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Soren steered the wormcar into the
gap that had opened between the massed disastrous and the walls. She
started the long way round toward the fortified entrance to Omfeloh's
claim, and before she was halfway she became aware of a sound that
was no longer drowned by the rumble of the wormcar's engine.
It was a rushing sussurus, formless
and uneven but steadily growing louder, and she realised where she'd
heard its like at the same time the source became evident.
Primal nanganb poured into the
chamber, gouting from the tunnels and from every corridor and opening
on the western wall. They flooded over the disastrous in the same
way the disastrous had flooded Anbegof's dedicated earlier, and the
cohesion and stillness of the disastrous vanished. The phalanx in
the centre of the chamber exploded outward, disastrous nanganb
rushing to meet primal in simple, savage wildness.
The titan clash rushed over Soren's
wormcar and threw her into darkness. The hull creaked and clanged
under the pressure of the opposing waves of bodies, and Soren
abandoned the idea of being careful. Her artificial instincts of
self-preservation kicked in at a thought, and she shoved the throttle
to its maximum and listened to the engine roar for a beat before
dropping it into its lowest gear.
For a moment, she thought the
wormcar wouldn't move. Then the brute-force power of its engine
started making progress, and Soren forced the vehicle forward through
the press. She was wholly submerged in nanganb, and through the
occasional gap that opened, she could see that the disastrous and the
primal were locked in a horrible three-dimensional melee, bodies
stacked atop each other four or five deep in places and fighting with
foes above, in front, beside, atop, behind.
Almost unconsciously, she started an
eyetap recording, capturing the scene even as she drove her wormcar
through it. It jolted every time the wheels passed over something
beneath, and Soren shook her head angrily, trying not to think of
what each bounce and shudder signified.
An age later, she came up to the
fortification. There was scarcely room for the wormcar to fit
through now, and the space was packed with dedicated, Earth-made
assault rifles and machineguns set up in bunkers of freshly concreted
slabs behind the lines. The front lines wielded shotguns and brutal,
chunky widebore nanganb firearms, and Soren could see they were
prepared to hold the line by sheer pressure of bodies, fighting in
the same guileless mode as the primal and disastrous themselves.
The main struggle had not yet
reached this side of the chamber; the straggling few primal who had
ended up over here were blasted before ever they reached the line,
and the disastrous who did not keep away met the same fate.
Soren pulled the wormcar up on one
side of the entrance and popped open the hatch. She stood up through
the hole and shouted, “Let me through! I have to talk to Anbegof!”
For a moment she thought nobody was
going to listen. Then, absurdly, a familiar shape pressed forward
into the front line – the pot-seller from the marketplace, her
thread-and-bead outfit replaced by a similar garment of braided wire
and strung scales, clothing turned into armour.
“Claim taken,” she yowled above
the sounds of battle. The struggle was largely silent, Soren
realised, the primal as voiceless as they'd been when they first
assaulted Rujenar's outpost in the depths and the disastrous far less
vocal than they'd been earlier.
The line broke in half, clearing a
space, and Soren dropped down and drove the wormcar into it without
hesitating. The formation resumed behind her, a moving bubble of
space opening in each rank and closing seamlessly behind, so that her
wormcar was taken into the interior of Anbegof's claim without trace.
She stopped in the marketplace,
behind the last bank of fortifications, and looked back. The chamber
outside was achurn with struggling bodies, piled twenty high now and
the battles within sluggish with the press. She shook her head and
looked away, and went to find Anbegof.
Instead, Flycatcher found Soren,
dropping down from above as she strode across the marketplace.
“Kirton's escaped,” en said. “Copmelar and Linc're pursuing,
out of contact. Elchinoy's escape's agent.”
“Shit,” she said, not at all
reassured. “Tell him to get back here. Chasing Kirton's an
idiot's game.”
“Copmelar won't cease,”
Flycatcher said. “Validity depends on recapture. Linc wouldn't
leave her.”
Soren rolled her eyes. “If you're
gonna be a hero,” she said, “it helps to be able to actually do
something useful. Which way did they go? We have to go get them.”
“Upward,” Flycatcher said,
anchoring uncertainty. “We've other issues. Omfeloh's negotiated
this claim's Judgment eased with the once-trapped Judge. Her own
validity's sacrificed to do it. She's to come with us when we leave,
or die if stays. There's some urgency in getting her away.”
“All right,” Soren said, “can
you take care of that? I'm going after Linc, but I need to talk to
Anbegof before I go.”
Flycatcher pointed upward with an
anchor. “Anbegof's command post's on a gallery two floors up.
Elia's there.”
Soren nodded. “Okay, I'm going.
Keep this wormcar safe, it's important.”
Flycatcher made an unfamiliar
manipulator gesture, and said something in Huiay that didn't
translate.
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