Chapter 55

The best laid plans of mice and men sometimes taste like cheese.

Nexus 1

One foot in front of the other. Just one foot in front of the other that was Ichi repeated to himself as he walked through the flooded passageway. Detritus and the bodies of his fellows bounced against him. An alarm in the corner of his hud informed him he only had half an hour at best of compressed air in his armour.

He saw the image taken from the surface camera. Brittanian forces had opened up the floodgates on the dam to maximum and then blasted them down. She had flooded the entire valley and in so doing drowned the nexus. If he had not been running his armour through maintenance tests he would be dead as well. Most of the command had not made it. The alarm system had forced the elevator to the deep road to seal itself. If no one was left alive to give counter signals from the base then the shaft would partially collapse.

After swearing an old curse that was meant to wish for boils upon an enemies sensitive regions He clambered out of the muck into an air pocket where a few huddled survivors had sheltered. He passed out emergency air tanks and chemical defence gear he had salvaged. Being filled with wreckage, corpses and various industrial chemicals the water was dangerous for a panapoly of reasons beyond drowning.

Blowing up a dam to flush them out was insane. Yet he gloomily mused it had worked.

There was one only Nobuseri on base that was piloted. The pilot was communicating with them and according to some pings there were already indications the Brittanians were getting ready to start diving operations as soon as the raging torrent of water eased up. Ichi wasn't about to wait for them to dig their way out. All the middle road tunnels attached to the nexus would be useless by now. So he and his fellows would have to walk it across the lakebed. Another rumble from above signified the structure of the building being hit by something large and mechanical.

That is if we can get out of here in the first place.

Nexus 2

The defenders of nexus 2 had been caught unawares. Even knowing they were a likely target. Even with all their preparations. They had been keeping an eye on a large deployment of Brittanian heavy armour and infantry that had been heading in their direction for the last three hours. Without any recon or scouting operations Cornelia had led a mass aerial drop from low hanging clouds onto the surrounding area of their mountain bastion. A landing preceded by a bombing campaign. All their main escape routes through the middle road were already being collapsed and the armour brigade they had thought to be the main attack had accelerated up the mountain. Cornelia was hitting the black knights with the full force of the military strength that they had assumed she would be deploying against the Chinese.

Mao may not have betrayed the secret of the deep roads. Yet only because his desire to draw things out had led him to withhold that information. What he had given was more than enough for Cornelia to turn Zeros plans upon themselves.

Nexus 3

War was desperately trying to bring some order to the situation as security alarms across base went crazy. Even though there was no sign of an actual attack. Instead an entire area of the perimeter had suddenly gone crazy."Report station 3."

The security overseer in ward station 3 replied in a panicked voice. Relaying the data he had acquired form the camera feeds for the section currently under attack. "Sir I don't understand they all started screaming about spiders in the walls and went crazy. Sergeant buko shot himself with his own sidearm even as he screamed something was controlling his body. Now there is what the …"

Then the voice cut out.

War gritted his teeth in frustration. Then he turned towards C.C. "Any other contractors you failed to mention?"

The witch looked a bit worried. Which was a an accomplishment since most people being looked at that way by the cyborg would be demonstrating abject fear of an impending metal fist to the face.
"These aren't my contractors."

Authors note.

And we are back. Sorry guys. This has been rewritten a few too many times for something so short. Then again I have been working on other things.
Will likely edit it some more later.
Essentially Cornelia has just undone all of Lelouchs expectations and is hitting the black knights in such a way that if it wasn't for the deep roads it would be the end of them. As it is she has just unknowingly made the implementation of E day a lot more difficult. Along with providing a huge boost to morale for the Brittanian side and setting the stage for Euphemia to mess things up more for the Black knights through sheer niceness.

Oh and some agents from the geass directorate have shown up as well.