Chapter 74: Chapter 74

There were no immediate bloodbaths, thankfully. Nestra’s mom would have probably fried the villagers where they stood if she were alone, but this was a diplomatic mission and so they let Tian handle it, and would probably keep doing it so long as things moved forward at a sufficient pace. Nestra hoped they would.

The first thing Tian did was gather and interrogate the villagers in a separate shed. She returned ten minutes later with a detailed map of where they would find the market, courtesy of a driver who’d been there once to deliver pu’er tea discs (Nestra was going to see if she could grab a few). By the time the interrogation was over, Tian was livid. She threatened the villagers, then melted the only local antenna with some angry fire spell to prevent them from using their phones. Nestra was willing to bet the whole village would be gone by the time the cops came for a ‘follow up’.

“Can we head there directly?” dad asked with a voice that wasn’t asking an actual question.

“No car. We will run there. I will carry Mrs. Stibbons. Debbie dear, if you would take Nestra? Ulysses will take Helena.”

“She’s getting heavier by the year,” Ulysses complained, though he was smiling.

She gave him the finger.

“Wear proper armor and you’ll get proper muscles.”

“We are in agreement then?” dad pretend-asked again.

“Right. Assault squad status?”

“Ready. Standing by,” Dad replied.

“Diversion please,” Winslow said.

Dad’s voice was suddenly much louder.

The valley was a peaceful, scenic spot with partying folks, smoking sentries. Another limo traveled up the southern road. Another drove up the road from the helipad at a placid pace.

The limo snapped in half with a ghastly clunk. It compressed to the size of a yoga ball, occupants included. The ball impacted the main checkpoint like a cannon shot. Every machine gun, every piece of furniture containing metal, every car, every barrier flew like they’d been struck by a hurricane. The main radar station exploded in a wave of fire, as did a sentry tower to the west. Battle erupted near the ravaged checkpoint in an orgy of unleashed fury. Body parts flew alongside the debris.

Nestra perceived all of this as she pressed the trigger.

The rifle was so loud, it echoed through the valley in an expanding wave.

The main relay drone exploded.

“It’s scrap,” Helena said. “Antenna next.”

A real sniper at a real distance would have paid more attention to the wind and coriolis and a bunch of stuff the rifle’s software solved for Nestra. She merely had to adjust the reticle.

“Target status,” Nestra curtly said.

“Shit sorry. It’s gone.”

Nestra aimed to the right. The center of the base was now in total chaos. Growing plants spread to the pond which was striated with actinic arcs, corpses floating near the surface. It seemed to be Palladians on the left near the prison, and slavers on the right near the ruin of the com center. Everything moved too fast for her to see so she had no idea how things were going, but at least the prisons were on their side of the battlefield. It also meant it was pointless for her to fire at anything there since it was a B-class battlefield. She was just supposed to cover the approach.

“Bravo four,” Helena said.

Nestra aimed towards the airport road.

“Technical, coming from the airport. Three gleams at the back.”

It was over a kilometer and a half away but closing fast. Good call.

“I see it. Adjusting.”

Nestra let the soft adjust the sight. She lined it up.

A shower of debris and blood. Ok, Gorge hadn’t been fucking with her. That thing could kill vehicles.

“Target destroyed. Alpha six.”

“Near that guard house. They’re deploying something.”

Nestra turned sharply right. It was very close to the helipad. A group of augs were taking and assembling something from a case. It looked big and complicated. It also looked automatic which was going to be a pain for the C-classes.

Better get the hardware. The augs didn’t count.

The thing exploded before it could deploy, showering the augs with debris. They ran for cover. The battlefield had changed again with the slavers pushed back to the edge of the field. Somehow, her people were winning and winning hard. The APCs were burning wrecks, courtesy of Sanae. There was now a hole through the western wall, to Nestra’s left. An old truck was driving through it, probably taken by Tian.

“I got company in the back!” Stibbs said.

A group of three guards were approaching the hill at a dead sprint, coming from behind. Shit gear and shit augs, Nestra judged.

“Doyouneedhelpdarling?” her mom asked on the coms.

“I got APCs coming from the airport too, aiming towards us,” Stibbs added.

Well this position was cooked. Four shots was all they’d get. Nestra dragged Helena to a copse of trees to the side. There had been a trap there.

The guards were visible now: two auged riflemen and one shield-bearing gleam without affinities. They were vaguely aiming towards the top of the hill to Nestra and Helena’s left. Amateurs.

“Let them get closer,” she whispered to Helena.

“I get the gleam,” her sister whispered.

The guards vaguely spread out. Nestra leaned from behind a tree and calmly lined a shot with her window maker.

The first aug fell with a hole in his chest. The second was dead before he could fully turn.

Helena was on the gleam in a moment.

It would be inexact to say Helena didn’t have a sense of strategy. It was just that she also had an axe, a strength affinity, and a mana type so aggressively destructive it even messed with her body. The onus of stopping said axe was firmly on her opponent. This one failed spectacularly.

Stibbs climbed down the hill. She was already out of breath. Her eyes found the axe murder victim.

“Seriously? Nestra, what have you taught her?”

Helena hissed playfully. The sound was eerily close to an Aszhii taunt. Nestra gave her a warning look.

“Ok you two,” Stibbs said. “Tian and Winslow are heading this way. They got her.”

Excitement and relief filled Nestra’s heart. Winslow appeared a moment later, bleeding from a scalp wound. He had a familiar shape in his arms. The truck roared not far behind. It was Clecle. She was in a bad shape with more scabs than clean skin under her medical shift. Some of the flesh was missing under the bandages, and she was short a few fingers but that was nothing to a B-class. Winslow had a first aid kit in his backpack. He applied some spray to his scalp wound while handing Nestra an injector.

“Alright, shove this in her chest. I need to get back to Tian.”

A reanimator of sorts. Nestra thought Winslow was stupid to leave a baseline to puncture a gleam, but the needle somehow went in Clecle without issue. It had to be some sort of advanced stuff.

Clecle gasped, bolting upright. Her arm clamped on Nestra’s. It hurt through the armor.

“Ow ow ow ow ow HEY!” Nestra complained.

Clecle’s gaze zeroed on her. It was a bit frantic. Also, her right eye couldn’t fully open.

“Nestra? Where am I? Where is this?”

“You got portal dumped. We’re rescuing you from a slave camp in the ass end of China.”

“Slavers? They dare? Where’s my damn spear?”

The two sisters tried to pull their aunt down with reasonable arguments such as ‘you’re barely alive’, but it still took a few seconds before Clecle would calm down. Meanwhile, Stibbs’ horrified glare went from one of the relatives to the other. It was like she was having a revelation.

“What?” Nestra complained.

“It’s genetic. And hereditary.”

“Shit where’s the core? I need to get it back,” Claire yelled.

“You need to calm down,” Nestra objected.

They fought some more, until Winslow talked in Nestra’s earpiece.

“Please inform Claire that I have her gear in the truck.”

Of course the nitwit went for the truck. Nestra gave up. It arrived soon after anyway, an ancient diesel thing that stank to high heaven. There were dazed and sleepy people at the back, all looking completely lost. A great many were gleams, but there were also conventionally attractive people of various ethnicities. Some wore the togas Nestra had seen, others wore prison uniforms and a couple were naked. Tian was at the wheel and she didn’t look happy.

Something thrummed to Nestra’s right, coming from the top of the hill. Looks like something was firing at where she used to be.

“Nestra!” her mom’s voice came, panicked.

“Oh thank God. You’ve moved?”

“Yes. We need to keep going though.”

“The assault squad can withdraw. We have secured the prisoners and need cover,” Tian said, voice tense.

“Sanae is dealing with the armored cars. Don’t worry… we’re almost done on our end.”

But mom didn’t reply. Instead, Stibbs' feed showed the gleam battle petered out.

The resort was devastated. There wasn’t a building left, and everything was on fire, thick smoke climbing high. Ulysses stood near the half-dried pond, holding a woman in rich garb and a mask at the end of the threads he held in his left hand. Her body sometimes shook from the static. There were fried bodies impaled on ice spikes like ghastly decorations anywhere that wasn’t actively burning. Thick trees that were not here before showed where Vassily had taken position. Only one duel was still ongoing: her father against the chain user.

They were mostly moving too fast for Nestra to perceive but sometimes they slowed down enough that she could catch glimpses of the guard’s long black chain wrapped around her dad’s hammer’s shaft. He was an obsidian user, a rare and powerful affinity. Clearly his plan had been to disarm and crush dad and clearly, it wasn’t working well. Nestra was surprised. They were supposed to be super good against hard targets.

Actually, all of her folks looked alive and well. A few of the enemy B-classes were apparently fleeing towards the airport, but she couldn’t see the others. It had been… surprisingly one-sided.

It took only a few more seconds for the battle to draw to a close. The chain user was left on his knees, or what was left of them rather. Her father had slowed down enough that they could talk. He was sharing his feed. Maybe the slavers still had people or cameras on the battle.

He was doing it on purpose.

“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” the guard said in heavily accented English.

Dad just stood there like a metal titan, his armor covered in gore but otherwise inviolate. The background was a hell of fire, metal, thorn growths, and peoplecicles bleeding carmine droplets, but frozen in time. Only his eyes were visible: gray, and without mercy. His voice didn’t carry any either.

“We don’t care. We are here to tell whoever thought they could enslave one of us… that House Palladian sends their regards.”

His hammer crushed the man’s skull. The headless body fell to the side in a pool of blood.

Helena made some ‘woah’ noise, which made Nestra a little concerned. It took only a few more seconds for the assault squad to regroup with the truck. Claire disappeared under shameless hugs and shoulder pats. It was done, or so it seemed. Nestra wasn’t so sure. Her Aszhii self clamored to be let out to make sure, to track and kill anything the humans might have overlooked. She felt blinded and hobbled in this form.

“The heli will pick us up in Shangri-La since it appears the battle is… over?” Tian added.

She didn’t sound so certain. Nestra wasn’t either, but that was probably just paranoia and alien instincts. No one stopped them as they retreated down the south road, the only one still intact and free of cars after her dad had given the limo the trash compactor treatment. Most of the gleams plus Nestra went on foot while Stibbs joined the wounded with her drones — she just wasn’t in any state to run without some more oxygen.

Nestra had to wait for her mom to unglue herself from Aunt Claire before she could climb into the back to sit next to the woman. Clecle was already hard at work scarfing down raider food and taking sips of some sort of potion. She was healing remarkably fast, probably because her wounds were caused by ripping through space and not the mana-infused attacks of powerful monsters. She still looked like a mess and it made Nestra’s chest tight.

“Ok, so tell me. What’s so important about this core?”

“It’s got the perfect mix of electricity and ice, to the second decimal! I got it from a humanoid enemy too, as requested. It’s absolutely perfect.”

“As requested by whom? Perfect for what?” Nestra insisted.

She was getting pissed off.

“Look, it’s big news. Really big news. I wanted to save it as a surprise but I guess I need to tell you now. I was very busy because… I have found a way to repair your core! I needed some research done and a compatible core and… it’s all complete now! We’re flying to Zurich, Nes!”

“So you were raiding so hard for that? Getting wounded on repeat and everything? For months?”

Nestra slapped her aunt. Hard too. Stupefied, Claire didn’t even try to stop her.

The truck fell silent.

“I don’t want to be a gleam nearly as much as I want my aunt alive. Alive, you hear? You fucking idiot.”

Claire’s joy sobered up. She slowly pulled Nestra into a hug. Nestra allowed it, resting her head on the raider’s strong shoulders.

“Ok. I’m sorry. I was just… very worried for a long time.”