12 Miles Below

Tamery rolled out of bed, woken by thumping at her doorframe. Adrenaline did the rest, shaking off sleep in one surge.

Not a siren today. Just banging on the door. She was safe, this wasn't an attack.

“I’m awake,” She called out, “On the way.”

The door knocks stopped.

How many hours of sleep did she get this time? Seven? It’d been a solid week since the last attack, maybe the bastards really had finally run dry on munitions.

She put on her pants, an old shirt, and stormed out the doorway.

The town had been settled on a small mite-made squat structure. For the first time in a very long time, humanity hadn’t been constrained to building a city around wherever a pillar heart was found, and instead could venture out and put a flag down on the location that offered the most habitable location.

Normally, it would take weeks to search through all the compiled maps the Undersiders of Capra’Nor had. And after getting a list of possible places, she’d need to send out expeditions to survey the area in more detail and get a feel for what’s there and what could be done. Hard to know a place just by searching through a dusty map.

That’s where the machines helped. Yrob and his Runners turned out to be map hoarders. Made sense to her, of all machines Runners loved to roam around and find new places. Connecting their own internal maps gave her people far more options to pick from.

And once she found places to check into, some Runner or another in the area would send her people a video feed showing exactly what the place looked like.

Still took a good two weeks of yelling and arguing between a few different heated mini-factions on what to get. One suggestion had been what looked to be a nascent surface dweller clan, built decades ago by the mites of a lower strata and slowly being pushed up and up through the layers. It could certainly hold an entire budding city, except they didn’t really need to live in cramped utilitarian locations like that.

Defenses would be needed. They might not have to fear machines, but other humans might not take their budding flag with any kind of respect - especially the Imperials.

A few mite fortresses had to be outright ignored, too close to imperial strongholds, or possibly good targets for imperials to want to take eventually.

They ended up picking a small metal city block growing like a fungus off the side of a cliff in the middle of a massive plain of silver shimmering flowers. Every now and then, the rolling silver hills would break their pattern with large plateaus, as if the earth had been pushed straight up and out, the huge cliffs acting like islands that broke up the silver sea around them.

As far as mite biomes went, this was pretty tame. The only oddity had been massive pillars of black glass, like jagged tiny mountains grew scattered around the plains. They weren’t attached to the ground, instead slowly bobbing up and down slightly despite the sheer mass. The dangerous part was that the base of these things had some kind of thick mist forming at the bottom, and Tamery had been told there was quite literally nothing there. Just mist and a freefall straight down to the next strata. The mini-mountains were hovering like a trapped magnet, slowly spinning on themselves.

That was fine, the location they’d ended up settling was half-built into one of the large cliffside walls, where some smaller mite colony had passed by and tried making a number of buildings that were mostly functional. One of the townsplanner had told her the layout resembled a giant bunker of some kind from old human war eras, or multiple bunkers all put together in every direction.

The deciding piece to all this was a mite fountain on the far other end of this rock archipelago. It wasn’t built outside, instead there had been a rock tunnel perfectly cut into it, like a small square punched straight through. Further down, they’d found the ruins of a cathedral of some kind, with a functional mite fountain. That had offered the town a limitless supply of power to draw from.

Ample place to grow, a defensible location at the top of the rock plateau, with clear visibility across the entire plains and the only way up being through a heavily built mite bunker-fortress, along with a power source deep inside the rock. A better place couldn’t be asked for really, and that’s where the Chosen decided they’d make their little town at.

It was said their original leader had passed by these very ruins on her way back to the city, chasing after To’Aacar. Complete coincidence if that actually happened or not, Tamery never heard To’Wrathh tell her any of that. The place was just excellent for a town regardless of history or omens.

And they’d quickly been proven how justified they’d been in selecting a defendable location, given the campaign of destruction that followed them here. As a scattered nomadic band, they’d been safe before by sheer obscurity. Now, they were a target on the map.

Which is where Tamery started her day. Stepping out into the bright artificial light, and being greeted by one of the towering Runners, next to a short squat man holding a clipboard.

She stepped on the hulking Runner’s finger, getting a lift up to his back and got to work in organizing the construction and city planning, all while having to deal with possible explosions dropping on their heads. Today, they were excavating into the cliffside wall and needed to make sure the ventilation system functioned.

She should have been organizing housing and setting up fields outside past their walls. Instead, they had to drill into the rocks to get any kind of shelter going. People were sleeping like fish all squashed together with the supplies. One day, they might actually be able to use all the space and farmlands around them. They just had to live to see those days.

The threat beyond their walls wasn’t going to come charging in for a few more days at least, not until their supply lines brought them new ordinance. Or so thought the rest of the hobbled together military that the Chosen had to work with. If the bastards could be bombing their town right now, they would have been.

Today was going to be peaceful. Halfway to noon, she got word otherwise. The Runner under her simply stopped moving, stood a little taller as if trying to hear a distant sound better, then turned his head backwards to look her in the eyes.

“What’s going through the air, Lugnut?” She asked him, having seen this behavior before.

“Yrob back.” He said. “With others.”

“Friends? He found friends?” Yrob was more curious than the other Runners, but usually single minded about his current hobby so him fishing out friends wasn’t something she had on her bingo sheet. She gave Lugnut a few small pats to get the machine moving again, had to get to the south side to check on the progress of the crater in the wall, make sure the builders got the supplies they’d asked for yesterday. That had to get fixed before the fighting started again.

Lugnut made quick work of the distance, easily moving around the various elevations, making use of the thick metal walls to give him leverage.

Yrob had been great at that in the past. Then he got into arts and crafts and now didn’t want anyone on his shoulders in case they scratched off his new paint. Lugnut had been a lot less interested in paint, and more interested in fabric and clothing, so he didn’t mind having Tamery hitch a ride, since he enjoyed more rugged clothing fit for running in. As he once told her, it was a good test of the material.

“Good to hear the gearhead’s being sociable again at least. So who’d he bring back this time?” She asked. “Stragglers from the General's crew or other machine packs willing to join us?”

The town could certainly use either given the threat looming down their necks.

“Surface humans.” Lugnut said.

She took a double take at that.

“What, like, clan traders?” Odd arrival, but she could work with that. They might not carry a lot of great goods to trade with, but having some amount of friends in this world was the winning move forward. She was more surprised they hadn’t been intercepted while traveling through the plains instead.

“No.” Lugnut said. “Have armor.”

Oh. That’s why they hadn’t been harassed on the way here.

The only other clan nearby had a rather sour experience with Chosen, given half her people had been sent up in some elaborate scheme tied with To’Wrathh’s own mission. A scheme which ended up being completely blown up by Keith and Kidra. But at least they were somewhere in the ‘neutral’ to ‘mildly unfriendly’ territory as of today, and not outright hostile. They did sent her people back safe and sound, just not with any kind of fond farewell. A boot to the back and told to scram.

Other clans might not be quite so kind. And given how they revered Deathless… could be a real problem. To the point she didn’t know if it was even safe to allow them inside the town.

If they were knights from Clan Altosk, everything could be solved. If they weren’t, there’s trouble. “Change of plans Lugnut, take me home.”

“South side?” He asked, head quirked.

“Just going to have to trust logistics learned from the last time we argued.” She said.

The machine shrugged, turned on its heel and put on a quick burst of speed back to where her bed was.

Her home was a tiny mite made metal laboratory, or might have been inspired by a laboratory. All she knew is that it had good chairs, tables and a lot of open holes where she could slip cables out and connect it to the rest of the town’s budding infrastructure, and was high enough on the cliffside where she could watch over the whole place. One of many cozy spots, and most hadn’t been targeted by the artillery hits. Those were reserved for cracking their walls mostly.

Inside her home, they’d found a bunch of old era human computers, bland tan keyboards and all. Their guts got replaced with more modern tech, but the rest was left with what they’d been made with. She came in and flipped all the switches on, letting the green cracked screens come to life.

The Runner behind her crouched into the room, violet eyes blinking a few times as he connected to the systems remotely.

Pictures came up, video feed connected and Tamery got to see what Yrob had dragged back into her town.

She saw them all right. And didn’t recognize a single one of them, which was bad. All had different insignias and patterns, none of which she’d seen any of the clan Altosk knights wear before, at least none of the ones following Lord Atius and Keith around in Capra’Nor. So a different clan had a few dozen knights roaming around underground, and Yrob was leading them right to her town. She didn’t know how the Runner had managed to convince that many knights not to open fire on him, they all looked loaded with gear and ammo to spare.

“What is that scraphead thinking?” She hissed under her breath. “This could backfire in a hundred and one ways.”

“Trap?” Lugnut asked.

“Hope not,” She answered, biting her thumb while thinking. “Clan knights usually don’t play along with elaborate schemes or pretend to be friends with anyone they’re not friends with. I think. Too pragmatic and to the point about everything.”

But… surface dwellers were known as scavengers and thieves, and their knights were stone-cold mercenaries willing to do anything for pay. Pretending to befriend Yrob and following him back into town might be something they’d do?

She glanced out her window, past the town makeshift walls and into the silver sea of flowers. Out there, the rat bastard was setting up for another attack. Hiring an entire clan’s worth of knights might be in his playbook. He had enough money to throw around like that.

She clicked the comms channels, “Man barricades, group of knights incoming. Possibly friendly, we’re not sure yet.”

The comms channels all lit up with chatter, her crew of Chosen running around to take positions. Sirens started to blare across the town, and people scattered back into the main shelter, hoping the anti-air systems would blast the incoming mortar shells before they blew up today’s progress.

Then she flicked over to send a message to Yrob, figure out what’s going on. She got a message back in text. And it made her want to pull her hair out.

He’d been intentionally vague. Telling her he couldn’t say exactly who until they were face to face. Still ‘not safe’ apparently.

So Tamery had to go conservative and keep the foreign knights outside, and allow only one to come in and explain their business here. It took a few more hours for the guests to arrive, but they hadn’t made any move to be hidden about it.

The distant clan knights conferred among each other, and one set down his pack and gear, then walked to the gates. Covered almost head to toe with heavy cloth and cloak, only the helmet was completely uncovered. Very unnatural to anyone who’d seen clan knights before.

Best reason Tamery could think for clan knights to be hiding so much of their House’s markings and pride, was if they were hiding weapons and other cards under their hands.

Whoever this man they’d sent to talk was, hopefully they’d be reasonable under all that cloak and dagger.

He walked side by side with Yrob, and Tamery slowly updated her initial thoughts. The knight had a strange text-like sigil in red with some followup designs that reminded her of flowers across the helmet. She couldn’t really get any other kind of information from that, but she did notice that Yrob walked without a hint of suspicion or caution. A good sign. The old runner didn’t get old by being dumb.

The pair went straight through the open gates, under the watch of all the town knights, until they vanished behind the blast door to the deeper mite bunker, the heart of the town.

Tamery tapped Lugnut under her, “Okay buddy, let’s see who’s come knocking on our doors.”

He nodded, lifting a hand to give her a place to step on, then slowly lowered her down on the ground, where she took a step forward and followed behind the clan knight into the bunker proper.

At the negotiation table, Tamery took a seat and folded her hands, watching as the clan knight equally sat on the other side with smooth movements. Other advisors had been called in, including the rotten priest, but they’d sit in another section of the bunker, watching through video screens. And the priest stayed outdoors. Only he could talk sense into the half-insane creature keeping vigil over the town, if the knight turned out to be hostile, that was the last person they wanted killed.

So Tamery was nervous, because if this did end up being a trap, then she’d be dead right about now.

Fortunately any idea of danger instantly vanished the moment the knight grabbed his helmet, and took it off.

She’d had it all wrong. The knight wasn’t a man at all. In fact, of all possible events that could have happened, this was the single best outcome she could have ever hoped for.

“Lady To’Wrathh.” Tamery exhaled out. Their official true leader had returned. Someone who could actually stand face to face with the threat outside and beat that darkness back to where it came from. Fully repaired and escorted by a pack of clan knights.

And if those were knights from clan Altosk…

“Tamery.” She said with that voice that had always made her think of To’Wrathh more like a human than what she really was. The pale skin and white hair reminded her differently, but To’Wrathh could change those features up if she ever felt like hiding among humans. “You have been occupied while I was away. I am happy to see the progress you’ve made here.”

Tamery could think about all that later. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to run up and give her best friend a hug.

And tell her to take over all this.

“Is the sword saint with the group?” Tamery asked, after getting most of the story from To’Wrathh. Said Feather was content on the other side of the table, eating the local popular dish. They didn’t have a lot of production right now, so they had to be a little more creative with cooking what they had. Yrob had actually been the one to pioneer this particular meal.

“Unfortunately, Kidra elected to remain behind to assist the defense against the clan’s threats.” To’Wrathh said. “The knights traveling with me are from House Winterscar.”

Threats. Right. She’d seen Kidra’s fights with To’Wrathh already over video footage, and the rest of the clan knights were all rumored to be able to move and fight at similar speeds and skill. The ones that had come as her bodyguard had those skills confirmed, at least during the rebellion days.

She didn’t think anything the clan faced would be much of a threat. “You can’t tell how happy I am to hear all that,” Tamery said. “The town’s been hit hard and clan knights from Altosk along with you basically makes all of that a distant past issue. We can finally hit back without having to open a hole in our defense. If we send them packing hard enough and often enough, they’ll eventually be forced to give up and leave us alone.”

“It did not slip my attention the amount of weapons and defenses entrenched around your position. What is attacking the town?” To’Wrathh asked.

Tamery grimaced. “We’re being sieged. By Deathless.”