12 Miles Below

“Insufficient user data to generate predictive model. Three thousand operation hours required for predictive modeling to pass acceptable percent accuracy. Twenty thousand hours recommended before diminishing returns reached.” Sagrius said from Kidra’s back as our group marched through the river.

“Does that mean your plan doesn’t pan out?” Windrunner asked from the front.

“In my defense, I never said all my plans work out. In fact, historically, most of them don’t.”

“You are filling us all with great confidence here.” He answered back.

I gave a shrug. “Eh, that's what plan B, C, and D are for. At least, once I figured them out. Give me a second to think.” If I couldn’t get a rulebook from the source himself, I’d settle for another rulebook closer to home. “Can the Winterscar amor send motion data of Tenisent?” I asked. “Or better yet, the combat engram itself if Winterscar hasn’t deleted it yet.”

“Winterscar confirms it still has the data at one hundred twenty thousand, four hundred forty-nine hours?” Kidra said, “There’s also a file with a warning symbol flashing next to it on my HUD. I believe this is the actual engram.”

“What’s all the Reacher jargon about?” Windrunner asked, recognizing the words but not the context behind it.

“You weren’t around to see it, but we had Winterscar generate a predictive model of Father’s movements and combat skills. It worked, and then the Occult happened at the same time, so half-worked.” I turned my attention to Kidra. “If I had to guess, it hasn’t deleted the engram just yet, but instead it’s keeping it under quarantine. It has… let’s say opinions about that engram. Wasn’t a great time for it. Because, you know, Occult.”

Windrunner nodded slowly, “Not sure I understand, and we don’t have time to explain it all to me. If it could work, do it. If it doesn’t work, leaves us right back to our current plan. Two possible plans are better than one.”

“Aegis, can you reuse that combat engram?” I asked. Hoping it would give me the answer I wanted it to.

The armor processed the request, a noticeable pause in the calculations. Which wasn’t normal for armors.

“Loading signs are showing on the HUD.” Kidra answered my unworded question. “I believe the armor is sending more than the engram.”

“Cathida, what are the armors saying to each other?” I asked, curious to the gossip going on in the background.

“Blah blah blah, danger danger danger, don’t touch it or turn it on. Spooky occult pyrite is going to happen. Users are being morons and setting you up. The usual scrapshit.” She said, bored. “Your family armor had a pretty traumatizing experience and is still healing up parts of its soul that your Father ate when he took the pilot seat by force. Being a bit of a drama queen though. Journey doesn’t agree with its conclusions, thinks it is putting its own self-preservation above the user’s, which is a very big no-no for armors. They’re all more surprised your family armor is so adamant about this and processing the validity.”

All right, I was now a little worried Aegis wouldn’t want to cooperate given what happened to Winterscar. The last time, Father’s soul used the combat engram as a conceptual crack in the ice to sneak inside with all the subtlety of a crowbar.

“Should it ease their fear, I was the one to choose to take advantage of the opening. What happened to my armor was my doing.” Father said from his necklace. “The resonance felt like an open path, and I made the decision to walk through it with force. Should it happen again to this armor, I won’t interfere. I give my word on this.”

“My armor, you mean.” Kidra corrected.

“Affirmative.” Aegis eventually said, deciding to take the chance, either out of its own conclusion or because of Father’s promise to not try anything. “Combat engram data received. Verified valid file. Warning, potential virus noted and confirmed by filesource, designation: Winterscar. Threat level calculated within tolerances.”

Winterscar remained carefully quiet on this. I got a feeling it was brooding, but that might just be me humanizing relic armors. Even Cathida was just Journey pretending to be the old bat and answering as the old bat would.

“Wait, let me get my weasels in line with their pipes here; you’re trying to get the armor itself to move around using your Father’s movements as the rulebook?” Windrunner asked, picking up on the plan.

I flashed him a thumbs up. “Yep, if we can’t get the captain back on his feet, we could go for the next best thing, get the armor moving around so it won’t be dead weight. It won’t help Sagrius directly, but we won’t need to leave him behind.”

Windrunner whistled. “Lord Atius wasn’t kicking the snow about Reachers and what you've been up to. Consider me a convert if this works out, kid.”

The old bat gave her bits of unasked for advice. “That said, how are you going to get past the local user permission? Last I checked, your captain here is out cold. Journey and the rest of the armors are trying to figure out a way past this lock, but they haven’t hit any gold yet on that front.”

“Local user permission?” Windrunner asked, taking a closer look at the captain.

“Yep, that’s a thing with armors.” I said. “Watch. Aegis, activate the engram to help you move around and fight.”

“Remote override rejected. Insufficient permissions. Root level permissions or administrator and user permissions required for remote override.” Aegis said in Sagrius's strange voice.

“Any way you can just read and copy the engram movements, without applying them to the armor?” I pressed on, trying out my different options before I had to go with the crowbar version.

“Unknown command. No default instructions set for this action.” Sagrius said, the armor not used to moving a human around even if it had an engram telling it how to move. We needed the engram online and working as the actual driver, leaving the armor at the pilot seat instead of the engine room.

“Tell me the specifics on how to authorize autonomous locomotion.” I asked, moving onto plan C.

“All features that require autonomous locomotion are locked, requiring both physical user confirmation and administrator permission, or root administrator permissions. Local administrator permissions are waived only if no local users are active.”

Word for word what Journey had told me all that time ago, when I was a bumbling kid trying to cheat as much of the system as I could. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

“Local user is still alive in there, so Sagrius is considered active. You’ve got my permission, a general administrator. Now, you need Sagrius’s permission, right?”

“Affirmative.” The armor said.

“Good. And since your soul is currently puppeteering Sagrius somehow, repeat after me: Remote override approved.”

Sure it wasn’t Sagrius himself approving the request, but the armor’s safety locks weren’t intelligent. They were simply hardwired protections, a separate system armors couldn’t touch or interfere with by design. That safety hardware heard the local user vocalize approval, and it wouldn’t ask any other questions.

“Remote override approved.” The armor dutifully said, and in doing so, made Sagrius say it as well. Aegis must have already caught on, because the very next words were very familiar to me.

“Releasing safety locks. Loading cognitive engram. Isolating model to directed assisted movement. Full cognitive engram, online.”

I held a breath, but there was no occult pulse this time. No crackle of lighting, and no show of force. Father remained inside the necklace, at least from what I saw in the soul fractal. Sure he and the others all had their tendrils busy trying to keep the captain’s soul together, but if Father saw a hole in the armor, he ignored it. And Sagrius remained connected with the armor’s soul, no change happened to it either.

Instead, Captain Sagrius reached his arms behind his back and unhooked himself from Kidra’s armor as if it were natural, falling down into the flowing river, up to his waistline. Wordlessly, he turned and began to march forward, taking a spot behind Windrunner and Kidra. The two stopped, looking over at the armor as if it had sprouted a few heads, which it might have for all we knew.

Agis stopped and glared at the two ahead. A beat passed, then it cracked its neck to the side, hand going to the hilt of the blade, while the helmet turned to examine the surroundings, as if searching for danger. The same kind of movement Father did whenever there was a hold up.

It was eerie. Extremely eerie.

“Aegis, are you… okay?” I asked, and watched as the armor turned its faceless head my direction.

“This unit is prepared for combat.” It said, the voice remaining monotone with Sagrius’s echo mixed in. “The Winterscar-Tenisent combat engram will be used to guide all further motion. No abnormalities detected. All systems working within tolerance.”

Windrunner gawked, then shrugged, turned and continued the march forward. “No idea how any of this occult-Reacher scrapshit works, but ain’t going to kick snow into a giftbox just because the wrapping’s weird. If Sagrius can move and fight, that’s all I care about.”

Cathida cackled. “Oh it can do that all right. And this time around, none of that spooky hokus pokus. All within what Journey and the armors understand. Mind you, it’s not going to fight as well as the old man did, or me of course. I’m better than any of you louts, but it’ll work out well enough.”

“What, should we have loaded your engram instead?” I asked. It was possible, we could swap it out. Father had beaten Cathida within the digital sea when we’d practiced, but that was his true self. This was just data mimicking his prior movements.

“Oh no, not at all.” Cathida said. “Best set of data here would be your Fathers. Crusader techniques are widespread against the lower strata machines, but we’re fighting upper strata machines here. Surface knights know this enemy and have plenty of tools to deal with them just as well as Imperials do. And surface techniques are a better match against Feathers. Crusaders don’t fight and win against those, not worth wasting time to train against, we leave those for the Deathless.”

“So why all this boasting about being better?” Windrunner asked, confused.

“The old bat never admits to anyone being better at fighting than she was.” I said. “She lies like she breathes when it comes to that. You get used to it.”

“Don’t do much breathing anymore these days, deary. But you got the basics of it.” Cathida cackled. "Now, get moving, Empire isn't paying per hour."

Crazy engram.

In the dark, our group of four pressed forward. The river’s pull crashed and buckled against the red crystals and walls of the underground temple, creating an echoing cacophony that overshadowed any sound we made. The river slowed us down slightly, relic armor having little trouble powering through. If we hadn't been in armor, we'd have gotten pulled off our feet and swept down with no resistance given how violent it had gotten. Progress was steady until we ran into machines.

We saw them well before they were even in a position to see us. Machines, for whatever reason Relinquished had chosen, glowed violet. Especially their eyes. It wasn’t much, but it did reveal their position like a beacon in this much darkness. Wrath had to keep her own shut down to avoid the glow, which effectively blinded her to everything save for what scraps of data Journey graciously sent over.

The Screamers waded through the stream, moving as a single file line, trying to keep the majority of their body out of the water as they pushed on. Twenty of them in this group. The one leading ahead constantly had one hand stretched out, holding onto the side of a wall for guidance. The rest followed behind, one arm reached out to keep hold of the front runner’s back. Given the proportionally massive arms and loping gait they took on, not much of them was completely submerged in the water. It let them move through the stream, almost spiderlike. Keeping one hand busy to make sure they wouldn’t lose each other was what truly slowed them down.

We froze as a group the moment we saw them. They came closer, their gait not showing any sign of difference, even as Journey revealed more details in wireframe. We all took a collective step to the other side of the large tunnel, the one they weren’t holding onto for guidance, and ducked under the water. Rifles and all. The rest of our hands were holding onto the hilts of our weapons, ready to draw them out and destroy this group at the slightest hint of hostility. Their outlines weren’t distorted as we sank, crouched low into the water.

They passed us by, completely oblivious of our existence. Wrath was right, their vision wasn’t any better than a human’s.

Windrunner drew a hand out, and motioned for us to follow.

They didn’t howl or make any of the usual noises Screamers made when hunting around as a pack. These were clearly under orders. And if the thick walls did prevent orders from being sent out, this group must be on their way back to an important chokehold or backup site, likely the mite forge itself.

While they didn’t do an all out rush, their movements were still moving with haste. They’d speak to each other using clicks and whistles, violet glowing eyes illuminating next to nothing but the side of the walls and tinting the white froth of the river a light purple. Almost impossible to hear over the river noises, but our armors had excellent hearing as part of their scanning suites.

And behind the machines, our group stalked a short distance away. Too far for them to overhear anything. Not far away enough for us to lose them.

We kept as much as we could submerged, leaving us virtually invisible to any of the machines taking a curious glance behind them into the darkness. Not that it happened, the machines walked with little fear.

As time went on, we drew closer and closer to the position marked on our map as the mite forge. Light came through on the other end. The machines crossed the threshold, gripping onto the sides of the tunnel and lifting themselves up one at a time, out of the tunnel and out of our sight.

Our group continued cautiously, fighting off against the current, staying underwater to take a peak at what lay on the other side. Here, we found our objective.

Windrunner cursed, breathed a bit, and cursed again. “Now what? Gods be damned, we’ll need to kill those two feathers before we can retreat, and all that for nothing.”

A massive ring of space stretched out before us, where all paths into the basement level led to. Massive ornate stairwells connected down from above, the second upper level winding into the sanctuary here in between the pillars that held the tower above.

The center of the temple.

The space here was huge, an outright ringed walkway surrounded the location, as wide as the main streets of the Undercity. But the edge had been clearly sliced off in small directed cuts, exactly the kind of damage To’Sefit could do if her plates moved during her shots. It made the entire ring edge look more like a large multi-gon.

I realized now why the area was noted down as simply flooded, rather than the powerful currents we’d run into. Why some of the sections further away were wet and filled with puddles instead of water.

The water was coming here from all directions, falling off the central hole like a waterfall. More water than whatever the mites had made to keep the temple supplied.

What’s better than having to defend an objective?

Not having any objective to defend in the first place.

To’Avalis couldn’t destroy the mite forge, but he sure could cut everything holding it attached to the temple and then let the whole thing fall down into the second strata below.

This might complicate things slightly.

Next chapter - Improvising

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