“Absolutely not.” Shadowsong said, not even looking up from his desk. “I made the mistake of letting you persuade me once before. Did you not see firsthand the results? You were nearly killed.”

“Okay, sure, that looked pretty bad.” I placated, “But hear me out: We came out of it with a stupid amount of relic armor, so it’s hands down a net win. The biggest win in clan history. All because I convinced you to let me go to a dance. Now, I’m not asking for much here. Just to let me go outside, stretch my legs a bit, meet a bunch of suspicious strangers who clearly have duplicitous intentions, maybe come back with a snowball or something. Nothing to it.”

Shadowsong growled. Actually growled, while he tossed another piece of paper, stamping it with his House’s sigil. “This is no time for jokes, Winterscar.”

“I’m not joking.”

He paused, then slowly looked up.

“Okay, maybe I’m joking a little bit, but I’m also serious.” I clarified.

The Chosen had reappeared just outside comms range. Telemetry data showed they’d parked their shiny looted airspeeder behind a large mountain, conveniently out of visibility from our railgun turrets. Their terms were pretty simple: They want to negotiate. And they’re holding hostage the second airspeeder crew onboard with them.

So far, so good. That’d be normal. I too would be rather annoyed on hearing the latest news, and holding the airspeeder crew hostage isn’t exactly an unjustifiable position. Assuming they really were innocent, which is about as likely as the surface heating up.

And then they royally screwed up on their next term: They demanded I come with the negotiations in person. Me. By name, saying they wanted a more “neutral” party and for some reason House Winterscar was who they’d picked as neutral. No one else, not from any of the other Houses, or Houseless. Not a chenobi, and not even a trained negotiator. They were adamant about that.

And that was the final deathblow for Lejis and the Chosen inside the clan.

Shadowsong and I had been running in circles trying to pin that pipe weasle on something, and in the end it’s his own knights who fuck it all up for him. Ironic.

Convincing the clan lord was simple after that. First the slavers came looking for me. And now the Chosen are doing the same? They made it way too obvious. Now Lejis and all his refugees were corralled back into prison and kept under guard - for their own protection as word of this would surely leak out to the population. They were already on edge with the Chosen, this would be a lit match into the fuel.

Lord Drass seemed almost stunned at the start, like she couldn’t believe the Undersider knights would just brashly try to have this work. I caught her muttering about the expected intelligence of knights, that she shouldn’t have expected more from a stranded group alone out in the wastes.

Little rude… but I was a Reacher at heart. Stereotypes exist everywhere, what can I say? Loyal knight, absolutely. Strong knights, also a good stereotype. Intelligent knights, well, not so common that one. Reachers are least would gossip about what favorite flavor of glue knights liked to chew on while they were lifting weights. I don’t know what the Logi talked about in the privacy of their quarters, but it likely was somewhat similar.

Maybe for the Chosen knights this didn’t sound like an unreasonable demand in a vacuum. The enemy’s not omniscient after all, they’re bound to make mistakes as much as we are. So naturally, I wanted to go pay these knights a visit and spring their cute little beartrap with an iron bolder.

“I am not allowing you on this mission.” Shadowsong said. “Your guards and some of the elites will be coming with me - and I will deal with the Chosen hostages personally. You will sit here, and not go looking for trouble.”

“But there’s so much we could discover if we try to spring their trap intentionally. They don’t know about our knightbreakers, the winterblossom techniques or the Occult I can use. Whatever they’ve come up with, we can put a wrench in it.”

“We don’t know the scale of their intelligence.” Shadowsong said. “They may have gotten word from after the slaver attack on our capabilities.”

“We didn’t use any knightbreakers in the attack. There is no way they could possibly know that exists. If I go as they’re asking, we’ll get a chance to see why they’re after me in the first place. Just knowing which of my secrets got leaked would go a long way to stopping any more flow of info and it might reveal just how they got so much intel out of the clan.” And damn everything, I needed to know why they had gone such a distance to target me specifically. There were gravestones outside that demanded more than the hymns we sang for their burial. I needed to get my answers. There were traitors among our ranks, and I was determined to ferret them out.

“You will not convince me. Out there, you run a real risk of death. You know any mission to the white wastes comes with that risk by default. As a scavenger, that risk was once acceptable. It was our duty to the clan. Now, as a knight of rank, and a specialist in the Occult, you are far too valuable to risk. No clan has had a sorcerer in our entire history.”

“Look if we’re talking safety, then think about it this way, there’s three elements to safety.” I brought a hand up, and began to count them out on fingers. “The first is how many of my guards I’m around. The second is if I’m in armor or not. And the third is if I’m in the clear to use the Occult. The rest of the clan’s infrastructure isn’t going to keep me any more or less safe. I could be in the center of an army of rifles, and it wouldn’t do me any good if the enemy attacked with a single knight.”

“Get to the point.”

“You’re departing with most of my guards and the elite. The defenses left in the clan are drastically inferior, I’m less safe hanging inside the clan than being surrounded by my men. For all we know, maybe that’s exactly what they want. You and all the firepower out there in the freeze far from me, and they’ll swing around for round two. Additionally, out there I’m free to use the Occult because nobody’s around to see me other than our own knights. From a safety perspective, the safest possible place I can be is on that airspeeder with you. And if I’m already on site, why not make use of me as bait to spring the trap? I’ve already shared what I know of the Occult with the clan lord. I’m no more important than any one of my guards in the grand scheme of things.”

“You’re the only one who can use the Occult’s true powers without your body going limp. None of the other knights are able to override their armor’s systems. There is no amount of practice that would change that fact for any of them. You are unique.”

“And that’s exactly why I should be out there. I’m the heaviest hitter you have on the roster now. I would be wasted just hanging out here tweedling my thumbs.”

“I see what’s happening here.” He said, folding his hands together and setting them on the table. “You’ve won one fight against your first real opponents, and now you believe yourself invincible.”

“And what if I am invincible?” I shot back. “When my armor and I work together, with full access to the Occult, I’m on the same level as a Deathless. You saw the footage. The slavers were obliterated by my hand… Technically at least.”

He said nothing, instead, just stared me down.

This damn sentimental old man. We both knew my overall contribution to the clan as a Reacher had been wrung dry. I was a Knight Retainer, and for the first time in my life I felt actually proud of that rank. “Fine. I didn’t want to do this, but you’re leaving me no choice.”

He lifted his head at that. And while the helmet hid his features, I could almost imagine the raised eyebrow.

“I demand remediation for your earlier attempt at my life. I will consider the debt settled if you allow me to join this expedition.”

He stayed silent at that, staring at me. I think his jaw might have dropped. “You don’t mean that.” He hissed. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. I fully expect death as a possibility for any of us out there in the wastes. These Undersiders all know they have no chance against surface techniques, they’ll have prepared other defenses as a counter or take more dangerous measures to the hostages they hold. Whoever is leading them has clearly lost any use for Lejis or the Chosen, given how casually they were tossed aside, so I strongly doubt their ability for mercy. This is not a mission for rebellious teenagers or the brash confidence of youth. This is a mission for level headed veterans. You are letting your emotions get the better of you, recognize that.”

“Call me brash if you want, that doesn’t change facts. If I had been anyone else, some random knight, you would have grabbed me for this mission without a second thought.” Cathida and I working together could beat anything, even him. And Shadowsong knew it.

The man leaned back in the chair, armored hands letting go of the seal and his pen. “Please.” He said, this time his voice turned almost… soft? “Reconsider, Keith. I do not wish to see you harmed. You are feeling a battle high, I’ve seen this in younger knights again and again. Your confidence is… better placed than theirs, given the track record. I’ll not deny facts. But please, reconsider this. This is new to you, and you’re overestimating your reach.”

“That’ll be for the clan lord to decide. If we cannot settle the remediations, it will fall to her decision. And like you said before, she’s Logi. I’m a net addition to any team I’m put on. We already know what her decision would end up being.” I paced around back and forth, before turning back to him. "I’m not some defenseless Reacher that needs to be sheltered. And this isn’t some need to prove myself again. I see how I can help the clan the most, and this is it. We need to know more about what they’ve discovered. And the safest place I can be is with you nearby at my side. The two of us can’t be beat.”

He held my gaze for a time, saying nothing.

Then, ever so slowly, he gave a resigned nod. “So be it. I accept the remediations. I will adjust the strategy to incorporate your involvement, and pray to the gods we are not making a mistake.”

-----

“Reduce friction coefficient by twenty, give me a bit of slack on the slides.” Teed flicked on a few switches, calling out to me every so often.

“Reducing coefficient by twenty, now.” I said, entering the commands and verifying the airspeeder followed orders. The frigate did exactly as ordered, all systems showing green. White snow billowed under us, fading fast as the bulk of metal flew above at impressive speed. I could see the antennas on the side rattle in the wind, though the sound didn’t carry into the pressurized cabin.

He tilted the joysticks to the side, carefully banking the speeder past another hillside, all while keeping the cockpit pointed straight at the target destination. A difficult maneuver and he made it look effortless. It probably was effortless to him, muscle memory by now.

“Looks like we just crossed the ten mark. Time to suit up, take over the commands for me kid. Mind the turns, should be straight for a few miles before we get into the potentially dangerous parts.” Teed said, twisting on his chair and heading to the side lockers. My hands reached out and grabbed my own set of joysticks, instantly taking command of the vessel.

He’d left it on horizon mode for me, which meant the airspeeder stabilized itself mostly but still needed some human input to keep it sharp. It was still a heady feeling, to be at the very front of a few thousand tons of metal speeding away, and being able to turn it with the lightest touches on the joysticks. Teed always set his configurations to minimize the amount of movement his hands needed to do. Slight inches would put the airspeeder in a spiraling twist.

Not to mention our frigate moved far faster than standard frigates as Shadowsong took out a full intercept frigate for this operation, with gauss cannons, missile racks, and all the goodies that come with a war frigate configuration. We'd come with teeth.

Teed had somehow passed into the gold rankings over the time I’d been back in the clan, with a simulation score that currently topped the ace pilots by a good margin. In his words, he needed to take a few levels and fortunately more hours in the sims could directly correlate to a better score with the right training and attention to detail. Where he got the motivation to no-life it like this was something only him and the gods knew.

Journey helped me keep the sticks perfectly level, so there wasn’t any sort of turbulence on the switch. A relic armor could compensate quite well, so even Teed’s insanely twitchy controls were manageable.

“Start chilling the cabin, I’ll have my rebreather on by the time the temperature starts getting nippy.” He said, while I flicked the options. Vents started to hiss at the sides, leaking in outside air in controlled bursts.

The man sat back down on his own chair, equipping the last of his gear and making sure there was a correct seal on his goggles. “Right. Now they’re free to start shooting our ride and I don’t have to worry about the outside air being a decompressive threat.”

“Lovely. Isn’t that such a wholesome feeling?” I said.

He chuckled. “Not yet. We got to bring all the weapons from yellow to red alert. Make sure if there’s a firefight we hit back just as hard. After that I'll feel better.” He turned a few more switches, and the cabin lights dimmed, red turning on and illuminating the darker recesses in a blood washed color. “All knights, prepare for first drop. All knights, prepare for first drop.”

We soared straight over a fissure, and he twisted the airspeeder to zoom parallel to the steep cliffside. He gave the all green, and I could hear the sound of knights jumping off, diving straight into the dark abyss next to us. Teed hadn’t even slowed down. The knights could survive a fall like that. And slowing down would alert the enemy something was up.

“Nice and steady now.” He muttered. “Got to keep the fat side of this ship to block their pings. Can’t let them catch us dropping our teams.”

The path we’d mapped out would zig zag around, picking a few spots where our knights would tunnel through underground and surround the enemy airship. If anything happens, they weren’t getting away anytime soon. Not with the equipment we’d brought.

“Second drop, incoming T minus two. Second drop, T minus two.” He announced, pushing the airspeeder to glide around another massive spike of ice and metal.

Another set of knights, including some of my guards, disembarked off the airspeeder. Hitting the ground hard and rolling into a slide. Low to the ground, too obscured by the terrain for active scanning to detect them.

Shadowsong entered the cabin now, leaving the door and airlock open behind him. Cold air flowed by him slowly, with the cabin already at temperature now. “Status, pilot?” He asked.

“Just about ready to open comms with them, sir. We can drop the last team at gamma, and then we can slow down and start heading into the mountainside.”

The main part of the plan was to have multiple knight squadrons catch up to the airspeeder on foot, where they weren’t going to be detected. Each squad carried one knightbreaker among them, which should no-sell quite a bit of the opposition. Teed’s airship would remain on standby with artillery ready to call down a strike, and he’s also the only pilot that can fly through the cracks in that mountain with alacrity. Anyone else would be forced to move at a crawl’s speed just to avoid crashing into the walls. Which was something the Undersiders likely aren’t expecting, considering they picked the center mass to park their airspeeder. They didn’t want anyone to come in or out with any speed.

Shadowsong nodded to Teed, one hand holding onto the handle behind the pilot’s seat. Head focused on the approaching iceberg. “Begin phase two of the operation.” He turned that faceless helmet of his to me next. “Open communications.

You’re up, Winterscar.”

- Talk is cheaper than snow