Chapter 888 - 888: The Soldier Bolted A Charge To Erebos's Desk

Nessa Cord kept her bare hand on the breach because her suit had started lying to her.

The black shell around her wrist reported a clean seal. She could see two of its Vale-grown tendons hanging through the broken plate, stretched toward the hooked thing trapped under the cracked helm. Her own fingers still moved, which gave her time to cut the suit away before it decided the missing tendons belonged somewhere else.

Below the wrecked transport, the six-legged attacker tore another slab from the defensive wall. Three salvage crawlers pinned the loose fingers that had come through the breach. A fourth tested the black knuckle bone under Nessa's boot and backed away when its cutter softened.

"Cord, the west wall loses another brace when the next heavy shot lands, and the brewery tunnel will be buried if we wait for the civilians to clear it first."

Nessa heard Davi through the speaker implanted behind her molar. He was two roofs away with half a rifle and a suit that had eaten most of his left sleeve.

"Move the civilians through the brewery tunnel, and leave me two crawlers that still have working clamps."

"The hole in front of you has people inside it."

"People built holes before they learned to crawl through them. I will sort the difference after the wall holds."

She kept her grown rifle aimed at the one-eyed woman. The strangers stood inside a monitoring room stripped of most of its screens. A skeleton held the chain of a body caught in the floor. A bleeding mechanic crouched beside a brass carriage carrying ten cloudy plates.

Nessa had seen Vale nests arranged with less intent.

She pulled a flat charge from the housing over her hip. Its ceramic case held three directional cups and a burn cord braided from red wire. One cup would cut the broken plate free. Two would drive the blast into whatever supported the room behind it.

The one-eyed woman shifted out of the rifle's line by moving closer to the trapped hook.

"Your charge breaks ten doors when you only want this one closed."

"You watched our world while the Vale crossed it, so advice from your side costs more than ammunition."

The mechanic struck the brass carriage with a burned key. "Put that charge against the broken rim, and every iron jaw opens when the center kicks loose."

Nessa checked the room again. Blood on the mechanic's key matched her wounded hand, while the chain in the skeleton's grip had pulled his ribs apart. Neither stranger carried the calm of an operator watching a successful invasion.

The room itself moved above all three strangers on Nessa's danger list.

"Move away from the plate while I place the charge where your bodies cannot shield the machinery."

The skeleton tightened both hands around the chain. "Your suit is made from dead Vale tissue, and the thing behind us has started pulling at it."

Nessa flexed her hand inside the black shell. The wrist gave no pressure back.

She looked down. The hooked body had caught one hanging tendon and wound it around the inner curve of its weapon. Black fibers peeled from Nessa's forearm without tearing her skin. Her pulse cage flashed against the bones of her wrist, forcing the remaining suit tissue to remember the hand inside it.

The hook pulled again.

Her smallest finger stopped answering.

Nessa released the broken plate and drove her bare thumb into the emergency port at her elbow. Four needles entered muscle. The pulse cage dumped the memory of her last hand injury through the suit, including the door that had crushed two fingertips when she was twelve.

The black shell recoiled from the hook and clamped around her arm.

Inside the room, the one-eyed woman grabbed the chain before the hooked body could take another pull. "It can collect the dead material, but your living claim keeps the suit from going freely."

"I already knew my arm belongs to me, and I dislike needing your corpse to confirm it."

The skeleton looked down at himself. "That description covers fewer of us than you intended."

Nessa pushed the shaped charge through the breach.

Two salvage crawlers locked their clamps around her boots. She leaned into their weight and reached across with her armored arm. The trapped hook followed the Vale tissue, but the skeleton shortened its chain and dragged the weapon against the floor.

Nessa set the charge on the fourth desk, three inches above the broken plate. A drill unfolded from her forearm and drove the first ceramic bolt through the desk's steel brace.

The mechanic crawled beneath the charge. "That brace carries the center socket, so move your lower cup toward the outer jaw."

"Crawl away before I decide the shortest quarantine line runs through your shoulder."

"Threaten me after you stop drilling into the part that opens nine more worlds."

Nessa drove the second bolt and left the third in its sleeve. Two bolts would hold through a directional cut. The unspent cup could be turned toward the carriage if the strangers tried to seize her arm.

The one-eyed woman watched the red burn cord rather than the rifle. "How long after you break that wire does the charge fire?"

"Long enough for my hand to return, and short enough that you cannot follow it."

"Your hand is already the part the Reaper wants most."

The word meant nothing to Nessa. The woman used it like a name and an accusation at once.

Nessa started pulling her arm back.

The hook slipped under the cracked helm and came up through the charge brace. Its point missed Nessa's skin, caught the black shell at her elbow, and opened the suit from wrist to shoulder.

Vale tissue poured through the breach in cords. The pulse cage tightened around her forearm until the needles bent inside her muscle. Nessa's crawlers pulled from the street while the hooked body pulled from the room.

Her shoulder struck the broken plate.

The one-eyed woman caught her bare hand. The skeleton seized the hook shaft with one sickle, and the mechanic drove her burned key beneath the charge's lower cup.

"Jade, keep her elbow above the plate while I move the charge."

"Cut your suit at the shoulder before it carries the rest of you inside."

Nessa tried to reach the cutter at her collar. Her smallest finger remained useless, and the other three had locked around the woman's hand.

"The suit closes the collar when foreign tissue reaches the pulse cage. I need someone on my side to cut it."

Davi answered in her jaw. "Both crawlers are sliding, and the west wall just lost its upper brace."

"Send the civilians through the tunnel before you come anywhere near this breach."

"You are halfway inside enemy machinery now, Captain."

"That changes my location without improving your priorities."

The six-legged attacker struck the defensive wall. One salvage crawler released Nessa's boot when falling stone crushed its rear clamp. The second crawler held, dragging a white line across the street as its feet lost purchase.

Inside Room Four, the Reaper braced both palms against the floor and hauled Nessa closer. The shut Sadle hinge held its waist, turning its body into an anchor between worlds.

The skeleton's ribs spread when he leaned on the sickle. He could cut the hook shaft, but the chain around the brass carriage moved with every change in his grip.

"If I sever this weapon, the trapped body stops holding the Sadle hinge and the carriage turns free."

The mechanic looked from the chain to the charge. "Then the Earth jaw opens with hers, and the other eight follow when the key comes out."

Nessa heard enough to understand the shape of the trap. Destroying the breach where she had placed the charge would spread it.

She released the rifle grown along her arm. The weapon split at the wrist and stayed on the far side, attached to the suit tissue caught by the Reaper. Her human arm slipped free to the elbow.

Pain stabbed through the bent needle holes. Every finger answered except the smallest, so she kept moving.

"Turn the upper cup toward the desk bolts, and keep the lower cup away from the brass center."

Jade held Nessa's hand while reaching for the charge with the other. "You can turn it yourself after you stop aiming weapons through my face."

"My rifle is on the street, and your dead friend is eating it. Adjust the charge before that becomes less important."

The mechanic used the burned key as a lever. The charge rotated on its two bolts until the upper cup faced the desk's three remaining floor mounts. The lower cup pointed toward the blank wall above the trapped body.

The third cup still faced the broken plate.

Nessa pulled the unused ceramic bolt from its sleeve and jammed it through the third cup. "That blocks the plate cut, but the pressure will crack the case if the other cups fail."

The Reaper tore the last Vale cord from her shoulder.

The second crawler lost its grip.

Nessa crossed the plate up to her ribs. Jade wrapped both arms around her and turned sideways before their heads struck. The skeleton caught Nessa's belt with his free hand. Her boots kicked once against the far street, then cleared the breach.

The broken plate tried to close behind her.

Nessa grabbed the red burn cord before it could be cut between worlds. Heat had already reached the first ceramic bead near the charge.

"The cord armed when my second crawler released, and pulling it free only shortens the burn."

The mechanic put her wounded palm against the charge case. "The desk bolts will take the first cup, while the empty wall can take the second. What does the case do after that?"

"It breaks toward the largest open space, which is currently the road behind me."

Jade looked through the shrinking plate. The six-legged attacker climbed onto the street where Nessa had been standing. Davi fired from the brewery roof while civilians ran beneath him toward the tunnel.

"Then we do not close your road until the blast crosses it."

Nessa pulled a steel pin from her belt with her working hand and drove it through the broken plate's rim. The route caught the pin and stopped with an opening no wider than her shoulders.

The Reaper reached past the cracked helm for her bare arm.

Nessa rolled under the hook, seized the pinned field finger from the desk, and rammed it into the empty third cup of her own charge.

The finger began clawing at the ceramic from inside.