The landing was a controlled crash. The Garuda slammed onto the durasteel service platform with a groaning crunch, its stealth field sputtering and dying as the engines powered down. The ramp hissed open, revealing a world of screaming wind and horizontal, freezing rain.
WHOOOOOOSH!
The storm was a living entity, a physical assault of sound and fury. The sky was a churning vortex of black and grey, lit by strobing flashes of violet lightning. Three kilometers away, Spire Zero was a jagged spear piercing the heart of the storm, its surface crawling with active energy shields and blinking warning lights.
"Welcome to hell's front porch!" Anasuya yelled over the gale, her voice barely audible. She pulled a rebreather over her mouth and thermal goggles over her eyes. "Let's move before their patrols spot our wreckage!"
Kalpit pulled up his own hood and followed her out into the maelstrom. The wind was a solid wall, forcing them to lean into it just to stay upright. The platform was slick with ice and rain. Fifty meters below, a furious, black ocean churned and smashed against the spire's foundations.
<"The platform is on the spire's leeward side, so the direct sensor sweeps are weakest here,">> Atri's voice crackled in his comm, tinny and distorted by the storm's interference. <"But they'll have automated drones patrolling the perimeter. You have to get to the water. Now!">>
They ran, hugging the a low maintenance wall for cover. The scale of the spire was oppressive. It wasn't just a building; it was a monument to absolute authority, designed to make any observer feel small and insignificant.
A new sound cut through the storm's roar—the high-pitched whine of turbines.
"Drone!" Anasuya shouted, pointing.
A sleek, manta-ray-shaped patrol drone swept around the curve of the spire. Its central blue optic cut through the rain, methodically scanning the platform. It hadn't seen them yet.
They froze, pressing themselves against the wall. The drone hovered for a moment, its light washing over a spot just meters from where they hid. Then, it continued on its patrol path.
They didn't wait for it to return. They broke cover and sprinted for the far edge of the platform, where a series of maintenance ladders led down to the churning water below.
They had almost reached them when the drone's piercing alarm blared.
BWWWEEEEE! UNAUTHORIZED BIO-SIGNATURES DETECTED! HOSTILE PRESENCE CONFIRMED!
The blue optic snapped to red. A weapon pod under its chassis swiveled and opened fire.
FZZT-FZZT-FZZT!
Needle-thin pulses of laser fire stitched across the platform behind them, superheating the metal into glowing lines.
"No time for the ladder!" Kalpit yelled.
He did the only thing he could. He jumped.
He leaped over the railing, plummeting towards the violent, black ocean fifty meters below. Anasuya, without a second's hesitation, jumped right after him. For a moment they were weightless in the roaring wind, the red beams of the drone's laser lancing through the air where they had just been.
They hit the water with a brutal, concussive impact that drove the air from their lungs.
The shock of the freezing cold was absolute. It was a physical blow, instantly stealing his breath and his strength. The ocean here was not just water; it was a chaotic, violent soup of undercurrents and waves generated by the storm and the spire's own energy outputs.
Kalpit was immediately dragged under, tossed and turned in the crushing, dark chaos. He had no sense of up or down. His lungs screamed for air. The cold was a physical weight, squeezing the life from him. This was a death more certain than any drone.
He felt a hand grab the collar of his jacket. Anasuya. Her military training was keeping her oriented. She kicked hard, dragging them both towards the immense, barnacle-encrusted wall of the spire's foundation. They surfaced, gasping, in the relative shelter of a massive pylon.
"The vent!" Anasuya coughed, spitting salt water. "Atri said it's near here! We have to find it!"
Kalpit, shivering violently, focused his mind, pushing past the pain and the cold. He activated his Muladhara-sight. The familiar blueprint of the world flickered to life. He looked at the spire's foundation, a solid, impenetrable wall of plascrete and steel.
But then he saw it. A circular anomaly. A point where the structure was different. A large, circular tunnel leading deep into the spire's heart, its entrance covered by a massive, reinforced grille. A dark, gaping maw fifty meters below the surface. The decommissioned geothermal vent. Atri's sewer grate.
He pointed down. "There!"
Anasuya nodded, pulling the rebreather over her mouth. "Get yours on. We have to move fast. That drone will have called in reinforcements."
They took a final breath of the stormy air and plunged back into the dark, violent water.
The descent was a fight for every meter. The currents were a constant, brutal force, trying to tear them away from the spire wall. Kalpit, his body forged by Parashurama's training, now had the core strength to resist, to swim with focused, powerful strokes.
They reached the massive, circular grille. It was made of thick, rust-proof alloy bars, each one as thick as Kalpit's body. There was no visible lock, no control panel. It was sealed.
<"It's mag-locked from the inside,">> Atri's voice, now barely a whisper in the comms, confirmed. <"And the grille is made of a reinforced alloy that will resist any standard plasma-cutter. You can't force it.">>
While Anasuya examined the bars for any weakness, Kalpit's eyes were drawn to the center of the grille. There was a small, circular indentation, a sigil he didn't recognize. But his newly awakened senses, the blend of his Chakras, told him it was a focal point. Not for a key, but for energy.
The tools. Parashurama's gifts.
Anasuya was already pulling the Mantra-shilas from the satchel. She looked at them, then at Kalpit, a questioning look in her eyes. Which one?
Kalpit reached for one of the smooth, runed stones, his choice guided by pure instinct. He didn't recognize the rune, but he felt its purpose. It wasn't paralysis, or fire, or force. It was something else. Unraveling. Dissolution.
He swam to the center of the grille. He pressed the smooth stone into the circular indentation. It fit perfectly.
Now what? Channel your Prana into it.
He placed his palm over the stone. He ignored the freezing water, the crushing pressure, the dwindling time. He became a conduit. He drew the fiery energy from his Manipura, the yellow-gold sun in his core, and poured it into the cold, dead stone.
The rune on the Mantra-shila began to glow with a soft, purple light. A low, harmonic hum emanated from it, a single, pure note that cut through the chaos of the water.
UUUUUUUMMMMMMM...
The sound wasn't just a vibration in the water; it was a resonance. It was a mantra of undoing, of entropy given voice. The purple light spread from the stone, flowing over the reinforced alloy bars of the grille.
The metal did not melt or explode. It... aged.
In the space of seconds, millennia of corrosion and decay were inflicted upon the unbreakable grille. Rust bloomed, spreading like a disease. The alloy cracked, splintered, and then, with a silent, groaning sigh, the entire massive structure disintegrated into a cloud of red-brown dust, which was instantly swept away by the current.
The way was open.
Before they could even savor the victory, a new threat appeared. From the dark, gaping mouth of the vent, a series of lights switched on. Red, predatory lights.
From the blackness emerged two sleek, serpentine machines, each twenty meters long, with segmented metallic bodies and cruel, pincer-like heads. They were aquatic sentinels, awakened by the grille's deactivation. They moved with the silent, deadly grace of deep-sea predators. Their official designation was probably something complex. To Kalpit, they were simply sea dragons.
Their pincer-heads opened, revealing the glowing maws of sonic cannons, which began to charge with a high-pitched whine. They were trapped between the sentinels and the open, storm-tossed sea. There was nowhere to run.