing protection while maintaining full mobility.

Lucifel approached the altar again, placing both palms flat against its surface. She closed her eyes and sent a pulse of consciousness into the Battle Mantle's systems.

"Revelation 228-9, awaken."

The cathedral interior hummed with energy. Lights flickered along the walls as dormant systems reactivated. The stained glass windows brightened, their colors intensifying as power flowed through the Battle Mantle's circuits.

***

Deep within the forest, an unusually tall pine tree shuddered. The bark rippled, the illusion dissolving as the shroud protocol disengaged. Quantum White emerged beneath the camouflage, revealing the true form of Revelation 228-9. The Battle Mantle stood impossibly tall against the surrounding trees, its marble-like surface gleaming even in the dim light of night.

The statue's serene face tilted skyward, eyes closed but all-seeing. Massive wings, previously folded against its back, unfurled with a sound like thunder. Each feather, though carved from seemingly solid material, moved with organic fluidity.

"Let thy holy name be praised," Lucifel whispered from within the sanctuary. "Commencing operation."

The Battle Mantle's systems responded to her will. Its wings swept upwards, an invisible force gathering within the marble feathers. The forest floor cracked beneath the unknown pressure, trees bending outward from the epicenter.

Suddenly, ignition.

The Battle Mantle launched skyward with catastrophic force. The blast wave flattened trees for a quarter mile in every direction, transforming the once-dense forest into a perfect circle of devastation. Splinters and debris shot outward like shrapnel, while a column of dust and broken vegetation spiraled in the mech's wake.

Revelation 228-9 ascended rapidly, punching through cloud cover and into the thin upper atmosphere. Lucifel felt the Battle Mantle's sensors mapping the terrain below, correlating it with the stolen intelligence. She banked the massive form southward, the wings adjusting their configuration for maximum speed.

She sensed something fast approaching.

Three Lightwing AF-17 fighters appeared on her tactical display, scrambling from a nearby airbase. Their afterburners glowed hot as they strained to intercept.

Lucifel was still connected to the Ghamorran military systems. She thus heard the pilots' chatter as their primitive vehicles chased her.

"It's an Angel!" One of the panicked pilots shouted. "CC6, do you copy? It's an angel!"

"Understood," the command center responded, the man's voice calm unlike the pilot. "You are free to engage."

"Pathetic," Lucifel sneered.

She pushed the Battle Mantle faster, leaving the fighters behind as if they were standing still. The sleek jets fired missiles that tracked briefly before losing lock and spiraling harmlessly into the clouds below. Within moments, the Lightwings were specks on her rear sensors.

The landscape below transformed from forest to scrubland, then to barren desert. Sector 97 lay hidden beneath this wasteland; it was Project Diaspora's beating heart. To ordinary observers, nothing distinguished this patch of desert from any other, but Lucifel's enhanced sensors detected the subtle electromagnetic signatures of a massive underground complex.

"Found you," she whispered.

Revelation 228-9 tucked its wings and plummeted. The Battle Mantle struck the desert floor at terminal velocity, impacting what appeared to be ordinary sand. The camouflaged surface shattered on impact, revealing reinforced metal doors, the hidden entrance large enough to accommodate heavy vehicles.

The Battle Mantle's fist closed around the edge of one massive door, fingers digging into the metal like it was clay. With a single wrenching motion, Lucifel tore the door from its frame. The second door followed, both tossed aside like discarded toys.

Alarms wailed as she stepped into the cavernous facility. Emergency lights flashed, bathing the interior in alternating red and shadow. Ten MOP-10 battlemechs stood in defensive formation, their weapons already tracking her movement.

"Intruder, you have entered a restricted military installation," a voice boomed over loudspeakers. "Stand down immediately or—"

The MOP-10s opened fire before the warning finished. Heavy caliber rounds from their machine guns struck the Battle Mantle's surface, creating a deafening cacophony of ricochets. Missiles followed, detonating against her chest and shoulders in rapid succession.

"Is target down?" The lead mech asked through comms. "Do you have a visual?"

"Negative," another mech pilot replied.

When the smoke cleared, Revelation 228-9 stood unmarked, not even a scratch on its Quantum White surface.

"Shit!" One of the pilots shouted as he began to rearm his missiles.

"Let Your word be my sword," Lucifel said.

She extended the Battle Mantle's right hand. Golden light coalesced, forming a massive helic sword. It was ornate, its hilt gold, and the blade white silver. Suddenly, the sword hummed, vibrating at a frequency that made the air around it shimmer. The blade ignited, wreathed in fire.

Lucifel lunged forward with impossible speed for something so large. The sword swept through the air in a horizontal arc, slicing through three MOP-10s simultaneously. The fiery blade passed through armor plating, internal systems, and pilots as if they were made of paper.

"Oh God! It cut through the—" A pilot's scream cut short as his mech split in half, fuel cells rupturing in a violent explosion.

The remaining MOP-10s backpedaled, still firing desperately. Lucifel advanced methodically, the Battle Mantle's movements graceful despite its size. Another swing of her blade removed the legs from two more mechs. A third thrust pierced the cockpit of another, the pilot's final moments broadcast over the secure comms channel.

In less than thirty seconds, all ten battlemechs lay in ruins, with smoking, twisted metal scattered across the hangar floor. The command center desperately asked for their status, hoping desperately that some of them had survived. None replied.

Lucifel turned toward the interior doorway, a massive corridor leading deeper into the facility. Emergency blast doors began closing, meter-thick slabs of reinforced steel designed to contain catastrophic events.

She walked forward unhurried, the helic sword slicing through each barrier as easily as the open air. Molten metal dripped from the clean cuts, leaving glowing orange trails on the concrete floor.

Lucifel, through her connection to the military systems, heard the command center panicking, shouting for complete lockdown and sending desperate requests for aid to the outside. She could have hacked into the system further, to shut down communications and prevent reinforcements from arriving. But there was no need; nothing on this planet could stand up to an Angel's might.

Deeper into the complex, more defenders awaited. Additional MOP-10s emerged from side chambers, accompanied by low-profile tanks that fired armor-piercing shells. The projectiles bounced harmlessly off the Battle Mantle's surface.

"Your sins shall not be forgiven," Lucifel broadcast on all frequencies as she cut down the defenders.

The Battle Mantle moved deeper into the labyrinth of metal corridors and concrete chambers, descending level by level toward the heart of Project Diaspora. Each new defense proved as ineffective as the last: shells, missiles, and even primitive energy weapons leaving not even a mark on the Quantum White surface.

Behind her, Lucifel left only destruction; the broken remains of Ghamorr's finest weapons and the bodies of those who operated them.

The corridor widened into a vast underground chamber, the ceiling so high it disappeared into darkness. Lucifel paused at the threshold, her Battle Mantle's sensors registering the immense space ahead. Before her stretched a chasm that cut across the entire chamber, its bottom lost in shadow. No ordinary pit, this was a deliberate design; a last defensive measure to protect what rose from its center.

A colossal pillar of obsidian black metal ascended from the abyss, its surface etched with complex geometric patterns that pulsed with violet light. The symbols shifted and flowed like liquid mathematics, equations solving and reforming in endless permutations. Even from this distance, the air around the structure seemed to warp and bend, reality itself distorted by its presence.

"Godless filth," Lucifel snarled, her voice echoing through Revelation 228-9's sanctuary.

Recognition burned through her like acid. This was no Ghamorran creation. The dimensional wave generator was unmistakably Godless technology, the same cursed civilization that had destroyed Earth. The Angels' reprisal had obliterated the Godless utterly, erasing even their planets from existence. Yet somehow, this artifact remained.

"So this is how you accomplished your escape," she whispered. "Scavengers. Thieves. Using the technology of your dead allies."

The violet symbols pulsed faster as if responding to her presence. Technicians scattered on observation platforms surrounding the pillar, abandoning workstations as they fled deeper into the facility. Automated defense turrets emerged from hidden compartments along the chasm walls, tracking the Battle Mantle's position.

Lucifel ignored them. Her focus remained fixed on the Godless artifact.

Revelation 228-9's magnificent wings unfurled to their full span, each feather of Quantum White gleaming with inner light. The Battle Mantle lifted from the ground, hovering effortlessly despite its massive size. She glided across the chasm, the wings beating slowly, each movement precise and deliberate.

Defense turrets opened fire, their shells and energy beams dissipating harmlessly against the Battle Mantle's surface. Lucifel paid them no attention as she positioned herself directly before the black pillar, close enough to see her reflection in its polished surface.

The helic sword in her Battle Mantle's hand dissolved into particles of light, returning to the ether from which it had been summoned. In its place, something new materialized: a perfect sphere of what appeared to be glass, though its construction was far beyond mortal understanding. The orb was encased in an intricate framework of pure gold, sacred geometries forming protective sigils across its surface.

Within the transparent sphere floated a single droplet of golden liquid, suspended in perfect stillness. It shimmered with its own inner light, a substance not of this universe or any other. The Blood of the Savior; a weapon so devastating that Angels themselves used it only in the direst circumstances.

"One is all I have; one is all I need," Lucifel said, her voice solemn. "Let this abomination be unmade."

The Battle Mantle raised the orb above its head. For a brief moment, the golden droplet seemed to pulse in rhythm with the violet symbols on the pillar; two technologies from civilizations that had once been mortal enemies, recognizing each other across the void.

"In thy name, let your flames burn true."

Revelation 228-9's marble fingers tightened around the sphere. The glass cracked with a sound like a distant bell, golden light spilling through the fissures.

A microsecond of perfect silence followed.

Then, reality folded.

Everything within one hundred kilometers (the facility, the desert above, the Godless artifact, and all living beings) simply ceased to exist. Not destroyed, but negated, as if that portion of the universe had been carefully excised and the void left behind stitched closed.

Beyond the perfect circle of nothingness, the world convulsed. Nature abhors a vacuum, and this was a void unprecedented in Ghamorr's history. The atmosphere responded first, air molecules rushing toward the emptiness with hurricane force. The sound was not a roar but something deeper; a planet-wide gasp as Ghamorr itself tried to breathe into the wound.

The ground buckled and fractured. Fault lines that had lain dormant for millennia activated in chain reactions, rippling outward from the epicenter. Mountains hundreds of miles distant shuddered, shedding ancient stone faces that had weathered eons. Valleys folded inward, crushing everything between their newly formed walls.

Desert sand transformed into superheated glass as friction ignited the very air. The shockwave rolled across the landscape, flattening everything in its path, be it forests, villages, military outposts; all reduced to splinters and dust before being sucked backward toward the collapsing center.

In far-away Korchusk, buildings swayed and crumbled as the ground beneath them liquefied. Citizens who had survived the Angels' attack and dimensional jump now faced annihilation from an entirely different direction. The city's eastern districts disappeared first, structures and people alike pulverized by forces they couldn't comprehend.

Revelation 228-9 alone remained, hovering untouched within the chaos, the Battle Mantle's pristine amidst unmaking. It hovered above the massive circular depression in the desert, its Quantum White form untouched by the weapon that had unmade everything else.