Seeing that his two Iron Legion colleagues had admitted defeat, Blackrose turned to Popas.
As a highly trained officer—and a major whose hometown was Marseille—Popas knew exactly what he had to do. He had already taken his hands off the autocannon and placed them behind his head with practiced ease.
Both "robots" had surrendered. What could one weak, helpless, pitiful human do?
Of course, giving up resistance was one thing. Major Popas still couldn't help adding, "If Commander Yu Lian happens to arrive right now, you won't be able to talk your way out of this."
"That would certainly be a headache. That's why, once your communications came back online half an hour ago, I've been sending false coordinates to Colonel Yu Lian's terminal. I also scattered some microbots along our retreat route. They can imitate the sounds of battle, so they should be able to stall him for a little while longer," Blackrose said.
They had traveled together for nearly half an hour, yet Major Popas hadn't noticed the other man doing any of that. He was immediately overcome with self-reproach.
Once Blackrose was certain that everyone had given up resisting, he retracted the cannon barrel in his wrist. By then, his intrusion into the Matrix Mother had reached its final step.
"Come to me, Mother. Merge with me. I am your new commander." He felt his signal connect to the core of the nanomachine network, and his heart surged with excitement.
Thousands of nanomachines were speeding toward him through the conduits beneath the ground.
This had to be the Matrix's mother core, right? Blackrose lowered himself in delight. The six steel wings on his back began to move again, gathering an invisible magnetic field as he prepared to merge with his new "components" on the spot.
But just