12 Miles Below

“That’s them all right.” I zoomed out the viewpoint, looking around the scene to see what our local Deathless were up to. The answer: No gods damned idea.

They hadn’t bothered relocating their airspeeder out of the zone, just hauled it until they had no power left given how long we had to track them down. Fido did the heavy lifting, both for scouting and getting us fresh power cells to swap during the sprint. We actually fully ran out of power and had to plot out getting a fresh cell change midway through. Either the Deathless were spooked out of their minds about us, or they were plotting and scheming.

With that same distance it could have been halfway through the red forest or onto the grand highway.

But no, they decided the same fields of silver flower, same rock plateaus dotting the landscape, same onyx glass pillars jutting up from the ground, and just like last time, none of those pillars were nearby this particular field.

They were scheming something and I had no idea what was going on in their heads.

I turned and walked back down the hill, sending Wrath a quick text message telling her we’d be starting the fight pretty soon. Far down the hillside, past all the giant boulders and silver flowers weaving in between, were the rest of the knights milling about. At the center was our table of operations: one glorified rock that was slightly more flat to the ground than all the other rocks and boulders around the area, and the war council there were debating tactics. Father, Captain Sagrius, Lejis the Chosen priest, and a tablet with Marsella on video comms sharing the screenspace with a map.

We had to travel fast to catch up to Lejis and Fido. That meant leaving behind quite a few rations and personnel. Mostly the Chosen knights, machines and Marsella. Plus we had to source power cells from somewhere, so some of the machines gave their spares and went back home.

“I doubt it’s got anything to do with terrain.” Marsella’s voice crackled. She had a tone that made me strongly suspect she’d found a chair with a footrest slightly higher than her seat and was making use of it, though all that was off camera. “They wanted to get as much ground as possible to give their B team the time to rack the town over the coals. Assuming that’s what they’re doing, which I’m pretty confident the kid’s right about. Hence the distance and keeping it easy enough for us to find them.”

“Wrath’s got it handled.” I said, leaning back against the boulder behind me. “She’s the chef in the kitchen, and they’re crickets jumping into her pans. I’m not worried at all.”