Watching Phalanx Gamma make their way through the Gauntlet was distantly nostalgic. Reaper Alpha maintained the record for the fastest clear of the last Gauntlet, second place deservingly having gone to Patrick and his Iron Chariot team. The old gauntlet was retired, but we’d kept the records on hand, an unintended but welcome way to commemorate an old friend.

A path that, in this case, had been retrofitted. The first gauntlet was no longer just a random horde of wolves. Now the goal was to defend the ‘flag,’ a type of floor with hordes of wolves that would move through a predetermined route until it reached the ‘goal’ with intent to destroy it. There were many ways to handle the challenge, ours had been relatively straightforward to simply defend against the siege.

For Borham and Domino, the option seemed vastly different. Why defend one point when you could guide a horde through overlapping fields of ever flexing fire.

I had to hand it to them, it was an interesting plan, but I did find myself skeptical of how it could respond to stresses.

Regrettably, they’d already nearly cleared the entire floor in the short time that I’d been on the phone. The numbers of the Wolves were the same as what my team had fought long ago, however technology and numbers had changed for the teams. This resulted in the first floor being cleared very quickly.

Though, I knew that this “first floor” was actually the second floor as we’d fought it, long ago. Our entry point had been a simple horde of wolves rushing us.

At the end of the floor the digitized terrain began to decay rapidly, leaving them with only a circular dias to stand on. It was holographic, they did have land to step on around them, but it didn’t look that way. Blackness yawned open from around the ten meter circle that they stood upon, silvery light giving them nothing to focus on environmentally.

“That was excellent,” Borham began, “Domino, you incorporated what you assumed to be my team’s strengths as best you could. Moving the field and issuing orders quickly will help you immensely going forward.”

“Thank you,” Domino grinned, heartily taking the praise he and his team had to have poured countless hours into honing.

“Now, I have some counter points, but,” he glanced over to my location, seemingly still aware of where the observation post was, “I’ll see if our observer has any input they’d like to share.”

I blinked, shaking my head as he waited for me. This was another step that was required, though I’d let myself get distracted. Luckily, I needed to only will the message together and send it in the span of a second.

He looked over the message with a complicated expression, “Well, this is a bit more than I expected…” he murmured.

One of the others, the young woman from before, looked somewhat chagrined, “Did we do badly?”

“Oh, no no, nothing like that,” Rick smiled, “he put together a report covering what you did well and what could be improved. It’s… err… dense.”

“Hey, mind if I share this?” Rick looked up to me as I studied Phalanx Gamma, somewhat chastened that my computer mind could operate much more quickly when I wanted it too, even if perhaps not strictly necessary. I’d indeed put together a report, but it was more likened to a strategic breakdown of my thoughts on their actions. Of course, I kept my input on alternative strategies to a minimum, expecting that they’d want to improve on their own styles rather than have another brute-forced upon them.

I sent a short message of assent to Rick as he turned back to the students. Taking the full time to learn their names was, admittedly, a process that only required me to peer at their files.

Domino, Jessica, Covina, Eric, Venezuela, Harold, Rachel, and Emma. So far, they’d accumulated the most points of any of the Phalanx classes, and had the general renown and good faith of the teachers that were responsible for their education.

As such, seeing their mixed reactions to what I’d put together for them was amusing.

“I… thanks, I guess?” Jessica spoke with hesitant gratitude, “Did they start taking notes early, or something?”

Rachel, a slightly more wizened woman who favored a quad-barreled shotgun of disgusting power output, cleared her throat. “We do appreciate the effort,” she shot a mild glance to Jessica, “it means a lot.”

“Err, yep, great!” She chuckled nervously, setting Rachel to helplessly shake her head. It made some sense that they’d be wary of accidentally insulting their observer, given that their placement in the Legion might well be affected by how they performed, both in combat and in interpersonal skills.

Even if I was hardly a grand example of interpersonal skills myself.

“Alright, you guys know this second one from hearsay I’m sure, but let me be the first to tell you that the mines are dangerous.” Rick spoke up after letting them read through some of the materials, “Me and M-” he caught himself barely, “-your observer went through these things personally. I’ll be the first to tell you that they did too damned well of a job with recreating this hell hole.”

The students caught his slip up, but said nothing of it, and still had little to work with. Though, seeing Eric’s posture stiffen, I figured he might have begun to suspect who I was.

“You’ve fought the Salt Beetles in simulations before, but these ones are in an ideal habitat. You have the luxury and supreme benefit of power armor and advanced weapons, things that Legion can take for granted these days. However, back then, we barely had steel plates for reasonable defense. And as such, the liberty has been taken to step up the difficulty to match the gravitas back then. I believe you all scored the highest in the training Gauntlet for the mines, isn’t that right, Domino?”

The brown haired man nodded, “We did.”

“Pretend this is the first time you’ve seen these mines,” Rick stated gravely, “they’re not the same beasts you dealt with before.”

I nodded at that, taking a look at the programming and seeing how true Rick’s words were. The mines themselves were larger somewhat than they’d been in reality, but only slightly. The format had been changed as well, only two levels being relevant. The upper floor and the lower floor, connected by a two-hundred meter long chute with a broken down elevator at the bottom.

But, likewise, the biotics were only somewhat harder, their algorithm updated to make them perhaps a little sneakier.

I frowned at that, wondering if Rick wanted to play up the danger.

My answer came a moment later in a message from him.

“Do your worst.”

I grinned.

The digital landscape had only just begun to settle before suddenly it rippled, my consciousness extending across the design, warped tendrils settling into the fabrics of the data.

‘This is the way to darkness; the madness in the depths of the world where woven are reality and nightmare into one wholesome maw.’ Wolvey chittered madly as we struck through the mines. Intelligence, however limited, was injected into the minds of the biotics as I imagined what this hive could have been if we’d left it to its own devices. Where once stone and simple carved salt formations where the chiseled, carved corridors of alien design. I recalled the strange terrain deep within those mines, and pushed that idea across.

The waiting team watched grimly as the entrance to the mine warped before their eyes, the dirt crusting white and surging with more permanent foundations until finally their starting point was not within the mines, but instead just outside of it. White gates with sharp ridges lay open, carved and deep grooves where biotics had surged out en force by the hundreds damaged what might have been otherwise beautiful work.

[Phalanx Gamma Clear Goals: Destroy the Queen and ensure the biotics have no royal larva left alive. Be swift, for the biotic horde is under way to the city. Beware, they will protect their Queen to the last.]

“Jesus,” I heard Rick utter under his breath even as he stared at the mines. “Alright, color me impressed.”

“That’s insane.” Rachel walked up to the gateway, “It feels so much more… real, you know? Like we’re actually here.”

Rick nodded, “A special treat. This captures the essence of what was going on well. Domino, it’s your show, but I’d recommend you take that timer warning seriously.”

He nodded, and without further delay got to work. I watched them as they moved deeper into the mines, stunned by the changes that they found within.

I also watched as they registered the movement inside corridors as one unit, though Borham’s team was a half-step faster. They were getting used to one another, but the team were no slouches. Armored shields with enamel coatings were brought up, deflecting and shattering hardened salt projectiles as they streamed in from the sides. A moment later, several Beetles, fully encased in salt streamed in, still supported from the back by salt-slinging attackers.

Domino responded quickly, having the front-lines entangle their offensive attackers. Power armor gave us an edge we didn’t have before, and for every two beetles, one front-liner could hold them.

He didn’t, however, fall into the trap of relying too much on that. Instead, the enemy ranged attackers were struck first, most of them suffering debilitating injuries in seconds.

After that, lacking a ranged menace, the team was able to quickly dispatch their own quarry with little to no damage.

They moved deeper into the mines, abandoning stealth and pushing hard. There were two battles after the first, but they quickly dispatched them, even if it meant using heavier ordnance.

That was good, because in the wake of every battle, double the number of beetles would surge towards the location from distant channels carved into the rocks, simulating the beetles invasive presence within every floor of the mines. Whether they knew that would be the case, or if they simply wanted to push for the timer, I wasn’t certain.

Deep within the mine, though, they encountered their first major problems.

A large open cavern that had appeared clear proved to be anything but. Hive Guard burst forth from pillars, intricately carved and hardened armor providing for ample protection and camouflage. Even Borham seemed taken aback by the sheer numbers of them as they surged in from all around, brute forcing the battle instead of seeking a moderate approach. Each of these creatures could overwhelm a power-armor of basic assortments. Luckily, Borham’s team had the outfitting to take them and stall them in one on one, but the simple fact was that they were outnumbered four times over.

They were pushed back, and damage began accruing on shields as Borham’s team relentlessly moved back and forth, Domino’s team quickly moving between them and dealing damage. At first, I wondered if perhaps this was too much for Phalanx Gamma to deal with.

I needn’t have worried.

All throughout the fight, Domino had been moving their group further forward, pushing with their firepower in one direction and staggering their pursuers. At first, it seemed to be a desperate gambit to reach a wall and fight from one side.

The mines left in his wake, however, told another story.

Superheated explosives detonated beneath the amassed pursuers, and just as quickly, Domino shifted into full offense. Borham and his team surged forward, side-by-side with the damage heavy members of Gamma.

The heat weakened the salt armor, and I’d realized then that the entire team was outfitted with air-tight armor. As they ran, Domino and Jessica threw several grenades into the air which exploded, but not into fire.

Foam scattered upwards against the ceiling as the heat threatened to compromise the salt ceiling over their heads. Remarkably, the foam expanded as it seemed to suck in the heat, cooling rapidly and pushing steam out in the process.

Below, the team reaped through a large swath of the remaining Hive Guards, those that did not bake within their own shells. Several of the team also bore foam grenades, some of which had been engaged on their own armor.

As the last Guard fell, I could hear Borham’s teeth chattering from the cold, “K-kid, help me get this stuff off?”

“Y-yessir,” Domino stuttered, likewise cold as the frigid substance began to fall off in freezing chunks.

I nodded appreciatively, the massive amount of frost on the walls testament to the effectiveness of… whatever that was.

Idly as they moved on, I searched what and where they might have gotten a hold of that. What I found was a pleasant surprise, being that Reaper R&D had designed it and was extensively producing it and many other devices for the Phalanx classes to test in controlled environments. I nodded appreciatively at that, knowing that change had to start from somewhere.

When they reached the Royal Chamber, Borham stopped the team. He glared at the ceiling as though he could see through it.

“Trust me, you don’t want to go first. Give me some of those grenades?” Rick asked Domino, who gave him a confused look.

But, the class trusted Rick, the woman who held the bulk of their explosives, Rachel, putting three of them in his outstretched hand.

The veteran who’d fought the first Queen alongside me grunted in thanks, strapping them to his shield on the front and pulling the pins. He rapidly moved forward with no warning, Shield held in front of him, and just as rapidly dodged back.

It was almost still too slow, the long, lancing stinger of the Queen jabbing straight through the metal like a hot knife through butter. The barbed appendage withdrew with a madly angry Hive Queen on the other side.

One that only grew more irritated as the three grenades exploded, foam erupting all across its body and beginning to rapidly freeze the Queen. It flapped its wings rapidly, but only for a few moments as it began to stiffen, falling out of the air only a dozen meters away.

“Lay into it, don’t get closer.” Rick stated, “there are pitfalls all over the damn place here.”

The group acknowledged that, and from their firing point decimated the immobile Queen.

“Good work,” Rick grunted, breathing a sigh of relief, “now we can just kill the larv-”

Domino tackled the man to the ground just as something swiped through the air. Rick, flat on his back, looked up at the second Queen hanging from the ceiling.

“Fucking hell.” The man pulled his bolter up, slugging several shots into the biotics abdomen as its wings vibrated, bladed legs raking downwards towards them.

“Fire!” Domino shouted aloud, his team not hesitating in firing a stream of bullets inches over his head. The Queen's attempt to abduct the pair was halted by bullets tearing into its legs, narrowly saving them from a fate that I knew to be horrific.

Distantly, another pair of vibrating wings filled the room.

“Two more!” I heard one of the men of Borhams team shout, unslinging a rocket launcher alongside three other members doing the same, two of which were on Domino’s team.

“Do it! Rachel, percussive foam on us and the entrance, now!” The nonchalant smirk and constant positivity had vanished, in its place Domino strove for the option that would keep them all alive.

Hopefully.

The launchers they fired were not designed to destroy a single hardened target. They were designed with absolute devastation in mind, a high-yield warhead with a wide blast radius.

Each fired, half of the barrels disconnecting and traveling forward as the shell, guiding the rockets towards the center of the room. The grenades exploded a second before, foam expanding over and covering Rick and Domino, and flooding the entrance to the room.

They’d hardened somewhat, but the sheer explosive force of the rockets would not be denied easily. The simulation even seemed to lag as it calculated what was going on and how things should respond, and I found myself impressed that Phalanx Gamma had as many tactics available as they did.

The room erupted in explosive force, the living things unprotected within or too close to the blasts simply churned inside out.

Foam that had hardened into concrete had been halfway blasted back through the corridor that the team had come in through. The other half were currently still more than partly buried in the foam.

But they were alive.

“Status? Whose alive?” Domino groaned, hefting himself out of rapidly hardening foam before it became even harder to get out of.

“Everyone,” Rachel groaned, “I think, anyways. Unless being dead hurts this bad.”

I examined the mine, noting the cracks that quickly were spreading through the layer. Odds were good that this portion of the mine would begin to fail, even in spite of the reinforcements that the Beetles had provided the structure.

Overall, however, this could firmly be considered a win.

And I couldn’t wait to see how they’d deal with the next levels.