Chapter 34
"What the heck?" Ryu swore turning the ship around for another shot at the mecha only to find it vanished when they came around for another shot with Ken positioned on top of the ship ready to slice it up with the hypershoot.
Ken shifted his feet further apart into his fighter's stance to maintain his balance while he ran through the scenario of the past hour in his mind. It was like a game of cat and mouse with this mecha.
"Ryu I'm going ahead of you to see what's going on." Ken said detaching the G-1 he stayed ready to use the hypershoot should the mecha rear its ugly head once more. But it didn't reappear.
"Odd… why would it do that?" Jun mused through the intercom. "It's like it was…"
"…Toying with us so it could distract us from Galactor's real mission. So what is their real mission?" Ken finished her sentenced. "We've been duped team, contact base Ryu, inform them…" He stopped for a second, as a revelation slapped him across the face. "No…." He breathed and then the urgency to confirm his suspicions took over. "Ryu get me Dr Nambu…Kamo anyone at the base now!"
"Static, that's all I'm getting Ken." Ryu reported.
"I'm coming back in, Ryu we have to get back there now…I bet this whole thing was a set up to get us out of there…but how did they know?" He questioned running to the shoot that enabled him to reach the bridge quicker.
"The white fine dust!" Jun sprang from her seat as he entered the bridge and ran over to him with wild green eyes. "That strange powder that feel off you…could it have been a tracking device of some kind?"
They didn't need any other prompting- Ryu powered the Gatchasparten to full speed as they headed back towards their base.
The sight that met his eyes less than an hour later sent a sharp pain straight through Ken.
The black smoke confirming the death of the base built especially for him and his team had been reduced to a pile of rubble. A heavy blanket of silence fell over team as they all stared at the viewing screen.
Ryu didn't ask Ken if he wanted to land, the ships pilot already knew the thoughts of his commander having worked together for so long.
Ken didn't feel his feet touch the ground, but he knew his legs moved as he walked along the cliff top to get a better view and piece together in his mind how the base met its final end. Drawing in a deep breath he refused to close his eyes forcing them to focus on the destruction and draw strength from it to continue his fight against the evil that caused it.
The rest of the team stayed a respectful distance away from him, he silently thanked for it knowing it was hardest for Jun to not run over and throw her arms around him to try and bring him some comfort. She knew him well.
Eventually he turned to look at his team- their drawn faces reflected his inner pain. Looking back he saw a body not far from the entrance. What if that man's still alive he thought snapping out of his melancholy moment, a sense of urgency to search for anyone alive sent his heart racing as he prepared for the next mission.
"We have to go and look for survivors…there was hundreds of personnel on that base, they deserve a chance and we're wasting precious minutes standing here. We start with the person whose collapsed outside the base…he could still be alive" His quiet choked up words echoed loudly through his ears like he was shouting.
A ray of hope flickered in their eyes.
"Let's move out." Joe said running to a vantage point he glided off the top of the cliff face to the land in the midst of the still burning base below. Looking at Jun Ken grasped her hand discreetly into his for a split second. With Jinpei and Ryu standing on the other side of her, they followed the Condor in the search for anyone who could still be alive in the wreckage of their former base.
* * * *
Dr Nambu tried to clear his foggy mind and separate the pain into a place where he could control it. He had been taught how do it when was a only eighteen years old when he had been selected to be a part of special forces unit along with his brother who died when being interrogated by his captures, leaving his pregnant new wife a window. Anna was only few months along when she received the news of her husbands death, from that time on Dr Nambu had very little to do with his nephew living in Ameris with his mother, he made sure she had enough money to raise him without a struggle and put through the best schools in Ameris but other than that he didn't have any contact with them. He had only been in touch with him recently to discover he had also become a doctor of science like his uncle. A sudden jolt of intense pain temporarily brought him back to where he was hanging from a rope with his feet only painfully inches from the floor. The pain stopped, Egobossler's Barron tone voice began again to throw questions into his foggy fried brain again, instead he chose to tune out…Flashbacks plagued his thoughts once more…his wandering into days gone by of his youth when he was a small boy fascinated by what he saw looking through a microscope for the first time igniting forever his passion for science and looking for ways to make the world a better place…It became his way of coping with the torture Count Egobossler insisted upon doing to his aged wretched body. He felt old…like a very old worn out man clinging to life and wondering why. Another sharper jolt of pain caused him to cry out and curse Egobossler and the whole of Galactor for the torment of the world before the aching became too much to bear and the world faded into darkness….
* * * *
The news of Dr Nambu's surrender had hit Ken like a bucket of icy water sending shivers down his spine. How could the doctor be so irrational, it just wasn't like him- He was always logical in his actions and thought things through…He thought wildly. Scolding his mentor silently he tried to focus on the ground below him as he flew the G-1 in yet another circle over the ancient town below to ensure he covered the ground. Joe and Jinpei reported into him, they'd found nothing that resembled a Galactor base so he waited on Jun and Ryu.
* * * *
Groggy from whatever drug Mekandor injected into him Dr. Nambu painfully dragged his tired body to a seated position against a wall in the chamber they had thrown him it. Gingerly reaching into his secret pocket inside of his trousers he quickly produced a tracing devise and opened his watch face to place it inside. Not knowing if he was being watched Dr Nambu took the chance anyway and began to send out the signal to lead his team to the location of the base, something extremely bright caught his attention forcing him to look up. The world filled with luminous blurring rays of colour, prolonged pain could so that a person. Dr. Nambu knew since he had once done a major study on the effects of torture to prepare Gatchaman for his coming role in case he was captured…In eth midst of the bright rainbow rays came the ghostly face of Count Egbossler's blue hued face and nasty smirk.
"Ready to talk yet Nambu?" He asked his smirk intensified.
Dr Nambu didn't respond, he knew he could outsmart the leader of Galactor he just need time to form a plan to escape. Another blast of pain hit him, this time it felt different from the electric shocks used previously. And then he saw a glimpse of his true enemy Sosai Z for a slit second before being brought back to reality and passing out before he could digest the horror of what he had just seen.