80. Friends in unexpected places

 
 
 
Exhausted, Nox and Jaden found a place to sit and contemplate what they were doing. They’d successfully made it into the enemy base only to tip them off as to their presence. They still had a long way to go, and the worst thing was, like the spirits, they had no idea what to expect next.
 
As the other women rested, Fureva-Yung explored the corridor heading south, opening into a dark room. Floor panels sat at odd angles as if something pushed up from underneath. Looking under a few, she found thick roots reaching out to all corners of the space. In the far corner on a raised platform sat a servitor, its head lolling to one side, its arms loose and disjointed, covered in moss. From somewhere below, the sound of trickling water could be heard.
 
Marius, too, was exploring. Hidden under a shield of invisibility, he stealthed down to the right of the elevator and into a large room. Stairs led down into a control centre where a central column thrummed with energy before two sets of heavy doors. As he watched, the furthest set of doors opened and out stepped a group of servitors. The first was one of the four armed repair drones, followed by a heavily armoured Protector. Beyond the door, another Protector and repair drone stood waiting in case they were needed.
 
The repair drone crossed the room and started working on the console. Its Protector stayed nearby to make sure it completed its task. Marius couldn’t see the screen on the console from where he was, but was sure whatever was happening was no good for them. Armed repair crews certainly looked like the response to knowing your enemy was near. Unsure what to do, Marius pulled out his gun and aimed, ready to shoot.
 
In the other room, Nox had joined Fureva-Yung, examining the roots.
“Don’t they look like the space tree?” Fureva-Yung asked. Nox scanned the roots and found them to be very similar, maybe a related plant of the same species.
“These roots are part of a larger plant that comes from deeper down,” Nox relayed to the others. The trickling water sound and the idea that the plant had already broken through to other levels gave Nox an idea.
“What if we can follow the plant down. We wouldn’t have to go past all these servitors, and the Shard couldn’t track us.”
 
On what Nox has just told her, Fureva-Yung found the Sharavellen link as well as the link made by the Space tree. These she touched to a protruding root nearby. The moss covering the broken servitor and ground started to glow.
“What if I tried talking to this one like we did the Space tree?” Nox suggested, and when no one could think of a better idea than standing back from the potentially exploding moss, she reached out and connected with the intellect of the tree.
 
COLD, NO AIR, CUT PAIN! CRUMPLED SERVITOR. The words came as images and sensations, not speech. It seemed the plant had been cut by the servitor at one time and had made it stop the best way it knew how. Now, a new image and sensation came through, one that felt like a question.
SERVITOR?
NO SERVITOR! Nox projected back emphatically and started showing images of each of the party when they had been hurt by servitors. SERVITORS CUT ALL.
SERVITORS GO AWAY, HELP?
Nox replied with a strong feeling of agreement and felt the ground move under her feet.
 
SERVITORS OTHER PLACES? Nox tried to send, but how do you explain places beyond what you can feel to a creature without eyes?
CONFUSION.
SERVITORS NEAR OTHER ROOTS? She qualified, and the tree understood.
NO. NOT NOW.
 
Outside of the conversation, the broken and moss-covered servitor began to move. First, its head jiggled and turned. Then its extremities twitched and spasmed as the plants made new connections. Finally, the plants took control, and the servitor began to rise.
Look! Zombitor! Fureva-Yung said just as through the telepathic network Marius sent.
Watch out! They’re coming!
Nox sent one last message to the plant. An image of many servitors moving towards the root. The Zombitor started heading out to face the servitors from the other room.
 
Marius held his fire. The pillar stopped glowing blue. The repair drone finished at the panel, and the group behind the door now stepped through. There were six of them in total. One Squat Servitor, they now called Squattys, two Protectors, two Repair Drones and a Skitter. The group of servitors now formed up and started marching out of the column room back to where Fureva-Yung, Jaden and Nox were.
Watch out! They’re coming! Marius sent and crept in behind the servitor force, backing up towards the lift as soon as the way was clear.
 
Nox had already sent her Protector, now called Bruce, to fight alongside the Zombitor. Marius could see the group caught in a room with no way out as the Shard Servitor attacked. Sneaking in, he placed himself as close as possible to Squatty and waited for his chance. With a roar, Fureva-Yung charged in, and the battle was on!
 
Jaden stepped back and worked out that the Squatty servitors' sensors gave them a large blind spot down low. She relayed that information through the telepathic network, giving everyone a better chance of hitting it. Protectors one and two moved in to attack Zombitor, but Bruce came up alongside, surprising Protector two with a metal fist to the face. Marius threw one of his concussive bombs behind the attackers. It hit the Skitter and one of the repair drones, doing a little damage. Now that there was nothing between him and Squatty, he moved in.
 
Zombietor wrestled Protector one, roots and moss extending from its own body to start invading that of the Protector. Squatty started its sonic hum as the second repair bot created an explosive out of io and threw it into the party. Nox and Jaden got out of the way, and Fureva-Yung took the brunt of the damage to her armour, none of it penetrating through.
 
Behind the two defending servitors and Fureva-Yung, Nox pulled out a cypher and set up a magnetic shield. Anything metal was repelled from the area, making a small safe space where Nox and Jaden could stand. The hum from Squatty cause Nox to stumble, she couldn’t think straight against the constant noise. Jaden and even Fureva-Yung found ways to close their mind to the distracting noise and continued to fight.
 
Fureva-Yung, leaping to combat,swung her chain around like a whirlwind. She smashed the skitter to pieces and made the damaged repair drone collapse. Squatty’s shield burned bright, and the chain still made it through, doing a little damage to the bot, though on Protector One the chain missed entirely. Having found out what she could, Jaden pulled out her laser rifle and aimed it at Squatty, only to have the shot bounce off Squatty’s shield.
 
The wrestling fight between Protector One and Zombitor continued with Protector One kicking Zombitor with an armoured knee. Protector Two swung an arm at Bruce and missed wildly as Marius snuck in and sent his molecular rearranger hands through Squatty’s shield. Where the laser failed to penetrate, the slow hands made it through, giving Marius an odd pins and needles sensation. Squatty was taken completely unaware, as a large hole appeared straight through it. It exploded, sending shards of metal in all directions. Marius dodged aside as a rain of shrapnel hit all the servitors, including Bruce and Zombitor.
 
The humming stopped. The last remaining Repair Drone, seeing how the battle was going, turned and fled. Fureva-Yung started pounding Protector Two as Nox sent out a wave of Psychic Blast, one also critically hitting Protector Two. Jaden aimed for the retreating Repair Drone and felled it with one shot from her rifle.
 
It was now a battle of servitors, Protector One and Zombitor, Protect Two and Bruce. Making another concussive bomb, Marius looked around for something sticky and remembered the piece of Responsive Synth Fureva-Yung was forever chewing and popping. Reaching up into the warrior woman’s mouth, he fished around and found the sticky, rubbery compound. Plastering it to his bomb, he slapped it in place on Protector Two and stood back. The explosion threw the responsive synth back into Fuerva-Yung’s mouth.
“Chewy and crunchy now,” Fureva-Yung grinned, swinging her chain.
 
Zombitor got the best of Protector Two, knocking it to the ground and pinning it in place. Roots grew out of every orifice on Zombitor, hunting for gaps in the Protector’s armour. Fureva-Yung chain lashed the air, swinging wide and smacking Bruce. With a heavy thud, Bruce crumpled to the ground.
“No! Mine!” Nox cried out in anger as her servitor failed and collapsed. A flash of bright light filled the area. It hit Protector One and Fureva-Yung, but didn’t make it past either armoured hides. Her angry outburst doing nothing, Nox hid behind the magnetic field and sulked.
 
Neither Jaden nor Fureva-Yung were as upset at the demise of Bruce, and yet, they were just as effective on their turns. Only Marius took the fight to the enemy. With a nightly punch, Protector One finally crumples to the ground and the battle was over. Nox noticed the broken shell of Protector Two start creeping towards the corner with the roots.
Protector Two as well? She asked the tree roots, showing the broken robot following its companion. She received an affirmative, only to have both robots stop at the magnetic shield.
 
“Oops! We’ll have to wait for the wall to come down,” she said, realising what was going on. She then spent the time talking to the tree.
Is there room to follow the water down? She was shown many small caverns behind the walls of the Temple. What was more, the roots had made it through the super-dense metal further down in the complex.
“This means we can by pass all of the Shard security and have a way of teleporting in and out of the secure areas further down.
 
Fureva-Yung rested on the other side of the barrier, watching Nox as she started reshaping the wall, digging a way to the caverns beyond.
“You broke Bruce,” Nox complained, forgetting the impressive charge her friend had made earlier in the battle.
“Yes, I am sorry.”
“This is why I can’t have nice things.”
 
“Marius was a little more productive and founds a few cyphers and other io on the bodies of the repair drone and skitter. Of Squatty, there was nothing left and it was clear the roots were claiming the two Protectors.