12 Miles Below

The ship rocketed upwards a few meters with a heavy groan. Gravity squeezed me down into my chair, but the seat’s padding easily handled any discomfort until the acceleration passed. The scavengers that dotted the outside hull simply had to deal with the motion, tightening hands on their handholds.

Our airspeeder lazily glided into line behind the other behemoths, small turns and stops magnified by the scale of the ship, hovering above the ground only a few meters off.

The lead ship kicked off into gear, with the rest of the convoy including ours following steadily behind. Snow and sleet billowed off the sides as the ships gathered speed, cutting through the barren land and harsh wind.

The next stop would be about seven hours from now. Kidra, as usual, was using this time to meditate on past combat or drills. As Father had trained us both to do over eight years of angry yelling.

As for me, my eyes stayed set on the horizon. Binoculars pressed as close to my goggles as physically possible. As if I was going to miss a moment of this trip with my eyes closed.

A white sea of snow and ice covered the world. Maybe once every two hours or so, I’d catch glimpses of broken buildings far out in the distance. Towers, derelicts or even fortresses, all pressed out of their tombs over the years from the underground shifting around.

The deep timbre voice crackled out of my comm speakers again, this time into my private comms. He was just about a decade my senior, the current pilot of this airspeeder and one of my few good friends. Teed. “Kid, how you holding up?”

“Almost got shot earlier.” I grinned ear to ear, even if no one could see. “I already owe someone a power cell, Ankah’s causing problems for the knife again, Father wants me to gather an insane amount of frostbloom or I’m kicked from the expedition. And I think we officially crossed the farthest I’ve been from home today. All in all, normal day for me.”

“Sounds like you’re settling into the wastes.”

“There are so many people Teed, I don’t even know everyone’s names!” Not to mention - I’ve never seen over three relic knights in an expedition before. And there are twenty tagging along as guards. Twenty! Main expeditions were a completely different beast than the tiny ones I’ve been on up to now. The possible future sites we’d find further out into the wastes and what could be found inside was making it hard to sleep each night.

“You’ll get used to it, kid. Run enough expeditions, you see the same faces enough times to know ‘em all. The roster count changes up, all the players stay the same. None of ‘em trouble right? Other than a certain lady.”

“The normal folks all think I’m father’s chosen right now, so they’re keeping polite. Might change after they find out he hates my guts, and it’s really my sister that inherited all of.. well, all that.”

Whatever my father had that let him come out of unwinnable fights time and time again, Kidra had gotten it. For the first few years after he sobered up and began training us, I thought he’d stop hating me if I could be as good as my sister. Naive on my part. I realized the moment I opened the family ledger just how little skill would have changed anything.

“Your old man’s not that bad. He wouldn’t have brought you along with the big boys if he really hated you,” Teed said.

“No,” I said, chuckling. “He’s got too much principle to give up on me like he should. Let's change the subject, this is a sore spot for me. Are we on track to make it under Urs?”

Of course we were. The convoy pilots were meticulous in their planning. If they messed up and missed the re-fuel, it could mean a slow freezing death for all of us. Well - they’d reroute to another celestial fly-by, so freezing to death might be a bit dramatic. But it was the first thing floating on my mind to talk about, and Father's reasons were a sore subject to me.

There was a noticeable moment of static before he replied, “I’ve been piloting out in these white wastes before you even learned how to sneak out of your House grounds. Been...ahh, ‘diligently’ checking the charts every hour.”

“I noticed a suspicious amount of time before you confirmed direction. Just enough time to take a reading from an astrological chart. Hmm, very suspicious. Yes.”

“Well... you ain’t wrong,” He said, giggling to himself. “But I could find camp under one of the gods with my eyes closed. Don’t need any of these charts. Much.” I heard a knocking on metal over the speaker for good luck. “Navigation is a lost art kid, and I’m... let's say an artisan explorer.”

“Getting too big for your britches there old man.”

He scoffed, “Younglings don’t know their place anymore these days. Talking about that, ever thought of sneakin’ up here to the cockpit with me? You’d make a much better Reacher than you would a Retainer, no offense.”

“I wish I could. Though maybe not a pilot. I’m more of a tinker and make-things type of guy. Not sure I’d be good at plotting out astrological charts, or keeping track of where the gods are orbiting. Rather leave that to the priests and pilots.” I answered honestly.

“I know learnin’ how to navigate would be something you’d be good at, kid. Actually, let me offer a more convincing argument - there’s numbers here,” He said, using math as bait. “I can even rustle some up right now. You like sevens, right?”

He was probably doing the eye waggle with that last bit. Teed was someone whose personality carried directly through the deep timbre voice of his. Kidra said his voice was more like dark chocolate. Leave it to her to compare a voice to food.

“Someday,” I said, ignoring the bait he’d put out earlier. I wasn’t that easy to hook. “Problem is I can hear him in my head already - honor and house Winterscar something something duty and responsibility. Ugh. I’ve got to find a way to get away from all this ratshit.”

“Eh, flip him a new one. Tell him you’re going to follow the Reacher oaths of duty instead of the Retainer one. Oath is an oath right? He’s got to respect that at least, the clan lord set that in stone.”

“If only it were that easy to switch lives Teed.”

“Yeah, but who’d actually stop you? Only Winterscars left runnin’ around last I counted was your sister, your father, and you." Knocking on metal resounded over the comms again. "I don’t think you could disappoint your sister, angel that she is, and don’t suspect you could disappoint your father… well, more than he already is. Heh. Again, no offense meant, honored retainer sir, the three gods above praise your name, ecetera ecetera.”

“You’ve got a weird way of respecting your betters. I’ll start a blood feud with you if you keep showing me lip like this. Fear me.”

“Oh I’m shakin’ in my boots." His grin could be practically heard through the comms at this point. "Tell your dear sister to hold me, I need reassurance for my poor plebeian soul.”

A glance over at Kidra showed she hadn’t moved a muscle. Still cradling the rifle in her hands. Meditating correctly, as expected of a knight retainer, unlike her gossip monger of a brother.

“Alas poor Teed, dear elder sister’s one genuine lover in this world will always be that NAR-15. This romance of yours is not made to be.”

“A simple peasant like me can dream, sir.”

“But seriously. What is it you see in her anyhow? She’s my sister and I love her to death, of course, but she’s too prim and proper about everything she sets her mind on. Not to mention she’s a caste and a half above you, that’s always a messy scandal when it happens.” But it makes for the juiciest gossip.

He sighed over the speakers, “Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re older, kid.”

“I’ve got grey hairs already, mostly from you. How much older do you want me to be?”

“Right, and next you’ll be trying to show me you got hair down there too?”

“I solemnly swear it’s also grey.”

“I’d rather eat ice than ask for proof on that one,” He chuckled, then interrupted me before my next breath. “Hang on Keith, got company comin’ up here.” His demeanor and attitude changed completely. “Ah - M’lord, welcome. What can this humble navigator do for you?”

And this time, the respect in his voice was genuine. This felt like eavesdropping on a more private part of Teed’s life. Either he’d forgotten to turn off his comms with me, or he’d wanted me to listen in. But that guilty feeling was pushed down by my inner gossip mongering - there’s only one person in the entire clan who had the title of a Lord.

“Aye m’lord, it can be done. Have to travel further north for about a day to catch back up with Urs if we do this. If we divert for too long, Tsuya’s orbit is also in range, though we’ll have to backtrack a few hours to reach it.”

A shorter moment bridged this gap. Hearing something indistinct in the background. Teed's voice picked up soon after.

“Of course m’lord, I’ll set the new route immediately and contact the rest of the convoy with the change of plans. If I might ask for preparation reasons, why the change?”

I strained to hear the voice in the background talk. If my father was a living legend in the clan, the clan lord was a being straight out of myth. He was Deathless. An immortal being more akin to a demi-god than a human. They say he’s lived over four hundred years. To put it another way: He tags on the main expeditions to handle things that relic knights can’t.

“Ah, I understand m’lord, consider it done.” The static in the speakers interrupted my thoughts, and all was silent once more except for the humming of the engines.

The airspeeder turned on itself now, with my side rising upwards as the whole thing tilted. Almost immediately, the rotational pull squished my chest against the straps. Wanting to rip me off my seat and into the open as the speeder gracefully turned.

The scavengers hanging on the outside hull nervously tightened down on their handholds. Dangling feet rising upwards with the pull. It wasn’t anywhere strong enough to worry about especially since everyone should have strapped their clips in. Still, nobody wanted to be the first in years to fall off an airspeeder mid ride.

Oh, you’d survive if you tumbled correctly. Assuming nothing important broke on your suit during the tumble. But the entire convoy would have to stop and turn around to fetch you - which was plenty embarrassing.

“Gods damn it,” Teed muttered a moment later. “Why did he pick my ship, of all the ships, to spend the trip on?”

“Right so, fess up.” I demanded. You don’t just drop this sort of delicious gossip right by a rumormonger like me and expect to escape.

“... My comms on this entire time?”

“You know it.”

“All right, go ahead, you nosy little monster.” His voice was resigned, knowing exactly what sort of person I was when offered gossip. "Let’s get the interrogation over already.”

I was happy to oblige. “Where does he want the convoy to go?”

Teed answered with an almost verbal shrug. “He said he felt something ‘call out to him’ from the west, gave me coordinates and all.”

“What, he just had a gut feeling something was at these… ahh, perfectly specific coordinates?”

Gut feelings were no basis for moving an entire four hundred man operation. It’s more likely he hadn’t ‘felt’ anything but didn’t want to reveal more about the true source, if I had to guess. Then again, he was a Deathless. The stories about their powers were always changing around. So what was he planning?

“He says ‘drive me there’, well I’ll do exactly that and smile the whole way. But word to the wise kid - if it's got him interested, it’s way out of our league.” He knocked again on the metal. “Anything happens out there - you don’t ask questions. You run.”

“Fair enough.” I’ve heard stranger things about the Deathless. “How far away is it?”

“Coordinates are close by. Should arrive in three hours or so at this speed, so it’s closer than our previous target.”

“Got any idea what’s waiting for us?”

“Not a single clue kid. It could be a breach into the underground, a site, or maybe another reason.”

Or maybe the reason he brought twenty relic knights with him isn’t just for security.