Las bolts sizzled and spattered on the mud behind us, blasting fist sized globes of the silty muck into shards of glass and burning organic debris. A claxon was sounding somewhere, oddly reminiscent of flood warning alarms I had heard on Bonaventure. I didn’t see how we were possibly going to survive. There was no way we could climb the levy without presenting ourselves to the full fury of the now aroused defenders of this hellish place. Said defenders were spilling from the barracks and other arches which lead deeper into the sunken city. Luckily for us a good number of them appeared to be local recruits, whose lack of accuracy had not quite been made up for by their numbers.

“Flood it?” I asked, already reaching out with my mind before I fully took Hadrian’s meaning. Lucius was easy to find, his mind a hard ball of barely restrained fury. I tried to convey the idea of flooding the city, but it was too abstract a concept for him to grasp at this distance. I altered my thought simply to ‘break’ and felt my connection snap. A roar of fury erupted from the distant wall as Lucius Raj stood, then drove a fist into the joint between two levy panel, his post human musculature and his ancient armor delivering enough force to send spidering cracks through the panel on which he stood. His arm flashed back and struck again, shattering ferrocrete and fiberglass supports both. With a roar he dropped into the hole he had made and vanished from my sight. I watched in fascinated horror as the levy wall groaned, and jets of water burst from the straining joint. By inches they grew until, with a groan, a ten foot panel twisted inwards and came away, carried into the enclosure on a crashing tide of muddy water. I saw Lazarus running along the top of the levy as a dozen panels bowed inwards. He fired on the move at something I couldn’t see, lifting a fireball ten meters tall from the interior of the compound. A black tidal wave of water and mud poured in from the breached wall, crashing downwards as the swamp rushed in. It swept over the slave barracks, picking up men and material in its wake, churning into a frothy tide as the dissolved cellulose in the swamp water tumbled and rebounded.

“Frack,” I muttered, then stumbled as something slapped me in the back. 


“Emma!” Selenica was calling. I tried to straighten but there was something wrong with my legs. Hadrian caught me around the waist and hauled me along. He seemed to be whispering even though his lips moved like he was shouting. I had a confused impression of being hauled up onto the loading barge. Laying on the metal deck as Clara and Hadrian fired over the edge down into the maelstrom below. Dark water surged up around us but the barge broke free of its rails. I had a sudden and terrible impression that we were about to be swept into the fungal city and whatever warp borne horrors lurked within. I tried to cry out but my voice wouldn’t come. Selenica was suddenly standing over me, her shadow blocking out the anemic sun. Her hands were slicked with blood as she fussed with my belly, the medicae pack on her belt torn open. There was an unpleasant coppery taste in my mouth as I was shoved up unto my side, Selenica’s hands tearing at the back of my hunting jacket. In this new position I got a good view of the former excavation, now a shallow whirlpool of sucking and gurgling mud water filled with flotsam, some of it human. I watched the body of a fur clad tribesman circle around, dipping into the maelstrom. At the center of it all I could see the stella of the sunken city, curiously visible despite the opacity of the water rushing in to cover it. I could just make out the slight phosphorescence of giant fungal flowers, glimmering beneath the black water.


“Frack,” I tried to repeat, though the only sound I made was a glug as blood spurted from my lips. Selenica shoved something hard against my back and then the world went dark.