Multiple cerevores tried to infiltrate the civilians they rescued, but couldn’t escape the notice of Lepido, whose hisses of distaste were basically a death sentence, or the spirits of the Ghost Knights and their hungry mind blades.

One unlucky Null had a cerevore invade his mouth, and was struck from six different angles by mindblades, guided by his own plunging in. His jaw was torn right off when the cerevore expanded to full size in death... but he didn’t die, as a healer leapt on him, a blood-bonded Healer crystal tied to Serene, the head Rantha of the blok, in his hand; started the empathic healing transfer and mended the injuries to his spine, brain, face, skull, jaw, and neck as everyone waited.

The Ranthas had their backs. Within a minute, the mutilated fighter was back on his feet, looking grimmer than ever, and a wild look of renewed confidence back in his eyes.

-Ammunition Check,- Egil /said unflappably, and the shooters checked their reserves. They’d been scavenging any dropped magazines as they went, with their own expended ones either going into pockets for recharge if they could, or stacked up neatly off to the side so someone coming after them wouldn’t mistake them for fresh ones, to be swept up by the teams coming in behind them for recharging.

-NUKE INCOMING PROXIMATE CASPERBLOK.- Serena /Declared, and everyone looked up and cursed at the same time.

-Support beams,- Egil /directed them calmly, taking a few steps to stand next to a corner, and the team promptly scattered to do the same. Those who couldn’t get an optimal position did the best they could, while a few just sighed, stood where they were, and faced what was coming on their feet.

The light passed over the Plunge, which flared behind them with actinic radiance. The vibration came through the ground first, a shockwave that made the ground heave as it sought an outlet, and around them, floors cracked... some, which had been assaulted by extremely corrosive acid, more than others.

Egil looked up at the ceiling shattering above him, sighed in resignation, and then the whole blok lurched as the primary shockwave smashed into it, and there was a roar of falling plascrete masonry.

------

Egil didn’t know where he was, but he now knew how he got there.

The edge of something sharp had drilled into his eyes, and both his real and fake eyes were ruined, the bones of his face sheared an inch deep. He had a bar of durasteel in his shoulder, the tip of it fractured like crystal... only a few thousand years old, and couldn’t stand a couple shockwaves like that, probably some contractor cheating on the alloy specs. His leg was crushed and caught under a slab of some kind, while he had somehow fallen into a cavity that had preserved his life.

-And you didn’t believe in Soak at one time,- a quiet, calm /voice intruded into his self-assessment.

-There is no instruction like practical experience,- he /agreed, using the paralysis of sleep to continue not moving and so reduce the pain. -How long.-

-A half hour or so. We got a psion to dimdoor us into Casperblok, and have been working our way up.- He had seen Ranthas at work, so he could picture the kind of havoc the sword-wielding nymphals and hammer-wielding Ancients were wreaking on the xenos. – Your team left a guard with Lepido there, and have begun securing the floor, while making sure the xenos don’t spread up as we pressure them.-

-How bad was the nuke.- he /asked, morbidly interested.

-It was aimed at Aloft Spire. The Mentats deflected it away and down. Krommelblok caught the edge of the primary blast, and is basically gone.- Images flickered, and he got a rough eyeful of the blast area, a crater at least a mile across, surrounded by ruins, but overlaid by enough debris and dust smoke that he couldn’t see much more than too much radiation boiling at the center of it. Durasteel was no joke, and nuclear weapons were generally designed to generate intense focused heat, rather than dispersed blasts. So, the crater would be reaching down into Underspire, but the fallout damage would not be as horrible as it could be.

Still, all the lesser habs and workplaces in the area were basically rubble, and anyone unshielded within ten miles was going to be a blast shadow or ashes.

The secondary shields of the Spire had weathered the blast. If the xenos wanted to take it, they’d have to do so on foot now.

-The other atomics converged on a section of the Shield Wall, and breached the hard wall in the direction of the Spikeplains. Cavalry and armor up to bio-mech grade came up out of the killwaters there and over the breach. They did a harmonic field extension to keep out any bad air, and the xenos aren’t trying to fight that, but there’s also interested creatures from outside wandering in when they see the xenos bio-armor crawling through the gap.-

-Sounds exciting.- he /deadpanned.

-Very. The Kasas are already deploying with great anticipation of multiple explosions and great property damage. Boys and their toys and all.-

He thought about the Rantha tank and mecha drivers, and said nothing. The war machines of the Empire were certainly capable of explosions and property damage.

He also thought about where the enemy was coming from. -They have an underwater base of operations.-

-Yes, they are coming from under the Sunken Seas. We have no idea how many bases of operation, or how long they have been there. By numbers and penetration, we assume their primary bases are on the other side of the continent. Their attacks here seem more aimed at damaging crucial infrastructure and keeping us occupied than any serious attempt to seize assets or biomass.-

That was an interesting point. -How did they secure the vats.- he /asked. He hadn’t talked with her while he was fighting, because he couldn’t divide his attention like she could. Multiple thoughtstreams and everything. When a few of them thoughtstreams focused on kissing him, ah, even a soul like his couldn’t help but ignite...

-Administered a toxyignitor to the mass of them, along with a water absorbent, and dumped it all into the lower tunnels before igniting the whole thing. The lowest tunnels are a mass of charcoal and ash, drowned and suffocated xenos, and poison gas.-

There was no way that the corps involved would have had such ruthless and ready plans prepared. He could only guess that the Ranthas had been ridiculously overprepared, and were exploiting all their contingency plans with gusto, regardless of what the relevant corps or cartels wanted to happen.

That did seem to be their modus operandi, after all.

-How is the war going.- he /asked calmly, having little else to do right now. He was immediately treated to a panoply of Rantha eye-views from all over the place, from extremely enthusiastic personal combat, extremely loud and heavy guns going off in measured massacres as machinery moved with great speed, tactical feeds from the bridges of starships (appalling information security, he thought to himself, studying the scene of space fleets jockeying for position with some interest), and several updated tactical Maps showing deployments of friendlies and enemies, with the latter universally outnumbering the former.

There was a lot to look at, and it kept him occupied as the carnage sweeping up towards him from below continued towards his position. He could hear distant faint thumpings, and the warbling of psychic screams.

Somehow, somewhere, he felt he could also hear the spirits of the damned Pslaves also shouting as they were released from their psychic shackles, and watched the death of their tormentors.

------

A half hour later, he was sent a personal view, as the team of Hagbloods, three each men and women, came up on his position.

The women weren’t wearing much, because it had all been clawed off them, but the metallic Nog skin armor made them look like organic flowmetal robots, not people, so they lost nothing, and didn’t much care. However, the thoughtful G&G people had relayed up the fact they didn’t have much clothing, and had gotten some basic pants and shirts out of the rooms of a couple G&G members on this floor, passing them out as the women glided up.

The men were all in power armor, of course; adamant armor that was scraped all to hell, cut and gouged in numerous places by powerful psi-aided impacts, and humming with psychic reinforcement while the blueshine polish that universally defied xenos acid gleamed as if spit-shined from all the horribly acidic gore that had done nothing to it.

They were looking at a pile of rubble from a collapsed floor, or two, piled up into a shoulder-sized mound of one to two-foot-thick slabs of heavy plascrete and wrenched and twisted durasteel, some of the pieces weighing several tons.

Egil realized he was actually on the floor below where he’d been standing when the shockwave hit, and most of the hallway ceiling here, as well as several rooms, had collapsed. He also saw that at least two members of the team with him still had body parts jutting out from under the rubble, signifying they hadn’t made it, either.

After she shrugged on a shirt and pants, he watched through Serena’s eyes as the six got to work. Massive chunks of masonry were manhandled with startling ease and balance, shuffled off to one side, stacked neatly by improbably strong men and impossibly strong slender women. If wrenched rebar got in the way, it was severed with Star Core mindclaws immediately, and he could hear the weight above him getting cleared away.

A three-ton block was shifted away, and he felt air movement.

There was a purring and patter of tiny feet, and Lepido snaked her way between the blocks and was up on his chest. She had been waiting nearby on the blocks, keeping watch, butterfly wings fluttering, and when her head turned and wings spread, his guards had looked and shot whatever was coming.

Egil clawed his hand slowly up his belly to touch the fluttercat, who moved her paw to rest in his palm. Everything was all right. Her master’s mate was here, and so was she. What did her silly master who let a ceiling fall on him have to fear?

Rubble groaned and was lifted away by hands armored and Claw-wreathed. He saw the size of the huge slab above him, and the ones to either side that had prevented it from crushing him flat. It had to weigh at least ten tons, but the Hagbloods just spaced themselves out, and before the very impressed G&G guards, didn’t even bother to cut it apart, directly lifting it up, over, setting one end down, and standing it up to lean against a support beam there with a crunch.

He had to admit he looked really bad. The crushing gash had thoroughly obliterated his eyes into a single long bloody mess, the rebar sticking through his shoulder had totally ruined his shirt, and his right leg was still crushed flat by another too-large section of duracrete.

And there was Lepido on his chest, paw in his hand.

Serena’s emotions wavered around him like a well, deep and awesome and really hard to look into. There was grief and pity, but they were drowned out by a love and relief that really made him want to melt inside... and below them, a stoking fury of outrage at anything and everything that would do that to him.

“You hold still now,” she whispered, as the other Ranthas moved to clear the excess debris weighing down the slab on his leg. He watched her Claw reach out, and light flare as a Sun Strike sheared through the durasteel rebar like tofu, first chopping off the bar above his shoulder, then below.

Her finger pressed up from below with brutal precision, he felt her Vajra wrapping into his own, and he guided and pushed the meat and bone of his shoulder away as she propelled the messy metal up, and plucked it smoothly away.

Her psicrystal Stillness touched the bloody hole, and Empathic Healing flowed over the wound, stealing the injury away and delivering it to her, which she promptly healed away without any problems. Unmarked skin was left behind, and all the ache and pain was gone except for a mental shadow.