Chapter 1

Up became down and down turned to up. Iro’s stomach lurched as the gravity flipped again, his feet slipped from the metal bulkhead, and he plummeted towards the new floor. Emil bellowed in anger, Justice screamed in fright, Toshiko giggled like a maniac, and the squad leader treated the situation to her most passive aggressive silence.

The fingoid clung to the new ceiling like a giant spider made entirely of fingers. The monster was easily four times the size of a ship pod and scuttled forward on dozens of gnarled fingers.

Iro swung his sword to the side, Blink Striking across the chamber onto one of the bulkhead walls. His feet slammed into the metal and he launched himself away again, using another Blink Strike to fly back up towards the monster. It reared, clinging upside down, and jabbed two pink fingers at him, cracked yellow nails jagged as rusty knives. Iro slashed the two fingers, severing one and gouging the other as his momentum carried him past the monster. Dark ichor sprayed across the chamber and the severed finger dropped the thirty feet to the floor.

“That’s one finger down!” Iro shouted.

“Eclipse, look out! The fan,” the squad leader shouted over the comms.

Iro turned in midair and realised he was careening towards a giant fan, the blades spinning at such a speed they were nothing but deadly blur and noise.

They were in some sort of ventilation chamber, huge fans position on many of the walls, dragging air currents in and out of hundreds of ducts. All the fans had metal bars across them, but the gaps between those bars were just about big enough for a Hopper not paying attention.

Another Blink carried Iro out of the way of the fan and he hit the ground, rolling to a stop against the wall. Above him, the fan let out a steady whunk whunk whunk as it span.

Iro’s vambrace-mounted tablet pinged and he looked down to see a message from North.

North

Command Request: Don’t die, please.

Iro glanced across the expansive chamber to where Justice was picking himself up off the floor. North cradled in the crook of one arm. They still hadn’t managed to fix the little bot and it couldn’t fly. That made it something of a liability on Hops, but Iro couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind.

Iro pressed the button on his comms. “I got one of the fingers at least.”

“You don’t read much, do you, Iro?” Toshiko said over the comms. “Never thought of at least picking up the bestiary?”

“Sure he does,” Emil said, his voice tinny in Iro’s ear. “He likes to look at all the pretty pictures.”

Iro’s tablet pinged again and he saw a message from North sending through information about the fingoid, but he didn’t have time to stop and read it.

“You can’t kill a fingoid by chopping off fingers, oh mighty Corsair,” Justice said on the comms. “You have to go for the heart. Every time you chop off a finger, you only make the scrapping thing stronger. But please, do feel free to keep making our job harder.”

Iro looked up to see two new fingers growing rapidly out of the stump of the one he had just severed. “Scrap! Sorry.”

The fingoid bunched up, dozens of fingers curling, then pounced, leaping down from the ceiling towards Justice and Toshiko. Justice screeched in terror.

Iro’s stomach lurched again as gravity flipped and his feet slipped from the new ceiling. All of them, the whole squad and the fingoid, tumbled through the air, towards the floor. The squad leader hit the ground on her feet, going down onto one knee. Emil smashed into a metal grating a few paces away. Toshiko sprang off a solid version of her crest, using her new Boost talent, catching Justice in her arms and carrying them both gently to the ground. Iro used a Blink to arrest his momentum. The fingoid hit the ground upside down, scrabbled for a few seconds, then flipped over and launched itself at Justice and Toshiko.

Gadise Samir slammed into the fingoid shield first. It must have outweighed her ten times over, but both Vanguard and monster tumbled away, wrestling in the roaring winds.

“Justice,” the squad leader said, her voice strained as she held off clutching fingers. “Disable the scrapping gravity trap.”

“On it, Cousin,” Justice said, pulling his new Oversight goggles over his eyes. His crest oozed a sickly green behind him as he placed a palm against the floor and used Scan to scout the area.

“Thousand Suns, charge up Steel Lotus.”

“Already doing it, boss lady!” Toshiko said with a grin, patting her oversized cannon. Her pink crest was a neon fizzing light, bright and huge.

“Eclipse, Courage, we hold this thing off until our Mage is ready to blast it. Preferably before the rest of the clutch awakens.”

Emil slammed his huge gauntlets together and lurched into a run towards the monster. “Time to break some digits.”

“No more cutting them off.”

Iro pressed the button on his comms. “Uh, that’s kind of all I do.”

The squad leader growled over the comms as she heaved three of the fingers aside. Four more were already reaching for her, but the air turned an angry red as her passive talent, Bulwark, activated. As long as she didn’t move her feet, Gadise Samir grew stronger and tougher with every passing moment.

Emil’s crest flared to fiery crimson behind him and his arms bulged as he used his Strength talent. He smashed into the fingoid with a bellow and grabbed one of the fingers, wrenching it about and then twisting. It snapped with a sound like a thunderclap and the fingoid squealed and reared backwards away from the squad leader. Emil held onto the broken finger and was dragged along with it.

The squad leader bellowed, “Courage, disengage.”

“I can’t!”

The fingoid scuttled backwards on a dozen fingers. Another three digits grabbed Emil, wrapping around his chest, squeezing him. The red haze around the squad leader faded as she moved her feet and launched into a sprint after Paladin and monster.

Iro saw Emil’s face going red. His talent, Steel, might bolster his skin against cutting, but it did nothing against a crushing force like the fingoid’s strength. Emil roared in pain.

“Scrap it!” Iro activated Burning Adrenaline, supercharging himself. Speed, strength, enhanced talents all at the cost of drying up his current in a rapidly accelerated timescale. He slashed to the side, Blink Striking next to the retreating fingoid, then used Light Blade. His sword shone bright as an icy star and he leapt at the monster, slashing down in a spinning arc, slicing through flesh and bone in a gush of blood.

He skidded to a stop the other side of the monster and released Burning Adrenaline. Already he could feel he had used up half his current with just a few seconds.

“I said no more chopping off fingers,” the squad leader shouted.

Iro glared at her as she rushed towards him. “And I told you, that’s all I do!”

Emil peeled the last severed finger from around his chest and threw it to the ground. “Thanks, Iro.” He held up a gauntleted fist and Iro bumped it with his own.

“You used that talent again,” the squad leader said, meeting Iro’s glare with one of her own. Her’s was a lot fiercer and Iro looked away. “We’ll talk about it later.”

The fingoid had backed away while its three severed fingers regenerated into six new ones. It pawed at the ground like a bhurbeast about to charge.

“Thousand Suns, how’s the charge?” Gadise Samir said, planting her feet and raising her shield.

“45%, boss lady.”

“Stop calling me that.” Gadise Samir cracked her neck. “OK, new plan…”

Gravity flipped.

* * *

Emil tumbled through the air, arms flailing as he tried to find anything to grab hold of. He found nothing. A few seconds later, the floor smacked into him from behind. He rolled over, groaning. A circular light glared at him from a fixture below and he tried to decide if the floor was now the ceiling or if everything was the right way up.

“You know,” he said as he crawled back to his feet. “I’m starting to really hate gravity.”

He stood and found a giant fan just a few paces away, the blade behind the bars spinning at deadly speeds, sucking air into the vents behind. His dark hair flopped about in the breeze, getting in his eyes, and he decided he might need to cut it soon.

“A little help, Courage!” the squad leader shouted. The fingoid was on her, fingers curling around her, nails scraping against her shield and armor. She was a Fourth Gater, far more powerful than him, than he’d ever be now he was stalled, but she was a Vanguard, built to defend not attack.

“Coming,” he said and launch into a run.

Something tripped him and Emil fell hard, slamming into the bulkhead floor face first. He shook spots from his eyes and rolled over. A large disembodied hand the size of his chest, with twenty fingers was crawling up his leg. It paused, bunched, leapt at his face. Emil got his gauntlets up just in time to catch the baby fingoid. Hideously strong fingers wrapped around his own, dragging his hands together as the monster reached for his eyes.

“Uhh, Squad Leader, I think they’re hatching!” Emil bellowed.

He wrestled with the little fingoid, then spun around and slammed it against the floor, gripping hard and snapping half a dozen fingers. The little monster coiled around his gauntlet and tried to claw its way up his arm.

Something heavy leapt onto Emil’s back, knocking him forwards. Nails scraped against his armor and long fingers reached for the back of his neck. He activated his crest and used Strength, bolstering his power. With his left hand, he crushed the little fingoid he had pinned to the floor while he reached up with his right hand and dragged the second monster off his back by two of its fingers. This one was larger, stronger, but not strong enough. Emil pinned it to ground and pounded his gauntlet against it three times, spattering dark blood everywhere until it stopped twitching.

He looked up to see more of the little fingoids crawling out of the ducts all around. Some were small, no larger than his own hands, while others were the size of his chest or larger still. Ten of them leapt for him.

Iro blurred through the air, appearing to the left, to the right, back to the left again, a blue streak. Ten slashes in the space of a couple of seconds and all ten of the baby fingoids fell to the ground in pieces.

“The little ones are easy to deal with,” Iro said as he danced about, light on his feet. “Also, are we still counting saves because if so, that counts as ten.” He grinned.

“That counts as none. I didn’t need saving.” Emil saw movement behind Iro and shoved him, catching a fingoid in midair. It was a little one and he crushed it in his grip. “But that’s definitely another one for me.”

Justice coughed over the comms. “If you two would like to stop flirting, there’s more of them coming. A lot more.”

Emil looked up to find the air ducts swarming with baby fingoids, dozens of them crawling over each other out of every duct. They leapt onto the floor or ceiling or whatever it was, scuttling towards Emil from every side. He turned  and stood back to back with Iro.

“You ready?” Emil asked.

Iro chuckled. “Just try to keep up.”

Gravity flipped.

* * *

“Oh not a-scrapping-gain. AHHHH!” Justice screamed as he fell.

Toshiko giggled as gravity grabbed hold and ripped her downwards. Not too long ago, she’d hated falling like this, but since learning her new talent, she no longer feared the drop. She used Boost to give her a burst of upward force just before she hit the ground, robbing her momentum, and stepped calmly onto the new floor just beside Justice who was lying in a heap cradled around poor North.

Justice groaned as he uncurled. “It’s not fair you’re so proficient with that talent already.”

Toshiko held out a hand to help him up. “You can’t all be as naturally talented as me and Steel Lotus.”

Justice’s little autodage waddled onto his shoulder, slapped him across the face with its claw, then pointed upwards.

“Scrap!” Justice whined and curled back into a ball. A moment later, dozens of baby fingoids rained from the sky, falling all around them with meaty thumps as their gross little bodies hit the bulkheads.

“Eeeewww!” Toshiko danced about on the spot as one of the little monsters flipped onto its fingers and rushed towards her like a malformed spider from the void. She pulled out her little TCX hand cannon and blasted the monster three times until it stopped moving, but others were already starting to crawl onto their fingers.

Toshiko scratched at that damned itch on her arm. She felt like the monsters were already crawling all over her, just like they had in the dark basement of the spire, coiling and scuttling and oozing and…

“No!” She used a Boost to propel her six feet into the air and shot another of the little fingoids. “No. No. No. No. No.” Each word channeling more current into her cannons, each word another blast baking a monster inside out.

One of the fingoids reached Justice, still curled in a ball. North gave a quiet buzz of alarm. Justice’s autodage waddled along its master’s arm and its head unfurled into a small plasma torch. It released a stream of super heated matter at the fingoid which squealed and scuttled away as it burned.

“Sixty-three seconds,” Justice said as he uncurled and got to his knees. “Each gravity flip is exactly sixty-three seconds apart.”

“That’s wonderful, Justice,” Gadise said, her voice strained as she wrestled with the adult fingoid. “Now disarm the scrapping trap.”

“Disarm the trap,” Justice said in an obnoxious voice. “Because puzzling out the inner workings of the titan that allow for localised gravitational control is easy. Sure. It must be nice to just hit things for a living.”

Toshiko cleared her throat to get the Surveyor’s attention. “Your comms are still on, Justice.”

The Surveyor groaned and hung his head. “She’s going to kill me.”

“Look at the bright side, maybe your curse will finally get us all and we’ll die before you can be brought to… justice.”

The Surveyor stared at her blankly for a few seconds. “I hate you.”

Over the other side of the ventilation chamber, the big fingoid reared back, coiled a finger, then flicked at the squad leader. She flew across the chamber, tumbling head over ass, then smashed into a bulkhead wall hard enough to dent it. Iro flashed in front of the monster, already slashing, severed another finger, and then zipped away before it could grab him.

“I told you to stop cutting off digits, Eclipse,” Gadise Samir said as she pulled herself out of the dented wall and jumped down to the ground, which now Toshiko looked at it, was possibly the ceiling.

“There’s too many fingers, I can’t reach the heart of it,” Iro complained. He was right about that, the fingoid was a thronging mass of fingers on fingers on fingers. Just thinking about it gave Toshiko the absolutely nots.

“Uh oh!” Justice said. He was kneeling on the floor, his crest glowing behind him, his hand pressed to the metal. In the reflection of his goggles, Toshiko saw a mass of red dots. “The whole clutch just woke up.” He looked at Toshiko. “They’re coming.”

Even over the whump whump whump of the fans pulling air through the chamber, Toshiko heard the tapping scuttle of thousands of nailed-fingers against the ducts. The thought of so many fingers, disembodied hands, pawing at her, crawling over her like spiders. Toshiko hated spiders. Too many legs and the lurching, frantic way they moved, and…

“No!” She shook her head and glanced down at Steel Lotus’ display. “Charge at 59%. Point me at them, Justice.”

Dots flashed in front of the Surveyor’s eyes and he pointed towards a duct just as hundreds of scuttling fingoids rushed out of the darkness.

Toshiko flicked a switch on Steel Lotus’ control and the huge barrel split apart, pieces moving, twisting, recombining until instead of one big barrel, there were twelve small barrels set in a rotating configuration. “Ready to fire!”

Toshiko pulled the trigger.

Steel Lotus’ barrels glowed, spun, then belched out hundreds of searing white blasts. Fingoids cooked, died, clogged up the duct with their bodies.

“Over there!” Justice pointed to a new duct.

Toshiko dragged Steel Lotus about, not taking her finger from the trigger. She blasted apart hundreds more baby fingoids as they leapt for her. Justice pointed again and she turned the cannon on yet more monsters.

Steel Lotus ran out of charge. The barrels slowed to a stop, smoking from the heat. Dead fingoids rained around them, little bodies spilling from the ducts.

“You got them,” Justice said in awe.

“All of them?”

The Surveyor shrugged. “Near enough.”

The squad leader’s voice shouted over the comms, “Void sake, Thousand Suns. You were supposed to use that blast on the adult.”

“Oh.” Toshiko winced and scratched at her arm. “Sorry. I thought the little ones… Sorry. It’ll take me a while to recharge Steel Lotus.”

Gadise Samir growled over the comms.

Justice groaned. “Three, two, one…”

Gravity flipped.

* * *

Iro flashed down to the new floor with a Blink. His sword hit the bulkhead and rebounded with a solid thunk. Ship printed metal was so weak and dull. He missed his sister’s old sword. Even broken, the titansteel was sharper and stronger than any other sword he’d used.

Emil hit the ground a few feet away. He groaned as he rolled over onto his back and coughed. “Justice, can you please disarm this SCRAPPING TRAP!” Iro grabbed Emil by the arm and hauled him to his feet.

“I’m on it,” the Surveyor said over the comms as he crawled to a service panel on the wall. His autodage clambered onto his shoulder and started unscrewing bolts on the panel.

“Where’s the fingoid?” Iro asked.

The huge monster slammed into Iro and Emil from above, flattening them against the floor. Massive, gnarled fingers pressed him down, punching him, putrescent yellow nails scraping against his armor. It was too close to use his sword, so Iro dropped it, forged a Light Blade dagger in his hand and stabbed it up into the wriggling, flailing mass of fingers. The blade bit home, burning through flesh, spilling hot blood on his chest and the floor, but the monster just pressed down harder, crushing Iro.

Beside him, Emil roared as he activated his crest and used Strength to heave the fingoid up. A finger smacked him around the face and blood gushed from his nose, but Emil screamed past the pain and lifted two tons of writhing fingers.

“Go!” Emil shouted.

Iro scrabbled backwards on his ass out from under the fingoid. It flailed at him with jabbing digits, but Emil had hold of it now, his gauntlets crushing fingers even as he pushed it up off of him.

A sound like a struck gong reverberated around the chamber and Iro couldn’t help but glance to the side where Gadise Samir stood with her shield raised. Taunt was a Vanguard talent to draw the attention of monsters, though it also worked on distracted Hoppers. The fingoid did not relent from trying to crush Emil.

“That thing doesn’t have ears, Cousin,” Justice said as he worked on the service panel, pulling out wires and reconnecting them with the help of his autodage.

“Scrap!” The squad leader ran at the fingoid and smashed into it shield first. The monster rocked, staggered, scuttled off Emil, letting him up.

Blood ran down Emil’s face from his nose. He roared as he reached his feet and launched himself at the monster, fists pounding against fingers. The squad leader jumped in after him, using her shield as a weapon, striking at knuckles and beating the monster back.

“Thousand Suns?” Gadise Samir shouted over the comms.

“Charge at 8%,” Toshiko said. “Not enough unless you just want me to tickle it. Sorry again.”

“We need a way to kill it!”

Iro grabbed his sword and hefted it onto his shoulder as he glanced around the chamber. Lots of small air ducts they could use to escape, but they were squad Four Home and they didn’t run from fights. The six big fans spun at reckless speeds, drawing air in or pushing it out. Iro watched as one of the baby fingoid corpses was dragged across the floor by the wind, then up and through the bars, into the fans. It was mulched in a moment. He knew what they had to do.

“Disarming the trap now,” Justice said over the comms.

“Wait!” Iro shouted. He ran towards the closest fan. “Can you trigger the gravity flip manually?”

“Sure. But why…”

“Just wait.” Iro slid to a stop by the fan.

The air current was fierce, pulling at his hair and his old red scarf tied around his arm. He ignited his sword into a Light Blade and swung it hard at the bars. Metal and burning current met metal with a clang and his blade bit half way through the first bar. He pulled it free, swung again, chopping through the first bar, then went to work on the next. Each blow reverberated through his hands and each bar took two swings to cut through.

“What are you doing, Eclipse?” asked the squad leader over the comms.

Iro cut through another bar. The cross hatch was mostly severed on three sides now. He threw his blade away and grabbed the bars, wrenching on them. Metal squealed and bent as he pulled the bars aside. He wasn’t as strong as Emil, but Iro had the power of a Second Gate pumping through his veins, enhancing his body.

He pressed the button on his comms. “Emil, get ready to throw the fingoid into the fan as soon as the gravity flips.”

Emil grunted and dove into the flailing fingers. His crest flared huge behind him and he roared as he lifted the gigantic monster.

“Justice, flip the gravity now.”

Justice pressed a button and the gravity flipped. Emil shouted and heaved the fingoid through the air. Toshiko Boosted herself into position behind the monster and pulled the trigger, firing off a weak blast that slammed into the monster. The fingoid squealed as it cartwheeled through the air, past Iro, and straight into the whirling blades of the fan. The blades chewed the monster to bloody, fleshy pulp in moments.