TEN - ACROPHOBIA

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They climbed the stairs in silence. 6651 led the way, followed by Stellada, with 6690 and 11218 bringing up the rear. The silence was kept by Stellada's rule, who had assumed by default the role of 6651's second in command. The hazy, dying strands of sunlight that filtered through cracks in the building gave their black armour a strange sheen that was unsettling to the pilot. He was Celestrian born and bred, and seeing an orangey-red on the Celestrian Blue that his black stood for disturbed him.

The sounds of falling ships had fallen strangely silent. The pilot didn't think that combat had ceased, but he knew Celestria was always changing its mind and never seemed to have any sort of common-sense, kept together with a kind of begrudging loyalty. His planet to him was a mother. It was always home, though not perhaps the home you wanted in your vibrant, lavishly painted dreams.

Though the artificial storms above their heads had stopped, the sounds of ground attacks were more audible, though they were few and far between. There was more to just Greivstor than just the one city after all, though the city seemed to be the epicentre of the violence. Biomechs seemed to spawn out of the ground here.

At the top of the stairs of the large building complex, sunlight finally fading, he feared slipping into paranoia. He was a simple man by nature, but being inside a death-trap with biomechs looking to slit their throats and drain their fluids was enough to put anyone in the mood to shift it.

"Lights on," he said. Torches atop their weapons shone towards the mouth of the first walkway. It dared them to step onto its framework with dubious and wavering conviction. 'Try your luck,' it taunted, 'test your luck. See how far you can get. Can you do it? Can you make it all the way across? Why don't you take a step and see? It's easy!. Just one foot after the other, simple and sweet. Come one and press your luck.'

"You can go first, boss," Stellada said. She didn't sound convinced.

The pilot sighed. He did approve of the idea to go this way, after all, so he has to be the first to try it. Two thousand year old suspension bridges. At least the last bridge they had gone across had been relatively large. This thing was clearly single file. Single file. Nobody to help him should he smear crimson on the ivy-smothered pavement.

He steadied his nerves and put one boot in the tunnel.

It held.

The pilot continued forward, ears pricked for every creak. It groaned quietly underfoot. Apparently Greivstor architects hadn't been bad. He moved through, occasionally flicking his torch down to check for debris. He spied a nearly-fossilised bone of some creature, possibly Greivstorian. He looked away quickly, straight ahead. He ignored his brain trying to tell him how little there was between his feet and the air.

Gingerly, he reached the other side. He quickly checked the black of the building he'd arrived in and saw a biomech, dead, its bowels splayed open on a far wall, blood and oil a stench of unholy matrimony.

He waved for Stellada to begin to cross. She trod almost exactly in his footsteps. She passed over with swift dexterity and litheness transcending her bulky attire. She waved for 6690 to begin his crossing.

"What's that?" she whispered when she spied the corpse.

"Biomech. They've been up here before. It's charted territory." 6690 was now a quarter of the way across.

"Then they might come back," Stellada breathed.

6690 was halfway across, picking his way out, testing his footing before each step. Stellada signalled for him to speed up. His feet became slightly quicker, forgoing the testing, just listening out for the creaks and groans as he moved.

6651 breathed heavily inside his cracked helmet. The vapour condensed on the inside of his visor, and he didn't want to take his eyes off the scene before him to wipe it off. He held his nerve.

The walkway creaked loudly. 6690 stopped. All four of them froze, as if their sudden stasis would hold it together. Stellada slowly holstered her gun, getting ready to catch a leaping soldier. The wind whistled, gusts picking up. The creaking continued. 6690 looked uneasily at his feet, then to the ceiling. A small chunk of rust flaked off and fell like blossom to the floor.

The creaking stopped.

Nobody moved for half a minute.

6690 slowly eased pressure onto his foot. He moved as if each step were his bare foot treading on a razor's edge. He came within four feet of the end. Stellada and the pilot reached out and together they slowly brought him off the bridge.

"Holy shit," 6690 breathed.

"You got that right."

On the bridge, another piece of rust fell to the floor.

"Your turn now," 6651 called to the final soldier. 11218 looked at the walkway, the way it had begun to sway in the wind as it funnelled down the alleyway to arrive at that narrow corridor. He stepped onto it.

Nothing happened.

Slowly, inch by inch, the most cautious 6651 had ever seen him, the soldier crossed, the structure creaking and crying out like a corpse awakening from the tomb. At halfway across as the roof shrieked as he put his foot down. A dust cloud fell onto the Celestrian's head. He stopped. The walkway continued to sway.

"Not far now," Stellada encouraged. 11218 began again, nudging, inching, trying to escape the walkway's detection. He glanced around the structure, and as the pilot traced his vision he didn't know if the cracks were really there or it was the light playing tricks.

Ten feet to go and the walkway gave its loudest protest yet. The walkway shuddered in pain. 11218 was shaking.

"Don't run," 6690 said to him. "Whatever you do, don't run." 11218 didn't. He stood there paralysed. Six floors high on a crumbling ruin, he stopped dead.

None of them breathed. If anyone said anything now, he might bolt and bring the whole structure down.

'6690's right' the pilot thought to himself. 'Don't run. Walk slowly, edge your way over. That's it, baby steps, less than baby steps if that's what it takes. There we go, slowly does it. There, take Stellada's hand. There, now, one more step...'

11218 stepped into Stellada's arms. He looked at his feet as if unsure if they were actually there and not plunging him to his death.

"Scared of heights," he said.

"You've done one, you can do them all." Nobody was convinced. The idea had been great to begin with, but now they reckoned a blasting with biomechs was a preferable solution.

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