The Foundry | Part Four | Chapter Forty-Six
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed
Chapter Forty-Six
Touch-down on the Bismark was clean and quick for Thrasher and D’Artagnan. He’d been out before, but not like this.
War Cry’s drive core burn wrote a line across his up-scopes in pursuit of the dark rider who’d thought they might harm this fleet of civilians in orbit of Atreya. Three successive blasts from her twin cannons, one upon its bearing, along with two evenly spread at its sides; those were guesses.
Thrasher unfolded its grid marked outer-framework and deposited D’Artangan directly from his hard shell onto the Bismark — a freighter slug redesigned for human occupation — breaking immediately into a hardest sprint across the deck work, beneath its opalescent amber environment shield; a cube of transparent light which reminded the boy of a sunset on his home world.
Poe’s shot on the right had done the trick. That darkest warframe of Auluré found a sphere of its own immolation waiting upon the reactive bearing taken. She’d cut thrust, and spun her mech on its axles, retaining course while finding a new bearing with its sharpest tipped nosecone. After a second-long of reverse burn on thrusters to slow War Cry just enough, she’d floored the throttle of its drive core.
She’d only seen the Bismark as a spec on her go-scope while subvocalizing her command to Theodore. He’d open comms directly to D’Artangan.
“My dude!” Poe shouted with presumption he’d hear the unspoken request.
The boy had found way underneath an overhang, into an alcove shrouded from the reflective light of Atreya, only to see by a thinnest strip of luminance at the border of it’s outer airlock. He’d been spinning the handwheel to make entrance as he called back.
“Just getting in now. Let them know I’m here.”
He’d cracked the hatch and felt a rush from its decompression pass over his skinsuit’s emotive outer fabric.
“And cover my ass.”
Poe was running a passive tap-game within the augmented reality forborne by War Cry’s soft chair. Connected by wrist and micro-plugged headpiece of nearly un-noticeable weight — the servo-sensors in her seat and arm cushioning to provide extra touches of control. Her bodies eye’s closed, War Cry’s senses witnessing all, she’d not missed a beat.
“I’m all up in your ass, boy.”
Alan had been messaging with Echo since before this all began.
He’d told her everything — starting with the way his murder of Count Salus had rolled into a laziest investigation. Yet, the subsequent dispatching of his mother Beatrice Undroth, was bringing the entire ship down around him.
The admiralty was incensed with Condor, and the faith in his vision of Tiberius had proven within all comrades to have waned. There was insurrection, martial law, and upheaval in the lower levels. All was crashing down around the man who would be Emperor.
Still, he’d wield great sway with his closest few — those very same who’d bought liege over defected pilots of The Foundry, including those they’d operated on to keep that way. In fact, it was only Priscilla who remained herself.
Their nine had become six in stead of losing Alan, along with two to operational failure; such a common occurrence.
He was making his way from that quarters in the lower decks, fighting the swell of crowing and crowding masses in the hallways. There’d been a bulk before each passage upward. All of the doors were locked.
Water had been cut off in the face of this emergency. The decree was for ‘zero waste.’
Alan brought the notices with him, pamphlets he’d printed in haste on the middle-deck before making his way to retrieve that most precious tool from his quarters, and was handing them to those seeming disposed to listen.
It was about spreading the word — this was the time for them to bring it all down.
Every person aboard the lower decks had been squat upon, made to suffer by the labors demanded of them, and broken in spirit by how little agency they had over their own freedom. Together, with those he’d inspire in shortest time, before very few had lost themselves to wanting for thirst so badly they’d drink from that fountain’s chlorinated pool, Alan would be chosen to lead.
There wasn’t a thought in Alan’s head, but he’d never been more inside his body. He’d taken that rail spike recovered from their carrier shuttle’s hull — itself the size of his wrist — and pounded it into a widest crack, of most inadequately spacing; a crevasse between the lower deck’s inner hull and a hatch to the port-most stairwell.
He’d found himself smiling.
Monarch and Scarlet were straddling Cardinal as they’d reached the polar-capped apex of their far side orbit. Something in the formation was familiar to the three women after precious time spent preparing for this coming battle.
She’d been riding solo, and like these two, it just made sense to form a threesome. Rory and Echo had even discussed the thought of making that official in some unofficial capacity.
Echo always liked multiples of three; she was into it, always plenty of heart to go around with the woman, and not a hint of insecurity left after time spent in such extremes.
“You’re right on target.” Leopold piped through.
Echo and Fox were in private discussion, making plans, riding this orbit in purest guidance of Rory, as was Iris. Their ships were slaved to hers so they might use their consciousnesses along with that of their warships to find electronic means of warfare against the target.
Rory was steering, but those two were toiling away inside, and as a unit they’d been tasked to deliver the most crucial blow of this battle.
Auluré was filled with civilians, wrought with injustice, and ripe for the taking. The decision had been made at behest of the advice and pleas of Rory and Leopold together before the rest of the council, and each of the Consoler’s had been officially ordained a temporary title.
This was time of balance, shifting from old ways to new, there’d need to be some semblance of what existed before in the coming time of transformation at The Foundry — that very same which would soon eliminate hierarchy completely —establishing the truest and most equitable dispersion of power which might be capable at any given moment. For a period, there would remain such titles as the council continued to serve those functions it did before, but only for the adequate length any person need be deigned with such identification.
Leadership was earned, and constantly. There would be no such thing as permanence within the structures of The Foundry’s inner functions by the end, as that would be a lie, in conflict with the very nature of the ever changing universe itself. Those worlds who lived with possession, and such illusions of control over the impermanent, would only corrupt their every action by that self-deception.
Echo pulled herself out from within the three dimensional AR display she’d built of Auluré, and checked the communication logs between Fox and Effervescence; Iris’s intelligence.
Effervescence: I can almost taste it.
Fox: Yup. — Mhm. — Me too.
“Come on!” Echo chided. “Get your heads in the game, you two.”
They flooded her senses with what they’d been looking at. A bug had been found in the security systems of Auluré. It was only with those two intelligences working together, at last, and Rory at the lead, in means for infiltrating Auluré had been found.
A vision bloomed in Echo’s mind, and it was one which birthed a smile to her face. She’d brought something along with Scarlet on this mission. It would prove most useful next to the tools which Rory and Iris would each wield beside her, and they’d save Echo’s friend; Alan.
The future was neigh for Auluré, and these three were the boarding party.
Hardline threw fire in growing sphere’s of magmatic fury.
A fleet of dark riders was comprised of five in whole, suspended in a breadth of dark space caught between the greatest lengths capable, nearly the central axis of intersection between Atreya, Chiron, The Foundry, and Auluré now burning straight from its cover behind the giant.
Four from The Foundry would do.
Chalice blew storms of furious electric cloud, they’d surround and consume, disable and dismantle. More than electromagnetic wrath, it was that of molecular dismemberment. They’d propel themselves from the craft itself, borne of vents on its wingtips, pouring forth in its swirling death-ride, crafting its legacy of chaotic entanglement.
The five riders had split, carving out and up, down and under. One had foolishly taken out on its own.
Silence would have that one from the darkness, enveloping the goon within its projected field of displacement, wielding its ability to fold time-space into means of brutal torment. It’d taken the front half of the craft, and phased it directly into Chiron, caught just right in that gridded-globe which Jocé only saw in her inner vision, leaving the front shield of its hard-shell to the storms and swirls of that mammoth planet, casting its pilot into the blackness.
Priscilla hadn’t lasted but a moment.
The arcing pair above the oncoming mechs of The Foundry, themselves now a trio in wingtip formation aiming downward at perpendicularity, would be all for Chloe.
She’d seen her shot as they grew so near each other, and having obsessed quite thoroughly over the very thing Echo and Rory had been not-so-secretly competing over — Chloe knew this her chance.
Cutting throttle; on full-float in highest immediacy. Hardline’s tailfin would throw its rudder right, veering the craft’s nose that same direction, while its bearing remained unchanged on drift. She’d engage throttle from her dual drive cores, burning its upper chambers at one-eighth from the front, and its lower row on-full from the rear, proving the needed overbearance which would take the craft into an upward arc at its off kilter angle. That moment she’d hit a ninety-degree incline, Chloe disengaged her core, flipped her nosecone back into itself, burned top-facing thrusters on its rear to throw its rotation backward, before collapsing her right wing up and in — burning those outer most, rear-facing core chambers she’d mounted beneath the left wing — feathering the upward facing thrusters mottled along its length for the needed downforce. At that perfect moment she’d disengage everything, blasting thrusters straight out of her lower right hull’s frame to cut the spin, adding a touch of downforce on the rear to even her out — straightening the rudder, unfolding everything in perfect time — before hard lining straight ahead.
Chloe had beat them all, but only for now.
She’d sent a globular force of reckoning upon her mechs focused point-of-direction, that cozy space just ahead of the dark rider’s soon towering overpass. They’d have no escape from the torment of her flame, caught in its currents, the sphere itself empowered into a furnace by the addition of an enemy, not to mention a pair. Churning and whirling as its heat grew to peak in temperatures of a small sun.
The light it bore was muted by design, but that fire inside was not, and burned-through the hull’s of The Foundry’s enemies had.
Below, her companions flying Chalice and Onslaught sought chase of their remaining vermin, who’d split in a forking maneuver of pure panic. Jacobi Ebbentide was waiting for nothing other than the opportunity to catch a fiend within his chaos.
There’d be pot-shots fired at the one he’d found his target, drawing them back towards him, pretending himself most had. That moment he allowed them to believe it, that second, he’d ripped Chalice into its glorious barrel-rolled death-march, leaving such trailing fumes of molecular hellscape behind. The sights he’d recorded from his rear-scope would be deleted by Jacobi.
In fact, he’d do that every time he used his weapon.
Onslaught had only modeled itself into that spear of plasmic blue-flame, propelling to speeds beyond that usually capable a craft bearing a human pilot. Demi Annexa’s design choices included interior fields of protection which would mute g-force to a hundredth of a degree while in that form.
She’d aimed well.
“I’m so fucked,” was D’Artagnan’s estimation.
Poe hadn’t confirmed it, but she’d guessed the same while watching the Bismark veer towards Atreya.
“It’s the only way, Poe.”
There’d been hope held in D’Artagnan and Poe he might complete his leg of this mission without facing the end of his life. Although, that would not be proving the case. He’d known it a highest possibility when offering himself for the role. There was always a hero in the boy, that very youngest initiate in his class, and he would be proving it to all for eternity.
D’Artagnan Daemenos name would be written in the histories of The Foundry.
The lives he was saving by driving the Bismark through Atreya’s atmosphere, into a tomb of sea before its detonation, would prevent catastrophe in orbit. He’d save lives which would change things in this and hundreds of other galaxies. The ripples from this one bold choice to act would make more good than any human might ever know.
He was a most courageous sort, and a kindest fellow. D’Artagnan had known himself accepting a mission of certain doom. Hopeful lies would spawn in such scenarios, holdings of hope, and birth the will to do what would otherwise be impossible. A part of him knew that as he’d lied to himself, up to this very moment on the line with Poe.
She couldn’t accept it, “There’s got to be another way!”
He’d leave the line open, and talk with her the whole way down. She’d know he didn’t have fear to face the other side, and that gift would change this girl into a woman. She’d become the Poe which would change the universe herself. While always courageous, she would become fearless.
It had been that final thing he’d said, which placed it so deeply within her; a knowing of what lie beyond. D’Artagnan Daemenos had no idea who or what he was talking about, but he’d repeated what was told to him from some place beyond.
“Carol’s here, and she told me that she’s with you always.”
Vacuous spaciousness had fully consumed the consciousness of Condor Undroth. He’d been immersed in the thought of killing himself, but he’d wish to take as many ‘heathens’ with him on his way out. There’d be no hope for delivering primordial injustice firsthand, and so he’d simply spaced the entire middle deck for fun.
Everything felt perfect to the man. Something in the air of his private toilet chamber was ripe with opportunity wrought. Never again would he let his guard down to another, and he’d aim to bring the entire galaxy to his feet.
This gift of a chance to maim those who he’d once risen from humble places beside, was a gift to the heart and evil soul of this man above his pot of stool. He’d not flushed for some time, so lost in it all.
There was a greatest notion which dawned on the man then. He realized that he’d been an idiot his entire lifetime, and that every bit of power he found had come from his clinging to a powerful woman now dead.
It was freeing to Condor Undroth. At last, he’d not feel bad to take pleasure in the simple things which life afforded him. Nor lose hope for some future where he might build a simple home anew, and shed these walls of false confidence which felt such a burden to the man, allowing him at last a chance to do what he’d always wanted most; rest.
Echo Béleaph had given him that wish right then.
It came directly through the door. There’d been echoes heard half the length of the ship, shuddering the walls, their reverberations of metalwork signifying the loss of some — completely insignificant man.
Her rail went straight through his heart.
Rory was cutting a path to the lower decks and there’d been a firefight. She’d not forgotten her interrogation device as she’d wielded those lighting bursts of molded fury towards her many enemies. Iris had just been watching. The way she’d taken control, and made that force her own, it was a sight to the girl’s eyes.
She’d a softest glow about her, a lightest hair, and a brightest laugh. There was surprise in Rory, only at first, to hear those giggling sounds escaping through breath at such a time. Yet, she’d been surprised before by the ferocity that lie within a form she hadn’t expected.
The way she’d laid her enemy to waste; all of those many times she’d brought them to their knees and cut them down to size — was proving a bonding experience for these women.
No face would be a more gorgeous sight to Rory than the smile of Iris Lirafleur, it would only ever match in caliber a single thing, and that was how Echo made her heart feel. There was something special in the beginnings of this moment.
Echo would be very excited to hear about it.
The Theater of War had become its namesake by the will of Echo Béleaph.
She’d not find more flow than moments of purest adrenaline, when the stakes were highest and there’d be so much to lose. It was the one gift she’d always been most grateful for in her belly; the excellence which would pour forth when it was required. There’d seem to be no end of this pool she might draw from once she fully came into herself.
In this space and especially beside and before these men; she was getting a free preview.
Horrors, like these gentlemen she had been taking her time with, were not something she’d ever deem forgivable. They were the very same which would kill her Earth in the end.
Through time moving with The Great Generator’s portal about space, Echo would find the breadth of her lifetime extend far beyond that of anyone she’d lived beside on Earth; eons further. She’d see the destroyed planet with her own eyes, and there was a part of her that could already feel that. It was with her always, and why she’d no fear of fleeing.
It was the Onokia which saved Echo; a race beyond the pale of magnificence to be witnessed in these parts of space and time, except by rarest occasion.
They’d come to Earth in knowing that its horrors would birth the most special kind. People who could uplift their own people. They’d help them to understand more of each other and their place in the universe. Echo had been in contact with them her entire life without knowing.
If there’d been a hope to save that place she would have been uplifted with peers to do so, but things had become to dour, and the world most rotten. There wouldn’t be a chance for her to save them.
While she’d have been able to live out her lifetime and considered doing so happily — humanity to survive centuries beyond her, and the planet millennia — the offer had been made to join the Onokoia, and Echo took it.
Many things had been taught on her passage to Boreál. The primary lesson she’d needed to learn was how not to forgive, and when it appropriate to make that decision. It came down to one thing, and one thing alone — her heart.
She’d care as much as anyone for individuals she honestly came to know, and Echo was a perceptive woman. There’d be no last chance she’d take to fight for people her heart believed in, because it knew a truth beyond herself. It also spoke of harshness required. There was a darkest dark within those hidden chambers, to wield unmercifully in the righteous knowing she’d held of when a threat was too great for the innocent.
Echo would do it uncaring of any who thought she ought pay for the sacrifice she’d make for them by becoming an outcast of sorrow. Her heart was a gift that had no end. It would shine her back to health from the inside out the moment she’d shred one of these men with her whip.
Poly-glass in nano fibers strung by a tethering of channeled electromagnetism reached to those farthest corners of this now darkened chamber.
She’d brought her spirit with her to the room. There was a reaper inside this woman, and it came from her heart. That golden whip had shredded clown after goon, fool after tart, little baby boy after man-child. Their whirlwinds of escaping blood cloud were thrown mercilessly into each other’s plooms.
Nothing was moving in her mind but Echo felt right at home. There was a peace of stillness in the dispensing of this vermin — which would allow the taking of a ship for her people — an accomplishment which would change far more than The Foundry or Boreál, and lead beyond the ultimate salvation of Atreya; Echo Béleaph would be saving mankind’s place amongst the stars.
I believe I may have landed this ship, perhaps, flipped it upside down and back pretty cool-like too on the way.