Rhea saw the initial explosion with her own eyes. It was deep a red that disappeared into a growing, billowing white cloud. It rolled across the ground towards her at breakneck speed. Then the door to the cannon slammed shut and the sight was gone. She turned to the screens as they clouded over.
Unthinkingly she was about to ask Isla what had happened, but then a wall of flame filled her view and the temperature rose sharply.
Santouri had warned her that even outside the detonation area there would be an effect. She expected the heat but it kept rising. The moist air was turning to steam as Rhea felt the material of the lab coat crisp and heard the crackling of the chemical exposure tag as it failed. Her skin began to tighten and her breaths became impossible to breath. Then almost as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone and the mist faded.
What was revealed was just a surprising. Again she was about to blurt out that something was wrong before she realized the force field pattern was still there. It just occupied the entire screen.
Her mind was behind her hand movement as she grabbed the joystick, and it only caught up by the time the aimer had swung up to the left side of the screen following a line of disappearing crosshairs. Almost on instinct she fired as the cruiser disappeared from view. There was no time for disappointment. The grinding crash that shook the building evaporated that.
This time she spoke. “What’s happ…”
“The ship brushed the emplacement. It is destroyed?” said Isla in triumph.
.
At some time the building had completely retracted into the ground and as Rhea stepped out at ground level she could see the smoking cruiser was still mostly intact. She stood looking about, there were fires burning not far from where it had crashed, she didn’t know if they from it or the missile. Everywhere else everything was quiet: everything was still: it seemed impossible that such a short time ago chaos reigned. Then it began again…
The all-clear sirens began to wail and in several locations massive slabs of reinforced metal slit in two and opened like flowers in a madman’s garden.
Military vehicles pouring up out of the ground shattered the illusion. There were militia transports and every type of weapon: everyone but three circled the still quiet spacecraft. Rhea was glad that it had not been destroyed. She hoped that there were few casualties, but that hope was replaced as she saw three vehicles stop short of the buildings perimeter.
Militiamen poured out each brandishing a weapon pointed in her direction. She nervously put her hands in the air as a small group of officers came towards her.
“Professor Rhea Victoria Thain?” One said harshly.
“Yes… That’s me,” she said weakly.
“Take off your coat: one arm at a time leaving the other in the air.”
Her anxiety increased but with difficulty she did as she was ordered
“Turn around slowly.”
She did and became aware that they were staring intently at her body. She knew they were scanning for any bulge that would betray a weapon, but that wouldn’t be everything they were examining. The thought embarrassed her, and she turned back to them feeling flushed.
“I’m sorry professor,” said a woman who appeared to be the senior officer. “But you are not in an area where you are authorized… Can you explain to me why?”
“I… I was finishing some very important work?”
“It is a serious contravention of military rule not to go to the bunkers when the siren sounds; you know that?”
“Yes…” she said meekly trying to put on her most innocent smile and wishing it had been a male officer: she had a much better rapport with men. “It was very important work… To the Alliance…” She added hoping it made the point.
“In a cannon emplacement?”
“I… I…” She couldn’t explain why.
“Isla reported that you had an alien machine that overrode the cannons controls?”
She was in enough trouble already without explaining any more. “I don’t have anything like that?”
The officer couldn’t explain anything either and looked over to the cruiser. “How you accessed the cannon is for some other to determine, but it seems whatever you did, you did with good result.”
She wanted to smile and say ‘I shot it down’ but she knew it wasn’t really her.
“Your records don’t indicate you have ever been instructed; can you tell me how you did that?”
“I…” she couldn’t, well not in a way that didn’t tell them everything.
“I just grabbed the aimer thing and pressed the red button?”
“That’s it?” The woman muttered in disbelief.
“Yes.”
“So professor, you ignored a compulsory evacuation signal to come up here, to a restricted area, entered an even more forbidden cannon emplacement, activated a weapon that your records show you having no operational knowledge of, and brought down an enemy warship in a way that…” The woman glanced back over her shoulder towards the wreck. “Probably caused the minimum of casualties,” she looked at Rhea suspiciously. “Can you then at least explain what possessed you to do all that?”
Rhea tried to smile again. “ Not really,” quickly followed by, “Other than it is a citizens duty to do whatever they can to defeat the enemy?”
The woman would have probably laughed had she been the kind of a woman who laughed.