Chapter 41 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 41 — The production facility; Aryl goes dark

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ramp-Up · Previous: Chapter 40 — Little Günter; a dragon chain · Next: Chapter 42 — The warlord council; Princess Vinata · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

Donut yowled as we landed in the room.

Summary

Menus off, ears popping, nausea; Carl sits down too fast and Donut notices. His new tattoo is 'expert quality', which Edgar says is second best; Donut thinks it crooked and calls him 'one of those white rapper doodle notebook guys'. With the saferoom cut off the base has no showers and, she says, 'clutter comes squalor'. Snake Pit needs Carl and Donut apart for a long stretch, which she hates; the council is cover — keep the Sultana in the meeting as long as possible while the team infiltrates and the army feints north. Ferdinand teleports in and panics Scooby-Doo style off the walls — 'Don't hit me. I'm sorry' — hatless, ungroomed, smelling of smoke and drink: 'How goes the war?' Three gnolls in power armour do the security check (the orc prince shouted; 'He's now a king. Makes it even sweeter'); Donut knows the guard Neelii by name; Ferdinand threatens 'the slish slash' from a corner. Zev pops in with a splash: Formidable's crew waited hours, then went into the station and pressed the button themselves — nothing happened here, and at that exact nanosecond the Aryl system, site of the previous crawl, a Squim battle-royale season with relocated survivors and tens of thousands still on mining ships, went dark, its tunnel node gone. Nodes have never gone offline, not even when stars went nova; they were the map of the seeded worlds before the Plenty learned to open them; even the old Borant gate cannot reach it; the nearest neighbour is 2.9 light cycles away, so three cycles until anyone knows whether the star is there. And Aryl's AI had gone silent — working, not talking — sometime during the sixth floor, before Carl's implant. Ferdinand wants the snacks he was promised. Refreshments at the meeting.

Characters

• Ferdinand — Panics off the walls; wants snacks; 'the slish slash'.
• Zev — Brings news that has never happened before.
• Princess Donut — Squalor, clutter, and a crooked tattoo.
• Carl — Sits down fast; the plan needs him in this room for hours.
• Neelii — A gnoll guard Donut knows by name.
• The System AI — Aryl's AI silent since the sixth floor; a node that vanished.

Locations

• The production facility — Randomised rooms; no ship; power-armoured guards on Earth.

Motifs

• The failsafe — Pressed by orcs at Venus; nothing here; a star system elsewhere goes dark.
• The Blood Sultanate — The Sultana kept talking while Snake Pit moves.
• The show — A council broadcast live because the AI insists.