Chapter 55
The next three missiles shot deeper, piercing through the gaps created by the first two missiles, and struck the ship's coordination chamber with tremendous force, shattering control panels, blowing up monitor screens, and killing the operators inside in an instant before they could even scream.
The coordination chamber, the heart of that advanced flying ship, was now nothing but smoking debris, sparks of fire scattering in every direction.
The last two missiles, the most crucial ones, the ones that would determine everything, launched at an absurd speed toward the primary target.
The ship's outer reactor.
The sixth missile approached the reactor, but at the final moment, a sudden shield appeared out of nowhere, created by an automatic defense system that was still functioning despite the chaos.
The missile only managed to graze the outer layer of the reactor, leaving a deep scratch that emitted bursts of blue energy, but it was not enough to detonate it.
However, the seventh missile, the final missile, the one fired with prayers and hopes gathered from the depths of Nirma's soul, shot directly behind the sixth missile, exploiting even the smallest remaining gap, and pierced straight into the reactor, embedding itself there, penetrating its outer layer, and exploding.
The explosion was not as massive as imagined, it did not spew fire and smoke in every direction, but it was enough to disrupt the reactor's balance, enough to throw the ship's propulsion system into chaos, enough to make the ship begin losing control.
And at the same time, the flying ship belonging to the Temporal Cross-Police began to tilt.
Its movement was strange, unnatural, like a sea vessel struck by a storm in the middle of the ocean, yet it did so in the air, dozens of meters above the ground.
It jerked violently to the right, then even more violently to the left, its massive glossy black body trembling intensely, and from within came the sounds of small explosions, sounds of panic, screams that no one had ever imagined would come from units that had always seemed so cold and invincible.
Amid the chaos still unfolding, among the scattered debris and the smoke still rising from the tilting ship, Arya shouted.
The distance between them was not too far, yet not too close either, enough to force Arya to scream so his voice could be heard over the clamor of the small explosions still occurring inside the ship.
His face, which had briefly shown a victorious smile, now changed drastically into overwhelming tension, a tension that Nirma immediately sensed even though they were still separated by dozens of meters.
Arya waved his hand frantically, his eyes wide, his mouth open as he shouted with a voice that cut through the surrounding noise.
"Nirma, listen! There's a problem!" Arya shouted, his breath ragged from running, yet his voice remained clear, still audible despite competing with the roar of the dying ship's engines.
"You managed to damage the outer reactor, you're incredible, you did what we never imagined could be done!
But around that reactor, Nirma, there are small pillars that maintain the ship's balance!
Those pillars cannot be seen from below, they are invisible to the naked eye, but they are there, they are part of the ship's safety system!"
He kept moving both his hands, kept shouting with growing panic.
"And when your last two missiles hit the reactor, when the sixth missile scratched its outer layer and the seventh pierced inside, you indirectly damaged those pillars!
Not just one, Nirma, but several!
They are cracked, they are unstable, they can no longer maintain the ship's balance!"
Nirma stood frozen, the bazooka in her hand slowly lowering, her single eye staring at Arya with a mixture of confusion and fear that was beginning to creep in.
Deciding to sprint, Arya finally arrived in front of her.
His body staggered briefly before he grabbed Nirma's arm tightly, his eyes locking onto hers with extraordinary intensity.
"We only have fifteen seconds, Nirma. Maybe less. Maybe more, but not much.
If within fifteen seconds we don't take any follow-up action, if we don't do something to stabilize the reactor or at least direct its fall, then this ship will not be able to hover normally.
It will fall, Nirma. Fall into a certain era, maybe this era, maybe another, who knows where.
And when it falls, when that damaged reactor hits the ground at high speed, the explosion will be tremendous.
An explosion that will be remembered in the following years, in history, as an accident of unknown origin, as a supernatural phenomenon that no one can explain."
He shook Nirma's arm, his voice trembling.
Nirma lifted her face, her single eye shifting from the flying ship that continued to sway uncontrollably to Arya standing before her, breathless.
For two seconds that felt like eternity, they stared at each other, no words spoken, no gestures given, only gazes speaking deeper than thousands of sentences.
In Nirma's eyes, Arya saw conviction, saw determination, saw readiness to do whatever was necessary even if it meant risking both their lives.
In Arya's eyes, Nirma saw trust, saw the acknowledgment that there was no one else in this world he could rely on but her, saw love that did not need to be spoken because it was embedded in every fiber of their souls.
And when those two seconds passed, when time continued ticking toward the decisive fifteen, they both nodded.
One small nod, synchronized, perfect, like two parts of the same whole, and after that, they moved.
Nirma's hand moved quickly into the torn pocket of her stole, pulling out an antique watch that looked as though it came from the 1800s, with a thin silver chain and a glass surface slightly cracked in several places.
She put it on her left wrist with a calm yet certain motion, unhurried even as time kept running, unshaken even though the lives of thousands might depend on what she would do next.
Her slender fingers turned the crown of the watch once, twice, three times, and in the next second, a screen the size of a 4x4 photograph suddenly appeared before her, floating in the thin air, emitting a faint flickering blue light.
Nirma stared at the screen, her single eye moving quickly as she read the lines of foreign words appearing on it, then her index finger began pressing, typing at a speed that would astonish anyone who saw it.
She pressed word after word, command after command, code after code, and when she finished, the screen vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving nothing but empty air before her.
Nirma raised her left hand, the antique watch now emitting a dim glow on its surface, and from it, from that small and seemingly harmless object, a beam of laser emerged.
The laser was a dense gray, almost black, yet within it shimmered millions of light particles moving at an absurd speed.
Nirma positioned her hand, directing the laser straight at the Temporal Cross-Police's flying ship that continued to tilt above them, and in an instant, the ship was enveloped by the laser.
Not enveloped like mist, not enveloped like ordinary light, but enveloped in the truest sense, as if the laser were a gigantic blanket wrapping the entire ship from end to end, stabilizing it, holding it, preventing it from falling.
To be continued…