<u>34</u>
Miche arced through and then hit the floor on the other side of that malfunctioning hatch. Made a rough landing because he couldn’t heal well and stay in the air at the same time, and there wasn’t much room to maneuver. Found himself in a sort of tunnel or entry hall; low ceilinged, polished and tight.
Big, heavy bodies crashed hard against the hatch from outside. Jagged hooks thrust and slashed through the twisted gap between door and threshold, but the monstrous horde hadn’t got through. Yet.
The doorway’s ancient mechanism growled and whined, trying to open that twisted boarding hatch. Its noise was almost drowned out by the thunder of clicking, tapping and mimicking cries from the passage beyond. That, and by Miche’s own pounding heart.
He pushed backward with one leg and the arm that still worked, having to extinguish and pocket his energy-blade, leaving a long smear of blood on the gleaming white floor. Firelord’s last act for a very long time was to stanch the worst of his bleeding, for a major artery had been hit in the elf’s left shoulder, and only that stuck, cut-off hook had kept him from bleeding to death. After that, the small god retreated, too spent for anything more than a deep, lengthy rest.
“We need to move,” grunted Miche. “Put some more distance and doors between us and <u>those</u>.”
He got to his feet, wobbly from blood loss and badly-clamped pain. His mangled right leg would still hold him, and a hurried spell had ruthlessly smothered sensations of deeply chipped bone and torn flesh. Enough to limp down the corridor, if not very quickly, tending to turn in the wound-side direction. Worse, some kind of toxin had entered his body, causing slow but persistent damage. Made sense. If the meat-hooks failed in their first grab, they could just follow the blood-trail and wait for their poison to finish you off.
Nameless was gone again, scooting and dashing further down that low passage, barking madly. There was… he might have been just delirious, but… <u>music</u>. Slow and distorted; the dirge of a peppy welcoming tune. Light panels flickered and spat on the corridor walls, working to relay a message or advertise Gottshan’s many delights. He couldn’t be certain which.
“Find someplace secure…” he panted to Nameless, fighting to stay on his feet and keep moving. “Need time to recover.”
Lord Erron stepped in then, putting a figurative hand on his trembling shoulder.
“Recycle,” said the warrior, through Miche. “Twenty-one times from getting here ought to do it. Rebuild your manna. I can manage in the meantime with bandages and field-magic, and the marten will scout someplace safe to lie up. <u>Go</u>.”
He went. Just drifting off into unconscious nothing at first, leaving his friends in charge. And that was Miche, done utterly in for a bit. As for Erron…
The elf-lord pulled an old “shipmate care” charm out of memory; the sort of spell you’d use while dragging an injured friend away from a burning hole in the hull.
“None of that, Shipmate!” he ordered, inscribing a cross-and-tuck sigil with the hand that still worked. “Mind on the mission.”
…which right now was down to staying alive and uneaten. Small, bright figures appeared in the air all around him. Like fey lights, but juddering. Staticky. Less there to heal than to advertise food and entertainment, the glowing shapes projected well-being and appetite. Oddly, that helped.
Then the marten came streaking back like a river of furry black lightning. Squeaking and bouncing, the beast rose up like a snake to seize Erron’s blood-stained cloak and draw his attention.
“Found something?” he guessed. “Lead on, Scout. I will follow the best way I can, and hope that it isn’t too far for my strength…”
It wasn’t. As the clicking and thuds and mocked cries faded behind them… as the city’s slow, wavering music and engine noise grew… as his own rough breathing and pained, dragging steps seemed to fill up the passage… Nameless led him to a doorway marked “Elite Passenger Lounge”.
He pulled a hand away from his injured shoulder long enough to slap it against the door’s flashing green side panel. Left a bloody handprint, but got the door open (slowly, with much grinding of very old gears).
Inside, there were cushioned seats, soft lighting, and more of that warbling, off-kilter music. The floor was carpeted in something blue that puffed into dust at every one of his faltering steps. More doors lined the curving opposite wall. Five or seven of them. His vision kept swimming, and it would not agree on a number.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
He chose the first door that would open and lay in a straight line before him. Marked “Privacy”, inside was a bed and a big-screen light panel. There was more besides that, but he was burning with fever and venom by that point. Too nauseous to focus on anything else but roughly doffing his armor, lying down and instructing the marten. Metal clanged to the floor in his wake, shed like dragon scales.
“Do you… stand watch, Scout…” he grunted, easing himself down on the bed’s padded surface. (It crumbled away as he lowered his weight on the mattress, but the bedframe remained, so call it a win.) “Wake me at need.”
The privacy door ground noisily shut, sealing that little room off from the rest of the lounge. Safety, of sorts… if nothing <u>else</u> went wrong.
The elf-lord curled up on the bed, shaking with fever and chills. Was sometimes asleep, sometimes partly awake, seeing and speaking to Hana, his wife. Complexly overjoyed to find her, and bitterly ashamed of himself and his own abject failure. Frantically needing to know,
“Are you well, Hanie? Are you and the children safe?”
Only, she could not seem to answer him. Just hummed the song that takes away pain, bringing fey-lights and ease. Stroking his forehead, kissing his face many times. Crying and smiling and holding him close.
Just delirium, probably, but it speeded his healing. He mended somewhat. Was strong enough to sit up and work that hook-end out of his shoulder by the time that the child… Miche… returned.
His armor and weapons were piled in the corner at that point, his wounds mostly bandaged, treated and stanched with torn cloth; a bottle of something powerfully aromatic open on the low table that stood near the bed.
“There is a ‘bar’,” explained Erron. “Like a tavern, but with much better drink and very strange food.”
It seemed to be created on the spot, at command, from a glowing-bright menu of choices.
“The ‘cheeseburger’ is good, and the ‘fried chips with katsu’.” The fever had broken at last, leaving him very hungry and needing a drink. “Your scout found this place and kept watch as I slept. He is a very good beast, Miche.”
A very good <u>friend</u>, rather. The younger elf took back over, cleansing and healing with spells. More like thirty recycles had passed for him, but he’d come rushing back to find that all was better, if not fully well. They were safe and, yes, hungry. That something had saddened and shored up Lord Erron.
“You… aren’t really just an old story I heard, or a set of memories, are you?” asked Miche, as he next got to work mending armor and boot. “You’re a ghost? Like the ones on the Cloud?”
“I don’t know,” said Erron, shrugging his borrowed shoulders. “I cursed myself to death, or tried to, meaning to power some last-magic aid for my people’s escape ship. Then I came awake and relived my entire life up to… to defeat, capture and ruin.”
He did not have to explain, for Miche had lived it all, too, through Erron’s two-thousand-year memory.
“That was a very long time ago,” said the younger elf, whose own past stretched over just sixty-three days. From mid-Month-of-Ripening to early Month-of-First-Snow, he thought. “You… <u>we</u>… are here now together, doing the best that we can… And they will no doubt be frantic with worry, back on the Cloud. Meg is probably trying to batter her way into the city with axes and fists, right now.”
He felt, rather than saw, Erron’s answering smile.
“No doubt,” agreed the elf-lord, adding, “We should locate your shrine at best speed, set it right and then make our way back to the airship, before she peels Gottshan as one does an apple.”
Nameless had woken and sensed the change in management. Dropping down from a shelf, the marten climbed upon Miche’s chest to touch noses. Miche reached out and scratched behind the small animal’s ears. Said to both of his friends,
“Thank you.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
And very far distant in time, quite near in space, V47 Pilot considered the robot’s question. He stood in an ancient Reliquary, facing the masters'' locked refuge. Took .005<sup>th</sup> of a nano-tick thinking it over. Spoke to his waiting AI through the Titan’s interface then, asking,
“Vee, can you take control of my body while I go to this virtual haven? I do not trust the robot not to just flash me to particles, if no one prevents him.”
‘We will be separated again, Pilot,’ sent V47.
“Yes… but this time we know it is coming, and we have arranged it, ourselves, so that I have something left to come back to.”
The entire exchange took less than a milli-tick, but the archive robot was impatient, anyhow, drumming various weapon-tipped arms on its bright metal carapace.
‘It is a logical stratagem,’ replied V47. ‘If you do not return…’
“I will, Vee. OVR-Lord failed and so shall the masters. Whatever is in there is cobwebs and dreaming; the drug-sleep of cowards who long ago shrank from the fight. After all of this time, what are they even <u>like</u>?”
‘You will return,’ amended V47. ‘The Reliquary, this robot and all of Etherion stand hostage to your safe emergence, Pilot. At Bide-a-While Station, I caused damage. That was nothing. This world will discover what a Titan is capable of, should your return be delayed.’
V47 Pilot nodded. Right to the end, clear to the hilt, he had a good friend. The truest of all in his short, punctured life.
“I will go in, find the masters, then fight my way out if it comes to that, Vee. You take control of my body, out here. The data packet… use your judgement, Buddy. I do not forbid you from scanning it… but I’d rather be with you, whenever you finally do that.”
Because, at the possible end of all things, what mattered more than helping a friend?
‘Request received. Request processed. Accepted. I will await your return, Pilot. Complete your procedure overclock-swift, for the sake of Etherion.’
V47 Pilot nodded again.
“Understood,” he replied. Then, turning to face the Archivist (who’d started to hum and fiddle with artifacts) he said,
“I am prepared, Robot. Send me inside.”