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The channel was flooded with chatter
between dedicated. From the background noise, many of them were in
wormcars as well. “Labhalls sealed, incursion risk, invalid.”
“Tervemor's own group, overrun.” “Burndoors active, utmost
power.”
“What's going on?” Soren asked
into a pause in the flood.
She had her answer as she plunged
her wormcar into the passages leading back to Omfeloh's domain. One
last wormcar was coming the other way, swerving crazily from side to
side, and as it passed under one of the still-lit passage lamps,
Soren saw why.
Half a dozen primal nanganb were
clinging to the outside of it, pulling and prying at the seams with
patient, relentless strength. The driver twisted the wormcar
sideways, brushing the wall, and a couple of the primal were scraped
from their hold, but the wormcar lost momentum and the other primal
were able to shift and adjust their grip.
The moment she saw that, Soren hit
the brakes on her own vehicle. She opened the hatch above her and
knelt on the driver's couch, half-emerging from the hatch. She lifted
her carbine and took careful aim down the sight, and snapped off a
series of single shots.
Three of the primal were punched off
the wormcar by the bullets; the fourth flattened to the hull and
clung stubbornly despite taking a couple of shots. The primal she'd
shot off the vehicle got back up almost immediately, but the driver
of the other car was already pulling ahead.
She came nearer, and Soren saw
through the other car's windscreen that the driver wore a stained
labcoat, and her face was matted with orange nanganb blood.
Soren gestured frantically, making
wormcars of her hands and indicating the other driver should pass
right alongside Soren's car. The nang must have understood, because
she angled her vehicle in to nearly brush the hulls together.
Soren popped up out off the hatch,
standing on the roof of her wormcar. As the other car came level she
dropped into a crouch and spun, sweeping one leg out in a long,
powerful kick that caught the clinging primal right in the upper
chest as she rose up. The combination of the wormcar's momentum and
Soren's electrogen mass and force tore the primal's grip loose, and
she vanished down in front of Soren's car.
The impact nearly knocked Soren off
the roof, and she had to grab the edge of the hatch to steady
herself. She dropped back into the wormcar as soon as she had her
balance and slammed the hatch. The primal she'd kicked was out of
view under or beside her car, but those she'd shot were
stagger-running down the corridor toward her.
She threw the throttle open and
accelerated, not looking to see what had happened to the last primal.
The oncoming group seemed like they weren't going to get out of the
way, but at the last minute they scattered, and Soren heard a bang on
the hull as she passed them.
“Oh, that's wonderful,” she
grumbled. She disabled her jammer, and immediately made contact with
the ersatz datanet that had sprung up around the multitude of d-spots
they'd dropped in this area. “Guys,” she flashed to the others,
“the primal are coming up. Like right now. I think I've got one
stuck on the back of my car.”
“You've a car?” Flycatcher
flashed back immediately.
“Yep, and some other stuff. Let
Omfeloh know about the primal, yeah?”
“I'll,” Flycatcher affirmed.
“Omfeloh's ceded claim to Anbegof, though.”
Soren blinked. “A coup? Now?”
“A peaceful transition,”
Flycatcher said. “Sacrificed leadership for others' survival.” En
sounded thoroughly approving.
“Fine, whatever.” Soren steered
nervously into the dark final stretch before the open space that had
been a battlefield not long before. “Just make sure the dedicated
are ready.” There was a scritching, scraping sound coming from the
back of the wormcar.
Mercifully, she didn't run into
anything in the dark. When the light from the courtyard spilled into
the tunnel, though, she stopped the car in astonishment.
The space, floor and walls and
upper-floor galleries, was packed with disastrous, both Mojangur's
spiky sort and the patchy, grungy-looking punks who'd attacked
Omfeloh's claim earlier. They weren't attacking this time. Most of
them were simply waiting; a few on the ground were writhedancing in
circles without fires.
Soren nosed the wormcar forward
carefully, emerging from the tunnel at a crawl. The disastrous in
front moved out of the way, and made just enough room for her to
bring the wormcar all the way out into the open.
Movement to the side caught her eye
at the edge of her field of vision. A group of disastrous were
pushing forward, crawling over others in the way, and she heard a
group of thuds on the rear of the wormcar. She kept her pace steady,
and increased her heartbeat, ready to invoke an adrenaline rush. It
was entirely possible that the disastrous might try to break into the
wormcar.
Instead, there was a sort of
scuffling clangour and the noises on the hull dropped away. In a
convex rear-vision mirror attached on the right of the car, she saw
that the group of disastrous had pulled the lone primal nanganb off
the wormcar and had engulfed her in a knot of their bodies. She had
the impression that the action was firm but non-violent, but she
understood none of it.
The primal shrieked, a convulsive
sound that filled the immense chamber and made Soren press down on
the throttle for a moment. It seemed impossible that such a noise
could come from so small a being.
The disastrous shifted and flowed in
response, swirling into the middle of the chamber and circling,
packing together into a sort of dense organic phalanx. Those on the
walls oriented themselves face downward, and there was much
brandishing of weapons and tensing of postures.
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