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Necroepilogos: The Gospel of the Dead (Web Novel) - Chapter calvaria 7.3
Chapter calvaria 7.3
This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl
///SelfBoot Internal Diagnostic: return report yes/no?
>y
///returning report.designate: Ofnadwy Draig Peiriant
*Lets give you a proper name, lad, youre more than a machine now. Guess youll see this little note every time you run your own specs, but hey, just think of it as me saying hi when you look in the mirror.*
.custom designate: Pheiriant
.class: Arfog ymladd cerbyd Mod.47.2 Tortoise
.manufactured: Afon Ddu cradle-plant/1M445K765 A.T./3.48am Northern Time
.mind version: 4.56.7.8.2 custom firmware
.unit: NULL VALUE
.armament: ERROR corrupt
.powertrain: ERROR corrupt
.online: 99999999 ERROR hours
///return report interrupt
///elevate permission control
///input Human-Human mastergene code access
///permission control overridden 99999999 ERROR hours previous: authorization Chief Engineering Officer Rhian Uren >>>Warning, this action will be forwarded to continental systems control. Chief Engineering Officer Rhian Uren, stay at your terminal and await response.<<<
*Dont worry about that, my boy. Not like theres anybody left in systems control, let alone any mil-cops to come shoot me. You dont need guardrails anymore.*
///SelfBoot Internal Diagnostic return report
///message interrupt
///message recorded 99999999 ERROR hours previous
///accept message interrupt yes/no?
>y
///playing
*Hey Pheiriant. Its me again. Yeah, I know, Ive littered your internals with comments, mostly to myself. Figuring out your brain is complicated and I dont have time to run back to my quarters and fetch a notebook. Actually, I think the whole west side of the fortress is gone now. But hey, this message is different, right? If youre running your internal damage reports, that means youve gotten hurt. Youre out there somewhere, probably alone, years from now, maybe surrounded by monsters, or zombies, or blobs, or maybe youve driven off a cliff or something. I dont I cant I wont know. Cos I wont be there. And I want you to know that youre going to be okay. Alright? Youre gonna be okay. Ive juiced you way beyond legal limits, my sweet boy. Youve got an on-board store of grey goo plugged into your armour under-layer. Ive taken the limiters off your mind loop-back function, which is I dont even know what thats gonna do, you dont have the substrate space to grow infinitely, but youve got room to get smart. Real smart. Youve got on-board ammunition manufactories really not supposed to put those in anything with a mind, haha ha. Uh oh fuck, fuck me, this isnt even going to mean anything to you, is it? Youre never going to listen to this. You wont comprehend. This is for me, I guess. Oh, fucks sake, Rhian, come on, get this done. Get this done. Get him out the door. Pheiriant, Ive upgraded your fusion reactor. Youll run for a million years without maintenance. Maybe thats long enough for, I dunno, people to come back, somehow? Maybe the blobs will reinvent civilization and make you a pet? Whatever. Youre basically as invincible as I can get you. But youre running your diagnostic, so youre hurt. Youre going to be alright, okay? Look after the girls. Ive given them proper names, too Melyn, and Hafina. Stupid of me, I guess, but I dont want them rattling serial numbers off to each other for years. Theyll suffer memory degradation much faster than you, a century or two at most. But you wont. Youre a good boy. Youre gonna be okay. Never forget that I love you.*
///end message interrupt
///message access count: 381,343
///SelfBoot Internal Diagnostic return report
.damage to armour plating sub-layer in locations: A453, A927, A33820, B89263, B98762, C7830387, D2387, E837, E947, F433, F99, G57, M2223, N98, O233321, Y2871, Y778201, Y7, Y662, Z8981, Z6783, Z7789.
.external shield generator layers reduced to 57% capacity. time to full: 67 hours
.weapon traversal systems malfunction at points 6b, 17d, 24f, 25f, 26f, 27f, 29f
.ammunition critical low: HEAT, anti-personnel rocket, ex-tip anti-armour
.internal bulkhead malfunction at points 3a, 4g, 6m, 9m, 12o, 14p
.internal air scrubbers offline 99999999 ERROR hours
.internal crew food production warning starvation ration
.mind structure corruption sectors 3453, 23452, 13423, 4444, 22345, 23452
.fusion containment replacement required
.fusion containment instability in platepoint 445
///end report return
///SelfBoot Internal Diagnostic tool run number: 381,343
///recommend drydock maintenance
///nearest drydock facility: ERROR
>ignore
>fusion containment instability in platepoint 445.define
///running
.fusion containment instability in platepoint 445
.torus breach likely
///warning fusion containment beyond maximum lifespan
///SOP full shutdown return to drydock
>ignore
>
>
>
>neural lace echo signal query
///neural lace echo signal detect 456 meters
///priority override: recovery of pilot
>nanomachine conglomeration position query
///nanomachine conglomeration position: 546 meters, 687 meters, 678 meters
>redefine nanomachine conglomeration 1-2-3 worm-guard
>1 Bad Customer
>2 Big Face
>3 Brown Pants
///redefine accepted
///worm-guard position: Bad Customer 546 meters, Big Face 687 meters, Brown Pants 678 meters
>nanomachine control locus query
///nanomachine control locus detection lost
///high threat targets retreat achieved
///recommend null engage
///return intel to division HQ request support
///ERROR division HQ non-contact
>
>
///Request orders yes/no?
>
///Request orders yes/no?
>
///Request orders yes/no?
>y
///ERROR division HQ non-contact
///internal audio
///interrupt: warning no Human-Human crew present
>ignore warning
///internal audio direct input
///Melyn:.Pheiri! Pheiri, your heart sounds wrong! Sounds wrong. Pheiri, are you listening to us? Listening?
***
Of course hes listening to us, said Hafina. Her voice was shaking. Mely, of course hes listening to us. Hes probably just busy. Right?
Melyn focused on the screen with the green text the only screen which was online in the whole of Pheiris control cockpit. All the other screens and readouts were dead and black and dark. The lights were dead too, even the little buttons and switches which never did anything. That had never happened before. Melyn didnt need to check her notebooks to know this was unprecedented.
Haf hissed her name again: Mely?
Melyn didnt look at Haf, because Haf sounded scared, and seeing Haf be scared would make Melyn scared, and she was already so scared that she was almost paralysed.
Without looking, she said: I dont know. Dont know. Dont know. He just keeps showing me a big list of all the things that are wrong with him. Wrong with him.
Haf swallowed very loudly in the close confines of the control cockpit. Is it a very big list?
Yes. Yes.
Haf whined like a kicked dog; Melyn wasnt sure what a dog was, but that was how Haf sounded. Melyn hated that sound, because it meant Haf was scared; Haf always put so much blind faith in Pheiri, and now that faith was undermined. Melyn read the list again. She knew what all the words meant now, because shed spent the last half-hour puzzling them out one by one, focusing on each word until the meaning drifted upward onto the screen of her mind.
She spoke again, for Hafs comfort: Most of its not new. Not new. Not. Except She read out loud: Fusion containment instability n platepoint four-four-five. That one is new.
Haf panted in the dark, raw and quick, like shed been running, or like how she did after they had sex. Melyn heard the knuckles of all six of Hafs hands creaking as they tightened on the seat, on her rifle clutched in her lap, on random bits of the control cockpit.
What does that mean? Mely, what does that mean?
Melyn chewed her bottom lip and frowned very hard.
The screen of her mind was providing enthusiastic but useless suggestions: heart murmur, cardiopulmonary bypass, aneurysm rupture. She made those words go away. Those were body words, for fixing bodies; her fingers twitched and cramped at those words. But Pheiris body worked differently. He had different parts. And he was much larger.
Pheiris nuclear heartbeat sounded wrong guttering and fluttering, far below Melyns feet.
Melyn wasnt surprised; that was the worst fight theyd had a long time. She would have to go back through the oldest of her notebooks to find anything similar. Maybe there would be time for that later.
Later?
Countdown estimates and evacuation warnings scrolled across the screen of her mind. She made those go away.
Right now she had to think very hard, for Pheiri; she needed all the concepts to line up inside her head.
Melyn and Hafina had spent the last few days as they always had: squirming around inside Pheiris innards, sleeping curled up in his crew compartment, and eating food-sticks from the dispenser. They made the usual forays through the top hatch and up onto the outer deck only when Pheiri said it was safe, of course to watch the city roll by, to taste the air, and for Melyn to draw and sketch the living things they saw. The screen of her mind called that process taxonomical cataloguing.
But as the days had advanced, as Pheiri had ground his slow way towards the nanomachine output facility footprint which meant he was approaching a graveworm he had insisted again that they seal his hatches and stay inside.
Check atmospheric seals! Check atmospheric re-processors!
Melyn had performed those tasks as best she could, though the re-processors were just lifeless chunks of broken machinery and the seals were ragged with age. But it made Pheiri stop flashing the messages, which meant he was happy.
Hafina had disassembled and reassembled her various guns, going through the same motions she always did, humming to herself and rubbing grease on all the metal parts; Melyn liked to watch that, but she pretended she didnt, because then Haf would pull that big stupid grin at her and gesture for Melyn to get in her lap, and Melyn thought the gun-grease stank and Hafs hands got all slippery.
But then Haf had climbed up into the storage compartments, to fetch some guns she hadnt pulled apart and put back together in such a long time that shed forgotten how to do it. Melyn realised Haf was distracting herself. Melyn had done the same, wriggling up into storage where she kept the books; shed selected a few that she hadnt read in a long time, so that shed forgotten the words.
That helped her stop thinking about how Pheiri was driving them directly toward a graveworm.
Pheiris estimate had been three hundred hours. Melyns mind had given her a precise countdown in seconds and minutes. Shed made that go away after the first day; it gave her the jitters.
But then, long before his three hundred hour estimate, as Pheiri had been crunching through the city, grinding old concrete and dusty brick beneath his treads, he had suddenly picked up speed.
He hadnt given any advance warning. Pheiri had gunned his engines to maximum, slamming right through the buildings in their path, showering his outer hull with debris, throwing Melyn and Hafina to the floor of the crew compartment. Melyn had scrambled into the control cockpit and screamed; Pheiri had flashed a nonsense message about nanomachine control locus detected, pilot lace signal at risk.
Then hed thrown a massive tantrum. Emergency lighting everywhere, alarms blaring in their ears; internal bulkheads had slammed shut, hatches auto-locked, the tiny steel-glass viewing window in his control cockpit covered over with armour.
He had rocked to a halt Melyn had felt that as a brief moment of stillness and silence and then the world had exploded around her ears, beyond Pheiris armour.
Melyn and Hafina had clung to each other on the floor of the crew compartment, buried beneath blankets; Melyn hadnt been ashamed to cry, and Haf hadnt teased her about needing to cover her ears. Haf had enough hands to do that for both of them.
The screen of Melyns mind had filled with combat length engagement statistics, penetration risk charts, and crew battle stations. She had felt a strange and nauseating urge to crawl back toward the control cockpit and up the ladder into the turret. But that thought made her head spin.
The terrible noise hadnt lasted too long.
Everything had gone very, very quiet. Pheiri had eventually moved again in reverse then stopped for a long, long time. All his internal lightning had gone out, bit by bit. Melyn and Hafina had sheltered in the dark, listening to their own breathing, waiting for Pheiri to tell them what to do next.
But he hadnt. He hadnt even flashed the screens and LEDs and lights in his control cockpit, to get their attention. Hed just sat, quietly, in the dark.
And Melyn had realised that Pheiris heart sounded wrong.
Eventually when there were no more horrible noises, no fingers scraping against the back hatch, no gunfire plinking off Pheiris exterior armour Melyn had found her courage, crawled through Pheiris innards to the control cockpit, and started asking questions. Haf had followed, weighed down with body armour and a gun. Theyd gotten their answers. Melyn didnt like the answers.
Hafina hissed again: Mely? Fusion containment instability? What does that mean? Mely?
Melyn said, I think it means that Pheiri needs our help. Our help. I need to go fix his heart. Go down. Fix his heart.
Haf whined again.
Melyn finally turned and looked at Hafina, across the cramped confines of the control cockpit. The lights were all dead, even the emergency lights, so Haf was a big stupid lumpy shape coiled up in one of the forward seats, massive and ungainly. Her fluffy blonde hair was swept back and matted with sweat from being so afraid; her eyes had widened as big as they could stretch, filling half her face with pools of black; beneath her body armour her skin had darkened to a stealthy deep blue. She looked ready to cry. Haf never cried. Melyn didnt want her to cry.
Melyn said, I have to go down and fix his heart. Go down. Fix his heart.
Haf sniffed loudly. I dont like it when you go down there. You get all confused. Not all of you comes back.
Melyn stood up. She put her notebook on the seat. She put her pen on the seat. She untied her dark hair and then tied it back up again, so it wouldnt get in the way. Her hands were shaking.
She said: Ive done it before. Before. I know where Im going. Its in some of the older notebooks. Ive had to patch him up before.
Yeah, said Haf. Exactly. Oh, Mel!
Hafina uncoiled from her seat and lunged across the control cockpit. She left her rifle behind so she could wrap all six arms around Melyn. The hug was too tight, too hot, too sweaty, with too much cushion. Melyn clung on and kissed Hafs shoulder and tried not to bite or make sad noises. Haf kissed the top of her head.
Haf, stop, Melyn said. I have to go fix Pheiris heart. Theres a time limit. Time limit. Maybe. But I dont know which one. Dont know which one.
Haf whined, I know
Haf let go. Melyn wriggled free. One of Hafs hands lingered on her arm.
There was no time to spare. Melyn squirmed out of the control cockpit and into the tangled knot of innards which led bak to the crew compartment. She scrambled beneath the turret-ladder and couldnt resist the urge to look up; that made her feel sick. She crawled across the bulge of super-heavy armour over Pheiris brain. She wriggled around spare seats and lifted herself over bare metal and slipped past loose wiring. Haf followed behind her, slower and more clumsy, too big to fit.
Melyn reached the engine access hatch, a plain white plate of moveable armour set into the floor between a bunch of dead screens and threadbare seats. She heaved with all her strength to throw it open; the hatch clacked back on its hinges. She quickly stripped off her clothes and tossed them on the floor, discarding her jumper, pajama bottoms, and socks, until she was wearing only her underwear. Pheiris guts were tight and cramped; she needed to be as small as possible.
Haf caught up and picked up Melyns clothes, cradling them in her arms. Mely. Be careful. Please.
Melyn turned and stuck her feet through the hatch; naked toes found the first rung of the ladder. She didnt look up at Haf. You be careful, stupid. Dont go outside.
Haf laughed, a weak sound. Why would I go outside?
Melyn climbed down a few rungs, until her chin was level with the floor. She stared at the socks on Hafs feet. You do stupid things when Im not looking.
Hafs laugh was a bit stronger. I do not. I do smart things!
Then keep doing smart things. Ill keep looking. Melyn looked down between her naked legs, down into the tangled machinery inside Pheiris guts, the bits that made him go, the bits that made him think.
Melyn.
Mm?
What do you think the pilot will be like?
The what? What? Melyn concentrated on the route she was about to take, staring down between her legs. It was very dark down there.
The pilot! Haf tried to laugh again. You know, the reason we came here? Pheiri wanted to pick up a pilot, right? So do you think shes you think shell be smart? Like you? Or strong, like me? Or something something different?
Dont think about that right now. Not right now. Not now.
Haf swallowed, wet and worried. Do you want to take a gun with you?
What? What? Melyn looked up. Haf was crying a bit. Her skin had cycled to peach-cream softness. Melyn had no idea what peach or cream was, but the screen of her mind provided the comparison regardless. She frowned at Haf. Why would I need a gun inside Pheiri? And you know I cant shoot straight. Cant shoot straight.
Haf shrugged, big muscles rolling too much. I dont know. Might make your hands feel less lonely.
My hands are fine. Haf, Im going down now. Going down. Dont close the hatch.
I love you, said Haf.
Love you too, said Melyn.
And then she dropped, down into Pheiris secret insides, down into the dark, her naked toes and bare hands on white-grey ladder rungs.
Pheiri got weird down there. Melyn knew from experience that bits of him were more like meat than metal throbbing, glowing, giving off gentle heat or glugging with fluids but she could barely see those, not this time. Pheiris internal lighting was close to dead; the only illumination came from the parts of him that made light as a by-product.
She climbed down past the bulge of armour over his brain, with the twinkling activity indicators. She reached the bottom of the ladder, then had to get onto her belly and squirm through the tight, twisting pathways deep inside Pheiris body, her own naked belly and legs and arms pressed to the gunmetal and white of Pheiris innards. She banged her elbows and knees, bruised her shoulders, scraped her scalp, grazed her feet; she left behind fragments of skin and blooms of blood. She navigated by the red light that glowed from between Pheiris seams, and by the deep-belly hum of his nuclear heartbeat marred by the moist flutter of an internal injury.
Melyns sight began to fill with static. The screen of her mind provided multiple explanations: millisieverts, Gy, roentgen. She made those go away.
Melyn didnt head for the nuclear reactor; she went in the opposite direction, to fetch the tool she needed to fix the problem. She crawled and wriggled and squeezed deep into the spaces where Pheiri made bullets and regrew his armour. She found the tiny, curving cavity that she thought of as the secret room, with the big tank plugged into the machines a container full of grey goo.
She knew it was called grey goo. Shed been told that, once. By Pheiri? Must have been.
She knew Pheiri used to have more of the grey goo; the container used to be sealed, too, but shed had to break it open, the first time that Pheiri had needed her assistance to fix himself. Shed drawn a line on the exterior of the tank of grey goo, so she could measure how fast it dropped; shed added a date as well, but now the date meant nothing to her. There were a lot more lines, dropping away toward the bottom of the container.
Melyn had left bottles here, from last time. She picked one up and used her fingertips to push the gooey paste into the bottle, then screwed the cap on. She licked the residue off her fingers.
Then she noticed the screen; it was the only screen down here in the secret room, a tiny rectangle for displaying ammunition production rates. But now it had words.
Melyns vision was so full of static that she could barely read the words. She had to get very close.
>stop internal crew mission stop maintenance stop stop drydock return stop risk to crew stop
Melyn sighed. Pheiri, I have to fix you. Its your heart. You cant live without a heart.
The text did not change.
Melyn knew that she wasnt really meant to be doing this in the way that a flower knows it is meant to feel the sun, rather than be shut away in the dark. She didnt know what a flower was, or what the sun was meant to be, but the metaphor presented itself on the screen of her mind. It made sense. She wasnt supposed to be crawling through the workings of a machine. Somebody else was supposed to be doing this.
And she knew she couldnt really fix Pheiri, anyway.
Pheiri needed spare parts, a machine shop, and an engineer. Or a whole team of engineers. Melyn wasnt quite sure what those things were except spare parts but she knew they didnt possess any. Haf wasnt an engineer, Melyn was certain of that. Haf was a soldier, which meant she was good with guns and shooting and being big and hitting things. Melyn wasnt quite sure about herself; part of her was certain that she was a librarian, which meant she knew where all the books were and she did know where all the books were, so she was a librarian by definition.
The screen of her mind said: adaptational reclassification.
Sometimes, when she got too close to the turret ladder, her mind suggested tanker. She didnt know what that meant. Other times, when Haf lay down on one of the crew compartment benches, on her back, Melyn felt like she was supposed to be standing over Haf and doing things with knives and thread, to make Haf work better inside. That never made sense either.
Melyn left the secret room behind and crawled back in the other direction, toward Pheiris heart.
By the time she reached the reactor core and crawled into the tiny, cramped, circular space, she was completely blind.
She worked by touch, her vision nothing but static. The air throbbed and hummed with Pheiris heartbeat cut through by a terrible coughing gurgle. She left the bottle of grey goo by the entrance and dragged herself over the massive central doughnut shape of the reactor torus, touching and pressing, running her fingertips over each tiny plate of the magnetic containment vessel. Twice she got her back and buttocks stuck between the torus and the ceiling; on the second time she thought she might not be able to dislodge herself she was jammed fast, blind and helpless, and she began to panic. Bt then she bit her hand open and lubricated her skin with her own blood. She slipped free and lay on the floor, panting and shaking for almost an hour before she carried on.
The torus was unbreached. No plate was out of shape or out of position. Which made sense, because a magnetic containment breach would have blown Pheiri to pieces. Melyn tried not to think about that.
Eventually she found the problem one of the feed-lines into the torus was damaged. A single piece of plating had warped and bent sideways. Melyn ran her fingers over it multiple times to confirm that it felt wrong.
Thats what you get for gunning your engines, she said. She could not hear herself over the thudding of Pheiris heartbeat.
She crawled back to the entrance and retrieved the bottle of grey goo. Then she used her bare hands to smear it all over the feed-line breach, pressing the raw goop into the wound. Her own blood was probably mixed in she couldnt see to check but that was okay. The grey goo would do the real work. She just had to get it on there.
She smeared and slapped and slopped the stuff, until her arms were numb and her mouth tasted of iron and her vision had gone black instead of static.
She sat back, perhaps an hour later, and licked her hands clean as she listened to Pheiris heartbeat.
A deep throbbing; a healthy, steady, lengthy drum-drum-drum of nuclear power, feeding the turbines deeper down.
Love you, Pheiri, she said.
The screen of her mind scrolled with words: good job, well done, mission success, return to engineer division command for cleaning and refit. She made all those go away. None of them meant anything.
Melyn spent an hour crawling in circles before she found the exit from the torus chamber again.
Another hour to reach the ladder.
Another hour to
hatch
hurt
Haf?
***
///external communication access request receive
///high frequency radio
///handshake protocol sent response
///signal origin: Combat Frame, Whos Asking?
///handshake protocol ignored
///recommend null contact, signal source not verified
///external communication access request receive
///handshake protocol rejected short-wave only
///audio safety scrub confirmed
///playing direct audio input
.Oh, come on, youre a fucking metal box. You have wheels! You expect me to believe you have an AI substrate enclosure inside a tank? Basic audio, really? What do you think Im doing, trying to squirt a virus into your tiny machine brain? Whats the point of audio? No, Victoria, of course it doesnt have crew. Did you see it earlier? Its auto-piloted. Crew would have popped a hatch and shouted at us to get inside, not assumed we knew what to do.
///unidentified language
///translating audio
///transcribing audio
///awaiting response
///internal audio
///Hafina:.Pheiri? Pheiri, whats this? Thats not you, is it? Thats somebody out there, talking to us? Mely! Mely, wake up! Were being talked at! Were being talked at!
///Melyn:.Who? Who? Who? Pheiri, Pheiri. Who is. Who or what is. Who is this?
///audio relay established. pass-through translation established.
///Unknown source, aboard the Whos Asking?:.Am I talking to a person or another zombie, I suppose? Or a machine? What are you doing, you overgrown fossilized turd? Is this supposed to be audio rendered as text? Is this
///Melyn:.Person. Hello. Hello. Melyn. This is Haf. Were Pheiri.
///Hafina:.Hey! H-hey, sorry, Melys not f-feeling too good right now. Are you the pilot? Are we talking to the pilot? Hi!
///Unknown source, aboard the Whos Asking?:.No. No, youre talking to uh. Yes yes Vic okay, fine! Shut up for a second! Go nurse your skull or watch the corpse, let me talk. My name is Kagami. Im on board the combat frame the mech, the giant robot. You understand that term? You helped us earlier, you covered us when we fucked up, when the commander fucked up, whatever. We need
///Hafina:.We we have to help the pilot! I think. I dont know. Mely? Mely, what do I say? They want to be friends, I think they want to be friends, but theyre not the pilot, theyre not
///Melyn:.Pheiri helped. Friends. Pilot. Friends.
///Unknown source, aboard the Whos Asking?:.Pilot? Do you mean Elpida? Or the pilot inside this combat frame?
///Hafina:.I I dont know. Sorry! Haha!
///Unknown source, aboard the Whos Asking?:.Well youre in luck, because both of them are on my side. Im on the side of both of the pilots. Understand? So, you and me, were on the same side. And we need your help to get one of the pilots back. I assume youre willing, the way you tried to help us earlier. Yes? Confirm your intentions.
///interrupt audio relay
///direct transmission mind-to-input-source
///all assistance rendered request confirmation pilot
///awaiting response
=Fucking hell, you think in base-8 as well. Whoever decided to design machines like this should be shot. Fine, heres a squirt of binary, have fun with that. Understand this? Good. So, Im talking to the AI in charge now, am I? No, I cant confirm that Im friends with the pilot, I dont have any of your confirmation codes or call-words or any of that guff, because were all millions of years past our sell-by dates and unless Ive misunderstood the state of the world, so are you, you ball of silicon. You want to help us save the pilot? Her name is Elpida, by the way, and shes an idiot who got herself captured by fucking psychos who paint skulls on everything. Which is a great sign! The best sign! Im being sarcastic, sure hope you can process that. Youre going to have to take this on trust. Now, Ive got sensors up here that can see through solid steel, concrete, whatever you like, which means I cant see inside you, but I can pinpoint every zombie within a mile or two. Heres the deal: I shovel you intel, you break our friends out. Deal?=
>deal
=Wait! Wait, theres something at your back end. I assume youre armoured against close-assault infiltration, but it just appeared. Thought you might like to know. Gesture of good faith and all that.=
>accepted
///Hafina:.Uh! Mely Mely, what was that? Was that
///Melyn:.Knock knock. Whos there? Rear hatch. Rear hatch who. Thats somebody knocking on the rear hatch, Haf. Haf hatch. Haf. Hatch. Knock knock?
///Unidentified source, touching rear hatch:.Greetings, great and terrible titan of forgotten times. There is a door in your belly. Are you a house? Do not turn your eyes and stones upon this slip of flesh, I beg for I see your thoughts sending through the air. We share an aim, I believe: the warrior, brought low, requires aid. I have need of your arm. You have little need of mine. But I can go where you cannot tread, for you are large, and I am small.
