12 miles below the froze.., p.5
12 Miles Below: The Frozen Realm: (A Progression Fantasy Epic), page 5
Kidra groaned, now getting pulled into the fight. “My brother apologizes for antagonizing you three. Please sit back down.”
“I don’t apolog—” I started, but Kidra’s arm yanked me to the side of the seat.
“My dear brother, you owe me. I’d like some peace and quiet, and you’re going to make that happen. Are we clear?”
I turned to glare at the standing minion. “I… apologize for my rude behavior.”
The lackey stayed standing, glaring back at me under his goggles. There was some irony here, how neither of us wanted to surrender but neither of us wanted to piss off our respective bosses. Ankah finally waved him away, ordering him back into his seat with a flick of her head. “Impressive, Kidra. You have him on a leash now. Good for you.”
“Must you continue with this childish behavior?” Kidra said. “We haven’t been teenagers for a long time now.”
“Alas, time doesn’t completely remove all... scars. Only most of them. Such a pity.”
“You only further prove my point.” Kidra glanced up, an exasperated breath coming out over the comms. “What do you really want? We both know you didn’t come here by chance.”
Ankah examined her glove, rotating it in the light, ignoring Kidra. Bits of gold jewelry glinted as the light hit her bracers. “I want my knife,” she eventually said, primly. Almost as if it were an afterthought.
“Your knife? Curious, that’s not quite how I remember it going.”
“That knife should be mine by rights!” she snapped out, furious all of a sudden. “You should never have been allowed a spot in the first place!”
“I was allowed to compete as per tradition.”
“Your House isn’t even a real House anymore! You’ve been wiped off the face of the surface for years now!”
“Rules are rules. I suggest you learn to be content with second place. It’ll be quite useful in your life.”
The lady went quiet, composing herself again. Scheming probably. “Fine. No matter, I already planned for this.” Well, that sounds ominous. She drew out a mess of papers from her backpack. “This cost quite a bit of my own personal resources to track and obtain. Perhaps you might be interested.”
Ankah turned so the title was on top, making it visible to me. Specifically me. On the page: Department of Defense - ECAC Field Antenna Handbook - JUNE 1984.
Bitch.
“How did you know?” I asked, voice low.
“Finding something Kidra wants was a dead end. Nothing she cares for is difficult to acquire. You, however… my research points that you’re full of desires far outside your ability to obtain.” She tapped the stack of papers. “Like this book.”
Don’t get excited. It might not even have what I need. For all I knew, it could just be about software instead of the mechanical know-how on long-range radio waves. But scrapshit, if it did happen to detail that… a massive web of comm buoys all over the wastes would solve issues. Have them daisy chain information around. Pirates and thugs wouldn’t be able to find and destroy them all.
I was already at the limits of what engineers typically learned. Anywhere further into the third era was a fool’s errand. It all got exponentially more complicated after simple circuits.
Records from back then showed a different picture than today. They had hundreds of people collaborating to advance the field, instant access to every bit of information in the entire world, guides that could distill a lifetime’s worth of work into a single paper report, state-of-the-art tools, and entire nations worth of budget to work from.
And it still took them years to advance.
A combustion engine was easy enough to understand. But even old, outdated computers simply couldn’t be reverse engineered from nothing by one person, especially with the culture of the clan. Research was seen as a waste of time when those parts could be printed out and put to immediate use. Too much effort for something that might be outdated the very next day if a scavenger happened to return with usable printing files.
Civilization had once been built on the shoulders of giants, and today there were no giants to stand on.
She must have read my journal entries to know about that. This was bait. “If you think I’m going to ask my sister to trade her gods-damned occult knife for a book, you’re out of your mind.”
Ankah laughed, putting the collection of papers back into her storage. “Of course not. The value difference is ludicrous. No, I’m not offering a trade. I’m offering a competition.”
Kidra took a look at me and then panned over to Ankah. “What are the terms?”
“This is ratshit,” I hissed, turning on my sister. “Risking your knife isn’t worth it for a stack of glorified paper.”
“The knife belongs to me, brother. I will choose to do with it as I please.”
Ankah cut in, voice almost gleeful. “Since the book’s value is far below an occult blade, I’ll allow you to select the challenge, so long as it’s fair. Should you win, I’ll give you the book. Should I win, you’ll give me my knife.”
My sister stayed silent for a moment, mulling it over. “I accept. When we arrive at the next scrap site, whoever returns with the most power cells wins. You will have to leave behind one of your teammates, however, as there are only two of us and three of you.” She pointed at the minions, who seemed to almost bristle at the idea of getting separated. “Additionally, I’ll increase the stakes. Whoever loses must hand over all gathered power cells to the winner as well. I don’t intend to win only a book.”
That was still a gamble, but we had a heavy advantage. Most scavenging teams were large and optimized for working at such a scale. Ankah would find herself with only one teammate to rely on—a position she’d never been in before. Kidra and I, on the other hand, had spent years learning how to maximize the efficiency of two people.
“So be it, I accept. Locke, you will stay behind at the convoy for this.” She turned her sights on us. “I look forward to victory.”
I stared at my sister, horrified, and switched over to private comms. “What have you done? There’s no way that book is worth taking a gamble on your knife.”
“The occult blade is only a tool in the end. It’s expensive, yes. But it can be replaced or bought eventually. A dream is worth more.”
When I untangled just what she meant, it hit like a gut punch. “She-she’s going to cheat,” I said, sniffing and trying to keep composed against the well of emotions. I was only sentimental because it wasn’t every day someone put a gods-damned occult knife down on a bet for my crazy internet pipedream. Just a small one took years of saving up. A knife like hers would take decades.
“She will certainly attempt to find any advantage she can; however, it will not cross outright sabotage. Consider her position.” Kidra looked up from her rifle, staring down her rival. “Of all the options available for my knife, she deliberately chose a competition. It likely took her longer to obtain that book than to commission her own knife, and she certainly has the capital to outright purchase one.”
“Lords, you political schemers are complicated.”
Kidra nodded, showing a hand sign for smiling. “She’s always been like this. Her pride is far more important than a knife, even an occult one. You don’t know her as well as I do.”
Ankah sat prim and properly on her seat, almost smug even. I could hear it in her voice. “I hope you’ve enjoyed that blade, my dear. In a few hours it will be mine, as it should have been from the start.”
Kidra scoffed back. “Did you think I accepted this competition for charity? I fully intend to win.”
The antique airspeeder rumbled under us, almost annoyed, like a particularly sharp stick had prodded it. The vibrations were making it through all my layers of printed fur.
“All crew, prep for takeoff. Keep your arms and legs close, and make sure you don’t forget to hook yourself up. I’m lookin’ at you, Degrato,” the comms system announced in a deep voice.
I could hear the common channel blow up with laughter and one indignant voice objecting the whole way through.
“Complain all you want, kid, you should have paid more attention to who’s next to your hook,” the pilot replied with a good-natured chuckle, silencing the comms noise. “The rest of the expedition is headin’ out now, guys and gals. Takeoff in…
three...
two...
one...”
CHAPTER SIX
THE DEATHLESS
The ship rocketed upward a few meters with a heavy groan. Gravity squeezed me down into my chair, but the seat’s padding easily handled any discomfort until the acceleration passed. The scavengers that dotted the outside hull simply had to deal with the motion, tightening hands on their handholds.
Our airspeeder lazily glided into line behind the other behemoths, small turns and stops magnified by the scale of the ship, hovering above the ground only a few meters off.
The lead ship kicked off into gear with the rest of the convoy, including ours, following steadily behind. Snow and sleet billowed off the sides as the ships gathered speed, cutting through the barren land and harsh wind.
The next stop would be about seven hours from now. Kidra, as usual, was using this time to meditate on past combat or drills—as Father had trained us both to do over eight years of angry yelling. As for me, my eyes stayed set on the horizon, binoculars pressed as close to my goggles as physically possible. As if I was going to miss a moment of this trip with my eyes closed.
A white sea of snow and ice covered the world. Maybe once every two hours or so, I’d catch glimpses of broken buildings far out in the distance. Towers, derelicts, or even fortresses, all pressed out of their tombs over the years from the underground shifting around.
The deep timbre voice crackled out of my comm speakers again, this time into my private comms. He was just about a decade my senior, the current pilot of this airspeeder, and one of my few good friends. Teed. “Kid, how you holding up?”
“Got shot earlier.” I grinned ear to ear, even if no one could see. “I already owe someone a power cell, Ankah’s causing problems for the knife again, Father wants me to gather an insane amount of frostbloom or I’m kicked from the expedition, and I think we officially crossed the farthest I’ve been from home today. All in all, a normal day for me.”
“Sounds like you’re settling into the wastes.”
“There are so many people, Teed. I don’t even know everyone’s names!” Not to mention, I’d never seen over three relic knights in an expedition before. And there were twenty tagging along as guards. Twenty! Main expeditions were a completely different beast than the tiny ones I’d been on up to now. The possible future sites we’d find farther out into the wastes and what could be found inside were making it hard to sleep each night.
“You’ll get used to it, kid. Run enough expeditions, you see the same faces enough times to know ‘em all. The roster count changes up, but all the players stay the same. None of ‘em trouble, right? Other than a certain lady.”
“The normal folks all think I’m Father’s chosen right now, so they’re keeping polite. Might change after they find out he hates my guts and it’s really my sister who inherited all of… well, all that.”
Whatever my father had that let him come out of unwinnable fights time and time again, Kidra had gotten it. For the first few years after he sobered up and began training us, I thought he’d stop hating me if I could be as good as my sister. Naive on my part. I realized the moment I opened the family ledger just how little skill would have changed anything. I could have been a blademaster on the level sung in stories, and he’d still have hated me to the core for what I represented.
“Your old man’s not that bad. He wouldn’t have brought you along with the big boys if he really hated you,” Teed said.
“No,” I said, chuckling. “He’s got too much principle to ignore me like he should. Let’s change the subject, this is a sore spot for me. Are we on track to make it under Urs?”
Of course we were. The convoy pilots were meticulous in their planning. If they messed up and missed the re-fuel, it could mean a slow, freezing death for all of us—well, they’d reroute to another celestial flyby, so freezing to death might be a bit dramatic, but it was the first thing floating on my mind to talk about, and Father’s reasons were a sore subject to me.
There was a noticeable moment of static before he replied, “I’ve been piloting out in these white wastes before you even learned how to sneak out of your House grounds. Been... ahh, ‘diligently’ checking the charts every hour.”
“I noticed a suspicious amount of time before you confirmed direction. Just enough time to take a reading from an astrological chart. Hmm, very suspicious. Yes.”
“Well... you ain’t wrong,” he said, chuckling to himself. “But I could find camp under one of the gods with my eyes closed. Don’t need any of these charts. Much.” I heard a knocking on metal over the speaker for good luck. “Navigation is a lost art, kid, and I’m... let’s say an artisan explorer.”
“Getting too big for your britches there, old man.”
He scoffed. “Younglings don’t know their place anymore these days. Talking about that, ever thought of sneakin’ up here to the cockpit with me? You’d make a much better Reacher than you would a Retainer. No offense.”
“I wish I could. Though maybe not a pilot. I’m more of a tinker and make-things type of guy. Not sure I’d be good at plotting out astrological charts or keeping track of where the gods are orbiting. Rather leave that to the priests and pilots,” I answered honestly.
“I know learnin’ how to navigate would be something you’d be good at, kid. Actually, let me offer a more convincing argument—there’s numbers here,” he said, using math as bait. “I can even rustle some up right now. You like sevens, right?”
He was probably doing the eye waggle with that last bit. Teed was someone whose personality carried directly through the deep timbre voice of his. Kidra said his voice was more like dark chocolate. Leave it to her to compare a voice to food.
“Someday,” I said, ignoring the bait he’d put out earlier. I wasn’t that easy to hook. “Problem is I can hear him in my head already—honor your vow and House Winterscar… something, something… duty and responsibility. Ugh. I’ve got to find a way to get away from all this ratshit.”
“Eh, flip him a new one. Tell him you’re going to follow the Reacher vows of duty instead of the Retainer one. Oath is an oath, right? He’s got to respect that at least. The clan lord set that in stone.”
“If only it were that easy to switch lives, Teed.”
“Yeah, but who’d actually stop you? Only Winterscars left runnin’ around last I counted was your sister, your father, and you.” Knocking on metal resounded over the comms again. “I don’t think you could disappoint your sister, angel that she is, and I don’t suspect you could disappoint your father… well, more than he already is. Heh. Again, no offense meant, honored Retainer sir, the three gods above praise your name, etcetera, etcetera.”
“You’ve got a weird way of respecting your betters. I’ll start a blood feud with you if you keep showing me lip like this. Fear me.”
“Oh, I’m shakin’ in my boots.” His grin could be practically heard through the comms at this point. “Tell your dear sister to hold me, I need reassurance for my poor plebeian soul.”
A glance over at Kidra showed she hadn’t moved a muscle, still cradling the rifle in her hands. Meditating correctly, as expected of a knight Retainer, unlike her gossipmonger of a brother.
“Alas, poor Teed, dear elder sister’s one genuine lover in this world will always be that NAR-15. This romance of yours is not made to be.”
“A simple peasant like me can dream, sir.”
“But seriously. What is it you see in her anyhow? She’s my sister, and I love her to death, of course, but she’s too prim and proper about everything she sets her mind on. Not to mention she’s a caste and a half above you. That’s always a messy scandal when it happens.” But it makes for the juiciest gossip.
He sighed over the speakers. “Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re older, kid.”
“I’ve got gray hairs already, mostly from you. How much older do you want me to be?”
“Right, and next you’ll be trying to show me you got hair down there too?”
“I solemnly swear it’s also gray.”
“I’d rather eat ice than ask for proof on that one.” He chuckled, then interrupted me before my next breath. “Hang on, Keith, got company comin’ up here.” His demeanor and attitude changed completely. “Ah, m’lord, welcome. What can this humble navigator do for you?”
And this time, the respect in his voice was genuine. This felt like eavesdropping on a more private part of Teed’s life. Either he’d forgotten to turn off his comms with me, or he’d wanted me to listen in. But that guilty feeling was pushed down by my inner gossipmongering—there was only one person in the entire clan who had the title of a lord.
“Aye, m’lord, it can be done. Have to travel farther north for about a day to catch back up with Urs if we do this. If we divert for too long, Tsuya’s orbit is also in range, though we’ll have to backtrack a few hours to reach it.”
A shorter moment bridged this gap. After hearing something indistinct in the background, Teed’s voice picked up soon after.
“Of course, m’lord, I’ll set the new route immediately and contact the rest of the convoy with the change of plans. If I might ask for preparation reasons, why the change?”
I strained to hear the voice in the background talk. If my father was a living legend in the clan, the clan lord was a being straight out of myth. He wasn’t just a regular clan lord, he was Deathless. An immortal being more akin to a demi-god than a human. They say he’d lived over four hundred years. To put it another way: he tagged on the main expeditions to handle things relic knights couldn’t.
“Ah, I understand, m’lord, consider it done.” The static in the speakers interrupted my thoughts, and all was silent once more except for the humming of the engines.
“I don’t apolog—” I started, but Kidra’s arm yanked me to the side of the seat.
“My dear brother, you owe me. I’d like some peace and quiet, and you’re going to make that happen. Are we clear?”
I turned to glare at the standing minion. “I… apologize for my rude behavior.”
The lackey stayed standing, glaring back at me under his goggles. There was some irony here, how neither of us wanted to surrender but neither of us wanted to piss off our respective bosses. Ankah finally waved him away, ordering him back into his seat with a flick of her head. “Impressive, Kidra. You have him on a leash now. Good for you.”
“Must you continue with this childish behavior?” Kidra said. “We haven’t been teenagers for a long time now.”
“Alas, time doesn’t completely remove all... scars. Only most of them. Such a pity.”
“You only further prove my point.” Kidra glanced up, an exasperated breath coming out over the comms. “What do you really want? We both know you didn’t come here by chance.”
Ankah examined her glove, rotating it in the light, ignoring Kidra. Bits of gold jewelry glinted as the light hit her bracers. “I want my knife,” she eventually said, primly. Almost as if it were an afterthought.
“Your knife? Curious, that’s not quite how I remember it going.”
“That knife should be mine by rights!” she snapped out, furious all of a sudden. “You should never have been allowed a spot in the first place!”
“I was allowed to compete as per tradition.”
“Your House isn’t even a real House anymore! You’ve been wiped off the face of the surface for years now!”
“Rules are rules. I suggest you learn to be content with second place. It’ll be quite useful in your life.”
The lady went quiet, composing herself again. Scheming probably. “Fine. No matter, I already planned for this.” Well, that sounds ominous. She drew out a mess of papers from her backpack. “This cost quite a bit of my own personal resources to track and obtain. Perhaps you might be interested.”
Ankah turned so the title was on top, making it visible to me. Specifically me. On the page: Department of Defense - ECAC Field Antenna Handbook - JUNE 1984.
Bitch.
“How did you know?” I asked, voice low.
“Finding something Kidra wants was a dead end. Nothing she cares for is difficult to acquire. You, however… my research points that you’re full of desires far outside your ability to obtain.” She tapped the stack of papers. “Like this book.”
Don’t get excited. It might not even have what I need. For all I knew, it could just be about software instead of the mechanical know-how on long-range radio waves. But scrapshit, if it did happen to detail that… a massive web of comm buoys all over the wastes would solve issues. Have them daisy chain information around. Pirates and thugs wouldn’t be able to find and destroy them all.
I was already at the limits of what engineers typically learned. Anywhere further into the third era was a fool’s errand. It all got exponentially more complicated after simple circuits.
Records from back then showed a different picture than today. They had hundreds of people collaborating to advance the field, instant access to every bit of information in the entire world, guides that could distill a lifetime’s worth of work into a single paper report, state-of-the-art tools, and entire nations worth of budget to work from.
And it still took them years to advance.
A combustion engine was easy enough to understand. But even old, outdated computers simply couldn’t be reverse engineered from nothing by one person, especially with the culture of the clan. Research was seen as a waste of time when those parts could be printed out and put to immediate use. Too much effort for something that might be outdated the very next day if a scavenger happened to return with usable printing files.
Civilization had once been built on the shoulders of giants, and today there were no giants to stand on.
She must have read my journal entries to know about that. This was bait. “If you think I’m going to ask my sister to trade her gods-damned occult knife for a book, you’re out of your mind.”
Ankah laughed, putting the collection of papers back into her storage. “Of course not. The value difference is ludicrous. No, I’m not offering a trade. I’m offering a competition.”
Kidra took a look at me and then panned over to Ankah. “What are the terms?”
“This is ratshit,” I hissed, turning on my sister. “Risking your knife isn’t worth it for a stack of glorified paper.”
“The knife belongs to me, brother. I will choose to do with it as I please.”
Ankah cut in, voice almost gleeful. “Since the book’s value is far below an occult blade, I’ll allow you to select the challenge, so long as it’s fair. Should you win, I’ll give you the book. Should I win, you’ll give me my knife.”
My sister stayed silent for a moment, mulling it over. “I accept. When we arrive at the next scrap site, whoever returns with the most power cells wins. You will have to leave behind one of your teammates, however, as there are only two of us and three of you.” She pointed at the minions, who seemed to almost bristle at the idea of getting separated. “Additionally, I’ll increase the stakes. Whoever loses must hand over all gathered power cells to the winner as well. I don’t intend to win only a book.”
That was still a gamble, but we had a heavy advantage. Most scavenging teams were large and optimized for working at such a scale. Ankah would find herself with only one teammate to rely on—a position she’d never been in before. Kidra and I, on the other hand, had spent years learning how to maximize the efficiency of two people.
“So be it, I accept. Locke, you will stay behind at the convoy for this.” She turned her sights on us. “I look forward to victory.”
I stared at my sister, horrified, and switched over to private comms. “What have you done? There’s no way that book is worth taking a gamble on your knife.”
“The occult blade is only a tool in the end. It’s expensive, yes. But it can be replaced or bought eventually. A dream is worth more.”
When I untangled just what she meant, it hit like a gut punch. “She-she’s going to cheat,” I said, sniffing and trying to keep composed against the well of emotions. I was only sentimental because it wasn’t every day someone put a gods-damned occult knife down on a bet for my crazy internet pipedream. Just a small one took years of saving up. A knife like hers would take decades.
“She will certainly attempt to find any advantage she can; however, it will not cross outright sabotage. Consider her position.” Kidra looked up from her rifle, staring down her rival. “Of all the options available for my knife, she deliberately chose a competition. It likely took her longer to obtain that book than to commission her own knife, and she certainly has the capital to outright purchase one.”
“Lords, you political schemers are complicated.”
Kidra nodded, showing a hand sign for smiling. “She’s always been like this. Her pride is far more important than a knife, even an occult one. You don’t know her as well as I do.”
Ankah sat prim and properly on her seat, almost smug even. I could hear it in her voice. “I hope you’ve enjoyed that blade, my dear. In a few hours it will be mine, as it should have been from the start.”
Kidra scoffed back. “Did you think I accepted this competition for charity? I fully intend to win.”
The antique airspeeder rumbled under us, almost annoyed, like a particularly sharp stick had prodded it. The vibrations were making it through all my layers of printed fur.
“All crew, prep for takeoff. Keep your arms and legs close, and make sure you don’t forget to hook yourself up. I’m lookin’ at you, Degrato,” the comms system announced in a deep voice.
I could hear the common channel blow up with laughter and one indignant voice objecting the whole way through.
“Complain all you want, kid, you should have paid more attention to who’s next to your hook,” the pilot replied with a good-natured chuckle, silencing the comms noise. “The rest of the expedition is headin’ out now, guys and gals. Takeoff in…
three...
two...
one...”
CHAPTER SIX
THE DEATHLESS
The ship rocketed upward a few meters with a heavy groan. Gravity squeezed me down into my chair, but the seat’s padding easily handled any discomfort until the acceleration passed. The scavengers that dotted the outside hull simply had to deal with the motion, tightening hands on their handholds.
Our airspeeder lazily glided into line behind the other behemoths, small turns and stops magnified by the scale of the ship, hovering above the ground only a few meters off.
The lead ship kicked off into gear with the rest of the convoy, including ours, following steadily behind. Snow and sleet billowed off the sides as the ships gathered speed, cutting through the barren land and harsh wind.
The next stop would be about seven hours from now. Kidra, as usual, was using this time to meditate on past combat or drills—as Father had trained us both to do over eight years of angry yelling. As for me, my eyes stayed set on the horizon, binoculars pressed as close to my goggles as physically possible. As if I was going to miss a moment of this trip with my eyes closed.
A white sea of snow and ice covered the world. Maybe once every two hours or so, I’d catch glimpses of broken buildings far out in the distance. Towers, derelicts, or even fortresses, all pressed out of their tombs over the years from the underground shifting around.
The deep timbre voice crackled out of my comm speakers again, this time into my private comms. He was just about a decade my senior, the current pilot of this airspeeder, and one of my few good friends. Teed. “Kid, how you holding up?”
“Got shot earlier.” I grinned ear to ear, even if no one could see. “I already owe someone a power cell, Ankah’s causing problems for the knife again, Father wants me to gather an insane amount of frostbloom or I’m kicked from the expedition, and I think we officially crossed the farthest I’ve been from home today. All in all, a normal day for me.”
“Sounds like you’re settling into the wastes.”
“There are so many people, Teed. I don’t even know everyone’s names!” Not to mention, I’d never seen over three relic knights in an expedition before. And there were twenty tagging along as guards. Twenty! Main expeditions were a completely different beast than the tiny ones I’d been on up to now. The possible future sites we’d find farther out into the wastes and what could be found inside were making it hard to sleep each night.
“You’ll get used to it, kid. Run enough expeditions, you see the same faces enough times to know ‘em all. The roster count changes up, but all the players stay the same. None of ‘em trouble, right? Other than a certain lady.”
“The normal folks all think I’m Father’s chosen right now, so they’re keeping polite. Might change after they find out he hates my guts and it’s really my sister who inherited all of… well, all that.”
Whatever my father had that let him come out of unwinnable fights time and time again, Kidra had gotten it. For the first few years after he sobered up and began training us, I thought he’d stop hating me if I could be as good as my sister. Naive on my part. I realized the moment I opened the family ledger just how little skill would have changed anything. I could have been a blademaster on the level sung in stories, and he’d still have hated me to the core for what I represented.
“Your old man’s not that bad. He wouldn’t have brought you along with the big boys if he really hated you,” Teed said.
“No,” I said, chuckling. “He’s got too much principle to ignore me like he should. Let’s change the subject, this is a sore spot for me. Are we on track to make it under Urs?”
Of course we were. The convoy pilots were meticulous in their planning. If they messed up and missed the re-fuel, it could mean a slow, freezing death for all of us—well, they’d reroute to another celestial flyby, so freezing to death might be a bit dramatic, but it was the first thing floating on my mind to talk about, and Father’s reasons were a sore subject to me.
There was a noticeable moment of static before he replied, “I’ve been piloting out in these white wastes before you even learned how to sneak out of your House grounds. Been... ahh, ‘diligently’ checking the charts every hour.”
“I noticed a suspicious amount of time before you confirmed direction. Just enough time to take a reading from an astrological chart. Hmm, very suspicious. Yes.”
“Well... you ain’t wrong,” he said, chuckling to himself. “But I could find camp under one of the gods with my eyes closed. Don’t need any of these charts. Much.” I heard a knocking on metal over the speaker for good luck. “Navigation is a lost art, kid, and I’m... let’s say an artisan explorer.”
“Getting too big for your britches there, old man.”
He scoffed. “Younglings don’t know their place anymore these days. Talking about that, ever thought of sneakin’ up here to the cockpit with me? You’d make a much better Reacher than you would a Retainer. No offense.”
“I wish I could. Though maybe not a pilot. I’m more of a tinker and make-things type of guy. Not sure I’d be good at plotting out astrological charts or keeping track of where the gods are orbiting. Rather leave that to the priests and pilots,” I answered honestly.
“I know learnin’ how to navigate would be something you’d be good at, kid. Actually, let me offer a more convincing argument—there’s numbers here,” he said, using math as bait. “I can even rustle some up right now. You like sevens, right?”
He was probably doing the eye waggle with that last bit. Teed was someone whose personality carried directly through the deep timbre voice of his. Kidra said his voice was more like dark chocolate. Leave it to her to compare a voice to food.
“Someday,” I said, ignoring the bait he’d put out earlier. I wasn’t that easy to hook. “Problem is I can hear him in my head already—honor your vow and House Winterscar… something, something… duty and responsibility. Ugh. I’ve got to find a way to get away from all this ratshit.”
“Eh, flip him a new one. Tell him you’re going to follow the Reacher vows of duty instead of the Retainer one. Oath is an oath, right? He’s got to respect that at least. The clan lord set that in stone.”
“If only it were that easy to switch lives, Teed.”
“Yeah, but who’d actually stop you? Only Winterscars left runnin’ around last I counted was your sister, your father, and you.” Knocking on metal resounded over the comms again. “I don’t think you could disappoint your sister, angel that she is, and I don’t suspect you could disappoint your father… well, more than he already is. Heh. Again, no offense meant, honored Retainer sir, the three gods above praise your name, etcetera, etcetera.”
“You’ve got a weird way of respecting your betters. I’ll start a blood feud with you if you keep showing me lip like this. Fear me.”
“Oh, I’m shakin’ in my boots.” His grin could be practically heard through the comms at this point. “Tell your dear sister to hold me, I need reassurance for my poor plebeian soul.”
A glance over at Kidra showed she hadn’t moved a muscle, still cradling the rifle in her hands. Meditating correctly, as expected of a knight Retainer, unlike her gossipmonger of a brother.
“Alas, poor Teed, dear elder sister’s one genuine lover in this world will always be that NAR-15. This romance of yours is not made to be.”
“A simple peasant like me can dream, sir.”
“But seriously. What is it you see in her anyhow? She’s my sister, and I love her to death, of course, but she’s too prim and proper about everything she sets her mind on. Not to mention she’s a caste and a half above you. That’s always a messy scandal when it happens.” But it makes for the juiciest gossip.
He sighed over the speakers. “Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re older, kid.”
“I’ve got gray hairs already, mostly from you. How much older do you want me to be?”
“Right, and next you’ll be trying to show me you got hair down there too?”
“I solemnly swear it’s also gray.”
“I’d rather eat ice than ask for proof on that one.” He chuckled, then interrupted me before my next breath. “Hang on, Keith, got company comin’ up here.” His demeanor and attitude changed completely. “Ah, m’lord, welcome. What can this humble navigator do for you?”
And this time, the respect in his voice was genuine. This felt like eavesdropping on a more private part of Teed’s life. Either he’d forgotten to turn off his comms with me, or he’d wanted me to listen in. But that guilty feeling was pushed down by my inner gossipmongering—there was only one person in the entire clan who had the title of a lord.
“Aye, m’lord, it can be done. Have to travel farther north for about a day to catch back up with Urs if we do this. If we divert for too long, Tsuya’s orbit is also in range, though we’ll have to backtrack a few hours to reach it.”
A shorter moment bridged this gap. After hearing something indistinct in the background, Teed’s voice picked up soon after.
“Of course, m’lord, I’ll set the new route immediately and contact the rest of the convoy with the change of plans. If I might ask for preparation reasons, why the change?”
I strained to hear the voice in the background talk. If my father was a living legend in the clan, the clan lord was a being straight out of myth. He wasn’t just a regular clan lord, he was Deathless. An immortal being more akin to a demi-god than a human. They say he’d lived over four hundred years. To put it another way: he tagged on the main expeditions to handle things relic knights couldn’t.
“Ah, I understand, m’lord, consider it done.” The static in the speakers interrupted my thoughts, and all was silent once more except for the humming of the engines.
