Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

The west came back as four things at once and Jin could separate three of them.

Deep scraping first — the grinding displacement of something working through the collapsed tunnel remains, at least two sources, possibly three. Then heavier contacts crossing the surface stone further out, arriving through the connected slab clean enough to count. Then a third layer that was not enemies at all: eleven people and nine beasts moving down the center of his sector at the pace of the slowest injured animal, hammering the foundation with every step and drowning the fine detail underneath all of it.

And at station three, as always, the reports simply stopped existing.

"West," Jin said. "Two confirmed underground, deep, moving in. Two or three more on the surface beyond the branch mouth. The center’s full of our own people, so anything light out there I’m going to miss completely."

"Understood," said Neris on the wider band. "E-9, you’re inside your boundary. Run it."

Jin looked at the channel and knew immediately that the version of it he had been using for the opening hour was about to fail.

Four callsigns had become eight. Eleven extra people, three zones, two branches, a bottleneck full of wounded, and one band that all of them were on.

If everyone tells me everything, I’ll be reading reports while the west opens.

"E-9, all stations. New structure. One pass, don’t acknowledge until I’ve finished," Jin said.

The channel cleared.

"Pell. Everything east of your inner line is yours — the branch, the boundary, and the E-8 ranged pair I sent you. You don’t clear web decisions with me. You call me for three things: something crosses your inner line, an anchor face or load line fails, or you want another resource."

"Received," said Lysa.

"Kestrel. Western inner line, thirty meters down. That position is yours and you place your beast where you want it. You call me when the line can’t absorb another committed emergence, or when something gets past you. Nothing else."

"Received." Kestrel’s voice was ragged and perfectly level. "Understood exactly."

"Runner. Evacuation and the center route. You own the order the wounded move in. Nobody asks you to do anything else and you don’t leave the route for a better fight. If the route itself is threatened, that’s your call and then you tell me."

"Received," said Runner’s handler.

"Everything else comes to me and Glitch at the join. That’s all of it."

He let the band sit quiet for three seconds.

Three zones. Three triggers. Nine people I never have to hear from.

The east moved first.

Lysa let four jackals into a lane noticeably shorter than the one she had used at hour one, because she no longer had the web to make it long, and closed it behind them with a section she had already written off.

"Marks," she said, and the E-8 ranged pair fired on her marks and nothing else, which Jin noticed and did not mention.

She did not report the capture. It was inside her boundary and nothing had crossed her inner line, so as far as Jin’s channel was concerned it had not happened, and that was exactly right.

In the center, Runner moved the slowest beast first — a plated E-8 animal with a broken foreleg, half-carried on a sled — and put two walking handlers on either side of it. Volley fired twice in eleven minutes, both times at something angling toward the retreat channel, and reported ammunition at nineteen percent unprompted because that was the trigger they had built six days ago.

In the west, Kestrel met the first surface Ridgeback and did the right thing with it.

Jin watched the plated beast take the emergence on its shoulder and turn the burrower into the channel wall rather than trying to kill it, and Kestrel did not report that either, because the line had absorbed it.

Good. That’s what the trigger is for.

Glitch found the underground commitment eleven seconds before it happened.

It came up through the bond as weight going all the way into a push — the signature a Ridgeback made when it stopped tunneling and started arriving — and the heading put it near the join rather than the inner line.

"Glitch, left of the slab. Brace."

It came up four meters from where Jin had been standing.

[Harden — active]

Glitch took it on the shoulder and did not move, and Jin felt the impact go through the animal and into the ground and back up through his own boots.

Then Glitch turned after the contact, the way he had turned after everything since the evolution, and put the tail across the Ridgeback’s forelimbs while its weight was still going forward.

It went down, rolled, and got up angry.

Jin did not use Acid Breath.

He thought about it — the seam was there, the animal was exposed, three seconds would have finished it — and then he thought about a throat that had already been used once and a Tide expected to last for days.

"Volley. One shot, left forelimb, it’s damaged."

"Nineteen percent," said Volley, and fired one.

Glitch finished it with his weight.

Afterward he came back to the slab and Jin saw the leg. Not a limp. A hesitation of about a quarter-second on the third step of every four, where the animal was choosing not to load it fully.

Stiffening.

He put a hand on it and received flat, unbothered resistance through the bond, pushing his attention away from the leg.

The enemy adapted the way animals adapted, which was without cleverness and to good effect.

The jackals stopped spreading and began worrying at the same weakened section of Lysa’s boundary, over and over, because that was where the give was and every one of them could feel it.

"Lost load line one," Lysa reported. "That’s a trigger. Anchor face held, the line didn’t."

"Received. Do you want a resource?" Jin asked.

"No. One load line and four spools left, and I can hold the inner boundary with that if I stop trying to keep the middle."

"Then stop trying to keep the middle," Jin said.

"Already have," Lysa said.

The Ridgebacks stopped arriving one at a time. They went in through holes that already existed rather than making new ones, and staggered their surfacing so that Kestrel’s beast was always mid-recovery when the next one came up.

That was not coordination. Jin was reasonably sure of it and said so once, briefly, for the record.

"Staggered emergence, west. That’s them using broken ground, not a broodguard. I have no evidence of one."

"Noted," said Neris.

Both triggers arrived inside eleven seconds of each other.

"Pell," Lysa reported. "Sustained pressure on the inner eastern line. I can hold about four minutes on what I’ve got."

Kestrel followed immediately. "Confirmed emergence, western inner line. It’s through the front of my beast. Turned, but past the shoulder."

Jin did not ask either of them for a situation report.

She said four minutes, and she’s never given me a number she couldn’t make. Kestrel has something past his position. Where is it going?

"Kestrel, heading?"

"Toward the center."

The center was the evacuation route, where Runner had the last three wounded beasts inside a bottleneck twenty meters wide.

"Glitch — west. Now."

Jin went with him.

They caught it eleven meters short of the retreat channel, and Glitch did not have room to set his feet properly, and it hit him at an angle he had not chosen, and the impact went through the stiffening foreleg.

The sound the bond made was not a word.

Glitch held anyway. He turned it with his body instead of his footing, dropped a shoulder into it, and shoved it off the center line into the western wall. Kestrel’s plated beast arrived four seconds later and pinned it there while the E-8 handler put something into its exposed flank.

"Runner. Is the center open?"

"Center’s open. Last three are moving."

"That’s all I need."

Lysa held her four minutes and said nothing on the shared channel. Inside her branch, she spent one expendable spool sealing the gap left by the failed load line; the loss stayed inside her boundary and below the trigger she had agreed to report.

By the time the bottleneck cleared, Jin had a picture of his sector that he did not enjoy.

Lysa: one load line, three spools, eastern inner boundary intact. Volley: fourteen percent. Runner: courser injured, evacuation nearly complete. Kestrel: plated beast dented down the entire left side, still standing, moving slower.

Glitch: throat unusable without cost, foreleg loading wrong, stamina somewhere Jin did not want to quantify.

"Astor," said Kestrel. "Trigger report."

"Go."

"My beast can absorb one more committed emergence." A pause. "Not two. I want that on the record now instead of afterward."

"Received. Recorded."

At almost the same moment Glitch’s head came off the slab and the bond filled with the deep grinding weight of new contacts entering the western approach — four of them, possibly five, spread across a front. Jin tracked them inward for about forty seconds.

Then they reached station three and began, one at a time, to stop existing.

He stood at the join with a western line that had one hold left in it and no idea how many things were going to come out of the ground together.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!