“Well, shit.” Petra said it first, but everyone was thinking it.
The Guild Hall’s situation table cast blue light across five faces and one mechanical dog. Tess had called the briefing an hour before the daily reset, before the main doors opened and the registered delvers filed in for their morning runs. Everyone was here. Everyone looked as if they wished they’d slept more.
Bee’s map of Floor 2 filled the display. Corridors and chambers rendered in blue where cameras provided coverage, grey static where the dead zones crept in at the edges. A pulsing red marker sat deep in the southeastern quadrant, labeled FCN-2B (STRUCTURE).
“That’s a long way in,” Yuki said.
“It is also not connected to the tunnels,” Bee said through the table’s speakers. “FCN-2A sits within the maintenance tunnel network Tess accessed by drilling from Floor 1. FCN-2B is served by an entirely separate system. There are no junctions or interchanges. These tunnels are completely separate, and below Floor 2’s corridors.”
“Two maintenance networks?” Tess asked.
“Possibly, or it was split apart with the rampant growth of the floor,” Bee added. “The architecture around FCN-2B is much older than what it looks like closer to the main staging area.”
Marcus leaned forward. He’d followed Tess here from the freighter when she’d gotten up and called everyone, and hadn’t said a word through the first five minutes of briefing. “Can you drill from the existing tunnels? Find a new angle?”
“No. The nearest point in the first tunnel network is over two hundred meters from FCN-2B’s position, through solid dungeon infrastructure. Even if the BFD could sustain a cut that long, the power requirements would be impractical.”
“So we have to drill through the actual dungeon corridor?” Tess said. “Is that even possible?”
The display shifted. Bee zoomed into the area directly above FCN-2B’s red marker. The corridors of Section 9 appeared in stitched camera feeds, wide-angle and slightly grainy at the edges of coverage.
“Here.” A room highlighted on the display, walls outlined in green. Maybe eight meters across, with one entrance and thick walls. It looked like a space the dungeon used for junctions or even loot. “FCN-2B is approximately six meters directly below this room.”
“Six meters,” Mikhail said. He didn’t make it a question. He made it a number he was deciding how to feel about.
“Of dungeon floor material,” Bee confirmed. “Crystal-reinforced composite designed to resist industrial cutting equipment. The corridors and chambers are engineered to prevent vertical access. Cutting lasers, mining rigs, industrial drills, even orbital bombardment.”
“So us, basically,” Petra said.
“That is correct. More or less.”
Tess leaned both hands on the table. “Here’s where it gets interesting, though. Bee, show them the structural data.”
The map updated. Color gradients washed across it. Green in the core where structural integrity held strong, shifting to yellow through the middle sections. Orange and red crept in at the edges, bleeding into the dead zones. Section 9 sat in the yellow band.
“The floor material in Section 9 is degraded,” Bee said. “Not compromised, but measurably weaker than the core areas. Lower Aether density means the crystal that makes up the structure has lost some of its designed resistance.”
“So it’s still six meters of dungeon floor,” Marcus said. “Just six meters of tired dungeon floor.”
“Essentially.”
“And the room,” Yuki said, tapping the green outline on the table. “One entrance. Thick walls. Clean sightlines down the approach.”
“If the team needed to hold a position while someone operated heavy equipment for an extended period,” Bee said, “this is the best option available. I have checked all locations on the floor. Thankfully, Floor 2 doesn’t reset the same way Floor 1 does. It just keeps growing.”
Petra’s jaw worked once. The Tertian equivalent of a relieved sigh. “At least it’s a room we can hold.”
“How extended are we talking?” Mikhail asked.
Tess ran the numbers. “The Floor 1 cut was two and a half meters. About eight minutes with Resonance Bore Mode, and the drill was fighting the tunnel material, not whatever is in the corridors. Six meters of hardened floor composition, even degraded…” She looked toward the ceiling, toward Bee’s camera. “Thirty to forty-five minutes. Depending on how the material density varies through the layers.”
“Thirty to forty-five minutes of holding a room on Floor 2,” Petra said. “While something loud draws every drone in the section.”
“There’s also a power problem.” Tess pulled up the numbers from memory. “The BFD’s internal capacity is twenty-four Aether-Watts. The Floor 1 cut burned through most of that in eight minutes. Six meters of harder material means I drain the internal battery before I’m even halfway through.”
“Capacitor banks,” Marcus said.
“From staging. Charged and ready. The mag-lev can carry them, but they need to travel through active Floor 2 corridors to reach Section 9.” She paused. “And they need to arrive in one piece. A stray plasma bolt hits a charged capacitor bank and we lose the power supply. Possibly more than the power supply.”
“Possibly?” Asha asked.
“Thermal runaway. Directed energy discharge.”
“Meaning an explosion?”
“Meaning a big explosion.”
“Understood. Don’t let things shoot the batteries.”
Mikhail turned to the display. “How many banks?”
“Four. Three minimum, four for margin.” Tess held up a hand, ticking off fingers. “Four banks, the BFD, and my toolkit. All on the mag-lev. That’s the package we’re escorting.”
“Bee,” Marcus said. He’d stood and was circling the table, studying the projection from different angles. “Patrol data.”
The map was populated with movement traces. Orange and red lines, each one a drone patrol route tracked over the past twenty-four hours of camera coverage. The corridors between staging and Section 9 had moderate traffic. Not the heaviest concentration, which clustered near the center of the floor, but far from clear.
“The combat drones on Floor 2’s surface operate on consistent patrol cycles,” Bee said. “More consistent than I expected. Their timing is efficient and predictable.”
“Predictable is good,” Yuki said. She’d leaned forward, reading the patrol traces with the focus of someone who had built her career in the spaces between dangerous things. “Cycles mean gaps. If the timing holds, we thread between them.”
“I can route the team through corridors with the longest gaps between patrol passes. Several stretches offer four to five minute windows. Comfortable for a group moving with purpose.”
“And when the windows close?” Petra asked.
“There will be contacts. I cannot guarantee a clean route from staging to Section 9. The floor is too active. But I can minimize engagements and ensure you are not caught off-guard.”
“Not caught off-guard by the ones you can see,” Yuki corrected. “You’ve got thirteen dead zones in your coverage.”
“None directly on the proposed route. But complete situational awareness is beyond what I can promise.”
“Won’t need complete,” Asha said. She nodded toward Yuki. “Got [TREMORSENSE] for the gaps, yeah? Between that and Bee, we’ll know what’s coming.”
Yuki nodded. “[TREMORSENSE] picks up anything moving within about forty meters. Legs or repulsors, I feel it.”
“Then here is the plan,” Bee said. The display shifted to a route overlay. A green line traced from the Floor 2 entrance through a series of corridors, bending and branching through blue-lit sections, arriving at the green-outlined room in Section 9. Red markers dotted the path at expected contact points. Seven of them.
“Everyone goes through the private staging area. Guild elevator, same as always. No public entrance, no registration logs, no record of this run.”
“Phase one,” Tess picked up. “We load the mag-lev in staging. Drill, capacitors, toolkit. Gear up, form up.”
“Phase two,” Bee continued. “The full team moves together. I route you between patrols, the mag-lev board stays center formation. Petra and Mikhail forward, Yuki and Asha covering the rear. Tess with the equipment.”
“Seven expected contacts on the route,” Mikhail noted.
“Approximate. The actual number depends on timing and which patrol cycles we intersect. It could be as few as four or as many as ten.”
“Ten engagements while escorting a bomb on a hoverboard,” Petra said. “Wonderful.”
“The capacitors are not technically bombs.”
“They are if someone shoots them.”
Tess glanced at the corner of the Guild Hall where Cici sat, watching the briefing with her head tilted at an angle that suggested intense focus and mild indignation. “Cici stays here.”
Cici’s ears flattened. “I could help.”
“The maintenance drones in the tunnels didn’t attack you, but the combat drones are different hardware, different protocols. We don’t know if they’d react the same way, and I’m not betting your chassis on finding out.”
“That’s… fair.”
Marcus settled back into his chair. “I’ll coordinate from up here. Bee, live feed of the team’s position?”
“Camera coverage along the proposed route is approximately seventy percent. I will supplement with environmental sensor data for the remaining sections. You will have near-continuous tracking.”
“Near-continuous.” Marcus rubbed his jaw. “It’ll do.”
He looked around the table. His gaze settled on each of them. Checking that every person was accounted for and ready.
“This is the hardest thing we’ve done. Harder than the Alphas, harder than the tunnel breach. You’re carrying critical equipment through hostile territory with no clean fallback that doesn’t mean losing the mission.” He let that sit. “So make it clean the first time, and… protect Tess. Equipment can be replaced.”
“We’ve got this,” Yuki said.
Marcus looked at Tess. “Thirty to forty-five minutes of drilling while they hold the room. Everything you need goes on that board the first time.”
“It will.”
“Good.” He stood. “Everyone down to staging. Tess, Asha, get the mag-lev loaded. Combat team, gear up.”
***
The private staging area hummed with the sound of fully charged capacitor banks.
The mag-lev board sat against the far wall with the BFD-3600 already secured in its case with heavy cargo straps.
Asha moved through the space with the economy of someone who’d packed for combat runs on a dozen different stations. Belt pouches open, supplies arranged by urgency. Stims, healing hypos, dermal patches, the diagnostic scanner she’d built half of herself. Bleeds first, then burns, then bones was how she’d described it once. Her hands didn’t hesitate over any of it.
“How many runs you done?” Asha asked without looking up. “Big ones. Not the repairs.”
“This would technically be my third time if you count running through a spawn-infested research facility.”
“Three’s better than none.” She snapped a pouch shut. “We’ll get you where you need to be.”
“I know.”
“Good answer.” She slotted the last hypo into its loop and cinched her belt tight. “Seen too many support types try to be heroes. Stay near the equipment, yeah? We come to you.”
Tess was already wrestling the first capacitor bank off its cradle.
“Give me that.” Asha moved in on the bank and squatted. She was shorter than Tess but built solid, and she hauled the capacitor off its cradle with a grunt and a clean lift. “Healers have deceptively high Power stat, used to haul a pack that weighed more than this working with my grandmother.”
“With the BFD?”
“With the BFD.” She set the bank down and adjusted its position until the connectors lined up. “Three generations of Veldi strip-mining for a living. Honest work. Then the Network sealed the lower tunnels and called it ‘complete.’ Seventy percent of the veins—gone overnight.”
Her voice didn’t change. Just a statement of fact. But her hands were rougher than necessary, settling another bank into position.
“We’re going to fix this one,” Tess said.
“Yeah.” Asha looked at her. “Know you are.”
The fourth bank went on last. Tess redistributed the load until the mag-lev’s balance held true. Drill in the center, four capacitors surrounding it like a defensive formation of their own, toolkit strapped underneath. She tested the repulsors. The board lifted clean and steady. No drift.
“At least four hundred kilos,” Asha said, watching it hover. “And it just floats.”
“Dungeon tech.”
“Love it.” She turned back to her own preparations. “Love everything about it except the things trying to kill us while we use it.”
Tess pulled her plasteel armor from the staging locker and suited up. Chest plate, bracers, greaves over her jumpsuit. At least the fit was broken in now. The pulse pistol went on her hip. She wasn’t much of a shot, but the CPP-12 was better than nothing if something got past the team.
Asha was already armored. Light kit, reinforced sleeves and bracers, no chest plate. Mobility over protection. A healer who couldn’t move was a healer who couldn’t heal.
“Nervous?” Tess asked.
Asha’s laugh was short. “Been wanting to get into a functional dungeon since getting here. Nervous is done. Bored is done. Ready is where I’m at.”
Tess leaned against the wall beside the staging door. On the other side was Floor 2. Active spawns, drone patrols, and a forty-minute push through hostile corridors to a room where she’d spend another forty-five minutes drilling through the hardest material she’d ever cut—while her team held the line.
The mag-lev held four hundred kilograms of everything they’d built and scrounged and repaired. Three generations of Asha’s family in the BFD alone. Capacitor banks were charged over days of preparation. A toolkit worn and restocked and worn again.
On the other side of the staging area, Petra was running through vibroblade drills in a space barely wide enough for them, each stroke controlled and precise. Mikhail sat on an equipment crate, checking the MK-IX’s charge indicator, his father’s vibroblade already on his hip. Yuki had her rifle broken down on a cloth, hands moving through the reassembly without looking, eyes on the staging door.
“Bee,” Tess said. “Route status?”
“Current patrol density along the proposed path is within expected parameters. I have identified an optimal departure window in eleven minutes. After that, the next window is forty minutes later.”
“Eleven minutes,” Yuki said, snapping the rifle’s barrel assembly home. “Good. I hate waiting.”
“Thirty-eight minutes to Section 9 once you move,” Bee continued. “I will adjust the route in real time.”
“Thirty-eight minutes.” Asha nodded once. “Then it’s just the drill and the room.”
“Just,” Tess said.
Asha grinned. “Compared to getting there? Yeah. Just.”
Petra sheathed her vibroblades and walked over to the mag-lev. She studied the loaded platform for a moment, then looked at Tess.
“This is everything?”
“Everything.”
“Then let’s go get that node.” She turned to the staging door. Mikhail was already on his feet, shield humming to life on his arm. Yuki slung her rifle and fell in behind them.
Asha straightened off the wall, and she was grinning.
“About damn time.”
Bee’s voice was sharp. “Go now.”