Chapter 20 #2
"No," Violet said, but the word was not very convincing.
Lily, on the other hand, was staring through the hole that Violet had made. "Incoming." She turned to Violet. "Now would be a good time to decide your stance on the indentured servants."
"Of course we won't hurt them," Violet said. "I doubt they even want to be here."
Lily scowled. "Whether they choose to be here or not, the fact of the matter is that they are here, and they are standing between me and my objective. Therefore, they are a problem to be solved."
"They're people!" Violet said, practically shouting at Lily. The helivore didn't seem to mind.
Regardless of their argument, the shouts grew closer and closer.
The first one up was an emaciated grogax.
I'd seen Brick, who was perhaps above average, but the one in front of us now was thin enough that he looked unwell.
His clothes were little more than rags as he charged like an animal, frothing at the mouth, an electric collar strapped to his throat.
Violet stepped forward, her beam saber lashing out and hamstringing him as she slipped past, shooting Lily a scowl with enough acid to strip paint.
But as soon as the first came, so did dozens more.
The grogax was simply leading the charge as they came screaming and rushing at us with reckless abandon.
Before Violet could stop all of them, black spines shot out of the wall, catching them and rooting them in place.
The mycelial network was stretchy enough that it was like they were caught in a web.
And that web was alive, writhing and burrowing deeper into their flesh with every second as they began to darken and burble, black flesh turning each of them into a mass of mycelial tissue.
"Lily!" Violet scolded.
Lily crossed her arms, standing back by me undoubtedly to keep me safe. "If you can solve this with your strength, then please go right ahead. But I will not go easy on these people only to risk the captain."
I held my hands up as Violet looked to me for help. "Lily's not wrong. She might be brutal, but she's not wrong."
I pulled out my blaster and began putting fire down into what looked like a quarry that had people spilling out of it like ants from an anthill.
Even as I was doing that, several of those that Violet had hamstrung started twitching on the ground, the collars around their necks visibly giving off sparks, and several of them staggered back to their feet, going as far as to crawl for our ankles.
Violet was swift in snapping their wrists with quick kicks. She seemed to teleport around the fight, but I also couldn’t pay as much attention as I might have otherwise. The fight was getting busy as hundreds of indentured servants filled the area around us.
"Since you won’t solve the problems, I will," Lily snapped, and her masses of mycelial tissue bled into those that were wounded on the ground, only for Violet to jump forward and sever several of the growing tendrils.
"No need!" she snapped.
Lily didn't waste time arguing with Violet. Instead, she stopped and focused her efforts elsewhere.
More and more of the indentured servants were pouring out to the point that I wondered if they were endless. And unfortunately, their numbers only appeared to be fueling Lily’s mycelial mass, which began to grow so numerous that they outweighed the swarm of indentured servants.
"Lily, we need to find where we're going," I told her.
"Down," she answered, in such a way that I could only roll my eyes.
I spotted a section that looked like some sort of command tent and began moving, keeping my blaster out and my trigger finger busy.
Thankfully, the indentured servants weren't armed, and even if they might be as strong as a grogax, it seemed that whoever was forcing people to be here hadn't been able to force anything like a dragon.
The result was that they were simply throwing themselves at Lily to their deaths or at Violet to wind up injured and clutching at her legs on the floor.
I moved, and both followed, over to a building that looked like it might hold answers. The door practically came off its hinges with heavy use, revealing a dozen kikai in various states of distress.
"What do you want?" one of them held up their hands.
"Map,” I told them.
They pointed at a tablet on the table. “Take mine. There's a map of the whole system on it. Now that I've told you, you won't kill me, right?" the kikai asked hopefully, clearly wanting to put some distance between themselves and the rest.
I noticed the collars on all of them. Then I felt the weight of two women's gazes on my back. I could almost feel Lily and Violet begging me to pick a side.
Then the collars lit up, ratcheting to incredible intensity, and those in the building all clutched at their throats, screaming.
“We’ll just remove these and save them.” Violet scoffed as they all fell to the floor writhing, before her saber lashed out and cut one of the collars off.
The collar detonated, taking the indentured servant's life with it in a sudden but messy explosion that blew inwards, ensuring there was no head left.
Violet stared slack-jawed at what she had just done. "I d-d-didn’t know," she stuttered.
"Well done." Lily grinned victoriously.
I glared at both of them. We did not have time to bicker. Then I picked up the tablet and used the now-dead kikai's finger to swipe it unlocked using his biometrics.
The others in the room had seen the first collar explode and started screaming, pulling at their own, which only seemed to trigger whatever tamper resistance was programmed into the collars. Their heads popped.
"Horrifying," Violet said. "Only the vilest of existences would treat life so casually."
"Well, if it weren't for me, you would have been completely overrun. Besides, these people barely count as people. More like livestock with those collars around their necks." Lily seemed to take that comment personally, glaring at Violet.
"They are people. Mistreated people." Violet glared.
“Weak people," Lily disagreed.
I did my best to tune out their bickering and focused on the tablet in front of me. "It looks like there's something down here," I said, ignoring their argument and turning the tablet to show them a detailed map of the quarry and the tunnels below.
"If we wait too long, those that Violet left alive will bring more," Lily said, staring at the map for a second before she began to lead the way.
A competitive edge glittered in Violet's eyes as she pushed to overtake Lily, and the kikai and helivore broke into a run, forgetting about me entirely as they fought to be the first to encounter each new wave of enemies.