Beneath the Ice (3)
"…that's how you consume it."
"Then why on earth—?"
"MM Corp may have crossed some line. The Blue Lady was just about to make her move, and we had the misfortune of catching her eye."
Alan finished the control session and looked around. The mass of concrete slumbering inside the crystal had grown noticeably larger — and it kept expanding, so that deeper in…
An intact building might actually turn up.
By that point the Destroyer would be a concern as well, but for now, escaping the Blue Lady came first.
If the Destroyer does notice us, we'll owe that to the Blue Lady.
Divide-and-distract was a useful strategy in any era, and even if Alan himself were the Destroyer, he would sooner keep a handful of tiny people in check than a figure of the Blue Lady's caliber.
It was all conjecture piled on conjecture, but imagining the future and preparing a range of solutions allowed him to respond quickly. The real problem was the kind of power possessed by the Destroyer and the Blue Lady — power that could render even the best-laid strategy worthless. But that was no reason to sit back and take it lying down.
The uncomfortable companionship continued for some time. Steven, the seasoned warrior that he was, never took his eyes off Alan's party.
I have no particular tricks in mind.
The other side had plenty of magitech engineers and mages of their own. Lesser in skill, perhaps, but numerous enough that they couldn't be dismissed.
Instead, Alan kept dispatching spiders to observe the Blue Lady. Box operated like a drone carrier, recharging the spiders and patching their minor malfunctions, and thanks to that they could at least guess at the vibrations and mana wavelengths she favored.
Though it could just be a simple reaction to the alien mana.
He was still turning that thought over when a cheer rose up from the front, where the MM Corp personnel had clustered.
"Colonel…"
"Quiet."
Steven shot Alan a glare. The reluctance to show them what lay ahead was written plainly on his face, but with the Blue Lady closing in behind them, he had no real choice.
"Looks like there's something up there."
"…"
"In that case, this is where we part ways."
A sound of teeth grinding reached them.
Once all of MM Corp's people had filed out of the passage, Alan could finally see what lay ahead in full.
"An underground city?"
It was the most fitting description. A broad expanse existed inside the crystal, packed to its edges with low-slung buildings.
Taylor watched enemies vanishing between the structures, then shifted his gaze to the center.
"That one there looks like a temple."
"I was thinking the same. Not a trace of human presence, though."
Alan swept his senses across the interior. The underground city was smaller than he'd expected — as if a fragment of some whole had been cleanly cut away and transplanted to this place.
Shiva, who had been monitoring the enemies' movements, called out to him.
"Brother."
"I see it too."
The MM Corp fighters who had entered the city first were spreading out in all directions — not randomly, but into a formation that would encircle Alan's party the moment they descended.
"It's hard to pull off a proper encirclement in a narrow passage, so they're pretending not to want a fight while they take up positions. The buildings will serve as trench lines, too, so I doubt unleashing magi-shells would accomplish much."
But there was one thing Steven had overlooked.
"We have the Moon Crystal Lens as well. I suppose they assumed everyone would have to follow the paths they carved."
Alan bored a fresh route through the ice, and the waiting enemies could do nothing but stare blankly at the hole.
"Colonel."
"Hold. The Blue Lady is right behind them — they'll have to come down. Then we concentrate our fire and finish it in one stroke."
The Icesteel crystal was opaque; there was no way to see what Alan's party was doing inside. Even drone reconnaissance was fooled by the holograms laced with illusion magic.
In the meantime, Alan's party entered the city and made for its heart.
"MM Corp knew this place existed, didn't they?"
"That would be why they were trying to open a path. It'd be lovely if there were a Spatial Gate in that temple."
"Even if one exists, there's no telling where it leads."
"Better than being eaten."
BOOM!
Barely had Taylor finished speaking when a great hole tore open in the crystal wall and chunks of Icesteel came crashing down. The Blue Lady poked her head out and gazed down at the city.
< Beneath the Ice (2) > — End
< Beneath the Ice (3) >
Taylor, running hard toward the temple, rubbed his arms with his hands.
"It's a bit cold."
"Brother, Icesteel is, in the end, ice — and we are standing inside the ice at this very moment."
"I know that. It's just… eerie somehow. Or am I imagining it? Alan, what's the temperature right now?"
"Minus ten, Celsius."
"Really? Feels more like minus twenty to me…"
Getting no satisfaction, Taylor faced forward again, and Alan followed behind him while surveying the buildings' interiors.
Through the windows, he could see inside. The shapes varied, but they were crammed with furniture and appliance-like devices straight off the surface.
Whenever Alan encountered an unfamiliar machine, he would glue a spider to it and move on. Then he stole a glance back.
The Blue Lady, head still jutting from the crystal that ringed the city, remained perfectly still. The way she occasionally tilted her head made her look almost like a person deep in thought.
Her docility had bought them time, for now — but other problems remained.
MM Corp…
Thanks to the illusion they had set foot in the city unharmed, but by now even Colonel Steven must have realized he'd been fooled.
Which means he'll come charging at the temple.
Alan had surveilled them with a sparrow-shaped automaton, but the enemy had caught on and shot it down at once. Still, he'd learned roughly how far ahead they were.
"What can we manage in ten minutes?"
"Long enough to strip this place bare and run — unless they've got defensive installations. We're here."
Taylor ducked between massive stone pillars and heaved the colossal doors apart on either side.
Judging by the temple's scale, Alan had expected an interior that was labyrinthine or lavish. What he faced instead was an empty room. Nothing floated there save for an enormous teardrop-shaped blue crystal, suspended at the center.
"Brother, there's something here."
"Yes, I see it."
"Do you know what it is?"
Alan shook his head at Shiva's question. He was the one with the broadest knowledge among them, so the question came to him often — but this time, regrettably, he had no answer to give.
"It's gotten even colder than before."
"Th-that it has."
Taylor crossed his arms; Cayden's jaw chattered away.
"Follow Mother's teachings, and you too can grow sturdy as I am. Brother Cayden, why not join me while you're at it?"
"…Could I, really?"
Alan passed the proselytizing Shiva and the half-frozen Cayden and drew close to the crystal.
At a glance, one might mistake it for Icesteel, but the mana it exuded and the angles at which it reflected light were entirely different.
"Alan."
"Yes. I know."
Worried he might sink too deep into concentration, he gave Taylor a small nod of reassurance.
"A Spatial Gate would have been wonderful. Instead, we get a crystal of unknown origin."
"Let me have a quick look."
Alan approached the crystal — nearly the size of his own torso — and gave it a light push with his hand. It didn't budge, immovable as a sheer cliff face. Even feeding a trickle of mana into it drew nothing but stony silence.
"Nothing doing. Let's pull back."
"If things weren't so urgent, we could hole up here for days. Well — another time, then."
"There is no other time."
Steven came through the very doors Taylor had opened. He had sprinted the whole way; steam rose from his body in waves.
"Leaving your men behind and coming ahead yourself? By my count, we still have six minutes."
"Six minutes? You think the world runs on your schedule, boy?"
Alan noted that Steven's gaze had lingered on the crystal for an instant. Even while feigning indifference, the man's attention was wholly fixed upon it.
"Do you know what the crystal is?"
"You can ask that question in hell."
Steven's form blurred, and he came on in a straight line. The Reflex Accel — nerve enhancement paired with physical acceleration — was all but mandatory magicware for warriors and soldiers alike.
At the stage of a complete overhaul, where the body's raw performance leapt by orders of magnitude, it became useless — but how many people ever reached that stage?
Taylor ran the same magicware Steven did. The two of them flickered like burnt-out lightbulbs, their forms snapping into clarity only at the instant of each clash.
"Easier than I expected. What were you banking on, coming alone?"
"…"
Steven absorbed Taylor's needling and glanced sidelong at Alan.
Even as a mere avatar, with enough time he could more than subdue the old man in front of him. But there was one major variable.
And here I thought he was the type to trust nothing but his Power Suit.
The mercenary in the Power Suit was the true problem. Threads of mana stretched out from the man's body and bound Steven's own, while some unidentified magic threw drag across his every movement.
Steven changed tactics. Evade the attacks as much as possible and simply buy time. His judgment proved sound, and his men, sprinting over in haste, rallied to him.
"You little brats. Skittering this way and that."
"Corporate-issue magicware really is fine stuff. Solid firewall, and the baseline performance is outstanding."
"Don't tell me you bought it hoping to fit it onto me?"
"That… would be no."
"The hesitation worries me."
Once his men had joined him, Steven pointed at Alan's party.
"Forget the crystal. Pour everything into them."
Before the order had even finished leaving his mouth, the fighters were drawing their weapons. Some leveled recoilless cannons. Artificial eyes linked directly to their weapons served as targeting optics, and the speed of it was staggering.
"Fire—"
KRAKOOM!
The detonation split the air before Steven could finish the word. Since an attack had been coming regardless, striking first cost nothing — the problem was that the explosion had gone off directly beside him.
Only scraps of footwear and scorched soot remained where a man had stood.
"Automatons! Watch for the spiders!"
The spiders Alan commanded were palm-sized and lightning-quick. The ones already deployed around the temple burrowed into the enemy formation and threw themselves into suicide blasts. Detonating gunpowder and magi-shells rippled outward from each explosion, compounding the losses in gruesome chains.
"Keep this up and we might actually—"
Cayden murmured, bright with hope. Alan's assessment was rather different.
The surprise strike had caught the enemy off guard, true — but far from collapsing into chaos, they had hardened their defenses all the more. Their numbers dwarfed his own, and with numbers came a wider arsenal.
Wounds were accumulating across Taylor's body as he held Steven at bay, and the white glow of Shiva's support was dimming bit by bit.
As the tide pushed them back, the enemies made it fully into the temple. The temple doors had held stubbornly against every attack and served as excellent cover — but once entry was conceded, that advantage evaporated.
I wonder — can corporate troopers be hacked too?
Alan studied Steven and his men. This was both a test of how far his abilities reached and an obstacle he would have to clear to survive.
Alan concentrated his mana, and the space between his brows flooded with light.
Steven watched his opponent's wounds mount. The balance of the fight was tipping; press a little harder, and it would be over soon enough.
Then he sensed movement closing in from behind.
I gave strict orders not to approach my flank.
He understood how battle-fever could strip away discipline, and he swung his fist forward. In that same instant, something sharp drove into his thigh. The source was one of his own men's swords.
"What the hell?"
"My body — it's moving on its own!"
He was not the only one behaving strangely. Traitors could not possibly erupt all at once like this. The moment Steven's glare locked onto Alan—
BOOM!
A colossal concussion shook the entire city. A seismic force rocked the temple hard enough to topple it — yet not a single shard of stone fell.
The impact was so violent that the battle stopped cold. Everyone already knew, more or less, who was responsible.
"It's moving."
The instant someone on the MM Corp side spoke, Alan swept the whole of the city through his reconnaissance spiders posted outside.
The Blue Lady dropped down out of the crystal wall and turned her head toward the temple. Strangely enough, the hole she had emerged from was already sealed shut.
Why?
There was no time to ponder the reason. A body the size of a high-rise came wriggling along the great avenue, and it was fast — so fast that after only a few blinks it was already upon them.
The Blue Lady opened her mouth wide.
"Run!"
Someone screamed it, but no one could move a muscle.
"Something's wrong with my body!"
"Something's holding me down!"
Alan's party felt it too, all too keenly. All across their bodies came the sensation of human hands gripping them — as though the air around them were thick with invisible ghosts.
And just like that, the people were carried out of the temple—