Book 8 – Chapter 40 – What Relinquished hid

Another whale-looking machine crashed against the snow, crushing a few hundred machines that had the misfortune not to be situationally aware.

My heart goes out for them, truly. Getting crushed was a terrible way to go. Compared to getting lasered.

Speaking of, a good rotation was set up among the knights, allowing for one or two To’Sefit beams to be blasted downrange every ten seconds, and kept some reserve blasts for emergency issues.

I expected to hold out for a good half hour in this airspeeder, possibly getting forced back into the city if the power cells here got overloaded. We’d burned through three so far, the airspeeder shields still oddly functional for a multi century frozen derelict.

Superior returned much sooner.

Got them. He said, first thing. Spear trick worked.

How was it?

He gave a wiggle of a hand. Doable if I really focus hard on it. I think with a bit more practice, I could call and create one on the fly. But in the meantime, ready to figure out what’s on the other end of the miteseeker?

What have you found? What are we looking at?

He shrugged. There really is just a single coordinate. But I know the biome is sealed off. As in, there’s no way in or out of that thing besides a portal. I also know another thing: It was a deadzone – to Tsuya. She couldn’t see it or tell it existed. So the only way to find it was to have the mites circumvent whatever deal they’d done to keep that spot hidden away.

Relinquished. I hissed out. She’s hiding something there.

Yeah. Something big if she went all this way. That the mites had to do this entire song just to find the location, meant the coordinates here were too expensive to directly sell. Relinquished paid a huge amount to keep this out of everyone’s view.

We’ll find out what kind of weapon she was trying to hide from view. Any other details?

No. Nothing more. Also, I’m not sure the miteseeker is going to work anymore. I, uh, did a slight amount of possible criminal activity to get these coordinates out.

Is there a portal near the objective? The idea of showing up to the nearest portal being a few miles away would be a problem.

Apparently it’s straight ahead of the nearest portal, over what they say is a bridge. We’ll be fine.

“Incoming. Backup firepower on my targets.” Father called out over the comms, having run into more enemies than he could deal with in one swing. I saw on the video camera footage over my HUD what was going on over there, when I swapped to Father’s feed: More airspeeder-sized floating machines were showing, and they were not only shooting drake beams out, they also deployed some sort of flying locus swarm. Which made our To’Sefit laser sweeps a lot less useful.

“Knights, fall back to the portal, we’re getting out.” I said.

Superior, boot it up. I’ll keep power flowing on my end here. Does Relinquished know where we’re going?

That’s the great part. She shouldn’t. Wrath’s got her unity fractal removed, permanently. And Father tore it out as soon as he could if I remember your memories right. She shouldn’t know where we are unless a machine reports it to her.

“Captain Sagrius will go in first.” Father called, and I could see the logic.

Out of all of us here, even including Father, Sagrius was just flat unkillable using the occult. His depth of willpower made him able to take on even To’Sefit’s lasers all converging on him.

Sending him first to secure a beachhead against whatever was on the other side was the best use case.

“All other knights, prepare a fighting retreat back to the airspeeder the moment we cross into parameter.”

I stared at my HUD, watching the location markers sprint as fast as they could. Father and Sagrius were breaking through the enemy lines, back onto our turf.

Problem with this: Without them on the frontlines disrupting everything, the rest of the airspeeder sized machines started opening fire on our own. Only To’Sefit’s plates were cutting that number down, and it wouldn’t be enough. Potshots against our immobilized fortress here were starting to pile up.

Airspeeder shields showed three power cells left keeping things together. I debated making a run for the engineering room, I could swap out the cells again, put in new ones. But we’d be depleting our reserves, and we’d need them for where we’re going.

Two more lasers got a hit off on the airspeeder, and the system pinged my helmet another power cell had been drained.

“Come on, come on.” I hissed under my breath, watching the two green dots on my map fighting their way back.

Another volley of lasers shoot out of the next monster to portal into the biome, turrets on its side not even bothering to lock on properly before firing. Most of the lasers slashed through the ground, melting snow and punching a hole into the dirt for a few feet.

We were fortunate that the mite portal was in the hangar bay, and teetering off the side of a cliff over the roadway, it meant there was an entire hill between the mite portal and the incoming lasers. I’d be safe here, but the rest of the ship anywhere a few feet above my helmet was open season.

Of which was being tested right this moment.

Red warning messages appeared over my HUD, status updates. The airspeeder starting to panic. Emergency red lights began flashing all over the ship; we were on our last cell.

The two green dots finally broke free from the mass of red ones, and I exhaled some pent up stress. Speed on their approach rapidly increased as the few red dots chasing after Father and Sagrius vanished. Covering fire from the airspeeder was taking care of stragglers now, since the To’Sefit knights were dedicated on shooting down the artillery ships in the back.

The swarm of micro-machines on the other hand were still on approach, just far slower about it. Moving like a giant silver cloud in the distance.

“All knights, begin extraction.” Father called out, just as his marker passed the green zone on the HUD. “Fighting retreat, pairs of two.”

The pair of green dots separated. Sagrius advanced straight for the airspeeder, while the other green dots surrounding the ship equally disengaged.

Superior also took the cue to start the portal process. Occult pulsed out of the alien looking tech carried within the hangar, and I stared down as the maw of the portal opened up, a whirlpool leading somewhere other.

It will close when you pass it. Superior sent. Make sure you jump in last.

I let the team know, while they organized their movements, finding the most optimal way to return fire while also marshaling back to the portal.

“Setting weapons to autofire.” Comms called out as the gunner knights all withdrew from their stations. In moments, I could hear the sound of them landing hard on metal railings behind me.

They ran through the airspeeder doorways, until they reached the tilted hangar bay, watching the open portal.

Sagrius gave zero attention to anything and flew right in on jets, by the open roadway, turning on his heel, then jumping up, directly into the portal.

The other knights immediately moved after, “Go go go! Secure perimeter behind the Captain!”

Three knights vanished into the portal, feet first as they leapt from behind me, and fell through. Other knights started appearing under the open bay doors like the captain had, taking turns to open fire at a distant enemy before the hillside obstructed their firepath.

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Only Father remained behind on my map, still by the parameter of the airspeeder. “Father, get over here!”

“I am drawing their ire. I will retreat last. Go ahead.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re planning something stupid like staying behind?”

“I am not, boy.” He said in a tone that clearly found the idea ridiculous.

“Tenisent means that it would be a tactical blunder to remain behind, he has no plans to do such a thing.” Wrath said. “There is greater chance of danger on the other end of the portal. He would only remain behind to defend a retreat point if it was advantageous to do so.”

“Right.” I said, “Trust in that over his word is what you’re saying.”

The Winterscar knights rapidly retreating below the bay doors all jumped up one at a time, a few landing a foot on the tilted hangar to push themselves further up, but most simply flew straight through the open portal, same as Sagrius.

And with each knight vanishing into the portal, there were less To’Sefit plates to go around. The number of hostile enemies the airspeeder sensors were reporting were greatly overwhelming how fast we could take them out. Now the swarm of machines itself was gaining ground, the auto firing solutions from the turrets occasionally spazzing out and failing to lock onto targets.

Three more knights passed through the portal, leaving just Father, myself, Wrath and five other knights.

And then the inevitable happened. The airspeeder’s lights flickered for a moment as the system transferred from power cell energy to emergency backup for cabin support.

The last power cell had been spent.

The next drake laser tore straight through the center hull. Another slashed through the lower engine, and a third stabbed right into the cockpit. Melted metal and bent fragments spilled out the other side.

Two more Winterscars passed by under, and jumped straight through the portal.