12 Miles Below

Planning wise, teams were consolidated into two instead of four. And we were all hunting down relic knights now. Until they were all eliminated, we wouldn’t be after any other objective.

The spy team was taking their sweet time to sabotage the defenses though. All of us were ready in action, once the defenses were down, Teed would bring the ship to full speed and we’d arrive at their doorstep in under a few minutes. Probably would need to jump out during a flyby too.

It was quiet as the knights all readies themselves mentally for the battle ahead.

Which is why I found it odd to get a private comms request from Father of all people.

“You practicing talking mentally?” I asked, watching as his eyes softly glowed next to me.

His mouth didn’t move, nor did he look my direction, but his voice came through the comms.

“The girl taught me already.” He paused, frowning for a moment. “...What do you know of slavers?”

Odd question. “I don’t think I’d know more about them than you would. You’ve probably had to fight them a few dozen times over your lifetime.”

“I have.” He said. “I know everything I need. You might not. You need to be mentally prepared for what you’ll find. Explain what you know.”

Old man was testing me? Or worried about me? He probably wanted to make sure I had the right info on how to fight them. I thought back on everything I knew about Slavers. Rumors around them, what the textbooks and clan knew about them, and my own experience having to fight them before at the heart of the Winterscar compound.

Sum total: “They’re… not really that great in a fight. Only time I’ve seen or heard them win, is when they’ve ambushed or caught a clan by surprise.” That’s how they got the old guard in House Winterscar, by stalking behind and hitting at a weak point. “Most of them don’t spend a lifetime training like clan knights do, so they generally are on the backfoot when they have to fight us. That’s why they rely on bigger numbers. At least when it comes to relics.”

The ones that attacked the Winterscar compound directly weren’t bad fighters, just not monsters like Kidra of Father were. They were real cocky when everything was going their way, but when they saw the writing on the wall… “Not a lot of morale either. They route easily and have no problems abandoning each other.”

That captain ran off to leave his men to die at my hands once I had Journey requipped. Felt like forever ago, but I had taken out a full squad of them. Even the moment after I’d equipped Journey, I’d walked out and took down two slavers in seconds.

“You understand the basics.” Father said, nodding. “There’s more you need to understand. You saw their more hardened warriors. Today, you’ll see their weaker ones. That is what you need to be prepared for.”

“You think the weaker ones will be more trouble?” I asked, not quite getting the subtext.

“Aye. They’re capable of saying anything and doing anything to survive. They pretend to be human when they realize death is inevitable. They’ll beg you for mercy.” He turned to fully watch me now. “You need to understand, and understand deeply boy - They wear our form. They’ll speak our words. But they have given up their humanity long ago. Not a single one of their kind are redeemable. There is no other living being you should despise more than Slavers.”

Makes sense logically of course. Slavers were called slavers for a reason - they traded people like poultry. Someone like that isn’t going to have any kind of moral compass left intact. Any one of them who climbed enough ranks to get a relic armor wasn’t a good person by definition. “I’ve killed them before without feeling any remorse over it.” I said. “If you’re worried I’ll avoid a killing blow, that airlock’s long gone cold. I already have before, and it didn’t drag me down much.”

If anything, I hadn’t hesitated for a moment. The men and women serving house Winterscar needed me to step up and put a stop to them, so I have no regrets doing exactly that.

“It’s not the demons I’m worried for. You’ll see far more than just their kind inside one of their dens. You’ll see their victims as well. And they’ll beg for help.”

“And… we can’t offer it, can we? Is that what you’re trying to warn me about?”

“Aye, we can’t stop to help them. You need to move past them and continue the attack.” His eyes turned away, back to staring at the bay door. “What we do is grant them a chance to free themselves. There is nothing more we can do without choosing favorites, too many will be found. You will have to make peace with this. Drugs will not mask it. The propranolol will block irrational horror. What you’ll find in that compound is a very rational one. The more empathy you have, the harder it will be. Steel your heart.”

“What kind of experience do you have with them?” I asked.

“You already know the most significant one. You were there for it.” He said, then closed his eyes. “Lord Atius never did find the culprits who ambushed the clan migration. But they would not have run so far away as to leave behind everything they had.”

“You think they’re here somewhere, in this attack.”

He nodded, slightly. “Without question. Who better to recruit among their forces, than a band that had successfully attacked the clan a decade before? We don’t know their banners. We don’t know their names. But they must still be alive out there, hiding among the numbers.”

“You got a plan of some kind to find them?” I asked. “If they got recruited into the attack force, then there’s probably paperwork or logistics somewhere pointing them out.”

“In times past, I would have considered such a thing impossible to track down. Now, this shell can scan through thousands of records in seconds.” Father said, a finger tapping his head. “Remember, boy: I am not human anymore. And they’ll find me a greater demon than any of them put together.”

The spy team took an additional hour and a half to get into position. Nothing outside on the compound changed, it was still a snow piled slab of metal bumps in the distance. But a signal came through and let us know we were good to go, so the defenses must have been brought down.

Teed raised the ship and had it go at full speed directly at the enemy. The turrets in the distance stayed frozen in place. No airspeeders raced out the hangars to intercept us.

Five missiles went soaring into the air from our ship. They quickly zipped away, turning into yellow distant lights slowly making their way to the large tower.

Impact hit the compound like a sledgehammer, tons of frozen ice blown apart as the tower’s spine broke in multiple parts. It collapsed down at the same moment, landing against the reinforced compound, sliding off to the side and blocking one of the hangar exits.

Bay doors opened wide, with our team holding tight to the sides as the ship sped across the white wastes.

There was a buzz of excitement. Even with the additional enemy armaments, we weren’t dissuaded at all. Icestride stood on the other side, along with his team. We’d be dropped off first, and he’d be dropped off at a different section of the outpost.

“Ten seconds.” Teed announced over the comms. No sound of any retaliation, nor danger yet.

The ship listed off to the side, carving slightly into the ice under us. The countdown continued, until it hit zero.

Father and I leaped straight out. Current speed had us soar above the ice, then land hard and continue to slide directly towards the closed hangar doors.

They remained sealed for only a moment, before rumbling open.

“I have infiltrated their security systems.” Wrath said over the comms. “Opening doors.” Frozen ice on the entrance cracked off in chunks, breaking into smaller pieces as they hit the ground.

If she hadn’t been able to, we’d have ripped our own hole into them.

Teed’s ship didn’t bother to stop or wait to make sure we got in. It hadn’t stopped it’s speed, only driving by the sides of the compound and quickly racing out of sight. Looking around for another insertion point.

“Advance.” Father said as we slid to a stop only a few dozen feet from the opening hangar doors.

Four slaver knights rushed out, rifles aimed up, and daggers at their belts. The moment they saw our numbers, they turned on their heels and raced off back inside. Sane strategy, there was seven of us sprinting right at them. Until they had the numbers even or greater, they wouldn’t commit to an attack.

We slipped straight through the open doors like water, flying across into the hangar, chasing after where the slaver knights had run off to.

Inside the hangar was a good three dozen men all in environmental suits. Some wore tribal colors, others wore nothing but tan rags above their basic suit. Half of them lost their nerve the moment they thought we were going their general direction. The other half had their trigger fingers pulled down all the way.

Bullets welcomed us in, none of it triggered shields on anyone.

“Eliminate the colored ones when possible.” Father said taking a short side pass, using crates as a springboard to leap up onto the catwalks above. His blade lit up, catching one such man right in his back. His friends were in the process of scrambling away, but Father was going far too fast for anyone to escape. “Do not go out of your path to eliminate them. There will be time for that later. Ignore the slaves.”

The knights all pinged affirmative, and we slipped further into their disorganized mess of a compound.

The unarmored slavers weren’t completely dumb, they did try to wheel around larger cannons and set them up ahead of time. Problem was that we were moving ridiculously fast, scything through anything in our way. By the time the cannons were set, the barrels had been sliced apart. “Ignore operators.” Father ordered, passing by one such man cowering on the ground. “All of them will be slaves.”

He was right. Not a single cannon emplacement was operated by slavers, just their terrified victims. They knew cannons were the first thing relic knights went for, so not the best place to hang out in.

“And of the slavers that hide among the slaves?” Kidra asked, slicing off the heads of three such slavers with cold efficiency. Those always had color marks to denote what band they were part of.

One died with his trigger finger pressed all the way on his weapon, to which Kidra clamped a quick hand over and twisted until the weapon stopped firing, her other hand busy slashing through the throat of the man’s friend.

Stray bullets weren’t any kind of threat to us, but they could rip a environmental suit. And I doubt slaves were given anything to patch those up if there’s an issue.

“They will be caught and killed soon enough.” Father answered. “Wrath is in their systems. Their hangers will not open. Any that try to flee the compound on foot will be hunted down by our pilot. None of them are running from us.”

And speaking of running, the four slaver knights ran right into a sealed doorway with us hot on their trail. I could outright see the panic in their attempts to punch the console doorway open. It remained red and shut. Wrath had her hand in basically everything inside the system by now.

By the time the slaver knights realized their system was compromised and they’d have better chances by outright ripping through the doorway using their armor, we’d already caught up.

I hadn’t been on the vanguard for that turn, instead I’d been keeping the rear covered. Two other knights on our team slammed into them head first, while the rest of our team chased right behind.

Two Winterscar knights against four slaver knights in tight quarters.

It was messy. The four knights didn’t fight to win or beat down the Winterscar knights. No they were trying to slip away from the fight, throwing each other as roadblocks. One tried his luck by rushing through the rest of us.

His shields let him survive a few slices from each of us, up until he tried to slip past Father.

In a moment, his helmet was sized by one white rag covered gauntlet and lifted straight up in the air. His legs swung forward, inertia of his run bleeding through and lifting the rest of his body horizontally.

Father slammed him straight down into the ground from there without a word. Relic shields flashed around him, but he was caught dead in the center of our group. Five different occult edges were already burning through the energy reserves by the time his back had hit the ground. A moment later, the shields died out. He didn’t so much as have the time to whimper.

The old man hadn’t even bothered to take out his blade. His hand crunched down and the helmet shattered away.

In the same moment, the two Winterscar knights up ahead had butchered the rest of the slaver knights. Right down to stabbing the last one straight through his back and skewering him into the very door he’d been trying to cut a path through. They’d been too terrified to even mount a proper fight back. The only one who did try to stand his ground had his blade quickly pinned down, and then had his head chopped off a moment later once his shields died against the onslaught.

Not even a few minutes into the operation and four of their knights were dead already.

The doors flashed green and opened up to let us through. It had gotten a bit messed up by the slaver’s desperate attempts to escape, parts of it were getting stuck on sections that weren’t working anymore.

“Their security systems are now fully under my control.” Wrath said. “Camera systems online. I have visuals on all knights. Sending coordinates now.”

That would make it easy to track down all their knights. And like Father had mentioned, if any tired to make a run for it across the white wastes, Teed would swoop in with his cannons and make short work of them. Relic armor was powerful, but Teed was driving a gods damned war frigate around.

“They’re assembling for a fight.” Father said, likely watching the same concentration of red dots showing up in one of the larger rooms. Close by too.

“I see no reason to keep our hosts waiting.” Kidra said, resheathing her dagger back into position. “They have made it rather convenient for us. It would be improper of us to ignore the welcome.”

“Agreed.” Father said, hand ripping the rest of the doorway open, metal bending at his touch as if it were clay.

We burst straight into a large courtyard, where we found the slowly assembling slaver defenses. More knights were heading this direction, but right now the fight was seven against thirteen. Lopsided and generally difficult for clan knights to fight off. Each knight would need to be able to take on two enemy knights to beat that kind of number.

One of these knights was clearly the ringleader, given his skulls and decoration. I’m sure it would terrify most people, but compared to the machines underground, it almost seemed cute.

“You dicksuckers picked the wrong fuckers to piss off.” The lead slaver said, waving to the rest of his escort. “Timing of this is fuckin’ perfect too. Too bad for you lot, we gots a wee bit more armor than you’d think. The boys here have been looking forward to trying their new metal out.”

“We know.” Father said, taking a step forward without a care in the world. “We’ve come to take it.”

The raider just laughed, “Naw, I’m thinking we take your shit instead since you’re so kind as to bring it right to us. Get ‘em boys. But make it slow, wouldn’t want to let the others show up to just bones now.”

Slaver knights fought like clan knights. To an extent. The schools of combat are pretty well studied up here, but slavers and raiders didn’t usually end up the disciplined bunch that would train each day. They’d be the bunch that would indulge in their little pleasures and expect their armors to do the rest of the work for them.

Since Father had taken a few steps past our line, he was also the first one targeted. Three slaver knights raced for him.

The first reached Father, with a piss poor Tetsu stance. Arm was way off where it should have been. The man was still confident enough to slash down with his small occult knife anyhow, expecting any retaliation to be defensive. Rest of his gang were right behind him after all, and even more red dots were making their way to our little courtyard.

Father’s hand reached out, grabbed the attacking wrist and spun him around. The other hand grabbed the man’s shoulder and shoved the man down on his knees. His armor screeched in protest.

The running slavers came to a stop, all of them fixated on how a relic armor could possibly manhandle another armor so absurdly. Relic armor had differences depending on model, some were stronger than others, but nothing was so overwhelmingly different like this.

Then Father began to pull the other arm. The armor held up admirably. For a few seconds.

It detonated into segments, slipping off the slaver’s exposed skin.

“I see.” Father said, grabbing the man's arm again. Seemed almost harmless until I saw his hand had shattered the man’s bones with a mild twist of his wrist. The arm fell limp.

At the same time, he twisted the screaming slaver’s other arm behind his own back, and pulled up. Far past the range of motion a human should be capable of. Neither the armor’s shields nor its attempt to jettison plates could save the human operator. The slaver’s occult dagger fell from his broken hand, to which Father caught in his other hand.

He nodded, experiment concluded, before turning on the occult edge against the pinned Slaver.

The lead slaver watched, dumbfounded. “Who the fuck are you?” He whispered.

“To think I ran from animals like you, once.” He said, voice cold as ice as the slaver desperately tried to fight for freedom. The rest of the slavers in the room watched, some taking an unconscious step back.

The blade edge continued to chew through the pinned slaver’s shields until it all flared bright blue. The relic armor shields failed, breaking completely. Father turned the dagger off and tossed it to the side, as if it were worthless. Then lifted up the slaver with one hand, and slammed his other straight through the raider’s back and out his chestplate. Armor and all. As if it were nothing but paper.

“Pray to whatever miserable gods you have left." Father’s uncaring voice was the only voice in the room now, the rest of the slavers staring. "You're all meeting them today.”

Next chapter - Absolute shitshow