Chapter 531 The Thunder Rolls

Chapter 531 The Thunder Rolls

Just a few streets away from the courthouse in Shelton was an irish pub. To tourists and locals, it was a gathering place for people to drink their worries away, eat “ethnic” cuisine, and, on St. Patrick’s Day, celebrate by gulping down cheap beer with even cheaper green dye added.

But to the cult of the progenitor, it was a beginning. Its basement was where Rick had first begun preaching his ideal of a new utopia where the progenitors would live hand-in-hand with the human descendants they’d left behind when they left to explore the vast universe. It was a shrine, a place of pilgrimage, and the closest thing to a holy site that the cult had, and it was why not just one, but two of Rick’s inner circle were present in such a flea speck town that was only included on maps out of a sense of obligation.

One of them was hidden, masquerading as the chief of police, and the other was the Hartstene Pointe Maintenance Association’s vice president.

The phone on the police chief’s desk rang, but sadly, the chief had already left. He was on his way to the basement of the pub, where he would rally with the cult members in town and arm themselves for a confrontation with the incoming raid. He was under no illusion that the cult forces would survive, but when cornered, even the mildest rabbit would bite. However, had he been in his office to answer that phone call, things might have perhaps played out differently.

But he wasn’t, so his fate was sealed.

He had about forty young, strong cultists, and another fifty or sixty old and young who were willing to sacrifice themselves, if necessary. Whether they actually would sacrifice themselves in the end was a question the chief was unwilling to ask himself, in fear of the answer, but at least they claimed they were. And that was all that mattered at this junction.

“They’re coming, hurry!” he said, waving the stream of people into the pub as people walking by curiously looked on, wondering what was happening.

“Can we make it through this, chief?” a panicky-looking youth asked as he passed the chief.

The chief only looked at him with a grim expression, then slowly shook his head. “Not likely, son. But at least we can spit in the devil’s eye while he drags us down to hell,” he solemnly said, then continued counting people and waving them past him into the pub.

The young man, already on the verge of full-blown panic, paled and fell weeping to the ground. Then a purple light flashed in his eyes and he stilled, then robotically climbed to his feet and trudged into the pub.

[Targets have congregated and are grouped up. Suggest indirect fire.]

“Roger that,” the reaper team leader said. He marked the pub on the battle map and waved his hand at the heavy and demolition experts in the team.

No words needed to be said; they had access to the same information as the team leader did and immediately took a knee. A firing tube extended from each of their backpack-

mounted indirect-fire modules, loaded with a single round.

The heavy had a “bunker-buster” that would penetrate three meters into the ground before rapidly filling the space it fell through with a mixture of jet fuel and methane and detonating in a single fireball that would collapse everything around it thanks to the vacuum left behind after it petered out.

The demolition expert, on the other hand, had a more conventional high explosive penetrator round. It would fly over the heads of its target and explode, driving shrapnel into the ground much like a shotgun blast would into a target in front of it.

“Ready,” the two men reported, then waited for the fire order.

The squad AI, after confirming that civilian casualties would be kept to an absolute minimum through Overwatch, gave the team leader the green light.

“Fire, fire, fire,” the man ordered, and two streaks left two launch tubes.

The firers stood and rejoined the rest of the team, then everyone continued on their way to their destination.