Chapter 54
Fresh blood soaked her hands, yet her left eye remained cold, her focus razor-sharp, a single objective engraved in her mind.
To reach the vessel, to shoot its reactor, to blow it apart, to trap them all in some random era.
But as Nirma drew closer to the landing point of the units, as she entered the remaining range of their vision, one unit who happened to glance backward to retrieve fresh ammunition caught a suspicious movement among the debris and smoke.
He saw the figure of a woman in strange clothing running swiftly toward the ship, and in her hand was a weapon emitting a faint glow.
The unit shouted, his voice piercing through the chaos of battle, and in an instant dozens of surviving units shifted their attention from Arya to the new threat that had suddenly appeared behind them.
They fired in unison, without mercy, without hesitation.
Bullets from the year 2200 shot forward at supersonic speed, mini-rockets from the year 2240 streaked through the air leaving thin trails of smoke, smart missiles from the year 2555 locked onto their target with flawless precision, and all of it—weaponry from various centuries—was directed toward a single point.
Nirma's advancing position.
Nirma would not stand still, would not surrender, would not allow that storm of madness to stop her just meters before the finish line.
Her body moved with agility impossible for an ordinary human, leaping backward as three rockets from the year 2240 struck precisely where she had stood moments before, zigzagging through the relentless hail of 2200-era bullets pursuing her, flipping into a perfect backward somersault—head down, feet above—to evade a smart missile that nearly tore through her skull.
With every landing, with every fraction of a second her feet touched the ground, her swift hands positioned whatever she needed—a shield that appeared from nowhere, a modified M4A1 from the year 4100 firing back as she moved, or anything that could protect her from the ceaseless rain of death.
Sweat mixed with blood soaked her face, her breathing grew ragged, her muscles burned as if aflame, yet her eyes remained focused, sharp, locked on a single distant point.
The flying vessel.
Its reactor.
Their only hope of survival.
Move after move she sustained long enough to make the Temporal Cross-Police units begin running low on ammunition, long enough to leave them bewildered before a target that never stopped moving, never stopped evading, never stopped firing back.
One by one they fell—some shot clean through the head by Nirma's modified M4A1, others separated from their necks when she closed the distance during her mad acrobatics—until only a few units remained, and they began retreating, seeking cover, realizing that they were no longer the hunters but the hunted.
Nirma stopped running, her body staggering briefly before standing firm, and when she lifted her face upward, when she looked at the hovering vessel with its glowing reactor, she realized she had reached her destination.
Directly beneath the small hatch where the units had descended.
The very point where she could fire at the reactor with perfect accuracy.
Without wasting a second, without glancing back to see whether Arya still stood or had already fallen, Nirma reached into a small pocket hidden beneath her torn and dirt-stained stole.
She pulled out a tiny object resembling a date seed—small, brown, utterly unremarkable—yet when her fingers pressed it four times in rhythmic succession, a miracle occurred.
In her left hand, a massive, gleaming bazooka suddenly materialized, futuristic in design beyond reason, a bazooka of the year 3240 radiating a faint glow along its barrel.
Nirma raised it, rested the launcher upon her shoulder, narrowed her eyes, and there—clear before her—was the vessel's external reactor, the small point that served as the primary foundation allowing it to travel freely from year to year.
Most of the Temporal Cross-Police units still on the ground, who had only just recovered from the shock of Nirma's insane acrobatics, finally understood what was happening.
They saw her standing firm beneath the landing hatch, the great bazooka of the year 3240 lifted in her left hand, its barrel aimed precisely at their ship's external reactor.
Warning shouts echoed across the area as the units raised their weapons, aiming at Nirma, preparing to fire with whatever arsenal remained.
But at that same moment, from within the vessel, the automated defense system activated.
Protective screens of the highest security level began enveloping the entire surface of the ship in multiple shimmering golden layers, designed to withstand attacks from any era—including rockets from a bazooka of the year 3240.
Inside, the ship's crew worked swiftly, fingers dancing over control panels, initiating protocols that would render their vessel immune to any assault within seconds.
Yet they forgot about Arya.
Arya, who had been bombarding relentlessly, serving as bait, moving like madness incarnate, suddenly stopped.
From within the folds of his torn, dust-covered cloak, he drew out a handful of tiny seeds no larger than peas, and with a swift throwing motion he scattered them toward the cluster of units preparing to fire at Nirma.
The seeds did not explode, did not emit smoke, did not flash with light, but when they reached their highest arc in the air, they began producing a sound.
Not an ordinary sound, but a frequency—one designed specifically to pierce the human auditory nerves, a frequency that made ears feel as though stabbed by thousands of burning needles, a frequency that caused excruciating throbbing in the skull of anyone who heard it.
The Temporal Cross-Police units writhed, their hands flying to cover their ears, their weapons slipping from their grasp, their bodies staggering in agony, and for those precious seconds not a single shot was fired toward Nirma.
Nirma saw it all—saw the units grimacing in pain, saw the protective screens beginning to envelop the vessel yet not fully formed—and she knew this was the moment, the second that would determine everything.
Her fingers pulled the trigger once, twice, three times—until seven consecutive shots roared forth, and seven rockets from the bazooka of the year 3240 blasted from the barrel, leaving blazing trails of white smoke, streaking at speeds no ordinary eye could follow, aimed at a single point.
The external reactor of the Temporal Cross-Police vessel.
The result was spectacular, beyond even the wildest expectation.
The seven rockets struck with flawless precision, piercing layer after layer of the vessel's defenses still in the process of formation.
The first two rockets managed only to penetrate the outer hull of the ship, their pointed tips embedded there, unable to go further, yet leaving gaping holes sufficient to weaken the overall structure.
To be continued…