Three explosions went off at once, blowing smoke and dust over her. Althea brushed away the dirt, concentrated on Dorian’s display, the tracking scan for the corpore core’s steady distress call. More radiation sources, more ghosting on the detection fields kept the true direction vague. She looked over at Traejan, who was back on his knees by Kyso.

Response delays are decreasing rapidly.

“How much time do we have?”

You may have two eights, less if there is acceleration.

With the vast maze of wreckage to search through, that might not be enough time to find the core. She swore.

It’s never easy, is it?

She couldn’t cover the necessary ground on her own. She turned back to Traejan, walked the twenty-one steps to where he knelt.

“I need your help,” she told him.

He remained concentrated on the dying man.

“When he dies, he’ll need to be burned,” he told her quietly.

Did they burn their dead here? Did they– she shook the thought away, needed to deal with the Macro first.

“We’ll all be burned if I don’t find the corpore’s communications core,” she insisted, putting in all the urgency she could muster. “Are you going to stand here doing nothing? Or are you going to help me?”

“I can’t leave him like this,” Traejan continued.

She touched his shoulder.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“We’ll give him a proper funeral, I promise you.”

He turned to look up at her, expression wavering between loss and suspicion.

“When?”

“Later… soon,” she assured him. “Please – let’s get to work. There’s not much time”

The tundra south of the ruined city was a maze now, the broken ruins surrounded – covered – by massive fragments of the destroyed corpore. Thousands of huge chunks of the construct were littered in their path – burning, smoking – impossible to easily or quickly navigate. A solid third of it had failed to disintegrate, had fallen sideways to create a massive wall along the west, stretching ragged metal teeth into the sky. After two sevens of turning back and forth, Althea had no choice but to climb on the top of a hot broken mass to survey the path ahead.

The corpore had exploded from the within, where its stores of trilium had fueled the thrusters, the other powered systems. Thankfully, that meant that the communication core wouldn’t be deeply hidden amongst the blocks of wreckage and debris – would be easy to find, manipulate once she could locate it. Unfortunately, the corpore had been at least a thirteen wide; the background radiation made finding an absolute location difficult, frustrating. Even with Traejan helping with triangulation, she didn’t think they were closing in on it fast enough.

She had chosen not to try the lifter. It too had been pummeled by fragments – of the corpore, or maybe the smaller constructs – and it would not start. Weighing definite movement over an uncertain amount of time to make repairs, she chose to head out on foot.

Almost an eight into the search, Althea was starting to regret the decision.

“What direction do you have?” she called over her link.

Her line buzzed several times, then his voice came through.

“One hundred and twelve degrees.”

She readjusted the gain, compared the signals. Looked straight ahead, ran forwards to the next smoking block – tried again – grinned at the result, relieved.

The ghosting had cleared, with Dorian finally able to compensate for the interference; the corpore’s core communication source – reduced to one definite signal. An eight and a seven away, two hundred and five degrees, confirmed!

“I’ve got it,” she announced.

She locked the scan, started around the wreckage.

“Where is it?” Traejan wanted to know.

“A little over an eight from me.”

“How about from me?”

She worked out his location, distance.

“From where you are – about a nine and one eight, one hundred and twenty seven degrees.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” then he cut the connection.

In a handful of beats, her goal was in sight.