12 Miles Below

Book 8 - Chapter 87 - A silent moment above the world

To’Wrathh ascended into the lower atmosphere, her wing system easily handling the air friction and gravity. All trajectories lined up within expected parameters.

She was more cautious for stray fire or potential interference. But the Icon should be covering her assent, eliminating any surface targets that could potentially attempt to prevent her arrival. Combat and calculations became something other when pitted against hundreds of miles.

Tsuya’s fortress was currently orbiting the world at a ludicrous speed, able to do a full revolution around the planet within the span of a half hour and some change.

Despite the insane speeds and physical stresses, it was simply a matter of calculations and physics.

She jettisoned a spent power cell and replaced it with one in her sack, provided by the Icon’s retainers earlier. Once she passed the upper atmosphere where air was no longer a factor, she could put her energy in acceleration.

She knows we are attempting to reach the fortress. Tenisent’s voice spoke soul to soul, warning her out of nowhere.

Mother spotted us this early? How do you know?

Below us. Pay attention to your surroundings girl. The time for learning is done. We cannot make mistakes.

To’Wrathh launched a sensor sweep around her, and saw what Tenisent had already felt.

Red dots of approaching Feathers lit up on her senses from multiple directions.

Seven were clearly unsuited for the task and were projected to fail. Either because they lacked the power or their design wasn’t rated for this kind of maneuver. Two others might be able to reach. One approaching from the north west vector, about two hundred miles off and angling to match her arc, and the other was directly south, making an attempt to outspeed her.

A small army of machines followed behind each Feather with exception to the southern Feather who was attempting to make it by sheer speed.

That was somewhat expected. The Icon had been pressing down the aerial aspect of the enemy, and now that she had to divert her strongest pieces to fending off Talen, Relinquished had grown in power and scope.

That said, as To’Wrathh investigated the signatures, she did notice something off: They were all an eclectic army. No standardization. Which meant everything that could potentially fly was being sent upwards.

Some were being left behind already, falling down as they lacked the power or shape required, similar to the other seven Feathers that failed the task. They still made the attempt despite that.

There was desperation in the air.

Relinquished must be panicking, throwing everything she could to prevent To’Wrathh from reaching the station. Which meant they were on the right track. The goddess wouldn’t have bothered with the attempt if To’Wrathh wasn’t a threat.

Zooming in her vision, she could see the south Feather had started burning up as air friction began taking a toll.

He was gaining on her right now and would intercept her vector within fourteen minutes. But To’Wrathh didn’t intend to remain at this speed and acceleration for long. His attempts were in vain.

She carried the jump jets designed by Keith and herself. Once she reached the upper atmosphere without air friction, they would ignite and allow her to match the ludicrous speed of the station. The Feather behind her simply could not catch up and would likely need to target for the later rotation.

The station would outlap her a single time around the world before To'Wrathh reached the correct speed, and by the time it was catching up to outlap her a second time, she would be within docking speed.

Which meant if this Feather didn’t catch up with her this round, he would angle to catch her on her loop around the world. At that point it would be more akin to trying to catch a speedball with his glove, but that wasn’t the objective. If he could knock her off course at that speed, it could potentially cause her to miss the docking window with the ancient fortress above. She’d need to readjust her speed, and could cost her up to an hour at worst.

She’d need to deal with him when she got to it.

The Feather from the north west was going to be an immediate problem. He would catch up to her vector before she started a full burn with the jump jets. And he had a small army at his side.

This random group of Feathers may not be coordinated, and may be the only dredges Mother could send her way last second at this moment, but they were still Feathers and an army.

And just like the lone southern Feather, they didn’t need to win either, they only needed to disrupt her orbital calculations and buy time for Relinquished to send more of her army.

Far above, and equally moving far faster than anyone, Tsuya’s fortress silently skimmed above the world in orbit. She could see the small bubble of occult moving on the horizon line, locked into orbit by that power. And more importantly, the streaks of missiles all attempting to converge with it.

They occasionally blew up in the air, as the silent human fortress didn’t suffer their presence.

Worse, it had changed trajectories and was advancing in her general direction now. She’d aimed for the first time it lapped her around the world to be several thousand miles away in distance, keeping her safe from the autonomous weapons.

Now it was basically perfectly aligned with her trajectory.

The Icon had concluded the fortress had a powerful autonomous defense system that would adjust and use tactical analysis. It must have noticed the incoming orbital invaders all currently lined up on To’Wrathh’s orbital vector and moved to suppress them early.

Her HUD lit up with warning signs as weapons fire was detected from the fortress, aimed in her general direction.

This would be the first test of To’Orda’s shields then. If the shield could not protect To’Wrathh from the fortress at this distance from its first flyby, her plan was doomed and she’d need to descend back into comms range with the Icon and recalculate a new approach vector.

She triggered To’Orda’s shield, hiding behind it, curled up in a ball as gravity took a few hundred feet off her advance. A price she paid to remain safe.

There were no sounds of impact. Her system couldn’t register exactly what had flown over their heads, and it didn’t disturb the air either. But the sensors were showing a massive amount of something had just sailed over their heads and left no trace behind otherwise.

Occult empowered. Tenisent spoke, pointing out how he saw the world through the soul sight. The concept of destructive trails left behind. It's firing something within another dimension. One with no air.

Far ahead, the north west Feather’s location blinked with multiple small explosions. The army was thinned down until none were left. And then the lead Feather himself was struck down, his frame falling out of the sky. Damaged in some way that was critical to flight.

She prepared herself for the onslaught that would come next, as the fortress was even closer to her position than the north west army had been.

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With the larger threat eliminated, the system would target her now.

Nothing came.

She realized why immediately after: “It’s waiting to get a better angle at us.”

Or too clever to use conventional weapons against a shield it calculates would protect you.

To’Wrathh knew the air around her was currently her greatest defense. And once she entered upper atmosphere, that protection would no longer be her ally. The true weapons of the fortress would be free to open fire on her. It may be biding its time until she got too close.

Prepare yourself. I will do what I can to shield us both. Tenisent said.

His ability to see death approach would be vital. They had no true idea of the weapons a fortress of the golden age such as this was equipped with or retrofitted with. The station was only named Tsuya by the surface dwellers.

The true name was indifferent to the old goddess’s whims. This fortress had existed long before she had after all. Tsuya had merely summoned it from the darkness of space beyond, waking it back up and drawing it back to earth like a chained beast.

The ancient Fortress flew over their heads in under ten seconds, several miles still above. No weapon fire came down at them. Not even an attempt.

Something is off. Tenisent said, sensing a trap.

She continued the orbital burn unobstructed, moving into the upper atmosphere. She expected to have run into a defense by now. Or more Feathers and an army that had already launched on the other end of the world, waiting for her to catch up in range.

Instead, they found the remnants of those armies. Metal that was still in the process of falling back out of orbit, burning away in the atmosphere. Shells of the dead, breaking apart against gravity and friction.

The fortress was cleaning the orbit ahead of her.

It must have already added To’Orda’s shield to the threat calculation and determined a more suitable weapon would work. Otherwise, it would have moved orbits away from To’Wrathh if it could not calculate a win condition.

For all To’Wrathh knew, the dimensional weaponry might be the weakest weapon it had, and was being used solely for the range and atmospheric penetration.

She’d find out in under thirty minutes at this rate. The second time it would fly over her, she’d be nearly matching the speed. Which meant it would have plenty of time to fire, and keep firing, at her shell. With weapons she had no idea about yet.

The first docking attempt may be dedicated to solely gathering information on what to expect against the fortress, with the second attempt being more informed.

She should have a buffer of two hours to accomplish this before the Icon had to scuttle and retreat from command operations. After that, she only had however long Keith could hold against Relinquished. The entire process might take three or even four hours if she failed her docking attempts.

I will shield you. Worry for what you need to worry for. Tenisent sent, resolute.

And then To’Wrathh saw something that did make her panic. But it was not from the threats above orbit or attempting to reach orbit: It was what she could see from this far up in the heavens.

What was going on the surface of the white world below her.

Relinquished would not be dragged to the surface lightly. They had all known she was the kind to duck and weave between narrative weights. To be completely certain they could force her to the surface, they had to set the stage in a manner she could not ignore.

Fortunately, the surface was vast, and the Icon had been cataloguing it all for the perfect final fight location over the past ten hours of the war.

And there was a good location in mind.

The world’s most suitable location to be more accurate. A complete edge-case of the distribution graph.

The target had been found within a massive sloping inverse mountain, like the center of a gentle volcano hole, except several miles wide and sunken into the strata. And nestled at the very center of that was the start of a missile launch site the machines had begun building.

The location was protected from attacks from Tsuya’s fortress due to the massive amounts of earth and ground in the way of the orbital trajectory. The missiles fired straight upwards could then readjust midway in the air to narrow their shots down. They would have no issue with the terrain and odd angle, but Tsuya’s fortress would.

Normally, this was the kind of weapon site that the Icon would send commando knights within to wreck things before more were built. But this one was left alone.

Relinquished pooled further and further resources into it, expanding the base outwards. The Icon responded by sending forces outside the fortress to attack it at range, forcing Relinquished to build defenses around the site. And given the icon didn’t have many flying knights like Kidra jumping around, the best quick defenses Relinquished could make were walls.

The Icon kept the missile site from growing too far out of hand by judicious use of To’Sefit’s final gifts. All so that the orbital fortress itself wouldn’t see the site as a threat and deviated from its position to eliminate it.

From the point of view of the machines, this fortress was their most advanced and well defended site, with only puny attacks from the surrounding human raiders keeping the full missile might of that citadel from being effective.

After so many hours left to fester undisturbed, and with walls being built to protect itself, this had became the largest citadel the machines owned on the planet.

Logistically it was nothing more than a better defended orbital weapons site. But in comparison to the rest of the world?

This was the very heart of their empire. A sprawling city built for destruction, with several hundred thousand machines skittering over the surface as they frantically built further and brought more weapons to open fire with.

Exactly the kind of location that could see a final assault. Or a doomed last stand.

The plan had been to dock with Tsuya station, and take over the orbital trajectory. She would slow it down until it could reach geostationary orbit above this singular spot.

When the Icon and Keith detected the orbital trajectory of Tsuya’s fortress had changed to approach the site, they would go on an all out offensive.

Every single veteran and soldier that the Icon could send would be portaled into the edges of the rim, so that the entire force of humanity could stand here for the final fight.

And Keith would arrive at the vanguard of that formation, to step before the citadel gates of the machine empire, and demand Relinquished to show herself.

It couldn’t possibly be ignored. Relinquished would be forced to appear, and when she did, To’Wrathh would be far above in orbit, ready to leave Tenisent behind. She’d drop down from the heavens, slam into Relinquished, and hold her from escaping the full wrath of mankind’s last fortress.

All of this hinged on her docking with the station and overriding the orbital maneuvers. That was the signal to begin preparations for the final fight.

It was not supposed to begin right now.

She’d still need a half hour to catch up and dock, and then another half hour to pilot the fortress into the right location. Possibly far more depending on what options and orbital abilities the fortress truely possessed. For all they knew, slowing down the fortress enough could take an hour or more.

But far below her, she saw it - the black citadel of the machine empire. All around it were hundreds of thousands of portals opening up, relic knights from all across the world and stratas stepping through for the final fight.

Warfrigates had been turned and were driving straight for the location at all speed. She could count at the very least a thousand in total, some turning a good five hundred miles away to start advancing to the last stand.

Which meant the rest of machine kind were being left free to ravage the surface and bivouac their weapon sites everywhere over the world. Within an hour, Tsuya’s fortress would be fending off an entire world’s worth of surface to orbit firepower. And each hour that passed, it would grow larger and larger.

She would not have the time to do a second docking attempt. She might not even have the time to slow the orbital speed down and position the cannon above Relinquished ahead of time. This was a disaster.

And the only reason the Icon would have triggered the final fight prematurely like this…

She has been found. Tenisent spoke, watching the same thing To’Wrathh was. These are her last portals.

“It’s too early, it’ll take us at least another half hour to reach orbit and dock. And-”

She knows it. If she has deployed the portals, she has no other choice in the matter. It was now or never. She chose now.

“Relinquished will come out immediately.” To’Wrathh paled. “She’s already made attempts to stop me. She knows what I’m after. She’ll see the fortress isn’t in orbit, and I haven’t yet reached it, and she’ll take the chance to eradicate Keith before we can reach her.”

He will survive. Tenisent said.

“How can you be certain of that? Talen could not fi-”

He is my son. He will hold the line because that is what is needed.

And for once, Tenisent opened a slight sliver of his soul to her senses again. And she felt it deep down. A sense of complete faith. Tenisent did not bother even considering the fight between Relinquished and Keith.

Tenisent believed Keith would fight and win. To his dying breath if need be. He would never give in until the station was in orbit above his head.

He is a Knight Retainer. We have all spoken the oaths. Continue the climb. We will do our part.

To’Wrathh turned and continued the orbital burn, finally reaching upper atmosphere. Gravity had loosened its hold on her significantly now. The air was too thin to matter.

Stage two reached. No signs of enemies.

The HUD expanded out as she ignited the dormant jump jets. Keith required limits to his own set, there was such a speed that the human brain would crush itself against the back of the skull.

To’Wrathh had none of those limits. And she had power cells to spare.

Systems reported nominal. Trajectory was locked. The space ahead of her had been cleared by the fortress itself, ripping apart anything Relinquished had tried sending after her.

Now, all that was left was to catch up to the massive structure, and slip past its defenses.

The jets fully ignited at her waist. And To’Wrathh began to race among the heavens, trying to catch up to a power older than even the gods.

Racing against time itself.