The fail-safe was still alive, but its metallic components had melted to the point of incapacitating the thing. Nuka had managed to avoid the worst of the blast, but was still crying like a Gnophkeh, sitting in the tacky, smoking blood that had flooded the bay. The bio-helm filtered out everything but the smell, the bouquet of burnt hair and engine oil making Pipaluk’s eyes water. She didn’t look down at the fused mass of mewling fail-safe and gorgeous, dead subgineer. Instead, she yanked Nuka to his feet and fired a cold-shower code down his channel—the result was instantaneous, the coward straightening up and shuddering as his suit doused him in a psychoactive chemical spray.
“Subgineer Nuka,” Pipaluk barked in his face while he was ripe for imprinting. “Ready your weapon and follow me. Those hymirbjarg-brained academics have obviously breached the last airlock. Hurry!”
The subgineer saluted and snapped his olid-pistol off his belt. It was no microwave spitter, but it was better than the ceremonial gladius that Pipaluk had brought—had she known Laila wouldn’t be in her lab, ready for arrest, she obviously would have brought something more substantial. At least there weren’t any more fail-safes between them and the final airlock. Probably.
They cautiously entered the final bay, splashing in puddles as they moved through the cobalt twilight. Judging from the oily whorls of colour in the blood, the team of grad students, servitors, and spawn had taken out a fail-safe, as well, but there was no sign of the fallen guardian, nor, for that matter, any of Laila’s crew, beyond the blood. That was…odd. Holding her hand up to the last panel, Pipaluk saw her talons were shaking. She gritted her fangs, willing herself to enter the code, when Nuka nickered excitedly behind her. She lowered the volume on his channel before turning to see what was bothering him now.
A pillar of blood had flowed straight up into the air behind them. Pipaluk went into a roll, just as the formless spawn crashed down. Of course that was why there were no bodies—this must be one of Laila’s, injured in battle with the fail-safe and left behind to heal itself on the corpses of the fallen. It probably couldn’t have hid from the fail-safe for long, trapped alone with it in this bay, which meant they might be just behind the blasphemous Professori…unless she had died in this place, too. Well, no sense being optimistic just yet, Pipaluk reasoned, as her reflexes carried her backward, up, down, sideways, flipping away from the relentless, deadly ooze.
“Stink it!” Pipaluk panted, as she lured the pursuing wave back toward Nuka, who sat with his back to the final airlock. “Stink the thing, already!”
Nothing came over the subgineer’s channel and, cartwheeling up to his splayed body, she saw he was not simply lying down on the job; he had quit it altogether: His neck had been twisted almost completely off when the spawn had hit him, only the suit keeping it attached. Gross. The pistol in his hand seemed intact, however, and all she had to do was—
—Go spinning across the bay as the formless spawn caught her foot and hurled her away from her prize. It was on her before she stopped sliding over the slick basalt, but a low heatburst from her suit drove it back, the thing hissing as it smoldered. Before it could throw itself atop her again, she was on all fours and dashing back to Nuka’s corpse. It tried to put itself between her and the gun, but another suit-pulse let her slip past it, then the bony handle of the stinker was in hand. The spawn tried to hide in the pools on the ground, but her bio-helm filters picked up the creature immediately and she blasted it into oblivion with the foul little weapon.
“For Ane,” she caught herself saying, as she depressed the trigger a second, superfluous time, which surprised her—she was not one for redundancy or sentimentality, as a rule. If anyone found out she was going soft, they might make a move for her position, try to hit her with the old bump-and-shuffle. But there was no time for politics, not now. Giving the bay another scan, just to make sure she hadn’t missed any of the spawn in her haste, she turned and opened the final airlock, praying she wasn’t too late.
IV
The ruins of Eibon’s tower retained their pentagonal design but little else, at least that Pipaluk could recall from the blueprints. There certainly hadn’t been any mention of mineral cacti, molten streams of metal crisscrossing the floor, or a perpetual ashy cloud in the toxic air. A yellow moss coating the walls and fallen blocks confused her, for it was surely a close relation to the squamous fungus that grew only in the most hallowed temples of Tsathoggua, and yet she could not imagine a place less-favoured by the god than this foyer to his uncle’s realm.
The moss also carpeted the floor wherever the mercurial creeks did not, but was trampled down so thoroughly that she could make no estimate of who had passed this way, or when. Everywhere she looked were wet scraps of Voormis, oily hunks of fail-safes, and puddles of deconstructed formless spawn, but nothing seemed alive in the ruins. The grotto was cramped, dark, and malodorous; it immediately put her at ease.
Pipaluk crossed the bizarre chamber, ducking beneath acid-dripping stalactites that whispered to her in a foreign tongue as she methodically searched the area. She paid them no mind, for she made out the name ‘Hziulquoigmnzhah’ amidst their stony gibberings and knew them to be heretical deposits. Then, at last, she saw a florescent reddish panel set in a spit of black gneiss that rose from a pool of the liquid metal—the small plate had a crack at its base, and from this fissure issued the iridescent fluid that dribbled down the ebon rock to feed stream and puddle alike. There was no sign of Laila, any member of her team, or even an active fail-safe. Pipaluk had failed.
“Pipaluk!” Provost Ole blared in her ear, the Quorum channel forcejacked back on. He sounded upset. “We’ve been monitoring everything. You’ve failed.”
“Impossible,” she sneered, too tired and disappointed for diplomacy. “You’re bluffing; you can’t—”
“Subgineer Refn here sneakpatched us into your bio-helm before you even reached the second airlock,” said Ole. “He’s also filled us in rather thoroughly regarding the numerous infractions you have committed in the course of your tenure. Effective immediately, you are to return to the first bay, where politibetjents are waiting to relieve you of your government equipment. Thereupon, you will stand trial for putting your subgineers in harm’s way instead of using spawn, as is basic protocol. And then there is the matter of your refusal to obey my direct order to return to the Quorum for further instruction, and—”
Pipaluk couldn’t deactivate the channel anymore, but she found she could still mute it. Subgineer Refn, eh? She hadn’t seen that coming—she’d taken him back to her warrens a few months ago, but hadn’t found him particularly enjoyable or even memorable. Now she wondered if he had been researching her, probing for weaknesses, rather than probing for—well, no matter, the damage was done. She had to admit he’d made a decent play of it, going directly to the Quorum, but it was hard to admire an action that would most likely result in her being painfully sacrificed to the inscrutable god she had spent her entire life trying to serve.