“What do you mean they’re in the facility,” Kat said, shaking her head as she tried to clear her thoughts. “I know there were reports of them disappearing, but I thought that just meant NeoSyne was driving the nomadic clans off of their territory as part of some sort of expansion plan.”

Emma stood up, nodding to her before grabbing the back of the chair she’d been sitting in and dragging it over toward the room’s rest area.

“That’s what I thought,” Whip continued, switching to the team’s secure frequency, “but they’re here. It looks like they’re being held and used as forced labor. Apparently NeoSyne wasn’t able to build enough radiation shielding around the reactor room. They’re using shifts of conscripted nomads to keep the power on until they succumb to overexposure.”

“Why don’t they just revolt?” Davis asked, a hint of anger upsetting his usual calm. “Even if they can’t win, it sounds like NeoSyne is slowly killing all of them anyway. It’s better for them to go out in a blaze of glory than to simply work until you collapse and die in agony on the job.”

“They have their families Merrimac,” Whip responded softly. “Hundreds of children and elderly that would just be gunned down if they tried to run. God, all I have are work logs, medical records, and lists of provisions delivered. Nothing is explained in detail, but almost every week they’re getting slightly less food due to someone passing. It’s all stark and clinical, but you can tell that things are bad down there.”

“Well, if the goal is to disable the antimatter reactor or whatever, it would make sense to get their help then,” Emma interjected as she wandered back toward Kat. “I mean, I doubt they’re happy with the status quo. If we could help them escape, I’m sure they’d be happy to give us information at a minimum.”

The door to the control room opened, and Whippoorwill jogged in, a wheeled drone squealing across the floor next to her. A second later, Davis’ heavily armored form filled the entryway before he angled himself sideways and carefully slipped in after her.

“We can do better than that,” he said thoughtfully. “This is a weapons factory after all. Surely there must be some way that we can get some of these futuristic armaments into the prisoners’ hands once we free them. Even if they aren’t exactly combat trained, 200 people with state of the art weaponry has a tendency to overwhelm a small team of quality operators.”

“What do you think Chiffon, do you think we’ll be able to get them out without tripping security?” Kat asked, turning to look at her friend. She couldn’t see Whippoorwill’s expression through her infiltration suit, but the other woman stiffened, obviously diving into her connection with the database.

Finally she shook her head. “Sorry Erinyes, there’s no way we’re getting them out without someone sounding an alarm.”

“I can see what’s on other floors through a diagnostic system,” she continued, shaking her head gently, “but I don’t have any control. For now I have access to their existing cameras and sensors, but the minute they realize I’m in the system they’ll be able to lock things down into local control only.”

“Worse,” she sighed. “Now that I’m actually looking at their security, it was a godsend that the guards on the first floor were distracted. There are enough cameras and motion sensors in the hallways to sound an alert for every rat that managed to sneak into the facility. Hell, it looks like that’s what saved us. The guards turned the auto-reporting system to ‘manual only’ so they wouldn’t have to fill out paperwork for every gust of wind or bird that ended up down here.”

Kat pursed her lips, glancing at Davis’ hulking armor and heavy dual purpose cannon before looking back to Whippoorwill. As much as she would prefer to accomplish as much of this mission as she could without being noticed, it wasn’t like they weren’t prepared for combat.

After a moment of contemplation, Kat shrugged. When she spoke her voice was decisive, filled with a calm that she didn’t even begin to feel.

”If we have to go loud, we go loud. This mission is too important for us to back out halfway through, and as soon as they find all of these bodies, security is going to be quintupled. We have a narrow window, and I’m not going to let the planet slip through my grasp just because things got risky.”

“I just wish Hestia were here,” Kat muttered. “We could use an infusion of literal firepower right about now.”

“Don’t worry girl,” Davis replied. “I already gave her a call about helping up with the aftermath, and be assured, there will be an aftermath. No operation this big goes down without creating a huge mess to clean up after the fact. As soon as Hestia heard that you were involved, she hopped on a maglev. She’ll be in Vegas in a day or two.”

Whippoorwill stiffened slightly. Normally Kat wouldn’t have noticed it, but after her talk with Emma, she was beginning to second guess every little action or piece of body language that she would have ordinarily dismissed.

“Until then.” He turned, armor thumping with each shuffling step. “Chiffon, what’s the plan for freeing these prisoners and arming them? Let me know what we’re facing and I’ll tell you whether it’s something we can handle or not. Just leave the actual implementation to Erinyes and me.”

“Well,” Whip began, pausing to take a deep breath. “The prisoners are confined to the fourth floor. I can access the elevators from here, but it looks like they’re the only way in or out, and NeoSyne keeps the prisoners in line by preventing any local control of the lifts.”

“That sounds like a fire hazard,” Emma interjected jokingly. “They really need to build fire escapes into something this size. Imagine how much they’ll be fined by the arbitration board if they find out that they didn’t take basic safety precautions.”

Whippoorwill rotated her head, staring through the dark mesh at Emma. Kat couldn’t see her friend’s expression, but she could practically feel the glare burning a hole through her, and she wasn’t even its target.

“Yes,” Whip replied icily. “The people being literally worked to death are laboring under inhumane conditions, and we both know that arbitration won’t intervene unless the assets of another company are involved.”

“Enough,” Davis’ voice cut through the room like a whipcrack. “What sort of security will we be dealing with and how heavily armed will they be? We’ll have time for jokes and back and forth later, once we’re far away from this death trap.”

Whippoorwill tore her gaze away from Emma before focusing on Davis and Kat once again..

“Sorry Merrimac,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Security will be fairly tight, but it shouldn’t be out of control. The reactor is on the 9th floor with a security checkpoint built into a lab on the 8th. There’s no way we’ll be able to avoid that, the elevators I can control only go down to the lab and we’ll need to transfer once we’re there.”

“That said,” Whip continued, “the real prize is floor 7. 5 and 6 are factories, producing all of the weaponry we’re here to put an end to, but 7 is a warehouse. Everything they’ve been too afraid to ship out of the facility for fear of tipping off their competitors is stored on that floor.”

“Unfortunately,” Whippoorwill said, shrugging unhappily, “the contents are classified. The logs detail that its being used for armaments storage and warn people about experimental explosives being present, but none of the guards on the first level had the clearance to actually know what’s being built here. In short, I don’t have numbers, locations, or technical specifications. Just the knowledge that there’s a treasure trove on the 7th.”

“What about floors 2 and 3?” Kat asked. “I think we’ve covered basically everything else, but you haven’t told us what to expect there.”

“Don’t go there,” Whippoorwill replied, shaking her head. “Those floors are full of guards and staff. There are something like 400 people that live on those floors. Even if more than half of them are scientists, a bullet fired by someone in a labcoat will kill you just as efficiently as one from a trained and chromed samurai.”

“Then I guess we just head straight to floor 4,” Kat said thoughtfully. “We’ll just have to make it up as we go along, but I think that actually talking to the people that have some experience in here before we make any sort of final decision seems like a good idea.”

“Agreed,” Davis concurred with a nod, his helmet clicking against his battlesuit’s chestplate. “There’s no sense waiting around here forever chewing our cud. The longer we wait, the more time we have for things to go wrong. As soon as relief comes for the dead guards, the game is up.”

“Chiffon.” He motioned vaguely in Whip’s direction with his free hand. Lead the way to the elevator. Let’s see if we can’t acquire some allies.”

Whippoorwill’s drone whirred past them, wheels spinning as it took point, the small crossbow built into its top scanning back and forth for any threats that might have been missed by the facility’s security cameras.

Five or so tense minutes later, they arrived at the elevators, a bank of three large gleaming tubes stabbing through the floor and into the belly of the facility. As they approached, one set of doors opened with a pleasant ding, triggered by Whip’s unspoken command.

The four of them stepped inside, followed a moment later by three of Whippoorwill’s drones. The final robot parked itself just outside the elevator shaft, an antenna raising out of its chassis as it took over the role of a repeater, boosting the signal from Whip’s smartpanel in order to ensure her access to the shunt that they’d already placed.

Kat shifted slightly, checking her weapons as the doors closed behind them. The elevator hummed into motion, triggering a gentle wave of soothing keyboard music that washed over her. Barely fifteen seconds later, the lift stopped accelerating, magnetic brakes activating to slow them to a halt.

The doors whooshed open in front of them. Immediately, the smell of smoke and unwashed bodies assaulted them. Where the first floor had been clean and brightly lit, a sterile grid of storage space, the 4th looked like a scene from an entertainment channel.

There were no walls. Nothing for the refugees to use for choke points or defensive positions should they choose to rebel. Instead the entire floor was one great cavernous expanse filled with ramshackle housing made from scraps of plastic and shipping containers.

Almost half of the strips of fluorescent lighting that lined the ceiling were dark, inactive due to some combination of poor maintenance and active sabotage. Picking up the slack were a dozen or so metal burn barrels, giving off soot and cherry red light in equal measures.

Four or five people, all wearing heavy coats that hid their appearance despite the relative warmth of the facility, turned to face their group as they stepped out of the elevator. None of the figures moved away from their flickering barrel.

Kat opened her mouth to call out to them only to be cut off by the shriek of metal on metal. Three hatches in the floor slid to the side revealing a trio of armored gun turrets that sprouted from the ground like chrome-covered weeds.

A sensor atop the center turret flashed to life, and a soft blue light quickly scanned from left to right over the four of them. As soon as it finished, the sensor shifted to red and the machine buzzed threateningly.

“Unidentified personnel,” a pleasant woman’s voice began, emanating from the central turret. “You are not in the NeoSyne database. Please do not move from where you stand, or you will be executed. Please provide valid security clearances via your smartpanel interface within 30 seconds, or you will be executed.”

“Chiffon,” Davis growled. The word both a statement and a question.

“I don’t have any access to this floor’s security programs,” Whip replied hurriedly. “I didn’t even know that there was an automated security checkpoint here. We’re on our own.”

“Twenty seconds remaining,” the recorded voice continued, as pleasant and cheerful as ever despite the implicit threat.

“Merrimac, do you think your armor can handle that kind of weapon fire?” Kat asked, eyeing up the gleaming barrels on the chest high turrets.

He thought for a moment before nodding. “If I activate a skill, I won’t be able to move but I should be able to hold out for a couple of seconds.”

“Good,” Kat said hurriedly. “On the count of three, the non-combatants should dive behind you and open the elevator door. They need to get behind cover in there as soon as possible-

“Ten seconds,” the guns reminded them politely.

“-Merrimac you start at the left, and I’ll go right,” Kat continued, ignoring the security system. “One.”

“Erinyes, no!” Whip shouted, almost vibrating with panic.

“Two,” Kat intoned, quietly casting Levitation on herself before pouring mana into Gravity Spike, her eyes fixed on the center turret.

“Don’t risk yourself like this, we can-” Whippoorwill was almost babbling, but Kat pushed her friend’s concern to the back of her mind.

“One.” As soon as the word left Kat’s lips, she Leapt into the air, aiming her descent so that she would land just behind the rightmost turret.

Distantly she heard an angry buzzing as the lights on all three guns' sensors began flashing red as the same soothing voice began repeating the words “Movement detected.”

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Two of the guns tried and failed to track Kat through the air, spitting out high caliber bullets that struck sparks from the wall behind her. The third trained itself on Merrimac as he erupted with red light, both Emma and Whippoorwill diving behind his solid form.

Kat concentrated, unleashing her gathered mana into a Gravity Spike that warped the internal workings of the central turret, silencing the gun as its barrel twisted and bent downward under the force of her magic.

As soon as the spell left her, Kat immediately canceled Levitation, switching to Gravity’s Grasp as she neared the apex of her jump. Behind her, Merrimac’s cannon roared to life as he opened fire on his target.

Just before the turret firing at Kat caught up with her, she accelerated downward, plunging like a hawk toward the debris-covered ground and throwing off its aim once again. She hit the floor, bruising her shoulder despite the textbook perfect roll that took her past the turret.

With one smooth motion, she whipped out a throwing knife, taking advantage of her Throw skill to plant the thin blade directly in the sensor atop the turret even as she used Cat Step to serpentine back to the gun.

Merrimac fired again, his high caliber autocannon removing another fist-sized chunk of the turret’s armor, ignoring the dozen or so machine gun bullets that flashed and deflected off of his glowing armor.

Then Kat was upon the last turret, going low as the gun struggled to find her with its main targeting system disabled. Her left hand darted up, gripping the red hot barrel to hold it in place even as she stabbed into the machine’s housing with her dagger. For a brief second, the weapon flashed with ruby light as she activated Penetrate, and then Kat was sawing through wires and cables, gutting and disabling the security system before she needed to take a second breath.

Davis fired a third and final time, shattering his turret’s armored housing and trashing the machinery that controlled the weapon. Kat jerked her knife the the left once more for good measure, soaking herself in a combination of oil and coolant before she stood up.

Merrimac’s armor looked like it had seen better days. Its paint was scuffed and, and the plates themselves were creased from deflected bullets. Still, nothing had penetrated, and the suit’s overall integrity seemed to be intact.

Emma’s head poked out from the half open doors to the elevator. She quickly surveyed the smoking and twisted wreckage of the turrets before flashing Kat a cheerful thumbs up and jogging out into the open once more.

“Holeeeee shit!” A voice called out from behind her.

Kat turned, to find that one of the figures from the burn barrel had detached themselves from the crow. The person approached, a lumpy winter coat hiding what appeared to be a slim frame, a pair of dark ‘sun glasses’ smartpanels obscuring their eyes and most of their face.

“I’m presuming from all the fireworks and costumes that your group aren’t NeoSyne employees that just forgot to update your clearances?” They asked cheerfully, extending a gloved hand to Kat.

“No,” she agreed, offering her hand back warily. “We’re not exactly friends with NeoSyne. We’re especially not friendly with the moles that they’re working for.”

“So you already know about the stallesp?” The person questioned, nodding underneath their hood. “Good, that helps streamline the process of getting you and your friends up to speed.”

“I go by Erinyes,” Kat responded. “Merrimac is the one in armor behind me and Chiffon is our tech specialist. We have a fourth member that hasn’t earned a name yet. Can you tell me who I’m addressing right now?”

“I go by Baker,” they replied, a grin about the only thing Kat could make out on their face. “And this behind me is Legion 3445.”

They glanced back at the rag-tag crowd of people that were beginning to filter out of their ramshackle homes and hiding places. Baker shrugged theatrically before smiling at Kat once again.

“Least what’s left of the 3445. We were an armed trading convoy out of the Durango area. Mostly kept to ourselves, but I’m not gonna pretend that a couple NeoSyne cargo semis didn’t go missing in our territory if there weren’t enough guards on ‘em if you catch my drift.”

“Then, ‘bout a year or so ago,” Baker continued. “Some of our scouting parties started disappearing. Enough that it could have been raiders, but we couldn’t pin it on any one group. Eventually, we called in all of our outlying teams so we could talk everything over, figure out what was happening.”

“Turns out that had been the plan all along.” They spat on the dirty, soot-covered floor. “Our vice-chief was working for the stallesp. Turned out they had done something to her head. They showed up with a couple flying tanks, and we were like fish in a barrel. Rounded up all of us in one swoop, and we’ve been stuck in this hellhole, making more guns and tanks for ‘em ever since.”

“Flying tanks?” Davis asked, clomping up behind Kat. “What can you tell us about them?”

“Not much really,” the coat-covered figure said with a shrug. “Machines handle most of the scifi stuff like the gravity drives and the mag cannon. They just use us to carry around materials and weld on armor plates. Not sure you need to know much though, the aliens have the things programmed with touch screens and really fancy computers that do most of the fighting for you. Just designate a target and pick an evasive routine, and the tank does the rest for you. Guess they didn’t really trust rank and file NeoSyne staff to be able to pick up how to use their fancy equipment on a moment’s notice.”

Kat looked to Davis, cocking her head slightly in an unspoken question. He nodded back.

“Well Baker,” she began, addressing the shapeless mass of coats in front of her. “There are only four of us, but we’re here to shut this place down. Our original plan was to sabotage the reactor, but once we got inside Chiffon discovered that you and your friends were trapped in here. If you think you and your people can pilot those tanks, we’re interested in helping you stage a bit of a prison break.”

“Oh yeah.” Baker’s face twisted into a feral smile underneath their sunglasses. “I think we can manage that. That won’t be any problem at all.”