12 Miles Below

The closest surface entrance to Capra’nor was a good week from the clan. The zone of operations the raiders worked from is about a day to a half day from the clan. So we were heading straight for their rear outposts.

Not like that would grant a lot of surprise options, the world was vast and the raiders hadn’t tried to blockade the clan, so there was hundreds of miles to circle around them if one wanted to. They’d need to get into railgun range before they had enough forces to man a parameter.

And no one wants to be in railgun range.

That did make spying on the raiders a little harder due to the large distances, but nothing Lord Atius hadn’t already worked out before he made his dramatic exit. The clan picked up where he left off and expanded on the spy network, digging roots a bit everywhere.

Othersiders were a massive collection of paranoid people grudgingly working together. Slipping a few clan chenobi among their numbers was child’s play. To the point the enemy leadership didn’t bother trying to stop it. Not because they’re dumb, but because of their very organization structure.

This wasn’t a single raider band attacking. This was a set of different bands all lumped together. Bands that traditionally saw each other as perfectly good targets to eat if there weren’t any easier targets nearby.

Some othersider colonies were more mercantile, with an established power that’s keeping the peace. They operate like a clan would, only with a lot more capitalism and no caste system. Clans generally didn't do a lot of trading with them on principle, but we wouldn't be outright hostile to them either. Depending on the hub, the laws could be anywhere from functional to just a suggestion.

Raiders didn’t come from the functional hubs, that’s for sure. The places they flocked to and found roots in were places where everyone slept with a knife under their pillow. Might makes right, and if you didn’t have the might, you had the price tag.

That’s who we were up against. Ruthless psychopaths who were only grouped together because their leaders all saw more profit in attacking our clan than attacking each other.

Majority of the people keeping the raider bases up and running weren’t the raiders either, they were slaves who had no choice in the matter.

Fortunately, they weren’t usually given guns to fight with for obvious rebellion issues. And if they were - it wouldn’t be any kind of caliber that relic armors would need to trigger shields for. So we had the luxury of outright ignoring the workers and going straight for the red meat.

“Target will be Zaraduk, one of the larger bands in command.” Icestride said, pointing on a holographic map. Scavengers around us couldn’t see it, since it was superimposed on our HUDs, but they still watched as the knights huddled together and discussed tactics. Not much else to do while waiting for action to start. “Their band has six main subordinate bands, all of which are unstable and only held together in check by the big fish. Kill the big fish and the rest of the bands will fall on each other like wild dogs.”

Raiders had to search out abandoned sites out there to make use of, since a temporary camp under the shadow of airspeeders wasn’t going to do for a full scale assault. And fully functional habitats weren’t going to be found abandoned. So they took to fixing up some nearly working sites as their temporary homes. Places that could have been clan colonies in their own right, had the mites not messed up parts of their construction so bad that repairing it all was impossible.

He pointed at the site in question, a good five hours from our current position. “This site isn’t fully sealed up, missing a few critical structures for sustained life along with being generally too small. However it does have working comms towers, several hangar bays, workshops, armories and dormitories. Objective will be to eliminate the tower, break into their armories to destroy larger equipment and distribute their own weapons into the slave dormitories. Then create breaches in all heat sealed sections, rendering the outpost unusable long term. Throughout the excursion, we will seek out and eliminate all enemy relic knights. This band of raiders will dissolve naturally after. Secondary objectives are to extract the spy team lodged in their ranks, which will send us coordinates over encryptions during the fight.”

“Enemy numbers?” Father asked, watching the briefing. He didn’t have a helmet, but his eyes were glowing slightly. Wrath must have shown him how to accept and decode messages and data packets like this.

“Last message was from a week ago, and they had counted nineteen relic armors.” Icestride said.

Makes sense why they’ve been so entrenched. That number of armors would take entire clans to fight off. Or it used to.

“I look forward to testing their mettle.” Ankah said, far more comfortable within her red painted armor. Killing raiders was a clan duty, something glorified in basically every single song that had raiders or slavers pop up. Her two minions looked equally bloodthirsty in those red plates.

Technically, that would go back to the pirates Atius had bargained from. On hindsight, maybe not the best trade given what we discovered. But that would be a good number of armed and crewed airspeeders to run around and rain fire on the enemy. More guns turned against the sorry bastards was always going to be welcome.

She’d grown pretty used to the Winterblossom technique, as hadCalem and Locke. I had conflicted thoughts about that one.

When the city was facing extermination, Kidra cut off some of her spare soul fractals within her armor and passed them to each. Because it was the right thing to do, and so that’s what Kidra did even if it cost our family secrets. I’d have bargained up a storm before I handed over anything to Mrs. Princess in purple there. But that’s why Kidra was the one people called a hero and I was the loot gremlin more likely to steal anything I got my hands on.

Life is so unfair. Just because I’ve got relic armor that lets me rip anything bolted down doesn’t mean that’s what I do. Not everything bolted down could be sold off.

Anyhow, it’s all out of the bag now and there was no putting it back in. Ankah was a right witch to deal with but that haughty attitude also came with an obligation to follow through with it. It was tradition that in the face of a larger threat, all clan disputes were put aside until the main threat was defeated. Sort of a hallmark of clan culture, and something often spoken about with pride.

What we were doing today was on a much smaller scale, but still part of the same thing. Eliminating an annoyance that Shadowsong couldn’t quite commit enough knights without opportunity cost to handling the smaller fries closer to the clan.

“Intelligence has highlighted a security flaw on the south side of their encampment.” Icestride continued, marking a set of green lines where our airspeeder would take us through and ending at a dot some distance from the enemy. “Their defense turrets were scavenged from nearby ruins with incompatible technology. They’re finicky, prone to failure, and aren’t maintained well. Their main deterrents were the sheer number of relic armors within their command. Which means sabotage is an easy objective to accomplish. We'll approach from behind this mountain range, on which the raider surveillance equipment has been tampered with to give false signals."

A valley of smaller mountains were highlighted on the HUD, along with three red points peppered around the ridges. Signal repeaters, set down by the raiders to get vision across the mountain range blind spot. Equipment that was set and forget, which meant the spy team only had to tamper with it once and nobody in the camp would bother going all the way out there to verify it was still sending correct signals.

"Once we reach comms range, we’ll send a signal to the dormant spy team within their ranks, and they’ll shut down their defenses long enough for us to approach.”

From the empty dot, another green line showed up, a direct path to the enemy compound. “This frigate will handle the comms tower. Hangars will remain mostly unharmed, since we expect the slaves to commandeer their airspeeders once they’ve started turning on their masters. From there on, their fate is their own.”

Those escaping slaves could band together and head off to one of the more civilized othersider colonies. Or might devolve into a new raider band themselves. Can’t always win everything, but at least we’d give those worth saving a fair shot at freedom.

“Nistene and Hecate will be in charge of hunting down their leadership along with enemy knights.” Icestride said, helmet turning to the two Feathers. “You both are the strongest and most qualified for that mission.” Geared and piled up with evosuit fabric was an understatement. Father looked like a homeless pile of rags with a mildly humanoid shape. Wrath was covered head to toe in relic armor from one of the plates we’d brought back from the expedition.

Armor could be reforged from a single plate if it housed the nanoswarm, and we’d had time to extract the most durable parts of each armor from our casualties. With exception to Windrunner and Atius, who’s armors had been outright melted away with nothing left behind. Only thing we couldn’t loot was Avalis’s chain weapon nor some of my knightbreaker shells. Those had fallen off the skyscrapers and slipped straight down to the murky depths. We couldn’t even find Sagrius down there - and his armor would be sending out signals.

Wrath refused to leave her wings behind of course, so she’d also gotten half the rag treatment father had. Mostly to cover her folded wings. Once we were inside the compound, even if it wasn’t sealed off to the outside environment, it did have thick ceilings. If she was supposed to be safe walking around inside a clan colony, this wouldn’t be different.

Then Icestride’s helmet turned to me. “Winterscar heirs, the two of you will accompany Nistene. Hecate will be paired with Arcbound, those two should have next to no threat of casualties.”

If someone somehow broke past Arcbound’s relic armor shields and stabbed him through the heart, he wasn’t exactly going to die from it. Or having his head chopped off. On account of being a walking possessed armor. That was going to spook a few Slavers expecting something different.

“Shadowsongs will be in charge of reaching the armory and destroying all large scale weapons inside. Smaller arms that can be used by slaves and doesn’t pose any threat to us will be recovered and spread around the dormitories.”

He turned to his own clan knights. “Stormsweepers, Lorrii and I will take on their command structure, aiming to destroy their logistics.”

Split into a group of four then, two groups hunting down knights, two groups going for objectives. Divide and conquer.

“Mission follows shock and awe rules. Once we’ve reached the clan home, our two Deathless’s abilities to invest temporary powers to knights will be disclosed. Word should reach the raiders around the same time as the survivors from this site are recovered. Make liberal use of occult powers and leave enough of the small fries alive to speak of it. We want the knowledge to spread far and wide that Lord Atius isn’t the only Deathless fighting for Clan Altosk. The rank and file will further break apart from that.”

“Would that not make their enemy command more informed of the threats to handle during their attack?” Wrath asked, watching. “Were I in charge of their army, knowing what abilities my opponents possess would allow me to better prepare for the main attack.”

Icestride gave her a quick thumbs up. “That’s correct. If the raiders send out a full assault, it would look vastly different depending on how many Deathless they fight. If they attacked with a setup to handle only Lord Atius, and find two more Deathless by surprise, they’d be scrapped. But Lord Atius doesn’t intend to let them get to that point at all. There won't be a main attack.

We’re not waiting for the raiders to crash against our fortified positions. We’re wiping them out first.”

Teed expertly twisted the frigate around, landing it like falling snow onto the white wastes. At the same time, a figure leaped straight from the airspeeder, landing in a roll against the white wastes and sprinting up the mountainside.

Mission had started. Clock was on.

First objective was to establish contact with the spy team while remaining undetected. Next to impossible to spot a tiny little clan knight with a small dish hiding on a mountain than it was to spot a war frigate moving around. And with the enemy blind on their radars, actual line of sight was the only way they'd see us passing by.

The raider signal repeaters were exactly where the spy team had sent word about, which meant they hadn't been moved or modified. So while it was a little nerve wracking to see those unmanned posts clearly having line of sight as we approached, they were supposed to be sending back all clear signals. Had to trust the clan Chenobi had done their job for this.

Up at the top of the mountain, Arcbound planted a dish, aimed it at the distant compound, and started sending encrypted signals only our clan knew about while laying down flat on the ground.

It took a half hour before we got a response signal, which Arcbound’s armor transmitted back to our ship comms.

“War frigate Equinox, this is spy team alpha.” A gravelly voice crackled. “Received request to engage in sabotage. Recommend mission abort. Repeat - recommend mission abort.”

Icestride took to the comms. “This is war frigate Equinox, Icestride prime speaking. Explain.” He asked.

“New shipment of armors arrived yesterday.” The man said, a little frantically. “Counting thirty armors - I repeat, thirty armors. All unmarked and brand new.”

Interesting. Unmarked and brand new armors, sent to raiders of all people. Either they had a deal going with the Undersiders, or they’d gotten access to a mite forge somehow like we planned to in future excursions.

“Source?” Icestride asked.

“We don’t know. Three gods above, if we knew, we’d be already planning an escape to pass that knowledge onto command as fast as possible. How they got their hands on so many is something they’re keeping tight lipped about. They’re not above flaunting it before their subjects however. Best guess is that they were able to raid Undersiders at some point, they have the numbers for that. Second guess is that an imperial garrison was wiped out and the raiders found the bodies left behind.”

“Understood.” Icestride said. “Confirmed forty nine armors within that compound. Mission continues as planned with priorities shifted.”

The voice was quiet for a moment. “You can’t be serio-- Master Icestride, that’s an entire clan’s worth of armors all in the hands of sadists and torturers. You are a single frigate.”

“This won’t be an issue Alpha. We have enough to handle such a force.”

“... How many are aboard your frigate?”

“Thirteen clan knights. And two Deathless.”

The comms went silent for a long moment. “And these two Deathless are powerful enough to turn the tides against that many?” There was outright hope leaking in the man’s voice. The sort of surprised hope that came from someone who’d lost all of it already.

Seeing thirty relic armors delivered to this outpost, the spy team there must have felt like all hope of winning had been wiped away. It had taken Clan Altosk two centuries to gather up fifty five armors. And these raiders got thirty out of nowhere all in one day.

Given that the spy team had been inserted a long time ago before the raiders had first tried to attack my House, they probably only heard rumors on the clan's newfound strength.

“I am confident in mission success.” Icestride said, helmet looking up to both Wrath and Father standing by.

Wrath had outright battled relic knights en mass before, easily killing more than that number by herself. She could probably solo the entire compound if given a day or two to work in.

No, the additional armors didn’t change anything. Their source was going to be the more important secret to beat out of them.

“The additional relic armors will look far better among our clan knights than their current owners.” Icestride continued. “We’ll add additional objectives to discover the source of their new armors. Rest of the mission proceeds as normal. Sabotage the defenses, give us the green light, and go straight to extraction. Two knights will meet you there and escort you into the war frigate. The rest of the raider compound is our duty to deal with. ”

“.... Understood. Spy team alpha confirms operation start. We’ll do our part for the clan. Three gods above, watch over and deliver us from struggle.”

“Once we get into the raider base, they won’t have to.” Icestride said, and cut the contact.