In those days the Company was in service to the lords of New Shutra, come to the keep of the Mercedes family in a green and pleasant land, a wealthy manor of artisans making fine devices. The Mercedes's liege had called upon their oaths of old, and their knights ventured forth to make war upon the Maschinenbauer. A threat now arose in their homelands, and they turned to the Azure Company…
-The Annals of the Azure Company, 0080, Annalist Mittens
"Hey, Mittens, shouldn't you be at the negotiation?" Granite called out cheerfully as she practiced swings with her greatsword Steinbrecher in the keep's practice yard.
Lazing in a sunbeam while writing, Mittens flicked a white feline ear. "I doubt anything of interest will happen at the meeting. They will underbid, Captain will tell them our base price,"
"We'll pay you one hundred and twenty thousand thalers to eliminate the vespiforms," the Mercedes's steward said curtly, looking at the two mercenary women in his office over a gold-inlaid mahogany desk large enough for three people on each side.
"Thirty-five thousand petals if you want us to clear out the hive," Captain said, looking at the steward across the table, "That's not including a search-and-destroy for any workers that were out of the nest at the time."
"Then she'll tell them how much expanding our objectives will cost, and they'll settle on something moderate."
"That's hardly enough," the steward replied irritably, raking his hand through his thinning hair. "We've seen tracks as far as thirty kilometers away."
"If you want us to sweep for them, add three hundred petals a head," Captain replied. "There's no telling how many little bands are out there. Thirty-five thousand for the queens and any other bugs in the hive."
"And if the rumors that the Covrians set them on us are true?" the steward asked, leaning forwards. "Will you leave them alone too?"
"We'll clear the hive even if someone tries to stop us. If you want to look for evidence in the hive, send a forensics team when we're done. We can talk if they find anything." She shrugged. "No guarantees we'll preserve evidence, though."
"How much would preserving evidence cost us, then?"
"Not at any price," Captain replied. "If you want to go clear a vespiform swarm without using bombardment spells, be my guest. If you'd like a live queen, that's fifteen thousand extra and we're not going to stay in town for search-and-destroy."
The Steward blinked. "Do people actually pay for captured queens?"
Captain nodded. "Covrians trying to breed them isn't a conspiracy theory; so far it's gone as well as you'd expect."
"Madmen," the steward muttered. "All right, just the hive."
"Then they'll try to pay us in thalers, and eventually agree to pay us in petals and/or goods."
"One thousand and sixty thousand thalers, then" the Steward continued.
Stillwater crossed her arms on the desk in front of her. "We don't take payment in thalers. Petals or an in-kind payment. Only goods we can use ourselves, at their market value."
"This is New Shutra," the steward replied firmly. "Thalers are the only currency we use. The Mercedes do not trade in petals."
"You're lying," Captain said flatly, leaning back in her chair. "You might make the serfs in your manor use them, but every noble has their hidden savings in Midchildan banks, and Shutran thalers are just about worthless there."
"We don't have any…" the steward began weakly. Captain and Stillwater just stared at him. "Thirty-five thousand petals, paid on completion," he conceded.
"Captain will tell me if there's anything worth putting in the annals." Mittens flipped to the next page in her notebook and continued writing. "Besides, you know how the New Shutrans get about snow leopards. I'm tired of them asking me to become a bauble for their court."
Pretty Boy drew back the string of his longbow Windstalker to his ear, aiming an arrow of teal light at a holographic practice target. "Yeah, I remember that one duke who asked to buy your contract."
"Pay off my contract," Mittens corrected. "He seemed to think I was a serf. At least most of the rest think a familiar is like a knight bachelor." Her tail lashed irritably. "Then they insult me and Captain both by trying to get me to switch lieges."
+Do not get her started on how New Shutran laws work+ Granite warned telepathically. +She can go on for hours+
+I've made that mistake before+ Pretty Boy replied, then loosed. His arrow slammed directly into the bullseye. He lowered Windstalker and turned to the other two. "So, it's vespiforms, I hear. Are they as bad as everyone says?"
"Ooh yeah," Granite shuddered. "I mean, even with the acid one's not a problem for a B-ranker, but when there's a couple hundred of the damn soldier forms that's a different story. Especially once we had to go into the tunnels."
Two other mercenary women were in the examination room ordinarily used by the manor's doctor; Prince in her usual resplendent white suit and the half-mask she habitually wore in New Shutran territories standing near the door next to the local sheriff, and Angel in her antiseptic white barrier jacket, a cross between a cleanroom suit without a helmet and a school uniform, leaning over an injured guard on the table.
Angel slowly moved her hands over the leg of the town guard, lilac light flowing from her hands onto the blackish-red acid burn on his thigh. "It looks like you'll make a full recovery," she said reassuringly, "but you won't be able to put weight on the leg for a few days."
"I thought I'd only got a minor burn," the guardsman said ruefully, wincing. "Got the neutralizer on it after we killed the last bug."
"Vespiform spit contains a mix of acids," Angel replied, accepting gauze and tape from Prince and wrapping it over the injury. "The neutralizer will counteract all of them on the surface of the skin, but hydrofluoric acid absorbs into the skin and can react with bone. You need to put the neutralizer on immediately if any of it gets through your Barrier Jac- Armor Coat, and even then you may suffer minor burns."
The sheriff blinked. "I'll tell everyone that. You're from Mid?"
"The Company doesn't talk about our pasts," Angel said primly. "Captain's orders; it's a lost mercenary tradition."
The sheriff considered that. "And the names?"
"Also a tradition," Prince supplied. "It protects against witch magic that relies on true names." She smiled behind her mask. "Captain usually assigns them, but Pretty Boy made the mistake of asking Granite for a cool, manly name."
The sheriff chuckled. "Well, it suits him well enough," he said. Then he looked at the guardsman's wound again. "So how much is the treatment going to cost?" he asked reluctantly.
"Free," Angel replied. "In fact, if anyone else is hurt I can take a look at them too."
"She does free clinic work on the side," Prince explained to the started sheriff. "Buys her own supplies, or takes the cost of surplus out of her salary, and works during her time off." She smiled again at the local's expressions. "We do more with our lives than fight for money."
"Well, you're not the only people who do that," the wounded guardsman noted, chuckling.
"I suppose not," the sheriff conceded. Then his expression turned sober. "And the steward's books aren't going to be pretty, but we're right glad you're here. This just had to happen while Lord Mercedes and the young miss are on the Hegemon's service. If it weren't for you, we'd have to raise the militia, and we'd be paying a lot more than money."
Angel winced at the thought of hundreds of civilians, who perhaps trained a few hours a month if that, taking up their Storage Devices and trying to battle vespiforms. "We'll see it doesn't come to that."
+We've officially been hired+ Captain broke in +Meet in the training yard in ten minutes+
"We're going to be clearing the nearby vespiform hive," Captain explained to the roughly three dozen mercenaries gathered in the yard. "It's been a couple years since we last went after a hive and some of you weren't there for that, so I'll go over what that means."
She generated a holographic window, displaying a map of the farmlands to the north, studded with angry red dots where a farmer or remote viewing had spotted a vespiform and a large yellow circle over a collection of rocky gullies. "We've estimated the location of the hive to be in this region," she explained. "The entry tunnels will be somewhat concealed, but we don't expect any particular difficulty finding them. We will be luring out and engaging as many of the vespiforms as possible, but we'll have to enter the hive to make sure of the queens."
"Can't we just blast it into rubble?" Pretty Boy asked.
"They burrow deep and it's notoriously difficult to breach the main chambers from overhead," Captain replied. "Of course, anything can be destroyed if you put enough bombardment spells into it, but we can't be sure we got all the queens, and unlike a lot of creatures they can survive being buried long enough to dig their way out."
"Now," she continued, "There's four classes of vespiform" She brought up images of the four types, all monstrously chitinous with four legs and a pair of brutal sickles for arms beneath heavy mandibles. "Worker," the smallest, colored a dusty brown, "soldier," taller, heavyset, silvery, "knight," slenderer than the soldier, with lacy gossamer wings and a slight reddish tinge to the silver, "and queen," massive, bloated with eggs, the remnants of wings barely visible.
"As a reminder," Mittens interjected, lying in her leopard form next to Captain while receiving her due ear scratches, "despite what popular entertainment shows, the 'queens' and 'knights' do not have particular authority and killing them will not cause an immediate disruption to the hive. The large-scale coordination of a hive is emergent from the actions and pheromone releases of individual vespiforms."
"Among them and notably important for our purposes," Captain continued, "they release a special pheromone on death. At low concentrations and in the presence of the pheromone released on detecting non-vespiform creatures, nearby vespiforms will swarm to attack. At high concentrations, they will retreat into the hive. So, Strike will start by luring the bulk of them out, destroy the knights, and then bombard the others. Guard and Support will cover our backs against any returning patrols. Questions?"
"Are we likely to have to fight Covrians?" Angel asked anxiously.
"That isn't very likely," Mittens replied. "They've had very little success with even their repellent pheromone experiments, much less actually taming them, and their summoners can't bind them in large numbers. Even if they are behind this, they wouldn't be able to remain near the hive."
"Do we get to teleport this time?" Granite called out to resigned chuckles.
"Well, for some reason named the Night Talons," Captain replied, smiling, "no one seems to want to let mercenaries through their teleport defenses any more and the Bureau has yet to pawn off their warships. So no, no teleport for today."
Captain gazed down at the preparations and nodded, satisfied. She and Mittens hung thirty meters in the air over a rocky hilltop, the main exit tunnels of the vespiform nest visible a couple hundred meters away. Below them, the four ground-bound members of Strike stood in formation around Angel, waiting for her signal.
At midday, most of the creatures not already out foraging were resting below ground, save a few dozen on a close-in patrol. The half-dozen knights patrolling above the entrance had registered the mercenaries' presence, but did not yet regard them as an active threat. Rumor had it that they were an artificial species bred for war, but in Captain's view the utter lack of concern for long-ranged spells shown by their defensive instincts disproved that. They'd even stripped away the already sparse vegetation that might have provided them with cover, inadvertently creating a perfect killing field. Now, the Company just needed to bait the ground-bound castes into it.
+Pretty Boy, we're counting on you+ she transmitted. +Fire when ready+
As expected, Pretty Boy leapt to his task eagerly, always looking for a chance to show off his cool, manly reliability. "Storm Cutter!" he cried out, unleashing a bolt of force from his bow that carved a trench below it and struck a distant soldier dead on, tearing it apart.
+He's so cute when he's all fired up+ Granite noted to the other women, raising her greatsword into a guard position.
+That he is+ Angel replied, a cartridge clattering to the ground next to her as she formed a lilac dome over the ground team. Apparently Pretty Boy was in for more head pats.
However, his shot had one of its intended effects; the vespiforms certainly saw them as a threat now. A buzzing rasp of alarm went up, accompanied by massive bursts of pheromones. Below, the creatures hiding from the heat of the day reacted, soldiers, workers, and knights alike taking up the cry and racing towards the surface. As a wall of chitin emerged from the main tunnels, others tore their way up through rock and thin soil for a hundred meters around. What would have been a deadly trap for a land dragon or a pack of spinebacks instead merely left the ground torn up.
Where a human force might falter with confusion at finding no enemy within their ambush, the simple minds of the vespiforms left no room for such an emotion. Those already on the surface knew where the threat lay and rushed to the attack, drawing the rest behind them. Within moments, the entire hive was rushing towards the mercenaries. The knights, spotting flying foes, raced ahead.
"Mirror Hall!" Mittens roared thunderously. Her form blurred and split, dozens of translucent illusionary copies swarming around her. She rapidly shifted position, and even Captain couldn't pick her out through the false images. The spell couldn't be used for any complex deceptions and the doppelgangers lacked even the slightest substance, but it rendered the snow leopard nearly impossible to effectively target. Even as she moved, she unleashed another spell, rays of focused light striking out to burn through the exoskeletons of two of the knights.
Captain utterly lacked her familiar's abilities with bending light, but she had skills of her own. She aimed Guardian Blade at an oncoming knight. "Ice Lance" she said calmly. An azure circle snapped into being around her naginata and a quartet of icicles shot forwards. Three of them struck the chitin of the thorax and rebounded, leaving cracks spurting greenish ichor, but the fourth took the knight through the neck and it plunged from the sky. She turned to the remaining three and unleashed a spread of azure beams that pierced through them, leaving frost riming the jagged edges of the holes.
That took care of the patrollers, but she could see a dozen more knights in the air already. Before that, though, she turned her attention to the ground. Unleashing her freezing affinity again, she formed a plane of ice up the hillside ahead of the charging soldiers, sending them slipping. The team on the ground sprung into action as well, Granite unleashing a shockwave that shattered the frozen ground into shifting rubble while Stillwater entangled the leading soldiers with brief binds.
Now that they'd bogged the creatures down, the Company unleashed its ranged firepower. Captain once again struck with beams of force and cold, reducing the front ranks to shattered, frozen statues. Pretty Boy drew and loosed again and again, spitting out slivers of teal light that split apart and arced over the ruin of the front ranks to impale workers, their thinner carapace unable to withstand the bolts. Mittens raked light through the staggering soldiers, ice flashing to steam in an instant, the sudden temperature change splintering the rock below.
Undeterred, the surviving vespiforms pressed on, dozens of them picking paths over the frozen ground, others behind spreading out as they determined going around would bring them to their targets sooner. They noted the bombardment from above but ignored it; they knew instinctively the fliers were beyond the reach of their acid. There was an enemy before them. They would eliminate the threat on the ground and bring their corpses to feed the hive. Others would deal with the foe above. Dimly, they recognized the lilac dome ahead as a defense.
+The workers are starting to tunnel+ Captain warned, seeing them start to tear into the ground as the soldiers clambered over their dead, the foremost spitting hissing bolts of acid that splattered against the dome. A cartridge ejected from Guardian Blade as she spread a new ring of ice around the dome to slow the soldiers, then flung up a circular shield to intercept an acid bolt from an oncoming knight. Mittens raised a shield of her own, accompanied by a phantom duplicate for each of her illusionary doubles. Most of the incoming acid bolts hissed harmlessly through the illusions, a few bursting on the real shield. Her position given away by the impacts, Mittens reflexively displaced, intersecting with several of her decoys, and in moments Captain had lost track of her again.
The knights dragged her attention away from her beloved familiar, four of them moving to surround her. Captain slipped away to the left, sweeping her naginata down and to the right to cleave into the nearest and deflecting its scythe with her pauldron. As it tumbled from the sky, she swiftly raised Guardian Blade and drove the point through the throat of another, then brought up the shaft to parry the third's blow. The fourth, though, landed a strike on her right forearm, missing the bracer and carving a red line through the jacket's cloth, drops of blood seeping out. She swept her left arm over the wound, a circle forming in her palm, and winced in anticipation rather than pain.
Pretty Boy flinched at the sound of a snow leopard roaring at full volume. +Just a scratch+ Captain reassured them stoically. Probably true; Mittens tended to lose her temper whenever Captain got so much as a paper cut. Or maybe she just didn't want them to be worried during the fight; the others did tend to be a bit overprotective. Mostly of Pretty Boy.
Well, he'd just have to show them he didn't have to be fussed over. He raised Windstalker to target the soldiers, which were finally reaching the dome. The two in the air must have killed over a hundred of the things, leaving... rather more than he liked. The weaker arrows he'd used against the workers wouldn't penetrate their carapace, so he shifted spells. A teal Belkan triangle formed under his feet. "Target Flight." A shaft of light pierced straight through the thorax of his target.
The others were joining in too, though Angel wasn't much of a direct fighter and the Ancient Belkan system's notorious weakness at range was hampering the others. Granite could only shake the ground, but Prince made up for her relatively poor firepower with her customary precision, driving conjured steel needles directly into joints. Stillwater extended a razor-sharp metal wire through the dome and entangled soldiers one at a time, tightening to slice through their carapace one by one.
Despite their efforts, the tide of monsters soon swept around the dome, beating on it with their scythed claws. Pretty Boy turned to face the ones to their rear, preparing to cover Angel's back when the dome fell. He could already see cracks growing in the lilac light. Frost suddenly flashed into being on the vespiforms, Captain buying them a moment's respite before yet more soldiers shoved their dead aside.
+Dome will breach in fifteen seconds+ Stillwater warned. Always so calm; she could have been discussing the weather rather than a frenzied swarm of ravenous insects. He wasn't even sure how she could tell how long Angel's spell would hold, but she was almost certainly right as usual.
+Understood+ Pretty Boy sent back, mustering up his most confident-sounding mental tone. It was difficult; as usual the plan had seemed a lot simpler when Captain was explaining it than when they were actually carrying it out. But fear was contagious; he needed to act brave to reassure the others. +We'll be ready+
+We can handle the ones in front+ Granite replied privately. +You just watch our backs+ A red triangle swept underfoot as Granite reinforced the ground below.
+Five seconds+ Stillwater noted.
+We're about clear of the knights+ Captain sent, radiating confidence. Pretty boy resolutely chased away the thought she might be faking it for their sakes. He lowered Windstalker.
"Blade form" his bow announced, splitting into two shortswords, the gemstone core forming the pommel of the right blade. Pretty Boy raised them both. Lilac light settled over him, Angel using her environmental protection spell to ward them against acid just as the dome shattered. Wind roared outwards as the warm air within the dome met the arctic chill surrounding it.
Pretty Boy stepped forwards immediately, leaning in to stab with his right blade and letting one of his target's scythes hiss through the air over him, parrying the other with his left. He swept rightwards, managing to punch both blades through the carapace of another soldier, then whirled back to his left. Four scythes were frozen in midair, a pair of vespiforms yanked to a momentary halt by chains of orange light. He drove his blade through both their throats in the moment before Stillwater's bindings dissolved.
Bolts of acid splashed off the lilac light wreathing him. Rather than charge the spitting soldiers, Pretty Boy stepped back, holding his position in the triangle around Stillwater and Angel. He might be able to fight surrounded, relying on his lunges to take him out of the reach of those behind and trusting to his Armor Coat to deflect blows that hit home regardless, but the two in the middle certainly couldn't.
They weren't entirely helpless, though. One of the oncoming creatures abruptly dropped as a thin beam of lilac light slashed through its throat. Not a single drop of green blood spilled; Angel's modified surgical spell left veins neatly sealed behind it. She's pretty scary sometimes, Pretty Boy thought, ducking under another blow and impaling his attacker through the heart.
Granite took her left hand off Steinbrecher and called out "Stahl Wirkung". Red light wreathed her fist as she slammed it into a soldier, blocking a blow from another with her sword. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Prince drive her rapier Reichsschwert through another's throat, its scythes just barely missing her. Granite wasn't worried; Prince usually dodged by centimeters. If she started giving attacks a wide berth, that meant she was in trouble.
+We're close+ Stillwater signaled. Granite brought her sword up in a wide arc, hacking through three soldiers in a single swing. There still seemed to be an endless supply of the things, but Stillwater was good with the big picture. Letting her and Captain take care of things suited Granite just fine; she'd stick to dealing with the enemy in front of her.
Her last swing left her a bit out of position for the next soldiers. There wasn't room to step back and return to guard before they attacked, so she turned it into an upwards chop at one of them, letting another cut across her left sleeve. Her tracksuit-like Armor Coat turned it easily, and she threw another punch.
The blow didn't hit as solidly as she liked; the soldier reeled but didn't immediately fall, until Angel slit its throat. Orange light grabbed at the next wave, giving her a moment to reset. Azure flashed downwards beyond them, tearing a hole that swiftly refilled. Granite grinned; there were advantages to fighting with a team. Captain had taught her that the hard way.
She resisted the urge to glance around and check on Pretty Boy. The kid was reliable despite how he looked, and that Modern Belkan style of his was fine in close fights. He'd sounded a bit nervous, but he'd be fine.
Very close to the end of this phase Stillwater thought. The fight was proceeding predictably, though she was slightly concerned about Captain. Stillwater had not expected her to take a wound so quickly, and there was a small chance it was serious. Captain was not the type to let bravado overcome good sense and she would have asked for covering fire if it were incapacitating, but she might need serious medical attention soon.
For the moment, however, the air battle had been mostly won, and Mittens was dealing with the remaining knights while Captain returned to ground bombardment. It appeared Stillwater's prediction had been correct; the colony still had the knights that escorted the queens to establish a new hive, but it had not started producing its own knights. She'd received word that Guard had engaged a significant returning hunting party, so the hive was indeed foraging.
She activated another bind, pinning two soldiers on Prince's left to allow her to lunge right, and ran the numbers in her head again. Fourteen bombardment spells on the ground targets, she'd killed seventeen attacking the dome, Pretty Boy fired on the workers for seventy-five seconds plus or minus two and his average fire rate in drill was…
Four hundred to four hundred thirty dead vespiforms; the calculations were easy for her, but her counts were uncertain. The imprecision itself didn't trouble her, but she felt mild regret that she couldn't predict the breaking point exactly. It should be soon.
Ten seconds and one icy blast later, it arrived suddenly. The inexorable advance ceased and reversed as the balance of pheromones hit a tipping point. The behavior of a vespiform hive was complex but built out of simple reactions that rendered it predictable. Each creature sensed many of its fellows had died and they had not taken any of the enemy with them. They could not comprehend that Captain was low on cartridges, that Granite's Armor Coat was becoming battered, that Prince was starting to tire. The ratio of deaths was unfavorable. They withdrew with the same single-minded focus that impelled them to charge across a killing field.
+Hold position+ Captain signaled, switching from bombardment to the less mana-intensive icicles, supported by darts from Prince. Pretty Boy returned Windstalker to bow form and joined in harrying the retreating creatures, while Granite lowered her sword and took a deep breath. Thirty-four additional kills. Most likely two-thirds of the colony was dead on the hillside.
Angel sighed in relief as the vespiforms withdrew. It had looked perilously close there for a bit, although none of the insects had broken past her guards. Maybe she'd take Mittens up on learning some real attack spells, at least for fighting monsters. She didn't morally object to fighting, but it was hard to bring herself to attack a human.
She swept Vital Ward over the others on the ground, checking for injuries. No visible acid burns, and her device didn't pick up hydrofluoric acid absorption; it seemed her environmental protection spell had held up. Granite, not unexpectedly, had a few superficial scratches. She'd also killed the most vespiforms of the three; Granite could parry fine but preferred to counterattack and trust her Armor Coat was strong enough to accept the blow. Prince and Pretty Boy, more defensive fighters, were both unhurt. That left Mittens and Captain.
Fortunately, Captain had been telling the truth about her injury being minor, and she'd already treated it with a basic hemostatic. Angel reinforced it and sealed up Granite's scratches as well. Mittens had a gash across her ribcage, which required a somewhat stronger spell to make clot, but it'd clearly been misaimed and missed inflicting any serious damage. "All good" her device declared.
"All right," Captain declared, "Redistribute cartridges and then we'll move into the tunnels. The internal layout is complicated but following the larger tunnels will take us to the main chambers." Angel took a deep breath, bracing herself. The last time they'd done this had been unfortunately memorable.
Prince and Granite were leading the group downwards through the entrance tunnel when they first met resistance. Now that they were within the hive itself, the vespiforms had regrouped. Despite the scent of death pheromone drifting down from above, they attacked with the same mindless ferocity they'd shown at the beginning. With their queens now directly threatened, they'd fight to the end.
Granite had reverted Steinbrecher to its rest form as a jeweled bracelet; even the largest tunnels had little room overhead. Against more heavily protected opponents she might still have used her sword, but for the moment she preferred to rely on her Strike Arts training. The current terrain was in many ways ideal; it channeled their opponents into a narrow approach while still leaving room for carefully aimed fire support from behind. Unfortunately, the vespiforms were prepared for that.
Granite hadn't really followed Mittens' explanation about emergent behavior leading to complex tactics from individually simple…well, the how didn't matter. What mattered was that the walls and ceiling suddenly hissed and began emitting white smoke. She slammed her right foot down, sending a charge of reinforcing energy into the floor, then raised a triangular shield overhead. Workers smashed through the walls and ceiling, a shower of rock striking her shield, followed swiftly by a worker's blunter digging scythes.
Granite kicked the soldier in front of her, simultaneously punching left. Her blow caught the worker at an angle, sending it reeling but not smashing through. Beside her, Prince had driven her rapier through the worker coming in overhead, then let it tumble to her right into the path of her other attacker.
Granite released her shield with a blast of force, throwing the worker overhead back into the tunnel it came from and into the path of a soldier following behind. Behind her, Angel caught an incoming scythe in the slots of her swordbreaker, her slight frame reinforced with magic, giving her the strength to hold it in place long enough for Captain to strike it, taking a blow of her own from another worker.
She could hear more fighting behind her, but with the soldiers still oncoming and more piling in through the holes she couldn't spare any attention. Granite just had to hope they'd be all right, and the roof didn't cave in completely. Striking at the soldier ahead and the worker above, she finally took her first really solid hit of the day from the left, breaching an already weakened section. She felt a painful tearing in her side as she twisted to strike, but it didn't feel like it'd hit anything really vital.
There was a third wave, then a fourth, but no more. A few icicles whizzed past as Captain returned to firing on the soldiers ahead, and soon the tunnel in front was clear as well. Granite didn't feel relieved; there was a lot more tunnel to go.
"How bad is it?" Captain asked her as Angel moved forwards to examine the injury.
Granite didn't play tough. Captain had made it very clear that when she asked a question like that didn't want bravado, she wanted to know if they were still combat effective. "It hurts pretty bad when I move, but I think it's just muscle."
Angel finished her examination. "No organ damage." She extended her hands. "I'll get the bleeding stopped and pack the wound." She frowned as she worked. "It's not critical but I'd rather she rest the injury."
Granite grunted. "I'd really rather not have to come back here. And no one in Guard is a great close fighter. Plus, you need me to make sure they don't come through the floor too."
"That's true," Captain admitted reluctantly. "Switch places with me, though." Granite nodded. She wasn't really worried; Angel would have insisted if it were actually serious. Still, she wasn't looking forwards to the next ambush.
The vespiforms came for them twice more, once again swarming from pre-prepared ambush tunnels. With no one in front of her, Captain unleashed her heavier bombardment spells to clear the attackers from ahead, leaving slicks of ice the survivors struggled to cross. She was forced to restrict her fire, though, as the ceiling groaned ominously under the force of the blasts.
Captain struggled to fight effectively when the walls broke; she didn't have space to easily swing her weapon and couldn't give ground to maintain her reach advantage. The metallic portions of her barrier jacket rapidly accumulated gashes and her sleeves were sliced through in several places. Prince was forced to come to her aid repeatedly, her formerly immaculate suit acquiring several slices of its own.
Granite was also hard-pressed, though now she only had to deal with attacks from the right and above. Angel's binding on her wound restricted her ability to twist around and tugged painfully when she put too much weight behind a swing. Cartridges popped out of her bracelet with alarming frequency, using extra magic to compensate for the physical impairment.
The one saving grace of the situation was that most of the soldiers had died on the surface, and most of the remainder in the first ambush. The workers fought with the same mindless ferocity, but their blunter scythes and weaker arms struggled to penetrate even Stillwater's robes. They sustained no further serious injuries on their way to the queen's chambers.
When they arrived in the spacious chamber, with a last few dozen workers rallying for a final defense around three massive queens, Captain finally got her own back, expending two cartridges for a massive, sweeping blast. The queens struggled forwards as Mittens joined in, the bombardment slowly chewing through their enormously thick chitin. Hampered by their bulky abdomens, they succumbed before reaching the entrance tunnel.
"Look for the pupae," Captain instructed. "I don't want them hatching. Then it's all over but the cleanup."
"Well done," Captain told the Company, gathered in the training yard for debriefing. "The town guard has accepted the nest as cleared and taken over watching for any creatures returning. We got paid in full and on time, so it's bonuses all around!"
She waited for the cheering to die down. "We'll have at least two days leave here. The usual rules apply; at least two people with devices per group, if yours is in for maintenance find someone to accompany you, don't break local laws, if you do surrender to the authorities and we'll make arrangements. If you go outside the walls, watch out for any surviving bugs. Dismissed."