The next day...

I eyed my Band as the alarm rang on it, blaring in my head for my attention.

“What’s up, My Queen?” I responded with a mental tap on it. “Someone’s pet Canary Kriko get away?” I knew he’d be looking that up, but I just threw it out there. The brain-melting cute little birds from Colgurin IV were outlawed everywhere, their songs were just that deadly.

“Juris Directive. You’ve been requisitioned for leading a Tactical Squad for the cleansing operation on that Spideroid nest you found.”

Gee, that sounded familiar. “Either they don’t need me, or I’m useless with the numbers they are going to send, My Queen?” I answered, although I had to admit more Karma and nexals was not something I would pass up lightly.

“And I quote, ‘After review of Terminatus Sanctia’s Agent Rantha’s close-combat skills against members of the Arachne Gigas Nox, her services are requested to provide guide and personal security for Juris Tactical operators during the breach of the primary Arachne Lair.’ Unquote. Get moving. You’ve an hour to get there.”

It was a requisition, not a request. I rolled my eyes. “I really want to get a higher ranking so they just can’t do that to me, My Queen.”

“Juris handles everything below the Umbrans and Coronals. They can always do that to you,” was his deadpan reply. “Are you geared.”

“Yeah, I had time to work on some ranged options.” I patted my shoulder holster with my new autobow, Paten. He could definitely use lots and lots of Naming Karma. “Close-combat support, huh.”

“Their decision came after I sent one of the Queen legs you brought back up to them.”

And they discovered it could chop through their armor and didn’t feel like getting minced when one dropped down on top of them. “Such swell people. Did you negotiate hourly and hazard pay, plus bounty payment?”

“For every kill you can validate.” My Queen was so thorough about money.

“I’m on my way.”

------------

The assembly point for my squad was actually about half a mile from where I’d waited for the troop previously. And to my surprise, it was Sergeant Charlz and his Tactical Squad again.

I glided up again, yawning into the back of my hand, and this time the bike-cop just waved me past, obviously told to expect me. I waved at him, he kind of looked at me in disbelief, and I slid past, spinning around lazily once, still moving in the same direction as I pirouetted like no ice skater could, and ended up right in front of Sergeant Charlz.

The slightest of flinches made it plain he wondered how I had picked him out in the middle there, but that was all. “Termite Sama Rantha drafted and reporting for duty, Sergeant!” I replied, saluting casually yet properly. I glanced around perfunctorily. “I don’t have a known way down from here, Sergeant, and the ways I do have won’t fit someone in power armor.”

“Agent Rantha.” His voice had that edge of someone who’d watched a certain series of videos about harvesting spideroids on Termite bounty reports very closely, and suddenly realized, Fuck me I do not want to be on the other side of that mindblade of hers. He probably had all sorts of questions about why someone like me was working as a Termite when I could be selling my skills upspire, but he held off. “We have an alternate route down through some maintenance tunnels that will admit us.” He flicked the route to me, my Band pinged, and I glanced at it in my Visual File.

“Damn, that’s some murderous choke points. I’ll have to take point and clear them for you.” I wrinkled my nose and ignored his flinch of surprise that I was going to run point for them. “Patch your coms through my Band, would you? And the FoF indicator, so you don’t pop me when things get sweaty. I’ll give you a visual feed.” I tilted my head, looked at his feet. “I see you got some pads there.”

“Yes. Our objective is to seal off that tunnel you identified and make sure it is not used as an escape route while the main force presses in from the sides. There are other squads deploying to seal and block other routes out.” Beep boop bip, linked up with the don’t-shoot-me and coms.

Of which there had to be literally dozens by now. “How are they handling the lower routes?” I asked curiously.

“Undergang units are moving in to seal them.” Ah, the infamous Eight Families of Underspire...

“Changed your loadout, too.” I frowned slightly, looking over them. “It’s inevitable that you’re going to be charged. Are you bringing any riot shields? Anything you can put between yourselves and those choppers would be useful. The exit from the lift was twenty feet across, so you’ll need at least seven of them to make a wall across the bottom.” Which would be half his squad.

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“Eight men have fold-out shields to form a wall.” The wrist stubbers on their arm-mounts were perfect for point-blank duty.

“Well, then.” I glanced at the map again, oriented myself to a stairwell nearby, and skated off that way. I knew what they were all looking at, and they got a good view, too.

------

“Emperor, Sarge, this girl moves quick,” Corporal Buunz murmured in the private channel.

“No shit, fuckhead. How many times did you watch her vids? Not enough!” he answered before the other man could. They were trotting along with the tireless ease of their power armor, in single file down here in the access tunnels, being careful not to bang on the pipes of durasteel or plascrete walls around them, the heavy suits only humming as the two-inch pads on their feet absorbed the weight of over a quarter-ton of man and metal almost silently. “Now shut it with the chatter.”

She was already over a hundred yards ahead of them, her position clearly indicated on their route, markers for choke points indicated, and they could all see her unnaturally clear video feed in a corner of their visors.

And she was humming under her breath. The tune was strange, getting into the blood, and making their hearts beat faster. They felt like heroes advancing towards some great fight, and the enemy had best be scared they were coming...

“Choke Five, I’ve got a door here. Code?”

Sergeant Charlz waved it to her, and she punched it in with a blur of fingers. The locking mechanism disengaged, they could hear it through her feed, and she opened it up very slowly... and stopped.

“We’ve got webs,” her subvocal came through, but the humming didn’t stop. Instead, somehow, more notes and keys were getting added in. She looked past the edge of the door, and they could see wisps of shadowy strands adhering to the door she had just partially opened.

They could also see several suspicious gouges on the durasteel door...

She reached out as her mindclaw flickered into hard, terribly precise existence over her hand, and a white flame danced off those strands, cleaning them off the door with a touch. Only once they were all cleansed off did she pull the door open further.

The room beyond had hanging strands of webbing, and clusters here and there between the pipes and support columns. It wasn’t thick or an obstruction... but it meant the spiders had been here.

Her eyes looked around with incredible clarity, despite the fact that the darkness down here had only been growing, and their armor lights reached less than twenty feet in front of them at this point. They drifted this way and that, looking and measuring.

And then her mindblade flickered up, a crystalline length of razored golden force, and she was leaping through the air, kicking off a pipe, and suddenly twenty feet above the ground and cutting into a cluster of shadows there.

The three-foot spideroid inside died almost instantly, slashed completely in two as the Sun Strike went out. Shadowy webs went up like tinder around her, chasing one another across the ceiling and between the beams and pipes.

Her viewpoint spun as she descended, grabbing the durasteel support and changing her course as she came down close to the exit to the chamber, flaming webs that couldn’t latch onto her leading the way.

The baby spideroid waiting under the pipes near the door didn’t have time to react as she hit the ground flat on her face, sliding and cutting at the same time, and cut it in two before it could run.

“They’ve got scouts. Definitely not non-sapient,” she murmured to all of them, “or at least guided by something with intelligence.” The humming, quavering music only seemed to get more anticipatory. She glanced up, and they saw whiteness crawling across shadow, and the room seemed to clear up as the webs were burned away. “The way is clear. Continuing.”

The following Juris hissed under their breaths. Yes, very quick, indeed...

-----

They didn’t see my hair pulling out the nexals from the dead spideroids, but that was my business, not theirs. Vivus would dispose of them, although I sincerely wondered what a world like this would do with the life energy. Make more mold?

Whatever...

Lines of webbing were hanging and woven across the route now, which I had to cut apart and down. Vivic fire ate the gloam psi-power as easily as any other non-natural energy, and incidentally cleared up the gloaming in the air as it did so, restoring some visibility for the men behind me.

So they’d expanded this way, and found it blocked. It also meant they’d chopped through at least one more security door down here...

My Tremble was out in full force, and they couldn’t hide from me inside it. They were the only thing even partially organic down here, so they stood out like big wet blots outside the pipes.

I could dodge most of the hanging webs to approach one if they had line of sight, only popping them when I got up close.

I pulled out Paten to take a few potshots, make sure he got his Naming Karma. The Endless Clip regenerated a new bolt every six seconds, so I could run out of ammo temporarily, but it wasn’t a problem here. Sun Shots and ki-boosted ammunition hit way harder than anyone would expect out of a measly hand crossbow as my Vajra hauled back its string, and another short bolt deCompressed and slid into place.

Paten was only Soulbound at this point, I was working on his Zvei Slot. Of course, once I did, I would grab Main Gauche... and I should be able to get that working with just a few more spideroids.

A sudden increase to +IX Phrenic Bane Vivic was going to be a substantial boost to his killing power. Which was good, because I was sure I was going to need it.

---

A few minutes and eight more spiders of small to man-size, I was at the door to the chamber I’d reached before.

I remembered this door being in the top corner of the room, with a narrow stairwell leading down the floor. Only it had now been half-chopped off, leaving a waist-high gap that was more than big enough for a spideroid with its legs tucked narrowly to slide through.

Needless to say, the same thing had been done to the lift doors below. They had been slowly and roughly hacked open on one side, about a quarter of the circle carved through, more than enough room for even an Empress spideroid to come through if it wanted to.

I knew that the original access points had been sealed off with adamantine grates to stop any spreading spideroids on a temporary basis, so the spiders had opted to find a different way. The multiple doors must have annoyed them, and they hadn’t moved on to the next option, luckily for us. It was only a matter of time before they did, however, as they recognized doors, and realized doors had to lead somewhere...