Chapter 38 The Defoliant Array

The air grew progressively colder as they climbed toward the rim, then suddenly shifted, thick with the smell of wet sulfur and scorching tallow.

Dawn was still an hour away. Above them, the sky was a deep, starless indigo, but the mouth of the Upper Fault Chute glowed with the orange, flickering light of pitch torches. The sound of iron sled runners grinding over bare shale carried down the cliff face, interspersed with the harsh, echoing shouts of Vane-Hollow enforcers.

Rowan led Kaelen up a narrow, blind chimney forty yards west of the main haul-track.

The ascent was brutal for a baseline human. The chimney was barely three feet wide, its stone coated in a micro-thin layer of condensation from a nearby thermal seam. Where Rowan could sink his bare, scale-patterned fingers directly into the wet basalt—his micro-spines locking into the rock like iron teeth—Kaelen had to wedge his back against one wall and his sound right heel against the other, inching upward by agonizing inches.

Rowan stayed directly beneath him, his broad shoulders wedged into the stone to act as a physical stop whenever Kaelen's crutch slipped.

"Hold," Kaelen rasped, his knuckles white around the wooden grip of his crutch. His chest heaved against the tight wool of his tunic, his face slick with sweat and black coal dust. He rested his fractured left leg carefully against a natural rock outcrop, his jaw trembling with the effort of keeping the splinted bone still. "The winch platform... it's right above us. If I drop the crutch, it'll ring like an iron bell on this shale."

"I've got your belt," Rowan said quietly. His right hand—denser, slightly wider than a normal human palm, clad in gray calcified plating—held Kaelen's leather utility belt in a steady, sure grip. "Rest for twenty seconds. The steam's thickest right here. It'll mask the sound of your breathing."

Rowan glanced down. Beneath his boots, the dark void of the gorge dropped away into sheer nothingness. His breathing remained low and measured, though his arms had started to ache from holding the two of them against the rock.

His [Nasopharyngeal Catalytic Filter] filtered out the sharpest of the chemical fumes bleeding up from the Vane-Hollow staging posts below, though the air was hot enough to make his throat feel dry. His body temperature was slightly elevated; the continuous use of his friction grip drew on his metabolic reserves. He was still moving well, but he could feel the margin narrowing.

Above them, a heavy wooden timber creaked under immense tension.

"Check the primary line!" a voice shouted from the ledge. "Sled one is locked to the cable! Get the pry-bars under the runners!"

Rowan nudged Kaelen gently. They pulled themselves up the final six feet of the fissure, sliding into a narrow, dark crevice behind a stack of abandoned ironwood timbers.

The primary deployment ledge was a broad, artificial terrace carved directly into the mouth of the chute. Six Vane-Hollow enforcers in heavy leather coats moved around a massive iron winch assembly anchored into the bedrock by four thick iron eye-bolts.

The primary distribution sled sat at the very edge of the precipice. Its two riveted Ash-Scour canisters gleamed dull black in the torchlight, their brass pressure valves already weeping tiny beads of pale yellow liquid. A heavy, braided iron cable ran from the winch barrel to a thick iron ring bolted to the rear of the sled.

Two guards stood near the edge, long iron pry-bars resting over their shoulders, waiting for the dawn command to tip the sled over the lip. Two more tended the winch, while the remaining pair patrolled the rear access path with cocked crossbows.

Kaelen leaned close to Rowan's ear, his breath hot and fast. "The winch frame," Kaelen whispered, pointing a thin finger through the gap in the timbers. "See the primary drum? It's geared. They aren't dropping the sled blind—they're lowering it fifty feet into the throat of the chute before tripping the lead shear pins with a trip-line. That way the chemical sprays sideways across the upper rock face instead of just falling to the floor."

Rowan studied the heavy iron apparatus.

The winch frame was bolted to four massive timber legs, which were in turn secured to the rock floor by thick iron cables tightened with turnbuckles. The iron cable holding the sled was an inch thick, greasy with black lard.

Attempting to cut that cable with an iron blade would be noisy, slow, and impossible to do without alerting the guards. Breaking the winch drum would require a sledgehammer.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I'm not cutting the cable," Rowan murmured. "Look at the western anchor bolt."

Kaelen squinted into the dim light. The western anchor bolt was driven deep into a natural seam of calcified shale. Because of the continuous steam venting from the cliff wall, the rock around that specific bolt was damp, dark, and already weakened by mineral erosion.

"The rock is bad there," Kaelen realized, his eyes widening slightly. "If that single anchor pulls free while the sled is hanging over the edge..."

"The winch frame pivots," Rowan said. "The cable angle shifts forty degrees to the left. The sled won't fall down the main drainage chute. It'll swing directly into the western side fissure."

Rowan reached down to his hip pouch, pulling out a heavy, wax-sealed clay flask.

Inside was the concentrated gastric bile he had harvested from the Mire-Hound matriarch weeks ago. He'd tested it before against mollusk shell and soft shale in the lower caves—it didn't burn like fire, but he'd watched it turn rigid mineral surfaces soft and crumbly within minutes. He was betting the same reaction would hold here.

"Stay here," Rowan said. "Watch the patrol rotation. If the guards at the rear turn back toward the timber stack, knock a loose stone down the chimney. I'll need fifteen seconds."

Kaelen nodded, resting his back against the timber stack and gripping a palm-sized piece of loose shale. "Go. The patrol just reached the far end of the ledge."

Rowan moved.

He didn't walk across the ledge. Instead, he dropped over the back lip of the terrace, hanging by his scale-covered fingertips from the very edge of the rock floor.

***[Pheromone Repellent Ester] trickled into his dermal layer, dulling the sharpest edges of his human scent so a stray wind was less likely to carry it to the guards above. He slid sideways along the lip like a gray lizard, his feet finding invisible micro-ledges in the dark basalt. His calcified palms took the strain of the rough stone, the outer plates absorbing the sharpest edges without tearing.***

Within ten seconds, he was directly beneath the western winch anchor.

The iron eye-bolt protruded six inches from the cliff face, held fast by a thick collar of poured lead and driven into a pre-drilled shale socket. Steam curled continuously around the iron ring, making the metal hot to the touch.

Rowan unstoppered the clay flask with his teeth.

He didn't dump the whole container at once. He held the lip of the flask against the rock directly above the lead collar, tilting it just enough to release a thin, greenish-yellow trickle of Mire-Hound bile.

The bile hit the warm, wet shale.

Instantly, a soft, effervescent fizzing sound began. Tiny, dense white bubbles erupted along the seam where the metal bolt met the stone. The sharp, acrid smell washed up into Rowan's face; his [Nasopharyngeal Catalytic Filter] engaged, filtering out the worst of the fumes before they could burn his throat.

Rowan watched the reaction with cold, methodical focus.

The iron bolt itself looked untouched. But the stone around it was going the same pale, chalky gray he'd seen during his shell and shale tests in the lower caves—whatever the bile did, it seemed to be working on the rock, not the metal. The dark, rigid lattice was breaking down into a pale, mushy slurry that began to drip down the cliff face in tiny gray droplets.

He paused, withdrawing the flask.

The bolt was still held in place, but the rock socket around it had clearly lost some of its integrity. It was like a tooth sitting in rotting gum tissue. Under static weight, it might hold. But the moment the winch took the dynamic load of the loaded sled swinging over the lip, the force could well pull the entire socket out of the wall.

A sharp clack echoed from the chimney behind him—Kaelen's signal.

Rowan re-stoppered the flask, slipped it into his pouch, and let himself drop four feet into a dark drainage niche below the ledge. He flattened his back against the stone as a guard walked over to the lip directly above his head.

The guard spat off the edge. The blob of saliva fell past Rowan's face, landing in the steam below.

"Hey!" the squad leader called out from the winch drum. "Sky's turning gray in the east! Get the pry-bars set! Master Vane gave the signal from the lower tower!"

The guard above Rowan turned away, his heavy boots thumping back toward the center of the terrace.

Rowan climbed back up the chimney, slipping behind the timber stack next to Kaelen.

Kaelen's breath was hitching, his hands clamped tight around his crutch. "Did it take?"

"The rock's gone soft," Rowan whispered. "Get ready to move back down the chimney the moment it shifts. When that cable pulls free, this ledge is going to snap."

On the terrace, four guards threw their weight onto the heavy wooden levers placed beneath the runners of the primary distribution sled.

"One... two... heave!"

With a loud, tearing screech of iron on stone, the heavy timber sled slid forward. The front runners cleared the precipice, tipping downward into open space.

The heavy iron winch cable instantly snapped taut. The massive timber winch frame groaned under the sudden transfer of thousands of pounds of dead weight, its iron gears singing with high-pitched tension.

"Hold the brake!" the squad leader screamed, reaching for the iron control wheel. "Lower her ten feet to the first mark!"

The sled hung in the air over the main gorge, swaying slightly in the rising thermal drafts.

Then, the western anchor bolt failed.

_______________________________________________________________

This story has been stolen from Royal Royal. If you see it elsewhere, please report it.

Hi, I’m DoctorRune, the author of Apex Biomass. I only publish this story on Royal Royal (and advanced chapters on my Patreon). If you are reading this story on anywhere else , it has been stolen. Please report the website , and consider reading the official version for free on Royal Royal.

Thank you for supporting independent authors! 🧬