Nothing of the kind.
“More kobolds!” Brom says, voice down to a hard whisper.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, massed around the walls like a river-piled deadfall, their jointed tubes and pads jumbled in with long heads and camera eyes—still pale, still supple, but motionless, silent, and in such confusion I can’t begin to figure out what the mass would have looked like alive and working.
Maybe the kobolds had come together like Tinkertoys to become a single machine, to more efficiently carve out the lava and metal with hundreds of grinding, cutting pads, still busy, still digging—
DJ splashes through an ankle-deep pool. The chamber appears to have been expanded within the past few days or weeks. Water could have been kept longer in the lower tunnels, allowing the kobolds more time to keep digging—until they connected with a dry passage and everything drained. But draining water wasn’t what killed them. They can move around for some time even after the water is gone—I saw one do just that. Maybe they can even keep working.
A gigantic mining machine, a big operation—
Until somebody—possibly Captain Coyle herself, or Gunny de Guzman, whom I first saw with the lawnmower—ran rampant and sprayed beams all through the hollow. Spiraling scorch marks rise across and around the walls, cleaving the thick masses of kobolds, up to the rugged ceiling. By definition, a lawnmower is excessive—so what’s an excess of excess? Mad, thorough destruction.
Our sisters might have figured they were about to be attacked. Maybe they were attacked. But we see no blood, no human bodies—except for Voors.
Ackerly and Brom and DJ stand at the center of the hollow, stunned. “This is our shit!” Ackerly says, his voice very low now, trying to reason through the threat, the cause. “What if these fucking kobolds are Ant scouts—little buggy drones or shit? They’re inside, checking things out, making their moves, so our sisters righteously carved them into lunch meat!”
“These aren’t Ant drones,” Brom says quietly.
I agree. They don’t fit any known pattern, don’t carry weapons, and haven’t hurt us or even threatened us.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re a kobold whether you’re alive or dead,” Ackerly says. “Maybe they can revive and spring up and grab you… like zombies! Soda straw zombies.”
“Shut up,” DJ says in fierce disgust.
They’re all looking right at me. It’s never good when Skyrines start plumbing the depths of their intellect.
“We have to get back to Sanka,” I say. It’s all I can think to do: finish our mission, pass the buck—inform our commander the eastern gate is locked, we haven’t seen any Antags in the Drifter…
Only kobolds, whatever the fuck they are.
DJ walks ahead and we follow, muttering in the shadows and damp as he flings his arm right, then left, guiding us. We’re moving fast. Our heads hurt from all the pressure changes.
He halts at a wide spot in the tunnel and slams his hand against a hatch set into the wall, covering an opening in the floor about two meters wide, not an airlock but maybe watertight. “Okay,” he says. “I know this one. This covers a shaft that takes you down maybe fifty meters, to where nobody’s been except maybe the Voors. If we can get it open.”
“And you know that because…?” I ask.
“I told you!” he shouts. “The booth. It’s… up here, you know?” He taps his head again and I feel a sudden anger, an outrageous urge to just start kicking him and the walls, because it’s all so nuts. Would a little certainty and sanity hurt whoever’s in charge, please, just this once?
Instead, I ask, “Will it take us any closer to the southern gate?”
DJ thinks this over. “No,” he says. “Deeper, down to a big void, no idea what’s inside.” He kneels and manages to pry up one side. “Look, it’s not locked.”
The door is light, not steel—probably some polymer printed out by the depositor.
“Is there space down there for a good-sized group to hide?”
“Definitely,” DJ says. “Really big.”
“Fucking hold fire!” someone shouts from down the tunnel—a woman. “Seventh Marines, Akbar!”
I recognize the voice. It’s Captain Coyle.
“Fuck,” Brom says under his breath.
First down the tunnel walks Vee-Def, pushed out front by Sergeant Mustafa, and he doesn’t look happy. He gives me a warning glance as helm lights flash. Theirs is not a cordial relationship.
“Fuck this shit,” he says wearily, and Mustafa taps him on the back of his neck with the butt of her sidearm. He reels forward and falls to his knees.
Ackerly, Brom, and DJ form a tight square around me, and we all palm sidearms.
Mustafa glares. “He’s being an asshole,” she says, then reaches to help Vee-Def back to his feet.
Coyle and four of our sisters come out of the shadows and join us in the wide spot, where they surround us like it’s old home week, checking us over, casually checking status of our sidearms, monkeys picking nits, social as shit in a chute—but my head is buzzing, my adrenaline is way up.
Shrugging off Mustafa’s help, Vee-Def stands. His eyes are heavy, and not just with pain. Betrayal. Rage.
“What the hell happened to you?” I ask Coyle.
Without meeting my eyes, she softly, gently tells us about the unexpected arrival of twelve more Voors, coming in through the eastern gate, fully armed with pistols and assault weapons. Her voice is flat, deadly calm, like she’s on some sort of drug.
“The Voors drew down,” she says, pacing around the hatch. DJ bends and swings the hatch up. At Mustafa’s scowl, DJ backs off. “There was a brief struggle, nearly everyone returned fire. Two Voors were killed by bolts, two of ours were killed by projectiles, and we overwhelmed the rest. Some broke loose and ran down here. When we got here, they ambushed us, attacked us again.”
“What about Lieutenant Colonel Roost?”
“Killed in the first attack.” Coyle suddenly looks right at me, face like an angry little girl’s, defying me or anyone to say she’s a liar, but that’s exactly what she is, a liar—and we all know it.
The ladies have sidearms out and charged. De Guzman levels that goddamned lawnmower, expression total trigger. I idly observe that if she fires she’ll take out not just us but half her team.
“Ladies, ladies,” Ackerly says, holding up his hands.
DJ’s sweating, losing focus.
“Where’s Teal?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Coyle says. “Doesn’t matter.”
The sisters loosen their ring but not their vigilance.
“Listen up,” Coyle says, her voice ringing against the walls as if she’s addressing a platoon. “We have orders. New orders. The Antags are going to overwhelm this place, and command doesn’t want it to fall to them. So we’re taking all our spent matter and mining explosives and shit… rigging it to release all at once. We’re going to collapse the upper works.”
Brom and Ackerly shake their heads and look dubious. DJ stands aside, back hunched, like he’s going to be sick. He keeps looking at the hatch.
“Sir, why not mount a defense until they reinforce?” Brom asks pertly, as if rational questions are still in order. Ackerly pokes Brom in the ribs but it doesn’t seem to register. “We have the weapons, you say we have enough charges—”
Coyle ignores him and turns to me. “Where have you been?” she asks.
“The eastern gate,” I say.