The pipe was larger, the sludge was deeper, and the stench was bad enough to make me forget I had a migraine. My wards filtered out the most noxious and poisonous gases. That the people behind us managed to survive was a voidmunching miracle.

  I only hoped it wouldn't get worse. The pipe was yellow polymer, smooth and slippery. I sloshed through muck up to my thighs. The high-flow marks were visible above my head. Things could be much worse.

  The flow pipe allowed five of us to stumble forward abreast, holding each other up, my remaining flash ward active and casting a sharp white glow before us. I estimated that we'd gotten more than a kilometer in, maybe as far as two. Fifteen minutes of trudging, with no gunfire behind us.

  "Will we make it?" I growled through half-closed lips. It was the only way to talk. Breathing was done through my rolled-up shirt over my face.

  "The sky willing," Riina growled back. Meaning there was nothing to do but hope and trudge.

  We trudged. Five hundred meters onward, the pipe turned into a waterfall, splashing and splattering sludge into a fine mist before it flowed away toward us.

  If I ever got out of here, I'd ward my skin, then rip it off. Either that, or accept that I'd never get clean.

  "That's not on the map," Hao yelled through a tightly knotted scarf.

  "Two dimensions," Riina growled, shaking her head. "Crud tech."

  Hao gently rolled up the map. I wanted to tell her to toss the useless thing in the sludge, but didn't waste my breath. It was short enough already.

  The waterfall wasn't completely vertical, the pipe angling upward at an fifty degree angle. I might have climbed it, with a good anti-slip surface. Against a current of slimy sludge? A Fed mechanized force would have trouble going up that way.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "Now what?" I said.

  "We can't go back," Riina said. "There's no way to turn, and the Trimen won't wait forever."

  "Can't go up," Hao said. "Maybe if we constructed a ladder. If we can get some rods, and flash weld them."

  "No rods," Riina said. "No tools either."

  She looked at the Kylians in the first rows, but nobody offered up anything.

  "Then we'll have to go out," I said through my shirt.

  I grabbed my etching drill and went to work. Except that the voidmunching polymer pipe crumbled, polymer dust choking the drill head. I cursed, cleaned it, cut my fingers, cleaned it again.

  This wasn't going to work.

  "Here," Hao said, pulling out the slab of ship plate from Montar's bag of tricks. "Knew I'd been lugging this crud thing around for some reason."

  I grabbed it, and etched a push ward on it in quick lines and swirls. Then I held my breath and reached out with my mind.

  Conjuring while holding your breath is a bad idea. You need oxygen, and a clear head, which is why warders don't drink alcohol. But right now, I'd happily glue my nose shut and down a bottle of whiskey if it got the sludge stench out of my nostrils. Holding my breath was a poor second best.

  The thread came, a cold, slithering sensation, a welcome distraction from the filth falling on me. With it came a stabbing pain, and the grey spots flashing before my eyes grew worse.

  I placed the plate against the side of the pipe, shoulder height, and let the thread flow into it, imbuing the ward.

  Then I up-tuned it.

  The plate shook, sliding slowly sideways. Either it wasn't straight, or my ward was askew. I up-tuned it more, and the sliding stopped.

  The pipe bulged outward, a centimeter, a finger width, a palm width. Stretch marks formed, thin lines, white in the light of my flash ward, beneath the surface of the polymer.

  Suddenly, the pipe burst. My wards activated, deafening me, but everyone around me slapped their hands to their ears.

  Stupid of me. I should have thought to warn them. Too late for that.

  I fumbled forward, grabbing at the pipe's jagged edges and hauling myself out. The opening was wide enough to let me pass without scraping my shoulders.

  I emerged into light, in what was clearly an industrial space ship dock. No fancy gangplanks of finely painted walls. Lots of cranes, gantries, loading grapples.

  And four armed guards in black-and-blue armor.