Amaranthe stopped walking and lifted a hand. She’d heard something.
A clank sounded in the distance, somewhere ahead of them and… above them? Could that be right?
“Is that-”
“Sh.” Amaranthe held a finger to her lips, then jogged down the tunnel. Listening as she went, she tried to keep her footfalls soft and stop the clatter of her gear, though her rucksack thumped annoyingly on her back.
Maldynado ran beside her, stealing glances at her. Hadn’t he heard anything? Maybe she’d imagined it.
A blocky shape came into sight in the tunnel ahead. Another destroyed cube. Good. They were on the right track. They ran past it without stopping to examine it.
“Look out,” someone yelled ahead of them. Mahliki.
“I see it,” came Tikaya’s response, calm but harried.
A sickly smoke scent, something between burning rubber and scorched metal, reached Amaranthe’s nose. Maldynado picked up speed, outpacing her. Lantern light came into view ahead.
His broad back blocked her line of sight, so she didn’t see why he yanked out his rapier, but she trusted he had a good reason. She pulled out her pistol. Neither of their weapons would be effective, but maybe they could distract the cubes.
Maldynado bellowed and took a swing at something in front of him, wielding the blade as if it were an axe instead of a slender rapier. Hugging the wall, Amaranthe went down on one knee and lifted her pistol, expecting a cube to hover in the air ahead of them. She was in time to see his blade clang against something else, something larger but also floating. The blow caused it to bump against the wall and wobble before righting itself. Whatever it was, it didn’t retaliate.
Four feet tall and reminiscent of two big snowballs one atop the other, the black object hovered a few inches above the floor. Two thick white beams shot from its body, painting the wall next to it. Maldynado twitched, almost leaping back, but when he saw that the beams weren’t aimed at him, he swung again. Again, the contraption hit the side of the tunnel, bounced off, and wobbled, but again righted itself and refocused its beam on the wall, a smoldering patch of wall.
Amaranthe raised a hand to stop him. “I don’t think-”
“Not those,” came Tikaya’s voice from ahead.
Amaranthe and Maldynado were at the end of a tunnel that opened into a strange chamber with a spiky floor plan-she didn’t know what else to call it. Long angular alcoves thrust outward in all directions from an open center area, the walls coming together at the shadowy ends of those alcoves like the tips of a triangle with a column of lights at each point. Control stations?
“They’re repairing the damage,” Tikaya went on. Her head was sticking out from one of those alcoves. “They won’t hurt you, but-”
“Look out,” her daughter barked again.
“-the cubes will!” Tikaya finished, ducking back into the alcove before a splash of crimson struck the wall. The sturdy metal didn’t explode or even sheer off in great shards, but flakes did rain to the floor as the beam bore in.
“Where’s Basilard?” Maldynado called.
“Where’s your bow? And that royal gunk?” Amaranthe asked. Now that she’d been told it wouldn’t hurt her, she scooted past the large hovering device, ducking to avoid its white beam, though she paused, startled as a putty-like substance floated through the light and affixed itself to the wall.
Not important, she decided and slipped out of the tunnel. From there, she could see the full room, including two cubes floating toward the alcove Tikaya and Mahliki shared. The two of them were out of sight, but if their alcove was like the others she could see down, it dead-ended at one of those columns. Unless those columns housed secret weapons, the women were in trouble. Where was Basilard?
She’d no more than thought the question when he sprinted out of an alcove-no, that was a tunnel-on the opposite side of the chamber. Five arrows were clenched in his fist, and he ran toward the women’s hiding spot, but he halted, almost skidding on the smooth floor when he spotted the cubes. One stopped advancing toward the alcove and rotated toward him. He only had the arrows and a dagger, nothing that would help him against it.
“Get out of there, Bas,” Maldynado barked, jumping out of the tunnel with his rapier.
Basilard hesitated, but didn’t backpedal. He glanced toward the women’s alcove, then, jaw set with determination, sprinted toward it.
Maldynado charged at the cube targeting Basilard. Amaranthe fired before the men drew too close. Her ball clipped its back corner, but didn’t make it so much as twitch.
A red beam speared the air, aiming straight for Basilard’s heart. He anticipated it and dove, rolling toward the alcove, arrows held away from his body so he wouldn’t impale himself. He came up zigging and zagging, then dove again, this time disappearing from Amaranthe’s sight.
Maldynado skidded to a stop a few feet behind the cube.
“Get out of there,” Amaranthe shouted. “You can’t do anything.”
She couldn’t either. She dropped her useless pistol and spun about, eyeing the repair device. It had sealed the hole in the wall and was drifting off up the tunnel.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Amaranthe chased after it and grabbed it around the middle, figuring it couldn’t be that heavy-Maldynado had moved it by beating on it with a rapier, after all. She was right, and she was able to pull it back into the chamber.
She came out of the tunnel, lugging the thing behind her, in time to see Maldynado run off down the opposite passage with a cube chasing him. The other one floated at the head of the women’s alcove and was firing inside. Amaranthe gulped. It couldn’t have hit anyone yet-there would have been screams, surely. But there weren’t any arrows coming out either.
Like a sled dog straining into the leads, Amaranthe hauled the repair device after her, hoping the cube wouldn’t notice her until she was ready. She didn’t know if she could replicate Basilard’s acrobatic beam dodging.
She passed a smoldering section of the floor, and her captured device whirred and pulled against her. Yes, it wanted to do its job, and she was stopping it. Intruders were so rude.
Watching the cube every step of the way, she managed to haul the device to within a few feet of the alcove. She shifted her grip, coming around the thing, and started pushing instead of pulling.
“There, you go, a nice chipped corner to work on,” she panted and gave it a great shove.
The double snowball jerked and trembled, but the momentum sent it floating in front of the alcove. It crossed into the path of the crimson beam. Amaranthe skittered back, fearing an explosion, but the cube’s attack merely bit in slightly, as it did with the walls. The repair device didn’t seem to notice. It rotated until its opening faced the damaged corner, and one of the white beams shot out, bathing the black wall in light.
Maybe the machines were talking to each other-as in, stop firing at me, you idiot box-for the crimson beam winked out. Unfortunately, the cube only turned toward the next target-Amaranthe.
She started to spin, intending to sprint back to the tunnel, but a flash of green streaked out of the alcove, just missing the repair device. It whizzed past to lodge in the cube’s orifice. An arrow, Amaranthe realized, noting the green fletching even as she kept scrambling back. If the strike didn’t work…
The hole flashed red, and a short, angry beam devoured the arrow.
Not good. Amaranthe tried to resume her sprint for the tunnel, but her changes of direction had thrown her off balance, and she tripped over her feet. She landed hard on her hip.
She scrambled back up immediately, risking a glance as she ran. The cube had stopped rotating to follow her. It hung there, motionless and soundless. Halfway back to the tunnel, Amaranthe paused. A slender wisp of smoke wafted from the cube’s hole.
“Ah?” she murmured.
Had it worked after all?