12 Miles Below

Book 5. Chapter 36: Trial and error

Book 5. Chapter 36: Trial and error

Other than being walking weapons of terror, Feathers had other uses besides blunt force trauma.

In my eyes, both Wrath and Father were walking factories, capable of creating a huge variety of items, like ammunition and chemical regents.

That meant any kind of scrapshit weapons I came up with would be allowed, if I proved it can be remade and restocked at all times. Which opened up a huge amount of potential. Said potential was currently undergoing testing, on my favorite target dummy.

The foam expanded, immediately engulfing every arm and leg before hardening into a sticky mess in the center of the empty hanger.

“This polyurethane solution is more resilient than the prior attempts.” Wrath said over the comms, walking straight out of the foam, strings of stretching out and snapping away, the whole thing fighting between moving with her or staying glued to the floor. “Power required to move at normal speed increased by four hundred and twelve percent while submerged.”

“But can you still move at full speed?” I asked, watching as she took a few more steps out of the initial blast. The sticky strings still clung to every part of her body, and I could tell she wasn’t pleased with this.

She drew blades, then swung them around. Slimy looking strings formed up between arm and leg, a few snapping away. That same slime was so difficult to move that a drop of it could lock my fingers together. Wrath easily snapped the finger test, but a full test still had potential. “Power requirement once outside the epicenter is at one hundred and fifty seven percent so long as the fluid remains on my shell. No significant reduction in combat ability noticed, however overall performance time has decreased significantly.”

“I’m fighting to survive more than five minutes in a fight against him right now. Knowing he’ll tire out a few hours early isn’t going to save scrap.” I said, sitting back down on my workshop chair and pondering. This was the third iteration of the goo-bomb, built from the ground up as a giant fuck-off to Father’s stupid speed. I figured it might slow him down just enough to put him in my range of skill. “How about launching a knightbreaker round at him, right after the goop?”

Wrath paused, crunching the numbers. “Within two meters, I would not be fast enough to avoid a full round. Between four and six meters, partial damage is expected but options have increased significantly. Further past six meters is ineffective.”

Two meters away from a Feather was a death sentence - I could be caught in the glue blast as well. Feathers could rip free of that stuff, but armor got stuck deep and it took some time to crawl out of. “You sure the machines never discovered anything stronger than this stuff?”

“Unfortunately, this is the strongest binding quick agent I know of within my memory banks.” Wrath said. “Chemical bonding agents capable of binding metal together would work with better results, however the time to bind would be unusable in combat. The only alternative that has similar strength is a quick-setting resin mixture laced with nanotubing however it would be brittle instead of binding. Unfortunately, the maximum strength is simulated to be below a Feather’s. They would break free without any adverse effects.”

To be fair to Wrath’s chemical knowledge here, this goop would have been one major step up against regular machines and knights in general. If the clan could find chemical printers capable of the accuracy needed, these would have been perfect to counter enemy knights. At least before we discovered the Winterblossom technique. Now, it was just a cute trick to tie down enemy knights. And one that couldn’t be manufactured in any large quantity.

We’d tried a few other chemical options. Good old acid strong enough to eat through a Feather’s skin was one option. A liquid solution would do the maximum damage, but too difficult to actually land, so an airborne gas cloud was what we tried out.

Problem was that it would eat through Journey just as easily if I accidentally got hit by a gust. And it wouldn’t burn through fast enough to make any difference, just piss off the Feather.

The real catch is that they could eat it.

In fact, I was watching Wrath do exactly that, a black cloud expanding out of her, dissolving the stands of goop still clinging onto her. Nanoswarms were a default in every Feather, so they could counter just about any chemical attack. Walking factory benefits and all that.

Journey could also eat caustic agents on its armor, but the nanoswarm of an armor was smaller and weaker than one run by a Feather. The machine versions didn’t have any limits, and clear access to the best of humanity’s old technology.

A magnetized dustbomb was also part of the options I tried. It instantly latched onto a Father’s shell, digging into the joints and clogging everything up.

It worked - just not well enough. Most of the sand turned into small piled up spikes across her body, and only one tenth of the whole payload managed to sink into the joints. Of that tenth, Wrath had no trouble pulverizing and sweeping her nanoswarm through it, gobbling it up. Didn’t even slow her down.

“What if it’s a conductor?” I asked, and then clarified when Wrath gave me a befuddled look. “The goop I mean. Find a way to make it conductive, and then hit it with an EMP or electric wave capable of disrupting systems more directly than through air?”

The EMP attack had worked on Father, just not well enough. Wouldn't get rid of his soul sight, but it would shut down a lot of other means to see. Might be able to combo that with something else.

Wrath stopped to ponder for a moment. “Simulations show standard machines would suffer greatly from an electric shock of strong enough magnitude. A Feather’s chassis would be more resistant to overall damage, however… not immune.”

“Wait, you mean there’s a chance?”

She flicked away the last of the goop off her leg, while the black swarms raced across, polishing off what was left behind. “Assuming you are able to discharge enough power through the fluid, yes. Critical damage is possible, though the neuromorphic computer systems have safety systems capable of shunting the power surge.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Thought about that direction for a moment. An EMP grenade would affect my armor just about the same as a Feather’s, and with far more destructive feedback. So that was out of the running. “Maybe carry around a cable whip connected to a power cell, then toss it right at the goop for a direct connection?”

“It would work, however you would not be fast enough. The first attempt would likely cause surprise and a delayed reaction, allowing you to land the attack. Future battles will not.”

A one-trick attack. Dead end here again. “Scrap on a barrel, always comes down to speed. Alright, if we can’t slow down his speed, could we force him into a checkmate situation?”

“Such as?”

A knightbreaker wrapping around his chest would be perfect, at a certain point there was nothing a Feather could do if they got caught in that attack. Problem is that they aren’t going to let themselves be caught in that attack.

Wait, Atius had run into this same problem before and he’d already come up with a solution. “What about holding onto a knightbreaker round fully unfurled and active, and then using the mirror fractal to generate attacks with that?”

Can’t summon as many ghosts as the lord Deathless, but three or four knightbreakers being slashed through the air is more than enough to back a Feather into a corner.

To’Aacar hadn’t been able to dodge that, he’d needed to teleport out of the surprise attack. All I’d need to do is surround Father with the occult images and slash out all at once.

A mental image of him spearing out multiple ghosts by stabbing them through the armguard flashed through my head. He’d be too fast.

Atius had summoned twelve fully formed ghosts to fight with. I needed more to guarantee Father wouldn’t weasel out of it.

Wait. Maybe I didn’t need knightbreakers at all. The problem wasn’t firepower. The knightbreaker chains did just about as much damage as the occult armguard, so long as it connected. Functionally they were the same, other than the chains being harder to avoid.

All I needed to do then, was to hit Father faster than he could dodge. Impossible to do with my physical body, but ghosts weren’t tied to reality at all. If I could make them move faster, they might just be able to out-speed a Feather.

Just had to practice. A lot.

"Well, if it isn't my wayward apprentice. Have you come to grace my humble home with your presence?" Hexis asked, still reading a book as I walked in. He slowly closed the book with a thud, then set it down on the desk.

“No master, I’ve come to apologize for skipping the last few days. I was… under the weather. I hope this doesn’t change our aim?”

He turned to look at me with one raised eyebrow. “Under the weather?” Then scoffed, “Matters not to me. It’s your own time that is measured and judged, not mine. Sit. The lesson will begin. Helmet off.”

His hand reached to one of the office drawers and he removed a blank sheet of paper. “Given the lack of progress the last few days, I believe we will accelerate forward to catch up. This is a rather old tradition among warlocks. A game of wits, in a manner of speaking. The objective is very simple. We begin with an easy formula,” He wrote down y equal to x squared, then a graph bounds of one to negative one and tapped his pencil on it. “I take it you can visualize this without issue?”

“Simple exponential graph. Looks like a parabola.”

Hexis nodded. "The rules of the game are thus: We shall take turns adding, removing, or altering components of the formula, thereby transforming the graph into progressively more complex shapes. Do you have any coins at your disposal?"

Can’t say I’m in the habit of bringing coins with me on my trip to visit the local warlock. He could clearly tell too.

"You will use mine for now, though monetary value holds little significance for either of us," Hexis said, tossing a small bag of coins onto the desktop. "Tradition, however, demands adherence. Each time you take a turn, you shall pay a set price, determined in advance. An ante, as it is commonly known."

A single coin clinked onto the desk as Hexis added a negative to the Y side of the equation. "The objective of this exercise," he began, his voice measured, "is to render the graph sufficiently convoluted so as to confound your opponent's understanding, yet not so intricate as to obfuscate your own visualization."

His hand extended out, asking me to play next. I did, taking a coin and putting it down on the table. “What exactly can I change?”

"Any numeral, letter, or symbol on the page may be altered, including the boundaries of the graph itself. You are also permitted to erase and replace variables, as necessary. Don't abuse this, you only get three times to undo something I've done."

All right, lot I could mess with here. What move would scrap up the graph the most? I ended up erasing the exponent and replacing it with Y.

"You grasp the game with commendable speed," Hexis said, leaning back deep in his chair. "Now then, you may elect to challenge me or forfeit your turn. And I reserve the right to do the same at this juncture."

“Challenge?”

"Indeed. You wager all the coins you've bet, matched by my own, on the belief that I cannot visualize the graph any longer. Should I fail, you claim the sum. Should I succeed, I claim the sum. If I call for a challenge, it means I believe you've lost sight of your own maneuver. Conversely, if you challenge me, then you believe I am unable to draw the graph. The defeated party may issue a counter-challenge for a quarter of their ante taken, but they must also risk that amount if the victor can, in fact, draw the graph themselves."

Okay, so it was that kind of game. I was still trying to put together exactly what the new graph looked like myself, so if I let my turn go, he would likely immediately ask me to draw the graph and I’d lose.

“Bet.” I said, pushing my coins forward. He nodded back, taking a blank sheet of paper, then drawing a skinny lazy line up to the right starting from the origin, and a straight line down, disconnected from the origin at the negative halfpoint.

“Am I correct, apprentice?” He asked.

He was. When I ran the math, it was exactly that.

Ultimately, I never saw him lose one single match. He seemed to know when I’d lost my vision and was just trying to make things as hard as possible, and would call me out on it right then. I gave up with the counter-challenges, since he could always draw the graphs perfectly. Man was a monster on the inside.

“Each day, we shall engage in this game for one hour before our lessons. I am certain you already recognize how this game teaches both memorization and conceptualization of the underlying mathematics. And, nothing brings out the human spirit more than competition.” Hexis said, placing all the coins back into his bag, testing the weight. "After all, among puritans, it is known that the oldest living tradition among humans - is to win."

I hadn’t been left with a single coin, which was scrapshit. That didn’t discourage me, a game like this had too many ways to muck around with. “And what are we going to do for the next part of the lesson?”

He leaned forward. “Patterns in the air also have occult powers, and a few fall within the human vocal range - which is far more expansive than you might realize. By the end of my training, you will see and breathe occult fractals.”

Once my occult lessons were done, it was time to try and kill Father again.

"Dead. And you will not find an airspeeder underground, boy." He said, letting go of my armors collar. "This absurd idea of yours would not have passed, even had it worked."

Said airspeeder's anti-armor cannons were rapidly going from red hot to completely frozen over, on account of the hangar bay doors opened wide. Weapons pointed straight out into the freeze.

Father looked over the open hanger, where most of the missed shots flew out. Most. Some actually managed to hit him, not enough to stop his follow up rampage, but clearly enough to knock him off his footing.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only thing I hit.

"Pay for the damages." He said, looking over the punched holes in the clan hanger equipment and crates that had the misfortune of being between the doorway out and the Airspeeder. "From your own funds. I pray that teaches you a lesson."

“Yeah, confirmed exactly what I needed. Fast as you can go, Feathers can’t dodge bullets. And you really don’t like the bigger bullets.”

His eyes narrowed down. “What are you plotting, boy?”

I shot him a thumbs up. “Winning. One experiment at a time.”