Chapter 154: (Telkan) (2/2)
The jungle was quiet, the slamming explosions having fooled the jungle into thinking the threat was heading away. Many of the leaves were limp, the vines looking yellowish and brittle, the moss crinkling beneath their feet. Twice they jumped over large tubes of nutrient that only the top foot or so of the pipe was exposed.
Bellona suddenly stopped, putting one finger to her purple lips.
”Hold here. Firing ring,” Vuxten ordered. He knelt down in the middle of the circle of his troops as they all kneeled down, facing outward, weapons up against their shoulders but pointed down slightly.
Long minutes passed, broken only by the hissing of the two massive Warbound, who stood to either side of Vuxten and the cracking and creaking of thick ice nearby. The rain fell with a hiss and the ash made a whispering sound as it coated everything, mixed with the rain, to create a sticky blackish red coating on things.
”Telkan,” came a soft voice from the mist. ”Platoon coming in.”
”Send one forward. Advance and be recognized,” CPL Wikwin said, keeping his voice low.
From out of the mist came a tall creature. Taller than even a Terran, long limbs, graceful movements, clad in silver armor chased with gold, a spear of glittering chrome and crystal in one hand and a shield of insect carapace with leather painted in an ornate design. They wore jewelry that glittered with purpose and function and were almost haunting in appearance.
”I am Hal-deer, servant of the Elven Queen Gal-And-Del . We of the Galahad-herim Warriors are with you, at the behest of our great High Queen Loo-Thee-In, on this quest,” the creature, it could only be an elf, said softly. ”For Scarred Telkan and beauty we assist thee.”
Vuxten stood up, nodding. ”We welcome your strength and cunning with this quest. Bring forth the rest of your warriors so we may continue.” Again, the formulaic, ritualistic phrasing came almost naturally.
The elf nodded slowly, making a motion. Over a dozen of the elven warriors moved out of the mist, all of them armed with a shield and sword, all of them clad in silver armor decorated with gold.
”Alternate order. Warbound in the rear,” Vuxten said, moving forward again. The elves and Telkan fell in behind him, staying five paces apart in a long stringing line as they all moved forward. The giant Warbound hissed and clanked as they moved forward, but the sound was lost in the hiss of the rain and the cracking of ice.
Vuxten noted that the elves did not question if he knew where he was going, just followed as he followed Bellona's whispered urgings.
The jungle gave way to rock and gravel, only several thick nutrient pipes breaking ground here and there, with ice thick on rocks and the granite cliffs to either side. Slowly the group moved through the darkness, snow, and ash. The gravel and rocks crunched beneath the power armor troop's boots, made grinding noises beneath the massive feet of the Warbound. The elves moved silently.
Out of the fog loomed buildings and wrecked Precursor machines, covered in ice and frost.
”Precursor wreckage, remember your spacing,” Vuxten said softly.
He led them in a twisting meandering route, careful to never come to close to either the Precursor wreckage, the destroyed Terran war material, or the dead moss that had failed to break down the detritus of the war.
They began passing Overseer buildings, seeing wrecked vehicles of the Precursors, and twice passed piled skeleton of Lanaktallan Overseers.
Still Bellona slowly, stately, moved through the wreckage, leading Vuxten further and further.
There was the banging here and there of metal hitting metal. One massive Precursor wreck the sound of a piston hammering slowly made Vuxten warn everyone to watch that vehicle. A wrecked Terran warmech still had power arcing between damaged components.
Finally a cave entrance emerged from the fog. Thick nutrient pipes came down from the glacier, from under the ground around the cave entrance, leaving one the dead monorail tracks leading into what could have only been a mine ages ago. Vuxten, using hand motions, ordered his people and the elves to get up on the monorail.
The team had to backtrack for a few hundred meters to find a spot for the Warbound to get up to the five meter wide rail
The jungle's hatred pulsed at Vuxten's mind, but he pushed it away with a snarl, taking hold and embracing the pain from his knee to push his anger even further.
He led them into the cave, using passive nightvision rather than risking lights, reasoning that anything living underground would be sensitive to lights. The Telkan squad still put out the repeaters every hundred meters or if there was a bend in the cave tunnel that would block line of sight between the repeaters.
So far, there wasn't anything to report.
It began to get noticeably warmer in the caves and tunnels as he followed Bellona's burning purple eyes and pale deathly beauty. Moss began to cover the floors and walls and ceilings, vines began twisting among the support struts, on the struts of the dead platform highway of the monorail that the Telkans and elves were following, up the walls, and covering machinery.
The monorail terminated at an elevator shaft and one look told Vuxten that it was dead, no power.
”We're going to have to climb,” Vuxten said. He thought for a second. ”When we're at the bottom we'll signal and the Warbound can jump. Use your...”
471 was flashing an icon at him.
”Everyone hold one,” Vuxten said.
--hard light platform-- 471 flashed. He flashed a drawing of four Telkan Marines climbing down the shaft, using two hardlight projectors each to form a platform that a single Warbound stood upon.
”Engineer it up, 471, and pass it out. Can you nano-forge it?” Vuxten asked.
--warbound forges-- 471 said.
”Pass it to the warbound engineers then,” Vuxten said.
--roger roger--
The entire group knelt down, staring into the darkness. The engineers of the group, one per trooper but two per Warbound, gathered in a tight cluster, the icons flashing so quickly it was impossible to translate and the collaborated on the designs. Twice the ground shuddered but the shock absorbers on the monorail worked well enough that the group stayed stable. It only took a few minutes for the massive (by Telkan standards) Warbound to use their nano-forges to print out a set of hard-light projectors for each of the Telkan Marines. The greenies went about attaching them. It took 471 a minute longer till he just attached that at either side of the 'hump' that 471 could be completely armored inside of.
”We will go first and last. We are more adept at climbing,” one of the elves, Tran-Due-Ill, said while the engineers were still designing the templates for the hard light projectors.
”Go ahead. We'll be right down,” Vuxten said. ”We need to see what we're getting into.”
The elf nodded and trotted over to the elevator shaft, which at one point had been big enough to fit mono-rail train cars in but now was just a straight shaft. The elves all started climbing down warped and twisted struts and supports, quickly vanishing, while five of their number knelt down near the edge of the shaft.
”Lots of wreckage, but enough room for them to get down so far,” Tran-Due-Ill said after a few minutes. ”Lots of heat coming up from below, passed more than a few nutrient pipes.”
The minutes ticked by slowly as the engineers and then the nano-forges worked. Vuxten took the time to set down another repeater, this one larger, and had each trooper come by and place their glove's induction pad against the repeater's to download their footage so far.
If the repeater didn't hear from them in seventy-two hours or when it was ordered to, it would start the commo chain and broadcast out everything that First Telkan and the Elves had seen.
”Almost down. Some shells of the evil ones, the wreckage of a servant of the Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol. We will bless it and continue,” Tran-Due-Ill said softly.
Vuxten just nodded, glad he had looked up the word ”religion” and read up on it months ago.
Everyone was gathered up before Tran-Due-Ill reported in.
”Shaft opens up into a grand cavern. The enemy is everywhere along with the blasphemous life. No threats, but it is a long way down,” Tran-Due-Ill said.
”Roger. We'll be down in a few. Do not engage unless engaged,” Vuxten said.
”As you wish,” the elf answered.
”I'll take point then Gamma first, then Sigma, little brothers, keep the hard light platform steady,” Vuxten said. ”You're going to heat up, this is going to require a lot of juice.”
Roger icons flashed as Vuxten moved to the shaft and looked down. Even with light amplification and passive nightvision it just vanished into darkness. For a second he had a slight twinge of vertigo but he pushed it away.
Bellona sat on a twisted strut, almost invisible, her sheer white wrap fluttering and twisting in the breeze coming up from the depths of the shaft.
Vuxten jumped down, landing on a spur, then kept moving. Every hundred meters he dropped a signal repeater that sat in passive mode. His creation engine was running a little hot so he passed the duty off to the two squad leaders, just concentrating on getting down.
At the bottom he set up another one of the heavy repeaters. The elves also moved over and laid their palms on the induction data link, chanting softly to themselves.
Bellona led Vuxten further in, through twisted caves, to another shaft, and then more twisting caves, to another.
At the bottom of that one Vuxten ordered his men to rest. The elves chose struts of durasteel to lay on and eat food from the packs they carried. At the bottom of the shaft were several destroyed monorail cars and a supervisor's platform. He moved through it, tearing open panels, and with the help of his two team leaders, began grabbing handfuls of conductive wire, superconductor wiring, chunks of durastall and duralloy, glass chunks, and plastic/plasteel chunks, and handing the destroyed pieces to the greenies of the team.
The greenies opened the port to the creation engines and fed the destroyed components into the misty compartment, watching as the grinders and nanites tore it apart to store for the nanoforges.
Three hours of rest and Vuxten got everyone to their feet, ordering the squad leaders to tell their men to tab a piece of stimgum. The elves nodded and chewed on dark purple leaves, staining their teeth.
Vuxten's knee was stiff as they moved into the darkness of the caves. According to his inertial mapping system they were eighteen miles into the connected mountains and eight thousand feet down from the initial cave, still three thousand feet above sea level.
The air was hot, rich with oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and monoxide, hydrogen, and H2O molecules. Water dripped from the ceiling onto the mossy floor. Plants lined the tunnels, making them feel more like corridors through the jungle than beneath ground.
Bellona's outfit had changed from the diaphanous white cloth to her armor, her flamer in her hand dripping liquid fire, as they moved through the tunnels. When Vuxten had realized what he was seeing he snapped at the squad leaders to get ready.
As they crossed a cavern, water dripping from the ceiling, skirting smaller pools, they found themselves passing an underground lake covered in lilypads and algea, the water or the algae steaming in the darkness. Vuxten was heading for the cavern exit that Bellona had left through, leading his men toward the glow in the darkness that was faint but to Vuxten's sight, after over a day in the darkness of the tunnels, was bright as moonlight.
A fern, pale and ghostly, brushed an elf's cheek as he misjudged his duck, following the Telkan Marine who had ignored the ghostly frond when it had brushed his armor.
Armor was warsteel.
Warm, but still metal.
The elf's cheek was flesh.
And flesh had a biosignature.
Vuxten felt the disdain and hatred surge to life around him, pouring from every plant, every frond, every leaf, every bit of moss and fungus.
From the cavern where the moonlight glowed.
From the lake to his left.
It all came apart.