Chapter 263: The World’s Worst Couples Retreat

The automatic gun refused to discuss customer satisfaction, so we stopped the bus behind a water tank before it could express its opinion through the windscreen. Hollis moved the passengers away from the front seats while Bridget photographed the manufacturer’s plate from behind the gatepost.

The plate carried a company logo she knew, which briefly made me hopeful before she explained that her family leased equipment to people who made terrible decisions with it. I asked whether that was the official business description or something they saved for the Christmas letter.

[System: We could fly over and bite the camera, mate, but I’d check the little vents underneath first. Those look like cooling fans, and you’ve already reviewed that particular health spa.]

I’m trying to develop as a person without becoming a reusable example in your safety lectures. The gun mount sat too far beyond cover for anyone to reach its base comfortably, and hovering into its sightline would only teach it how quickly I could become a target.

Bridget and I took shelter in a concrete pump room while Lukas and Pike continued loading people behind the tanks. Twenty-one minutes remained before the threatened strike, and the map on the wall offered an old drainage route that somebody had crossed out in faded pencil.

She called Adrian from her own phone and asked him to withdraw the civilian clearance attached to his company’s equipment contract. He began explaining that frontier operations involved complicated decisions, so she put him on speaker and let him hear the bus owner counting children into seats.

"Your next donation speech is currently waiting for a cannon to stop pointing at its face," I told him. Adrian said he hadn’t authorised that use, which was becoming such a familiar statement that I wondered whether he’d paid somebody to record it for emergencies.

Bridget gave him the lease number and told him exactly which authorisation to suspend. His company could stop issuing fresh movement approvals, but the local weapon controller would keep its current instructions until an operator accepted the update, leaving us with a useful delay instead of an opened road.

She made him send the suspension notice anyway, then forwarded it to Hollis so the captain couldn’t pretend the sponsor still supported the order. It wouldn’t block a shell, but it might make the crew preparing to fire consider who intended to pay their lawyers.

I watched her end the call and asked whether this would make her family dinners unpleasant. "They’ve spent years asking me to be quieter, so at least they’ll have something new to complain about when I refuse," she said, checking that Hollis had received the notice.

"I can attend the next dinner if you’d like everyone distracted by a worse guest," I offered. She cleaned the dusty ribbon below my jaw. "I’d invite you because I wanted you beside me, Matt, although making Adrian uncomfortable would certainly improve dessert."

For a moment, the pump room felt less like somewhere we were hiding from machinery. She rested her palm against my uninjured side and asked whether I was frightened, which was a much more difficult question than anything Adrian had managed to avoid.

"I’m mostly annoyed that the people I want to embarrass keep owning equipment that can turn me into a weather event," I said. Then I admitted I didn’t want Lukas under another shelf or her beside a gun with somebody else choosing where it pointed.

Bridget said she didn’t want that either, then took her hand away to unfold the old drainage map. She returned to the map without demanding a brave answer, which made telling her the truth feel less like handing somebody a weapon.

[System: You’ve admitted a feeling without needing the fire brigade, champ; check the water route before your mate outside gets jealous and invents another bloody emergency.]

You’re getting a rent increase if the relationship advice continues, and no, beer bottles don’t count as a security deposit. The map showed a maintenance channel wide enough for a service vehicle, running beneath the weapon’s line of sight and opening behind the quarry road embankment.

It was flooded, which didn’t trouble Amphibious Breath but made it unsuitable for a bus until we changed that detail. A manual sluice below the pump room could drain the channel, provided someone reached its wheel and released the obstruction recorded beside the outlet.

The map also showed a dry inspection shelf beside the controls, where somebody had drawn a small warning about slippery access. I admired the optimism of an engineer who thought the main concern would be someone falling over rather than arriving under artillery fire with a snake.

Pike recognised the system when Bridget called him over the radio. The channel had carried repair vehicles before its pumps failed, and the bus would fit once the water dropped, although the outlet door had been locked during a previous militia inspection.

I volunteered before Lukas could decide injured ribs were compatible with underwater heroics. "I can breathe down there permanently, while your body complains about sitting in the front seat, so let me enjoy having the correct equipment for once," I told him over Bridget’s speaker.

He asked whether I wanted a safety line, and I accepted rather than making him argue. A loose web-line around a solid coil would give them a way to follow my progress without requiring a new ability, provided nobody tried hauling me through a closed door.

Bridget opened the service hatch with Pike’s borrowed key while I settled beside its rim. Cold water reflected the pump room lights, hiding the lower passage until I dipped my head beneath the surface and let the first easy breath remind me that I wasn’t restricted to the air.

The channel widened below us, but the outlet mechanism had already started moving. Through the water, I saw its heavy door lowering across the route we’d chosen, and a loose cable dragged a broken maintenance frame straight into the space where the sluice wheel needed to turn.