That tube led directly to Ground Floor One - it existed so that the most favored of the Subcity could be summoned into the presence of Kronos.
And in the end, they were only here to talk to it tonight. To offer it a little morsel of revenge...
"No - drop us off right here. I'd rather risk the beltway collapsing under me than try to fight my way through the Spires. If we still had Magi tech to jam their mekan...."
But of course, that was long ago. That was in another life. The poor Electromagi had been part of the Ashishim's sacrifice, back when the Saprophytes were at the gates.
"We'll go in through the tradesmen's entrance, like good little slaves. 'Cause we've got something to sell, right? Two things, wrapped up in one neat parcel. Simeon Blaire's body... and Octavio Ascher's mind. I think that'll fetch top dollar with our artificial friend."
The stainless-steel skids of the 'lifter crunched down on the carbonized ruin of Benton Veer's lawn, sinking a foot into the dry, dusty turf, as friable as desert sand without its irrigation webbing.
There were a few mournful creaks and groans from the ruined beltway, but it held long enough for CeeAn and her hand-picked honor guard to bail out of their seats.
Coils of rope and buckled rubber straps secured the Cargo - two great jagged crystals each about seven feet long.
A thin tubular hole had been bored into each one, right in line with its occupant's shaven skull. That was where the samples had been taken, trepanned out neat as if to commune with the spirits of the dead...
They glittered royal purple as rays of light cut in through the bulletholes in the sky, dappling the charred suburbia of Oleander Avenue.
Cee put her shoulder to the base of Simeon's block and pushed, rolling him out of the cargo bay. From under inches-thick crust of amythest his eyes stared back, all sick surprise. They weren't the eyes of Abdulafia 330, and never had been for all their genetic brotherhood.
It took four Ashishi soldiers to lift each monumental hunk of stone, and another to keep it fixed in the sights of a baroque silver firearm, a thing built for more than two hands. The alien Qui'gaar had come for the Forge long ago, to reignite their dying suns. A few shreds of alien technology like the Stoneweavers were all that remained when Kronos was finished with them.
That wasn't a lesson CeeAn was likely to forget.
"Form up, and make for the bridge." she said, casting out her finely-honed Dervashi senses and loosening a pair of panga knives in their sheathes. "The machine's been waiting seventeen years to get its claws on Ascher and Blaire. Let's make sure it pays exactly what we ask for them.”
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