Chapter 546: Ch The Resolve and the madness- 6 (last)

Sky-cars launched in chaotic swarms, their owners abandoning estates, wealth, and prized possessions without a backward glance—bringing only their lives in a desperate bid to escape.

On the ground, people shoved and trampled one another, driven purely by the instinct to survive. No one understood what was happening, nor did they care to stop and verify.

Wild rumors spread like wildfire through the panicked mobs: some claimed the humans’ orbital barrage had destabilized the planet’s core; others whispered of sabotage by internal traitors; a few even swore an ancient, dormant curse had been awakened.

At this point, however, the truth held no weight. To every soul clawing their way through the dust and rubble, this place had already turned into a living hell—and none of them had any intention of staying behind to burn.

CRASH! BOOM! BANG!

High in the sky above the crumbling cities, the frantic rush to flee bottlenecked the air corridors into sheer gridlock. Countless sky-cars, all converging at breakneck speeds toward the same few orbital exits, turned the skies into a slaughterhouse.

A sky-car barreling forward at maximum velocity suddenly saw another vehicle veer sharply into its path.

“Oh, shit!” the driver screamed in terror.

The vehicle’s automated collision system overrode the controls, yanking the nose upward just in time to avert disaster.

Phew…

The driver barely exhaled a breath of relief before a massive sky-bus materialized in his peripheral vision.

“Oh, fu—”

His scream was snuffed out as the sky-car slammed straight into the underbelly of the sky-bus. Metal shrieked and twisted, followed seconds later by a blinding detonation that consumed both vessels.

Burning wreckage rained down like miniature meteors, pulverizing the throngs of people below who were already scrambling out of crumbling buildings, crushing them into paste.

The destruction was horrific, and it was happening everywhere.

Not far off, another high-speed sky-car violently collided head-on with a smaller commuter pod.

The impact instantly overloaded their anti-gravity engines, turning both craft into spinning fireballs that tumbled out of the sky, slamming through high-rise windows, crushing fleeing crowds, and detonating in secondary firestorms.

In another city, a slightly larger transport shuttle was just lifting off from a four-hundred-meter skyscraper. It had barely begun its steady ascent when the launch platform beneath it shook violently, the entire tower buckling at its foundation and collapsing directly into an adjacent high-rise.

“Dammit! Get us out of here, now!” shouted a Star Citizen inside the cabin. He was draped in opulent, heavy robes and carried the arrogant aura of nobility, his eyes darting frantically toward the wreckage below.

The pilots bit their tongues, suppressing the furious urge to scream back at him. If he hadn’t wasted precious time packing the entire hold with his useless luxury junk, they would have cleared planetary airspace ten minutes ago.

Swallowing their anger, one pilot simply replied, “We’re pushing the thrusters to maximum, Lord Nim!”

“Oh no—LOOK OUT!” a terrified scream erupted from the rear passenger cabin.

The color instantly drained from the pilots’ faces. Lord Nim snapped his head to the right, his eyes widening in sheer horror. Another skyscraper was toppling sideways, shearing off its base and crashing straight toward their flight path.

“H-Hey—!”

Before Nim could finish his sentence, the pilot banked the shuttle hard to the right in a desperate evasive maneuver. They cleared the main mass, but the crumbling apex clipped their flank, ripping away a lateral stabilizer with a deafening screech of tearing hull plating.

The shuttle violently tilted onto its side. Its engines sputtered, shrieking in protest as hydraulic pressure vanished, and the nose abruptly pitched downward. Out of control, the vessel went into a steep dive, hurtling straight toward a low-rise complex and the crowded plaza beside it.

“B-brace for impact!” one of the pilots yelled over the blaring warning sirens.

BANG!The shuttle obliterated the roof on impact, sheared straight through the upper floors and then there was a massive explosion from within.

A huge fireball erupted and the whole building was incinerated, everything in the blast zone was vaporised.

Below, the fleeing mob had a quick glance up at the fireball and didn’t break stride. Compassion as well as curiosity were both dead.

All that was left was survival. They just carried on, the mob, towards their only hope which was the four major spaceports around the city perimeter.

At the Imperial Starport (the central district’s main launch facility) pure madness was already in full swing. The perimeter of the facility was already overrun by millions of people and the numbers were increasing by the second.

It was a massive complex with dozens of landing berths and the evacuation shuttles in question were all perched on the reinforced platforms.

A sea of desperate people just poured onto the launch concourses like a flood. The port security and traffic management teams were absolutely at their wits’ end trying to get some sort of order back, putting up barricades and barking orders through loudhailers.

What could a few thousand guards do against a mob of millions? Nothing. The security lines shattered in seconds, swept away and trampled beneath like a million leaves in a hurricane.

Unhinged and frantic the crowd were, storming the loading ramps, boarding up every shuttle and transport they could lay their hands on without a moment’s hesitation.

Anyone with the barest smidgen of piloting knowledge just slapped their hands onto the console and got the launch sequence going as fast as their fingers would allow.

None of them paid the slightest bit of attention to the frantic warnings that port control were blaring over the PA. To hell with the regulations. A lot of these vessels were registered directly under the high chambers of the great noble houses.

The crews and the aristocrats aboard were all cursing at the loudspeakers, treating the traffic controllers’ instructions as utter nonsense.

One at a time the ships fired their sub-orbital thrusters, roaring skywards in quick succession.

A few of the craft wobbled quite badly on ascent, listing over to one side and clipping against the adjacent gantries in the scramble before their inertial dampeners finally got a grip and brought them into a stable flight path.