The twelve knights fell to the floor and landed crouched and kneeling. High above, their reaver clambered over the hole to seal it off with its belly, to trap the precious air inside from the devouring vacuum of Aryssal airless sky, cutting off any sunlight. In unison they stood and leveled their rifles.
Hot smoke and floating debris from the belly bomb still clouded their infrared vision, but with the tremorsense pulse’s revelations, the topography was laid out in their mind’s eye. Broken boulders and rock fragments lay about them in great mounds. Though still clouded, their carapace visors could still spot warm bodies to attack.
But all they could see was cold, unmoving rock. The lava tube lay empty, its gentle sloping, cavernous gullet beckoning them.
Hold position.
The dust settled. Lichen! Moss! It grew thick all over the walls of the lava tube. So that’s how they got their air. It must have grown deep into the far reaches of the cave complex. The furry growth, a dull, pulsating teal, barely warmer than the cold blue rock, gave the Knight Leader a deep feeling of discomfort. The Knights had now blocked most psionic links between them except for simple command and communication. No sense in feeling each other’s terror.
The Knight Leader through Fourth trudged forward, deeper into the cave. Eleventh and Twelfth seemed paralyzed, having dropped back to a knee and holding cover against the two tight passageways, both staircases leading down, half blown apart but still unblocked, that were uncomfortably close to their holding position.
No movement detected, Third, whose armor was equipped with motion sensors.
Get to securing the passage up, thought Knight Leader, to the B Squad.
Fifth through Tenth obeyed. But they proceeded forward at a crawl’s pace. The First Four were the most seasoned fighters. The rest – they didn’t remember much after their minds were flayed, but judging by physique, a few of them might have been pleasure drones, at best miners, seasoned fighters they were not. At least they had carapace. There wasn’t much cover. Fifth pressed his shoulder to the side, his armor scraping the smooth rock wall of the upper passage of the lava tube that was untouched by the blast. Sixth, Seventh and Eighth formed a column behind him, while Ninth and Tenth held the other side. The First Four instead formed a wolf pack – an aggressive diamond with Knight Leader at point – and strode forward deeper into the cave.
The lava tube was surprisingly long, and silence held as much. As they strode forward, the moss began to get thick and slippery. Slight elvans,
Fourth, take point position.
Fourth nodded and strode ahead of the Knight Leader.
It’s not cowardice. As leader, if I fall, then the squad is in even greater danger.
Cowardice.
What was cowardice? He forgot? Did he ever know? A painful warbling emanated from his chest – a heart palpitation – am I frayed? Don’t think of things that are not in your station to know. Come now, elvan, get a hold of yourself. I’m…
Fourth stepped on something funny. A boulder? A small one?
That’s moving?
A shadow erupted from the moss right in front of Fourth, a stringy, gangly worker. She was emaciated, but had a bulging stomach, which suddenly lit up with a white glow before warping its way through her limbs. In the brief flash of light, flipping his visor lens from infrared to chromatic, Fourth could see her eyes were completely black, overloaded with spirits, dark gray coursing under her pigmentless white skin, these dark gray veins criss crossed her naked, pale white body, creeping across her face, into her eyes. The dark matter within her body began to bloat hideously, and soon the black turned too into a blinding white underneath translucent skin. Her face twisted into a hideous grimace, but then she screamed in wailing laughter, “A-HAHAHA!”
A banshee!
SPLA-AT.
The sickening pop of rupturing flesh echoed through the cave.
The Banshee splattered white hot and blasted Fourth backwards, and into the Knight Leader, and they were both knocked prone, Fourth’s armor weighing down the Knight Leader. AAH! AAH- Fourth’s muffled screams cut short. While the concussive blast alone would not have killed Fourth as he was protected in carapace, the intense heat of the sticky residue of what was left of the banshee cooked Fourth inside it, now a cage instead of a protective shell. Gryphantene, after all, was a very good conductor. Fourth’s body began to thrash. Uncontrollable, erratic death throes amplified by the carapace’s hydraulics, making his corpse exceedingly difficult to push off. The carapace joints grinded. And grinded. The Knight Leader was trapped underneath him, but Fourth’s body protected his from the denaturing heat. The blast had stunned Second and Third, and they winced and turned their heads away.
We’ve been flanked! Damn it! Damn it, get off me! Damn it!
Contact!
Fifth blindly fired his weapon up into the darkness, then a sizzling thunk, and a piercing flash of pain that vanished as quickly as it came, and then coldness, a dreadful realization, psionically echoed through Sixth and Seventh. Eighth choked with horror. A depleted uranium rod now protruded from Seventh’s chest, the force of the blow not only enough to impale Seventh through his gryphantene plate, but to pierce clean through the chests of Fifth and Sixth too.
The Rogue has a railgun! Panic now, whether they liked it or not the corrosive tendrils grabbed hold of them, they couldn’t block it. Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh collapsed.
Then, a sudden blankness, a psionic void where something once was but now was missing. It was Twelfth, or rather, lack thereof. The Knight Leader scryed what he could of Twelfth’s dying memory. He had flinched. He’d been distracted by the railgun shot. He had looked away from his iron sights, trained at the crumbling staircase leading to the rogues’ mines, but then just as he turned his head, in the corner of the visor’s field of view flashed a red-green-yellow infrared signature that swallowed his vision whole. A plasticky crackle. A rogue, hiding on the steps just below Twelfth’s vision, had dashed at Twelfth at just the right moment – probably stalking and scrying him the whole time to detect the window of opportunity when Twelfth glanced fatally away – found a chink in the armor, between plates, with a nanoserrated gryphantene knife and slammed it in, the point sinking deep into Twelfth’s throat, cutting through carotid and sawing through esophagus, flooding the windpipe. No sound. Just a muted gurgle only he could hear. The last thing he would hear.
I’m surrounded! Eleventh swiveled to face behind him and fired blindly, but soon he too was overwhelmed. They had come out of the staircases! That’s where the bulk of their forces were! The Knight Leader had narrowly avoided a death trap by deciding not to go into those staircases, but at the cost of exposing himself to two flanks, and a divided squad.
But now the soldiers’ killer instincts had kicked in. Second and Third rushed back to the center, and Fourth’s corpse’s twitching eventually went in the Knight Leader’s favor and flopped off. Knight Leader picked himself up and followed Second and Third.
Contact. Second squeezed his trigger twice, and the sickening sound of wet, cracking bone rang clear, once, twice. A shadow slumped to the ground.
Contact. Another rogue that had just emerged from the living quarters staircase lunged at Third with a spear, too close range for Third to shoot effectively.
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Clang!
Third parried the spear with his rifle, redirecting the tip to the ground, where it stuck. Third pulled the spear back, and the rogue wielding it, losing balance, flailed forwards – “Wah!” – before falling stomach first. “Ooph…” Now that he had the advantage, Third pushed the barrel of his gun directly upon the other rogue’s scalp. Bang. And executed her.
Another rogue – a soldier – leapt on Third’s back, grappling him. “GET OFF!”, Third shook violently, but stubbornly the rogue soldier clung on, attempting to unlatch the helmet, shortsword in hand. Unable to shoot him, Third backed up to the stone wall and slammed backwards with all his carapace’s might. Crunch. The arms draped around his neck jerked, and then flopped and bounced lifelessly off Third’s pauldrons, and the shortsword clattered to the floor.
More rogues came out of the staircases, these had combustion rifles too, and now with a clear line of fire they unloaded onto what remained of the first four, now three. Ratatat! The concussive impact of the strikes knocked the Knight Leader and Second back, and they stumbled into cover, a rock jutting from the sides of the stone walls, barely enough to protect both. Ratatatatatat! Shots connected to the rock jutting, blasting off chips and flecks, and leaving them enveloped in obscuring particles. Third fired his carapace booster and leapt to the crumbling slope of the blast shaft.
I’ll cover. Bratatatatat- Third cut down another rogue with a thunderous hail of gunfire that sliced across the area of the lava tube blasted wide open, before hurling himself behind a broken boulder for cover as – bratatatatatatat – the rogues that managed to scatter returned fire.
Give me suppressing fire! Second pulled out his handgun and threw his rifle to the side – using it here would expose himself too much – leaned around the cover, tried to get a bead with his handgun through the cloud of fine particles, couldn’t get one, so, anyway, he started blasting. Pah, pah! Knight Leader dashed to the remaining rogues.
His target noticed him and swiveled from firing at Third to directly at Knight Leader. A bullet glanced off his gauntlet, it was enough to whip his wrist painfully enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if it was fractured. But a fractured wrist was still enough to pilot the carapace, albeit in great pain. But not a cry, not a whimper, did he utter. He rotated his hips, letting the full force of the carapace’s range of motion smash his extended and armored elbow into the rogue’s face, and the rogue dropped. Another whipped around and unloaded point blank – bratatat – into the Knight Leader’s chest. He shook violently and was thrown to the wall, but the thoracic plate was still the strongest part of the carapace. He coughed out warm fluid- his blood. He was coughing out his blood.
Click, click, click. Empty. The rogue’s eyes widened in horror.
With a furious scowl he lifted his rifle and – bratatatatat – unloaded a burst. It cut through the leg, the flank, and the upper shoulder, and the rogue rag dolled to the side. Though Second had not hit anything, his suppressing fire gave Third the chance to pop out of cover and quickly snipe down the last two.
The ear-splitting exchanges of gunfire ended as quickly as it began. Silent, now. As it had been.
Six rogues. That’s all the bulk of their forces amounted to. Six rogues – five workers and one soldier – that now lay dead at their feet. And the banshee, and one more mysterious rogue with a railgun… so far. And yet, this ragtag group of rogues had already killed Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Twelfth, all clad in carapace. The Eleventh was badly injured.
Fucking railgun.
Second, Third, take Eleventh to the reaver, treat his wounds. Then cover me. Eleventh moaned in pain.
But- the railgun!
I’ll not risk three knights to a railgun when I can just risk myself. They only have time for one more shot, I’ll dodge it.
Dutifully, Second threw Eleventh to his back, and boost leaped up to a ledge left protruding out of the crumbling blast shaft to join Third. The reaver’s belly opened, and tendrils wrapped around Eleventh’s shoulders to drag him up.
Conduit, what are the Princess’s orders?
Psionic silence.
Conduit!
The Princess has ordered any knights who fall captive to be abandoned.
Deep in the lower reaches of the Lava Tube, there was more eerie psionic silence, and trying to push his mind deeper into its reaches gave him a dull headache. What happened to them?
They were hit by a mind blast and they’re unconscious. Whoever is wielding that railgun is also a powerful psion.
Using the rippling fear in the wake of the railgun attack to weaken their psionic defenses and then neutralize them. Devious.
A feeling washed over the Knight Leader. He… he could almost put a name to this feeling. He pressed his eyes tightly together and then… a… tear? He’s crying? He could not remember the last time he cried. And then the name of the feeling came to him.
Guilt. But why would he feel guilty? And then he realized - was it the conduit? Why would she feel this? Was she frayed? A distinct sense of gloom came to him. He was imprinted to be ignorant to it, but a railgun shouldn’t pierce through three suits of carapace… they were supposed to be solid.
It meant they were expendable.
Wait - why was he allowed to know this?
No time to think. Any further dithering and Knight Leader’s comrades would fall. The Princess ordered it, but would he abandon Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth?
No.
Surprise. Of course he could remember what that meant, he had to, how would a soldier understand ambush without understanding surprise? The Conduit was feeling surprised. He had these strange feelings before, but he had never felt it this clear. Now he was getting the hang of this. Was this what it was like to be a psion? To be able to feel what’s inside someone else’s head, just like that? To feel what they feel, almost involuntarily?
I’m going back for them.
Disobedience. An outright refusal to comply.
And then a sweet, soothing calm, strange upwelling of courage tinted with- anxiety? No, not courage, that was what he was starting to feel, no it was- admiration? He could suddenly feel the Conduit- caring for him. He could feel that the Conduit wanted him to win, and that made him feel like he- like he could. He could feel her concern for him. Fear of him dying, as he would fear death himself. It touched him. But why should she fear that he died? Soldiers die all the time, workers don’t weep.
This wasn’t just strange, it was alien. From another realm.
He couldn’t remember any elvan ever feeling this way about him. He couldn’t remember, but he almost felt not even his own…
He couldn’t quite explain why he was doing something so suicidal. That moment that Fourth died right in front of him, a moment’s hesitation and a meditation on- cowardice? He had perfectly logical reasons for why he sent Fourth to point. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it should have been him who died, and not Fourth.
But he was now certain about one thing.
He wasn’t going back in that reaver without Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth. Not if he could save them.
Princess Amefrid’s orders
Princess Amefrid’s
He was struggling to put the thought together, but he knew it was his own.
The Princess’s orders be damned.
Pleasure drones were almost a relic of the past, before the War of the Clans, the Betrayal of the Traitor Empress. Soldiers who were bred, not for war, not for fertilization, but for simple servicing of the physical needs of psions and Queens. Now turned to vassals, Clan Amallark quickly repurposed them for what the Empress felt were the only real use of soldiers: violence. They were largely superfluous to the elvan reproductive process. A mere convenience.
But they did not know what a wolf was, a cryptid which had never walked Aryss.
She didn’t want to die. But she was already dead.
But at least these bastards would go down with her! See you in hell!
An elvan worker injected with catalyzing chemicals, her spirits instructed to form as many volatile compounds as possible, and at the opportune moment, explode. Her name was Sarantha Wilson.
With his death, the redaction was lifted to the spirit-daemons in their body, but they could not inform their hosts that their comrade’s name was Einstein Talauth. The Conduit could scry it, but at the moment, she just didn’t care. She would, however, in due time.
His name was Geldas Gates-Buffett.
His name was Bespero Bezoth.
His name was Alysander Adanbani.
His name was Tekno Boucher.
Her name was Zeyah Zilis.
He had shot Zeyah in the face.
Her name was Druya Phagebrin.
His name was Katoss Gates-Buffett.
Their names were Charysha Bezoth, Kaleen Mars, and Malina Saud. Their leader retreated with her lover.
I don’t write my stuff anymore; I just kick it from my head.
It was a lucky thing he had this piece.
But he couldn’t see so good, so he missed.
Charysha.
Kaleen.
You should have gone for the head.
Malina and Truya.
And although the Knight Leader could not sense it, the Conduit thought- because you’re being heroic, you dummy! That’s why I don’t want you to die! I’m rooting for you!