Project Devilgama

Nine

"This is it, people. Welcome to the spaceship." May said as the elevator door opens, revealing a dim cabin.

The inside of the cabin was lined with protruding buttons and luminous interfaces which made Mhaz wonder how the guidance worked. There were four seats posted in a two-by-two arrangement. There were wide, tinted windows in the cabin wall that opened Mhaz's sight to the gigantic structure holed inside the earth where this and hundreds of other vessels are placed in. The numerous vessels were arranged into layered carousels. From there, Mhaz could see what they looked like; grey colored as a cumulonimbus cloud in stormy weather, shaped like the beak of a sparrow, and their calibers as large as two and a half meters.

"Autoloaders. We are the cannon fodder, now." Hannev appointed, "Take a seat, please."

Mhaz walked beside the seat in the front and stopped to see several attached apparatus that looked like thick trousers on the apron. Small tubes lined it, connecting to the base of this vessel. And on both armrests was a pair of long armbands with straps and similar kinds of tubes. "What's this?" Mhaz asked.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you about the harness. It is a special suit to help you hold the Gs. Air will pump into these trousers, tensing your muscle, increasing the blood pressure in the lower body part, so blood can still reach your brain when we spin."

It made sense to Mhaz, it is impossible to neutralize gravity. The law of physics remains a limitation for high-speed movement. The only way to compensate would be to slide into these specialized trousers. He automatically felt the trousers wrapping up his legs and waist the moment he takes the seat. The same goes for his arms that he slid into the armbands.

"This carousel is full. There are ten launchers here, so it will rotate slowly to load each launcher with these vessels. It's time to buckle up."

He heard a low hum. A sort of plate attached to a mechanical armature slowly lowered from the ceiling of the cabin, right above Mhaz. The plate eventually reached his torso, then clasped into it without pressing too hard, and he was able to breathe. This entire series of harnesses had held him in place, which gets him a little uneasy but still amply tolerable.

Mhaz peeked over the window and saw the whole circle of vessels move on its axis.

"It would be 3Gs when we spin in the launchers, for your info. Now, take the pills."

The three did not think twice about taking the pills off Hannev's hand.

By the time they ended the preparations, the vessel had slid into a dark tube - it was a sort of circular channel, and Mhaz could think that perhaps the vessel will spin inside this tube a hundred times before it shoots out into the air. Rings of lighting lining up the tube began to glow blue in a succession, ahead. The centrifuge spin will start in a short time. There was a countdown on the panels beside a digital clock which told him 7 o'clock, starting from ten.

Then, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the vessel began to accelerate through the tube.

"Hold all your muscles tense now!"

The gleaming bluish light that shone on Mhaz's face began to turn into short blinks for the increasing speed. He shuts his eye and started to contract every bit of muscle in his system. And all the harnesses wrapping his body gradually pressed harder against him. He felt like he might pass out somewhere in the radian.

"The principle was that there are things we can't control. What goes will go. Devilgama was not the exception." Maykal shouted words, an intermezzo between the unbearableness, "Let's think of this as a graduation. We are ascending!"

It has been countless times this vessel spun - Mhaz did not even count in the first place. In each complete spin, Mhaz could see a bright, white circle flashing before his eyes. It was supposedly the exiting tunnel which breaks out to the morning sky above.

"Remember when Zeno lost his ship in the storm? That was full of gold and wealth, but he didn't grieve for anything to happen. He blames nothing. He ... accepted his fate." May blew out a thick, compressed breath. "But we did not only have one ship, dear Mhaz. We ride the storm to the other one before we sink. That's how it works!"

At the end of his speech, the vessel shot out of the tube and into the bright sky. Laughs and sunlight flooded the whole interior, simultaneously.

"You guys good?"

"Affirming." Mhaz responded in relieve.

The vessel began to adjust to a horizontal position mid-air. Mhaz could feel low vibrations beneath his feet, caused by the thrusters activating. Then a harder one - now he felt the inertia of them pushing the vessel forward into a cruise.

"Guys, look down," Hannev said, peeking out of the windows. He saw numerous vessels reaching out to the sky from the depth of the ground. Then after a brief moment, the enormous churning ball of inferno erupted from the entire complex of Devilgama buildings below them. A blinding flash of light was casted from the explosion, that turned everyone's head inside the vessel away. It's shockwave blooms out like an expanding dome.

The vessel shook, several alerting beeps sounded inside.

"And so, the ship has sunken," May said, somehow gracefully. "But we did survive it, ladies and gentlemen. The long journey ahead awaits."

Mhaz was in silence. He thought of what he could do next as the hailing sound of destruction began to recede, only to find nothing in his mind. His meeting with the Devilgama was short, but it had already soldered a strange, unexplained feeling and emotion into his heart. Like a memory, like a dream.

Mhaz looked to Farad beside May behind. "You said it was everything." He spoke to May.

"Yes, the Devilgama was inside her."

"Tell me anything."

"By the time we hit the ground, shall we?" May ended.

There were beeps, then the machine spoke feminine, "Reaching altitude 3000 meters. Heading to the Twin Mountains in automatic guidance."

"Twin mountains? How far will this vehicle go?"

"Twin Mountains," Hannev said, "This vessel could go as far as a hundred kilometers by the momentum alone. Add some boosters, you can get fifty kilos more. And don't forget this vehicle have a pretty nice levitating engine. If nothing goes awry, then we can move hundreds of kilos. Sadly, it can't fly to the moon."

Mhaz turned his gaze to the outside. This vessel was still in the atmosphere. The cruise beneath the strato-clouds presented him the distant view below, he could see pockets of concrete jungles. Tall buildings that were left standing spike out of the ground that has turned pale and lifeless, mingled by the rubbles, and clouded by smoke that has settled as blanketing fog. And forests and rivers dying of thirst, if not turned into barren lands. "Never knew how terrible this island becomes." He murmured.

"I haven't seen the surface for years, man." May said, "Kinda missed it. This nonsense atomic violence has brought about unnecessary destruction. "

"Horrible was behind all of this."

"What's that?"

Then Mhaz began the explaination, "It's the revolt of those people, Maykal. The terrorists, cancer of humanity. You know, we had come so far that we have dismantled our absurd beliefs, but they wanted them back. It was a worldwide crusade, or something more convoluted."

"That's what happened if you gave extremists nukes," Hannev added.

The three plunged into a moment of silence, immersed in each thoughts. But, they had promised not to feel the despair and grief and hopelessness by the time they got into the countless spins. Only condolences for the fallen. Then, May came with a question, "Who launched nuke?"

"We have traced the trajectory when we were still down there, it was pointing out to the state of New Guinea."

"New Guinea?"

"Correct."