NOVEL NEXT Chapter 66 - The Descent
He shut down a flicker of guilt. They were moving as fast as they could. The XP notifications that rolled in were a grim reminder that their friends were in a desperate fight.
[+74,295 XP]
[+29,250 credits]
[Skill Level up! Silent Movement Proficiency Level 8 -> Level 9]
[Skill Level up! Ambush Tactics Proficiency Level 6 -> Level 7]
[Skill Level up! Tomahawk Throwing Proficiency Level 9 -> Level 10]
[Ability Unlocked: Trajectory Focus. Level 1: Instantly calculate the optimal throwing arc for a tomahawk, increasing accuracy by 30% and range by 20% for one throw, increase by one throw per level. Cooldown: 3 minutes, reduced by 10% per level after Level 10.]
Oh hell yeah, finally.
He smirked despite himself, his hand tightening around the grip of the energy tomahawk.
He peeked around the next corner. Clear, for now, except for two guards further down. He caught Zoe's eye and pointed, first to the left guard, then to himself. She gave a sharp nod, understanding immediately.
He darted forward, silent and precise. His tomahawk hummed as it sliced through the air, and he activated [Trajectory Focus]. The arc was perfect. The guard crumpled without a sound.
Before the body hit the floor, Zoe was a blur of motion. Her energy dagger flashed as the second guard started to turn. Her target dropped just as silently as his.
[+22,860 XP]
[+9000 credits]
[Item gained: Centauri PB-64 "Solar Fang" Plasma Blaster]
A small loot box materialized. A plasma blaster. Useful, but noisy. They moved on.
Heavy footsteps echoed from down the hall. A patrol.
"Alcove, now," he hissed.
They pressed themselves flat against a solid wall section, hoping the guards would pass by without noticing them. The toxic air made his suit's filters work overtime, a faint whining sound that he hoped wouldn't give them away. Six heavily armed guards jogged past, their boots thundering on the metal deck.
Just as the last guard disappeared around the corner, the wall behind them gave a mechanical whirr and suddenly rotated. Luca stumbled backward as the hidden panel spun, revealing a concealed chamber beyond.
"What the hell—" he started, then his eyes widened.
The excitement of discovery overrode caution. He rushed forward into the hidden lab, eager to see what secrets lay within, and immediately tripped over a nearly invisible wire stretched across the threshold.
Shit.
Red warning lights flashed as he flailed forward and lost his balance, rolling forward when a grid of brilliant red laser beams snapped to life, cutting the room in half, barely missing his foot. Zoe was trapped on the entrance side while he found himself facing banks of sophisticated research equipment and computer terminals.
"Luca!" Zoe's voice was sharp with concern.
A countdown timer appeared on the nearest screen: 00:60... 00:59... 00:58...
The laser grid began moving slowly toward his side of the room, the deadly beams advancing inch by inch, visibly burning the dust motes in the hidden room. At this rate, he had less than a minute before they reached the far wall—and him.
"I'm okay!" he called back, though sweat was already beading on his forehead. "Just need to hack this terminal!"
He rushed to the main console, pulling out his hacking pad. The system was more sophisticated than anything they'd encountered so far with multiple security layers and encryption protocols.
00:45... 00:44... 00:43...
"Come on, come on," he muttered, bypassing the first security layer. The second was... a pattern recognition system that required matching energy frequencies. The lasers were now only three feet from the back wall.
00:30... 00:29... 00:28...
"Luca, whatever you're doing, do it faster!" Zoe called out.
He could feel the heat from the laser grid now, uncomfortably warm even through his suit. The third security layer was a logic puzzle—routing power through the correct circuits to unlock the system. His hands were shaking as he traced the pathways.
00:15... 00:14... 00:13...
The lasers were inches away. He could smell the burnt dust now. One final connection, one last pathway to complete—
00:03... 00:02... 00:01...
Click.
The lasers vanished instantly. The countdown stopped. Emergency lighting bathed the room in a soft blue glow as the security system powered down.
Luca sagged against the console, breathing hard. "Holy shit."
Zoe grinned at him from across the room. "Nice work. What did you find?"
The main screen flickered to life, displaying a schematic that made his eyes widen. Technical diagrams, mathematical equations, and a title that sent his pulse racing.
"Zoe," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "We just hit the jackpot."
[Item Acquired: Reactionless Drive Prototype Schematic (TL9)]
[Item Acquired: Advanced Fusion Reactor Plans]
[Item Acquired: Power Cells x3]
[+25,000 credits]
He grabbed the disks and power cells, hands still trembling slightly from the adrenaline. A reactionless drive would revolutionize space travel. This single schematic was worth more than everything else they'd found combined.
"We need to get this back to the ship," he said, securing the data.
They kept moving, slipping through the base like shadows. Each time they encountered a guard, they took them down quickly and quietly, with swift, lethal strikes. The energy weapons were efficient if they could find a vulnerable spot. Luca could feel the satisfying hum of his tomahawk each time it connected, the faint resistance as it cut through armor. Clean, quick, deadly.
Zoe was a blur beside him, her dagger flashing, her movements fluid. They moved as one, their silent communication almost instinctive by now.
As they approached the command center, his HUD pinged. He paused, scanning the area, and saw two more guards stationed by the door.
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"Last stretch," he said over the comms. "Two guards. We take them out, and we're in."
"Sounds like a plan," Zoe replied. "You take left, I'll take right?"
The comms crackled with the sound of an explosion. "Luca, Zoe, we're losing ground here!" Danny's voice was panicked. "Get that command center or we're toast!"
Luca's stomach dropped. "Joey?" he asked immediately.
A beat. Then Joey's voice, steady but strained: "We're fine. We've got a kill zone set up and we're funneling them in. Just be careful out there."
He exhaled slowly, pulse still racing. "Copy that."
The two Varnathi Skirmishers stood guard, their rifles sweeping in jittery arcs. Zoe tapped the side of her helmet. Her suit's [Active Camouflage] shimmered, and she vanished.
He pressed his back to the wall, heart thudding. One... two... three. He activated his own [Active Camouflage], the suit shimmering as it folded light around him. He was invisible.
A flicker of movement caught his eye, Zoe's outline gliding across the floor. One of the Skirmishers turned, but it was too late. Her camouflage dropped as she stood behind him, and in the same heartbeat, her dagger sliced clean across his exposed neck. He crumpled to the ground without a sound.
Luca didn't wait. He stepped from cover, arm already moving. His tomahawk spun, then buried itself into the second Skirmisher's faceplate with a sickening crunch. He staggered, then collapsed. Two bodies down. Zero noise.
Zoe turned to look at him, a small, proud smile tugging at her lips as she wiped her blade on the guard's vest.
[+22,860 XP]
[+9000 credits]
[Item Acquired: Terrafiber Weave Schematic]
He grabbed the schematic, squinting at the disk in his hand.
Terrafiber Weave
Components: Helium, Carbon, Dysprosium
Requirements: Fiber Weave Chamber
Ultra-light fiber with extreme tensile strength. Ideal for tether cables, structural netting, and carbon-based armor.
He stared at his screen. "What the hell is Dysprosium?"
Zoe leaned over his shoulder to see the display. "No idea. Sounds like something for Danny."
"Yeah," he agreed, tucking the schematic away. Loot drops like this were new to New Dawn.
They moved to the command center's main doors. He pulled out his Hacking Pad and connected it to the access panel. The system showed the heat signatures inside. The room was packed.
"We can't fight our way through that," he muttered, more to himself than to Zoe. "We'd be cut down before we took three steps."
Zoe was a step ahead of him, her own hacking pad pulling up a different schematic. It showed the base's atmospheric and ventilation systems. She tapped a glowing conduit that ran directly over the command center.
"We don't have to," she said, her voice a low, practical murmur in his private comms. "This conduit here? It's the primary exhaust for the reactor's coolant system. Hot, unbreathable, probably laced with God-knows-what radioactive particles."
Luca stared at the schematic, the implications hitting him instantly. "You want to flood the room."
"It's clean," she replied, her tone devoid of emotion. "We find the junction, reroute the flow. The system will vent directly into the command center. Anyone in there will be unconscious in sixty seconds. No alarms, no fight." She looked at him, her expression unreadable behind her visor. "It's the smart play, Luca. It saves Ryan's team, and it saves us."
He frowned, his mind racing. It was smart. It was efficient. It was also horrifying. "And then what, Zoe? What do we do with a room full of unconscious enemies?"
"What do you mean, 'what do we do'?" she countered, a hint of impatience in her voice. "We open the door, and we finish the job while they're sleeping. One by one. No risk."
The coldness of her logic sent a chill down his spine. It was the same logic they had used just moments ago, killing guards in the dark. But this was different. This wasn't combat. "No," he said, shaking his head. "We can't just... execute them."
"Why not? They're trying to kill us right now."
"We could... find a place to lock them up," he offered, the idea sounding weak even as he said it. "There have to be brigs or storage lockers somewhere on this level."
Zoe let out an incredulous laugh. "Luca, listen to the comms. Listen to Ryan's team fighting for their lives. We don't have time to play warden. We have minutes, maybe less." She pointed to a faint, corrosive shimmer on her own gloves. "This air is eating through our suits. We finish this fast, or we all die here."
He looked from the schematic to the flashing alert on her armor. She was right. Every second they debated, their friends were dying. There was no clean choice. No heroic path. There was only her cold, brutal calculus... or his own flawed, desperate attempt to hold onto a line that was getting blurrier by the second.
"There's another way," he said, looking back at his own pad. "Forget the gas. We lock the doors. We cut the power. We go in dark."
Zoe tilted her head, processing it. "Total darkness. Total chaos. They'll be blind. We'll be invisible. It's... brutally effective." A slow, dangerous grin spread across her face. "I like it." Then, her expression sharpened, the pragmatist in her taking over. "But it's riskier, Luca. Way riskier than the gas. They'll be armed, panicked, and firing blindly. A stray shot in the dark kills you just as dead. Why take the chance?"
He met her gaze, his own expression grim. "Because this way, they have a chance to fight back. It's not an execution. It's a fight." He paused, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "It's more fair."
Zoe held his gaze for a long moment. She didn't argue. She just gave a single, sharp nod. "Fair enough. Let's move."
They moved fast along the outer corridor. The command center occupied a large part of the upper level of this section, with three reinforced blast doors providing access. "We seal these now, someone inside might notice," he muttered. "We find the power controls first."
Zoe nodded, already scanning the wall for utility access. "I'll trace the grid. There has to be a localized breaker nearby."
He crouched by the first door's access panel. With the emergency override panel ripped from the wall, he flicked on the edge current of his tomahawk and pressed the heated edge into the exposed cable bundle, melting the control lines into useless slag.
"System's live," he whispered. "I can trigger a manual lockdown for all three doors from any single panel."
Zoe's voice crackled in his ear. "Luca. Problem."
"Talk to me."
"No shutoff access on this level. I traced the conduit; it drops to a sealed sublevel. The reactor's down there."
He cursed under his breath. Of course. The power source would be in the most protected part of the base.
"I'll meet you there," he said, torching the last panel's wiring. "Don't cut it without me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
He finished the sabotage and jogged toward her position. So much for easy access. If they wanted the lights out, they were going to have to go deeper. And they had to do it fast.
The stairwell spiraled downward, metal walls narrowing the deeper they went. Emergency lighting cast stuttering shadows. The air grew thicker, the chemical haze creeping in through their filters with increasing intensity. His suit's environmental warnings were flashing amber—prolonged exposure to this atmosphere would eventually overwhelm their protection.
They moved with careful steps, punctuated only by the soft hiss of their rebreathers working overtime. At the next junction, they found two more Skirmishers but these were alert, scanning their sectors corridor.
Luca caught Zoe's eye and tapped his throat, then pointed to himself. She nodded, understanding. He activated his [Active Camouflage] and moved wide, circling behind both guards while Zoe created a distraction. Just a small sound, enough to draw their attention forward.
Both Skirmishers turned toward the noise. Luca struck from behind, his tomahawk taking the first guard silently. The second spun at the sound, but Zoe was already airborne in a perfect forward somersault that brought her down behind the guard. Her dagger found the gap in his armor before his feet could even shift to face the threat.
Two down. No alarms.
[Item Acquired: Whisper Spire]
[Item Acquired: Plasma Filament Blade (Schematic)]
Luca picked up the spike. A [Whisper Spire]. "TL9," he muttered, turning it over in his hand. "This can bypass security without triggering alarms. Slower than a hack, but clean."
Zoe held up the glowing schematic disk. "And this will let us upgrade our blades."
He blinked. That was a game-changer. Both his tomahawk and her dagger could get a serious boost. The tactical advantage was immense. "Good find," he said, his mind already racing with the possibilities. "A very good find."
They descended another level. The silence felt wrong. It was watching them.
Zoe froze mid-step. "Hold," she whispered.
"What?" he whispered back.
She didn't speak. Just tilted her head slightly. Then: "I saw something."
His heart spiked. He scanned the corridor ahead, it was empty. "I'm not seeing—"
"Shimmer. Far end of the hall," she cut in, voice sharp.
He flicked through vision modes. Nothing. "Could've been heat distortion," he offered.
"Or TL9 stealth gear," she replied, already lifting her rifle.
They kept moving cautiously down the corridor and hit another junction. Two Skirmishers, standing idle. Zoe moved first, flowing into position. Her shot was perfect. But the second guard turned a half-second too early, catching sight of Luca's approach.
The Varnathi's mouth opened to shout a warning. No time for a direct throw. Luca activated [Trajectory Focus] and whipped his tomahawk at the wall beside the guard. The blade ricocheted off the metal surface at the perfect angle, striking the Skirmisher in the temple before he could make a sound. Both bodies hit the floor within seconds of each other.
"Nice trick shot," Zoe whispered, impressed.
"New ability," he replied, retrieving his tomahawk. "Still getting used to it."
[+22,860 XP]
[+9000 credits]
[Skill level up! Close Quarters Proficiency Level 7 -> Level 8]
Still nothing from behind. But Zoe didn't relax. "We're being followed," she said, low and grim.
"I'm telling you, I'm not seeing—"
Pain exploded across his neck as a strong arm yanked him back.
His back slammed against the wall.
A blade pressed against his throat, cool and sharp even through the armor seal.