Chapter 27 - Stealth Means No Witnesses

Note : Chapter 28 has been written and added to the queue !

And before you ask, no, Northrend isn't an easter egg. I just named it that, and apparently it's a World of Warcraft thing ? I don't know.

Chapter 27

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Ruins of Mytran

"So...this was where the primary mining operation was?" Asked Sapphiria as she gazed at the overgrown ruins.

"Yes." Paul stopped, right at the edge of the shadows, instinctively staying in as much concealment as he could as they surveyed the area. The junkbots of course, were front and center, their steel plating gleaming in the sun. "Or at least where the town supporting it was."

"I'd thought it would be Astralis."

"No, no no no. That was established by the northbound expeditions. When the Empire still planned to exploit Northrend." He shrugged as she gave him a questioning look. "The Convergence, up north. Not...the most imaginative name, admittedly." He cleared his throat. "But the expedition stayed in business far longer than the miners. Unsurprising, given the legends." He gave her a pointed look, and she shrugged in a fake nonchalant way.

"I was never bothered." And she hoped not to be for a while. Because with what Cia had brought up...the fact that the tunnels were seemingly ventilated did bring up the very real possibility of there being something active deep down there. The mining expedition seemed to have mostly sealed it in when they pulled back, but that was no guarantee.

Especially as the first skeleton she'd found indicated that just collapsing the tunnels hadn't been enough. Which would readily explained why they'd fully evacuated.

"So, you went with Astralis because of the legends then? To settle down, I mean." She continued in a casual tone.

"Why tempt fate? Especially when there are already useable structures there, and not just ruins. Besides, it was farther away from the pass. If it was taken..."

"Right, less tempting of a target." Sapphiria frowned as the armor's systems pinged her. Anomalous sonic signals? "Do you hear that?"

The hunter frowned, and went still.

"Aye." He said, softly. "I can't quite make it out."

Sapphiria could. Well, after dumping part of the analysis on Cia. Repeated, distant impacts. Or rather...the analysis was returning the probability of an echo. And a direction.

She turned her head towards the mountain.

Oh fuck.

"We have a problem." She said, as she gestured for the hunter to follow, her camouflage triggering and her junkbots immediately falling back into the bushes.

"What kind?" He whispered as he followed her.

But before long, they heard the clangor rise massively, as they moved towards a road...a road that ran straight into the mountain.

A road separated from the settlement by hills, one of which they climbed. And they watched as a handful of skeletons dragged wheelbarrows, and added their contents to a new hill.

"This one." Had she been biological, Sapphiria's breath would have caught as she saw the activity below, with a veritable horde of skeletons hammering away at what had to be the cave-in in the vehicle access.

Then she received two alerts in rapid succession.

HOSTILES DETECTED

HOSTILES ENGAGING - RETALIATING

And the sound of gunfire behind them.

As one, every skeleton stopped digging, and trained their heads towards the sound.

"Run!" She grabbed the hunter and pushed him down the hill, before rushing in after him.

They sprinted through the ruins, as the sound of tools crashing against rocks was replaced by the rush of bones slamming on paved stones, and arrived just in time to see a legionnaire collapse, shuddering on the ground as seven junkbots poured fire into it. The eighth was trying to unpin itself from a tree, a javelin straight through its chest and well into the plant behind.

Sapphiria swore as she scanned the remains scattered around. It seemed they'd avoided the patrols she had been intending to engage by sheer luck, only to stumble onto what they were screening.

That meant they not only had the damned skeletons trying to clear the cave in to destroy, but also any patrols that would be investigating the mess.

She hesitated. They could pull back, might even keep pace with the skeletons, even if she had to carry the squishie to do so but if they stumbled upon any patrols they'd get pinned and overrun.

And the ruins were a mess of stones and broken crap. No meaningful cover but a lot of stumbling hazards. This wasn't perfect, but it was as good as they were going to get in terms of battlegrounds.

She ordered the bots to take defensive positions, as they faded back into the woods, one of them taking a second to free its pinned comrade, and all of them began preparing, laying out extra magazines from their packs -fancy name for 'metal box welded to their backs- on the ground for rapid access, in gaze those clamped to their torso armor ran out.

Sapphiria almost dove into cover as she joined her bots, and glared as Paul joined her.

"What's wrong with you? I said run!"

"I'm not leaving you milady."

Sapphiria looked at him, and regretted like she never had before that she hadn't taken a stun gun. She could knock him out, but she didn't know how much force to apply and she wasn't going to risk killing the squishie in order to save him.

Instead she said something unprintable, which earned her a half surprised, half admiring look, before turning back towards the ruins, as she saw the flash of bones moving over the skyline of the hills.

"Open fire!" She shouted, and muzzle flashes lit up the shadowy undergrowth as the bots obeyed.

Their aim was far from perfect, but she saw skeletons come down as they tried to scramble over the hill. Some got back up, but most were either down for good or got crushed into dust by those behind them.

The bots fired and reloaded like metronomes as the undead swarmed over the hills. Another confirmation for their stupidity, they could have used them for cover as they came around and followed the road, instead of having to scramble up them, breaking up their horde advantage, and then came back down, totally exposed.

But stupid or not, there were many of them, and before long her bots had to start firing at those that made it down, and began darting through the ruins to make contact.

Sapphiria just waited, fidgeting with her plasma gun, her sensors scanning the surrounding area on maximum power.

Finally the main horde pushed over the hills, like a tide of bones and steel, and she raised her gun, set to maximum.

"GET DOWN!" She barked out as Paul got up, possibly to put himself in a guard position in front of her like the too dutiful, stupid, too courageous for his own good squishie that he was, and dialed her plasma gun to maximum.

This time the entire damned clearing turned white as a miniature star screamed through the air.

As her sensors cleared up and regained full functionality, the AI swallowed as she saw the results.

The hill she aimed for was missing it's entire top, and the rest of it happily burned, the hardy lichen that had grown upon it set alight by the dispersing plasma and the thermal pulse of the impact.

Flesh and blood enemies would be screaming in horror, running or hitting the ground to save their own skins, but undead couldn't care less, and Sapphiria checked her gun's status as the horde finished pouring over the other hills.

Maximum power was all nice and dandy, but it wasn't made for rapid fire, and she set down the plasma gun as she pulled free her carbine, and joined the junkbots.

She didn't bother to go single fire. She had other weapons if necessary, and emptying a couple of magazine was all the time she needed for the plasma gun to recharge.

She stowed the carbine, and picked up the energy weapon again. This time the squishie didn't need prompting, as he dove down like an artillery barrage was coming.

This time the plasma bolt blasted straight through the bulk of the horde, leaving a trail of scorched bones and burning grass.

Instantly, two dozen skeletons came to a halt, and Sapphiria realized they were wielding slings and bows.

Fuck.

She dove into cover a split second before being turned into a pincushion, as stones and arrows whistled through where she had just been. Alarmingly, one of the skittered about, smoking and sputtering, glowing red hot.

Okay, what the fuck? Enchanted ammunition, too?

She gave orders, and a couple of her junkbots detached from the line, running out of cover and emptying their magazines into the crowd.

Like clockwork, or primitive combat bots, the ranged skeletons pivoted to face them. One of the junkbots managed to get back into cover with nothing more than dented armor plating and an arrow in the knee, but the other -the one that had taken the javelin earlier, actually-, got pinned to yet another tree. Amazingly enough, it was still active, trying to reload its gun as the skeletons poured fire into him.

Sapphiria peeked out of cover again, and decided against using her carbine, instead keeping the plasma gun in her hand.

She shouldered it as it recharged, before retargeting at the last second, as saw the glittering metal of scale armor in the rapidly thinning -and closing- horde.

She pulled the trigger...and the universe went mad.

The plasma bolt burned throught the crowd, and hit the legionnaire.

It didn't burn the skeleton, or vaporize it.

It exploded, both legionnaire and bolt instantly converted into a plasma bomb as her sensors screamed from the tidal wave of exotic and mundane radiation.

She saw sorched bones fly in every direction as skeletons and bots alike were tossed to the ground by the shockwave.

Both recovered with similar alacrity, but the damage was already done. Many of the skeletons had been catapulted forward, and Sapphiria stowed her plasma gun as she drew her laser pistol.

The first skeleton bounced towards her-

And flew apart as Paul's sword punched straight through its skull.

She opened her mouth to scream at the fucking squishie to run, damn him and his duty, only to close it in astonishment.

He didn't fight, or die messily. Instead he danced between the undead, skeletons collapsing all around him as a precise stab or swipe severed their spin or broke their skulls.

Yeah. Hunter her ass.

She finally shoved her astonishment aside, and brought her laser pistol up, bringing down a handful more skeletons, and suddenly it was over.

No more rushing undead, just...silence. Silence and the crackling of fire.

She pinged her network for a status report.

Of the eight junkbots she'd set out with, three were flat out not responding, and the other five reported various state of damage, from 'arms unresponsive' to 'knee operating at suboptimal efficiency'.

She turned towards Paul, as he lowered his sword, panting and looking at the utter mess around them.

"Are we good?" He asked between two gulps of air.

"We are." She remembered to retract her helmet, which had automatically come up as she'd opened fire. Squishies needed to see each other's faces, and right now that one was fresh out of a fight. He needed all the support he could get. "Next time I tell you to run, you run."

"If I'd come back without you, the magistrate would have flayed me alive and used my skin as a rug." He grimaced. "And that would have been the pleasant option."

"I'm amazed she sent you out there to begin with, and not kept you to protect her." He gave her a strange look, and she tilted her head. "What?"

"You should ask her why. It's not my place to say." He gazed around. "We should probably move. If the gunfire didn't attract attention, that...that thing-" He nodded towards the plasma gun, horror plain on his face. "-definitely did."

"It was the point of that little expedition. But I concur. Let's grab what we can, and scramble."

He nodded, and went out into the battlefield, grabbing weapons, as she gathered her bots and went for the downed ones.

Luckily, she'd come prepared for losses, and clamped the bodies onto the packs of the others, like some oversized teddy bears affixed to a school bag. It was pretty awkward and bulky, but their utility bot chassis was made to handle heavy loads. Moreover, it would allow her to study the damage the bots had taken and recycle them, without enabling the enemy to do the same.

The only problem was the one who got pinned to the tree. It wasn't so much a bot anymore as various pieces of scrap metal that might have resembled one at some point. The tree itself didn't look so good either, given the amount of punishment it had sustained.

That one had to basically be pried off the tree one piece of scrap at a time, then stuffed down into the packs.

"Damn." She looked up as Paul came in, a bundle of weapons under his arm, as he gazed at the tree and the bits of metal she was stuffing down another bot's pack. "They really hit it hard."

"That they did." She closed the pack. "I'm done here. You?"

"Same."

"Then let's go." She winced. "Hopefully we'll have a clear way out."

"Let's hope. I don't think the magistrate's going to be very happy as it is. Better not make it worse."

Yeah, that was gonna be a fun talk...