Spaceship Nibiru, orbital headquarter of the Strikeforce 1.
As Jack Merlin was traveling standing motionless over the moving sidewalk, heading toward the Command Deck, the voice of the Brain resonated into his earpiece.
"Re-alignment detected at Lagrange point. Two previously undetected meteors are moving from their orbital position and beginning fall over planet.... Calculating points of impact... Paris, France... three hours, forty minutes, five seconds... Viña del Mar, Chile... three hours fifty five minutes three seconds.... estimated victims directly and for related earthquakes... twenty five millions four hundred thousands three hundred fifty six. End report."
"Mhh..." whispered Merlin, beginning to walk over the moving sidewalk.
A few moments later he entered the Command Deck. Ekorre was standing next the main monitor, so Merlin deliberately sank into the command armchair.
The alien eyed him evilly, but Merlin shrugged slightly, just to be seen by him, and smiled.
"Well, people, the time has come, we have a planet to save. Tenant Inventor is appointed to land over meteor one with team red, while team blue over meteor two. Tenant Hero and his team set to depart for Paris NOW and wait for the meteor" ordered the white haired man.
"Wait.. for the meteor?!" wondered Ekorre, looking sharply at Merlin.
"Yes, sure. We are going to deviate the one falling in Chile... but the other will explode high above Paris. And it will seem that Hero had destroyed it. The people must love us... even better, they must see us like GODS!"
Albino, the fat kid, began to laugh uncontrollably.
Ekorre simply left the room, disgusted.
Merlin turned on his revolving armchair, shouting: "what time is it in Mandelovia?Anybody of you subhuman can tell me what time is it?"
A technician answered calmly: "Seven PM, sir".
"Night, then" observed Merlin. And then raising the tone of his voice: "Let the attack begins!"
The Palace of Mandelovia
Trough the dozens of monitors the images of the warm evening of the City of Mandelovia didn’t send the feel of an impending doom, for the nation or for the world.
People were strolling in the narrow streets of the Old City, stopping at little cafe with just three or five little round tables outside the entrance, directly on the paved road. The windows of shops full of colourful lights, young girls and boys pointing at fine dresses, holovisors and hovercycles.
“General!” shouted a technician on the upper level. Instantly the floor over which D’Goon and the Vangguardians were standing lifted up, in a frictionless and perfectly dumped movement.
The technician, without words, was pointing at a three dimensional monitor, something like a metallic pot over which the little model of a strange, cigar shaped things floated. Something like the petals of a flower opened on the flank, and little round shaped… things… fled off.
“The alarm, Dikoto” ordered the General. The man at the console pressed a button.
On the screen, the people crowding the streets began to walks in well order away fast. Soon, all of the city was empty.
“That’s the spaceship Nibiru, an alien cruiser arrived near Earth not earlier than a year ago. His commander, Ekorre, has been presented as a Captain of the Norwegian Royal Navy. Lies! He came to Earth to capture and kill all the Annunaki, an alien race that arrived on our planet thousands of years ago.” D’Goon was looking pleased at the face of most of the Vanguardians, that, aside Velo, Nadia, Different and Priest where all amazed at the revelation.
“The disc are automated shuttles of the mothership. They are coming to attack my nation” continued D’Goon.
“It would be safer to bring you outside the country, to a secret location” observed Nadia, her eyes on a monitor that showed many Mastiff of War, the big canine robots she encountered during the “Revolutionaries” escape from Mandelovia, taking positions in the many streets and squares of the town.
“It would be the destruction of my country, then, my dear” replied D’Goon. “They want me alive, to find the location of Naecken fortress. If I stay here, they will not harm my country, if I will fly away, they will reduce it to rubble. That’s why I need you. You must keep me alive AND in Mandelovia”.
Outside, the stars were obscured by the hundreds of discs just materialised in the sky above the city.
The noiseless, calm night suddenly erupted in flashes and flares of exchanging laser beams. The Mastiffs of War were running everywhere, shooting rays from their “eyes”, and the discs above them replied with other equally lethal beams.
Above and around the palace other robotic mastiffs, each one the size of an African elephant, were shielding the residence of the tyrant of Mandelovia. The disc-fighters didn't even came closer.
But on the roof of the Palace, shielded by an unnatural shadow, produced by the Strikeforce Agent going by the same name, Tenant The Rose were giving orders to Tenant Digigirl about the incursion into the Presidential Palace. The Indian young woman was typing furiously over the keyboard of his laptop, hacking trough multiple wireless connections into the mainframe of the Security Agency of the city-state. Suddenly, a smile appeared on his face, winking at Rose.
The former assassin brought a palm sized communicator near her mouth, whispering new orders: "Tenant ACK, the safe way in should be shown in your visor right now. Wait for Agent Shadow and then GO!" As the "black-matter" guy left their spot, the two woman safely retired in a hidden recess under one of the roofs, waiting for the event to unfolds, before starting the attack of their respective Agents.
A few moments later one disc-fighter dived nearly vertically down from the sky toward the Palace, then suddenly disappeared both from the sight and the radar signature.
And then, with a boom of tremendous proportion, a section of the front wall of the Palace came down. Fifty grey garbed men, wearing the stylized silver S of the Strikeforce, swarmed inside the Palace, firing incessantly with laser guns futuristic even for the Mandelovian standards.
In the same moment, clouded by the shadow matter, Tenant ACK, Agent Shadow, Agent Had O'ken and twelve Strikeforce soldiers were advancing trough lateral corridors, mostly unguarded after nearly all the security forces concentrated around the swarm of Strikeforcers coming out of the disc.
ACK was following closely the virtual marked path visible in his visor. At one point he stopped, laughing.
He pointed to a rounded section of the room, and said, raising his laser cannons: "D'Goon is behind that wall!"
