The owner of the shuttle was already beyond furious. The "fall" of the last hidden launch passage had become the final straw that broke Old Qiao. Realizing that every system in the fortress had slipped from his control, he simply shoved the control stick to its limit, recklessly pushed the engines to maximum output, and activated the shuttle's defensive autocannons.
The antigravity and propulsion engines roared at once. The frail aircraft began struggling to break free of the platform's stasis field. As the craft moved with difficulty, its two light rapid-fire particle cannons shrieked simultaneously, hurling blazing high-energy particle clusters at the isolation gate at the end of the passage—and at the Locking Mechanism beside it.
Yet just then, a series of thunderous booms rapidly approaching from the distance suddenly interrupted Old Qiao's final attempt.
It sounded as though some enormous war beast was tearing apart the buildings along its path. Terrifying collapses and the cracking of walls and support beams exploded like thunder through the sealed base. The sounds drew closer and closer until the entire passage began to shake. Then the lights on one side of the platform started flickering violently. As part of the power suddenly failed, a large hole was torn through the isolation wall leading to the fortress. Smoke instantly billowed everywhere, and the noise was deafening!
"What the hell is this no—"
Old Qiao barely had time to cry out before a massive silver-white figure burst from the smoke. Wrapped in blazing blue flames, it charged straight at his shuttle like a kinetic warhead hurtling at full speed.
"Boom!!!"
The shuttle had only just struggled free of the stasis field and had yet to accelerate when the silver-white beast rammed it head-on and flipped it over, slamming it almost sideways into the wall of