12 Miles Below

So.

To recap, I am now taking an interesting unexpected tour through the lower strata. And, admittedly, from what I could see in between the cockpit glass planes and general screaming, it was rather pretty compared to silver flowers and large waving hills.

I’d spend more time explaining exactly the kind of chaos I got a view at, after I got a few questions answered from my tour guide. But the whole, Why-are-we-falling-down-in-a-giant-airspeeder and what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you was a little awkward to ask directly.

“Golden tits, the rich bastard’s got a third knife.” Cathida called out, “He’s going to use it anyt- yep, there it is.”

“Less talking, more hacking.” I muttered back, watching said knife fly right for my helmet. I ducked by twisting my body in a ball and kicking up at the cockpit roof.

The ceiling was closer to me than the floor right now. And for good reason: Turns out, free-falling down meant getting shoved up against the roof as the giant airspeeder changed directions but its two unstrapped passengers inside didn’t.

Drakonis slashed again, in what I could only call the most sloppy attempt to deal damage I’d ever seen, almost as if he was asking to get stabbed and killed. I’d get to that part eventually, but I did need him alive until I got some more info on where the hell he’d brought me and why he thought this would work.

I landed a boot directly into his exposed chest and shoved him right back down against the pilot seat floor, using my free hand to hold tight against a console and pin him down.

We both stopped for a half second, helmets locking gazes with each other. In that single glance, both of us instantly got what was actually going on.

On my part, I realized all the sloppy openings and overcommitted attacks from him were intentional - he’d been trying to get himself killed. Normal people wouldn’t do that, but a Deathless? It’s a viable escape from any bad situation. And this might score as a bad situation.

And from his part, I think he realized that I figured him out.

Before either of us could say or do anything, we were slammed to the left as the ship pivoted on itself. His hand dove for a fourth knife on his chest, brought it up and slammed it down into his chestplate.

Or would have if I hadn’t rocketed back into his space and grabbed his wrist at the same time, trying to twist the blade out of his fingers before he could hurt himself with it. All while we were now wildly bumping on and off different consoles - and the ceiling too, because it couldn’t get enough of us.

Cathida was hacking through the control systems, so it might be her trying to salvage the situation. “Cathida? What the fuck?”

“Trying deary.” She answered back. “They self-sabotaged the systems, grenades or some kind of explosives. Lot of systems are fried and not responding, final orders are still in the memory banks but no way to overwrite them without some circuits being repaired.”

In the meantime, Drakonis reached for my boot, trying to get my knife free. Likely for another go at his own throat. Sneaky about it too, doing that out of my vision. I gave a quick kick at his gauntlet. “I didn’t say you get to die.” I hissed at the struggling patient. “I’ve got some questions for you and you only get to go when I’ve got my answers.”

“Pry them out of my cold dead hands, you bastard.” He laughed back, now sounding completely unhinged.

We slammed into the ceiling again for the third time, leaving a small dent in the metal this time, then slid backwards as the airspeeder was doing some kind of circus trick for all I knew.

The Deathless just laughed the whole while. “I don’t care how unbeatable you are, clanner. I’ve got you right where I want you.”

“Hate to be a bother to you right now.” Cathida said over the comms while I was midway through prying open Drakonis’s hand and ripping his final dagger out of it. Got to keep the toddler away from sharp objects and so forth. “But, uh, deary we have problems.”

“You’re fucked, you’re fucked and you don’t even know how yet. Ha!” Drakonis snarled.

“Congrats.” I grunted, giving a quick slice from a mirror image right over his wrist, severing his armor’s grip. The knife was pried out easily after. “You can’t beat me and ominous threats are the best you could come up with.”

“I can’t fucking beat you, you’re right.” His laugh ended, cut halfway through in a moment of lucidity. “But I sure as hell can drag you down with me.”

Well, that’s even more ominous.

“Deary. Look up please, anytime now.” Cathida said, a lot more insistently, and a second after the two of us were rocketed backwards into the semi-destroyed airlock door. Drakonis slammed over one of the consoles, smashing the glass with his helmet. He lifted himself out of it, then snapped his attention at the knife I’d pried out of his hand.

In the scuffle, it had slipped out of my grip since I hadn’t been able to get a good handle on it just yet. Thankfully, it was out of his reach.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t stabbed into anything, so it too was free floating around in the air, clattering against the floor and sliding backwards before bumping onto something which sent it back into the air spinning.

Drakonis launched an occult lash at the dagger, trying to get it, which meant I couldn’t ignore it anymore and also had to make sure it was out of his hands. Unfortunately for him, I was far faster, knew exactly where the dagger was flying off to from the soul sight, and had my hand snatch it out of the air without bothering to actually see it with my own eyes.

An occult lash landed onto my closed fist a moment after, trying to yank it out of my hand and failing miserably against relic armor. I pulled against it, dissolving the occult power with a physical yank at the same time I slapped a soul tendril at it.

“Deary!” Cathida said, “Less fighting, more panicking!”

Finally having a lull in the fight, with all the possible weapons locked out of his grasp, I looked up through the cockpit.

Soul sight had a great amount of advantages, but one disadvantage was the range. I could see in a small bubble of influence around me which made fighting in a tight cockpit like this basically cheating. But beyond a certain range I couldn’t see anything more. So with more focus on my physical vision, I paid attention to what was on the other side of the windows.

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A giant starfish-like structure was off to the side about half a mile under. Looking more like a temple, each appendage about the side of a small colony.

And at the center of this giant mite structure was a glowing portal of some kind, air and particles being slowly sucked in through a vortex. Given how giant the whole thing looked already from this distance, nearly filling up the entire view, it was clearly large enough to swallow the entire airspeeder whole without any trouble. Probably could fit about ten or so side to side. If I stood on top of the whole thing, I’d look like a grain of sand in comparison.

“What in the gods above is that?” I asked, stumped.

Drakonis just laughed all the more for it.

All around the massive structure was a geometrical city. Not like mite cities of the upper strata that wanted to look like a human city of old, this one looked more like a giant circuit board made into a city. Block structures everywhere, and power. Actual power was running through where the streets should have been. Glowing lines of pale blue, shooting straight through void, running like streets in between everything, or directly across hollowed out cubes. Further under it all was the deep blue of rushing water, streams of some kind that were flowing under arches and cubes. No roadways, just empty space with water deeper down under it all.

That’s what I’d seen first before all the tumbling started to happen. The starfish was new. Must have been behind us, because I’d have noticed something like that on first impression.

Good news: We weren’t near the giant portal starfish temple.

Bad news is that some part of the airspeeder had been dutifully executing its final navigation program even as we fell to certain doom - and that navigation involved the starfish. The earlier scuffle in zero gravity of us bonking our heads around ended up being the ship turning itself to face the starfish’s direction, and then igniting engines to full with whatever it had left in its tank, ramming both of us almost through the airlock.

We were on a direct trajectory straight at the mite structure of undefined ability.

Drakonis laughed even harder, unhooking his helmet and tossing it right at me in a bid to distract.

Good attempt, didn’t work against me. My hand snatched the helmet out of the air, while occult rippled around my armor. A mirror image flew forward and slashed straight through the pistol he’d unhooked from his belt, right as he leveled it to his head. Belatedly he realized he only had the pistol’s grip and trigger left working, idly being pressed down multiple times.

He stopped, looked at the broken weapon and tossed it aside like used garbage.

Inside the soul trance I could calmly look through the current evidence around me. Drakonis had picked the field of battle because he knew whatever this was, it’s here and not anywhere else. That’s probably why he had us go the distance to find him.

Second, he doesn’t think the airspeeder crashing will be enough to kill him, otherwise he wouldn’t be trying to end his life.

Third, he’s trying to end his life fast and getting more and more agitated each time I stopped him. And we’re hurtling towards a giant starfish with a portal. Warning bells were lighting up in my mind about all this. He didn’t want to die on the other side of that.

I gave him one last look, then decided on what I needed to do.

First thing’s first, give him the To’Aacar special, minus heart impalement. Occult powered through me, and I sent two mirror fractals out, the ghostly blades slashing through his armor’s power cells, right by his legs.

He went limp a moment after, his armor dead. He could still move, just a real pain to do anything with armor unpowered.

“What’s our survival chances looking like inside here?” I asked my armor.

“Journey estimates it can survive a crash.” Cathida said. “But it’s got no idea what’s through that portal and neither do I.”

“He does.” I said, grabbing the Deathless’s chestplate and shoving his own helmet back on his head. I hoped whatever relic armor did to seal itself off from the world could still be used when the armor’s offline - and I was proved right as I heard the familiar clicks around his throat of a full seal. Fine engineering, the armors were built to protect the user even in cases of complete power failure. Darkonis wasn’t going to die from any explosions today, as much as he tried.

I reached out and gave him a few pats on the helmet cheek, both to make sure the helmet was correctly sealed and second because Winterscar and - oh gods, I think I’ve spent too much time around Feathers.

Drakonis pulsed out power while I was having a minor existential crisis, occult flaring around him. I expected the ratshit, and wasn’t disappointed. A shockwave ripped free in a sphere around him, flattening anything delicate around the cockpit, breaking every single screen and instrument in a shower of floating shimmering glass fragments and bending some of the thinner metal bars around. The shockwave collided against the cockpit windows and walls. It all expanded out slightly but the sturdy construction held. On the other hand, the wave had been powerful enough to knock me away and back up into the ceiling.

“ETA?” I asked Cathida while I got a foothold against the ceiling. Drakonis wasn’t going anywhere, blindly trying to undo his helmet again and failing. Can’t feel much through metal gloves and that helmet was offline, no vision whatsoever.

“Better hurry.” Cathida said. “You’ve got seconds, not minutes.”

I made a snap decision and leapt back down at him, hands once more grabbing his chest. Occult rippled around me next, images flowing upwards with extended blades, cutting straight through the cockpit window.

The outside had a shield, nothing inside did and I was abusing that greatly. While my mirrors were doing the work, I twisted the man over my shoulders, angled my legs under me and pushed as hard as I could upwards.

I dissolved my occult mirrors at the same moment. We sped right at the damaged window. And a combined weight of possibly one thousand pounds of metal slammed and shattered right through as I used his armor like my personal battering ram.

We were in freefall now. The frigate zipped under me, bumping us both on the way out and nearly knocking my grip on him. Smoke and fire was trailing from the open bay doors, but the shield was still shimmering occasionally as the airspeeder slammed into shards of black glass.

Wait, what were chunks of glass still doing in the way? Lot more happening out here than I could have seen from the inside of the cockpit.

A look up showed me why there were still glass shards all around - the vortex was sucking it all up. We were caught in the slipstream of it, ahead of the pack from the airspeeder’s earlier afterburn, but still somewhat caught inside.

Which was really bad news for the whole plan. Sure, the rocks made for great stepping stones to push myself around, but I could tell the math wasn’t working out. If giant boulder sized pieces weighing several orders of magnitude more than me were being sucked into the vortex, the chances of leaping out of the stream were near zero.

Still tried to, hoping golden era ratshit technology built into the armor would somehow prove me wrong. A few ducks, dives and cursing among scattered leaps gave me the impression we were making some kind of headway, until I glanced down and could see the airspeeder still well in sight, engines dead as the whole thing started to roll slightly on its right. All three of us still trapped in the same lazy vortex drawing in all matter to the gullet.

A giant black shard slammed down into me as if to seal the deal, nearly knocking Drakonis out of my grasp for a second time, forcing me to take a detour in order to get free from the underside.

“All right, plan B time.” I muttered. “Survive the impact.”

Got to assume the portal wasn’t going to kill me, and plan for what was on the other side.

What’s the best way to survive being stuck in a freefall of multi-ton glass shards? Probably making sure to land on top of them instead of under them for a start.

“Journey, get me a path to the best place I can ride this out on.”

“On it,” Cathida said, and the HUD exploded with green arrows and circles, showing possible routes to jump off of in order to make it to the top of this wild ride.

A few leaps later, I was on the better side of a giant onyx shard and there weren’t any other shards of good enough size I could spot above me. That’s where I spent the last ten seconds of our freefall.

The airspeeder was much further down below, and was the first through the portal.

As if it was rousing itself one last time from stupefied slumber only to find itself in great danger, the engines sputtered to life one last time, accelerating the whole frigate in the worst possible direction - further into the portal. Blackness and stars were on the other side and the airspeeder slipped through it as if it had been plunged into water without a splash. Smoke, fire, metal groans and all. It vanished without a trace.

Giant shards followed behind it, with me riding on top.

The portal yawned, and swallowed us up.

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