Chapter 55 5:
"Fine," he finally murmured. "But if any of you make noise or break something, I'm going to smash you against the floor."
The children let out small excited cries.
Korr felt a vein beginning to throb dangerously in his forehead while that small childish army began following him through the halls of the Dorymathos.
The path toward the workshop led them through secondary corridors, until arriving at a place Korr did not expect.
Apparently the last turn of the long hallway had diverted him from his initial route.
Currently he found himself in a great plain inside the Dorymathos.
It was nothing more and nothing less than a colossal-scale training chamber, with a gray floor and a glass ceiling that projected and allowed the outside to be seen.
The children, upon seeing that open space, forgot discipline. They rose toward the center unconsciously, laughing, spinning around themselves, exploring like puppies in a park.
Vulc-an tried to lift a slab but Kang challenged him, again.
The tallest one tried to impose order once more and the smallest contradicted him again.
As for the other children they simply began looking around like fools, as though it had been their first time in the place.
Korr remained at the threshold, observing them, he could almost imagine they were normal children in a normal park.
Then for what was the equivalent of 5 Earth minutes, everything seemed to be in order until the unthinkable happened.
The ground suddenly began to tremble, at first very softly until suddenly, until the tremor became very strong.
All the children, himself included, rose a few centimeters by instinct.
At the same time, the floor of that platform seemed to want to crack and collapse, which made Korr's scalp tingle, because he knew these kinds of situations should not be normal given the fortification of this place of such high security.
"Everyone behind me!" Korr shouted at the children who immediately obeyed him.
The situation was serious because the lights turned red from one moment to another.
"What was that?" one of the girls asked, her voice small.
"Nobody fly off, stay together," Korr spoke in response, making sure everyone could understand his words with the highest clarity possible.
The tremor repeated even stronger. The floor slabs creaked and then, 300 meters from where they were, the ground tore apart.
As if it were a volcanic eruption, filled with molten metal and debris, it expanded as though it were a grayish mushroom.
By the time the smoke settled, a pit more than one hundred and fifty meters in diameter had opened in the floor, its edges dripping liquid metal.
From the hole, like an army of furious ants, hostile elements began emerging which Korr immediately recognized because of their characteristic four arms.
"Shit, these are..." he thought completely terrified.
Effectively, they were the Lithari race, who ironically lived in the underground zone of the Dorymathos itself.
All of them were part of the maintenance crew of all the installations and a large part of the city.
They were often recognized as perfect craftsmen in matters of technology and robotics.
Many Lithari had even advised him when in his free time, he attempted to create one thing or another under Vexa's supervision.
They were four-armed beings, with gray skin and good visual capacity. Each one over two and a half meters tall, and their muscles looked like bundles of steel cables beneath the epidermis.
Compared to other races they were extremely strong, only surpassed by the hounds themselves, who possessed the advantage of absorbing and empowering themselves with collected energy.
All these Lithari, completely covered in armor, heavily armed with rifles and plasma cannons, with desires for slaughter, meant only one thing.
Rebellion.
All of them let out a great war roar while they began firing everywhere. No, they were firing in their direction.
Because they were the only ones in this place.
"Shit." Korr's blood ran cold. "EVERYONE FLAT ON THE GROUND NOOOOOOW!" he shouted, deciding to do the same.
The first shots did not take long to arrive.
A plasma beam passed whistling past Kang's head, melting the ceiling behind him into a puddle of lava.
The child howled, more from surprise than pain.
Fortunately, none of the shots hit their mark and all of them had decided to obey him.
But they were in danger. Korr looked toward Kang's direction, the shot had only grazed him but nevertheless the area where it passed had reddened his skin.
They were vulnerable.
"Damn it." He thought.
The children, he had to protect the children.
Instinctively he ignored absolutely any thought about why the Lithari were attacking them.
They were a slave race, what other proposal was there besides reprisals or struggle for freedom?
He was not going to lose himself in stupid philosophical currents knowing that infants were under his care. He was responsible for having accepted that the children come along to begin with, so he could not allow that not even one single one of them be harmed by that destructive mass.
"The slabs! Lift the slabs!" Korr shouted, adrenaline coursing through his body.
He dug all his fingers deeply beneath and lifted with force.
Slow but steady, the slab, which weighed dozens of tons, rose within seconds until it was above the ground. It was 4 cubic meters downward. Without thinking twice he placed it as a barricade.
Bang!
But before that, a plasma beam struck his shoulder, making him let out a groan of pain but he managed to endure it. It felt more like a large drop of hot oil splashing onto the area.
As for the rest of the shots, they struck the slab, shattering the surface layer to pieces.
"TAKE COVER NOOOOOOW!"
The children on the ground began running toward the slab, hiding behind it.
All of them were bewildered and terrified.
They did not understand what was happening.
The worst thing was that apparently the events were not only unfolding inside. Because outside the Dorymathos, great explosions could be heard, probably coming from the city.
ENEMY ATTACK, ENEMY ATTACK. ALL COMBAT UNITS NOW!
ENEMY ATTACK, ENEMY ATTACK. ALL COMBAT UNITS NOW!
This was an attack against the intellectual heart of the empire!
And where were the instructors?
Korr did not know in the slightest.
But he could not wait for them to come save him.
The great wave of Lithari soldiers marched like a tide in their direction.
"Damn it, we're trapped."
He told himself since from the back he could see how the entrance had been blocked.
Someone had taken control of the operating system of the entire installation.
"Shit," Korr cursed once more.
He had to do something, he had to defend himself, he had to defend them.
His hands launched themselves toward another slab and aimed with the intention of shattering it.
However, his body trembled for a moment.
If he did this, he knew he would kill again, this time consciously.
This was a situation where dialogue simply served no purpose, and pacifism was a direct ticket toward the afterlife.
But he was going to kill, he was going to kill many conscious beings, sentient beings, beings with whom he had once spoken and taken advice from them.
With whom he had once laughed and spoken as though they were just another Viltrumite, another human.
He would become a murderer.
But... had he not been one already? A few hours ago, cycles to be exact, he had torn another sentient being apart until leaving it unrecognizable.
His body shuddered. For an instant, he wanted with all his strength to refuse to stain his hands with blood once more.
But then he looked at the terrified children.
Their eyes with tears on the verge of spilling down their cheeks.
It was not a matter of whether he wanted to or not.
He had to do it.
He had to do it, he must do it. Everything else could wait.
He was a hypocrite, but he was a hypocrite who would save the children.
So he clenched his heart and buried his conscience in the deepest mud of his self-contempt and smashed the entire mosaic to pieces.
Then he took the sheets he had in his hands and placed all the fragments of that mosaic onto them to use as ammunition.
These would be his projectiles.
There was no other choice.
He loaded the large sheet into his hands and levitated a few centimeters.
However he could not leave. Not before leaving instructions to the tallest child of all, who seemed to tremble with clenched fists.
"You, class 12," he roared.
"Ah-ah, yes sir." The child responded stuttering.
"I'm entrusting the children to you, the group I mean. It is forbidden for anything to happen to them." He thought a little more and then instructed again. "Use a slab and break it to pieces, make sure each child has at least one rock projectile in hand. If a rebel gets close throw them with all your strength at the head, I repeat, at the head."
Surprised by those instructions the child nodded vigorously.
"Yes sir, I'm class 12, I can order them to do what you asked."
"Good, take care." With that, he disappeared toward the fray at maximum speed.
For the first time in both lives, in his stage as a soldier, it was his first time throwing himself into a fight.
This rebellion was war.