Chương 128: ''Mission accomplished.''

Arima and Tieria rested together among the ruins of the damaged hangar for a few minutes. When the robot exploded for the third time, the duo ultimately stood up.

Arima looked at Tieria. "You should leave. Even if the airstrike can destroy the surface, the data contained here and some of the materials can still be recovered. I'll place the G-Mines to destroy the rest," he said.

Tieria shook her head. "I'll follow you. Can I just ask for a single moment?" She asked and trotted toward Tiria's body.

She crouched and grabbed a red-colored grenade that was lying around. She calmly put it on Tiria's body before clenching her hands together in front of her chest.

Arima solemnly watched and closed his eyes. After ten seconds, Tieria stepped back and raised her gun. She breathed in and stabilized her aim. She then fired and hit the grenade which exploded and immolated Tiria.

"Let's go," Tieria uttered afterward and turned around with tears in the corners of her eyes. Arima felt quite hurt as he saw her like that. Tiria was undeniably one of his best friends and the member of the squad who accepted him the fastest and always put him at ease. And Tieria was the one that would always be kind and informal with him. He even started to feel acutely considerate toward her since the moment he started doing missions with her.

It was without saying that Arima felt a huge pain in his heart when one of them died and the other cried just in front of him. Although he was incredibly mature for his age, he was still sixteen and his vision of human life was still rather undeveloped. He knew that when he killed, it was a for a reason and he could tolerate that. But when he saw people at his side dying, his beliefs were suddenly disturbed and he experienced sorrow for the first time.

He nodded at Tieria whilst thinking about all of that and ran with her toward a spiral corridor that led even further underground. When they reached the end of it, they stumbled upon a thick door of metal.

Fortunately for them, it was unlocked and they were able to enter quite easily. What was on the other side were oval objects arranged in different rows and placed pretty much anywhere you could find some space.

"So that's the FEBs…" Tieria muttered as she looked at the big objects.

Those things were indeed the Fission Eion Bombs. This technology was researched by every big power on the planet, but they always failed to create stable prototypes. They could explode, but the explosion itself was truly uncontrollable. It could be as weak as a grenade or even stronger than a nuke. But there were also cases where the bomb would explode during the manufacturing process.

That's why most of the powers couldn't research that weapon wholeheartedly. Mainly because technicians wouldn't accept to work on something that could potentially kill them. And that's the reason why the data contained in this facility was so precious since they had succeeded to build a great number of FEBs without blowing themselves up.

"Don't touch it though. We can't predict they will explode on us," Arima said and grabbed the case full of G-Mines. "Let's be quick. Things are calm for now, but I don't want to be assaulted by another damn Gundam," he grumbled and started running all over the place to install the mines.

Tieria watched him a bit amused as she covered the entrance whilst waiting for him. During his little 'marathon', Arima froze when he heard a synthetic voice coming from the speakers of the entire facility.

"/ The quarantine measure has been approved. The building will now be sealed. The procedure will take sixty seconds. \"

Arima and Tieria looked at each other and swore at the same time. Arima dropped the last mine and detached the handle of the case and brought it with him as he rushed toward the exit.

They climbed the spiral corridor and an alarm started ringing as the steel door they just passed was now closing. They also heard the shutters close right after.

Arima didn't have the choice and carried Tieria as he ran toward the hoist load at maximum speed. Tieria felt pretty awkward as she was simply being carried. But she got over it and now she was blushing; for a completely different reason altogether.

When Arima reached the hoist, he smiled wryly as he saw the whole thing destroyed. But the other squads had placed an electric zip line to go up. Arima and Tieria took it and went to the first floor after a moment. Obviously, every shutter and doors were locked when they arrived.

"Well, shit…" Arima let go of Tieria and went to the big door he had destroyed earlier with his rifle, but although it couldn't close because of that, it had now a steel shutter blocking the passage in its stead.

"Tch," Arima clicked his tongue as he drew his pistol and fired at a guy who had just come out of his hiding spot to shoot him.

Tieria looked wide-eyed at the survivor. "(This guy was stupid,)" she thought. "So, what do we do now?"

Arima mused and contacted Jin through his radio. The signal was weak, but it still got through.

"Hey, where the hell are you?" Jin's voice immediately resounded. Arima was about to respond but Jin continued. "The airstrike will happen in three minutes! We can't stop it now! Get out! I can't release the locks, the system closed on itself. Find another exit!"

Arima was speechless. He didn't say anything and face-palmed. "…I forgot we had only twenty minutes," he muttered and Tieria chuckled before bashfully covering her mouth.

Arima stared at her with a deadpan expression and she nervously looked away. He sighed and grabbed more Eion knives. "Stay back," he said and threw the knives at the shutter; the three knives exploded and formed a huge hole on the shutter. After the dust dispersed, Arima went through with Tieria and stepped inside the long corridor again.

He decided to go check the main entrance and could only sigh as he saw that he was a giant steel door. Impossible to break with his arsenal.

"…Arima, isn't it strange that some of the people working here seem to have disappeared. Even when we were going back here, we didn't meet anyone except that stupid guy," Tieria suddenly remarked and Arima exclaimed in understanding.

"You're right…" Arima smiled. He ran toward one of the small rooms and entered. When he saw the Russian guy tied up and panicking there, he smirked and cracked his fingers.

"Come on, little guy, give me what I want. I only have two minutes to save your sorry life and ours at the same time," he said and told the man to lead them toward the secret passage.

He untied the man and let him run away. They returned inside the main hall and the man opened up a hidden numeric pad on the wall. He hastily typed the code and a staircase was revealed for to them.

"Good job," Arima snorted before going inside with Tieria. The former captive couldn't do anything except following them. After they went down the stairs, the passage closed again.

At the end of the stairs, there was one more shutter that had been activated by either the system or one of the people who had fled previously. Arima didn't lose time as he grabbed the rest of his knives. "Sorry, mom," he whispered and threw them.

The heat and shockwave of the explosion hit them a bit, but they immediately went past the shutter when it was destroyed.

Arima trailed the long corridor that was behind and then finally reached the outside. The exit was located in a shrouded part of the forest and some of the other survivors were hiding there.

When they spotted Arima and Tieria, they immediately raised their weapon. But Arima completely disregarded them as he carried Tieria bridal-style before running away at full speed.

He was already hearing the planes' propellers. When Arima spotted the aircrafts flying above the island, he had barely reached the beach. The planes then dropped the bombs and commenced the airstrike. Their mission was to destroy the surface of this entire island, so the aim was pretty much everywhere. One of the bombs directly fell on the forest behind Arima.

The shockwave struck him from behind. He covered Tieria as he was sent flying into the ocean. After the two fell in the water, Tieria grabbed Arima who seemed to have lost his strength and swam back to the surface. The squad had detected them thanks to the radio and the submarine was already moving closer.

When it arrived, Garo and Farro helped Tieria pulling Arima inside. When the latter was finally inside the submarine, he lied his back on the floor and groaned. "My back…" he grumbled and the squad laughed lightly.

Jin sighed exuberantly. "You almost got hit directly by a rocket, got kicked by a giant robot, and now survived an Eion explosion that should have instantly killed anyone within a five-hundred-meter radius. Be happy that you're still alive."

Arima smirked and raised the handle of the G-Mines' case. "You better dive right now by the way, before we are out of range," he said. Moria's eyes widened and he told the driver to go down.

Arima managed to take a seat and split the handle in two. On one part of the broken handle, there was a blinking red light and on the other a really tempting red button. Arima chortled and pressed the button without hesitation.

The red light became green and the closest G-Mine on the island started beeping. Then it was the turn of the others as if they were sharing the signal.

The ones that were on the first floor had already been destroyed by the airstrike, but the underground of the facility had just simply been clogged by the ruins. The G-Mines placed near the Eion tanks and the FEBs were thus fully functional.

They all beeped together and two small holes opened on each one of them. Then, gas started to escape the holes at high pressure.

G-Mines are commonly known as TGM; Tactical Gas Mine. They release a great volume of highly explosive gas in the air when they're triggered and fill the space around them with it.

When the mines finally finished blowing the gas out, two minuscule rods appeared on top of them. The two appendices slowly tilted toward the other until a spark was produced in between. The gas was instantaneously ignited.

The Eion tanks cracked and joined the explosion. But when the FEBs cracked because of the detonation, it wasn't just a boost that occurred.

From the outside, the earth quaked and a blue light escaped the ruins and illuminated the sky above the demolished island. And within seconds, everything erupted. The entire island became shrouded by a cyan mushroom cloud.

An unstoppable shockwave spread and pushed the water around, provoking a kind of circular tsunami. Luckily, Fission Eion Bombs don't release radiation or anything of the sort so there was no worry that it would affect the continents.

Though ultimately, an island had just disappeared; miles of water evaporated, a tsunami that probably can destroy a small city was released, and if they were unlucky, the fact that so many of those bombs exploded at the same time could actually incite a real earthquake.

The submarine was also shaken by the aftermath even though it was already hundreds of meters underwater. The people inside grabbed on what they could and sighed in relief when the shaking ended.

Moria rubbed his weary eyes and looked at his men. "Mission accomplished," he declared but no one celebrated. Too many of their comrades had died. They all started meditating to calm themselves. They thought that, at least, their friends hadn't died in vain.

Tieria was exhausted mentally and rested her head on Arima's shoulder who was already fast asleep. That scene managed to bring smiles to everyone.

"One is sixteen and the other twenty-one. Guess who is who?" Jin jested while swallowing his anti-stress pills and everyone froze.