//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5: A hegyek mögött 
// Story: HighFleet: The Journey for Salvation 
// by ARandomLonelyDude 
//------------------------------//

Mark sat in his seat, watching the sun rise slowly over them. They had been travelling for a day now without any incident. In the meantime, they had been preparing for a confrontation with the Gathering forces. The aircraft carrier's crew had been getting used to the ship while the volunteers from the city had been getting comfortable with their own ships.

All was not well, however. They had a major issue of not knowing where exactly they would find Project Salvation as they had only been given a general direction and distance from Khiva. It could take a lot of time to search for the site and time was not with them. 

They had been out of the maximum communication range for about half a day and the things they had heard before losing contact were worrying. Conditions had been continuously deteriorating in the empire with areas near Salem and the great sea being evacuated. Sabotage had put the second nuclear power plant within the empire out of order, and now only one out of the three power plants in the empire was working and that was the Khiva plant. Fortunately, it could do the job of providing electricity to the land until the sabotaged reactor could be brought online.

Salem's reactor had been abandoned after the nuclear bombing and was leaking radiation into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. The cloud of nuclear ash was still growing and many cities in Southern Gerat were starting to feel the effects of it.

They had to be quick if they wanted to avoid disaster.

The crew was disheartened by the news of what was happening back home but were even more determined to get their job done.

The duke was pulled out of his musings when the radar operator spoke up.

"Mountain range ahead of us, four hundred kilometers. We' may have to increase altitude to cross it. Also some readings behind the mountains." the operator said.

"Launch a squadron of planes to scout ahead of us." Mark ordered. The radio operator nodded and sent a message to the carrier. The order was relayed to the carrier and soon enough, there was activity on the flight deck. Multiple crew members donned in high altitude suits were preparing a group of the drone aircrafts for launch. Five T-7 supersonic interceptors took off in a few minutes, their artificial minds given instructions to scout ahead and relay all data back to the fleet.

The aircrafts reached their supersonic speed quickly and were nearing the mountains quickly. They passed over the range, capturing images and videos that may be useful for the fleet and continued onwards to their next objective: investigating the additional readings.

In the distance, a great mountain could be seen by their cameras.