The Eternal Winter - Book 1 - Chapter 59 - Criminals and Planet Hall (Patreon)

Alexander North

After my short little nap, I quickly continue making my way towards the planet hall. But I find myself stopping again at the sight of something rather… unexpected.

Seriously?

I can’t help but stare at the two groups of survivors on the other side of the long street from me. One of the groups is wearing outdated black carbon fiber armor whereas the other just appear to be regular citizens. And the armored group is holding the citizens hostage by the looks of it and are using them as shields of all things against the frozen ones they’re fighting.

My eyes narrow and my claws tense up a little as I see the people who – judging by their particular armor – are likely mercenaries using the citizens as cannon fodder and shields finish up with the wendigo in front of them.

Guess there’ll always be people taking advantage of the chaos. Even in an apocalyptic scenario.

I wrack my brain trying to remember the exact laws in an apocalyptic scenario before beginning to back up a little bit.

On second thought, I don’t have to worry about the law in this situation. They’re breaking the law, so I can use force to put them down as long as I try to knock them out instead of kill them.

After backing up far enough, I break into a sprint before jumping across the street onto a building at the split off, where the street breaks into two separate smaller streets going different ways. I then jump off of the side of the building down towards where they’re standing.

By the time I’m three quarters of the way to them, I see them already pointing in my direction and pulling out various knives and swords. But I land directly on top of one of them without giving him enough time to get away, breaking any sort of formation they had as I hear a snapping sound come from the man who is now on the ground and screaming.

“Shit, it’s another one!” “Get it already!” “Kill the thing!”

The mercenaries all shout and scramble at my sudden entrance, each thinking that I’m a frozen one myself. And I don’t contradict them as I jump off of the disabled man to land right behind another one of the mercenaries where I reach out and grab his arm, putting pressure on it to force him into dropping his knife. I then wrench it back, dislocating it with ease before throwing him into the building and turning to the next.

“Get up here now!” one of the mercenaries shouts at the civilians, but as expected, none of them actually follow the order and end up backing up instead. Which helps me as I take the distraction to knock him out with a well placed chop to the back of his neck. I then go through, taking care of the remaining six mercenaries, only to be taken by surprise by one of them.

I instinctively spin around to avoid a sword strike before dragging my claws straight through his armor and into his chest, killing him on accident.

“Shit…” I mutter barely paying any attention to the freezing over of his chest from my physical contact with him as I draw to a stop and look around at the surrounding mercenaries.

I really don’t like holding back. But I wouldn’t be surprised if martial law is called soon, so…

Anyways, I look at the civilians, just to find them all running away while still having their hands bound in front of them.

That won’t do.

I rush over to catch up with each of them, cutting through the ropes with my claws before continuing on my way towards the planet hall without stopping to say anything to them.

Let’s hope that I don’t run into that many more situations like that.

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It ends up taking me about an hour to reach the planet hall, just to find it surrounded by quite the number of frozen ones. More so than any other place.

I narrow my eyes on the frozen ones, then at the massive number of heat signatures I see tucked safely away inside of the building.

Planet hall itself is a gigantic pyramid in its basic shape, and used to glow with a bluish purple light with various smaller cubes and pyramids floating around on the outside acting as platforms to go between different floors. The outer gates would open up at the approach of one of the platforms, and the people would be able to enter the next floor. But now all of the platforms are just littering the ground, covered in frost and ice with clear damage from the fall they very clearly went through.

Meanwhile the front gate, which is in a triangular shape, seems to be frozen shut. No matter how much the frozen ones outside try to bang on it to open it up.

I guess the Empire’s investment into finding new alloys to use came in handy after all.

The door, along with a large portion of the outer frame of the planet hall is made up of a type of superalloy that the Empire made. One that’s almost as strong as the cybernetic equipment, which uses magnetism and some sort of strange form of lightning to run.

It’s a pity that we can’t use the cybernetic stuff anymore, but the superalloy will work just fine as well.

Too bad I can’t get inside of planet hall with all of them outside.

Out of the frozen ones, I can see over half a dozen different types, including but not limited to wendigos, brutes, wraiths, the cephalopods, and even a couple of infected symbiont hosts. Which is pretty terrifying in and of itself. Just seeing them gathered in the plaza right outside of the large planet hall banging on the door or just wandering around at random.

I’m kind of surprised that they’re not fighting each other though. But as soon as that thought comes to mind, I notice one particular frozen one that I’ve never seen before. And the instant that I do, my terminal gives me a bright red alert.

/ Alert \

Incredibly strong exterior energy source located.
The source has an energy level of 5.73.

Recommended immediate evacuation from current location.

\End of Alert/

I stare at the number for a few seconds before slowly backing away.

Yeah, that might be a problem.

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