Chapter 52

  “I found the mutts,” Seventh said.

  Dalex expected the next words out of her mouth to be, “And they’re right behind you.”

  But she only looked at him patiently, waiting for him to acknowledge her announcement. Dalex folded his arms, wishing this interruption had waited at least a few more minutes. But Seventh always took the mutts and enemy {far realmers} seriously.

  “You’ve gotta give me more to work off of than that,” Dalex said. “Is everything alright, Seventh?”

  “Apologies,” she said. “I am experiencing an overwhelming amount of distortion coming from the mutts’ current location. It will pass, but it is affecting my cognitive processes.”

  “I see,” Dalex said. “Take your time.”

  Hitasa walked closer to them, closing the circle of their conversation. “What is going on?”

  No doubt she was just as concerned about mutts as Dalex and Seventh, perhaps more so. Dava had told Dalex about the truth behind the mutts’ arrival on Gaia Eta, about all of the cities that had been destroyed and the lives lost. Had Metsa brought Hitasa up to speed?

  Seventh finally got ahold of her explanatory faculties. “I have discovered a congregation of mutts approximately one hundred and fifty miles to the northeast of Batulan-bar. I cannot accurately estimate their numbers through the distortion, but the mass of the congregation seems to far exceed that of the den you exposed near the river.”

  “Far larger, eh?” Dalex mused.

  “And as we have been talking, I have calculated that the distortion emitted by the mutt mass is in motion, heading toward Batulan-bar.”

  Hitasa’s face was pale. “Dalex, you said you fought thousands of them in that den. How could there be even more than that?”

  Because it appeared Hitasa hadn’t been briefed on the true nature of the mutt invasion, Dalex gave her a brief rundown of what he knew. Her features turned even grayer, but she never came close to the expression that meant the catatonia was near.

  “Why would they lie about—?" she began, then she shook her head. “No, I know why. Because it’s a Gaia Eta problem. As long as the humans can defend the Waterfall Portal in Ulenbeter, the dragons don’t care what happens here.”

  “I have to go deal with this,” Dalex said. “But you shouldn’t worry. Keep working on your spell and—”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Hitasa said, wagging her finger in his face. “You can’t do this alone. I saw how you looked in the mutt den after you flew out of that pit. The mutts aren’t as easy for you to deal with as you would have us believe.”

  “Hitasa, I—”

  “If you need help, we can give it to you. Batulan-bar has scores of publicized warriors capable of defeating mutts. The hunters have been dealing with them for years.” She turned to Seventh. “Just tell us where these things are congregating and we’ll be there to help you fight them.”

  “Hitasa,” Dalex said, keeping his voice firm and taking her gently by the shoulders. She gave a slight jump at his touch but didn’t try to break away. “They took me by surprise in the den. And to be honest, I had to hold myself back. If I went all out, you and the others would have been hurt.”

  Dalex didn’t go in depth on all of the restrictions he’d put on himself.

  He went on, “If you or anyone else goes with me to this, I won’t be able to go all out, and something tells me I absolutely need to go all out on this one.”

  She held his eyes for a long time, until finally she said, “It’s dangerous.”

  “A bit, yeah.”

  “You’re not invincible.”

  Dalex cocked his head to the side. “Weeelll…”

  “I don’t believe you’re invincible.”

  “That I can’t disagree with.”

  She pinched her nose with one hand and finally stepped back from him. “And you smell like hydra guts.”

  Dalex felt his cheeks go red. He took a step back himself, scratching the back of his head. His fingers found some hydra gunk still clinging to his hair and he flicked it away, hopefully surreptitiously enough that she didn’t notice. “Yeah, it uh… It was messy.”

  “If you need us, call us,” Hitasa said. “Dava said the same. The resistance doesn’t just want to be protected. It wants to fight. The people of the city are beginning to realize who you are and what you’re doing for them. Whether we have to fight the dragons or the mutts, Batulan-bar won’t sit out of this war forever, and there are a lot of cities like Batulan-bar that would join the fight.”

  “I won’t forget it,” Dalex said. And he meant it. The people of Gaia Eta, whether they be human, elf, or beastkin, had continuously surprised him. Arnaut was a legitimate threat. There was a chance Yesui was even stronger than him. And Hitasa’s creativity and fortitude made her shine like the hottest ember in the ashes, just waiting to reignite the fire.

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  Dalex wanted to say more, but he knew it was too soon. “Go, finish publicizing kirtevas, and then make astregn into the biggest headline your world has ever seen.”

  “I will,” Hitasa said. “You go slay some mutts.”

  Dalex and Seventh took to the skies, flying away from Michel’s mansion. Just before Hitasa was too far away to see with the naked eye, he watched her use the {astral mortar} to form a tiny floating {golem}. She grabbed hold of it and flew away in the opposite direction.

  Dalex let out a single sharp laugh. “Astounding. What a woman.”

  ***

  Dalex flew until he was several hundred yards above Batulan-bar. When he stopped, he looked northeast, almost thinking he might see something building on the horizon that would indicate the presence of the mutts. Because of the distortion they caused, Seventh could not accurately {scry} their congregation and share the vision with Dalex.

  “What exactly does this distortion do to you?” Dalex asked. “Why can’t you just look through your {watch tower golems} in orbit and see the mutt horde?”

  “While the [satellites] record visual data, I do not process that visual data the same way you do. Even if a [satellite] directly observes a mutt, the distortion emitted by the creature obscures my ability to sense it. I am frequently not even aware that the distortion is occurring, however, when I know it is there, it helps me better determine the general area of the distortion’s source.”

  “I don’t really understand, but that’s fine. {Teleport} me as close as you can to the distortion.”

  Seventh hesitated. “I can do that, but I recommend further preparation before you begin your attack. It will take several hours before the mutts come close enough to threaten Batulan-bar, and your armor is still heavily damaged. It cannot currently self-repair to above fifty percent durability, and it will likely not rise to thirty percent before you confront the mutts.”

  “You’re right, I need a new set. {Teleport} us to the {voidstalker}.”

  “I have called for the [shuttle],” Seventh said instead. “The matter transmission beam cannot interact with the benefine deposit recovered from the hydra. If we were to transmit to the [stealth frigate], the deposit would be lost.”

  Maybe sensing Dalex’s impatience, she added, “We will re-arm and deliver the deposit before the mutts come anywhere near striking range of the city.”

  The transport vessel arrived just a few minutes later, descending down from orbit to pick them up and then zooming back to the {voidstalker}. When they arrived, Seventh handed the benefine deposit off to a bipedal {worker golem} which delivered the metal to one of the other {golems} capable of traversing long distances in the astral void. It would soon be shot off toward Dalex’s clone in the {gravity vortex}.

  Dalex supposed he was glad they had taken the time to deal with the delivery. It had been quick, and while Seventh had told him the Expedition 7 could hold out for many years, this care package would hopefully go a long way to making his clone’s stay in the {gravity vortex} more comfortable.

  While Dalex waited for Seventh to set up the machine that would attach new armor to him, a ray of light shone over his body, burning away the hydra blood and dirt coating his clothes and skin. It left a pleasant tingling sensation behind when it was finished, and the relaxing feeling made Dalex wonder what his clone was going through.

  Was she fighting for her life right now? Did she call herself Dalex, or had she come up with a different moniker? Was she renaming all of the tools they were both using? He wasn’t even sure how subjectively long his clone had been alive, and he wasn’t about to attempt the math to find out. Neither did he want to bother Seventh by asking.

  Dalex once again stood on the raised circular pad surrounded by the same mechanical arms that had put his armor on him in the first place. They went to work, removing the old plates and attaching new ones. In less than a minute, he had a fresh defensive shell. Dalex took a step off the platform but Seventh stopped him.

  “Wait just a moment,” she said. “I am adding an extra layer of protection.”

  Dalex moved back to the center of the platform and suddenly the ceiling disappeared, revealing a yawning maw of darkness. More mechanical arms descended out of the darkness, a hundred of them carrying different metal bits and doodads. A single metal hand grabbed him around the stomach and picked him up off the floor, holding him in the middle of the churning assembly room ten feet off the ground. The arms built up a brand-new suit of armor around him, this one four times his normal height and quite a bit chunkier.

  It took him a minute to realize exactly what the arms were making for him, at which point he began looking for a name and discovered it would be quite difficult. Mechas just didn’t have an easy fantasy equivalent.

  When the arms were finished, Dalex was enclosed in a fifty-foot robot, suspended in a cockpit filled with blinking lights and display screens. For just a moment, he couldn’t think of it as anything but a giant robot. They were firmly entrenched in science fiction, and he couldn’t easily slap the {golem} label on this thing because, as he was coming to find out, he was in full control of it.

  Dalex took a step forward, and the mecha took it for him, planting a single enormous foot at the edge of the armory platform. Luckily, the platform was made of sturdy enough stuff that it didn’t break or even crack when a sixty-ton machine walked across it.

  “I don’t know how to feel about this,” Dalex said.

  “This super-heavy beneplate armor carries more powerful weapons than the scout armor and has a larger complement of all-purpose and combat gel. It is faster than scout armor-assisted flight and should increase your survivability on the battlefield fifty-fold.”

  “I still would have liked to be consulted before you stuck me in this thing without my consent. I’m trying to cultivate a vibe here.”

  “I suggest shelving that vibe during combat with the unknown faction.”

  “That’s the thing about me,” Dalex said, taking one more step with the {celestial chariot} and shaking the room. Yes, he was going to like that name. “I’m committed to the bit. Now, how do I get out of here? I don’t think I’ll fit in the hallway.”

  “That is what this is for,” Seventh said.

  The ceiling opened again, revealing twinkling stars and the deeper darkness of the inter-astral void. A prompt appeared on a {scrying tablet} in front of Dalex, letting him know that the {celestial chariot} was ready to depart the {voidstalker}, instructing him to activate [thrus—], no {levitators}.

  Dalex slipped slowly upward out of the armory, leaving the vessel to float in the inky blackness of the inter-astral void. The {scrying tablets} all around him molded together to become one giant display giving him three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision of his surroundings. Gaia Eta glinted in the distance. The {voidstalker} he had just left was in a higher orbit than the zone where Dalex had briefly let Arnaut freeze. Dalex guessed it wouldn’t take him long to fly back to Gaia Eta in this metal monstrosity.

  Seventh’s voice echoed through the cabin of the {celestial chariot}, “I will meet you in atmosphere. Follow the prompts to my best estimate of the mutt congregation’s location.”

  A red dot appeared over Gaia Eta, pointing to a particular continental landmass.

  “Then I’ll see you there,” Dalex said, and he kicked the {celestial chariot} into high gear. Gaia Eta grew bigger and bigger as he approached until he dove down through its atmosphere toward the mutts.

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