POV General Condor
BOOM
A bit of dust falls from the ceiling as an explosion goes off near the surface.
"What's the progress on Star Shot?" I ask.
"It's completely ready; all we need to do is evacuate," Lorenz reported.
"Good, then let's get out of this death trap," I say, but then pause as I realise I was missing something.
I couldn't finish that thought as a nearby screen turned on, and I saw a face I was not happy to see.
"What do you want, Dr Ivo? This is a private meeting, and I don't recall giving you authorisation to use the screens," I say unhappily.
"I wanted to hand in my letter of resignation. You see, I have deemed our... cooperation is at an end," Dr Ivo says with a massive smirk, and I feel something is wrong.
"You can't terminate our agreement without approval from General Condor," Lorenz replies.
"Yes, well, that seems unnecessary as you no longer hold any value. You didn't think I would know about your schemes. You planned on getting rid of me. But I have been 8 steps ahead of all you imbred imbeciles. The fact that you thought you could outsmart me was insulting," Dr Ivo says with that same smirk.
"Even if what you say is true, there is nowhere you can run to that we won't find you," I reply.
"Ahh... That's the most beautiful part of this plan. I am going somewhere you can't reach. And I must at least thank you for so foolishly making the vehicle that will get me there. Though I imagine you likely thought it would be your way out," Dr Ivo says smugly.
"No... You... You couldn't!" Lorenz says with panic clear in his voice.
Lorenz runs to the nearby terminal and tries to access it, but I knew that was pointless.
"What's your real plan? You could have used the ship to escape by now, and there would be nothing we could do. No... You're waiting for something. I know you better than you think, and I can say for certain that you don't leave loose ends. So elaborate, what's your plan to get rid of me and the rest of the Enclave?" I ask.
"You misunderstand, I never intended to wipe out all the Enclave. That's just not feasible. It would take far too much effort. No... I just need Fort Drum to fall to the Gunners," Dr Ivo says.
"Our defences are strong enough to last for months still," I reply with narrowed eyes.
"True, but my creations are a major part of that defence, and it seems that a major part of the defences will suddenly be empty of any troops. A real tragedy. There was also an unfortunate leaking of the Enclaves' secret exits. I'm afraid you're quite trapped in that base of yours," Dr Ivo says with a fake saddened tone.
"Damn you, Robotnik! You will never get away with this!" I yell.
My eyes go wide, and the screen cuts out. I immediately tried and contact our reserve troops, but it was too late; the Gunners had already breached our defences. But even if the odds of survival were slim, I would rally the troops and try to fend off the enemy.
POV Ivo Robotnik
I laugh as the screens cut out, but I cut it off as I still needed to make sure everything went well.
"Snively! Is everything ready?" I ask.
"Yes, Uncle! The rocket engines are primed, and all systems are nominal," Snively says with a wide smile.
"What about the scientists?" I ask.
"One managed to get away," Snively reports quietly.
"Doctor Spara?" I ask.
"Doctor Spara," Snively replies
"Whatever, let her do what she wants. Trying to kill her at this point would be too annoying. If she wants to launch a rocket, let her," I reply with a tired look.
We had killed all the scientists except one. And it wasn't for a lack of trying. Doctor Spara was many things unhinged, being likely the main one. As such, she has managed to avoid any attempts to kill her in the strangest ways. After the 5th attempt, I just gave up.
I get suited up and seated alongside my nephew in the pilot chambers. The rocket contained a massive space station that was meant to be self-sufficient and heavily defended. The Enclave wanted to use this space station to rebuild the Enclave and use any orbiting junk as fuel and material. I just removed the Enlcave from this equation and decided to make some needed changes. The comms flare to life, and I hear Doctor Spara in the command room.
"Now FIRE THE ROCKET! Hypothesis: THIS WILL BE FRICKIN' SICK!" Dr Spara says over the comms.
'Oh dear lord. If she were less crazy, I think she could be an excellent scientist.'
"You ever see that basketball movie? With the song about flying? This is just like that," Spara says with a crazed voice.
"Let the robots launch the rocket! I feel like you would only mess things up," I reply.
"No Time! 3, 2, 1 BLAST OFF!" Spara responds.
The rocket ignites, and I still hear Spara talking over the comms to her imaginary helpers, most likely.
"Here some facts about flying. One, you need wings to fly. Two, Awesome..." Spara says with that tone that makes me wonder where the hell the Enclave found her.
"I don't want to live on this planet anymore," I say aloud before turning off comms.
'Never coming back to this h*llhole.'
POV Dr. Spara
"SCIIIIIIIEEEEENNNCCCCEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!" I scream.
POV Rio
I stop, and I feel as if there is a great disturbance in the science. No, I really stop as I sense something really odd.
'Did... my clone just... Die?'
The amount of brain power I have using my clones at any given time is not that massive. Thanks to my increase in Intelligence, I was recently able to upgrade the Similo Duplexis to allow for 4 clones instead of 3. But I was certain that one of them had just been killed. That alone is not necessarily impossible, but it was the suddenness and the fact that I can't tell what did it. It also didn't help that the place that the clone was sent to was a very important location. The Pentagon. I decided to check the first guess.
'No, the Pentagon is still there and not a crater, so... What the heck happened?'
As I was thinking about this, I also noticed something odd. I was getting a signal from a new satellite. Or rather, a previously unknown satellite was attempting to connect to the spy satellite I was using.
'Huh? No way...'
I was shocked as the various observatories and satellite relay stations were reporting a new satellite, and the size was massive. I was really confused about how such a ship could just appear out of nowhere. But I was able to quickly trace where it came from. The answer, however, made me unhappy.
'Really, the Enclave? Ugh. Why can't they just die? And stay dead. The last thing I need are Nazi Zombies.'
I had already been to Goodneighbor, and we were now heading back to Sanctuary. But now we needed to speed it up, as I didn't want a Fascist Satellite that might be what Mama Murphy was warning about. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they added some doomsday weapon to the satellite and were now going to use it to wipe out the 'mutants' of Earth. I also sent an alert to make everyone activate the shield generators. I wasn't taking any chances.
As soon as we arrived back in Sanctuary, I ran straight to Vault 111 and started attempting to gain access to the satellite and to find out what they were doing. Getting access was not that hard, as I let them connect to the spy satellite and then used that to piggyback into their systems. When I did that, I also found out what they were doing. They were closing in on ARCHIMEDES II and wanted to attach it to what is now clearly a space station. Once the connection was made, they would upload a new program and several machines would work to upgrade the orbital weapon. I was never going to let that happen.
'Good thing I grabbed those terminals when I was in the area.'
I had prepared for something like this. When I was at Big MT, I also made a small pit stop at HELIOS One to take all the computers or devices I could use to override the satellite. I just hadn't needed to use it until now.
'Hmm, maybe I can kill two birds with one stone.'
I waited until the space station got close to ARCHIMEDES II, then I uploaded the virus. The entire satellite started to build up a massive energy charge.
'Now what will you do? Try to override the process and risk annihilation, or will you give it up and let ARCHIMEDES II blow up?'
The person operating the space station tried to bypass the virus, but after a minute of trying, they seemed to give up and prepare to eject the satellite. I smiled, but my smile slowly faded as I realised something bad.
Pssst
With a burst of air, the ARCHIMEDES II satellite was ejected... right into the path of the Spy Satellite that I relied heavily on. I try to see if I can alter the trajectory, but both satellites have no reserve air left to alter course.
'You petty little jerk!'
I watch as ARCHIMEDES II closes the distance and crashes into the Spy Satellite. The feed is lost, and I feel very annoyed. It was the last satellite in orbit that could be used for visual spying. The only other satellite besides the Enclave Space Station was a communications satellite.
'If you want to be petty, then you picked the wrong house, fool!'
I start taking over every system I can on the space station. The enemy seemed to notice right away and tried to combat me. I had to admit their skills were very impressive. However, I was better. After losing over and over again, they severed the connection by shutting down almost all the computers they had on board. There wasn't anything I could do about that, as without power, I couldn't access their systems. But I did enough that if they tried turning on the computers again, my programs would notify me. This wasn't over. But for now, I would wait.
'Sigh. If I want to take them out, I will have to get a ship in orbit. I also now need one to replace the lost satellite. That can wait for a minute. I am getting close to completing the mirror project.'
------------------
Author's Note:
The Enclave is back. And they are already basically dead. Not to say there aren't survivors, just that there are very few. So nobody guessed who Dr Ivo was. At least not as of the writing of this chapter. I left a lot of clues, but hey, that's okay. Another loose end was that it was the Enclave that took the rocket engines from ArcJet Systems. They planned to escape to the stars for a while. Also, I love Doctor Spara. She is most likely not a scientist, but she is hilarious. Until next time, Ciao.