Chapter 56 6:
Korr-add launched himself through the open space as if he were a human bullet.
His heart pounded like a hydraulic anvil, he felt fear, he felt that internal resistance within himself, but his instinct forced him to fight.
The gray plain of the training chamber stretched before him like an apocalyptic ruin; that colossal plain which just minutes ago had seemed like an open training yard had now transformed into a battlefield.
He felt the atmosphere change, the temperature rise by several degrees, the glow of the plasma blur among the reddish emergency lights.
That plasma concentrated in his direction with murderous intent.
Zaaass!
The air exploded behind him.
A sonic boom tore through the entire chamber, rebounding against the metallic walls, making the enormous crystalline ceiling vibrate above the intruders' heads.
The lithari saw him coming, but they did not care in the slightest.
Of course they knew that such a situation could happen.
But a single vitumite represented a terrible problem for their plans.
Just one alone could damage 200 years of planning, every last calculation.
A viltrumite, even being a native, could put them in check even before they fulfilled their objective.
And even less so that particular native, for this one did not go unnoticed when he cut through the skies at speeds that would make any terrestrial aircraft in aerial superiority pale.
This had been a problem.
The first shots did not take long to arrive.
Plasma bursts tore through the air like incandescent needles, painting deadly trajectories that converged toward Korr's silhouette.
He, of course, saw them coming from the corner of his eye.
During his military service in another life, Korr memorized to exhaustion the anti-air maneuver manuals his instructors provided him.
They wanted to captivate them, making them see that airplanes were awesome and all that, all so they would specialize after their military service, since during that time, the militia was not well regarded as a life option.
Also, during a show at the base, he witnessed how an F-22 Raptor executed an impossible zigzag over the firing range.
The aircraft contorted itself in the air like an animal and he could not understand how the hell that mass of metal and fuel did not shatter into pieces under so much G-force.
Now, without wings, only using his viltrumite body, he had to improvise that deadly dance to avoid dying cooked alive.
The air began to resist him, which started to annoy him since the buzzing in his ears was beginning to irritate him.
As Korr accelerated, the atmosphere condensed against his body like an invisible wall.
That friction which would have torn apart any conventional living being posed no inconvenience whatsoever for any other viltrumite.
How he wished viltrumites could also generate bio-fields like that blue and red type from the comics.
The pressure began to accumulate over his face, shoulders, and chest while he crossed the artificial plain of the dorymathos.
His cheeks vibrated from the pressure, forcing him to clench his teeth hard.
"Damn it," he complained, having to squint his eyes to protect them from the cutting wind.
He was barely seeing anything, but enough.
The sheet in his hands, loaded with dozens of slab fragments, began to weigh more the faster he became.
Every square meter of fabric trapped the air like a sail uncontrollable by the storm, threatening to tear it from his fingers.
The weight increased suddenly due to the acceleration; every rock inside that improvised bag seemed to want to drag him down or slow him because of the accumulated momentum.
But Korr remained firm.
The very fabric they used for the bunks had been woven with a molecular alloy composite fiber, designed specifically to withstand viltrumite children.
God knew it was necessary to avoid the occasional tears caused by unpredictable children.
The sheet was durable, almost as much as his uniform.
And regarding his flight capability, Korr silently blessed viltrumite physiology once again.
Most species that achieved interstellar flight required ships with complicated inertial compensation systems, distortion fields, artificial gravity reactors, among one or another type of technology unknown to Korr.
All of that to prevent their bodies from turning into paste when performing abrupt maneuvers.
Viltrumites simply ignored inertia or any type of force.
It was as if the laws of physics had decided to make an exception for them; Korr could go from zero to hypersonic speeds in the blink of an eye, turn at angles that would destroy any ship, stop dead without his organs deciding to come out through his mouth, among many other things.
Any human aircraft would have lost stability with such an aggressive change; an elite human pilot, super prepared and excellently conditioned, would have died with his organs turned into paste.
But Korr, now a native viltrumite, simply changed direction without feeling the slightest mishap.
He felt no pain nor lost consciousness, his body simply responded to his desires as if gravity were nonexistent.
That action almost felt like a direct affront to the natural order of the universe and its laws.
Viltrum had long ago slapped aside such unquestionable universal laws after empowering its own race, and he appreciated that advantage.
The shots intensified after the first wave had failed.
The first line of lithari had formed a wall of moving fire.
They fired in coordinated volleys, creating a matrix of death that seemed impossible to cross.
Tens of hundreds of plasma lines illuminated the entire chamber like a bluish electrical storm.
"TARGET AIRBORNE LOCKED! FIRE! FIRE NOW!"
Korr felt the hair on his scalp stand on end.
This looked far too much like some kind of "Star Wars" simulation, the kind his daughter liked so much.
The difference was that, this time, he was the ship.
The shots passed close to his head leaving burning trails in the air; others converged from every angle, so they could ensure a hit, which reflected their determination to eliminate him from the sky.