Book 6. Chapter 2: Revenge trip
Apparently airspeeder pilots traditionally had to fight with their co-pilots for who gets to shoot the ice-clearing firepower, but since it usually took a few charges, mostly everyone got a chance to press the big buttons.
It certainly cleared off the ice, but we only had about ten minutes to get back in before everything froze over again so there was a short scramble.
Problem is that his warfrigate could only do so much to clear off the snow by the top layer. There was plenty more waiting for us under. And mitemade ground was resilient to anything Teed did to blow a path down, so anything that wasn't ice or snow was still mostly unmoveable.
At the bottom, we found the tunnel network was still backed up with snow, which was expected for this particular breach given its orientation with the surface wind. Normally, we’d need to waste a few explosive charges down here to clear off the snow.
Occult arcs worked just as well at pulverizing the way forward, even did some damage to the mite walls around us.
It’s a good thing relic armor could absorb heavy impacts, and warn me of when said impacts would be too tough for my body to take because with the way cleared, we found ourselves before the first real drop into the first strata.
Half sheer wall, half slope, wide open cavern with half-built concrete buildings half consumed by the walls around us. As if they’d all sunk into the ground and walls, then stopped and froze over. Some the of the staircases seemed outright horizontal instead of vertical, but they made for great stopping points.
Rope was lowered back down, affixed on the edges, and knights went forward, leap after leap until we found a large enough platform to redo the whole process.
Everyone else got warning chimes asking them to slow their fall using the attached rappel ropes if they ever started getting anywhere close to mild discomfort. I got Cathida, who was screaming at me to go faster instead.