Book 8 – Chapter 35 – Bargain

The beams impacted the airspeeder all at once. Shields flared up and held strong, but I could tell at least one of the power cells had been eaten up. Maybe two.

Airspeeders could handle Drake lasers, but not forever. This half-dead old lady was doing her best to survive I could tell, systems automatically rerouting power from non-critical systems. Temperature control was turned off, along with a host of other subsystems.

The comms were filled with clipped, practical discussion.

“Any chance to get this moving again?” One of the knights called out over comms, “Defending an immobile point of interest is adding additional difficulty to the mission.”

“Not possible.” Father said, voice crackling over the speakers in my helmet. “The engines are too damaged. This ship will never fly again.”

“He’s right.” I said over comms. “Turning engine power and life support systems offline. If we can get someone down to engineering with some more power cells, we can cycle through those as they burn out. It’ll keep the shield layers online against this.”

“On it.” One of the knights below answered, splitting away from the main fireline. The other two next to him immediately assumed his target duties, the targets spreading out equally among the rest of the line like a game of telephone.

Targets were divided by their armors, marking which should be killed by which. The efficiency in how they moved together as a single unit was unrivaled. There were hardly any pings, just occasional clipped messages.

I know Father had an entire collection of power cells he’d obtained, and the rest of the knights had more in their packs. The freed up knight methodically gathered up the spare cells, stuffed them into his pack, and then grappled his way up to the airspeeder with an occult lash, on course for the engineering bay.

We all knew what to do, and we relied on the others to handle blind spots. Actually, now that I looked closer, I realized they had all used soul tendrils to connect to one another whenever they came close enough. They might as well have been one unified person.

They all moved with such practiced discipline, I could tell there wasn’t a spark of fear in any of them even as they stared down what would have overwhelmed an entire army of undersiders.

More than that. Father was outright running into the battlefield ahead. Way beyond the control lines the knights had set up. “Father? Where are you even going!?”

“I will buy the time we need.” He said. “Captain Sagrius. With me.”

The two dots were speeding right through the centerline of the machines, jetpacks keeping the captain at speed while Father simply crushed the ground with every leap forward. Three gods above, he outright bodychecked clean through entire machines in his way, like a bullet.

They were going straight for the heavy artillery. To destroy it in person.

I believed they’d make it even. Out of all of the crew, he and Sagrius were probably the most unkillable monsters in the entire retinue.

Problem was that the whale machine wasn’t the only one. More were warping in directly. One moment the air was empty, and the next the machine just zipped into place from nothingness. Or higher dimensions.

I clicked a few options on my terminal. “You won’t make it in time before the airspeeder gets broadsided again, launching missiles at the target. I’ll keep them delayed.”

Father pinged a green light on my HUD right as I generated a targeting solution and launched weapons.

The missile ripped to life inside the spine of the half-awake airspeeder, the noise groaning through the hull. Expanding metal as the rocket’s flames broke ice and rime on its exit. It rammed through the air, speeding past Father and the captain. Then detonated directly into the first whale.

A shield flared to life and protected it from the explosion.

Well. Would have been nice if that just worked out for us for once.

“Save missiles for thinning ground forces.” Father said. “We will handle the elites.”

I sent a message to Superior again, asking if he’d gotten the coordinates yet from where the mitespeaker was supposed to point. I got a vague yes, but he was currently pulling teeth.

ETA?

Five minutes…. Nevermind, make that ten.

Asking for a miracle here Superior. I sent back.

I know what I’m asking for! I found the target on my end, but it’s balled up behind wall after wall. Could be even longer depending on how irontight the mites made this program. This thing was made to keep Tsuya from prying into it, as far as I can tell. There’s some defenses specifically against her and Relinquished, so I’m having an easier time getting through since those aren’t exploding in my face, but a lot of it is still general admission. And I don’t have the tickets for those. Need to get through the traditional method, with a crowbar.

The whales started to charge up their beams again. But this time, the lancing attacks struck the ground ahead of them, right where Father and the Captain were speeding after.

Both their dots remained green, shields at full. They’d either dodged, or managed to tank the hits. Possibly a combo of both.

The problem was that for all we knew, this could be neverending. I’d guess most were being redirected up to the surface, but that didn’t mean Relinquished wasn’t going to put enough firepower our way to put down a clan. And if we survived long enough, she’d start sending worse.

We had to portal out of here asap. If not into her fortress, then anywhere else before we were forced to start using our actual equipment. And I wanted that saved to surprise Feathers with.

All right, keep at it Superior. I’ll figure something out to keep the lights on this side.

We needed return firepower. Something with anti-capital ship capabilities, that wouldn’t send the enemy into a frenzy. The answer came to me in a flash.

There’s a reason I kept stealing just about anything that made the mistake of looking lootable and within eyesight. By my pouch, I had the answer.

Stolen plates, kept in reserve in case we’d find a way to unlock them: To’Sefit’s weapons of war.

That’ll do. Superior said at the exact same time I did out loud. We gave each other a quick high five, and then split back our own way.

They were locked tight. Unless we could get the owner to open them up on her end. Which might have been outright impossible to do an hour ago, but I knew one thing: Recent discussions have probably really spooked the Feathers after us. If I were in their shoes, I’d be making plans to run and keep running.

There might be a chance to get her to cooperate. Much as I wanted her dead a few times over for Windrunner, I knew if he were right here, he’d be telling me to use every advantage possible including the very plates that killed him.

I shifted over the controls and piped it through a wireless terminal, then sent the keycodes to Wrath. “Think you can handle the missiles while I go on an errand?”

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“I would be able to, yes.” She answered back. I could almost feel her narrowing eyes in judgement at me, even through the airspeeder walls. “Where are you planning on going?”

“Just down to the hangar bay, away from the keyboards here.”

Wrath paused on the comms channel. “What are you planning?”

“Don’t worry about it. And by the way, for completely unrelated reasons, got the address for let’s say… To’Sefit?”

She could 100% detect the lies in my voice, but that was fine. “To’Sefit is a hostile enemy to our forces, she will attempt to resist you even if you locate her within the digital sea and could possibly use those very vectors to attack you in some way.”

“I’m not hearing a no.” I said.