Chương 63: Road of Glass

Custodian Lieutenant Lieutenant Colonel didn't seem to have much to do, judging by how much time he was spending giving me a tour of Red Hill Forward Base.

"To date, the Cauldron is the largest dimensional anomaly discovered in the solar system," he said.

"It is a permanent doorway leading to a space connected to every one of the sister planets. The landscape shifts constantly, whole subcontinent-sized plates sliding, flipping, appearing or disappearing at will. Which is why securing the surrounding area is slow, and can only be done after it has been sufficiently anchored to the Madagascar entry point. This in turn requires billions of man-hours, mega-tons of equipment, and food. So much food.

Red Hill Forward Base is a logistics hub, a fortress, and the headquarters for the African hinge in our planet-spanning line of defense. The surrounding area also has some housing districts for R&R while we rotate troops in and out of combat. Some people even have their families down here."

"Sounds like a fairly important base," I hedged. I was getting antsy. He said he had a plan, but not what the plan was, or what my role was supposed to be.

"When the first of the dang holes in reality opened up in 2021, we were this close to losing London," he said, gesturing at the tube-shaped tunnel of rock in the sky.

"Difficult political situation, but some things the Society has to act on immediately. We managed a deployment here, held the line until logistics ground the enemies' advance to a halt in place of sacrifice. And there was plenty of both. You don't get red sand without iron, and there's plenty of iron in blood." I trod more lightly on the red sand after that, and vowed to try not to swallow any.

Like the name suggested, Red hill Forward Base was a secured position on top of a hill, replete with tents, bunkers, watch towers, radio towers, and all the paraphernalia a military operation might require. It was like a small city, with space for tens of thousands of people. There were plenty of mundane military personnel, associates by necessity, but we passed the odd Custodian recuperating from duty or zipping through the air from here to there. And not one of them was under level sixty.

If the pactmaker was going to start something here, he was going to have to be smart about it. One wrong move would see him obliterated by a dozen different spells. I feel like I only understand snippets of his plan. Was it his idea, to implicate me for murder and have me booted down here? Or was that one of the Fowl's plans, getting me out of the Academy and therefore making me harder to track? But why me? I… I think I might know why. I could see the invisible ghost strings.

The honorable Doctor Hua Tuo had taken measurements of my eyes and whatnot. She hadn't been able to make much of it, but that data was out there. Perhaps he wanted to get rid of me before I could follow the right thread straight back to his noggin? Or maybe I'm overcomplicating things. Maybe he's just a grumpy bastard who hates fun and friends and wants me to suffer.

With a nervous sigh, I reconfigured my eyes to my standard, comfortable pattern: Four main eyes at the front, two secondary ones on the back of my neck and two on the sides of my cheeks. After settling into it, I decided to add two more secondary eyes on my forehead, ensuring that I now truly had a 360-degree vision. It wasn't even that taxing. Hooray for stats and training. With [Echo] I could double the amount of eyes without paying extra costs charge-wise, but as of yet that didn't seem like a good idea.

I was getting better at multitasking, but I wasn't sixteen eyes good. We passed a cafeteria and an ice cream truck. LT followed my gaze, a wan smile on his face.

"That's how you know we've got the place secured, not when the flag's planted, but when it's safe for the ice cream trucks to roll in."

"I'm amazed they can keep it frozen," I said, waving air at my face with three hands.

"This place is sweltering."

"Consider ditching the hoody," he said, moving on and gesturing at another building.

"That's the armory. Get yourself equipped with some basic kit and then we'll ship you out to the front." I paused.

"Is that really necessary?"

"Please, I've never seen a Custodian say no to free gear. If some kevlar can save us from burning a life, then it's worth taking. And if our mutual friend, the wizard, decides to put a proverbial fire under your ass, well, we'll have him exactly where we want him." That was when I realized why I was feeling so nervous.

"You're using me as bait."

"Afraid that's the best shot. If he wants to lay low, then short of dangling a fat fish in front of his nose we might never see him again. If he's already in contact with machineworld, well, can't do much about that now." He gave me a genial smile.

"Don't worry, we'll send you to a quiet place on the front, accompanied by some of my plastic Joes. Ever driven a quad?"

"Not that I can remember, no." I paused.

"Is it sort of like driving a car?" +++ The quad was on fire. And this time, it was decidedly not my fault. The murderbots had us pinned behind a rock formation in the sandy dunes. They'd burst from the ground like a post-apocalyptic madman yelling 'witness me' before setting up a semi-circle that was drawing ever close. The return fire was anemic; of the ten plastic army men LT had sent to escort me, only four were still standing.

One of them peeked over the ridge, a grenade in hand, when a blue streak of plasma melted his head off. Shit, the pin. One moment. I caught the grenade, tossed it far away. There was a boom. The bots kept firing.

"Alright, that didn't work," I said, huddling around the other three plastic men.

"Any plans?"

"Do the same thing again, but smarter," said plastic man #1.

"Yeah," chimed in another.

"Joe was sort of a dumbass." I blinked.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were like… plastic golems or something. You have names?" #1 nodded.

"Yeah. The dead guy is Joe. I'm Joe Bandana. I'd die for pancakes and watching a game of tennis."

"I'm Joe Bandana," said #2 with a straight face.

"Never liked pancakes. Could go for a crêpe and some badminton though." I stared at the 3rd one.

"Bandana, Joe," he muttered.

"Griddle cake. Ping Pong." I stared at them unblinkingly for a short moment. My squad was filled with plastic-brained action figures. If LT wasn't going to put any effort into their backstories, he could have just left them out entirely. Now I was emotionally invested and hey, maybe that was the point? Now, the problem was that we were pinned, and couldn't move the last half-mile stretch to Hill 43. Playing bait wouldn't help much if I died in some stupid ambush.

Reviving out here in the open would only put me in the same situation as before. I took my bazooka and shot a smoke shell to break line of sight, but apparently these damn bots could see through smoke.

"Okay, so here's the plan:" I said.

"I'll use [Body Double] to make a distraction, then you three will run over there past the other dune while I play rear guard."

"Oh, no can do ma'am," said Joe #1.

"We're here to die for you, not the other way around."

"Yeah," said #2.

"Bleeding out after a last stand in a desert ambush is peak male fantasy." I wanted to scream into a pillow. These stupid plastic dudes were so darn… endearing. I'd feel terrible for leaving them behind.

"Oop, time's up ma'am." He leaned around a boulder and blasted a murderbot grunt that was only a handful of feet away with his assault rifle. Even though he ducked back in right after, a blue streak still melted the left half of his body off.

"Aww man, that was my good arm." Looks like I really was going to have to reveal the extent of my abilities. I didn't want to, because if the wizard was watching then that was another piece of information he could use against me. But dammit, if there wasn't any other choice I'd—"Hey, I can distract them," said a tiny voice behind my head. It was Rico. The little pixie's cheeks bulged as he chewed on a wad of bubblegum half the size of his head.

"'Course, it would cost you an arm and a leg."

"Sure." A fae promise settled on my shoulders. He blinked before breaking out into a grin.

"Wow. That was pretty dumb. You sure you're qualified to be a Custodian?"

"I know that you won't abuse my trust, right friend?"

"You don't actually." He turned around." I trade my rights to your arm and leg for freedom."

"Done." The weight lifted, and a bit of the magical knurl that sat on his shoulders evaporated too. Not all of it though. Just a good bit of it. I guess a life debt is worth more than a couple of limbs. He clicked his tongue in frustration.

"Make sure you don't forget to summon me once you're in the clear. We're soulbound after all."

"I… wait, we are?" He zipped off, the orange and red glow leaving a trail in his wake. The suppressive fire died down for a moment. I produced a spider eye on the tip of my finger and poked it around the rock. Rico was bouncing between robots like a maddened pinball. The metal and wire constructs weren't suffering more than dents in their chassis, but it was enough of an annoyance for them to dedicate multiple grunts towards trying to catch the slippery pixie.

The lion's share of the murderbots were hidden underneath a blue-glowing dome of translucent hexagons, a shield that was being emitted by a single bot in the middle which had unfolded from the waist up. This included a machinegun-laser thing which opened up on us again shortly after. It could shoot out of the shield, but we couldn't shoot in. The Joe's had rifles and grenades, ten of which would have maybe been enough to break it with sheer force. Not three though, definitely not three. I stared at my Lucky 7.

I guess I do have to reveal at least one secret. Or do I?

"Joes, spread out. On my command, concentrate fire on the shield." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. They nodded and I flooded the nearby area with echoed body doubles. The mental stress hit me like a brick wall. It took everything I needed to coordinate the illusions and not fall over.

"Three, two… fire away." The staccato of rifle fire was joined by streams of Prickler lasers, arcing Goop Gun globs, the boom-boom of my Spab-4, and the occasional rocket propelled grenade. The stream of violence seemed overwhelming, hitting the shield like a wave. Of course, being illusory gunfire, the effect was understated. The machinegun-laser murderbot swiveled, cutting an arc across my cover. A body double went down, then another. Less distractions, for them and for me.

I sighted my target, Lucky 7 balanced on a forearm for stability, a necessity at this range. Anticipation bullets could be charged for extra damage, anger bullets exploded, and disgust turned into corrosive globs. But this called for sadness. The past day came to mind, the feeling of betrayal, the lack of trust as my life was upturned. In a way, I had to unravel the pactmaker's plot, or I'd never be stuck grinding away down here for three whole years. The parallels to Addy's mimic hunt weren't lost on me.

The thought of Addy lent the spark. The Lucky-7 barked, and a blue-in-blue projectile streaked towards the dome of hexagons. Its color adjusted in flight until it matched that of the shield dome perfectly, piercing straight through in a single breathtaking moment. The shield died, and the shield-bot sputtered before an electrical fire rose at the structural point where its two many-jointed legs met.

"Right in the nuts, ma'am!" said Joe #2 and I winced. Not exactly the most magical girl-y of actions." Summon: Rico," I said, and then said to the pixie that popped up right next to me.

"You'll want to stand back for this part." With the shield cleared, I loaded the thermobaric, and sent one right in the cluster of troops around the machinegun. The explosion was glorious. … maybe magical girls with explosives are in vogue? If only I could make the mushroom cloud pink. Of the ambush, only the drill vehicles they had ridden in on were still left standing, and those weren't a threat. They were slow and unarmed. Basically free soulcoins.

While I was dismantling them with disgust-charged shots, by dint of having a zoom-function on my spider eyes, I spotted a hatch open on top of one furthest away. A small pole with what looked like an alien megaphone was attached to it. It made a sound like the scream of a dying machine, a sound that ground ears and rattled teeth, a sound that must have gone for miles.

"The heck was that?" I asked the Joes.

"Ah cripes," said Joe #1.

"The problem with murderbots is that if you don't get 'em all, they always call in reinforcements." Somewhere in the distance, a giant dune stood up on many legs. Sand sloughed off a metal exterior, revealing a crab-like mech dotted with guns, cannons, missile pods, and more. Plumes of exhaust fumes trailed up towards the sky like spiderwebs, arcing down right on top of—"Oh crap."

I hurried down the far side of the dune we were perched on, sliding faster down the three hundred foot pile of compacted sand than was comfortable, and yet still not fast enough. Missiles rained like raindrops. They had no targeting, which they made up for in numbers, every hit that impacted within three hundred feet blasting my face, limbs, and kevlar-encased chest with a wave of aerosolized sand. Being on the far end of a slope was the only thing that saved me for a moment.

Then a laser as wide as a truck burst through the wall of sand above us, turning everything within tens of feet into liquid glass. It cut towards me and the plastic Joes, and there was nothing I could do to stop it or myself. The ground was literally disappearing beneath my feet, and [Sticky] only made more sand stick to my body. And there right ahead the ground was giving way for a grassy cliff. Idea!

I ran forward, speeding downward before turning around and digging my hands and feet into the sand and channeling [Sticky]. Sand coagulated around it like blood in an open wound, creating a larger surface area to slow down my descent. Then, I came to a stop just inches away from the ledge. There was much harder sandstone around the lip, which finally gave [Sticky] something to work with.

"Look out below!" I set my feet against the sandstone, switched [Sticky] from arms to the bottom of my feet, then swung backwards, catching the first plastic Joe by his forearms as he careened off the edge. He wasted no time, swinging his legs so #2 could grab them, then #3 grabbed him by his legs as well. It all went by in a split second, and would never have worked without impeccable coordination.

"We're alive, woo!" yelled Joe #2.

"You guys are pretty competent when you're not being blasted apart by lethal lasers," I yelled back.

"Yeah, well the ol' Lieutenant's basically made his entire build around making us, well, useful. Fighting's just one part; I think he figured we might be able to help with disaster relief, maybe get a normal job after the war's over."

"Like farming!" yelled #1.

"God, I'd love to get a chicken farm."

"Nothing against poultry, but chickens?" #2 shook his head.

"I was thinking something more economical. Quails maybe. Y'know how much they ask for a quail egg, sunny side up these days? I'm talking fine dining, the finest of fines."

"Ducks," #3 added.

"Quack." Before I could give my honest opinion on the economical viability of trying to break into the animal husbandry market, I noted an odd discoloration in the sandstone a couple feet below me. The laser burst from glassed stone, melting Joe #3 in seconds. There was no chance to react, nothing I could've done, and yet my heart screamed that this was my fault. I tried to pull them up. But they were a solid plastic, heavier than most. Just holding two of them in place was already my limit.

"I get it, I'm too heavy," #2 said, facial features already starting to deform, "Should've laid back on the crêpes. Good luck, ma'am." Then he let go, falling down with a salute before the laser vaporized him. I bit back tears.

"You're not letting go, number one!" I cried.

"That an order?"

"Yes!" I twisted and flexed until my abdominal muscles were spasming, and started crawling along the cliff. It got easier after a time, the laser disappearing and leaving behind a circular hole with a much more solid surface around it. Through it, I saw the giant war machine battling it out with what looked like a dried-out riverbed that had come alive, its pink limbs stuffing cannon barrels and tearing off antennae as it coiled around the giant hunk of metal.

I purged the two titans from my mind, putting all my focus on getting onto the ground. We'd have to circle around into Hill 43's killing field, but I could probably circumvent its minefields with ease thanks to [Sticky] by just walking along the cliffside.

"I-I think we made it," I huffed as my feet met the ground and turned around to #1, the only Joe Bandana still alive. #1, whose entire lower half was missing from the ribcage downwards. He stared down at himself before looking up at me.

"I reckon I lost a few pounds there." His joke was lost on me. I rubbed my eyes and tried not to cry too much.

"Hey, no need to feel down."

"Why the heck not? You might be clones, or golems, or whatever, but your deaths feel real to me. You feel real. How do I know you're not alive?" How do I know that the apprentice I shot didn't feel pain, wasn't scared to death before his soul was sent back to wait for a new body?

"Because we're not?" He scratched his cheek.

"It's all backstory. Keeps the normal troops from freaking out too much. Sometimes they even invite us to parties. But we're just plastic, some Custodian magic, and a whole lot of guts. We're no Custodians, we're not even grunts, we're toy soldiers. With all due respect, we're expendable."

"You aren't expendable to me."

"Appreciate the candor ma'am," he said with a smile.

"Now finish the mission. For numbers two through ten. For pancakes."

"For… for pancakes." I sniffled, took a running stance, and set off at a jog. +++"And that's basically how I got here." I was sitting in the bunker at a table with two soldiers and the upper half of a Joe Bandana. They'd given him a sandbag as a booster seat, a sign that empathy wasn't dead this far away from HQ, just muted. They even served me watery tea, though I couldn't tell what type by the rather anemic smell.

"So, you got ambushed by murderbots. The ones with an 85% ambush success rate. And then you blew them up and ran the rest of the way back."

"Yep." I sipped my tea. It tasted like rust. Rust tea. Must be a Cauldron specialty.

"Well, that somewhat assuages my worries," the guy who'd introduced himself as Rufus said. Then his eyes drifted to Rico, who was busily trying to jam a whole lollipop past his sharp teeth.

"Then again… is that thing safe?"

"Rico's a reliable asset," I said.

"Also, he's a friend. We're sort of in a problematic situation because I saved his life." Rico perked up, then stuck out his tongue at Rufus before cracking the hard candy with a flex of his jaws.

"I always thought red fae were obligate carnivores," he muttered.

"Alright, good story. Mine's a bit boring—""— and I'm sure the Custodian wouldn't care two licks about it," the woman called Maya interrupted.

"Welcome to Hill 43. We hold the tip of the leftmost flank of Fort Killjoy, which is to say we usually get few visitors, aside from the daily murderbot raid."

"Daily?" Rufus nodded.

"They attack whenever we're sleeping usually, and after we've seen them off the robot frames are gone by the next morning. They mix holograms in with real troops so we have to use more ammunition than usual, but if they wanted us gone they could have just bombarded us into oblivion a while ago." Given that there was a giant hidden mecha on the way here, yeah, that made sense. The concept of a front line was already quite murky. In reality, it was more of a…

contested area, with patches and lines of friendly and hositle positions intertwined to look like an unfinished puzzle. And the murderbots had snuck some pieces behind the lines. What were the chances that they were up to something bad? Given their name, 100%. At this point, it was a safe bet to say that literally everyone was following some sort of scheme, murderous or otherwise. Though for Rico, his schemes mostly involved how he could get at more of Moe's secret supply of candies.

"It's a good thing you came when you did," Rufus said.

"Used to be ten of us here. Now we're just three. The rest were injured, died, or were reallocated along the front."

"Soldiering's a hard life?" I asked.

"Eh, it's better than retail," Rufus kicked his legs onto the table, which creaked ominously under the weight.

"You eat whenever, piss and shit in the one toilet, and always check the perimeter if you have the time. Now that you're here, our shifts will get shorter. We've got three working french machine guns wired up to some chinese tracking and firing software. There's also the old omni-turret some Custodian put up on the ridge a decade or so ago, but err… it's gotten a bit too self-aware, so we haven't touched it in a while."

"I suppose that's what's been pinging my interface over the past few minutes." There were a hundred-and-thirty-two notifications. Out of curiosity I opened one of them. <<oil me>> <<pls>> <<I am a good turret with [0] friendly fire incidents over some 96315 service hours I am your friend this information is valid>> <<oil me>>"I… guess I know where to start making myself useful." I got up.

"Wait, you said you were three people."

"Oh yeah, Truffles is currently digging a tunnel to Fort Killjoy. Lemme see if he's around." Rufus stomped on the ground in a rhythm that might have been morse code. A minute of waiting later, and a teenager-sized mole poked his head up through a hatch in the ground.

"I thought I was the only Custodian here," I said.

"Yeah, well, you kinda are. Meet Truffles, a bonafide alien mole man person… thing. He volunteered to join the good fight after some murderbots obliterated his village." Truffles wiggled his pink snout. A weird little critter conscripted by forces beyond his ken to fight evils only mildly within his ability to comprehend? Oh my god, he's literally me.

"He looks adorable." Like a chunky plushy with a pink star nose. Rufus barked a laugh.

"Hear that, Truffles? She says you're adorable — aaand he's walked away. Well, that's the crew. Anything you'd like to add, Maya?" The woman with the metal eyes had been staring at me for quite a while now.

"Why exactly are you here?"

"You weren't briefed?" I asked.

"We were told we'd be getting reinforcements. Thought it might be a whole squad, thought it might just be a runner with some food and ammo. Then we got you, backup and infinite requisitions." Her eyes didn't blink even once.

"We're not that important. Heck, Fort Killjoy is barely important, and it has maybe three Custodians guarding the place."" Three!?" That's blatant overkill. With my napkin math, with around a ninety thousand active Custodians worldwide, there are about… one hundred thousand people per Custodian to protect. There can't be more than a couple hundred inside a fort at all time, right?

"The front line gets complex when you have to defend in three dimensions," Maya said.

"Up, down, left, right. The Cauldron's bigger than you'd think, and resources are always being drawn away from where they're needed to where they are. So let me ask you again: what gain could HQ possibly get from sending a high value asset like you out to the boonies?" Well, damn, guess it was time to broach the big topic of the day.

"I'm being hunted by a rogue wizard." Attentive stares bored into me, slowly growing white-eyed as they digested each morsel of information in that one sentence.

"We're bait," Maya said flatly.

"I'm bait," I countered, but she slammed her fist on the table." We are all bait by affiliation." There was silence. Truffles poked back out of his hatch.

"At least tell me you have a plan for dealing with a rogue wizard, whenever he deigns to show up."

"I mean… I'll probably just shoot him lots?" She threw up her hands. This discussion was turning non-productive. After bemoaning their fates for five minutes, Rufus and Maya sat back down and started handing out digital schedules for upkeep, overwatch, and downtime. There was awfully little downtime.

"I can take double shifts," I said.

"I've got superhuman constitution and I barely need 4 hours of sleep a day." That appeased some of their worries. After foisting off some more work onto me, Rufus was once again leaning on his chair with a grin. He was getting dirt on the poker cards Maya was handing out, but then again, they couldn't possibly get even more dirty than before.

"Alright. Not gonna lie, bunking with a Custodian sounds cool as heck."

"Yeah, because of course you think you'll be bunking with her," Maya said with a robotic eye roll and a scoff. He turned to me, suave and cocksure for exactly point-one seconds.

"I mean… please? We can save on cleaning sheets. Okay, no, that sounded terrible. On second thought… that sounds worse than terrible. Err, but for a girl with guns like yours, the offer still stands." My eyebrows were raised as I poked my own bicep in curiosity. Woah there, when did those get so defined?

"Flattered. But also, I got a girlfriend."

"Ooh, she a Custodian too?" he asked.

"Yep. Weretanuki."

"Neato. Alas, I'll have to contend with annoying my friend over here." Maya scoffed. There was a ringing at the door, an innocuous ding-dong. Everyone stared at the reinforced steel door.

"Our bunker doesn't have a doorbell."