12 Miles Below

It had been about half an hour since Kidra had donned Winterscar, with no sign of anything... abnormal. Or glowing blue, at least. Her adjustment to the armor was going quick and her mastery was already at my level. Although to be fair, I've only had this armor for a day while likely still high as the gods, and I'm being held together by duct tape, prayer and dreams so far. So maybe not quite suprising she was already past my level of skill with relic armor.

It took us about ten minutes to scour the entire field for every bit of power cells we could get. All in all: We brought back a well stocked haul on the hoversled, straps used to keep the whole bundle of power cells together. It got big enough I’d stopped counting. More than enough to get us back to the colony, and then run a lap around it, depending on Teed’s mood.

“From this point on, an additional objective will be to safeguard this payload.” Atius patted the sled as he took measured steps next to it. “It is our way home after all, lads. Had a nice enough walk earlier today on the surface, I’m in no rush for the scenic way back to the clan.”

With a chuckle, we turned to depart.

And then we were pinged, because nothing good ever happens.

Atius sighed at the alert. “And here I’d been hoping that the blast door would have given it a longer speed bump. All knights, formation.” He said in a tired voice.

The four elites snapped forward, taking up armed rifles and aiming down sight in the ping's direction. Kidra took a position at their side, while the Shadowsong scrappers searched for cover, pistols drawn.

In the far distance, that same elevator I rode up on was moving, the sound of clanking metal carrying all the way here. Journey augmented the sight, zooming into the distance.

A massive clawed hand shot up, gripping the ground, bending the metal as it constricted on the handhold. The skeletal head of a drake appeared over the rim, teeth in a perpetual grin. As it pulled itself over, fourteen screamers jumped to the side, baying out war cries and already charging forward.

Atius walked past the formation with slow steps, Breaker drawn from his scabbard with a clean note. “You all know the drill. Once they get into range, cut them down. Switch to melee after they’ve adapted. I’ll take the drake. Winterscars, Cover the Shadowsong whelps.”

The drake in question opened a maw of teeth, glowing violet light lighting up jaw. The clan lord made no move, staying directly in center of the knight formation. I’d made my way to Calem in the meantime, keeping close to where he’d taken cover. We all watched as the enemy charged the weapon and the Screamers raced across the streets to intercept.

A beam exploded out of the drake’s mouth, but at the last second the creature twisted its head to the side, aiming at a different target than the clan lord.

Atius dove just as fast, as if he’d been expecting the drake to target someone else, feet a blur as he rocketed to the right, raising his left hand.

He skidded to a stop right as the beam struck, directly at his open palm.

A relic shield of some kind had appeared in front of the clan lord, only it remained uncolored and far wider. Like an invisible dome of force, extended a few inches out of his hand. I couldn’t see it at all, only the negative outline on the beam of the drake’s attack.

In a split second, the violet beam ended. Atius remained completely unscratched. And unamused. He took a step back to the center, readying himself again.

The screamers had made headway in the meantime. They’d be entering the fire-line in seconds. Shadowsong’s voice crackled over the comms, calm and in command. “All knights, pick your target and engage.”

Reflex raised my rifle, the barrel aimed and ready.

Two scavengers and all six relic knights, including myself, opened fire. Havoc descended on the enemy, skulls being ripped apart in droves. Seven bit the ground almost immediately. We destroyed three more on the second volley. By the third volley, the automatons had adapted and began to avoid the weapons fire.

Journey didn’t give them that luxury, it’s targeting system still superior. I destroyed two more before the screamers made it into melee range.

All four knights dropped their rifles and drew blades, charging forward past the clan lord with expert discipline.

Atius turned back to the group and signaled to form rank and move on. “It’ll be back, and likely with another plan. Now it knows that picking off knights from a distance while they’re distracted won’t work. Continue pace, use active scanning to catch any possible ambush ahead of us. They already know we’re here. No point being coy about it.”

The group remained somber as we hurried off. “Are all you winterscar brats srappin’ prodigies at aiming and fighting?” Ironreach pinged out. “Never seen someone nail those skullheads after they start dodging around.”

“I’m cheating, if if makes you feel better.” I replied back. “Stuff I can do with the administrator account.”

He groaned. “Scrap would that have been useful if it worked for us too.”

“Don’t rule it out just yet, I really need some time to sit down and run it through it’s paces back home on an engineering bench. Who knows, I might figure out how to unlock the accounts for everyone else.”

“I’ll buy you any ration bar you want if you can do that for me, kid.”

Windrunner pitched in, “I think he’ll be asking for a lot more than ration bars for a secret like that. Think you can afford it?”

“Are you calling me broke?” Ironreach shot back.

“Not at all. I’m just heavily implying it, while gesturing in your direction.”

“Ah, I see. My mistake, carry on then.”

Shadowsong stepped in and put an end to the chatter with a quick order for quiet. We weren’t out of danger just yet, even with Atius among us and full active scanning being used to catch any new targets approaching.

I opened a comms chat with Kidra in the meantime. “Friends of yours?”

“The two knights?”

“No, I meant that drake. Seemed like it wasn’t the first time it’s been spotted.”

She sighed, “We’re well acquainted by now. My issue with the drake is that it can’t take ‘No’ for an answer. The cursed creature has been following behind us for some time now, keeping itself at a distance. This is the third time it’s tried something. Last time it tried to focus fire on Atius. According to the other relic knights, this sort of behavior is typical for a drake - they’re hunters. If they aren’t killed, they’ll keep chasing.”

The first time I’d seen a drake, Father had said it was the second hunter sent after him. It made more sense now why he didn’t try to hide or outrun the creature, instead choosing to dispatch it as soon as possible.

“Atius mentioned something about blast doors?”

At that, Ironreach gave me an answer. “Exactly what they sound like, kid. Blast. Doors. Massive fackin’ things. Once they close, they’re closed for three days and nothing you can do will open ‘em up. Can’t slice through them with the occult weapons either, impervious like relic shields are. Except relic shields eventually break. These doors just… don’t.” He said that with a waved hand, as if tossing the last word out to me.

“That sounds oddly handy of the mites to make.” What team were the mites actually on anyhow? It seemed like a lot of what they made benefited humans more than machines. Map terminals, marked tunnels, and now blast doors?

“Oh, it gets even better. See they ain’t just made to stop all traffic, they’re also made in places that split entire zones up. If a door seals, it’ll certainly have sealed in the only crossing point for a good mile.”

Windrunner chimed from behind us, jogging up. “Ironreach is making them sound more useful than they really are. Often, there will be machines on the other side of the doors as well. You trade one set of problems for another usually. But they do seal off some threats and buy time.”

“Not enough time, drakes move fast.” Atius cut in. “Our friend must have abandoned his previous army. Fourteen is a small number, that makes me think the machine numbers around this area might be depleted.”

Given what Father and I have been through, I would hope so. I got a chance to see one of these doors for myself, within the very next half hour.

The top peaked from behind a wall of buildings and possibly a few blocks behind. Looming over the city, showing another world past it. Like the entrance to a cathedral, towering above all the other buildings and nestled by the very wall-side of the metal city. And burrowed into that wall of buildings between us and the door was something that did not belong.

A squat concrete thing, rounded. Like a small fortress, complete with turrets. Twelve of them, if I counted right. All massive mechanical monsters, silent like a grave. What was more interesting about this was the architecture.

This looked human.

And the most surprising thing: the mites had clearly not dismantled it. Instead, they seemed to have made a cocoon of sorts around it, with buildings. A few of the massive turrets were almost completely obscured by overhanging balconies from the neighboring buildings, likely to the point they wouldn’t be able to rotate anymore if they had been active.

“What the scrap is that?” I asked, seeing the strange human bunker in the middle of a metal city.

The clan lord looked it over with an appraising eye. “Our target.”

“Why haven’t the mites destroyed it? It looked like they just built the city on top of it instead.”

Atius slowed from his jog into a walk, the rest of the team following his lead. “There used to be a creature once, called an oyster.” He said. “A bivalve organism that lived within a shell it would construct, underwater. A filter feeder. Occasionally, sand or some bit of rock made its way inside the shell. The oyster was a primitive organism with no hands or means to dislodge the irritant if it was deep enough, so instead it would cocoon the item in calcium carbonate, the same material as the shell interior. Ever since I read about them, I see the mites more akin to those. Cocooning irritants they can’t break down and either pushing them away, or leaving them well entombed down here.”

He shrugged, turning to glance at me. “Where do you think those pre-built colony structures appear from? Mites make them, and another colony pushes them up into the surface. I’ve seen a few fortresses pushed down instead into the lower levels. Sometimes mites refuse to break down a foreign building completely for no reason that I could suggest. You’ve only seen the sites that happened to be pushed up by the mites.”

So by that logic, there’d also be a whole range of sites that didn’t get pushed in any direction and instead remained half-cocooned like this site had been. The underground might be filled with such things.

“Did mites create this?” I asked him just to be sure my hunch about it being human was right. It looked like a large barracks, big enough to house a few rooms inside, but nothing massive. Two horizontal weapon slits on both sides of the doorway. There were old black and white photos of an old world war that our ancestors had fought at some point in time. This looked like what the architecture had been picked from.

Windrunner shook his head, walking forward and answering. “Undersiders made this. You can tell from the building time period. It mixes multiple styles together, the turrets alone look more modern, like they’d belong in the far late third era from some of the tanks there, while the walls look far more primitive. Mites don’t like that. They’re one-track builders.”

“And you’re sure this our target, m’lord?” Ironreach asked to the side, walking up.

Atius nodded. “Aye, this be it. Inside and deeper. Fitting it would be a fortress of some kind. Let’s hope the security is turned off or this might be more difficult than expected. Those turrets don’t look like they’d be easy to handle. Weapons up, form up and prepare to approach.”

Luck was with us. The building was cold and dead.

As Atius approached it alone, none of the turrets on the walls activated. A few more hesitant steps and he’d confirmed that there weren’t any lights inside the building left on. Instead, we were stopped by a large metal reinforced door.

Locked shut, of course, and no yellow light twinkling above. There were massive hinges on the sides, making it clear the door would open outwards and to the right.

Doors had plenty of different ways to lock. One that would swing on hinges likely used deadbolts to secure the other side. And a blast door like this one might have a few massive deadbolts sealing everything.

A glance around didn’t reveal any kind of key to open the door, with exception to a long dead panel to the side. If it was an electric signal that triggered the door to open, could it be possible to bypass? Or would a more physical attempt to pick the deadbolts work better?

While the group set up around the bunker, and finished making sure the hover sled had been hauled up to here, I made my way to that door and gave it a few experimental tugs. No prize in guessing how that ended. “This door is estimated to be able to withstand above seven hundred PSI.” Journey chimed as I tugged some more. “Combat suit is unable to exert a matching pull.”

That got a whistle from me. “No way we’re prying the door open I guess. Maybe we can knock?”

The clan lord passed by me, drawing out his occult long-sword. “I never intended to politely knock.”

Doh. I owned both a knife and a sword now. Got to get used to realizing I can cut through anything now. Almost like a cheat really. Well, almost anything. Apparently some material mites can make could be occult proof. If it happened to be a massive door that towered above buildings.

The ancient long blade of the clan lord flickered to life, and he gently guided it through the leftmost door crack, sliding into a neat straight line where the deadbolt holding the door would be. It’s kind of ridiculous really, a weapon with centuries to its name being used as a picklock. Given Atius’s lifespan, that blade might have been used for far weirder things statistically speaking.

It would be fun to ask him. As a knight, I would have a lot more chances to speak with him casually in the future.

As soon as the blade reached knee length in the cut, a surge of water spilled through the cracks and didn’t show any signs of stopping. He powered through the torrent, cutting all the way down. Then, with a step back, he observed the work. Water continued to pour out through the cracks, bubbling out and covering the side as it flowed to the ground. “Given the water, the site is likely flooded on the inside. Don’t have high hopes for great salvage here.”

He sheathed the weapon back into his belt, reached for the handle, and pulled. The door swung open, more water spilling, covering past his knees and helping him shove the slab of metal open. That gave me a first look at what lay inside the old structure.

Darkness inside.

My headlights turned on automatically, Journey already prepared for the entrance.

What I saw was brown and grey metal, loose wiring, all packaged in exposed, corroded interior walls. Water did not do great things to metal. And there was clearly enough water to reach my knees, all rapidly draining out. I could hear further debris and metallic groaning inside the old structure, smashing down into the water with distant crashes, or into the sides of the walls. I suspect quite a bit of architecture had degraded to the point the loss of buoyancy from the water caused a chain collapse.

I was fairly confident the walls weren’t about to break down on us however, given how thick they had been made. What I’m more curious about was where that water had come from in the first place.

Parts of loose metal and materials were already flooding past my legs, ever expanding into the city streets. Ankah and Calem took several steps back, making sure they wouldn’t touch the water. They did not design environmental suits with liquid water in mind.

“Fireteam, form up.” Atius ordered, turning around to take stock of all of us.

It didn’t take long for us all to line up as the clan lord planned out the next plan. “Shadowsong one, Windrunner and both Winterscars. Remain out here and serve as an over-watch and guard duty for the Shadowsong whelps.” His gaze hovered over Ankah and Calem. “You’ll both remain out here and shore up the center, where you’re most protected. Without relic armor, you both need every advantage.”

The pair nodded slowly, understanding.

“Shadowsong two and Ironreach, you’ll be scouting the surrounding sector. By the time I’m out of this bunker, I want a full map. Start with the blast door behind this bunker. I want to know exactly how to reach it once we’re done here.”

The two gave a quick salute and moved off in a quick jog.

“That only leaves you for the bunker, m’lord.” Windrunner noted.

“Intended. I’ll be entering the bunker alone. I’m immortal after all.”

Journey’s headlights immediately winked out.

“If I don’t come out within thirty minutes, make your way to the surface and seal the blast door behind you.” He continued. “I’ll eventually make my way back once I revive.” Windrunner and the Shadowsong prime both nodded grimly.

Atius matched their gaze, then turned and made his way into the structure. The water clung to his legs and soaked the bottom of his great-cloak. He paid it no attention, his relic armor letting him march through the flood with impunity.

Once he turned a corner, he vanished completely from view without another glance back. The moment that contact was lost, his comms also dropped out of range. The bunker had been reinforced and cut off transmissions by its sheer architecture, if I had to guess. Likely material within the walls blocked signals from traveling in or out.

The Shadowsong prime didn’t waste a moment to start preparations in the meantime. “Move to set up a perimeter. I want a double layer of retreat points and an escape route ready. Dismissed!”

Windrunner took the orders immediately, moving out to start cutting side buildings for scrap to build walls with. Kidra and I followed through. The work would be slow, but it gave us something to do as we waited.

Atius wasn’t long inside the bunker. He emerged out the door about ten minutes later, comms realigning. “Keith, Kidra. I’ll need your help.”

“Us, my lord?” Kidra asked, surprised.

“Aye. I need manpower inside the bunker. Can’t bring Calem and Ankah inside with me, they’ve got environmental suits. The flooded ground will soak into their boots making surface travel impossible until it’s dry, besides risking frostbite. Worse, confined spaces with no ventilation like this bunker can have pockets of gasses build up over the years. Either toxic, or lacking oxygen.” He shot a look at the pair of scavengers. “Both of you are clever enough to know the danger that represents.”

They nodded. Most surface sites were open air or had enough holes in them to be exposed to the wind. The environmental suits still had a simple gas monitor in the rebreather, just in case. If it started beeping, that was usually the cue to backtrack as fast as possible. A human could be knocked out cold within seconds, especially if reverse osmosis took place - where oxygen was leeched out of the lungs with each breath. The environmental suits did not have room for an oxygen canister, which meant that these two won’t have something like that handy. The rebreather only heated air, it wasn’t a filter of any kind.

That bunker might as well be a deathtrap. At least for those two.

The rest of us wouldn’t even need to care about something like that. A relic knight could function completely submerged, so a bunch of bad air wasn’t going to make it blink. I chalk it up to lost tech black magic on how oxygen is maintained inside the suit.

“Shadowsong one and Windrunner are both reliable fighters. I want them outside to cover the whelps.” Atius continued. “And my last two bucketheads are off scouting for a possible retreat vector.”

There was a squawk of protest on the comms, which Atius chuckled and cut over. “You’ve been called worse. Report while I have you in range.”

Ironreach answered. “There’s a second doorframe behind the bunker that opens up to a main street. Directly ahead and to the right, connected by a plaza, are the blast door steps. Area is dense with structures, plenty of high ground. We’ll have the rest of the map filled out in minutes, my lord.”

He nodded, then turned back to us. “So that’s where you two come in. I need at least two relic knights. By process of elimination, you’re both the last choices remaining.” He turned on his heels and strode back into the bunker, footsteps disturbing the water at his ankles. “Time is closing in. There’s something that’s been left behind for us to recover. I intend to do so.”

Journey’s headlights turned back on.

Next chapter - Solaris Imperium