Chapitre 25: Chapter 25: Return to Earth
By the time we returned home, with the Stalwart in tow, it had almost been a week. About six days, to be more precise. Once the Crusader reached orbit, we then teleported back onto the surface. To keep up the illusion that we had returned through the portal, we beamed directly to the ruins on the Gobi Desert. After a scan by Aegis and Arondight, who had given me small, portable components of themselves so that I could summon them wherever through that whole quantum spatial-dimension transfer thing, we concluded that the portal wasn't ready on the other side yet.
"You're back!" Colonel Shang Xiao exclaimed, rushing over with his men. Most of them didn't have any special abilities, being regular military soldiers seconded to Sprue. I saluted, only to earn a stare from Lin Xue.
"Why are you playing soldier?"
"Oh, I read too many military science fiction stories. Just ignore me."
"What happened?" Shang Xiao asked, looking around. "Where did you go? You were gone for six days! I assume time moved the same way wherever you were transported to, or did no time pass for you at all?"
As expected of someone from the Department of Strange Phenomenon and Radical Unusual Encounters. He had taken into consideration the weird ways that time might occur through different dimensions and technology.
"Oh, we were transported to another planet," I said, exchanging a meaningful glance with Lin Xue. The both of us began to fill our superior in on what happened. Before we returned, I had discussed with her how much information we could share with Sprue. I had requested that she keep my possession of starships a secret. After all, we had no idea how the government would react to discovering that there were void-capable warships in orbit capable of nuking the planet to oblivion.
However, informing them about Carmarthen and how we established good relations with the inhabitants of that world was fine. They would find out eventually when Lionel Johansson led his troops through, or when someone experimented on it and inevitably blundered their way through. Like the archeologists.
Speaking of which…
"What happened to the archeologists?"
"We sent them back to City Bei. This is beyond their jurisdiction now, and so Sprue has assumed all control and security regarding the…alien ruin." Shang Xiao nodded at Lin Xue. "But you're saying this ruin is a portal?"
"That's right." Lin Xue glanced at me, and when I didn't say anything, she continued. "I believe, based on Tian Xing's devices, we have a way to disassemble the portal and transport it back to headquarters. I believe that it's much safer to transfer the alien portal to base, where it can be more easily guarded, protected, studied and analyzed. It will also prevent the portal from falling into the wrong hands."
"Agreed," Shang Xiao smiled. "There were discussions of establishing a major base here, around the alien ruin, but…that would incur astronomical costs, as well as consume a lot of time. Furthermore, it would be difficult to set up logistics and a supply route to the desert, where it's so far from everything."
I couldn't believe that he took our word for it, without any doubt or suspicion. He wasted no time ordering me to begin right away with my device, and I left the task to Aegis and Arondight, who did the same thing in Carmarthen and broke the portal down to smaller, portable components using nanotechnology.
The portal wasn't that big anyway. It was the entire stone altar that was several meters across. There wasn't even a visible power supply, no wires or conduits connecting the portal to anything. I watched the blocks being carried out by teams, realizing that I was mistaken about the material. Though it looked like stone from first glance, it was actually nanomaterial, a kind of granite-gray metal that was flexible and…entirely foreign.
"How does the portal work, anyway?" I wondered inwardly. "It doesn't use an Alcubierre drive like the starships, so how does it allow for instantaneous teleportation from one space to another across ninety-six light years? Quantum spatial-dimensional transfer? But that doesn't explain how Lin Xue and I can travel through that portal without needing a quantum pair on the other side."
"The process is different from teleportation, and it doesn't use quantum pairings to transport organisms. It does involve quantum technology in that if you activate one side of the gate, its paired gate will instantaneously trigger and open up a portal."
Aegis was fast with explanations as ever. Arondight took over with an elaboration.
"The portal uses wormhole technology, so unlike a warp drive, it cuts through the space between two paired quantum points. Imagine material space between Earth and Carmarthen as a tunnel. The portal takes that tunnel and cuts it out of existence, thereby linking the two gates directly. It also involves the folding of the fourth dimension known as time, and by bending time-space, it allows for instantaneous transfers."
"I…I see." I still didn't understand how wormholes worked, despite having heard the concept, but I wasn't a cosmologist. I was a science fiction aficionado. I just needed to appreciate the magic of advanced technologies, not understand them. Otherwise, science fiction writers would be inventing actual technological devices, not stories.
We were about to exit the ruins and head back to base camp when I heard shouts and bursts of gunfire. The soldiers under Shang Xiao were shooting at something in the distance – and when I rushed into the open space, I caught sight of a huge monster.
"A Tarbosaurus," the colonel grunted as he emerged, bearing a rifle of his own. He glanced over his shoulder and sighed. "A few of them. They've been showing up and causing a ruckus ever since you guys disappeared into the portal. It appears that either you or the archeologists tinkering around with this alien ruin triggered them to wake up from their hibernation."
"Tarbosaurus?" I repeated incredulously, despite witnessing the 3.5-meter tall theropods stampeding across the desert with my very own eyes. "We actually have extinct dinosaurs running around in the present?! Where did they come from?"
As an aside, Tarbosaurus were supposed to be a smaller variant of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and lived in northern Hua Xia and Mongolia approximately 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period. While the Tyrannosaurus was the biggest theropod in America, the Tarbosaurus was the largest theropod in Hua Xia, or even in all of Asia.
Aliens, I understood, but extinct dinosaurs appearing in the present? Did some mad scientist clone them using DNA found in amber or something? Then why were they here and not on an island designed to be a theme park?
"Saurian sentries," Aegis said. "Sleeper organisms left by Saurians who visited your planet millennia ago and left to hibernate until they detect any signs of Holy Terran Empire technology or devices awakening. It appears that the reactivation and restoration of the portal has awakened them."
"They are mean and big," Shang Xiao growled as he shot one of the Tarbosaurus, who roared at him. Blood trickled down the wound on its flank, but its armored scales and huge mass appeared to make it impervious to small arms fire. "They aren't invincible, but it takes a lot of shots to bring one down, unless we have dedicated anti-tank weaponry like missiles."
As if on cue, one of the soldiers hurried forward, bearing a portable rocket launcher on his shoulder. He dropped to a crouch, and shouted, "firing!"
His teammate dropped to his side and slapped his shoulder. "Clear!"
Once he was notified that his rear was empty, he squeezed the trigger. The back blast rippled across the desert, sending sand tumbling violently in its wake. At the front, a rocket propelled grenade streaked through the acrid air like a comet and buried itself into the torso of a titanic Tarbosaurus before detonating. The dinosaur vanished in an explosion of blood, flesh and bone.
Yet there were more. one was brought down by the combined firepower of an entire platoon, concentrating their rifles on it. A second one bore down on them, almost snapping up the closest soldier with its jaws, only for an arc of lightning from Lin Xue's gun to discourage it. It snarled and turned toward her, sparks still flying from its head.
Then it charged.
"Allow me."
Shang Xiao tossed his gun to the side. Though I would normally be outraged at the cavalier discard of his weapon, I recalled that he wasn't so much a soldier as he was an agent of Sprue with special abilities. Red marks spread across his face and arms, his meaty and muscular forearms exposed when he rolled his sleeves up. With a bellow, the colonel met the Tarbosaurus in the middle of the desert and punched it in the face.
"What the…?!"
I wasn't even sure what I was watching. Shang Xiao had laid a single Tarbosaurus low with a punch. It wasn't dead yet, but the sharp crack I heard indicated that he had at least fractured its skull. Shang Xiao wasn't finished, however. He pounced on the fallen Tarbosaurus and began pummeling it.
Another Tarbosaurus dipped its head to bite him, but before Lin Xue could cover her superior, I had intercepted its jaws with Aegis. Its fangs shattered harmlessly against her protective field, and I beheaded it with Arondight, the gleaming blade slicing through armored scales, flesh, muscle and bone as easily as they were all paper.
"Not bad," Shang Xiao said, glancing at me. "Where did you get that sword from?"
"The other world."
He gave me a stare. "Look, I know you're young and your generation is obsessed with isekai stories, but can you be serious for a second?"
"I'm serious!" I insisted, rolling my eyes. "I even told you about the other world earlier! Don't tell me you forgot all about Carmarthen and the portal!"
"Oh, so that's what you meant when you said the other world."
"What else did you think I meant?!"
"Um…isekai…"
I think he was the one who read too many isekai stories, not me.
Another rocket thundered behind us, blowing up a Tarbosaurus. I narrowed my eyes, turning about to look for more of the enemy.
"How many of them are there?"
"Usually about half a dozen attacking every time. No matter how many of them we kill, they keep crawling out of the woodwork like lice. I have no idea where they come from. They look like they just burst out of the sand."
"I can locate the hangar in which the sleeper units are located. Destroy their cloning facility, and you should be able to stop any more Saurian sentries from being produced." Arondight was helpful.
"Please do that. Thanks." I sighed and shook my head. "Something tells me it's not a coincidence that the Saurians decided to clone dinosaurs of all things."
"There was an abundance of Tarbosaurus fossils when the Saurians visited your planet millennia ago, and they recreated it through genetic scans and other bioengineering methods."
"They can do that?!" Suddenly, I wanted my own theme park full of living, breathing dinosaurs as well. Then I smacked those thoughts out of my mind. First things first. "Um, so where's the unit?"
"About two hundred meters directly under you."
"Great. Now we just have to figure a way to get there…"
"No need for that," Aegis said. "Commander, please point toward the air and shout, 'Gaia!'"
"…excuse me?" For a moment, I thought I had misheard her, but my shield was being quite insistent.
"Please do it."
"No."
"Please. You'll understand if you do it."
"You've got to be kidding me." I didn't want to make a fool out of myself.
"Please. We don't have time to waste. The facility will continue to clone more Tarbosaurus if you hesitate."
"Ugh." In front of a stunned Shang Xiao and Lin Xue and the platoon of soldiers, I pointed toward the sky and yelled, "Gaia!"
For a moment, I regretted it immensely, feeling foolish and embarrassed when everyone stared at me as if I was an idiot. And then…
…a blind lance of apocalyptic light thundered down from the heavens, searing through the desert and turning sand into glass from extreme heat. With a catastrophic explosion, it scorched a crater deep into the earth, disintegrating everything buried at least five hundred meters beneath the desert.
By then, everyone was too busily staring at the colossal crater with their mouths hanging wide open to pay any attention to me. As for me, I understood what had just happened. Aegis had called for an orbital strike from the Crusader above, delivering with uncanny precision a laser lance designed to tear apart warships stretching kilometers long and massing millions, if not billions of tons.
"…don't you think that's overkill?" I asked my errant AI assistant, coughing from the billowing cloud of fumes that blossomed from the glassed crater, the surrounding rock still glowing red-hot from the sheer heat.
"No," Aegis replied calmly. "It took a world-destroying asteroid to end the tyrannical reign of the dinosaurs. Nothing is overkill when it comes to exterminating these beasts."
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone