"Easy, easy!" I called out.

The back of BHR Jr. tilted down and the head of the drill bit began to turn. The augur shaft was tipped with the hardest substance we'd managed to find on Rava: the black carbon-dense skull-plate of the whistler.

Promo leaned out the side of the rig, trying to eyeball the angle. Dozens of goblins waited at the ready with spades and buckets and wheelbarrows. "Alright, hoss, settin' the stops," he said.

Three telescoping feet extended from the drill rig module on hydraulic legs that locked the whole thing into place. The head of the drill started to spin. Promo began to extend the telescoping drill and the bit carved up dirt and dust, churning the soil and rock beneath it. As soon as we broke ground, I felt the pulse under us quicken, reverberating up through my running blades. A pressure wrapped tight around my chest, and I dropped to my knees, struggling to breathe.

"I think it knows we's here, boss," gasped Armstrong.

"No kidding," I said through clenched teeth. It was like the extra layer of attention I had felt from System while flying, only magnified by about a thousand times. The pressure was almost as much as the rocket launch, pressing in on every square inch of my body. It lingered for what felt like half a minute before beginning to dissipate. I sucked in a deep breath and looked around at the rest of the goblins picking themselves up off the ground where they'd collapsed. The pressure hadn't vanished completely, but it was no longer enough to crush the air out of us. How powerful was this creature that by just looking at something too hard, it could kill?

"Keep going," I said.

The drill continued to churn until it had buried itself in the ground, at which point the BHR payload pulled back and began to spool out the control and power cable. Several of Buzz' builders went into the hole to steer the drill head, while the goblins with shovels and buckets moved in, attacking the churned soil like they had a grudge against it. It reminded me of my first days on Rava, blazing trails through the jungle with a rolling blue tide of gnashing teeth and swinging cleavers. The little blue maniacs began hauling away dirt and mud by the bucket, and then they were in the hole, daisy-chaining crushed rock and debris out while other builders with shoring material went in.

While I watched, one of my secretive service came back to me with a handset radio. "Boss, we got Pufferfish and Spinefish back."

"Fantastic," I said, taking the handset. "This is Apollo, go ahead."

"Sir," said John, voice still somewhat broken through the connection to his module a hundred kilochooms above us. "I don't know what you just did, but that bug priestess is all up in fits about a magical flare-up that she felt all the way up here."

"Cla'thn felt us start to drill?" I asked. "From orbit?!"

Eileen interjected. "She ain't the only one, boss. Ifrit are saying they felt it too. And they're miles away. Said it felt like the most powerful magic wellspring they'd ever sensed."

On a planet of super-predator magic devourers. I clenched my teeth. "Are the null devils still chasing the Ifrit?"

"One of 'em is, the others turned back around. I see closer ones coming out of the forest, too. Not just flying ones. I got eyes on a big one and more of the nyphs. They're all crawlin' on the ground. Hundreds. They must have forgot how to fly!"

"Great," I said, "This is great. We just hung out the buffet sign at our dig site." I lowered the handset and shouted. "Incoming to the east! Watch the ridge line!"

The dig site burst into a frenzy of activity as the railgun muzzles and self-cycling turrets twisted toward the ridge on the east side. Scrappers and wranglers repositioned with weapons and light vehicles. We couldn't see anything yet.

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"Boss, Spinefish has that rabble in sight," said John. "On the way, now."

"Good copy," I said. "Eileen, support at your discretion."

"Got it, boss."

I handed the radio back to the sparker. "Stay close," I said. My eyes shifted from the ridge to the drill rig. It was already starting to build up a dirt mound faster than the goblins could haul it away, even with two small bulldozer buggies under the control of Buzz' builders pushing the mounds away from the hole. The drill was powerful and durable, but I had no idea how deep the sleeping creature was. We'd set up in a lowland valley, but would it have been better to go down in the canyons? For all I knew, every null devil on Raphina was now heading straight for us.

A black smudge began to darken the sky over the ridge. An enormous creature pulled itself into view. Its long, spindly forelegs dragged a corpulent, bulbous bulk across the ground, shimmering with dark onyx scales as it jiggled. A circular maw at the front clacked with dozens of rows of clutching lamprey teeth. It didn't so much climb down the ridge as tumble and slide, practically causing an avalanche in its passing. Even across the six or so kilometer distance, I could tell it was at least as large as the one over the City of Brass.

I ran to the east side with Armstrong.

"That must be one o' the ones wot forgot it could fly," he said.

"Must be," I said. "Didn't forget how to be disgusting, though." I signaled up to the scrapper at the railgun controls. "How's your poacher bonus?"

The scrapper vibrated in her gunner's seat. "Like fire in my blood, boss. Gimme a cleaver, I think I could take it."

"I admire your attitude, but you got something a little better than a cleaver, don't you?"

A wide grin split the scrapper's face. "Aye, boss."

"Is it charged up?" I asked.

"Charged, boss."

"Is it loaded?"

"It's loaded, boss."

I pointed to the null devil. "So then what are you waiting for?"

The scrapper gripped her controls and worked the traversal wheels. She pressed her eyeball to the viewfinder. She lifted one foot and stomped it down on the firing pedal. I stuck my fingers in my ears.

The whole assembly bucked with the recoil of sending a ferrous spike toward the lumbering monstrosity descending the ridge. The air practically burned from the passage of the hypersonic spike, and I could only see the barest drop in its trajectory as it shot across the kilochooms separating the creature from the drill site. The shot took it in the mouth, exploding a wide section of the creature's serrated, circular teeth along with a cloud of black, viscous goo. The spike emerged somewhere from its back and struck the ridge behind, sending up an enormous cloud of dust and rock.

It took a few seconds for the sound of the impact and the creature's enraged shriek to reach us. But they only lasted a moment before two more of our railguns fired. One of them shattered one of the creature's long forelegs at the joint. The limb crashed to the ground with all the force of a California Redwood tipping. The third shot struck the creature below the jaw. It slowed, dragged itself a few more meters, and then slumped over. The black smudge it left on reality slowly faded away.

I looked back, pleased that only one of the guns was on fire. The drill rig continued churning more dirt.

"One down," I said, "And there's going to be more before we're through. Reload."

I looked at my portable chronometer that the Ifrit had given me. "Almost five minutes," I said. The sky began to darken again just over the ridgeline. first in one spot, then several, and then the entire ridge looked like it was being viewed through a black shroud. The swarm was coming.

Overhead, a starburst blossomed, falling like a meteor in the distance. It carved a perfectly vertical path down through the atmosphere, splitting the sky. It disappeared behind the ridge for a moment, and then a bright flash forced me to look away. The ground rumbled beneath my blades, and then the sound of the impact hit us in a single, sharp CRACK that echoed off the mountains and canyon walls.

"Apollo?! King Apollo, what has happened on the surface?" I heard Cla'thn say over the radio. "I thought us to be dropping a simple iron rod, yet I have witnessed a great blast upon the surface. Are you still there?"

I took the handset from the sparker, again, grinning. "Yeah, we're still here. Tell John his aim was perfect."

"I shall do so. We will soon pass from the area. Know that foes still head your way."

"Catch you on the next run," I said, and handed the radio off.

Armstrong was bouncing from foot to foot behind me. "Boss that was the biggest explosion ever! Neil would'a loved it! I din' know we had bombs that big!"

"Not a bomb," I said. "Just a 900-choom rod of iron accelerated to about Mach-20."

"Wicked. Can we do another?"

I looked skyward. I could just see the bright flicker of the sun crystal powering Spinefish against the dark side of Rava. Those heavy iron rods represented a non-trivial fraction of the total payload capacity for the entire mission. But after running afoul of the nymphs outside the City of Brass, I knew I needed something more than missiles to take out densely packed swarms. We'd had to bring the spikes up over six separate dedicated launches, but it looked like it was worth it.

"We've got five more shots," I said, "but we've got to hold out for the next hour to get Spinefish back in position. Come on, let's get that railgun back online."

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