12 Miles Below

“You humans are insane.” Kres said, from a safe distance away on a branch he’d just landed on. His beak turned left and right, watching over the dead machine. “Magic. You humans can actually use magic.”

I gave a shrug, then patted one of the dead monster’s legs. “Drakonis did tell you that we’re Deathless. Comes with the turf. More importantly, Murdershrimp is now Murderchum. Or maybe Murdered-shrimp? …Hang on, let me have a do-over."

Drakonis groaned, taking his helmet off for a breath of air, then hooked it to the shoulder plate. "Your fucking jokes are getting worse, Winterscar. Stick to fighting, it’s the only thing I’ve seen you good at."

I gave a quick tut, "You wouldn’t understand. Wit and wordplay are just too civilized for the likes of you."

"You lack both. Nothing to understand there.” He shook his head and pointed at the dead beast. “Job’s done, let's strip it for power cells and get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah, job’s done…” But that one thought put a stop in my step forward.

Was it?

All machines had a pattern of behaviors, and I’d started picking up on Murdershrimp’s - Try to ambush, kill fast, and if that failed it would try to run and repair itself quickly. That’d been what it did at the fountain. Now, we caught the next set of patterns past the run phase. If it couldn’t run, it would try to hide, like it had in the ravine. And if panicked, it would even make the attempt in plain sight, camouflaging right in front of us - as if we wouldn’t notice it.

There’s more than one way to hide without camouflage… I flared out my occult sight, searching through the giant concept of a machine right besides me. And deep inside, was a soul fractal. A still working and well powered soul fractal.

The little scrapshit was playing dead.

I didn’t know if it was going to attack us the moment we tried to undo the power cells, or if it had hidden reserves deep inside and would slowly lick its wounds shut once we weren’t around anymore. Given it’s skilled at repairing itself, it was likely going to wait us out. But I didn’t intend to find out.

“Know where a giant shrimp monster like this would store power cells?” I asked Drakonis, taking casual steps around the dead monster. “You’re the expert when it comes to farming machines for those.” All the eyes were dead, or so they looked to be. But a working camera didn’t need giant neon violet lights flashing to show it’s working. For all I knew, Murdershrimp was watching our every move.

“You humans plan to cut apart the machine and recover power cells from it?” Kres asked. He seemed utterly in shock, if the voice coming out of my helmet had translated that correctly.

“We do it all the time.” Drakonis said, then turned his gaze over to where I was wandering around. “Screamers have their power cells right by the center chestplate. Drakes have four, two on each side of the ribcage. It would be a safe bet to assume the chest cavity of this monster would have the cells if that pattern holds. I’ll check through the tail just in case, you go into the chestplate. Do you know what you’re looking for in general, or need me to show you how to gut a toaster?”

“I’m good.” I said. “The armor can guide me through most steps. Hang on before you start cutting into it, I want to take some pictures first.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Drakonis hissed. “I don’t know if there’s more of its kind around here, or what kind of distress signals it sent before biting it. We grab the cells and go.”

Murdershrimp possibly playing dead meant that if he goes closer, he might set off something. “Relax, live a little.” I told him. “And if we run into more of his kind, having photos to study might help us plan things out a bit more.”

Drakonis seemed to breath in deep, but then exhaled and looked up to where Kres was perched. “Fine. Make it quick.”

His guess was solid. I already had my answer even without asking Journey to help identify things - I could see the concepts of power cells clustered up inside the chest cavity, eight of them. Pairs of two, separated evenly around, so that if any cluster was attacked, the rest of the power supply wouldn’t break down. But they were all generally deeper under the broken mandible and folded up scythe arms.

Assuming that was all the legs and arms. For all I knew, there might be more hidden deeper inside, ready to reach out and yank me into a deadly hug. The beast had arms just about everywhere.

Unfortunately for Murdershrimp, I wasn’t dumb all the time. I walked by the chassis, hand on where my chin would be if the armor’s helmet wasn’t in the way. I made it look like I was deciding on where to start digging.

In reality, I was messaging Journey, and using a private channel for it all.

“Journey. Any transmissions or signals detected around it?”

“Negative. No abnormal readings detected.”

Good, that meant Murdershrimp was dedicated to the bit, and hadn’t sent any distress calls to anyone yet.

“Murdershrimp’s playing dead. I need you to override the armor and take a shot exactly where I’ll put a mark. I can’t afford to miss and it has to be lighting fast. First off, load an occult shell into the shotgun barrels.”

With Cathida, I could have just asked her to shoot for me. With Journey, I had to be super detailed on every last bit I needed. The HUD clicked green showing that my arm cannons had been loaded up, and I had to go through the general admin scrapshit to get the armor to comply.

A single bullet was all that was needed to break a soul fractal, but I didn’t want to miss. A shotgun shell would blast with good enough accuracy through the chassis, and multiple bullets would nick through the fractal. Better solution.

Murdershrimp’s not coming back with a deeply warped obsession over murdering me, no thank you. One time was enough.

“You done?” Drakonis asked, tossing his bag of power cells on the ground and grabbing the water flask on his belt pouch.

Inside the armor, I was jumping between the soul sight and my regular sight, trying to plot out a target trajectory that matched what I saw. Fortunately, Journey was great at spatial navigation, since it let me take measured paces around the dead titan.

I’d take a few steps, mark a location with my eyesight, and then another few steps. It technically only took two to get an approximation on where I wanted the shot to fire through, but I repeated the process about seven more times just to be sure. By the seventh, it had a small circle superimposed on the HUD that pointed directly to the soul fractal.

“On my mark.” I said, taking a few casual steps around the jaws. Trying to find the best place to fire from that had no eyes on me. “Three shots should be enough for at least one pellet to to make it deep enough without issue.”

“Affirmative.” Journey answered.

“Okay and… mark.”

Journey’s hand lifted with incredible speed, didn’t pause to aim for a moment, and opened fire into the dead machine. The HUD instantly lit up with red warning signs of bruising detected across the entire hand Journey controlled. Pain was starting to pop up, but the soul fractal let me shut that out completely. The armor hadn’t been joking about how brutally fast it could move if it didn’t have any security enabled.

It was a solid marksmanship as well, the soul fractal deep within Murdershrimp winked out at the same moment. No trace of the unity fractal activating. Caught the bastard by surprise.

“What was that?” Drakonis called out, head turning around to find me.

“It was still alive and playing dead.” I gave one of the legs a light kick. “Problem’s all fixed now.”

“It twitched and you panicked.” He said, eyes narrowing down with clear suspicion.

I shrugged, drawing out a longsword to start the work. “Better safe than sorry.” The armor on Murdershrimp was thick, a knife wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere.

Kres remained silent far above, watching the spectacle with measured calm.

Drakonis shrugged, standing back up and advancing to the tail end, his own blade lighting up.

“Never really got a chance to dig into these machines before.” I said, starting on the chestplate sections, letting my armor pry them off and away. “Always curious about what makes them tick. Do the Undersiders make use of more parts from dead machines than just their power cells?”

“Raw materials.” Drakonis said. “It’s a symbiotic industry parallel to power cell hunters. We kill and take the most valuable innerards, and scrap towers load up hover sleds behind with the rest of the body. Cut it apart to be melted down outside the city. Some mechanical stuff gets recycled.”

“Not all of it? A fully mechanical arm could be used for a lot of things. Even outside of combat applications.”

I grabbed one of Murdershrimp’s smaller folded up limbs. About the size of my arm, and ended in a spiky point. Maybe I could graft a few arms to Journey? Ones with hands of course. Give the armor more options to work with. On the other hand... they might get hacked and to strangle me.

I’ll put that idea down as a ‘maybe.’

Drakonis gave a tut. “Never seen anyone make a machine arm move. Trying to Interface with machine software is an easy way to brick any system, so there’s no reverse-engineering any of that.”

Ah, that made sense.

“You humans truly are insane.” Kres said from his branch up top. “My people avoid machines at all possible chances. It’s written into the very rules of our society.”

“Trying to make machine parts work is banned in most cities I know of.” Drakonis added. “For obvious reasons. Safer for a city’s health to just handle melted scrap in the long run. And we’re not going toe to toe with the machines, we pick our battles very carefully. It’s still a dangerous job. Underestimate machines even once, get caught out of position or be too greedy with how far you push your luck and you die. Most rookies die within the first six months, overconfidence.”

“Overconfidence. Against machines.” Kres said. And the tone he said it in made it absolutely clear just how far out that idea was to the Odin.

“...I see your point.” Drakonis said, slowly turning back to his work.

On my end, I got to see more about what makes a machine tick with each slice of my longsword. Hydraulic lines and electrical wiring were carefully shielded and separated, minimizing the risk of a critical failure from a single lucky hit. And there was armor deeper inside, many of it wrapped around the arm joint starting points, likely protecting the motors that moved those things.

Kres hopped lower down the tree from branch to branch, until he was nearly right above me. He eventually gave in to the curiosity and jumped down to perch on one of the dead legs. I didn’t need to know bird body language to tell he was being extremely cautious, it looked more like he’d fly off at any small movement.

The bird had an odd way of looking at things, beak pointed off to one side so that one of his eyes had an unobstructed view at what I was doing. He was also shuffling closer, one hesitant claw after another, trying to get a better look.

“First time seeing a machine cut open?” I asked.

“Yes.” He said. “First time also seeing how a human uses a longsword. In combat you were… quite powerful.”

Come to think of it, I did hold off a giant mechanical monster with more arms than anyone should be using, and I held my ground pretty good. Maybe I’ve become more like Father?

Much to my surprise as I cut deeper into Murdershrimp, there weren't any spare arms, but the sheer amount of other redundant parts made me think the monster could have half its body blown up and it would still be able to limp around.

Small occult bullets might not be enough for the bigger targets, or I’d need to have a better understanding of where the weak points were so I could aim for them. The soul fractal was the easiest one, but I’d need to get close enough to spot it through the occult sight and destroying it wouldn’t completely end the machine. To’Aacar still moved even after having his soul destroyed, the shell continued to follow generic instructions. Hmm.

Perhaps occult bullets to puncture into the superstructure, with a detonation housed inside? But the layers of armor everywhere made me think that wouldn’t be a perfect counter.

I did find another possible weak point of sorts. There were cooling vents, still protected under armor with joints to them. Halfway through, I cut a nice chunk off as a souvenir. I’d attach it somewhere on my armor later. “How much time do you think we have until friends show up?”

“Not sure.” Drakonis said over the comms. “Drakes are fast to the scene, screamers wait for their pack to assemble before hounding after the ping. As for this specimen... It was solidarity, it’s possible it was the only machine within the area.”

“We know of machine nests, but they are all far away from the guardian.” Kres offered. He’d gotten close enough he was right behind me, watching over my shoulder as I cut pieces, looked them over in my hand and chucked them backwards once I was done cataloging all of it.

His pack was noticeably bigger than it had been when I first saw him.

“That the Odin know of.” Drakonis said. “For all we know there’s machines under our feet, crawling in the ground like ants.”

“Mites might take offense to that.” I said. “But I’ll try to speed up on my end.”

Mostly got a good look at everything I was curious about. We still had a time limit to how far we could stretch our reserve of power cells, but it was no longer a pressing issue. There were eight waiting to be yanked out of Murdershrimp, which made about sixty four hours of sustained full time armor use. Maybe an extra three days worth for the both of us, in addition to our current reserve. Less of a pressing deadline than it had been.

I knew I was taking my time here checking into what made Murdershrimp tick, I should be grabbing those power cells and making a run for it. I could come back a few days later and continue investigating once we’re all sure there aren’t other machines in the area.

With most of my immediate curiosity satisfied, I began cutting around for where the power cells were.

Eventually, I found something familiar. “Found the power cell access points.” I called out.

“Finally, found nothing on tail so far.” Drakonis called out, and I heard the sounds of him jumping off and landing hard on the ground, turning to make his way up to my section.

“Power cell access points?” Kres asked, and I realized he’d gotten close enough I could hear his original words instead of Journey’s translation.

I tapped the metal sections with the tip of my sword. “These. That’s the machine stomach in a manner of speaking.”

Drakonis shuffled in, grabbing my shoulder and looking over it. “Wait, that looks like an airspeeder’s power cell chamber?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they are. Just extended out to push the cells deeper into the chassis.” I said, ripping off one more layer of armor next to it. I made sure the slab of metal didn’t slam into Kres as I tossed it backwards, that’d be very rude.

Under the metal armor was a familiar handle. A twist opened up the chamber, and inside there was a whirl of machinery. Golden green light flooded the area as an inner piston pushed the cell outwards.

Turns out, Relinquished didn’t stray too far in her designs. Murdershrimp had to have some way of replacing these over time.

We got to work pulling out the rest from its guts from there, wrapping up the whole thing in a few minutes more. In a way, it was a shame to rip apart and loot such a marvel of engineering.

But then again, it had tried to kill us. Repeatedly. So I didn't feel too bad about gutting it for parts.

It didn’t take too long, less than ten minutes all in all. No weapons or fractals recovered from the dead shrimp, so the loot had been lackluster. I’d considered cutting the arms up to recover the occult blades embedded within, but those weren’t as irreplaceable as they used to be.

"Well, this should keep us all going for a while," I said, slotting a fresh cell into my armor's leg plate. The familiar hum of energy and hiss of pressured gas filled my ears as the suit's systems showed full power. The rest of the cells were tossed into Drakonis's bag of goods.

He caught them, making sure each fit snugly inside, his movements efficient and practiced. "Good. Let’s clear out of here. Operation time shows we've been active for nearly a full day," he said. "We should find a place to camp."

“Kres, know any safe spots to spend the night around here? We’re looking for anything with only one access point, or has mite tech in the area. Fountains or terminals, anything really. But far off from this location.”

Anywhere that had a mite terminal I could plug into would let me contact either Abraxas or Wrath. And once I’ve got them on the line, getting back home would be far easier.

"There's a cave." Kres reported. "I strongly suspect it may have something to do with your own appearance."

“Why’s that?”

“It held a mite pillar that seemed linked to the portal you came from. I was studying it over the week."

My interest was instantly piqued. It's not only mite tech, but Kres found a link between that and the portal? The way home was already half-way cleared just off day one. "That sounds like exactly the kind of place we need to explore. Thanks, Kres." It felt a little odd to be thanking a bird, but talking to a voice on the comms felt like I was talking to any old teammate.

“You are welcome… human.” The bird said, with equal awkwardness. “Well, there would be another item of note. If we are working together… I should introduce you to the greyroamers.”

“I'll take a guess it's the wolves that we saw at the start?” Drakonis asked, head perking up at that. “I was curious to where they ran off to after the machine came.”

“Yes. That is also what the Icon of Stars calls them.” Kres said. "Wolves. But they are not either, modified she calls them. Like the Odin are."

“One tried to speak to us earlier today.” I said, “But we couldn’t make any sense of what it was saying. Do you speak their language?”

“I do. I will translate for you.” Kres confirmed, “They also suffer the same enemy as the Odin, and this pack has traveled with me on my own gambit. If you are going to help the Odin, you will be helping them too. Their den is nearby the cave, it would be a good time to meet.”

I turned to Drakonis with a shrug, then patted my legplate. "We've got a full stock of power cells now, the biggest enemy in a few miles is dead, and we've got a solid lead on the portal. I think we can afford to explore a little."