There's a saying on Earth: "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing." The Task Force Chimera corollary was quickly becoming: "Any escape that involves a high-speed aerial chase with stolen property is a successful mission."
"Enemy fighters on our six!" Quynh Nhu announced over the comms, her voice a little too cheerful for someone who was currently being shot at. "They look angry. Their 'paint it with lasers' formation is very aggressive."
Crimson plasma bolts stitched across the sky, narrowly missing their wing. Pham Tuan, who was clinging for dear life opposite Lin Ming, decided he officially hated flying more than anything else in the universe.
Lin Ming, meanwhile, was having a thought. A terrible, wonderful thought.
"Nhu, how's your aim in a high-G turn?" he yelled over the wind.
"I could shoot the wings off a gnat in a hurricane! Why?"
"Just a thought. Minerva, I'm sending you some coordinates," he said, tapping a quick message on his HUD. "When we get there, I want you to give me a full readout from the Book of Water. Specifically, the principles of 'pressure' and 'phase change'."
Minerva: Accessing Hydromancy 101. Are you planning on doing... 'creative plumbing' at this altitude, Zenith?
"Something like that," Lin Ming grinned. "Tuan! Hold on tight! It's about to get bumpy!"
He pointed towards a massive, sprawling canyon system below them—the Valles Marineris of Mars, a scar on the planet's face. "Down there, Nhu! Lose them in the trenches!"
Quynh Nhu cackled with glee. "Now you're speaking my language!"
She slammed the control stick sideways, putting the Dust Devil fighter into a gut-wrenching dive. They plunged into the canyon, the sheer rock walls a blur on either side. Six enemy fighters followed them, their formations tight and disciplined.
The chase was on. It was a dizzying, high-speed ballet of death through the canyons of Mars. Quynh Nhu was a natural, a virtuoso of aerial combat she never knew she was. She weaved the fighter through impossibly narrow gaps, scraped the wings against canyon walls to avoid plasma fire, and once, flew the ship upside down just, as she later claimed, "to see if she could."
While Quynh Nhu was living out her fighter pilot dreams, Lin Ming was studying. With the knowledge of the Book of Water flowing into his mind, he looked at the canyon floor. His Spiritual Sense could feel it—deep beneath the red dust, locked in the permafrost, were vast reservoirs of frozen water. Ice.
[SYSTEM PROMPT: The Host appears to be formulating a very bad idea.]
[The System wholeheartedly endorses this course of action.]
"Okay, Nhu!" he shouted. "Fly low! As low as you can get! Right over that big, flat plain up ahead!"
"You got it, boss!"
She leveled the fighter out, skimming just meters above the canyon floor. The six enemy fighters were hot on their tail, lining up for a perfect kill shot.
"Ready, Minerva?"
Minerva: The principles of subterranean ice sublimation under sudden, extreme energy exposure are... fascinating. Ready when you are, Zenith.
Lin Ming closed his eyes. He didn't use Thuan Thien. He didn't use a flashy skill. He placed his flat palm against the wing of the fighter and channeled his pure, refined Fairy Qi directly into the ground below him. It wasn't an attack. It was a catalyst. He poured the concept of 'Fire'—of rapid heat and energy—into the ground, then followed it with the concept of 'Water'—of pressure and explosive phase change from solid to gas.
He was essentially microwaving a subterranean glacier.
The ground beneath the six pursuing fighters bulged. Then, with the force of a volcanic eruption, a massive geyser of high-pressure steam and ice shards exploded upwards.
It was an ambush from the planet itself.
The lead enemy fighter, caught completely by surprise, flew directly into the eruption. The superheated steam flash-boiled its pilot, and the ice shards, now traveling at supersonic speeds, shredded its hull. The other fighters banked hard to avoid the sudden cloud of deadly steam, their formations breaking into chaos.
In that chaos, Quynh Nhu shined. "Open season!" she yelled.
She flipped the fighter around on a dime and opened up with her plasma cannons. The scattered, confused enemy pilots were easy pickings. She dispatched three of them in quick succession before the other two realized the situation was FUBAR (Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition) and fled.
[Flawless aerial victory achieved using questionable geology!]
[Geomancy and Hydromancy skill synergy confirmed.]
[Battle Will +3000 for defeating enemies with weaponized plumbing on a planetary scale.]
They flew on in silence for a moment, the only sound being Pham Tuan's heavy breathing.
"Remind me," Quynh Nhu said, her voice full of awe, "to never, ever get on your bad side."
They finally reached the coordinates of their hidden ship, the 'White Rabbit.' They landed the battered but triumphant Dust Devil fighter beside it. They were exhausted, covered in red dust, and had just committed what probably amounted to several dozen war crimes and acts of grand theft spaceship.
They clambered off the fighter wing. Pham Tuan immediately knelt and kissed the ground, happy to be on something that wasn't moving.
Minerva: Ahem. Team. Her voice came from the White Rabbit's external speakers. I must congratulate you. The data you've acquired is a treasure trove. It's everything. Lord Maka-Jed's strategies, his personal weaknesses, the patrol schedules for his fleet... he even kept a secret file titled 'Why I Think Scarfs Would Make Me Look More Menacing'. The intelligence is invaluable.
She paused. However, there is one more file I have just finished decrypting. It was hidden, triple-encrypted. It is labeled: 'Project: Chimera'.
The three of them froze.
Minerva: It seems they knew about us. Before we even knew about ourselves. The data contains detailed psychological profiles on an elite sniper with a taste for sweets, a powerful Awakened with defensive abilities... and a mysterious, 'un-categorizable anomaly' who uses a legendary sword.
"How?" Lin Ming breathed. "How could they know?"
Minerva: The file is dated three weeks before the Battle of Hanoi. It appears they have a source. An intelligence leak. High up within ASEAN command.
Her voice, for the first time, sounded truly cold.
Minerva: There is a traitor on Earth.