Chapter 619 ...Send Rescue Teams Over

Chapter 619 ...Send Rescue Teams Over

Research Base New New South Wales.

The storm front had already reached the base and, as they had been worried about, the mana-infused raindrops sheeting down were having a rather negative effect on the shield. It was draining the shield capacitors nearly as fast as the reactor could charge them. But that much, they could handle.

Then the lightning began striking and the fusion reactor could no longer keep up with the draining capacitor banks. And to make things worse, there was no way of increasing the output of the reactor any more than what it already was; in fact, it had already been increased to 110% of its max-rated output, and after the storm passed, they would need to tear it down and completely rebuild it. Upstodatee from n(0)/ve/lbIn/.(co/m

But even that much wouldn’t be an issue. The reactor could be run at the red line for thirty-six hours before they began running the risk of a containment breach. The biggest problem they were facing was one they hadn’t anticipated at all: mana.

As the water built up on the ground, forming a complex network of rivulets and puddles, the lightning strikes “overcharged” it with mana, each bolt that struck the ground sending out shockwaves like ripples in space. And those shockwaves had effectively blinded the Henry’s Eyes sensors in the base, as well as those in the satellite network and ships overhead.

The Proxima herself could potentially push enough power through theirs that they would be able to function through the masking effect of the storm front’s mana surges, but by the time she could arrive at Proxima Centauri b, the storm would long have passed by the research base.

Thus, Admiral Bianchi, acting with an overabundance of caution, had ordered the Farsight and her escort ships to begin a full-scale evacuation of Research Base New New South Wales and a steady stream of landers was flowing to and fro, ferrying passengers from the surface to the ships in orbit above the base.

Here and there on the ground, marines could be seen with lab-coated researchers thrown over their shoulders and being carried like wailing sacks of potatoes. In the marines’ minds, any researcher who wasn’t willing to abandon their work to save their lives wasn’t worth being handled with kid gloves, so some of them were even going so far as to bodily throw them into the landers, both with and without someone in the loading hatch prepared to catch them.

Injuries, after all, could be cured in a matter of minutes or hours in a medical pod. Lightning stricken bits of vaguely human-shaped charcoal, on the other hand, could not.

The only place that was still a reasonably calm island of efficiency was the main monitoring room in the central tower of the base. Ayaka was inside with Captain Petrovich and a few other technicians that would be in the last evacuation group. They were coordinating and directing the hundreds of landers coming down, acting as air traffic control to prevent collisions and keep things moving.

She frantically toggled her comms channel open and attempted to connect to Lee Joon-ho, but there was no response.

“Yui, check the last known of Warrant Officer Lee Joon-ho,” she ordered her personal AI assistant.

{Last known position of Warrant Officer Lee Joon-ho is here, Commander.}

A topographical map of the area was projected in Ayaka’s vision, on which were two labels. One for the rover that had broken down earlier, and another where the Terrible Teenager had been struggling just moments before.

And neither of the labeled dots were moving.

“Check biometrics on Warrant Officer Lee, Yui,” Ayaka ordered.

{Yes, Commander. Checking.... No biometric data stream found. Searching for backup.... No backup biometric data stream found. Checking for suit data recorder signal.... No suit data recorder signal found. Checking for backup....} The checks continued as Yui read them in her calm soprano voice, each failed check hitting Ayaka with an almost physical impact that she felt in her gut.

{File found, Commander. Fragmented data stream available. Recompile and display?} Yui asked.

Ayaka’s heart rose into her throat and her jaw worked soundlessly for a moment before she could utter a hoarse command to play the video. It loaded shortly after and her gorge completely rose as she watched a giant root come whipping toward Joon-ho from his suit’s perspective.

“Joon-ho...” she whispered as the video abruptly cut off.

{Playback complete, Commander,} Yui announced.