12 Miles Below

Book 6. Chapter 31: On the road

Bootsteps were left behind each step I took in the charred vale, the carbon under me making a perfect impression and the lack of wind here left them undisturbed. The heavy weight of the armor coupled with Drakonis’s own weight on my back made those impressions deep.

“You ever think about going on a diet?” I asked my passenger.

“Shut up Winterscar.” Drakonis hissed. “It’s your fault I’ve got no power and deep in the shit.”

“Oh, my bad.” I said. “I’ll just let myself get stabbed next time. Happens more often than you think.”

He was quiet for all of three seconds. “For a clan knight, you’ve got the fattest mouth I’ve ever seen. Aren’t you supposed to be some emotionless killing machine?”

“Wouldn’t it be heard?”

“What?”

Up ahead, I finally caught sight of something different than charred trees. Namely stumps of charred trees, as if something big had smashed it’s way through. Something big and floating a foot above ground, occasionally slamming down through it on terrain inconsistencies. “‘The fattest mouth you’ve ever heard.’ Helmet covers my face, so you’ve never technically seen me at all.” I said, as I changed directions and began to follow the trail of destruction.

“Are you this insufferable with everyone you meet?”

“Fuck off and die.”

That got a good laugh out of me, mostly by the deadpan delivery. That’s the kind of line he’d had practice saying. “Who’d take care of you if I was gone? It’s a scary world down here.” I gave him a pat on the side of his shoulder as I hauled him like an oversized backpack.

Drakonis’s armor was still dead. But not dead for good. To repair it, we needed power cell fluid and matter of some kind that isn’t mite-made, or among the inedible list. Picky eaters. We had spare power, but matter around here was harder to scavenge.

And this whole trip, I didn’t have Cathida to chat with. So I made that Drakonis’s problem.

“Reboot complete.” Journey stated, giving the Deathless a rest from me. “Loading predictive modeling. Isolating model to language modeling. Partial cognitive engram, online. Overriding natural language transformer.”

“Cathida?” I asked, after a silent moment.

“Yes deary?” She answered back.

“You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Something up? Do you need help dealing with the Deathless on your back or something? I can give you a list of good insults to annoy him with, but you were doing a fine job without me from what I’m reading on the logs.”

“That’s not… earlier you had to go offline and Journey was still in the process of rebooting you. Can you tell me more about that?”

“Can’t.” She said with her usual verbal shrug. “No memory of any of it, last I remember you were riding on a glass shard the size of an airspeeder and now you’re hauling back the Deathless, and working with him. Don’t know why exactly, but you do you deary. Cathida’s seen stranger things.”

“You don’t have any questions?”

“The real Cathida would. But she’s still a soldier, even at her era of being a nosy old crone. Sometimes you do what you need to do. She’s cranky, not senile.”

“So what do you remember?” I asked, while Drakonis seemed to take my moment of silence as an oddity.

“Winterscar? Did your armor spot something? Are we on the right track?”

I’d already started jogging down the path of destroyed trees and he could see them on both sides of us now. “We’re on the right path.” I said. “The hover’s looking like it was still functional enough after it landed.”

“How far did it go?” Drakonis asked. “I’m no mechanic or pilot.”

“Hovering and with a navigation command to go forward? It’ll run into a wall long before the cells are all drained. Even battered and limping. But don’t worry, armor’s already pinged it a while back. It’s close enough.”

The scenery was still just burnt and still burning husks of trees, but each time the terrain rose too high up, I could see the impact of a giant mechanical monster slamming into and through the hillways.

Probably ran into a crater and that was the end of the journey for the poor thing.

In the new lull of silence while I jogged across the terrain, Cathida informed me of her situation. “Journey gave me a few bullet points to work with. Can’t repower Drakonis’s armor without fixing up the power cell containers on his legplates. So armor fixing comes first. You lot tried with Journey’s reserve, but burnt carbon and half-burnt tree bark gets eaten too slowly, and you don’t have seven hours to wait for what should have taken ten minutes. Rocks and dirt around us are mite-made, armors can’t process that. And you obviously don’t want to give up anything on your back or belts. So you’re hunting your old ride. Do I got it all down?”

“Yeah, that’s about the thick of it.” I said.

I thought about it, but I guess Journey had solved the issue with the information overload in the simplest way possible: Act as if it didn’t happen. That keeps the filter working, and doesn’t cause issues.

The real problem is that I no longer think being blind to all this was an actual long term solution. Just the easy way out instead. Cathida’s blind hatred had to be handled, and boy was I the wrong person to deal with that right now.

Future Keith was a reliable bloke, I can just toss the problem down the line at him, right?

Right.

“Talking about your target, go slightly more to your left, airspeeder’s tracks should be about nine hundred meters. It took a big turn on the hill up ahead instead of plowing through it. Hearing a lot of wildlife there though. Rather odd.”

“There’s wildlife?” I asked, looking again around the charred vale. “Haven’t seen a single thing around us.”

“No idea either deary, just passing along Journey’s report.”

Few more minutes of light jogging and we found it. The airspeeder had stopped hovering, midway through the crash landing as I could see the churned up black soot and dirt trailing up to it. The nose was only mildly impacted, digging into a valley hillside. I think by this point all the original engine inertia had been spent and it was only moving at a sedate pace, gliding off the hill and into the recess here, the hover finally failing.

I expected a somber scene, with no sounds other than maybe some electric wires still alive and spitting sparks. Instead, I found the airspeeder had become the center point for animals of every shape and size.

“What’s going on up there?” Drakonis asked, straining to turn his head in that direction. “We find some wildlife trapped or something?”

“I’m not sure.” I said, and I meant it.

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These animals weren’t the nice fuzzy animals I’d grown used to hunting down for food like rabbits. These ones were snarling, foam dripping down their mouths, barking and baying after each other. It wasn’t just the outside, I could see movement inside the airspeeder, claws trying to scrape at the metal doorways, or breaking open composite crates for whatever they could find inside.

“Cathida.” I asked slowly. “Is the airspeeder being looted by wild animals?”

“I did say the old bat had seen some strange things.” Cathida said. “But this one’s going on top.”

One of the snarling animals, some kind of leopard-like beast with half its fur missing in patches, had tried to bite after what looked like a deer, who reared up and threatened hooves all while baying like a wounded screaming woman. In that one moment, the leopard caught sight of us up on the ridge line looking down at them.

Almost as if there was some kind of unworded announcement going, every single animal stopped in their tracks and turned to stare me down.

“Uh, hi?” I asked.

Whatever I said, they didn’t appreciate it as the entire pack of feral creatures all started sprinting right at me, like a nightmare made incarnate.

“Winterscar?!” Drakonis yelled out, “What the fuck is going on?”

“Get your helmet on,” I said, equipping my armguard and flipping a knife from my chestplate, lighting it up in a halo of occult blue.

The wave of animals raced up the hill and leaped for my throat.

Occult pulsed from my core, and my mirror images go to work, hacking and slashing at the baying animal tide. I took steps forward, knife slashing in quick strikes, armguard physically blocking and throwing off random monsters.

It was like wading into water, a resistance against my general movements, but ultimately nothing Journey couldn’t power through by sheer golden era tech. Animals made it past my ghosts and my knife swings, opened their teeth wide and took giant chomps at my feet and knees. The armor didn’t bother to trigger shields, letting the feral creatures try to gnaw at unyielding plates of armor.

Anything that got close to Drakonis, he pushed away with a pulse of occult, the shockwave still well and useful at clearing off my back. It had been strong enough to lift up and throw entire relic armors, so half-starved animals were child’s play. Some got thrown so far away, the landing probably killed them.

He still grabbed his helmet from the clip at his side and made sure it was affixed on his head, even if it completely blinded him. His armor didn’t have shields, it couldn’t protect his head and neck from any spare bites. Encased in armor, he was far safer. Can’t blame him, I wouldn’t want my face to get mauled. What a way to go.

“Get rid of them Winterscar!” He yelled out, “Don’t know how much air this armor has inside!”

“He’ll be fine, the big baby.” Cathida huffed. “Powered down armor still has the foam padding, which holds a significant amount of air according to Journey and leeches C02 passively, whatever that means. Journey just says it’s a good thing and keeps people alive.”

“Got it.” I gave Drakonis a quick pat on his helmet, “Keep that on for now until I’m done with this. Armor’s telling me you won’t have to worry for a few hours.” I told him and got a muffled acknowledgement.

Not many animals actually got close enough to bite anything with the occult at my command, the Winterblossom technique amplifying my movements, and the soul sight showing me every blindspot I had.

The issue is that these beasts didn’t seem to get the memo that they were dead. I’d cut their throats, or stab their hearts with an occult blade, and they still stood back up, limping to get to me. They’d eventually flop to the ground and finish bleeding out like nature intended, but the sheer ferocity of their attack was unnerving, and they hardly seemed to care or attack each other.

About two minutes into fang, fur and fury, the animals all leapt backwards from me as if given some kind of command. Then they turned, and ran away.

Or so I thought, instead they all raced back to the airseeder, ripping through the open hangar door, breaking the last bits of crates and gear they could get their mouths, hooves, paws and antlers on. And racing straight out the other open hangar doorway, moving like a river of sickly looking fur up and out the crater, deeper into the charred vale.

Pretty soon I was alone, surrounded by a few dozen dead feral animals and one or two still growling, flailing dying legs in the air to flip back up and continue running.

“Winterscar.” Drakonis said, unlatching his helmet and taking in the sights around us. “What the actual fuck is all this?”

“I was about to ask you the same question. This sort of thing not common down here, I take it?”

“No. Not in a million years. This all of them?”

“Wish that were it.” I said. “They all turned tail and rampaged through your airspeeder, took what they could and raced right out the other way.”

“That’s impossible.” He hissed. “Animals aren’t intelligent.”

“They didn’t look intelligent.” I said. “Just trained. They obeyed someone’s commands to the letter, though I have no idea how anyone could train this kind of frenzied animals into complying with anything. Let alone this many.”

“Any of them bite past your armor?” He asked. “I’m fine here, far as I can tell.”

I shook my head, taking smaller steps down the crater and closer up to the wreckage. “Not a single plate is even dented according to my HUD. I think a few broke their teeth trying to bite me, some of the leather straps have bite imprints on it and I’ve got some slobber and blood on my cloak. Going to have to put it through the wash a few times.”

Drakonis said nothing, head looking back at the dead bodies we were leaving behind. “They’re diseased.” He said. “Fur is discolored or in patches, foam at their mouths, some have burn marks that hardly look healed, and the way they move is unlike the animals I recognize.”

“So you have seen this kind of wildlife before?”

“I was a hunter before I joined the guard.” He said. “Part of the training regiment. I hunted for both game and machine power cells, the training with rifles and relic armor transfers over to what the military police is seeking. I’ve never seen game animals and predators work together like this before. Or move in any kind of coordination.”

As we got closer to the airspeeder, Drakonis dry heaved, then frantically grabbed his helmet and shoved it back on. “Fucking smells like death, don’t take your helmet off.”

I got to the airspeeder hangar doors, and boy was it in bad shape. Found out what had Drakonis almost puking for. Actual feces had been left and stomped over, smeared on the walls and crates. Dried and fresh blood was also just about everywhere, matted with loose fur and probably puke. Tainting whatever smashed crates still had stuff inside. “Foods all gone.” I said, looking across, Journey’s headlights lighting up whatever I looked over. “Whatever they couldn’t carry off, they ripped open and shat all over it. Some kind of attempt to starve us out? That’s some slavershit level tactic.” I muttered. “To think it up on the fly too is something.”

“How would you even train wild animals to open ration bars and shit on them?” Drakonis asked, “The actual fuck is this? Occult of some kind?”

“That… could be possible.” I said. “Might be some kind of spell that overrides someone’s mind. Occult has a lot to do with willpower. But if there was this kind of power out there, Feathers would have already been abusing it. Might only work on animals or anything without enough sense.”

Fortunately, whatever was commanding the wild animals couldn’t teach them how to open doorways. The path up to the cockpit had been pried open by one dirty surface savage who shall remain nameless, so that was now filled with the same destruction the hangar bay had been.

Fortunately, where I wanted to go was the engineering bay of this little ship, and that hadn’t been in the way of the cockpit. I climbed down a set of stairs off the right side of the completely soiled medical bay, then got to a doorway with a lot of scratch marks all over. The manual release lock was still in good shape and easily opened up with some mild insistence using Journey.

“Good news.” I said. “We got what we came for.”

“Goddess’s golden tits, thank fuck.” Drakonis said. “I don’t want to be carried any more than you want to carry me.”

Quite a few power cells lined the walls here, all linked up to the ship. Most were empty, the glow missing from the canisters. But there were still eight left locked into place and showing near full.

I grabbed the release from one, gave it a twist and had it hiss open, the pressure lock released. Golden green glowing liquid still sloshed inside, untouched by any of the madness above.

I released Drakonis, letting him flop on the floor, then knelt down and administered a few drops down into the crackled legplates.

So long as the armor spirit had some reserve power within the nanoswarm, it could still fly over and start eating at both the drops and the metal grating nearby. Considering his armor had been powered not even a few hours past, the spirit was perfectly alive and willing to get itself back to normal.

“The miteseeker’s moving.” Cathida said halfway through the repair procedure. “Pings were steady at the same location prior, and now they’re being dragged. Directly away from us.”

“You think it’s the wildlife?”

“Deary, this is so far out of my experience, I don’t even know what to think. But it’s got my hackles up, and I have a suspicion the seeker being moved in the exact opposite direction from us, makes me think they’re trying to take your toys and make sure you don’t get to them.”

“Jokes on them. They’re not stealing my gear. They’re collecting it all for me.” I muttered, as I yanked the last power cell from its holster, airspeeder lights winking out at the same moment. The green glow of the power cell fluid lit the room, before being swallowed up by my bag. “I’ve got enough power to last me a few days, and as far as I know only an oversized machine lizard can outrun an angry relic knight.”

I’d expected machines of the lower strata to be the danger I’d need to worry about. But turns out, I’m now having to chase after a bunch of wild animals hell bent on ruining my day.

On my belt was my sidearm with occult bullets at the ready, but that’d be a massive waste of ammunition meant for armored targets.

On the other hand, the Deathless had driven over here and stockpiled themselves with rations, ammo and probably weapons. Rations were all gone or soiled in the hangar, but the weapons and munitions were stored in safer locations on the airspeeder. Places that wouldn’t easily get blown up. And they were nicely stored behind a doorway, which meant it was time to go hunting with the traditional human weapons.

Guns, more guns and a massive amount of bullets.

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