The Valkyrie carved a white contrail a hundred kilometers long along the edge of the stratosphere, its skin glowing an eerie dark red from the friction of twelve times the speed of sound.
Inside the cabin, the liquid nitrogen cooling system screamed at its operational limit, white frost billowing through the cramped space.
Ryan leaned back against the freezing metal seat. The red dot on the holographic display was a hundred kilometers from its target coordinates.
The air at this altitude was impossibly thin and cold. The deep blue sky outside the window was nearly black, radiating a suffocating silence.
That silence was torn apart the next second by a shrieking red alert.
"Warning! High-energy biological signatures detected in forward airspace. Count: extreme. Interference frequency: Ouroboros core sequence."
Jill's voice detonated directly inside Ryan's head through the neural link, urgent and absolute. "They're blockading. Wesker turned this airspace into a living minefield."
Ryan set down his flask and glanced out the window.
At the edge of the horizon, above what had been a pristine sea of clouds, a dark-gold "cloud mass" materialized. As the distance closed at breakneck speed, the mass resolved into tens of thousands of four-winged dark-gold insects.
Each one was the size of an adult human, shells rippling with liquid-metal Ouroboros virus, mouthparts spraying a dense mist of concentrated acid.
"Activate auto fire-control. Full-power saturation." Ryan gave the order flatly, his eyes carrying the cold annoyance of a man who'd been interrupted.
Concealed weapon bays on both flanks of the Valkyrie snapped open. Six-barrel electromagnetic gatling cannons began dumping tungsten-alloy rounds at twenty thousand per minute.
Against the deep blue sky, countless tracer lines wove into an airtight net of death, instantly shredding the oncoming swarm into clouds of dark-gold mist. At their relative velocity, every round that punched through a body detonated the creature from the inside out.
But the swarm was simply too massive. They ignored their losses entirely, crashing toward the interceptor like a dark-gold tsunami blotting out the sky.
"They're running kamikaze! Boss, left wing engine at forty percent damage!"
Heisenberg's onboard system shrieked an electronic alarm. The entire interceptor shuddered violently at ten thousand meters, its hull groaning with a teeth-grinding metallic warp. One oversized mutant tanked through the electromagnetic fire and slammed into the Valkyrie's tail fin, then violently self-destructed.
The impact blew out instrument panels across the cabin in a shower of sparks.
Ryan left his seat, standing perfectly steady through the violent turbulence as if his body were fused with the aircraft itself. Not the slightest sway.
"If the engine's gonna be this loud, I'll step outside for some fresh air."
He placed his hand on the hatch handle, already badly warped from the pressure differential.
"Ryan! The plane's going too fast, that's insane!" Jill's worried voice came through the comms.
Ryan didn't answer. His fingers clamped down.
The entire alloy hatch blew outward under his kick, vanishing instantly into the savage airstream.
Ryan stepped out and planted both feet on top of the interceptor's wing.
His black coat whipped wildly in the wind but couldn't budge him an inch. Around him was negative-fifty-degree cold capable of shattering steel on contact, and the horrific vacuum shockwaves generated by supersonic flight.
Ryan looked up. A wall of swarming insects bore down on him, dark-gold pupils glinting with a predatory gleam in the sunlight.
He drew no weapon. He simply raised his hand as the first wave of creatures dove, fingers spread wide.
"You're in the way."
Ryan stomped down. The wing skin beneath his foot caved in and cracked.
He launched himself against the wind, tracing an arc too fast for the naked eye to follow at ten thousand meters, and crashed directly into the densest core of the swarm.
No fancy techniques. Just the most primal, most brutal physical destruction.
Ryan reached out, dug his fingers into the scapula of a mutant, and wrenched.
The creature, coated in dark-gold chitin tough enough to shrug off rifle fire, tore in half like cheap paper.
The black-purple blood didn't even have time to spray before the savage airstream froze it into ice crystals and ground them to powder.
Ryan moved through the air like he was walking on solid ground, kicking off creature carcasses, each leap covering hundreds of meters. He tore through the dense swarm, every punch accompanied by a deep, muffled detonation. The creatures that tried to swarm him disintegrated row by row the instant they touched his fists.
"Detecting Boss's vitals in high-speed movement... God, he's clearing the field by hand."
Aboard the command ship, the crew stared at the black blur on the monitors, flickering and reaping red dots at a manic pace. No one could speak.
Ryan landed on the back of a five-meter-long giant mutant and drove his fingers into its spine like steel spikes. His arms swelled with power, and using the creature as a pivot, he swung a perfect arc at ten thousand meters. Dozens of diving creatures caught by the swing shattered in a rolling chain of muffled impacts.
Ryan let go, letting the broken-backed creature plummet toward the ocean, and doubled back to land heavily on the now-burning wing.
The Valkyrie had hit its limit.
The kamikaze strikes had sheared the left wing clean off. The fuselage trailed smoke and fire, plunging toward the endless sea of clouds below.
Ryan stood on the disintegrating wreckage, eyes still as calm as still water, watching the black flying wing materializing in the distance ahead.
The interceptor erupted into a massive fireball in midair, metal fragments refracting blinding light in the stratospheric sun.
Ryan's silhouette fell through the flames like a meteor, plummeting toward the abyss below.
Then Sherry's voice cut through the comms channel.
"Uncle Ryan, guess where I am!"
Wind shrieked past his ears. Below him, the cloud sea churned. The instant Ryan dropped through the cloud layer, a bolt of blue lightning split the sky.
A Star Fire fighter jet in lightweight livery dove at extreme speed, pulling a heart-stopping cobra maneuver.
"Uncle Ryan! Hold on tight!"
Sherry's voice rang out over the sound of the canopy opening. Becky was white-knuckling the control stick, threading the fighter's spine precisely into Ryan's falling trajectory.
Ryan hooked one hand onto the recon craft's dorsal armor, rolled with the momentum, and dropped neatly into the rear seat.
Sherry turned around, her face still flushed with the thrill of the catch. Ryan just straightened out what was left of his coat.
"Thanks, Sherry." He looked ahead. "Road's clear. Punch through."
The fighter let out a sharp engine cry, throttle wide open, and launched into its final sprint toward the massive black flying wing looming ahead.
[This novel is now COMPLETE. Read the entire series right now on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]