The teeth of the saw caught and sprayed metal flakes back and forth as Peter drew and pushed the worn handle. Having left right away, he was exhausted. They moved through the night and grabbed the supplies they needed from the deserted tomb-headquarters.

Director Van Den Hoek didn’t help with the loading. The funeral pyre was still smoldering, and he had already said his goodbye to his wife, so the captain had him wait out of sight. Luckily, the storage tomb was still stocked full of supplies. After grabbing timber, saws, charges, anchors, and all the other things Owen thought they would need, they headed to a storm drain outlet that let out of the city.They now found themselves hacking, cutting, and sawing through the metal grates that blocked the way deeper into the sewer.

Owen studied a map he had marked and measured the distance to guess how far they had gotten. Peter sighed in annoyance at the blisters building on his hands. Owen always carried leather gloves, which provided some extra protection that Peter now greatly coveted.

Peter found it funny that he learned to brave the pain of fatal wounds, but he found the stinging soreness of a blister infuriating.

Captain Visser used their only plasma torch and made much faster progress with only a fraction of the effort. Peter finished with his bar, as did Captain Visser, and the grid of flattened bars came free from the wall.

“Good work,” Owen said, marking the map. “We’re almost there.”

“I hope so,” Peter said. “Julleck might already be a smoldering heap.”

No one responded to that, but Peter saw the men exchange troubled glances.

“Bring that here,” Owen said, pointing to the flat grid of bars they had just removed.

Peter and Captain Visser looked at the operations officer in confusion. Though Captain Visser outranked Owen, he did what he was told during engineering operations.

“What are you going to do with that?” Peter asked.

“We must ensure the path is clear for the escape raft,” Owen said. “So we need to clear this stuff out of the way. If we snagged on one of these, our exit would end quickly.”

Peter nodded as he understood. Surprisingly, the operations officer also deemed a broom important enough to bring; he had been sweeping sewage waste and garbage out of the tunnel and into the surrounding chambers.

Peter and Captain Visser carried the flat grate bars to Owen, and he told them to hold the ends to a wall.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked.

“Sealing of this entry. This is one of the more likely entry points for the enemy in the event of a compromised mission.”

The captain smiled. “You always were prepared for everything, weren’t you, Owen.”

Owen smiled dryly. “You’re alive today, aren’t you?”

“How are you going to seal it?” Peter asked. “We don’t have a forge, and the grate will be too small now that we’ve gutted it.”

Owen went to the raft that carried their supplies and pulled out a bulky pistol with a spike sticking out of the barrel. “We’ll attach a few anchors,” Owen said. He stuck the spike on the metal and used a cloth to muffle the anchor gun as best he could. The anchor setter hissed like a slagter, the reverb of the confined space and the muffler cloth contended to control the noise.

Peter was worried someone might hear the noise from above, but he couldn’t suppress an excited grin as he saw the massive anchor spike punched through the metal and into the wall’s stone.

Owen shot several more anchors into the side and top of the grate of bars and mounted it into an intersecting tunnel. The bars were smaller than the opening, so it hung off the floor and the far wall by a few inches, but not enough for someone to squeeze through.

“You’re opening our path and blocking theirs,” Peter marveled.

“Most of war is decided by what happens before the fighting starts.”

“I’ll remember that,” Peter promised.

“Van Den Hoek, go back and anchor the other railing to these bigger tunnels on the right,” Owen said, handing off the anchor gun.

“You think that’s where they would come from if they stormed us down here?” Peter asked.

“In part,” Owen said. “I’m more worried that the current will be tempted to sweep us that way. I’d hate to be taken off course and caught on a grate we didn’t prepare for.”

Van Den Hoek headed back, and the rest picked up the thick wooden sled that would double as a raft. They had to lift it over the jagged outline of where the bars were anchored initially, but once the water flowed, it should float clear of them.

‘Should,’Peter twitched. So many ifs and maybes.

As they continued, their feet splashed in the slow-running two inches of water and sewage.They should be directly under Hill View, the estate should be directly over … There it was.

The sewer widened into a much larger cavern, and a metal drain mounted directly into the stone ceiling glittered with reinforced steel. The egress vault looked like it belonged in a bank.

Owen let out a low whistle. “This changes things.”

“You can get in, can’t you?” Peter asked.

“The steward wasn’t kidding when he said it was fortified.”

“But you can do it, right?”

“If I had five times the charges, maybe,” Owen said. “Or we can see if we can dig any of it out before we set the charges. The metal is solid, but the stone is old. Either way, this will take longer than we thought.”

“We had better get started,” Peter said.

“We need to get some water flowing,” Owen said. “I need to make sure the water will go how we want it to, and a bit of water will give our little escape craft some lift.”

Feet sloshed in the water down the tunnel they came from, and Peter jumped and drew his Slagter. Several dark tunnels around them gapped threateningly, any of them potentially concealing ghouls. Peter held his weapon at the low, ready as Van Den Hoek’s shape materialized out of the darkness.

The young director cocked an eyebrow at Peter and turned to Owen. “More anchors?”

The operations officer shrugged his large duffle bag off his shoulder and handed it to the young director.

“I appreciate your vigilance, but please don’t shoot any of your teammates,” Owen said to Peter. “Let’s see what we can do about these spillway doors,” Owen suggested, and Peter nodded.

Making it to the spillway doors was much quicker for them as they could skip the grates using maintenance hatches they could walk through. It wouldn’t have been big enough to allow the raft, but they quickly made it there. That was comparative. The walk to arrive was still several minutes, and the longer it went, the less force they would have to carry them along once the water started flowing.

The big metal door had a massive twenty-nine painted on it in faded yellow.

“This should be directly under this fishing dock,” Owen said, tapping the map.

Another ‘should,’ Peter realized with discomfort. Every ‘should’ presented a severe risk to the mission.

“Let’s open her up and see how she flows.”

The spillway opened using a giant rusted wheel affixed next to it.

Peter and Van Dijk strained against the heavy valve wheel. With a horrible screech of rusted, underused metal, the spillway opened up ever so slightly. Peter expected to hear the roar of relieved pressure, but to his dismay, only a mild rush followed by a trickle met his ears.

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“Oh no,” Owen said, and Peter’s heart sank as he perceived the plan collapsing.

They stopped, but the word from Owen to keep going sent them spinning until it locked into place.

Peter dropped next to Owen to get a better view. The spillway door was opened all the way, but several yards down, there was another spillway door; several small jets of water spilled through the crack as a promise of what lay on the other side. Peter searched for the release wheel, but he couldn’t find it.

“It won’t work,” he realized to his dismay. “I didn’t know there would be another door.”

Owen looked at Peter with an amused light in his eyes. “If you always wait for things to go your way, you’ll never get to the fight.”

“But how can we get through it?” Peter asked. “You need all the charges for the drain, right?”

Owen frowned. “Not necessarily, but maybe.”

“Then we’ll have to see what it takes to blow the drain before we try here.”

Owen chuckled. “Peter, It’s my job to identify the problems in the plan and then find a way around them. That’s what it means to be an operations officer.”

Peter caught the hint and shut up.

“The release valve will be on the other side.”

Van Dijk turned pale. “So that means it will be underwater … in the river!”

Owen grinned ruefully. “Van Dijk, remember the other day when you bragged to everyone about how good you were at swimming?

Van Dijk’s pale face shifted green, and he shook his head, but Owen nodded with a smile.

Van Dijk and Isabella hurried across the streets of Stalpia. The sun was rising, but it was starting to slip behind Din, so it was a relatively dark morning. Stalpia had some pinkish flickering light borrowed from atmostorm, which cackled impossibly far away where the clouds didn’t reach, and the atmospheres of the three planets collided. The atmostorm that lashed the planets together was almost directly overhead today.

The streets were noticeably empty, but then again, it was early.

The two privates passed several ghouls, but with his hand jammed into his pocket, Van Dijk looked like any other enforcer.

They hurried east, having come to the streets through a manhole already near Vet River; they heard the rushing water nearby.

Isabella and Van Dijk left their coats and cloaks underneath in the sewers. They would only get in the way when swimming, and dry clothes would help them mitigate hypothermia when they surfaced.

The pair passed another pair of dormant ghouls. Van Dijk wondered why statuesque mummies spent so much time inactive. The ability to move freely made Can Dijk feel like he was walking into a trap.

The docks appeared around the corner. Vet River moved swiftly but was known for being unnaturally clean and impossibly warm. It was at least a mile wide, the shores on the other side being the Calacray coast. Hundreds of barges were docked in port. While Court Rahashel was waging war with Court Rasminfrey in Calacray, the harbor had been in constant motion, shipping out ghouls by the boatload day and night. Now that Rasminfrey was dead and Calacray was thoroughly raised, there was no longer a need to ship ghouls across the river.

Isabella turned north, but Van Dijk hurried to catch up with her. “What are you doing?” Van Dijk hissed. “Owen said that the spillway would be directly under pier twenty-nine and that the docks and the spillways line up.”

“You ensured everyone understood that you’re an excellent swimmer, Van Dijk,” Isabella said. “But unless you’re ready to fight the current, I recommend we go upstream. Owen said it was deep.”

They continued past dock thirty and stopped at thirty-one.

Isabella grabbed a rope and a small anchor that a fishing ship would use to bolt to the beach when grounding itself. It wasn’t horribly big, but it was satisfyingly heavy. Isabella wasn’t very large herself.

Van Dijk caught on and looped his rope through two of the same anchors discarded in a cluttered stack. They were heavy. When he noticed Isabella was looking at him, he added a third one, hiding the obvious strain on his face poorly.

Isabella shook her head with a smile before starting down the dock.

The sound of dry feet caused Van Dijk to turn around and let out an involuntary yelp. He clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle his outburst.

Two sentinels charged the privates with short swords drawn. Van Dijk looked down at his hands, which he still used to cover his face. It was his hand with four fingers, but he wore a glove with a stuffed ring finger. Either the ghouls saw through the farce, or an overseer must have mobilized them.

“Dive!” Isabella cried. She took several bounding steps down the wooden dock and threw herself in the water, hugging the anchor to her chest.

The ghouls rushed at Van Dijk, who tried to follow in Isabella’s footsteps, but his weights on the rope slowed him down. Van Dijk calculated quickly, realized he wouldn’t make it, and screamed as he dropped the weights. Free of his burden, he ran.

As he ran, he heard them gaining on him. The realization that if he got any further, he would pass more ghouls, which would only leave him trapped in the end, struck him.

He gasped as he saw the captain’s face in his mind’s eye, reprimanding him after the failed first tile extraction.

“What were you doing, Van Dijk? Is this how you act as a soldier? Men died today, men that you could have saved!”

Neils clenched his jaw tight, and his breath palpitated in his chest. Salty tears stung the corners of his eyes as he considered how much he loathed himself. Twisted ghoul faces snarled on the other side of his mind.

Just the previous night, he held a court band. What if he had put it on? What if he was unkillable? Why did he give it back to Van Seur?

Literal nightmares programmed to destroy hunted him like a rabbit. His blood ran hot and cold as rage and fear intermixed in his veins. So what if he could die? ghouls could be destroyed. He’d be damned before he proved to the captain right.

Something primal cracked inside Van Dijk, and he rebounded on the ghouls behind him. The private pulled out a long, thin bayonet dagger and screamed as he charged the ghouls. If he could slow them down, Isabella could finish the mission, and he wouldn’t be a coward.

The first ghoul struck forcefully, and he parried as he was trained; that conditioning moved him on, and he plunged his blade into its heart. Those horrible black eyes flashed with purple reflected light before they went blank, and the creature collapsed, with a puff of dark smoke rising off its head and shoulders.

Van Dijk was so startled by what he had done that he almost failed to bring his mind back to the fight before deflecting the second one. By some stupid luck, his blade landed on the ghoul’s fingers, and four of its fingers dropped to the ground along with its short sword. Van Dijk laughed triumphantly as he threw his shoulder into the corpse’s chest and lifted it off the ground. It was lighter than he expected.

The mummified ghouls clawed and thrashed at him, but he grinned victoriously as he threw it over a rail and into the water. The ghoul went under with a splash. It clawed at the water but slowly started to sink. It was a dry creature but didn’t hold air in its lungs, so as the water set in, it washed downriver under the surface.

Van Dijk Looked at his hands in shock. Had he really done that? He pumped a triumphant fist.

“Yes!” he cried, euphoric.

A cobblestone near him cracked as chips shot in the air. The sound of the gunshot followed a fraction of a second later. Van Dijk cried and threw himself into the water as several enforcers who had caught sight of him opened fire.

Van Dijk hit the water in a smooth dive. Fortunately, he hadn’t lied when he had boasted about his ability to swim. Unfortunately, the warmth of the Vet River was comparable to that of the other rivers. It was not warm by any sane man’s standards at this time of year. Van Dijk failed to ignore the initial shock of the icy water and stroke, after powerful stroke, he made his way to the bottom, weaving in and out of submerged dock timbers.

Van Dijk’s eyes struggled to perceive through the clear water in the low light. He swam toward the retention wall the docs were built on and saw the spillways constructed at the bottom. He passed spillway thirty as his lungs tightened.

He saw Isabella’s small figure struggling with a thick wheel mounted next to the door with a large twenty-nine painted onto it. He kicked and darted down to her. He grabbed the wheel, and she turned to him in surprise.

When Isabella saw him, a flicker of relief crossed her eyes, but Van Dijk also recognized the spark of panic that lingered. She was out of oxygen.

Van Dijk noticed that she had managed to open the spillway about six inches. He could already feel the water’s vacuum pull, tugging at them as the river’s pressure pushed water into the sewers.

Isabella looked up at the surface with alarm; she needed air.

Van Dijk grabbed her roughly by the arm, stealing her attention. He pointed to her and then to the gap under the spillway.

She nodded, understanding their silent conversation. Van Dijk hauled at the wheel, turning it and raising it inches at a time. He planted his heels against the wall and pushed against it to mimic his weight underwater.

Isabella swam to the opening and disappeared as she was sucked in. Van Dijk felt his own mind panic as, turn after turn, he hoisted the door further up and opened it. He realized that air would be the least of his problems if he couldn’t open it enough and Owen sent him back out to finish the job.

The river’s current fought against the suck of the spillway, opposing forces pulling Van Dijk in a disorienting contest. The private grunted in exertion and anciently inhaled a tiny spike of water behind the bubbles that escaped his lips. His throat constricted, and his nose burned. So he fought the current, which pulled him into the widening opening. He started to cling to the wheel, not just to open it but to fight the suck of the spillway as well. He looked up at the feathered light at the surface, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

A little more.

The circular spillway door had opened three feet. Van Dijk strained as he fought the submerged wheel, getting as much out of each turn as possible. Three and a half … four feet.

His feet were pulled away and down towards the spillway opening. He gripped the wheel, flapping like a flag in the wind. The water’s draw was too strong now. He let go of the wheel and was sucked into the sewer. He spun, and then he broke the water and gagged for breath.

A wrinkled elderly hand grabbed his flailing arm and pulled him to the side of the maintenance ramp and out of the roaring surge of water that flooded the sewer.

Van Seur grinned down at him. Now that he had shaved his face and pulled back his hair, Van Dijk could better see the former court’s hidden youth.

Van Seur had an unstable wildness to his eye, which paired oddly with his enthusiastic innocence. The nine-fingered man seemed to have shed an unseen weight and was eager to be part of a team. Van Seur was old and lean. With no shirt and his coat shredded, Van Dijk could see Van Seur’s very defined body in contrast to his twiggy proportions when they found him.

Van Dijk coughed and gasped for air but found his lungs and lay on the maintenance ramp as he caught his breath.

Isabella shivered as she sat with Owen’s cloak wrapped tightly around her.

“You did it!” Van Seur said, his face split by a boyish grin. “You actually did it.”

“Don’t sound too surprised,” Van Dijk warned.

Owen stepped into Van Dijk’s view but looked upside-down in Van Dijk’s perspective.

“Oh, hey, Owen.”

Owen chewed on a new toothpick.

“Van Dijk,” Owen nodded. “You still alive?”

Why did he have to say it like he was disappointed?

“Yeah,” Van Dijk muttered.

Owen smiled. “Nice.”