Shiver lounged in the captain's chair, trying to look anywhere but out the windows of the wheelhouse as the landship trundled along desert noticeably flatter than it had been a day ago.
The freak rainstorm had melted the flowing crests of the dunes, shrinking them and compacting the sand on top, making it easier to move than they had suspected. Even so, Frye remained vigilant the entire time, sometimes taking longer routes to avoid especially tall dunes, or deep valleys, anything to keep their momentum up and prevent them from sinking.
They were travelling north-east. Tiyes manned the navigator station, the red and green spheres sitting next to each other beside him. He seemed to be in a copacetic mood. He wasn't happy, per-say, but he was agreeable and conducted his task of navigation with all due diligence.
Neo's barbed words from last night were probably still sticking him. That was regrettable but it had the benefit of putting him further within Shiver's sphere of influence and she wasn't about to feel sorry for that.
She glanced across the wheel house at Neo who was sitting idly at one of the sensor operator stations, her salmonid pet resting atop the console. She stole occasional glances in Tiyes' direction but otherwise remained withdrawn.
On the opposite end of the wheelhouse, Tahlm had strapped himself into the storage pocket atop Big Man's instrument cluster as the ray sat in the second driver's seat, alternating driving duties with Frye.
Tiyes lightly tapped one of the spheres with his finger. "We're getting much closer," He announced.
The two spheres had their symbols pointed in towards each other, gradually turning further and further inwards. Tiyes theorized that they would reach their destination when the arrows were pointed directly at each other.
Shiver sat up and adopted a more respectable posture. It was important to be magnanimous at times like these.
"How much longer?"
"Minutes," Tiyes replied.
"Good. Neo, better start up the sensors and see what we can find. We don't want to drive over it if we can help it, right?"
Neo acknowledged and adjusted her seat before turning on her console and began setting up the sensors. By now, she knew more or less how they worked and could do it without Big Man's help.
Time passed. Shiver kept looking at the spheres, coming closer and closer, until Neo cried out.
"Stop, stop!"
Frye yanked the throttle lever all the way back and stomped on the broad brake pedal at her feet. The breaks shrieked and the huge machine lurched to a stop.
"Back up!"
Frye shifted into reverse and slowly backed away. It was then that Shiver noticed a detectable hump in the terrain. It was subtle but moving so slowly she could pick it out among the dunes.
Once the ship stopped, Shiver stood and went to Neo to look at her screen and frowned. She couldn't see anything.
"There," Neo pointed, "You see that really big kinda' half-circle thing there? It's subtle but you can see it."
Except Shiver couldn't see it. She wondered if it was simply so faint only an inkling's eyes could detect it. It wasn't until Neo adjusted a knob next to the screen that she was able to see what she was talking about.
It did indeed look like part of a disc, so large that only a small slice of it was visible on the monitor.
"It's huge," she murmured.
"Yeah…"
Neo didn't sound nearly as excited as she expected and she doubted it was because of her mood. Swallowing her excitement she asked, "how far down is it?"
Neo bit her lip. "The edge is more than ten metres down. It's got to be a pretty dense metal for us to be able to detect it at all."
Shiver grunted. "Alright, guide us around the edge of it and let's see if we can find a door."
"Got it. Let's go around along our right side."
"She means clockwise," Tiyes clarified.
Neo shot him a dirty look. Frye told Big Man to take over driving as he was in the right seat. Shiver settled herself back down in the captain's chair and tried not to look as anxious as she felt.
The last clue location had been accessible after digging just a few metres and that had taken hours to get to with a mix of digging by hand and with the landship's powerful blower. She wasn't sure if it would be up to the job of taking them down ten metres, especially after so much of the sand had been compacted by the rain. If they couldn't find a way inside much closer to the surface, what were they going to do? They didn't have the equipment to dig down that far.
"We're done," Neo announced in a distinctly unhappy tone. "I found a part sticking out that looks like it might be an entrance but it's just as far down. Actually, if that's the roof of the entrance way it's probably even further down.
Shiver sagged. That news was a veritable death stroke to their plans.
No, not a death stroke, but a huge setback. We don't have the resources we need to get down in there and how are we going to get back here even if we do somehow get the resources?
They needed time, money, equipment, perhaps even more people in order to make that possible, or at least practical.
Did we wait too long to start a gang? We got a few people but even if each of us could operate an excavator or something it would take us way too long to get in there and the Scrap Corporations would find out.
"Frye? How much fuel do we have left?"
Frye checked the fuel gauge and winced. "Well, enough to get back. Just."
That was another issue. How were they going to get back here? They needed a landship, they'd known that from the start, but the amount of money it would cost to refuel one wasn't insignificant, and where could they refuel it? They couldn't do it in Crater's Edge, they would draw too much attention and far too many questions, not to mention alerting the Corporations' informants.
She sighed. "Does anyone have any idea how we can dig that deep on our own?" Nobody did.
"Alright then, unless anyone has any ideas, we better head back to Crater's Edge. We'll hide the ship in the same place we did before. From there we'll take the motor sleds into town and ride the train back to Splatsville."
Neo looked unhappy. Frye and Tiyes had faces of grim acceptance. Big Man gave her a reassuring smile. For some reason, his reaction was the most painful.
Shiver gave him a nod and he turned the landship south, taking them in the general direction of Crater's Edge. Once they got closer, Tiyes and Neo would be able to give them more specific directions. It would be tomorrow before they got back to Splatsville. In the meantime, Deep Cut had a lot of thinking to do.
The Palace of Queen Immelina was an immense structure, larger than any building in Splatsville, even if one included the land port. It sat next to the sea almost in challenge against its might. It's high stone walls went up at least eight stories, and the roof was crowned with multiple large domes. It was every bit a monument to a powerful nation, yet it was over three-hundred years old. What kind of things could this nation accomplish now?
Maximinus somehow managed to hide his nervousness as he stepped out of the car. Myna was ahead of him, standing guard a short distance away, her gaze sweeping the area around them for threats. Maximinus thought that rather redundant given their present company.
Their car was surrounded by well armed inkling, octoling, and jellyfish guards. They regarded them with mixed interest, as if they weren't sure how to feel about them.
Their delegation was taken inside the palace through a set of large doors, easily big enough for the queen to walk through. They entered a massive hallway with an arched ceiling at least four or five stories above them. On the second and third floors, walkways ran along the walls, connecting the rooms.
An elongated electric cart carried them down the corridor, around a couple of corners, and then stopped in front of another set of large doors, this one guarded by another half-dozen guards. The two flanking the doors were each armed with a hammer at the end of a long pole a third taller than they were. Representative Betanuss stood waiting in front of the doors, hands clasped in front of her, watching as they disembarked.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
Maximinus gave his arms a little shake, hiding the release of nervous energy as an action to adjust the fit of his jacket sleeves. It helped. Beyond those doors was their last and greatest hope. If they could convince the Empress to act then they might be saved, assuming they were in time.
"I believe so." He glanced at he rest of his party. They were all as ready as they would ever be.
"Very well. You may speak Octese; Her Imperial Majesty is fluent. I would also advise you to be direct and not meander. She has little tolerance for those who refuse to get to the point."
That didn't disturb Maximinus as much as it might have other people. How often had he advised people similarly when they were to meet Lord Balt Ralok over the years?
Representative Betanuss turned to face the door and nodded to the guards with the long poles. They pushed the doors open with a grunt, and they swung inwards, revealing the magnificent throne room.
Particoloured drapes decorated the walls and ceiling. Natural light flooded in through large windows and the clerestory above. Decorated columns broke up the room and a long, blue carpet ran all the way to the opposite end of the room over one-hundred metres away, where the empress waited.
He'd guessed ahead of time that she was large, like the queen, but he thought she looked even taller. She sat upon a throne of silver that appeared to have been shaped by nature's finest fingers. Her long, silvery tentacles rested behind her, their tips a lime green. She was dressed in a gorgeous silver gown decorated with shining, silver embroidery and long sleeves. A simple but beautiful necklace looped around her neck. Her skin was fair yet still had a healthy lustre and her eyes were the same gold, cross-pupiled type the queen possessed, but there was something different about them.
The look in the queen's eyes had been cautious but inviting; the eyes of the empress were very different: cold, analytical, and distant. What he expected, really, but their sheer intensity was something otherworldly.
The empress was surrounded by a dozen guards and a number of attendants, two of which were only a metre or so shorter than she was. Other than the attendants, they all watched the delegation closely.
Betanuss stopped them five meters from the throne and bowed. "Your Imperial Majesty, I have brought the delegation from Splastville. Her Royal Majesty extends her love and pleads for compassion on these whom she wishes to accept as her own."
The empress gave Betanuss a barely perceptible nod then made a slight wave of her hand. Betanuss walked off to the side, standing just a metre closer to the delegation than the guards. Then the empress' eyes fell on Maximinus, the dark crosses in her eyes narrowing. Their behaviour unsettled him in a way that made his stomach turn.
They bowed and Maximinus went through the same introductions they had done with the queen, being sure to speak with as much reverence and humility as possible.
The empress responded with a voice that flowed like water yet resonant and firm. "I am Empress Marie of the Soren Ascendancy. You may rise."
They rose and the empress blinked slowly, her eyes flickering between all of them.
"I've heard of your mission. Here is the situation as I understand it. The Urchin Kingdom, the Reef of Lanc, and the Consortium of Birgus are trying to take over Splatsville. They're doing this by trying to buy you out and physically forcing your people into a corner by bringing in their own people, all through a bunch of legitimate companies they're using as proxies or fronts. You want to force them out and regain control of the city but you don't have the clout to do it because then the involved governments would use that as a pretext to act overtly."
Maximinus nodded. "Yes, that is more or less the situation, Your Majesty. We came hoping that our fellow Octarians would be able to render aid. We did not realize that they were now part of a greater nation."
The empress' head canted slightly. "No? My coronation was broadcast throughout the world."
"So we have since learned, Your Majesty; however, news from other parts of the world comes to Splatsville only in drips. We only learned that our fellow Octarians appeared freed from a few magazines and news articles that somehow landed on our shores."
The Empress regarded them and folded her hands under her chin. "That's not much to go on for such a long and risky expedition."
In other words, they had been desperate enough that they'd needed to try it. Maximinus hated giving that away but the queen and Betanuss had advised them to be honest and open with the Empress.
"We needed to act quickly before our enemies did. If we delayed too long they might have been able to intercept us."
"I see." The Empress lifted her head and sat up straighter. "So tell me, what's so valuable about Splatsville that all three of these nations are willing to work together to take it over, even though they are rivals for control over the city?"
Maximinus told her the same thing he'd told the queen, about the valuable scrap, artifacts, and Splatsville's strategic location as a trade port and the Green River with access deep into the continent.
"I see," the Empress said again when Maximinus had finished. "All these nations are rivals to each other. Birgus wants to control the river so they can access the sea, the Urchin Kingdom wants to try and control Birgus; and Lanc needs the natural resources in the Splatlands which the Kingdom also wants to deny to them."
"Yes, Your Majesty, that is the situation as we understand it."
"And what is it you want?"
Maximinus frowned. "We… we desire the assistance of the Ascendancy, Your Majesty. We –."
She cut him off with a raising of her hand. "I don't mean that; I mean ultimately. You all live in Splatsville, you started the mines to get more resources, you irrigated the banks of the river, and you had to have cooperated with all those foreign companies at one point before you realized why they were really there. Why are you doing all this?"
Maximinus found himself trailing off. He hadn't been prepared for this kind of question. Still, it wasn't difficult to come up with an answer.
"Your Majesty, we wish to protect our way of life, our freedom. We who serve the Balt Ralok Clan dream of rebuilding what was lost, to not be refugees but Octarians again, with a strong civilization to be proud of."
"Understandable," the Empress replied placidly. "The Octarians here have much the same dream. Any help you could give in achieving that goal would be appreciated. But if this were only about the Octarians of Splatsville, we would be having a very different conversation."
The empress' eyes narrowed and Maximinus resisted the urge to swallow.
"What about the other clans? You're asking us to take them in under our tentacles but we have no relationship with them, unlike you. You at least are still Octarians and you say you're willing to reintegrate yourselves. The Balt Ralok clan is a known entity, if only distantly, but we know nothing about the Onaga or Manta clans you mentioned."
Maximinus understood all too well what she meant. What they were proposing was something that normally took years to set up. Laying the groundwork, getting to know each other, understanding everyone's expectations, there were so many things that needed to be worked out, but they just didn't have the time.
"I understand, Your Majesty."
"Do you? You have officially offered a guarantee of fealty on behalf of the Balt Ralok clan. Even if you didn't, we have ways of ensuring that guarantee."
Maximinus shivered. The Empress' tone didn't change but he saw the steely look in her eyes, cold and unyielding. He didn't know all the details but he knew that the Empress had opposed Octavio prior to his death and her ascension to the throne. The Queen was her cousin too and all the Octarians were just as loyal to her. It was something he never would have anticipated before arriving there.
The empress continued. "What guarantee can the Onaga and the Manta clan offer us that they wouldn't turn and become a problem for us the minute we solve their problems for them? We don't know or trust each other. As far as they know, we can't offer anything long term either. They'll be just as suspicious of us as we are of them."
"Yes, Your Majesty, that may be true, but the clans are willing to cooperate."
The Empress stopped him again. "Do you know what it's going to take for the other nations to leave you alone? The authority and strength we would need to kick out the foreign influences?"
Maximinus fought to keep himself together. He felt as though his insides were being slowly squeezed by an iron claw. "I may be somewhat ignorant of the exact scope, Your Majesty."
"Well let me give you a sample then." The empress leaned forward and eyed him closely. "Splatsville is a long way from us. Our only justification for getting involved is for the sake of the Octarians living there. We could claim some distant form of kinship with the inklings there but we don't have sufficient history with them to interfere. The three nations attacking you are all fairly strong locally whereas it would be much more difficult for us to enforce our authority over such a long distance, a problem that could become increasingly complicated as time goes on and politics change. I wouldn't be surprised if the three of them united against us, and suddenly we'd find ourselves in a conflict of your making. Do you understand?"
Maximinus nodded. "I believe I do, Your Majesty."
He glanced at Marazanna, specifically to her headpiece, wanting to buy just enough time for their scribe to write down everything without creating an awkward stretch of silence, but the empress resumed speaking instead.
"Then let me give you a question to ask the clans: what arrangement can they provide that would be beneficial to the Ascendancy and would be worth me sending my people to support and protect them?"
The empress leaned even further forward, the curtain of tentacles behind her turned red, her eyes like molten steel. "My people's lives are not a commodity to be traded nor sacrificed in the name of altruism. I am answerable to them, so what would you have me tell them to justify our involvement?"
That was a sticking point. Maximinus had been so focused on convincing the leaders that he hadn't put nearly as much thought into how the people might react to the involvement. The Octarians it was easy to justify but for the other two clans, how could they? Did that matter right now?
"Forgive me, Your Majesty, but wouldn't you have to help the other two clans in order to help ours? The three of us have a long standing alliance and that is the only thing that has allowed us to last this long."
The empress leaned back in her throne, looking down at him with a straight back. "Then I suggest all three come up with something I can use. As a last resort, the Octarian population of Splatsville could be evacuated here, but I can imagine that is not a desirable outcome for you. It's hardly ideal for us either, but it is doable and I doubt the other three nations would protest, so it would be easier politically."
Maximinus kept himself under rigid control, suddenly finding their efforts threatening to be pulled out from under them.
"But, Your Majesty, it might be difficult for a simple city state to meet such… high expectations. What would you want us to offer in exchange for your help?"
The empress' mantle flashed red. "You misunderstand, Vir Rezni. I'm not talking about merely helping you, but making you a full member of the Ascendancy, with each of the three clans having representation in the Ascendancy Council."
Maximinus couldn't keep the shock and surprise off his face and his jaw fell open.
The Ascendancy Council was the soon to be executive legislative body of the Ascendancy. Giving all three clans such representation right off the bat was far beyond his or anyone's expectations. It would have sounded too good to be true if not for the fact that they had to convince the Ascendancy that sticking their proverbial neck out for them would be worth it.
Recomposing himself, Maximinus replied. "I believe we would require a few days to confer with the clans. Your gracious access to your communication systems would make that possible."
The empress nodded. "Then when you have made up your minds, you may come back and see me. But better make it quick. Time is not on your side."
Of that, Maximinus was painfully aware.
Pritor Velclaw sometimes wondered how he had ended up in his current position. Being in a security position for Chitinin Ironworks' didn't sound too far removed from his career as a soldier in the Grand Army, the military of the Grand Consortium, and yet it was a world apart from it.
His life as a soldier had been hard but relatively simple: one had to do what they were told. It was working creatively within what he had been told that had given him notoriety and his frustrations with self-serving rivals to discredit him that had led to his leaving the Grand Army and taking up Chitinin Ironworks' offer.
It was an offer he simply couldn't overlook. The chance for vengeance against an enemy he had hated since childhood was simply too enticing. And so, here he was, sitting in a room with two entirely different types of rivals, plotting the destruction of the Balt Ralok Clan.
Joowan Pairezz took a swig from his bottle of lager and set it back down on the coaster with hardly a sound. "Oh, that's good," he sighed. "I needed that."
Joowan always tried to act casual to try and lower everyone's barriers and set a more conversational mood but as far as Pritor was concerned, one could only feel so comfortable closed in a small boardroom with rival guards just outside the door.
At least he remembered my favourite drink, he thought, stirring his glass and watching the light flakes of pulp swirl in his orange liqueur.
Daevee Stinghead, the anemone head of Omnicorp Salvage's security guzzled from his mug of ale. He was portly, even for an anemone, and his many pale-white tentacles didn't so much sway as wobble.
"Let's just get to the point," he said. "I like a drink as much as the next person but we aren't here to socialize. Wasn't it you who told us the Ascendancy might be coming to throw us out?"
The single eyebrow over Joowan's eye arched in Daevee's direction. "I said the Ascendancy might be trying to get involved. We still aren't sure how, that's something we all need to work on figuring out." His eye turned to Pritor. "You're the one who knows the most about the Ascendancy of the three of us. What do you think?"
Pritor's mandibles clicked softly in annoyance. They only assumed that because Birgus had been part of the Grand Consortium that had attacked Inkadia.
"I have studied some of their military exploits but with the situation as it is right now, I don't have access to many information sources. I know they were responsible for the raid that wiped out the Grand Consortium Congress, but I still have no idea how they did that."
"Nobody does," Daevee grumbled. "How did they sneak a whole army right into the heart of such a powerful nation?"
Pritor had spent a lot of time trying to figure out that very thing. While he was conflicted about how he felt towards the Ascendancy as a whole, he openly admired their military exploits. Executing that kind of raid would have taken more than just luck, it would have taken quick but efficient planning, insane courage, and someone clever enough to come up with the plan and pull it off. The raiders had never been caught and as far as he knew, they'd gotten back to the Ascendancy.
His curiosity hungered for even the smallest detail on how they might have done it, but he also didn't relish the idea of facing such a competent military in battle.
"We should focus on figuring how how they'll attack us," Pritor said, stopping the tantalizing tangent in its tracks. "Fact is, if they land troops, we'll be in trouble. I don't know the details of what happened in Inkadia, but we know they're equipped to fight crabs. It wouldn't take much imagination to adapt their tactics to fight urchins and anemones."
Joowan frowned. "But ink isn't very effective against most species, including ours. How would they do it?"
Pritor took a sip of his drink, savouring the flavour before setting his glass back down. The pause in conversation helped him organize his thoughts.
"Again, I don't know meany details of what happened in Inkadia, but I do know that when the bodies of the Grand Consortium's leaders were found, it wasn't ink that had killed them; their bodies were all broken."
Daevee sputtered. "What? They tried to fight hand to hand with crabs?"
Joowan shrugged. "They weren't exactly fighting hardened warriors."
Daevee glared at the urchin through his beady eyes. "I'm not talking about the congress, I'm talking about all they guards they would have had to go through to get to them. They wouldn't have gone down easily. That means they must have used some kind of weapon, one they might use against the rest of us. Everyone knows about the giant crabs they had to fight. They must have come up with some way of stopping them."
Pritor winced. What had Gorbegosk been thinking? They'd been the most dominant of the consortiums but had still resorted to such heinous means of trying to maintain their dominance against their growing rivals. It had backfired spectacularly. The Grand Consortium had been shattered into its individual states, alliances between them in a constant state of flux as they fought for dominance, but all were against Gorbegosk. Turning their people into such monstrosities was an abomination to the gods and they would demand nothing less than their destruction. He could only hope that wouldn't extent to the all of the former Grand Consortium states.
Jowan leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "I think… I think we will need to take control over the city before they get here. If we can do that, we can discourage them from even trying to get involved. If we make it too much trouble, they won't risk attacking us. By the time they arrive, we'll have more than enough troops to hold the city, and even if they do attack, we can bring in more troops much faster than they can. It will just give our countries an excuse to get involved more directly."
Which just means the Ascendancy will be able to wait for us to tire out fighting each other before they move in. Pritor hid his frustration by taking more of his drink. He couldn't forget that these other two may be allies for the moment, but it was an alliance of convenience. They would be enemies the moment the city was taken and the Ascendancy was no longer an immediate concern. There wasn't much he could do on his own. His people were former soldiers but they weren't there to fight a war against other countries, they were just corporate security. But he was also the one in the best position to get Birgus what it so desperately needed.
Birgus was the furthest Consortium state from the sea to the east, landlocked except through the lakes to the south which drained into the Green River which then bled out into the sea right where Splatsville sat.
Birgus' geographical position meant they were avoiding the worst of the ongoing conflict among the former Grand Consortium member states, but with so many of their supply routes blocked, the only one left to them was either through the Urchin Kingdom's mountainous terrain and through the Green River. He had to secure it for Birgus no matter what, or they could face ruin. But before he could worry about the two rivals in front of him, he had to wrestle it from the Balt Ralok clan's suckers and stop the Ascendancy from getting a hold of it.
Through their control over the river, the octolings had coerced, extorted, and robbed his people for years, people who were just trying to deliver goods up and down the river to their home country at a lower price than importing across multiple nation boundaries overland. His own father had been assaulted for his refusal to pay a bribe.
Honestly, they should have expected as much from people who'd always been little more than pirates, And the Onaga and Manta clans hadn't done anything to stop them, so they shared the guilt.
"Let's focus on seizing the city," Pritor agreed. We do that and capture the Big Three's leadership, the rest will fall in line quickly. If they don't, they won't last long against the rest of us."
Daevee nodded emphatically. "Agreed. The details of what happens after aren't for us to worry about anyway. If we seize the Big Three's strongholds, they won't be able to fight long even if they tried. By the time the Ascendancy shows up, we'll be in command of the city and they'll have to turn away."
"We only have about a week to make this happen," Joowan said, eyeing the both of them firmly. "That's not a lot of time."
Pritor nodded. "Agreed. We'll just have to keep it simple then. Timing is going to be the important part. Too quickly and we risk tipping them off, too slow and they might get away. We'll have to make sure we have people in the right places so that doesn't happen."
And he would make sure that if he couldn't make certain to secure the river, then he would at least secure Rak Balt Ralok's head as a consolation prize.
Author's Notes:
Everyone has a lot of things to think about now with new problems to solve, even the bad guys. This chapter was originally much shorter but I added the last scene for reasons that will become more apparent later on in the story.
It's taken a while but we finally get to see Marie again. How do you think she's doing in her role as Empress?
What about our Splatland heroes? What do you think they should do to solve this new problem? Hope some mole survived extinction? What would you do?