12 Miles Below-Chapter 35Book 8 - - 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.

“Every part of my prior sentence was a no.” She reminded me. Then sighed, “Very well, sending the address now. Please, do not do anything too stupid with this information. And you are aware that this is all unusable while the machine network is down, yes?”

The data package beeped on my HUD, to which it was easily ingested into the armor’s database. “Maybe, but there’s still one network that’s up right now.”

The mite network. And we had an in on that - the portal inside the hangar bay of this very airspeeder. There was power still feeding it, which is why we could use it in the first place. And if it was on the network as a destination, it had to have some kind of connection.

I’d go through the digital sea, bait one of Relinquished’s spy bots, take it over as I did last time, and then use it to get to To’Sefit. Relinquished had everything connected together through the occult, I might be able to get a signal through the Unity fractal without actually touching it myself. Fifty fifty chances that the moment I touched onto the Unity fractal, Relinquished might spot me like a giant eye looking down from the heavens, or she might just see it as a machine signal being sent to another machine. If I could get To’Sefit to show up in mite space here, I’d be able to broker some kind of deal with her.

Was it a harebrained desperate scheme with more holes punched through it than this airspeeder? Yes. But I had to do something to even the odds before we were forced to expose our real advantages.

My boots landed hard on the open hangar bay, occult blue lighting the room as I swung a quick grapple upwards to keep my momentum going.

Due to how the airspeeder had crashed and ended up suspended over the roadway, the hangar flooring was pulled downwards at a slant. I slid down without issue, feet aiming to land and hold against the tied down portal. Some of the straps had snapped over time, but the metal ones were still doing the same eternal job they’d done from the start.

And it was sturdy enough to hold an extra four hundred pounds. So far.

My hand reached out to the terminal, and I prepared my journey into it.

When I next opened my eyes, I was deep within the terminal. In the digital ocean, this little server ended up looking like a large grey cubic block, where I stood. Looming right before me was one giant statue, four hands stretched outwards, framing a central circular portal of some kind. Inactive, see-through.

The terminal itself was what looked to be nothing but a stairwell going up and down. As far as I could see. There weren’t any programs here, no coral or ecosystem. I couldn’t even see a way out anywhere.

Aztu’s teachings came into clutch here, where I recognized an exit port directly ahead of me - the statue itself. Stepping up to the edge of the cube I stood on, the hole at the center of the statue remained only a few feet off across the void.

A blink and the entire circle was filled with a far more familiar sight - sediment. A desert filled of it in every direction, hazy pathways of programs all following behind each other far above the ground level of the sea. Out here, somewhere, was Keith Superior, dealing with a mite program inside a terminal of his own. It would be real interesting to run into him face to face, but there wasn’t the time for that kind of family reunion.

He had his challenges to handle, and I had mine. I took a few steps backwards, then ran and jumped through the portal, leading me out of the terminal into the proper sea.

I landed with a roll against a dune of garbage data allocation. It slid under me for a moment before my boot hooked onto some kind of solid half-buried structure. Behind was just a halfway tilted square pillar, no signs of the stairwell or anything else. Just a single circle cut out into it, leading back into the terminal. The majority of the pillar was dug deep inside the sediment here, and I got the odd feeling that the staircase leading downwards really would have ended into mite space properly. I wasn’t sure about where it would lead going up, but that was out of scope for my plan. I had a time limit, and a timecrunch to handle.

“All right,” I muttered, brushing the detritus off my plates as I stood up. “Where are you hiding Sefit?”

I’d need to bait one of Relinquished’s probes here, which meant finding an empty terminal where I could set a good trap to capture one. Hopefully this time Relinquished herself didn’t come after me. She’d intentionally let me go last time, I don’t think a second round would go anywhere in my favor.

But first, might as well test the base case. The data package I’d dragged from Journey all the way out here pinged out into the void.

Searching for a connection. I was mostly certain I wouldn’t find anything, since To’Sefit was offline from the machine network so there wou--

A return ping came. The address existed, and was right along the mite wall here.

That meant To’Sefit was out here somewhere, on this very floor of the ocean.

She’s about to get scrapped by Relinquished and the only reason she hadn’t been was due to Relinquished having bigger fish to fry. There’s only one other faction I’d put my lot with if I were in her shoes. My hunch had paid off, because if I’m being honest, trying to find a way to get to her through a spybot seemed like a horrible idea.

Turning her direction, I took a breath and jumped high up into the more turbulent waters above, arms extended out.

Aztu had told me a secret about the ocean. She swore that sometimes it felt like it takes a part of yourself. As if the entire sum total of this ecosystem had a gravity of its own after all this time, acting more like a second hand to those who knew how direct it.

I let myself drift in the water at the apex of my jump. And the current responded, picking up behind me like a gust, moving me along the data lines in the world.

It wasn’t physical distance. Electricity moved at the speed of light. And effectively, so did the occult as it flowed with it. A moment later I spotted my destination, rapidly approaching as if I’d been blown like an icecube in a storm for all of a second before landing back on another roof.

The terminal looked like a wooden galleon ship, the old kind from golden age media. The entire thing was breaching upwards out of the sediment, frozen in place otherwise. But there were too many sails to match up with what I’d seen in old media recordings. And as the current brought me closer, I could tell it was way too big to be one. The ship was immense and populated.

Large, eellike programs were stalking the area, swimming in between ropes, sheets and railings. But all of them were either smart enough not to bother me, or I didn’t fit into their preferred meal standards. But they were absolutely predator programs given what Aztu told me to look out for.

I flew right between the entire swarms, as the current dropped me off onto the thick of it.

They might not have noticed me at all, because they seemed focused on something else. As if preparing for something important and my arrival was just a distraction.

And then I saw why. A trapdoor nearby opened up and a swarm of smaller programs were chased out of it. In fact, this was happening all at once all around the ship. Like it was breathing.

Most of these smaller programs managed to swim back to another open trapdoor or find cracks in the wooden hull to slip into. A lot less of them were equally unlucky and became dinner.

I finally landed on one of the mast poles a moment later, sliding on a cloth sail until I hit the wooden beam part and kept a firm hold over that.

Somewhere within this terminal was To’Sefit. Given I hadn’t seen her on the outside of this galleon, she had to be inside. “Couldn’t just be waiting on the deck of a right-side up normal airspeeder?” I hissed as I got to work looking for one of those trapdoors in the deck.

One was nearby under me, so I let go of the wooden pillar, and slid down until I hooked a hand on it. Then I forced it open with little difficulty and slunk inside.

It was a mess of rope, coral, wooden planks, walls, and lanterns. Those smaller programs were all hiding inside here, avoiding the ones outside, and currently undergoing their own ecosystem macromovements inside.

Odd place for a Feather who excelled at long range combat to hide in. This place was so crammed and tiny, I didn’t even know if I could fight correctly with a longsword, or if a knife would actually be the best weapon to use here.

Still, if To’Sefit was in here somewhere speaking with mites, she’d be near the very bottom. Where the ship touched into the mite wall.

So I cut, broke, ripped and jumped my way down the messy corridors and rope-filled subdecks. The more I passed through, the more I felt like this entire inside was alive in some way. The ropes were placeholders for blood veins or ligaments, the wooden planks and broken walls were all plackets or something core to the terminal’s structure, and the coral growing everywhere felt more like an invader. There were a good amount of programs that were busy cleaning it up.

I was also harassed by the same terminal defenses here, but I outranked and scaled them all by a few hundred pounds, easily crushing anything in the way. It was a chaotic mess, and it took me about two minutes to cut through this jungle of weird shit before I found the bottom.

It went from a chaotic clump of walls, turns, ropes and coral into a wider chamber below. Like the expanded out lungs of whatever this server was. Or the stomach. Either way, at the very bottom of this hollow space, was the sediment that covered the barrier to the mite space beyond.

And she was right here.

Giant hat, dress and staff at the ready. To’Sefit. Looking wild, haggard, feral even. Knelt down over something, hands scratching at it. A tree-like cubic structure at the center of this terminal. Filled with little lights moving around within it like veins.

Mites. This tree-like thing was a root from under the sediment, that just happened to breach past the mite sea and up into the digital ocean proper.

From far above, I took a short hop off the netting and wood I’d landed on earlier, and slowly fell downwards.

“Hello there,” I said, landing softly on the sediment right behind her.

She fired a laser straight at my face.