12 Miles Below

Despite Wrath having locked down their systems, right down to communications, the Slavers seemed to get the message that even with their ridiculous numbers something wasn’t going right.

They’d been hit by two small teams of relic knights attacking from different ends and sent orders to intercept the knights and take them out. And everything after was scrambled communications and physically passed along messages of clan knights still storming around through the compound despite them having run into the main forces.

Every slaver knight took a look at the situation, realized that these clan knights should have been put down already or at least tied down in combat long enough for the rest of the forces to converge. And if that hadn’t happened then something was very, very wrong.

The very next thought was to seek protection among the herd and abandon ship. They’re not idiots at least.

Likewise, orders we got from Icestride were simple: Handle the slaver knights above all other targets first. As far as the compound’s defenses were, he’d confirmed that the only real threat that existed here were those knights.

All the ordinance and manpower stationed here might have been enough to pose a threat to regular clan knights, but we were far too fast in destroying any cannon emplacements being setup before it could be turned on us. Wrath and Father could outright walk into a fully setup killzone and take on every bullet sent with only their paint scratched.

“They’re all funneling into hangar bay six.” Icestride said. “We’ll divert and take on any stragglers still trying to reach the meeting zone. Winterscars, eliminate the hangar directly in the meantime.”

“They will shift to explosives in order to open the hangar bay doors soon.” Wrath added. “Be alert for any signs of this. Likely they will attempt to use the airspeeder’s own weapons. Those do have the rating to deal damage to your relic armors.”

“Right, you all hear the silver bimbo - don’t stand in front of the giant near stationary guns. Excellent tactical analysis, consider me baffled that humanity’s still somehow alive.” Cathida snarked, right before I hit the mute button.

“It is functional tactical advice, yes.” Wrath agreed. “Are you having difficulty understanding the concepts? I can provide more details if you need it.”

“No, she’s just being difficult.” I said, offering polite apologies. “Don’t mind her Wrath.”

Switching off comms, I glared at the mute button hovering over my HUD. I knew Journey could track eye movements, so Cathida must be getting the message. “Why are you like this?” I hissed. “Next time, I’m muting you for an entire day. Swear to all three gods and the devils under.”

“Worth it.” Cathida said, unrepentant as usual. “Besides, the toaster knows this is just my way of showing I care about her. In my own way.”

She had the audacity to make that sound almost convincing, even with the warble in her old dusty voice. “You’re not fooling anyone here.”

“Tosser.” She said, tutting. “What gave me away?”

I hit the mute button and set it for a whole day as threatened prior. Just in time as our group hit the ramparts and passed into the hangar bay wings.

Number six quickly came into view, the door at the end opened up wide from the last group to have passed through. It looked more like a clawed out thing, knife marks everywhere. The slavers had to get creative to get past all the locked doorways. And these were thin enough to work around. The actual hangar doors were far thicker and made to resist being cracked open from the outside by weapon fire.

So naturally, we found them all panicked around that issue, some trying to use their occult weapons to cleave a path through, others yelling out orders to lower level slavers for more explosives and other gear. Parts of the hangar already looked like there had been explosions, given the warped metal and shrapnel that littered the ground already.

Only thing that looked completely intact and unphased was the airspeeder hovering by, catwalk scaffolding still surrounding its branching supports, some slightly bent already as the massive beast had accidentally moved around a bit and crushed parts with little effort.

Slaver knights spotted us in a few seconds, shouting out to one another and pointing directly at our advancing group. Bullet fire began to rain down on us from just about everywhere. While the enemy relic users were all huddling together, they weren’t alone here. About five times their number were running around stiff environmental suits, trying to either get the ship ready to go, or trying to sneak into it ahead of time.

“Keith, Kidra.” Father ordered, leaping high into the air, weapon already drawn out as he soared straight down at his first target. “Into the airspeeder. Clear them out. The rest of us will deal with the stragglers out here.”

He landed with a heavy kick directly into one slaver’s chestplate, one hand battering away a hasty stab from his victim, the other hand chopping down his own occult blade down onto the neck.

The enemy was knocked down onto the ground, free hand trying to grab Father’s wrist and pull his sword arm off his neck. Shields were giving a screeching whine as Father’s blade pushed down inevitably against the plate.

A moment later, they flared and broke. And the slaver’s head was lopped off just about the same time, all his dying efforts completely wasted.

Father stood back up slowly from the dead body, eyes quickly scanning all the targets slowly fanning out to surround him. Two other Winterscar knights landed next to him, taking their positions at both his sides, weapons drawn out.

About all I saw before my own armor landed from a jump off the catwalks down right by the airspeeder’s open bay doors. They began to close up, as a slaver was frantically mashing a button on the inside, environmental helmet watching me dead on as I sprinted forward.

He realized the doors weren’t closing fast enough, scrambling for the rifle strap and bringing the weapon up and aimed at me.

I leaped in, being warmly welcomed by a hail of bullets. Journey didn’t bother to trigger shields for this, letting the bullet sparkle bright yellow against the armor plating.

My armguard slashed through his barrel with little thought, while my boot followed behind to kick him in his stomach. He gave a wet grunt as the kick scrambled his insides and sent him flying off into the side of a sealed airlock, crumpling the back of his environmental suit. He flopped down on the floor, air hissing out of holes on his broken equipment. A gurgle came out, along with a twitch and then nothing else.

Kidra had stormed inside at the same time, following right behind me, and equally taking out her side of the defenses. Three other slavers who’d had the unfortunate luck of trying to hide behind portable bullet proof barricades as cover while they fired back.

Like me, she hadn’t bothered to use her rifle for work like this, giving a quick swing of the Winterscar longsword, the reach easily cleaving through all three and the barricade they were hiding behind. A quick death for one who’d had his head in the way of the blade swing, and a slower death for the others who’d had less immediately fatal damage. Those poor bastards were scrambling around on the ground, trying to patch up their suit. Blood poured away and hissed once it made contact with the ice cold metal under, already coagulating and freezing up. Kidra strode by and gave both a quick swift stab through each helmet.

The bay doors sealed behind us, and the airspeeder shuddered for a moment.

“They’ve opened fire.” Kidra said, striding up to the airlock and triggering the air cycle. It flashed red.

The speeder rumbled under us, sounds of metal on metal grating.

“Great. Looks like we’re hitchhikers now.” I said, as the speeder began to move under us. There was a quick bit of acceleration, and then a sudden halt that nearly threw us off our footing. My hand reached out against a handrail to hold me steady, foot bracing against the impact. Metal groaning resounded all around us, lights flickering as power was drawn away from nearly every system.

The airlock light remained flashing red, a percentage sign showing halfway done on the panel. The metal groaning continued, then stopped and the airspeeder began to pick up speed once again.

Comms flickered in our headset. “They have rammed the airspeeder into weakened bay doors and managed to squeeze through.” Wrath said. “Airspeeder hull integrity reports still functional despite the damage. You will need to disable the speeder soon before they go out of range.”

Teed’s voice came in next. “I see them, they’re limping. One engine looks like it’s gotten torn off but the rest is functional enough. You two onboard it?”

“We are.” Kidra said.

“Gotcha, I’ll leave it to you then. Let me know if you want me to catch up and shoot it down, would be my pleasure.” He said closing the channel.

The airlock light blinked green and opened up. Kidra and I walked right in, closing it behind us.

“I am unsure what they hope to accomplish.” She said, twisting a dagger in her hand while we waited for the airlock to cycle in heated air. “We are already aboard their ship. They have no way to escape us now.”

“Don’t think they’re thinking at all.” I said, shrugging. The airlock lights blinked red and then halted completely. The cycle stopped from the other side. “Okay, correction, they’re at least trying to think.”

“Not clever enough.” Kidra said, turning on her dagger and stabbing it into the airlock door. A hiss of air came through as warm air from the other side tried to rush into our still frozen section. A few more slices and a large chunk of the doorway was outright ready to peel away.

I pulled the section down and tilted my head to the side a moment later. Occult sight had already let me know what was waiting on the other side, and a rapidly thrusting occult blade was exactly one such thing.

It stabbed through, the wielder overshooting his mark as he sliced air instead of his expected resistance. I grabbed the exposed wrist and shoved it against the side of the airlock, putting my shoulder and arm into the effort, both our relic armors whining as metal muscles tried to fight for supremacy.

Kidra wordlessly slashed her dagger edge directly into his exposed and pinned arm, the shields lighting up against the occult edge. I could hear panicked screaming on the other side as the slaver’s armor reported the damage and rapidly draining shields while the poor bastards was unable to pull his hand back in time.

Effort doubled as he got smart and put his whole shoulder and other hand against the doorframe to pry himself free from my vice grip.

Journey struggled against the force. A timer popped up showing me expected failure point in just under a minute.

Which would have been a year and a half in how fast combat went between relic armors. His shields failed a moment after against Kidra’s blade, but instead of cutting through the arm, she lifted it off, flourished her longblade and stabbed it straight through the metal airlock.

Tension against the pinned arm immediately stopped. Kidra’s blade had cut straight through the slaver’s armor, directly under his armpit and into his heart. Another win for being able to see through walls.

I let go of the limp hand, letting the man slump off on the other side while Kidra gave another two cuts into the metal doorway with her dagger and longsword working in tandem. This time when I pried off the chunk, no slaver tried to stab out at me again.

There were three in the cockpit left, two relic knights holding blades pointed directly at us, and a pilot tapping away at buttons, trying to keep the limping airspeeder moving. That one didn’t have armor at all, just a standard environmental suit.

Kidra stepped through the gap and I followed behind, cracking my neck and watching the last two enemies to deal with.

“Not to interrupt anything,” Teed said over the comms, “But I’m seeing three ticks on the back of your ship crawling on the hull.”

“I will deal with those in a moment. Keith, can you steer the ship back to the hangar while I handle the annoyances?”

“I would be happy to.” I said, drawing out my own Winterscar blade to pair with my armguard. “Always wanted a chance to actually drive one of these.”

“Then I suggest we deal with these two quickly before the ones outside become a nuisance.”

Given the cramped area, I didn't want a long drawn out fight that might damage the ride back home. Time to bring out the bigger guns.

I took a step forward. The first slaver gave a battle cry and leaped straight at me with a dagger flashing down for my head. The armguard did exactly as it was supposed to, the waffle pattern occult edges easily holding off the enemy blade without trouble.

At the same time, deep inside my armor, the mirror fractal lit bright blue. Occult pulsed around me, and four spectral arms flashed out, each holding a copy of the arm guard, slamming it into the exposed Slaver’s armor, while the main hand blade equally slashed from the other side.

His shields flashed out against the onslaught, held for a microsecond and collapsed as a few dozen occult edges all ate away at his shields in an eyeblink. The armguards swung straight through him a moment later, cutting him up into bloody chunks, while one longsword blade cut his head off.

I didn’t stop there. Three more fully realized mirror images stepped out and swung their own arm guards at the last cowering slaver knight. He tried to stab one, and failed the moment the image flickered into two images, one being correctly stabbed and dissolved, while the second slammed an armguard down into his back.

The other images equally followed through on their own hits, but I’d already turned to make my way to the terrified pilot. I could see in the soul sight as the concept of a slaver knight winked out of existence a moment later.

The pilot scrambled out of his seat, bringing out a handgun and opening fire. Insignias on his environmental suit showed he was a high ranking officer, and given how he hadn’t been flying right, I don’t think he’d driven an airspeeder in years. Likely having plenty of lackeys to delegate to.

“Mercy, lord deathless! Mer-” He stopped when my fist punched his helmet. My blade slashed through his throat as he reeled back.

“Doubt you showed any mercy to others.” I said, and shoved the dying body off his seat, taking over the controls.

Kidra had already turned and walked back out through the broken airlock, dagger back in her sheath to keep a spare hand open. She’d need it to climb up and handle the slavers trying to hitch a ride.

I found the commands for the bay doors and had them unlock and open up, revealing the flying white landscape zip under us. Now that I was back in my old element, Teed’s lessons and the few times I’d snuck into their simulators for fun came back.

I wasn’t anywhere near a good pilot like Teed was, there was an art to swinging a multi-ton flying beast like this one, especially if it’s running on three engines instead of four. But fancy moves weren’t needed. All I had to do was keep the whole thing stable and turn it back home.

They’d really made a mess of it. Reports on the consoles were flying around in red. They’d taken off when nearly every checklist item hadn’t been done. The cockpit itself was still in the process of deheating, along with a laundry list of other warning signs.

Worst one was that the pilot forgot to cut off fuel supply lines into the broken engine, outright putting the whole ship into explosion range.

I patched things up back to better shape, reducing the speed from the redmark back into a green state, and gracefully turned the ship around. Comms cycled on my HUD until I had the right frequency. “Teed, I’m in control of the airspeeder, bringing her back home now.”

“She’s a right mess,” He answered. “Smoke trail coming from engine four makes me thing the whole thing will blow up soon.”

“Cut off the fuel supply to that already, it’s just burning through the scraps left. Shouldn’t explode on me. I think.”

“Knock on metal, she ain’t looking too pretty right now. Pests are being taken care of though, I’m getting a nice view of that.”

In the soul trance I could see the concept of Kidra moving around gracefully above me, and concepts of slaver knights winking away one after another.

The third tried to slam into her with a running start, and equally faded away a moment later, turning into the concept of an empty relic armor flopping off the side of the ship, pinned into it by a rope and hook.

“All knights cleared off.” She said a moment after. “How is the ship?”

“We didn’t get super far from the compound.” I said, “But I’m taking her home slowly, so expect a few minutes.”

Teed’s own ship was off in the distance. Even with some of my windows splattered with red, I could still see the clan war frigate prowling around like a predator in the open wastelands. Keeping an eye on me.

The bay doors on the compound looked half ripped apart, and I was having a hard time understanding how an airspeeder of this size was able to fit through it all without more damage. Shields did show they were down a few percent, so the pilot must have triggered them on full just to wedge through without damaging the hull too much.

On the other side of the bay doors, I saw nothing but empty relic armors, collapsed on the ground with holes stuck through them. A few had helmets and armor parts crushed, where Father prowled around, hunting down slavers who had no relic armors. He kept to the shadows, sulking away from the open rip in the wall. If the slavers thought they’d be safer near the exit, the rest of the winterscar knights were proving them horribly wrong.

“I see the hangar is clear.” I said, bringing the airspeeder to a stop and landing it right before the rip.

“The bay door is no longer operational.” Wrath said. “They have caused too much damage to it. The ship will need to be left outside.”

“And the hunt for the relic users?”

“Complete.” She said. “No remaining targets within the hangar, and I’ve caught the last escapee attempt. The compound is ours.”

Indeed it was. Without relic knights to fight us off, the only thing left inside the Slaver base was the rank and file environmental suits with rifles and their hostages.

It was tedious work after that, hunting down the enemy. There were still only a few of us running around a massive compound crawling with Slavers trying to play hide and seek.

Halfway through the day, the slaves within had gathered up together with enough weapons to start doing our work for us, mowing down their former tormentors and fanning out to find wherever they hid with a zeal that seemed borderline religious. Each hour, more slaves broke free and joined the freedom fighters, accelerating the process.

Some of the desperate scum tried to escape on foot, running across the wasteland. Father and Wrath wouldn’t follow them outside, and the rest of us were too busy moving around the base and destroying everything to bother with a few stragglers.

Heavy turrets on an clan war frigate were overkill for a few Slavers scrambling away on ice. Surely none of Teed’s crew would gun down Slavers with bullets big enough to turn them into a mist of freezing blood and scrap.

No matter how cathartic that must feel. Or how bloodthirsty clan gunners were at the idea of getting to shoot Slavers instead of twiddling thumbs watching the knights have all the fun. Professionals have standards. They just miscounted the initial amount of bullets they’d brought aboard the ship. An honest mistake.

By the end of the day, there weren’t any slavers left alive. Even the ones trying to hide among the freedom fighters were caught and executed by their very victims. A bloody retaliation.

The slaves had formed several loose collections of organized groups, organized and guided by Wrath who pointed out where the slavers had the highest probability of hiding in, and leaving the rest for them to find and handle.

Teed finally landed his airspeeder right by one of the empty hangar bays, now that it had been a few hours without any more of the bastards trying to make a run for it outside. It was clear there weren't going to be any more either.

The slaves inside would take a few more days to organize the logistics among each other before they could fly the captured airspeeders off to the nearest Othersider colony, or wherever they wanted to go.

They had an entire base to loot for weapons and food, and nobody to stop them.

Mission complete. All that was left was to drive back home with an entire clan’s worth of freshly looted armors, and figure out just where in the three gods these slavers in the middle of nowhere got their hands on so many armors.

Wrath had their databases already loaded up, despite their best attempts to wipe that info off the face of the surface.

One way or another, we’d figure that part out. If the rest of the slaver bases were also getting shipments of armors on this scale, it wouldn’t be long until the clan was ready to set their sights on a bigger target.

The Underground.

Next chapter - Interlude: Hexis