The battle for the Vanguard is no longer just a local skirmish; it is a fight for the planetary thermal-grid. We will introduce the Deep-Cities themselves—not just caves, but subterranean mirror-metropolises—and the true origin of the Null-Storms.
Chapter 24: The Iron Skin
The hull of the Vanguard was a vertical desert of cold brass and whistling wind. As the sleds of the Deep-Exiles latched onto the leviathan's rear treads, the "Dullards" of Aethelgard emerged from the maintenance hatches. They weren't soldiers; they were steeplejacks, welders, and pipe-fitters. They moved across the exterior skin of the moving city with magnetic boots and tether-lines, their heavy wrenches and sledgehammers silhouetted against the electric purple of the Aurora.
"Don't let them reach the induction-cables!" Kaelen's voice roared through the external vox-emitters. "If they cut the link to Oros, we lose the power-share! We'll be dead in the snow in ten minutes!"
Kaelen swung himself over the primary heat-vent of the Port-Leg, his heavy wrench locked into a safety-rail. Below him, a sled—a sleek, crystalline shard the color of a bruised vein—slammed into the hull. Three Exiles leaped out. They didn't have legs; they glided on plumes of violet mist, their hands ending in jagged ice-claws that could shear through three-inch steel.
"The warmth belongs to the silence," the lead Exile chimed, its voice vibrating through the hull-plates.
"The warmth belongs to the people who sweat for it!" Kaelen retorted.
He didn't wait for a claw to reach him. He unhooked a high-pressure steam-line from the vent and pointed it directly at the sled's engine-core.
HISS.
The superheated vapor hit the violet crystals of the sled, causing them to shatter in a violent thermal-shock. The sled lost its magnetic grip and plummeted into the churning gears of the Vanguard's treads, disappearing in a shower of sparks and ice.
"Kaelen! The Bridge!" Elara's voice screamed in his ear-piece.
He looked up. The induction-bridge—the mile-long cable connecting the Vanguard to the city of Oros—was glowing a sickly purple. A swarm of Exiles had reached the junction. They weren't cutting the cable; they were infecting it. They were sending a pulse of absolute-zero energy back through the line to "freeze" the Vanguard's heart from the outside.
"They're bypassing the armor!" Valerius shouted from the comm-room. "The thermal-surge is hitting the Core-Tank! The Pilot is screaming, Kaelen!"
Kaelen felt it—a sharp, icy needle in the back of his mind. The Pilot's resonance was being choked.
"I have to get to the junction," Kaelen said, looking at the mile of open air between him and the bridge.
"You can't walk that cable in this wind!" Hrothgar's voice crackled. "The Null-Storm's tail is hitting us! The wind-chill is minus eighty!"
"I'm not walking," Kaelen said, his eyes locking onto a discarded pneumatic cargo-shuttle used for moving ore between cities. "I'm riding.