NOVEL WEB Chapter 430: Rough patch of the road
"That really didn't go well…" I muttered while putting the rear-view mirror of the vehicle atop one of the displays.
It caught the angry crowd chasing us from below quite well.
And did I mention pretty much everyone here has long since achieved the level of supreme, otherwise they would hardly be able to make their way all the way to the bottom of the trap?
"It's not like we had much choice," Fay muttered absentmindedly, her attention fully focused on the hovercraft's control.
The supremes chasing us could keep up with the maglev's speed, especially now that I had to take into account the broken parts of the machine and the chaotically moving spots of direct starlight.
That, and all the damage we incurred during their initial response to us flying directly overhead.
It was a pity, but with the dampeners damaged, I could no longer allow us to perform as rapidly as before, which also limited both our speed and possible altitude.
Maglev was never designed to fly at some ungodly heights, soaring where Earth's atmosphere started to disperse and blend into the whole of the mighty universe. For the most part, it was intended to serve as a mostly ground vehicle, impervious to weather or the conditions of the roads below.
To a degree, it was even possible to move it over water, but with a drastically reduced height limit, the waves grew to an actual issue and a potential threat in case of some bigger storms.
Still, over the ground, we could easily reach nearly forty, or fifty meters by adjusting our hypermagnets to the variety of the surface below. With max power and by pushing the maglev to its limits, a hundred meters wasn't unachievable.
But with our dampeners down, that distance cut into the lower limit, where flying as high as forty meters up would put even further strain on the ship's subsystems.
All of that would be fine, as long we only traveled over empty land, where we could safely cruise at five or ten meters above the ground.
The shit went down when we suddenly climbed over a small hill, only to appear on the outskirts of some massive, ancient town.
It was nothing like the societies on the other side of the barrier.
Instead of tents, the whole area was covered in simple and crude but well-engineered and maintained buildings.
The streets were well taken care of while the total population had to be ten if not twenty times what we saw on the other side.
And even with this, it would all be fine if one of the locals didn't find our presence somewhat disturbing.
A shockwave that followed a lazy sway of his hand forced me to climb up, once again pushing the maglev to its current, already weakened limits.
That, in turn, meant pumping more juice into the hypermagnets… and drastically ramping up the force they used to push off the ground.
The force that, in theory, was harmless to humans and most other living beings. But just like with everything even remotely physical, anything could and would become lethal when brought up to a sufficient scale.
A pair of panties could kill if someone stuffed ten of them into someone else's airways. A feather could kill thousands by carrying a disease into a well.
A single pea could literally take out continents if shot at a target with a relativistic speed.
And hypermagnets working at their full, safe power were just enough to annoy the man even further.
Long story short, by the time we finally crossed over this ancient city, the list of the failure points on the ship's diagnostic grew by quite a few new positions.
To a huge degree, the maglev held well, withstanding attacks of weirdly huge variety.
Whatever guns that we apparently had mounted were now disabled. With a conveyor system broken elsewhere, ammunition feeds into all the other onboard weapons were down, leaving just a few rounds already loaded.
In that state, we managed to shoot out of the city, with my hand itching to summon my portal and risk it by raising the power lever into a danger zone.
Then, mere moments after leaving the skies above the city, we saw her.
A girl sitting down by her lonesome, brooding over some sort of necklace she held in her hands.
She didn't seem to pay any mind to the commotion or the raging currents of the light of the stars, too absorbed in whatever she was doing to pay any attention to anything else.
"We need to grab her and go!" Fay shouted out loud, as if worried that if the girl was left unmentioned, we would simply prioritize our safety and fly right past her.
"Sure, sure," finally reaching the point at which the battle from just now no longer raised my heartbeat, I put the hovercraft into a gentle spin, turning it as I approached the area near the girl before putting the maglev down and opening up the ramp.
"I will need some rope and sleeping gas," I called out as I moved up from my seat. "Claudy, would you be as kind as to replace the belts on Fay's seat?"
"Sure thing." Wasting no time on useless chatter, Claudy unhooked his own belts and rushed to one of the secure shelves at the back of the ship.
"Here's some rope, I'm looking for the gas," Fay threw the long piece of sturdy, plastic rope and walked out with a sleeping grenade in her hand.
Before our departure, Makary judged toys like that to be of potential use. And in spite of my doubt from back them, he appeared to be quite right.
"How do you want to play it?" Fay asked, giving me a curious stare as she threw the grenade up and down while still hidden within the maglev's interior.
Your journey continues on empire
"We throw her the rope, and once she wraps it around her hand, we toss her some sleep and then drag her in," I explained the details of the plan I hatched on the spot.
To a degree, regardless of whether this barrier controlled space or time, it did so through one's perception. Meaning, as long as one wasn't aware of the process, they could ignore the hold of this damned trap!
It was an extremely dangerous process due to the presence of various spots of the direct starlights that formerly only I could see…
But right now, our ship's AI could not only detect it but also avoid it at its own discretion!
Meaning, my plan for having us drug ourselves to fall asleep while the automated processing of the ship would safely ferry us back to the entrance of the plain on its other side…
"What are you waiting for, then?" Fay asked, leaning her head over to the side while reaching down with her free hand to caress her slightly bulging stomach.
'Yeah, there's no way I will allow some random supreme onto the ship with her. Not before making sure they are not a threat.'
With this thought, I spun the end of the rope around a bit before throwing it towards the girl… Only to fall short a good few meters.
She couldn't get to us because of the barrier's effect. And if we tried to get to her, we would lose the space that, at least for now, was of utmost importance.
"Shit," I cursed under my breath, feeling the burning stare of Fay on my back.
I then spun the rope again before tossing it with much greater strength, this time easily overshooting the girl by over ten meters.
"Now, spin it around your arm!" I shouted while using the other end of the rope to describe what I wanted this random girl to do.
"Hey guys," Claudy called from deep within the ship. "Those guys are getting awfully close!"