Chapter 218: A Few Metres Wrong

The first one came up eleven meters north of where Jin had put Runner, and it came up forty seconds early.

He heard it before the overlay updated — a crack and a rolling scatter of stone over the channel, and then the handler’s voice, higher than it had been.

"Contact — contact, it’s out, it’s north of us, I’ve got it north—"

"Turn it away from the join," said Jin. "That’s the whole job. Don’t kill it, turn it."

The courser could not charge straight at it. It had been facing the exit cluster and the Ridgeback had come out behind and left of that, which meant crossing thirty meters laterally over broken stone with an armored burrower already moving.

The handler did it. Jin listened to the whole exchange and never saw any of it.

"It’s going for the branch line—"

"Don’t block it head-on. Get on its flank and make it turn."

"Turning it — turning — contact—"

There was a sound over the channel that Jin felt in his teeth.

"Runner, report."

Four seconds.

"Glancing hit. Flank. Armored strike, she’s — she’s up, she’s mobile." The handler’s breathing was ragged. "She’s mobile, we’re mobile, it’s turned off the join line."

"Confirm mobility."

"Confirmed mobile."

"Then hold your position and keep it turned. You’re doing the job."

Lysa’s voice cut in over the top of it.

"Western strand seven. Broken outward."

"Received. That’s a second one on the surface."

"Seven’s at the north exit."

"Received."

Second one out, roughly where the first came from. So the projection was wrong on the exit and right on the direction.

Then the ground gave him something back.

Glitch’s report came alive — the second Ridgeback had come out of the rubble and put its weight onto connected stone at the edge of the branch, and the impacts arrived clean and heavy through the slab.

"Second contact confirmed," Jin said. "It’s on connected ground, twenty-two meters north of Runner, moving toward the branch mouth. Confirmed, not projected."

"Do I take it?" said the handler.

"No. You’ve got one already and your beast’s hurt. Hold what you’ve got."

"Third?"

"Still blind. Nothing on it, no strand break, no contact." Jin made himself say the rest. "I don’t know where the third one is."

The east had been getting worse the whole time and Lysa finally asked for something.

"Astor. I’m losing the outer lane."

"Say it."

"Three expendable spools are gone. Load line two failed, and yielding the outer lane costs the two spools and paired load line still tied into it." Her voice was tight and precise. "I can hold the outer section and spend everything I have left, or give it up and tighten to the inner boundary. That leaves six spools and two load lines."

"How much do you save?"

"Six spools and both remaining load lines."

"Give up the outer section."

"Confirmed."

She did not ask him how to rebuild. He did not tell her.

"Volley — Lysa’s yielding the outer eastern lane. Reposition to cover the inner boundary. You’ll lose your current angle."

"Moving," said Volley. "Ammunition at sixty."

Then something got through the east.

It was a jackal, low Bronze, larger than the others and faster, and it came through the collapsing outer section while Lysa was mid-rebuild and made straight down the enclosed run for the join.

"Leader through," said Lysa. "It’s past me, I can’t reach it."

"Received."

At the same moment, on the overlay, the second Ridgeback reached the western branch mouth.

Both. Of course both.

Jin had eight seconds and one beast at the join, and the join was where both branches met, which was the entire reason Glitch had never left it.

"Volley, the jackal, marked — go."

Volley fired twice and hit once, and the jackal came on.

Glitch met it.

He did not chase and he did not turn. He stood on the slab with his feet set and read the last two strides through the stone and took the leap on hardened shoulder plating, and the jackal hit him and rebounded and got up, and by then Glitch had turned after the contact and the tail was already coming round.

It struck the channel wall, tried to rise, and Volley’s next shot put it down for good.

The Ridgeback arrived while that was happening.

It came at the join from the west with its plates down, low and heavy, and Jin watched it commit and felt the commitment arrive through the bond a half-second before it was visible.

"Glitch. It’s coming straight in. Take it."

[Harden — active]

The impact moved him. Not far — a hand’s width, maybe two, and it went through the slab and into the sector — and Glitch held.

The Ridgeback tucked. Head under the shoulder plate, limbs in, and it became a rock with a beast inside it, exactly as they had at Stonewell.

"Acid Breath. Left hip seam."

Nobody on the channel paused. Nobody asked anything. Volley shifted angle to cover the eastern approach while Glitch did it and Lysa said "inner boundary set" in the middle of it, and the entire use of the skill took three seconds and produced no commentary whatsoever.

The seam pitted and sagged.

"Volley, hip, left side, now."

Volley put two into the weakened plate and the Ridgeback opened.

Glitch was already moving. He put his full evolved weight through the compromised joint, got his jaws into what was under it, and turned his whole body, and the thing came apart at the hip and stopped being a coordinated animal.

Finishing it took another forty seconds and Jin did not enjoy any of them.

The third Ridgeback surfaced at the far western exit six minutes later, went about ten meters, encountered nothing it wanted, and went back down.

Jin tracked it for as long as the ground let him and then lost it, and it did not come back.

The eastern jackals broke off twenty-eight minutes after first contact. They had not been destroyed; roughly eight survivors withdrew when the sector became too expensive and returned to the wider Tide.

The sector went quiet in stages.

[E-9 — OBJECTIVE HOLD CONFIRMED]

[Contribution assessment: pending]

[Active defense: continuing]

Jin looked at the second line and then closed the panel, because he could not do anything with it and did not want to be a person who read it during a lull.

The damage report took four minutes and every part of it cost something.

Runner’s courser: glancing armored strike to the left flank. Bruising, no fracture, blood but not much. Mobile. Requires treatment after the shift.

Lysa: five expendable spools spent or abandoned with the outer eastern section. Two load lines gone, one failed and one left with the yielded lane. Six spools and two load lines remaining, with resupply at hour six.

Volley: ammunition at forty-one percent.

Glitch: Acid Breath once, Harden held through two significant impacts, and a raw throat that Jin could feel through the bond as a dull unpleasant scrape. Stamina down further than Jin liked at Tide minute thirty-nine.

Jin sat down on the edge of the slab.

The plan worked.

That was true and he made himself hold it next to the rest of it. The blind corridor had been named and fenced. Runner had been sent on a probable and had been eleven meters and forty seconds wrong and had still turned the thing away from the join. Lysa had spent an outer lane to save a boundary. Nobody was dead.

One injured beast. Five spools and two load lines gone. A throat he can’t use again for a while. And that was the probe.

Out along the eastern run, the torn sacrificial webbing lifted and settled in the charged air, over and over, while every exterior channel on the shared band stayed open and loud.

Thirty-nine minutes since the Tide began.