Lin's clipped tone told Andrea a great deal about the urgency of the situation. Lin only tended to sound like that when she was straining herself trying to control and coordinate too many things at once. "There have been a series of large detonations at points on the mountains around the valley. My initial estimates based on our mapping of the valley's contours indicates that the pass where you're located along with the Protectorate expedition is at risk. Projections indicate that our base camp and the joint Maleprean-League encampment are both in high danger areas. I'm attempting to evacuate what I can from the base camp and will be focusing firepower on protecting the area near the Protectorate expedition. Please ensure that you and the survivors in the area get back to the main group. The meeting site is still in the danger area even if I can successfully redirect the collapse of the mountainside there." Andrea signaled her acknowledgment as she snapped back into action, she called out to the rapidly advancing Protectorate guards as well as the still shaken Orna and Lori. "There's a huge rock slide coming right this way! Get back to the expedition as fast as possible! I'm grabbing the Olan and then joining you!" Without waiting for a response Andrea slipped back into the tent through the large hole in the fabric. It was fortunate that it was made out of a self-extinguishing material or by now it would have collapsed into a pyre right on top of Olan Lunere. With no time to carefully transfer the badly wounded officer onto one of the two Donkeys nearby, Andrea was forced to quickly spray on an emergency bandage to slow the bleeding, then pick them up in a fireman's carry and cut her own exit into one of the two intact walls as she broke into a dead sprint alongside side the pair of Donkeys, even as the ominous cracks from high above on the mountain slope morphed rapidly into a growing roar.

  Since the moment Andrea had been attacked Lin had been overwhelmingly busy. During the initial seconds of combat she had coordinated the approach of every combat drone they had from multiple vectors so that they were ready to provide fire support if Andrea needed it. While marshaling their small combat force, Lin examined the initial attack using the recorded feeds from the numerous sensors in Andrea's body. Lin was searching for any clues that other people at the table were anticipating Unla-Ela's actions. It wouldn't do, to allow someone to sink a proverbial, or literal, knife into Andrea's back. When Unla-Ela pulled their disappearing act, Lin then began rapidly sweeping the combat drones into overlapping search grids. She didn't want to miss a second potential sneak attack from Unla-Ela, and her quick analysis of the initial attack inclined her to believe Unla-Ela was acting without the complicity of anyone else in the meeting. Lin had set the trio of high altitude surveillance drones to keep an eye on the larger picture of events in the valley. This turned out to be an extremely wise decision as, mirror seconds into the search, they spotted the bright flashes and eruptions of shattered rock located at points around the valley. This visual detection allowed Lin to begin reacting to the massive explosions around the rim of the mountain valley before the sound arrived.

  That was the moment that truly began to strain even Lin's exceptional ability to multitask while making rapid high stakes decisions. The parallax from the different observation angles of the surveillance drones gave very precise location data for each of the explosion sites, and allowed for a rough explosive yield estimate based on the velocity of the ejecta. Within fractions of a second Lin fed that data into the model she'd been constructing for weeks, based on the combined geological surveys and topographic mapping Lin had conducted in the valley. Running the virtual model with that data required a full second of processing time stop returned with projections on the areas most in danger of being swept away by torrents of shattered rock, as well as the placement and energy requirements for attempts to forcefully redirect each of the developing rock slides. The results forced Lin to make a snap decision. Tapping everything she had in every single one of the combat drones she had, would only be enough to guarantee the redirection of one rock slide. Ultimately it wasn't much of a quandary. Both Andrea and a large number of other innocent people, a number of whom were on their way to becoming personal friends, were in one location. While it held a lot of extremely important supplies, and equipment the entirety of the base camp was ultimately replaceable. Lin directed every drone in the camp to swarm onto the available Donkeys and began trying to run them clear of the projected destruction. It was a long shot but anything that survived would be useful. In that same vein Lin skipped the rest of the pre-flight checks and emergency launched the first of the vacuum aerostats which had been completed just hours earlier that morning. As the vacuum aerostat burst upwards Lin contemplated the fate of the joint Maleprean-League camp. If she had the spare resources she would attempt to save them, however; there were fewer of them, their hostility was an open question, and Andrea was at the other location. Unfortunately they would have to fend for themselves. It was at this point that Lin told Andrea what was happening and instructed her to flee the meeting site.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  As Lin instructed the combat drones to climb and make distance, she watched Andrea gradually close the distance to the others who were fleeing. By this point both Orna and Lori were each being carried cradled in the arms of a living armor as the guards evacuated towards the main body of the expedition Lin was impressed that they managed to move nearly as fast as Andrea. This stray thought had no sooner crossed Lin’s mind than the combat drones all reached a position where they could bombard the selected sites. The audio feed from Andrea picked up almost simultaneous, and equally deafening, cracks and thumps. Kinetic impactor rounds shattered the sound barrier as they darted between the combat drones and the mountain side dozens then hundreds of sharp echoing reports filled the valley with overpowering aural violence, even the furious roar of the onrushing rock was drowned out for a few seconds. That was all the time it took to unload every round in the combat drones. It still wasn’t enough. Parts of the mountain slope had fractured, and were looking ready to shatter and drag the rest of the debris onto a new course, but as the last round slammed home the whole crumbling edifice of rock held its shape. This was exactly the outcome Lin had hoped for, the area was primed and now it just needed a last extra large push. She directed the combat drones to dump their remaining hydrogen fuel into the single missile they each carried. Roughly a gram and a half of fuel was left in each drone, roughly a third of that went into the fusion torch drive system of the missile while the remaining gram slotted into the variable yield ‘clean’ fusion warhead. A gram of hydrogen would allow for an approximately 80 ton equivalent yield, the rated maximum of the missiles. A fraction of a second later, a dozen combat drones simultaneously shattered as the heat and shockwave of the plasma jet from the missile engines blew their erstwhile homes into fragments. The overlapping cracks of a dozen fusion missiles breaking the sound barrier were lost as the equivalent of nearly a kiloton of TNT detonated in a tight cluster of explosions, generating a planned resonant shockwave in the rock. This finished the job the kinetic bombardment had started. Hundreds, then soon thousands of tons of mountain rock began roaring down into the valley and away from the pass.