Chapter 278: At Home [Edited]

The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the cracked concrete of the desert runway.

The twin turbofan engines of the unmarked Association transport jet were already idling, sending waves of heat across the tarmac. The ground crew worked quickly, securing the heavy equipment crates in the rear cargo hold and checking the aircraft's hydraulics.

Selena walked toward the loading ramp, the vacuum-sealed containment case strapped securely to her chest harness.

"Double-check the seal on the cargo door," Selena instructed the two field supervisors beside her. "Once we're airborne, this flight is running radio silent until we enter domestic airspace."

At the edge of the ramp, Julie was frantically digging through an open gear bag, trying to untangle a spare camera charging cord while holding a half-eaten protein bar in her mouth.

"I have twelve percent battery!" Julie mumbled around the food, waving the cord around. "If we hit high altitude without a steady voltage, the cloud synchronization will corrupt the raw 4K render! The world cannot experience the Sahara expedition in standard definition!"

"Get on the plane, Julie," Selena sighed, pressing two fingers against her brow. "If you drop that cord on the runway, I'm leaving you here with the mechanics."

Nicholas stood twenty yards away near the wing, his dark canvas duffel bag resting against his boot.

He wasn't looking at the plane.

His dark blue eyes scanned the dusty ridges and scrub surrounding the airstrip. The desert was quiet, broken only by the hum of the engines and the occasional gust of hot wind blowing across the dunes.

Then his senses twitched.

There was a faint, unnatural disturbance in the air—a small pulse of electromagnetic energy cutting through the heat.

A moment later, the portable perimeter sensor attached to the command tent's satellite mast let out a sharp, rhythmic chirp. The digital monitor mounted on the fuel truck flashed amber.

"We have movement on the ridge," Zero said, his dry voice cutting through the noise of the engines. He didn't turn his head, but his gloved hand had already settled on the hilt of his longsword. "Multiple heat signatures, closing fast from the north access road."

"Bandits?" Nectron asked, stepping out from beneath the fuselage and cracking his knuckles.

"No," Nicholas said calmly, his gaze locking onto a faint glint of polished chrome three hundred yards away. "Too organized. Heavy augments. They were tracking the fuel requisition orders from Zero's previous staging run."

Before Selena could tell the ground crew to take cover, the desert silence shattered.

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.

A volley of suppressed micro-missiles tore through the air from the northern ridge. They streaked across the open tarmac, leaving thin trails of white smoke as they headed straight for the transport jet's landing gear and the cargo containers on the loading lift.

"Ambush!" Selena yelled, drawing her sidearm as she pushed Julie up the metal gangway. "Get inside! Protect the containment case!"

"Not my raw files!" Julie screamed, stumbling into the cabin and grabbing her camera equipment.

The missiles never reached the aircraft.

Nicholas stepped forward and raised his right hand toward the incoming fire.

Gravity Distortion.

A wave of gravitational force spread across the space in front of the wing. The missiles slammed into the invisible barrier, their paths suddenly changing before they detonated against the empty concrete. Black smoke and gravel burst into the air, scattering harmlessly around Nicholas.

From the northern ridge, eight heavily armored figures rushed onto the tarmac at unnatural speed.

They were cybernetically enhanced mercenaries.

Their bodies were covered in high-grade carbon fiber plating and reinforced with mechanical supports. Chrome servos hissed with every step, while their red optical implants glowed beneath their helmets. They wore unmarked black gear and carried plasma carbines and containment grapples.

"Secure the primary hard drives and the organic sample!" the lead mercenary barked over the open comms. "Take out the escort team! The client wants the core data intact!"

"Corporate scavengers," Vixen remarked, stepping beside Nicholas.

Her white cape fluttered in the engine backwash, while spatial energy rippled around her wrists. "They really thought they could steal the harvest intelligence while we were loading luggage."

"Take the rear," Nicholas said quietly. "Keep them away from the fuel lines."

"Try to leave one for questioning," Vixen replied with a faint smirk.

Nicholas didn't answer.

He blurred forward.

His speed carried him across the tarmac in less than a second.

Two mercenaries raised their plasma carbines, their targeting systems locking onto him.

"Target acquired—"

The lead cyborg never finished.

Nicholas dropped beneath the line of fire, his boots skimming the concrete.

Plague Touch.

Dark energy surrounded his right hand and quickly formed into a heavy, razor-edged broadsword made from condensed plague energy.

Nicholas drove his heel into the ground and swung the black sword upward.

SHIK-CRACK!

The blade cut through the first mercenary's reinforced chest armor, severing the hydraulic lines and destroying the power battery inside.

Sparks and blue coolant sprayed across the pavement as the mercenary collapsed.

Nicholas immediately dissolved the sword back into energy, letting the black power cover both his fists.

The second cyborg swung a shock baton at his head with mechanical force.

Nicholas didn't dodge.

He raised his left forearm and caught the baton against his plague-covered arm. The impact cracked the concrete beneath his boots, but his arm didn't move.

With his right hand, Nicholas drove his palm into the cyborg's faceplate.

BOOM!

The impact, combined with a burst of gravitational force, shattered the reinforced visor and crushed the metal beneath it. The mercenary flew backward twenty feet, tumbling through the dust before coming to a stop.

On the left side, Vixen moved toward three more mercenaries as they opened fire with plasma rounds.

She snapped her fingers, opening a vertical spatial tear in front of her.

The plasma bolts disappeared into the rift.

A moment later, three new rifts opened behind the mercenaries.

Their own plasma rounds came back through the portals at close range, striking their power packs. The batteries exploded, sending the three cyborgs crashing face-first onto the tarmac as their systems shut down.

The remaining two mercenaries on the ridge quickly realized they were outmatched.

"Abort! Abort the objective!" the surviving squad leader rasped into his comms, firing his leg thrusters as he jumped back toward their transport buggy. "The escorts are top-tier anomalies! We are outmatched—"

A circular spatial portal opened beneath his feet.

He dropped through it and fell out of the sky ten feet in front of Nicholas, landing hard on his knees.

Before he could raise his sidearm, Nicholas stepped forward and planted his boot on the mercenary's cybernetic shoulder.

CRUNCH.

The titanium servo broke beneath Nicholas's weight, pinning the mercenary to the concrete.

Nicholas looked down at him, his dark blue eyes cold and calm.

"Who bought the coordinates?" Nicholas asked.

The mercenary coughed, oil and blood leaking from beneath his damaged faceplate. A distorted laugh came through his synthetic speaker.

"Doesn't matter... what you dug up out there... every private syndicate... every corporate board from Grayland to Tokyo... wants the energy source. You can't... keep a star ship buried..."

Nicholas didn't argue.

He pressed his heel down harder, crushing the mercenary's vocal processor and internal battery and rendering him unconscious.

The fight was over in less than two minutes.

Across the tarmac, the desert silence returned, broken only by the crackle of burning machine parts and the steady hum of the transport jet's engines.

Zero walked over and looked at the damaged cybernetic bodies scattered across the runway. He nudged a severed weapon with his boot.

"High-grade military augments. These weren't street mercenaries. They belong to a corporate black-ops division. They were intercepting every supply manifest tied to my initial excavation."

"They're still thinking like local business moguls," Selena said, stepping down the ramp with her tablet. She looked over the dismantled mercenaries. "They think this is about patent rights or manufacturing next-generation energy cores to control the hero market."

"They have no idea what they're actually playing with," Nectron rumbled, walking over with a heavy frown. "They think they're hunting for treasure. In reality, they're digging up the exact weapon that marked this planet for slaughter."

Nicholas stepped away from the crushed cyborg, wiping a drop of oil from his sleeve.

The bigger picture was clear now.

In Grayland and Chicago, the city hero garrisons were struggling to contain a rogue clone born from corporate arrogance and underground experimentation. In corporate boardrooms, executives were hunting for extraterrestrial power to gain control of the energy market.

And somewhere in the cold void of space, an ancient harvest fleet was slowly following the cosmic beacon created by humanity's awakening, which grew brighter every day.

The hero rankings, corporate disputes, and everything else happening on Earth suddenly seemed insignificant.

Earth wasn't just fighting an internal war anymore.

It was a race against extinction.

"We leave them for the local authorities to clean up," Nicholas said, turning toward the aircraft. "We have what we came for. Let's move."

"Agreed," Selena nodded, gesturing for the remaining ground crew to secure the boarding hatch.

Zero, Nectron, and Vixen followed Nicholas into the cabin.

The hydraulic ramp lifted with a deep clunk, sealing out the dry heat of the Sahara. The cabin crew locked the safety latches into place as the jet's engines grew louder.

Inside the cabin, Julie was already strapped into a rear seat, frantically typing on her tablet as the aircraft began taxiing down the cracked runway.

"I managed to film the spatial redirect and the boot-stomp execution from the cargo window!" Julie whispered excitedly, though she kept her voice low after catching Selena's sharp glare. "The composition was flawless! Chat is going to fund my new tripod in five minutes!"

"Thirty percent," Nicholas murmured, taking his seat across the aisle and fastening his harness.

Julie puffed out her cheeks in defeat and sank back into her seat with a dramatic groan.

The transport jet accelerated down the runway, its nose lifting into the clear African sky. With a smooth turn toward the west, the aircraft climbed through the clouds, leaving the burning sands of Egypt behind as it headed across the ocean toward home.