Chapter 4768 Thick Cell
"Okay, something has gone horribly wrong at the last minute."
"You think?!" Gloriana screeched in panic and anger. "We are not supposed to be caught in the middle of a warzone, let alone a cold and barren cell! Why didn't you protect us better, Ves?! It is already bad enough that a third party has taken the senior leaders.h.i.+p of our clan away from our seating block. It is worse when my children and I have been taken as well! We were never meant to be exposed to the dangers that you so often embrace over the course of your expeditions!"
"Hey!" Ves paused in examining the details of the ceiling of the cell and turned his armored form around to face his half-panicked wife. "This is not on me! I distinctly recall that I voiced my concerns about bringing you and my children to a high-profile event that is just begging to get attacked by the enemies of Davute. Instead of sharing my concerns about the colonial government's ability to protect us from external threats, you cared more about networking and looking pretty in front of the recorders! At least I went out of my way to buy a first-cla.s.s transphasic s.h.i.+eld generator for each of our kids!"
"YOU! It is your responsibility to protect us, but you have abjectly failed as a father! Our children are our future. You should have put more thought in protecting them and the rest of us from involuntary displacement! Due to your negligence, we may all die if we cannot find a way out of this cage. If anything befalls our daughters and our son, I will never forgive you, Ves!"
Ves wanted to throw his hands up. What was Gloriana expecting from him?! It seemed that each time anything went wrong, his wife automatically cast all of the blame on him regardless of whether he was at fault or not. It was especially galling to deal with her complaints when he had already gone above and beyond what he should do. Even he did not expect that the state had dropped the ball so much that its engineers still hadn't managed to restore the devices responsible for blocking forced teleportation attempts!
"I will definitely invest in personal anti-teleportation equipment when I get out of this place." He promised. "I made sure to equip the Spirit of Bentheim with sufficient countermeasures against this kind of stuff, but who knew it would happen in the period where I have chosen to spend my time on a planet again."
He truly found this to be a frustrating sequence of events. All of his precautions this far hadn't been enough as the enemy struck when he was depending on the protection of a state!
His deep-seethed paranoia and lack of trust in the reliability of a state actor had taken another nosedive. It seemed that no state had the ability to make good on its promises and actually prevent hostile groups from pulling off their nefarious schemes!
"IT'S TOO LATE, VES! YOU HAVE BEEN NEGLIGENT IN YOUR DUTIES AGAIN! IF YOU ACTUALLY SPENT YOUR WINDFALL OF MTA MERITS ON MORE USEFUL PURCHASES INSTEAD OF TRYING TO TURN THE SPIRIT OF BENTHEIM INTO A PSEUDO-FORTRESS, WE WOULDN'T BE STUCK HERE WHERE ANY AWFUL BEAST COULD RAVAGE US WITH IMPUNITY!"
"Hey, we are not without protection! We still have our cats, you know!"
"Meow!"
"Miaow miaow!"
While Ves and Gloriana had been arguing against each other, the two cats had instantly become more guarded and protective. They hovered around Aurelia, Andraste and Marvaine and made sure that nothing could approach the kids without their notice.
At this moment, it had become clear that they had moved to a completely different location than before!
Although the gravity was still the same as back in the Government District, the air mixture became substantially different. The temperature was hotter and there were mildly toxic ga.s.ses in the air that would slowly poison any human physique that did not possess adaptability augmentations.
