Rainmaker

     Across the vast ocean, on the mainland to the East, high within Mase Towers, the Zenith is sat behind a grand rosewood study deep in thought. Mase has just siphoned through Anda's Reverie simulation, particularly the data on the Celestial Mission and the Trevante. "Mase!" Custo Harris's voice echoed before footage from Minaret 1 was projected in front of Mase. "Use your off-world Terraformer to shoot down those ships around my city!", the Custo continued as he scanned the horizon from the central minaret. Mase responded in a composed manner, "Anda has blocked any access to my off-world tech."

"Well, you seem calm about things. Just take control of their Augs and blow up their power cells then," Harris said as he tracked the movements from Minaret 917 where Anda is. "Can't do that either. Most of your subjects have been sentenced since at least fifty years ago and don't have the current Gen augmentations I've circulated. The ones that have the capacity to do any damage, I'll detonate once they're airborne and in a cluster."

The footage showed Harris arming himself with the Anti-aircraft rifle and kicking his desk through the windows facing Anda's flight path. "God-damnit, Mase! I'll take him down myself!" Harris said as he propped himself on the minaret balcony to take aim. "I wouldn't do that, Harris. The only times I saw that thing firing was when it's attached to the mech," Mase said as he leaned back in his chair to see the Custo get ready to fire. A deafening boom can be heard as Harris took his shot and a moment later something was headed straight for the minaret. In an instant, the object ripped Harris in half and decimated the minaret, cutting the live footage.

     The double-doors to Mase's wood-embellished chambers open and a woman ornamented with precious stones and layers of plush fabrics storm through. She dismissed her entourage with a flick of the wrist and the doors shut behind her.

"Mase, the High Chief of the West has declared themselves as neutrals in this conflict," the lady says as she paced on the polished oak floors towards the Zenith. "Anda has met with Sky Rider about fifty-years ago, Tavo. Anda promised him the one thing we can't give them, life to their lands. Oh, we just lost Harris." Mase said with his hand cupped over his face. Tavo took the newly received information into calculation and silence filled the air until Mase asked,  "Is this Utopia of his true?"

"My satellites with diagnostic imaging tech have confirmed within the crust a large crater where the Grand Canyon used to be. Heat mapping and atmospheric readings indicate a habitable environment and about forty-thousand pure humans are in there," Tavo said as she prompts a projection on her findings on a large holographic display between her and Mase. "Fuck, the Reverie simulation checks-out. Anda has been right under our very noses flying in and out. Hijacking our own tech and setting the pieces to his master plan," Mase exasperated not lifting his face once even to look at the projection.

     Tavo walked past the projection, collapsing it and sat across Mase to start forming a strategy, "anything in his simulation that gives us a tactical advantage over his tech?" Mase finally lifted his face to recline in his seat and stared at the intricacies of his wooden coffered ceiling before answering, "Nothing. It's practically invisible to the naked eye and highly resistant to heat since it was found so close to the sun. It wasn't even the Trevante that picked up its location, it was Anda who first noticed it some time before he went radio silent."

"It's invisible and indestructible? I refuse to believe the statistical anomaly that Anda just happened to be at the right place at the right time and found a dwarf planet made of such an immensely compelling material," Tavo raised her voice at the incomprehensible claims that went against her deep-rooted stand of logic. Mase lingered for a while still studying his ceiling before coming up with a logical explanation, "No, Ix. It's not some divine revelation that led Anda there. He could always feel what he saw as a child and as he grew, he honed it. Even in our racing days, he could always ride a corner better than anyone that's augmented. Since he had augmentations after the war, he was untouchable. Combine his synesthesia and the capacity of the Trevante, it's no surprise he'd find something as magnificent. It truly is."

Mase was almost in a trance as he went through every bit of Anda's logs that contain the material. Mase's tone changed into one of admiration as he carried on, "it seems to react to the will of its beholder. It can create anything, from the complexities of a fully functioning nervous system to the execution of intricate calculations to engineer a mechanical weapon. It's almost like an Anti-antimatter. Lux Materia." Tavo was not as impressed with the colossal technological advantage Anda has.

     Tavo was on her feet again and brought up a projection of the Eastern Quadrant and the estimated flight path of Anda's armada. "We are completely out-gunned but we easily outnumber them. I suggest we take control of our subjects to board the 100,000 ships we have and use the Rainmaker protocol to bombard Anda from above," Tavo said as calculated and detached to the billions of lives she's using as pawns. "Hmph! Rainmaker," Mase said before letting out a dejected laugh. "I'm beginning to think it's because we engaged the Rainmaker 150 years ago that has put us in this position. Now Anda is letting us use it on our own kind. Oh, the fucking irony!"

"Hey, keep it together Eo! I don't want you losing it like you did… this morning. Shit, Anda had us from the start, huh? Listen, we can use towers like these to bombard his ground units once they make it into the city. We have to move to Aeropolis, it's probably the one place Anda won't annihilate," Tavo said as she summoned her entourage with another flick of the wrist.

The double doors opened again and the Prime Monarch's entourage stood by her, waiting for the Zenith. Mase stood from his chair and took only one item from his table; a framed photograph of him and his mother. They all made their way out of the chambers and went across to the dock where a luxurious hyper craft was docked. Both the Prime Monarch and the Zenith boarded it first before the rest of the entourage. The tower rattled as fleets of herculean cargo ships with a-hundred-meter-wingspan hovered above the city. They disembarked from Mase tower and fixed their bearings south towards Aeropolis.

     It didn't take long for the hyper craft to enter the Southern Quadrant of Aeropolis. Past the clouds, a city levitated in the sky. Its pearly white surfaces glowed with the reflection of the purple dawning sky. The sight of the buildings in the city resembled the ancient Greek architecture with the modern curved lines that exuded elegance and sophistication. The city in the sky was the crown of the augmented race that preserved all the works of art, history and records since 1 D.E.M and before the war.

Beneath the city, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands took to the sky and zipped around the hyper craft to travel Eastwards. These ships would transport its unbeknownst cargo to the behemoth cargo ships that hovered over the city and intercept Anda's armada at the borders between the Northern and Eastern Quadrant over the Pacific Ocean. Soon billions of docile lives that are implanted with the latest neural implants would find themselves high in the atmosphere unable to resist the explicit orders of the Zenith. 

The Zenith and Prime Monarch took their places at the edge of the floating city on thrones that seem to bleed out miles and miles of cables that ran across the floor around them. They were almost infused with their specialized seats as it supplied the processing power to control the 40 billion living I.E.Ds and 100,000 ships in their aerial fleet. Eastwards towards the battlefield in the distance, streaks of orange filled the horizon and the sun's rays spilled into the sky. In a few moments Anda's armada would fly into the kill zone and a rain of death will fall from above.

End of Deus Ex Machina Arc