"Right," Chelsea said. "See you at the bottom of the rope." She swung a leg over the lip, and was gone.
For a time, they progressed as before, leapfrogging one another down the shaft. In this section, lighting and terraces were intact, cane-thin rods vining between the trees to provide illumination. Benedick's suit prickled to warn him of unfiltered ultraviolet. He sealed his helm in response. He'd had enough of radiation burns.
As he slid down the cable, the overall effect was of gliding spider-silent through a cool, dappled tunnel. The vegetation, while lush, was climax growth, full of open spaces and long, clear lines of sight. After the cramped overgrowth of the previous shaft, the spacious bowers of this vertical forest soothed him. It would be harder for an enemy to ambush them here.
The life here was more familiar, though the oxygen levels remained high enough that he still saw insects of unusual size. In this microenvironment, those included flying forms: a dragonfly whose jeweled purple-blue body hung between wings of a half-meter span; a ladybug as big as a dinner plate.
Benedick wondered what such large arthropods consumed, and resolved to keep an eye out for predatory insect nymphs the size of his thigh. The stealthy manner of his descent--the only sound he made was in the brush of leaves against his armor and the whir of cable through the winch--meant that he passed within touching distance of many animals before they were even aware of his existence. A half-meter spotted cat hissed and vanished; a green-tinged sloth reached with dreamy control from one branch to another and swung away.
He grinned behind his helm--an expression that would have shocked most of his siblings. This was serious business. And he had a reputation for mirthlessness that he thought was as much the result of conditioned anhedonia as anything intrinsic to his character.
But the oxygen levels could make you giddy, and it was hard not to cheer up when you saw a sloth.
Mind on your work, Ben, he thought, in Caitlin's phrasing, and tried not to be too distracted by the wildlife.
Besides the high oxygen, one thing this shaft had in common with the one above was that it was cold. He couldn't feel it through the armor, but the sloth's long, coarse coat shone at the tips with frost, and frost also rimed the edges of the broad tree leaves. That had to be new, or transitory, because the trees themselves were hale, their foliage not yet curling.
That told him the system was continuing to lose heat, and heat was a thing not easily replaced unless they could find a way to generate energy--or tap the radiant heat of the expanding core of the supernova behind them, but that presented its own complex of problems.
He wondered how the trees had stayed intact through the acceleration. Perhaps--even broken and locked to a single setting--the gravity controls of the old commuter shaft were strong enough that they had locally compensated. It was an interesting hypothesis, because it carried the implication that, throughout the world, there might be other similarly protected spaces that could have sheltered anything within them. When they emerged from blackout, he would contact the angel and Caitlin with the suggestion.
A large trunk blocked his descent immediately below. He flexed knees to land lightly on it, stood, checked the cable with a quick glance up, and hopped over the side just as he heard Chelsea yelp through the comm.
"Benedick!"
Caitlin was the only person left alive who called him Ben. When she was speaking with him to call him anything.
"Here," he answered, one hand on the cable brake. He didn't trigger it yet, though--until you understand the situation, or you understand that halting will do less damage than pushing on, don't provide the enemy with intelligence.
"I'm under attack," she said. "Ambu--" Half the word, until her comm cut out.
Well, I guess that's a hint that we're on the right path. He slowed his descent, fighting the urge to rush. Charging to the rescue was one thing, so long as one was certain that one was charging to the rescue and not barreling into a trap. Silently, his black and bronze-brown armor blending into the dappled shadows of the leaves, he rotated himself so as to descend headfirst, and slipped lower.
The comm stayed dead, but before long his armor brought him the ambient sounds of combat. Crashing, a heavy thump, the splinter of green wood. No sound of weapons fire, which was suggestive.
The toolkit said "Brrt?" against his cheek.
"Shh," he answered. He swung in close to the nearest trunk and anchored the cable, in case Chelsea was still using it; he could sense weight on the opposite end. Then he disconnected himself and began the painstaking process of pressing close against the trunk and circling it.
Like a squirrel, he thought, as something liver red and about as large as his outstretched hand crashed through leaves nearby and bounced hard off the trunk of an age-gnarled sycamore as big around as an air lock door. Whatever it was, it left a trail of sparks, and a meat-colored smear on the tree's patchy green-and-silver trunk before arcing away through the canopy. Benedick sank spiked gauntlet-tips into the trunk of his own tree--branches to break the fall or not, it was a long way down--and continued his careful circumnavigation. Fight on, Sister. I'm coming.
Head-down around the curve of the trunk, he caught sight of her. She was indeed fighting, though her form was almost completely obscured by the lumpy, humping shapes of more of the hand-sized attackers. They shoved and jostled over the surface of her armor, as--blindly, with groping hands, because they occluded her faceplate as well--she clutched at them, grabbed and peeled, hurled them aside in a mess of bridging sparks. More dropped from the branches around her, however; the undersides of nearby trees writhed with the things, and for every one she got off, two more attached themselves.
Benedick hooked his knees over a thick, bent limb, having checked the underside for attackers, and--hanging like a sloth--stretched out both hands. The microwave projectors that had so successfully heated his supper had other uses now. While he didn't dare point them directly at Chelsea, even within the protection of her armor, the first step in getting her free was stopping the reinforcements. He couldn't do much about the ones humping down the cable toward her, like malevolent drops of molasses slipping along a string. But the dozens clustered on the undersides of the tree trunks, waiting their opening--those were fair game.
"Toolkit," he said. As his helm unsealed, he felt its silken fur uncoil from around his neck. A second later, it slithered the length of his arms. It plugged itself into a wrist outlet and reared up, spreading its fragile-seeming arms wide.
The liver-colored things sizzled but made no other sound. Like insects frying in the concentrated rays of the sun, they writhed, convulsed, and scaled from the trunk in showers, tumbling away below. Some, he heard hit solidly--a meaty thump as they smacked into a trunk or a limb. Some just brushed the leaves aside and vanished into the depths.
It didn't take long, which was a godsend. Microwaving burned stored power, and unless he was moving the armor couldn't use his own kinetic energy to recharge its batteries. Unassisted, the power cells wouldn't support this kind of expenditure long--and the toolkit couldn't have handled that sort of burn without his armor's help at all. But after less than ninety seconds, the only attackers remaining were the ones clinging to Chelsea and a few others too close to her to burn.
Benedick missed his anchor cable now. As the toolkit scampered back inside the safety of his helm, he grabbed the limb supporting his weight--and the equal weight of his armor--freed his legs, and pumped twice hard to make the swing-and-grab to Chelsea's side. He couldn't hear her, but it was possible that the fleshy, leechlike attackers were blocking her comm out but not in.