Chapter 32

Good news: We managed to find the Subs.

Bad news, half of them were turned into some sort of crystal. And I don't mean like half of the amount of those subs we found. I mean like half of their length was covered in the crystal growth.
Our little expedition now had to reach them. The subs were deep into the lake, as if being inside a stomach for digestion… which given where we were, was most likely what was happening.
We called the Pelican, Zea and Ark piloting the thing in ways not possible for us organics. Our telemetry data made a safe path for them. And we were now closer to getting out of here. I had begun seeing vitals in the TEAMCOM going in spikes the more we stayed in on shard. Half of our speed was spurned by our need to kill this thing, the other half being that I began seeing something wrong growing in all of us.

…maybe we were being digested ourselves.

Fuck.

"Alright! Bird is here! Get in and let's get to those subs! Ark, Zea, you have any points of interest?"

"Readings are all over the place. We need time to filter out the junk data! A few minutes, tops!"

"Ok get us as close as you can."

"Sure!"

"You have curious teammates, Yinsen." Himeko commented as we boarded the Pelican again.

"In our line of work, being… 'unique' is almost a work requirement." I shrugged, getting closer to her while everyone boarded. "You might have to get used to it."

"Oh? Will I want to?" Ok, down girl, we've in the middle of the job…

"You will have to."

"Awfully confident, aren't you?"

"In you? Yes." That shut her up and despite the helmet, I knew I succeeded in getting her to blush. A quick check and yes, I had that inside-the-helmet POV camera, so I watched her face.
She's as beautiful with a fierce grin in her face as she is when blushing like a teenager. I couldn't help but smile.

I coughed a bit and came back into focus. Ok, down boy. "Alright people, strap in for weird." The Pelican closed its hatch, and we went inside the space lake.

The trip thankfully was uneventful, as the lake's 'water' turned out to be insubstantial. I worried about having to add submarine mode to the Pelicans, but it turned out to be unnecessary. We went though and the only difference was the place looked like smoke floated around. According to the sensors everything was the same as outside, except for the background Honkai radiation, yet it felt… really, really wrong. Despite the normal-looking stuff we could see, this felt completely alien to humans.

The subs' hatches weren't covered by the crystals, and we chose the one least growth-covered to check for the nukes. The feeling got stronger the closer we got to the crystals, so we stayed as far as we could.

The hatch was stuck so we blasted it open. The Marine team went in first, followed by me, then watchpoint. The rider armor showed its biggest drawbacks, as the cramped space didn't allow us to use any moves other than our weapons. Luckily, we all had handguns or other small arms, even if we would accidentally fill this sub with hole and make it unsalvageable…

The sub felt… wrong, like some one read a blueprint and tried to match the pictures but had no idea how. Some things looked like they belonged to something else, and the inner hull looked like it was made from several kinds of metals. There even was a part of the hull made from aluminum foil.

We managed to reach the missile bay. It looked mostly right, but I sent the images to the other cores for them to check. DoD data cache for the win.

But the marines simply looked for another missile, a blue tipped one. I didn't know much about them, but I knew that the tip's shape was wrong, and it looked nothing like the Trident Missiles I remembered.

Jackson took off a panel and from it. "Package contents verified."

I could feel the power coming from inside that missile. The readings didn't lie, and I suddenly understood.

They had been planning to take the Core to the depths of the ocean to deny an asset. Whether it was to deny it to the plan or to the enemy, the CIA didn't want anyone playing with was theirs. That's why Bixi attacked King's Bay. It could tank anything the port could throw at it and it was equipped to search and dig up its objective from wherever it was.

But something was off.

From seeing this, I knew why there was so much warped space around us. An improper connection to a Herrscher Core could do that, or Bixi's inhuman mindset. But if it had found the core, why hadn't it brought it to its master? …Oh shit. "Everyone fall back! It's a trap!"

Our world went white with a splash of pink.

I woke up with a deep breath, and then began coughing. "Status!" I screamed at my radio. My whole body hurt, and my eyes were burned out, but my suit's optics had repaired themselves enough to directly feed the visuals to my brain.

"Here!" Himeko's suit looked like it was bathed in soot, and a lot of armor panels were outright ripped from her. her visor was discolored and cracked, yet not broken.

"Here!" Watchpoint thankfully had heavier armor, but it still looked like they had been fed to a woodchipper. There were deep gouges on their armor panels and some of their visors were cracked. They mostly looked ok. But we were missing people.

"Marines! Sound off!" I turned to look around. We were still inside the sub, but now it looked like it had been enlarged disproportionally, and where the missile bays were, a large semi translucent crystal filled the room. "Jackson?"

The marines were there, their armor, being far more mundane than ours, had broken with the extreme warping forces turning our surroundings into a modern art nightmare. They looked like someone decided to extend Yellowjacket's death scene in the MCU and try to see other ways it could go. Their bodies twisted and various parts were enlarged or reduced in size without care or hint of reason. Hopefully they were killed instantly, no one deserved to stay alive after that…

Inside, the crystal, I could barely see what I supposed was the Core of Logic. Shining blue without a care of the world, I was surprised that it hadn't managed to detonate the nukes filling the room. Or the missile fuel…

"What the hell was that?" Tyle came closer to me. An armor panel from the G3-Mild was stuck in his shoulder, making for a rather odd contrast in style.

"You ok?" I motioned to his recent adornment, He gave me a thumbs up and I nodded. "We were set up. The shining thing inside all that? That's what remains of the First Herrscher that attacked the US close to a decade ago. We told the CIA to give it up for the plan, but they thought they could sneak past the Honkai. So, this thing was deployed to find it and take it back to their master."

"So why is it here? Why hasn't it moved again?" A private asked, Sakamoto, going by the TEAMCOM.

"The Core of Logic, that thing's name, needs Honkai Energy to activate, but once you get going, it will keep going on its own. Right now, inside this thing is in the middle of a sea of energy, but nothing to guide it but the death throes of the people BIXI killed. As long as you understand something and you can deal with the radiation it emits while in use, you can use the Core of Logic to make anything out of Honkai energy." I babbled out as I began understanding how this had gone this way. "But there is nothing feeding it information to keep recreating stuff, so its now actively interfering with whatever BIXI uses to receive orders from Foxtrot Hotel, sorry, the Fourth Herrscher."

"So, it's like a dog sitting quietly on the street waiting for its owner to call it… but the dog has been deaf for a while and can't hear them?" Another Private, Kurenai, answered my babbling.

"Yes! This is good and bad for us. We need the Core to kill Foxtrot Hotel, but we also need to kill this thing fast enough to stop it from telling her that the Core is here."

"So why don't we grab the Core?"

"We need to destroy the crystal filling this room, but if we do that, the energy contained by it will create an explosion. It might either set off the nukes or kill us by itself." I stated. Come on… what can we use?

"What if we open the hatches and make something for it to release pressure while we drill through?" Private Maya raised her hand, and… yes!

"That could work! We send the energy through the cracks to the outside, and we begin digging the core out! Brilliant!" I think my smile was visible from outside my mask, as the boys and girls straightened with pride at their contribution. Himeko looked proud of her squad.

Himeko took half of her squad and went outside, leaving me with three Raiders to try and crack this thing without killing us all. I cycled thought what I had. The Typhoon Magnum, an Attache Calibur and the Raider's Tridentas. "Zea, Ark, can you hear me?"

"Barely, but yes. What's wrong?"

"We need something to pierce or cut through diamonds without shattering them too much. Do we have anything like that?"

"There is the Thousand Jacker we have onboard, but we don't have any Progrisekeys that might help."

Hmm… wait. there might be. "Send it down, there might be something around that we can use."

In another part of the world, inside a secure room deep below Moscow, a man looked at a screen with rapt attention. His supervisor passed by his desk and looked at the man. His voice promised pain. "Anton! Are you slacking on the job again! I'll make you drown in the flavor of you own ass, you damn cyka!" The addressed man didn't react. "Stand the hell up and face me when I speak!"

"Sir. Look at the screen." The man said with no emotion.

"Another of your American movies, so what?"

"This is live from their news networks." The man pointed at the little icon saying the scenes were indeed, transmitted live from wherever they occurred.

"Bah, more of their little propaganda."

"Our people are down there."

The supervisor froze, and then brought his face to the screen. In the images, metal giants killed monsters that never seemed to end. In the mist of all the machines' fighting some had a recognizable star on their pauldron, and inside the red star a pair of letters were visible. "Anton, keep surveillance and confirm any sights of these machines."

"Understood."

The supervisor left to search for his superiors. Maybe they would know what the П3 Plan was supposed to be.

The hatch was opened and from above the spear/sword hybrid fell, hilting itself on the deck. "One Thosand Jacker ready to go!"

"Thank you, girls."

"No problem! Hm, hello miss Aikawa. Yes, we have some stuff from the base…"

"If she needs anything, just give it to her."

"Just got authorization… yes… ok?"

I came back to pick up the Jacker and turned to one of the Raiders left to me by Himeko. "Hey, any of you guys have the old keys I gave you back when we met?"

It was odd seeing a Raider behave like a Rider, the slightly exaggerated body motions looked strange in their armor, even with the slight modifications that made it less bulky. "Yeah, let me… yup, right here." The woman put the key in my hand, and one of the original keys I made after arriving to this world stared at me. Piercing Bullet Ant then changed before me, instead of its previous Ammunition ability, it now had Reload.

Interesting.

"Hey Yinsen, you said we needed to break all this stuff?"

"No, just crack it enough for the energy inside to go outside while we dig out the Core."

"Got it, better brace yourself, dear!"

Dear god, hearing her say that… Down boy!

The Raiders and I walked back to the crystal filled room, and I prepared myself. "You ready out there?"

"Ready!" Himeko's voice was a bit distorted by rushing air… huh, I guess she's about to do something ridiculous… better catch up. I pulled out my loaned key.

"Reload!"

"Progrisekey Confirmed. Ready to Break."

"Thousandrise!

The Thousand Jacker's standby echoed in the distorted room. I pulled the trigger before ramming the weapon into the crystal.

"THOUSAND BREAK!"

The thunderous crack of the crystal shattering was completely swallowed by the flash of light.