The gryphantene plated reaver skimmed along the wastes of the Nepenthes Planum, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. The reaver held a death squad of vassal Knights, protected in
Inside the dark, cool, cavernous interior of the reaver, the knights sat in silence. To preserve the sharpness of their sense before the assault on the
In the approaching distance, a lone outpost materialized out of the Aryssal haze of dust. It was nothing more than a salvaged transparent plastic dome and most certainly stolen, one short tear away from leaking precious air. The dome bubbled up over a deeply sloped, perfectly circular depression. Sticking out of the top of the dome was a condenser – surely incapable of providing enough water for the elvans inside – little doubt they had to supplement by raiding Amallarkean ice caravans. The hint of viridian from within the dome erased what little doubt there was. Rogues that had the gall to steal enough water to grow Reathean flora in Aryss.
They got close enough to make out a robed figure emerging from a small hatch inside the dome to peer intently at the reaver, before falling back inside.
There was a bunker down there. Scouting had shown them that it was a narrow skylight into an old lava tube, long cooled, possibly eons ago. It was hard to say how many nooks and crannies, potential ambushes and nasty booby traps, could be down there. The reaver pulled alongside the dome.
The leader of the knights was motionless and still, his features could not be seen as he was encased in his carapace. But his comrades could all sense his psionic emanations - a wobbling staccato of fear - that then flattened itself out to a sharp focus.
Conduit, we need a tremorsense pulse.
The Conduit, a powerful psion who acted as an anchor for psionic communication across great distances, commanded the reaver’s tremorsense pulse to map their assault.
Incoming.
The reaver lowered itself with a hiss of hydraulic resuspension, two plates dropped from inside the reaver’s belly to plant their surface against the ground, and the reaver emitted a rumbling tremor, roaring across the empty landscape. The echo was reabsorbed by the reaver, projected to the mind of the Conduit, and returned to the knights.
Slowly, the empty form of the cavern – but exactly what lay inside remained blurry and indistinct – crystallized itself in the minds of the knights, a fey vision that superimposed itself upon their mind’s sight of the underground beneath them.
A straight drop down, likely using a ladder.
A large sloping tunnel – the lava tube itself – that continued in both directions, long past the range of the pulse.
Two branching passageways on either side that went deep into the Aryssal earth at a forty-five-degree angle slope, likely stairs.
One led to a small network of ever smaller tunnels, likely a rough-hewn mine, its tendrils fading at the edges of the pulse, the other staircase led to a tight bundle of rooms - likely where these rogues slept - also at the edges of the pulse, so that the exact layout was unclear.
Should they breach, they would potentially be facing attack from four directions, on territory that the enemy was intimately familiar with. From the Leader’s own tactical calculations, it was simply easier to collapse the damn thing and be done with it.
But the God Empress’s hunger for vassals and unrelenting cruelty towards rogues that would dare break away from her perfect order was immense. And so, her highness, the Princess Senjya, had ordered the knights to retrieve all the mining equipment, ice, and bodies – either cowed and submitted, ready for flaying and vassalization, or slain, flesh taken for composting – from the bowels of this cursed place. Not to mention that the presence of the long lava tube, extending to who-knows-where, meant that simply collapsing the skylight entrance couldn’t guarantee the destruction of these rogues. The whole point of a soldier was to guarantee destruction, as far as the Princess was concerned, half-measures were for her weaker sibling, who didn’t deserve to succeed the Empress.
So they were going to have to do this the hard way.
Conduit.
Yes, Knight Leader.
Let’s try a Belly Bomb to start.
The reaver groaned and creaked as it slowly crawled over the inflated plastic dome, its spiked treads easily ripping through the flimsy material, the air let out a whiny sigh as it shot out of the perforations. The dome crumpled like a crushed thing, caught in the jaws of a predator. Peering out the porthole, the Knight Leader could see that the green he saw was nothing more than a few mere spider plants, spiky fronds drooping in arcs, a core of white piercing through the green edges. Let’s see how much flora these rogues could grow. Would it be enough now that their precious air would be leaking out? And yet-
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
They had enough air to fill an entire lava tube?
The knights, sensing action, were beginning to rouse from their trance.
Another hiss, and then an irritating scraping of metal on metal, as the reaver’s belly, which had rolled over the protruding hatch into the rogues’ lair, split open. A heavy clunk indicated that the ordnance had been loaded.
Breaching.
Thank you, Conduit. A soldier must always be polite to his commanding psion.
A high-pitched groan, and furious, grinding creaks, as twitchy legs sprouted out of the reaver’s open belly, clawing into the hatch, sinking drills into it. Though the knights could not see, the Conduit, who had access to the compound eyes dotted across the reaver’s body, could not help but feel a thrill of satisfaction at a job well done, entranced by the sparks cascading around the drills, deftly incising the hatch in a perfect circle.
Dropping Belly Bomb.
A groan, a creak, a thud. Innocuous sounds that belied destruction. The reaver began quickly rolling away from the skylight entrance.
One of the knights, the Fourth, who had roused was emanating a twisted feeling of pleasure. Dark and vicious. As if he relished the idea of a rogue’s body torn apart by the concussive blast of an explosive, licks of flame boiling away the flesh. Limbs flying off in an almost comical fashion.
It disturbed the Knight Leader. Had they frayed this badly? Bloodthirsty madness. He thought to ask the psion to discipline him. But then any rogues inside wouldn’t hesitate to slit their throats. Why did he feel this slight sickness at the thought of a dead rogue? Was he the one who was frayed?
Bang!
The knights all jolted up as the vibration from the blast echoed throughout the reaver, their carapace’s internal shock suspension systems hugged their bodies tightly to protect them. The roar of the belly bomb’s blast echoed ringing tinnitus into their ears: shrill, harsh tones. Black smoke curled all around the reaver, obscuring the portholes. The very earth crumbled away, stopping just short.
Knight Leader, I can sense that before the blast they knew of your approach, but did not expect the Belly Bomb. I recommend you take advantage of the element of surprise.
Noted, Conduit.
Then to the squad,
Let’s roll out.
The reaver backed up, its gull-wing doors hissed open, and the Knights, twelve in all, marched out. They formed a circle around the blast hole, the ladder now blown away, the skylight widened so that the heart of the compound was laid bare, the now massive hole belching jets of depressurized, black, smoky haze. The Knight Leader, The First, quickly improvised a game plan.
Second, Third, Fourth, you’re with me, down the tube.
Though he wasn’t looking at them, but rather at the greatly widened and smoking lava tube skylight, he could psionically sense their grit. Any rote could be their last.
Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, secure the upper tube, they may bring more through the rille. The six knights readied their combustion rifles, Amallarkean cloned armalites, cocking the hammers to load the first round into the chamber, and then flicked off the safeties.
The Conduit interjected – algorithmic reconstruction of the tremorsense pulse gives me strong certainty that the rille has collapsed – the Knight Leader tilted his head down in relief. So there’s not likely to be reinforcements.
Then prevent a flank.
The Fifth Knight responded with a psionic affirmation of his own.
We have your back, Knight Leader.
Eleventh and Twelfth were recently flayed, their minds freshly devoured by the Princess. They might fray. He couldn’t let fear infect these fresh soldiers and be blamed for wasting precious resources, or surely the psions would subject him to vertigo. He hated vertigo. Nightmares of endless falling, dreading, yet begging, for a merciful destruction that never quite came. He wished he was allowed to shudder.
Eleventh, Twelfth, hold our position and cover the mines and sleeping quarters.
All Twelfth could feel was a mewling confusion. He didn’t quite yet comprehend his new fate. Eleventh had already been hardened from their last sortie defending against ice caravan raids, and so inside him was nothing but a blank slate of dutiful obedience. These poor saps. The Knight Leader was taken aback by the curiousness of that thought. Pity? Was he that frayed? A stony pit of despair clutched at his stomach. Would he be lobotomized?
No. No. If he did his job, he would be spared the wrath of the psions.
As fluidly as they marched out of the reaver, the Knights leapt into the darkness.
The legendary material gryphantene, which could only be created in the elvan spirit forges, was really just each piece a single molecule of carbon. By joining the ductile and compressed superhard qualities of spherical shaped carbon fullerenes, also known as buckyballs, through cylindrical fullerenes, also known as nanotubes, or buckytubes, to more stable tetrahedral lattices – the natural structure of diamonds – incredibly complex carbon allotropes could be created. With this, any piece of gryphantene could hold any combination of invincible hardness and unbreakable ductility. Gryphantene blades could hold edges sharp enough to cut at a nanoparticle level and never dull. Ductile gryphantene plates could bend against massive forces and never break. Hard gryphantene plates could withstand any attack and never fracture. It was the material of elite elvan weapons of war: solid carapace, liquid carapace, and dragonskin.
A reaver was a spirit laced rover, a psionic creature that housed and transported elvans, evolved from the typical continuous tracked vehicle used to explore roadless Aryss. The rover was renamed ‘reaver’, when it had transformed from an exploratory vessel of magickal data to an instrument of war.
Though oddly they had not felt her psionic presence for a few fortrotes, not since they began this ranging.
The reaver’s legs promptly gnawed away the steel, folding the scrap disc into a side carriage for later recycling.
They could not remember their names, so they addressed each other by numerical rank.
A sinuous rille, a winding and cavernous channel most likely created from flowing magma, once upon a time when Aryss still possessed some measure of volcanic activity.
A rifle design of Morquarran origin, improved again and again from its original form, prized for its modularity, the first one forged by the Godlike Eugene Stoner.