Jace ran down the smaller of the two hallways, following the two patrolling soldiers. He tried to step as softly as possible, rolling onto his heels and pushing off the balls of his feet.
Kinfild marched off down the other hallway, then disappeared around a corner. He’d find the codes, and Jace would find Lessa.
Jace passed another intersection, then came to a sealed door. It didn’t open when he pressed a button on the control panel beside it. He drew the Whistling Blade and stabbed through it. The control panel exploded into a burst of sparks, and the door slid open.
He stepped into a comparatively dark hallway, clad in concrete and burnished steel. The air was cold, but steam seeped through grates in the floor. He was probably standing above a reactor or furnace of some sort. The soldiers had talked about a fight near the furnace—some sort of entertainment.
It didn’t matter where they had been heading, as long as they brought him back to his friends.
He broke into a sprint. He passed through another set of doors, then stepped into an empty hallway. Wires and pipes lined the walls, and only a thin walkway ran along the floor. He held out his arms to the side to keep his balance.
After a few more steps, he reached a round hatch embedded in the wall between two bulkheads. If he kept going straight, he’d reach a dead end. This was where the soldiers had gone.
He tugged on a lever until it shifted and the door swung outwards, then stepped through. A ladder descended down a tube of wires and pipes, then deposited him in a cramped corridor of overlapping metal grates. Distant voices cheered through the walls. He must have been close.
He ran down the new corridor until he reached a new doorway—this one opened automatically. The chamber beyond was a glass-panelled control room. A trio of crewmen in white uniforms and navy hats sat in swivelling chairs, lazily tapping buttons and fiddling with controls.
None of them turned (they were focussed on whatever was going on below, Jace suspected), but one of the crewmen said, “Lieutenant! It’s just getting good!”
Another chimed in, “Candle girl’s better than I thought—”
“What’s happening?” Jace demanded. He drew the Whistling Blade out of its sheath. Immediately, the crewmen spun around to face him. One reached for a pistol at his hip, but before he could draw it, Jace darted closer and pressed the Whistling Blade up to his throat. “Reach and find out.”
The other two crewmen were unarmed. They backed away, hands raised. Jace kept the Whistling Blade pointed at them, but he didn’t attack—they were unarmed. “Where is Lessa?”
“W-what?” one of the sailors stammered. “Who?”
“A candlefolk,” Jace demanded. “A prisoner of yours, yes?”
The other surviving sailor pointed past one of the panes of glass. “There.”
Jace tilted his head. He spared a quick glance out the window. Below was a long, tube-like room made of brass—a giant, inactive furnace. Wooden panels covered the floor, forming a flat platform nearly fifty feet wide. Along the sides were hastily-constructed wooden risers, covered in holographic graffiti. Silver-armoured soldiers, gray-coated officers, and white-clad crewmen filled the stands.
Between the risers, in the center of the arena, was Lessa. She held a short glaive, and with it, swiped at a stout but fearsome dwarf. The small man’s limbs had been enhanced with kyborg parts, and he swung a mace harder and faster than any human could hope to. It smashed into the wood, splintering the boards.
“It’s a fight!” one of the crewmen pleaded. “Instead of executing prisoners, Stenol lets us pit them against each other, as long as they don’t die! Keeps things fresh while we’re spending long hours in the void. And it’s the uncommissioned, backup boiler, and we haven’t needed it for years!”
Jace tilted his head. “I don’t—”
“This isn’t an inspection,” the other crewman hissed. “He’s a Watchman!”
Jace tightened his grip on the Whistling Blade. Certainly, they’d think he was one. He didn’t bother correcting them. Slowly, he backed away from the glass and stepped out of the room, then shut the door.
No one followed him, but the crewmen would set off an alarm soon enough. He had to move fast. He looked back down the hallway, then sprinted in the opposite direction. He wound through the halls until he reached a staircase, where a pair of soldiers waited. He cut through them before they could raise their rifles.
He slammed the hilt of the blade into the latching mechanism of a door, and it hissed open. One more unsuspecting soldier waited on the other side, who he pushed into the wall as hard as he could. The soldier slumped down, unmoving.
He arrived in a dark room. Barred cells ran along the walls, and it was dark. These cells, however, were filled to the brim with people. There were all sorts of creatures, all coated in glinting, brassy armour that seemed to have been from the boiler walls. Gladiators, he suspected.
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Jace sprinted down the aisle between the cells, head flicking back and forth. He searched for an entrance into the arena. At the end of the hall, there was a hatch in the wall. When he pulled on it, it hummed and hissed, and an electric whir strained against his effort. There was no control panel to impale, smash, or otherwise abuse, but high above, he spotted an especially large wire in the roof. It sparked and sputtered. Without a rifle, he couldn’t blast it, but he didn’t need to.
He snatched up a wrench from the cluttered corner of the room, then grabbed it in his fingers and held it tight—so tight that it felt like it would either crumple or shoot out.
It had been over an hour since the battle on Ten, and his Wanderer’s Banishment had to be off cooldown. He swapped it into his single technique card slot, then activated it.
The wrench shot out of his grip and flashed out of existence. It blasted upwards, tearing through the wire, then through layers upon layers of hull and machinery. Wreckage tore through the hull. Metal shrieked. He winced.
All of the lights darkened and, with a synchronized thunk, every cell door popped open. The gladiators stepped out hesitantly, then ran away from the boiler arena.
Jace gripped the hatch and hauled it open. It swung without resistance now, allowing him into the arena.
Inside the arena, the lights had gone out as well, but wires sparked and light filaments still glowed—not to mention Lessa’s burning tail. Everything had a faint orange outline.
A murmur of confusion passed through the crowd. Lessa sprinted around the kyborg-enhanced dwarf and ran towards the exit. A pair of soldiers moved to intercept her. She struck one in the visor with the shaft of her glaive, and Jace cut the other in half with the Whistling Blade.
Lessa scrambled through the open hatch, and Jace followed close behind her. He slammed it shut, and suddenly, he wished it would lock again. “Quickly!” he hissed. “Run!”
Inclining her head, Lessa asked, “Jace? What are you—”
“No time!” He shook the Whistling Blade to burn the blood off it. “Run!”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” She took off down the hallway, snatching up a rifle from a fallen guard as she ran. She wore a brassy cuirass with jagged edges and a skirt of repeller-mail, and liquid wax seeped from shallow cuts all across her body.
“Are you alright?” Jace asked.
“I’ll live!”
They ran back through the winding tunnels, ducking under wires and dodging smouldering debris. The lights turned blood-red, and a klaxon wailed in alarm. A few bodies lined the hallway—both soldiers and escaped gladiators—but the corridor ahead was devoid of living people.
Jace and Lessa returned to the top of the stairs, where the lights still shone. Soldiers trickled around the corner behind them, unleashing a barrage of plasmafire. One blast raced past Jace’s shoulder. He patted out the blackened fabric before it lit on fire.
As quickly as they could, they scaled the ladder. The moment they reached the top, another barrage of plasma chased them.
They retraced their path to the Luna Wrath. Jace didn’t know how they were going to get back aboard—there was no vac-suit for Lessa—but he had no time to ponder the problem. Soldiers closed in on them from all directions.
Lessa blasted a soldier ahead of them. Another rounded the corner of an intersecting hallway, but Jace cut the man down before he could raise his rifle.
They raced through the battleship’s cramped hallways, blasting and cutting through any [Koedor Terginian Soldiers] or [Crewmen] who tried to stop them. A soldier deflected Jace’s sword into the wall with his gauntlet. It plunged through the steel and cut through a tube, spewing steam into the corridor. Jace retaliated with a broad sweep, cutting halfway through the soldier’s chest.
They sprinted out of the brig. Jace peered down an intersecting corridor, checking for approaching enemies, when he picked out a man in a vac-suit and a broad hat.
Kinfild?
The Wielder stood right along the hallway, facing a ladder that extended up towards the ceiling. It reached all the way up into the armour plating of the battleship, through a rubbery-looking tube, and into what looked to be the cargo hold of the Luna Wrath.
“They found the ship?” Jace asked. He sighed. He had to admit that he was thankful to not climb through space again. “Did you get the codes? Or…whatever you needed?”
“I did,” Kinfild whispered, holding a rudimentary, slender technique card in his fingers. “I’ll activate it, and it will broadcast an Aes-code that will signal the torpedo net to open.
[Technique Card: Open Torpedo Net (Common) (Utility) (Compatible Class: All) (Compatible Aspects: All)]
Jace opened his mouth, but Kinfild held a finger in front of his lips, then pointed up into the hold. Jace understood. They needed to stay quiet, or they would give themselves away to anyone who had boarded the Wrath.
Jace climbed up the ladder first, holding the Whistling Blade out in front of him as he hauled himself up. Everything was quiet. Not even the deck vibrated. He couldn’t hear the engines chugging or steam hissing.
There could still be soldiers inside the freighter. There had to be soldiers. Swinging his legs up onto the deck, he hopped up into a storage cabinet. The edges of the opening were rough, and still warm. It had been cut open, and a rubbery tube had been stretched between the two starships. Jace pushed the cabinet’s door open from the inside, emerging in the main cargo hold. The boarding ramp was shut, and the harpoon cable severed.
But much worse, the blast doors that Kinfild had ordered Aur-Six to seal were open. Jace inhaled slowly. Someone else was aboard.
Walking with his sword held ahead of him, he entered the cockpit. Three soldiers pored over the dashboard and examined some sort of hologram that they had projected from the console.
Jace didn’t give them a chance to defend themselves. Only one managed to draw his pistol. Ducking, Jace slashed one soldier’s thigh with a sloppy slash, then cut upwards through the man’s helmet. The other spun around, just in time for Jace to impale him.
The soldiers’ bodies fell and a puff of Aes flowed into Jace’s chest. He ran back through the hold and to the engine room, searching for anyone else.
Jace’s mouth slipped open. Aur-Six slumped in the corner of the engine room. There were two charred holes in his main body, and magenta sparks of plasma Aes still swirled around them. Jace knelt down and tried to hoist the kyborg back onto his treads, but stopped halfway. The gears in Aur-Six’s head didn’t turn.
“Kinfild!” Jace yelled. “We have a problem!”