THE CAVERNOUS SPIRALS of Loshan Bastion haunted Daggeira. Somehow, this utterly alien place felt familiar. Had she dreamed of these crystal walls in coma dreams? Maybe as a small mine rat she had spied an ancient sector of the Labyrinth that resembled these arched vaults?
Warseer Zika had led Spear, Daggeira, and their six vaidu from the talon gunship into the bastion. Zika’s conical sense mounds felt the dwarf planet’s magnetic poles, so she instinctively knew the cardinal directions. They had followed the same curving passageway for nearly a quarter shift before the warseer chose a new intersecting spiral. Over the next few hours, Zika changed routes into different passageways, some arching ten to twenty meters high, some barely accommodating the helmeted warseer’s height, until they entered a spacious corridor steadily curving southeast toward the central dome and the promised superweapon.
Their vaidu stalked a loose perimeter around the three of them, scuttling whisper quiet and ready to pounce at Spear and Daggeira’s first impulse. Occasionally, one of her biomechs would creep closer to her, before skittering farther away. When they were close, Daggeira felt a tug at the back of her mind, as if she could close her eyes and see through theirs. The three under Spear’s dominion kept to their perimeter and never approached him. Daggeira had been in close contact with many beasts during her childhood in the aggie caverns. She suspected that it gave her a more intuitive connection with her vaidu than the attendant.
The hours of walking had started to blend together when Daggeira felt the first cold gust whipping across the carapace of her vaidu. She had sent her three scouting down the largest spiral arm they had come to so far. The corridor they’d been following arched to a mere fifty meters overhead. This new spiral crossing their path towered four times higher and wider. They waited under the archway where the smaller corridor opened into the larger. Seconds after her vaidu sensed it, the same frigid wind pushed at her infiltration armor.
“Something big is coming,” she said.
“Veils,” Zika commanded.
They disappeared. In Daggeira’s visor display, Spear and Zika’s images were replaced by thin red outlines indicating their presence. She would appear the same to them.
“Warseer, whatever’s coming might disrupt our stealth,” Daggeira said. “The infidels drilled them last mission. That tech might’ve come from the Black Devil.”
“Whatever’s coming is too big to be the Devil and his khvazol,” Spear said.
“Whatever comes our way, comes from Loshan Bastion itself. I want to see what life pulses in its veins.” Zika’s outline strode confidently into the great tunnel.
The wind gusted harder. Cold seeped in at the joints of Daggeira’s armor, as she called her vaidu back with a thought.
“What is she doing?” Daggeira pointed to Zika.
When Spear declined to answer, she asked if they should follow her.
“We haven’t been ordered to,” he said.
“This is taking too long. We should keep moving. Don’t you think?”
No reply.
“I should go ahead. I’m the fastest runner.”
“We cannot allow this weapon to fall into the Devil’s hands,” Spear said.
“I see you, Attendant. So, you’ll advise Warseer Zika to send me ahead?”
“No.”
“I should ask her myself?”
“No.”
While they spoke, droning echoes steadily intensified, until growing too loud to ignore. From their left, at the far length of the curving spiral, dark shapes raced beneath the sulfurous lights. A swarm of airborne trains flew toward them. The whine of industrial-strength hover pods reverberated through the wind. All the trains flew far above Zika. Her invisible form seemed not to be in danger for the moment.
With Daggeira’s eyes protected from the gale by her helmet, she studied the trains roaring past. They consisted of an undercarriage lined with industrial hover pods below, and interlocking cars resembling mechanical hands above. On the top of some car-hands sat small mounds, each aglow with the same yellowish diodes that blistered the crystal walls. The fingers of each interlocked hand held the same cargo—huge spheres of rusty brown and yellowish-red.
“Gods bones,” Daggeira whispered.
“Aku-vayk,” Spear said. “The holy ore. Enough to supply a fleet.”
“The Gods see us. If we bring back the Black Devil and a new source of gods bones, even if Warseer Zika takes all the glory, we’ll still be buried in privileges.”
“We are never going back.”
“What?”
“No one, not human nor warseer nor Divine Master, has ever passed through the Gates of Heaven and lived. Not since they were shattered.”
“Not until Trickster’s Black Devil,” Daggeira corrected.
“Should we confiscate him still breathing, can we convince him to open the Gates again? I wager he’d rather die than let that happen, even if we apply pressure to the right sensitivities . . .”
“You mean Sab— the apostate? With my stick to her head, he’ll open the Gates.”
A long moment passed before he responded. “You’re ranked now. Learn to think several steps ahead. Should our pressure on the Devil convince him, and we open the Gates to return home, what will we tell the High Godseer? That no Heaven awaits us beyond the Gates? A treasure of holy ore, yes, but no Gods. Only a senile old man and his traps and games.”
The three vaidu Daggeira had sent as scouts returned. Joining Spear’s, they formed a defensive perimeter around the servants. One of hers sidled close to Daggeira. She tentatively reached out her hand, and it leaned toward her. She stroked the vaidu’s middle segment. Thick needles bristled beneath her gauntlet. The red outline of Spear regarded her before turning back to the hover trains.
“What about the superweapon?” Daggeira asked. “If we get it first, who knows what we can do with it? We bring back the traitors, a new source of ore, and a superweapon to use against the Monarchy, you really think the Godseers will condemn us?”
The crimson outline of his veil signature stared mutely at the zooming trains, some of which had already finished passing. The swarm was thinning. Farther out in the tunnel, Zika stood with arms raised, seemingly awestruck by the quantities of aku-vayk soaring over her head.
Then, as quickly and simply as flipping a switch, Daggeira knew what she had to do. She didn’t know how to appease Godseer inquisitions, or how to find a way through the Gates. But she did know how to compete. She knew how to win.
Daggeira ran full out and leaped, gauntleted hands stretching overhead. She caught an undercarriage strut of the lowest passing train and held on with all her strength. Her legs trailed behind, whipping in the cold air.
Her biomechs followed. Two caught the undercarriage behind her and secured Daggeira’s flapping legs. The other landed in front. It helped pull her fully onto the undercarriage struts. She lay flat on her armored belly. The frigid wind coursed over her back, and the hover pods vibrated the strut beneath her chest.
Daggeira didn’t know how far Zika’s dominion extended, and could only hope the train would rush past the threshold before the warseer could react. Zika would be furious with Daggeira, at first. But once she brought her the superweapon, and freed their talon from that strange old man, she would definitely earn the warseer’s praise instead of her prod.
“Third Drum, report,” Zika transmitted.
“Safely aboard a cargo train, Warseer.”
“What are you trying to do?”
Zika’s talking, not taking dominion. I must have gotten far enough away. “Scouting ahead, Warseer. Using the fastest means possible.”
Movement in Daggeira’s peripheral caught her attention. New lights blinked on around the hand-shaped train car. Elements of the hand’s mechanical joints and fingers separated themselves from the main body. These odd bits and pieces climbed up to the small mound on top of the train car. They gathered and recombined with each other and the mound, metal and machinery somehow fusing together. It reminded Daggeira of her palukai transitioning between shapes and formations, but with more complexity. She had glimpsed similar technology after waking from her coma among the traitors on the target planet.
“Keep your eyes open.” Zika’s breathing sounded like she was running. “Report what you see. The attendant and I will catch trains of our own.”
“Something is happening now,” Daggeira said.
“Report.”
“Some kind of drone, detaching itself from the train.”
“Autonomous drones?” Zika asked.
“Best I can tell.”
“So that’s the truth of this Loshan Bastion: a hive of abominations.”
“The biomechs,” Spear said. “No stealth veils.”
Of course. The train didn’t care a shit about the vaidu on the tunnel floor. But now that they’re aboard, it thinks it’s under attack. The smart choice would be to have the vaidu jump free and catch up later. She rebelled at the idea with the same revulsion as choosing to sever a finger. If the drone sensed the vaidu, but not her, Daggeira could use them as a diversion.
The mound atop the train car had fully transformed into a spindly array of mechanical limbs about a meter across. The drone crawled swiftly down the side of the car toward the biomech near Daggeira’s head. Her vaidu scissored its limbs at the monstrosity. Sparks scattered in the wind, as half of the drone fell away. The other half retreated, scurrying up the side. More detached train elements merged with the injured drone. It grew thicker and wider, sprouting more limbs. Sickly yellow diodes blistered across its back, like an infection of glowing pustules. She sent the same vaidu to finish it off before it grew any stronger. It was already twice as large as before. The biomech charged into the abomination. Both of their many limbs tangled and cut into each other.
The two vaidu near Daggeira’s feet tugged at the connection they shared with her. Lying horizontally along the undercarriage, she had to sit up and twist into the wind to see behind her. Another spindly automaton pounced on a vaidu. Catching it in a web of creaking mechanical limbs, the drone threw the biomech off the train, and it flailed chaotically to the floor. When it hit, she felt its pain flash up her spine. The fallen vaidu was hurt, but alive.
Daggeira turned back to the struggle near her head. She repositioned to get a better angle, then slammed her gauntleted fist down on the mechanical abomination, crumpling its shell beneath her strength. Glowing yellow blisters sputtered dark. The vaidu took the opportunity to sever the arms that had entangled it. Unmoored from the train car, the automaton tumbled into the wind. That vaidu hurried across the side of the car to its companion. Together, they shredded the drone and sent it falling away in pieces.
“The abominations keep getting stronger. Lost one vaidu, but it survived the fall,” Daggeira reported. “The drones are only attacking the vaidu. Probably can’t penetrate our stealth.”
“The attendant seems to be discovering the same,” Zika responded. “Do you spy further enemies ahead, waiting for us?”
Daggeira leaned her head and shoulders out from the undercarriage, air resistance pummeling her armor. She magnified the visor display. The cavernous expanse that the trains soared through was devoid of any feature or other inhabitant for as far as she could see.
“Nothing that I—” Daggeira cut short her reply. Stabs of sympathetic pain ran up her spine. She turned back to see one of the vaidu—spiny carapace splintering, dark oil-blood spurting—crushed between four mechanical pincers of another drone abomination hanging from the side of the train. Eight multi-jointed appendages extended from its thick, oblong core. It tossed aside the dead biomech while reaching for the last vaidu.
The biomech sprang at the drone, severing two of its limbs before a third clenched the vaidu in its grasp. It spasmed and flailed its bladed limbs, slicing into the drone’s vice-like clutches.
Daggeira drew her palukai from its back holster and fired. Bolts of angry red plasma scorched the drone. The abomination released her biomech and reared back as she fired another volley, vaporizing bits and pieces of its mechanical body. The vaidu, alive but gravely injured, skittered away from the drone toward Daggeira. A trail of slick oil-blood marked its path.
Even as she blasted at the drone, disintegrating chunks of it with each hit, it stalked forward, creaking and grinding and viciously swatting toward the source of fire. She had to stop shooting and duck to keep her head attached. The impact of the drone’s attack shuddered through the undercarriage, knocking her off balance. Her feet went out from under and she dropped. Her left hand whipped out, catching a hover pod. It thrummed through her gauntlet as the wind tossed and dragged her legs behind.
The drone paused for a moment—thank Conqueror—and she pulled herself up. More smaller drones came scurrying from other train cars. They merged into the damaged parts of the monstrosity—not only healing the machine but making it bigger. Stronger. More diodes like sulfurous eyes blistered its thick core. All their glowing attention turned toward her. Even with the veil, once she had opened fire, the abomination knew she was there.
And it was coming for her.