Regar sounded like he was out for a relaxing walk in the woods.
"Yeah, I'm close. Stand by. Time for a more direct solution to my problem."
I didn't even know if this thing was a hatch. I was assuming it was because it looked like it might be one. For all I knew it was some kind of transmitter, or a heatsink or something. I had a way to test my hypothesis that it was, however.
I pulled Excalibur free, holding the hook in my left hand while gripping the shaft with my right.
"Time to put you to work," I said.
Channeling power to the chisel tip, it lit up a bright blue as the Voidcutter edges lit up. Swiveling my hips and throwing all my strength behind it, I drove the point into the center of the hatch in front of me.
Excalibur bit and then plunged through the surface, stopping when my right hand would allow it to travel no further.
"Yes!" I yelled, and attacked the hatch with the Excalibur's point.
One more minute and I reached my gauntleted hand through and bent the thin metal of the hatch out of the way. I didn't have time to cut all the way around.
The space beyond was unlit and quiet, a simple rectangular corridor leading into the center of the Spike. I crawled inside.
Chapter Three: To the Rescue
THE CORRIDOR WASN'T made for humans; that was obvious. It was barely five feet high and three feet wide, and I had to crouch over and shuffle. If I have to fight in here, this will be bad.
I pushed myself as fast as I could, moving toward the blue dot labeled Regar.
"Regar, I'm in the Spike and nearby. Making my way toward you."
There was no reply. I could only assume he was too busy. The blue dot didn't waver. I hoped that meant that he was still alive; otherwise, Brick would have lost his position feed. I pushed myself to move faster and sent the scout drone ahead.
The corridor wasn't long. It ended just ahead of me, opening into a massive vertical space, a cylinder five hundred feet across.
"This must be the railgun," I said as I looked up the shaft toward a tiny circle of dark purple far above.
Regar's blue dot was on the other side of the shaft, slightly up from me. I looked over there, trying to find a corridor exit matching the one I was in. There was nothing.
"I'm still alive, but that was close," Regar said, replying at last. "I'm patching myself up. Still, sooner would be better, Jake."
"Working on it. Trying to cross the shaft."
"What in the void are you doing in—? Never mind. Here they come again. Just get here. Quickly."
I slammed my hand into the corridor wall beside me. There was nothing on the opposite wall. It was essentially a smooth surface, unlike the outside of the Spike. This corridor I was in was apparently something of an anomaly. I sent the scout up and down the shaft, and it saw nothing I could use.
Then things began to move. Sections of the shaft wall, thirty-foot-long blocks, slid smoothly out of the walls in a wave traveling up the shaft. There were six lines of these blocks, all around the circumference of the shaft. I could see a hollow space behind the one directly opposite and with a thought I directed the scout drone in there. The hollow space led farther into the other side.
"Got you! On the way, Regar," I yelled, stepping to the edge.
Sheer luck saved me from being splattered. The Shard fired something up the Spike right at that moment. It was round, black, and about a hundred feet across. That was all I noticed as it flashed past in front of me, faster than thought. There was a deafening crack of air as it passed my perch, moving much faster than the speed of sound. The buffeting of the air would have knocked me into the shaft if it weren't for the reflexive way I grabbed the floor with the gecko pads on my feet.
Below, as quickly as they'd opened, the mysterious blocks began to merge back into the walls of the shaft, in a reverse of the previous wave action.
"Shit!"
I dove into the shaft and rocketed toward the other side, toward the gap that would be closing any moment. I pushed my propulsion as much as I dared and made it through the gap just as it was closing, my drones following closely. Unable to kill my momentum fast enough, I slammed hard into a solid wall just past the area the block filled. The unforgiving material bounced me back to the floor.
The armor had soaked up most of the impact, but I still felt like someone had rung my bell. I shook it off, my Transcendent Flesh repairing the damage I had probably done to my brain.
My needler and particle beam drones had made it into the gap with me, but the scout drone wasn't with us. It was offline, in fact. It had been in the shaft when the Shard had fired the railgun. It had probably been smeared onto whatever it was that the Shard had sent into orbit.
Regar's dot was above me, but close. I needed to get to him before he was overwhelmed.
The area I was in was mostly open. A forest of support structure held things together, and power runs fed the blocks in the shaft. It was clear now that they were the acceleration mechanism. Not far above there was a ring around the outside of the Spike, a hundred feet wide. It was in that ring of solid material that Regar's blue dot was glowing.
Regar's trail was clear as well. The broken remains of many different types
