“Kayla, high seam!”
The command left Jack’s throat as a dry, tight rasp, swallowed immediately by the roar of the automated defense grid.
He launched himself into the crossfire.
The transition from the basalt ledge was a sudden suspension of weight, followed by the hard, downward drag of gravity.
His boots cleared the lip of the stone platform, and then the air rushed past his helmet, hot and thick with the stench of scorched insulation.
Below him, the primary corridor of the simulator was a narrow trench of black rock, illuminated only by the rhythmic, blinding pulses of the defensive systems.
The left turret fired, its twin barrels spitting yellow plasma bolts that sheared through the darkness.
The energy passed so close to his visor that the glass hummed with static, and the thermal indicators in his helmet flashed a brief, critical amber.
He hit the stone floor on his left side.
The impact was a brutal, physical shock that traveled through the reinforced polymer plates of his shoulder guard, deep into his collarbone.
He kept his limbs tucked close, his chest pressed toward his knees to present the smallest possible target.
He did not let the impact stop his momentum.
Instead, he channeled the fall into a hard, sliding skid across the basalt dust that coated the deck.
The stone under him was rough, biting into the paint of his leg plates with a continuous, metallic shriek.
Another yellow bolt struck the floor behind his heels, the impact vaporizing the rock and throwing up a dense spray of superheated grit.
The pieces peppered his calves, clicking against the metal seals of his boots.
He could smell the ozone, a sharp, metallic tang that tasted like copper on the back of his tongue, indicating that the air filters in his helmet were already struggling to process the ionized atmosphere.
He kept his head low, his eyes fixed on the narrow shadow at the base of the central pillar.
He slid beneath the primary firing arc of the left turret, where the barrel assemblies could not depress low enough to target him.
He came to a halt in the narrow recess at the base of the central basalt pillar, his boots slamming into the rock with a dull thud.
Vance was there, pressed into the shallow cleft of the stone, his rifle held flat against his chest plates.
His visor was covered in grey dust, and his breathing was loud over the short-range squad channel, a rapid, shallow sound that signaled the onset of panic.
His hands were shaking, his fingers twitching against the trigger guard of his plasma carbine.
Jack did not pause to assess Vance’s condition.
He reached out, his gloved fingers hooking into the heavy shoulder harness of Vance’s chest armor, and yanked him six inches deeper into the cleft.
Vance’s back hit the rear wall of the pillar with a heavy metallic clack.
“Stay down,” Jack said.
His voice was flat, deliberately emptied of the adrenaline that was hammering against his ribs.
“The left turret,” Vance gasped, his chest plates rising and falling in rapid, uneven jerks.
“It has the whole corridor covered. There is no gap in the cycle. It is a continuous sweep. We are stuck here.”
“It is not continuous,” Jack said.
He adjusted his grip on his rifle, his eyes tracking the mechanical movement of the housing above them.
“It is a three-round burst. Look at the cooling vents on the side of the casing. They pulse blue when the charge drops. That is the recharge cycle. It lasts point-eight seconds. We can use that.”
The turret was mounted on a heavy steel bracket twenty feet above the floor, its twin barrels swinging back and forth in a sixty-degree arc.
Under his sleeve, the silver band of the device began to change.
The skin of his right forearm grew cold, a sudden, localized drop in temperature that felt like a block of ice pressed against his wrist.
The coldness did not numb his arm; instead, it seemed to sharpen the nerve endings, spreading upward through his elbow and shoulder, then settling behind his eyes as a steady, quiet pressure.
It was not a voice, and it did not offer words.
It was a somatic shift, a sharpening of his sensory inputs that made the chaotic environment around him feel organized.
His visual field did not change, but his ability to process what he saw became incredibly precise.
The chaotic, blinding glare of the yellow plasma bolts ceased to be a blur.
He could see the exact microsecond the blue cooling vents on the turret began to glow, indicating the drop in capacitor voltage.
He could hear the specific, high-pitched pitch of the rotational motors as they adjusted the barrels for the next sweep.
The intervals between the shots felt distinct, separated by clear margins of silence.
He raised his rifle.
He aligned the iron sights with the primary sensor lens of the left turret, a small, circular disk of darkened glass that sat just above the dual barrels.
The lens glowed with a faint, steady crimson light as it scanned the dust, searching for movement.
Jack waited.
The turret fired its third bolt, a blinding flash of yellow that illuminated the entire corridor and cast long, jagged shadows against the basalt walls.
The blue cooling vents on its side flared with pale, electric light.
Jack squeezed the trigger.
The rifle kicked against his shoulder, a solid, familiar thud that resonated through his collarbone.
The projectile sped through the air, traveling the twenty feet in a fraction of a millisecond, and struck the center of the crimson disk.
The glass shattered, sending a small cascade of dark, glittering shards down onto the basalt floor below.
The red light inside the sensor went dark.
The left turret stopped its sweep immediately, its twin barrels dropping toward the floor as its automated targeting system tried to recalibrate to the sudden loss of optical data.
“Kayla, climb,” Jack said over the comms.
On the far side of the trench, Kayla did not hesitate.
She left her cover behind a low boulder, her movements fluid and economical.
She reached the vertical fracture in the basalt wall, the high seam that led to the upper ledge.
Her gloved hands found the narrow crevices in the stone.
She began to climb, using her boots to wedge herself into the crack, moving upward with a steady, practiced rhythm that ignored the thermal heat radiating from the nearby steam vents.
Her weight shifted from hold to hold with the mechanical efficiency of an experienced climber, her eyes fixed on the dark ledge above.
Jack watched her progress through the peripheral display of his visor, but his focus was pulled back to the center of the corridor.
A wet, choking gasp came through the squad channel, followed by a low moan of pain that was cut off by a fit of coughing.
“Help,” Ryker said.
His voice was ragged, stripped of its usual dominant tone, reduced to a thin, desperate whisper.
“My collar… I cannot… I cannot get air. The seal is broken.”
Jack looked through the dust.
Ryker was lying flat on his back in the center of the path, his body fully exposed to the line of sight of both remaining turrets.
The yellow gas from the floor vents was swirling around his helmet in thick, greasy clouds, obscuring his faceplate.
The automated warning system on Ryker’s suit was blaring, a high-pitched, rhythmic tone that reached Jack’s eyes as a flashing amber warning icon in the lower corner of his visor, accompanied by a rapid drop in Ryker’s oxygen readouts.
Three red laser lines from the right turret were locked onto the center of Ryker’s chest plate.
The turret’s barrels were spinning up, the high-pitched whine of the rotary drive echoing off the stone walls like a drilling machine.
Ryker was thrashing, his legs kicking against the basalt dust, his hands clawing at the seal of his collar where a jagged crack in the polymer seal was leaking yellow gas into his helmet.
“He is done,” Vance said, his voice shaking over the comms.
“We cannot get to him. The right turret has a full lock. If we step out there, we are disqualified. We have to leave him.”
Jack looked at his own HUD.
His academic score was displayed in the upper right corner: ninety-two points.
If he stayed behind the pillar and let Kayla disable the power, his score would remain intact.
He would pass the trial.
He would get his archive access.
He would finally find the records of his brother, Nolan.
The files were his only connection to what had happened in the deep mines, his only hope of finding out why Nolan had disappeared.
If he moved into the open, the score penalties for leaving formation and exposing himself to direct fire would accumulate.
If he took damage, the system would dock him further, possibly dropping him below the threshold required for archive clearance.
The entire effort of the last six months would be wasted for the sake of a cadet who had done nothing but try to break him since his arrival.
He reached into his utility pocket.
His fingers brushed against the cool, smooth brass of Nolan’s old lighter.
The metal was worn thin at the edges, a tangible reminder of the brother who had gone into the deep mines and never returned.
Nolan had always said that a squad was only as strong as its weakest link, and that leaving a man behind was a failure of the mind, not just the body.
The memories of Nolan’s final weeks at the academy came back to him, the quiet determination, the refusal to let the system turn him into a machine that valued scores over survival.
The device on his arm pulsed again, a deep, frozen wave that cleared the hesitation from his thoughts.
It was a cold clarity that left no room for calculation, only action.
“Vance, cover the right turret’s optics,” Jack said.
“Jack, that is suicide,” Vance protested, his voice rising in pitch.
“We cannot survive both turrets.”
“Do it now,” Jack said, his voice dropping into a tone that left no room for argument.
Jack stepped out from behind the pillar.
He did not run in a straight line.
He kept his weight low, his knees bent, moving in a zigzag pattern across the uneven stone.
The right turret fired.
A yellow bolt tore through the air where Jack had been a fraction of a second before, the heat scorching his left cheek through the helmet’s thermal insulation.
The smell of his own singed hair, caught in the intake valves before the filters could close, was sharp and dry.
He reached Ryker.
He dropped to his knees, his armor plate striking the basalt with a heavy clang.
He grabbed the handle on Ryker’s shoulder harness and pulled.
Ryker was heavy, his deadweight amplified by the thick steel plating of his training suit, which was designed to simulate the weight of active-duty power armor.
Jack strained, his leg muscles burning as he dragged the larger cadet backward toward the shadow of a low rock outcropping.
The right turret tracked them.
A second bolt struck the floor near Jack’s hip, throwing up a cloud of hot dust that blinded his visor’s external sensors for a brief second. Read this novel at novelping . com for the best experience.
The blast wave pushed him sideways, but he dug his boots into the gravel, refusing to let go of the harness.
He kept pulling.
He dragged Ryker behind the low boulder.
The red laser lines washed over the stone above them, unable to penetrate the thick basalt.
Ryker was still thrashing, his eyes wide and unfocused behind his cracked faceplate.
His skin had taken on a pale, bluish tint from the gas.
He was choking, his hands pulling at his neck ring, threatening to break the seal entirely.
“Stop moving,” Jack said.
He threw his weight onto Ryker’s chest, pinning the larger cadet’s arms to the ground.
Ryker struggled, his legs kicking against the stone, but Jack held him down with the absolute focus of physical leverage.
“If you break that seal, you inhale the full concentration,” Jack said, his face inches from Ryker’s.
“Hold still.”
Jack reached for his utility belt.
He pulled out a canister of quick-setting polymer sealant.
It was a standard-issue maintenance tool, meant for temporary pipe repairs, but Jack knew its properties.
He shook the can once, then pressed the nozzle against the cracked seam of Ryker’s collar.
He squeezed the trigger.
The nozzle hissed, spraying a thick, grey foam over the fractured polymer.
The foam expanded instantly upon contact with the air, sealing the gap and hardening into a solid, airtight crust within three seconds.
The warning alarm on Ryker’s HUD stopped its rapid blaring, shifting to a slow, yellow caution indicator as the suit’s internal scrubbers began to purge the remaining gas from his helmet.
Ryker lay still, his chest rising and falling in long, ragged gasps.
He looked up at Jack, his expression a mixture of fear, shock, and a deep, silent humiliation.
His usual arrogance was gone, replaced by the raw, wet breathing of a survivor who had come too close to the edge.
“You are sealed,” Jack said.
“Stay low.”
He did not wait for Ryker to respond.
He turned his attention back to the gauntlet.
The right turret was still operational, its barrels scanning the corridor, searchlights cutting through the yellow haze.
“Vance,” Jack called out.
“Do you have an angle on the rotational gears?”
Vance’s voice came back over the comms, tense but steady.
“I have a line of sight from here, but the shield plate is in the way. I cannot hit the main housing.”
“The shield plate has a joint at the base,” Jack said, remembering the structural schematics of the standard defense models he had studied during his late nights in the academy maintenance bays.
“Look for the silver grease fitting just above the mounting bolts. Hit that with a low-charge plasma shot. It will fuse the gear ring.”
There was a short pause.
Jack could hear Vance shifting his position behind the pillar, the scrape of his boots against the basalt indicating that he was leaning out further than before.
“I see it,” Vance said.
“The target is small. The dust is heavy.”
“Take the shot, Vance,” Jack said.
“We do not have time.”
A single, high-velocity plasma bolt fired from Vance’s position.
It struck the base of the right turret with a sharp, crackling sound.
A shower of white-hot sparks erupted from the joint, illuminating the dark ceiling of the corridor.
The turret attempted to rotate toward Vance’s position, but its motor groaned, a horrible grinding sound of metal teeth tearing against fused steel.
The turret jammed, its barrels locked in a thirty-degree angle toward the far wall, helpless to track the center of the corridor.
“Kayla,” Jack said, looking up toward the high ledge.
“The power cable for the right turret runs through the conduit behind you. Can you reach it?”
Kayla’s voice was crisp.
“I am at the junction box now. The casing is locked. I cannot get my leverage tool inside the seal.”
“Do not try to force the lock,” Jack said.
“Look above you. There is a loose basalt slab resting on the ledge. It weighs at least eighty pounds. Use your leverage bar to tip it over. Let it fall onto the cable guide.”
“Understood,” Kayla said.
Through the yellow haze, Jack saw Kayla’s silhouette move along the upper ledge.
She wedged her metal tool beneath a large, cracked block of stone.
She leaned her weight into the bar.
The block tilted.
It fell from the ledge, striking the heavy cable guide with a massive crash.
The impact sheared the conduit from the wall, pulling the power cables out of their sockets in a flurry of blue electrical arcs.
The right turret went completely dark, its searchlight dying, its barrels drooping toward the floor.
The corridor fell silent, save for the rhythmic, metallic sighing of the floor vents.
“Status,” Jack said, his voice cutting through the quiet.
“I am clear,” Kayla said, dropping down from the high ledge to a lower platform.
“The upper level is stable. The power loop is dead.”
“I am moving,” Vance said, stepping out from behind his pillar, his rifle held ready.
He walked toward Jack and Ryker, his eyes scanning the dark corners of the ceiling.
Ryker slowly sat up, his hand rising to touch the hardened grey foam around his collar.
He did not look at Jack.
His breathing was still heavy, but the color was returning to his face, the blue tint fading from his lips.
“Can you walk, Voss?” Jack asked, using Ryker’s surname to maintain the professional distance required in the field.
Ryker nodded once, a stiff, jerky movement of his helmet.
“I can walk.”
“Good,” Jack said.
“Get up. We are only halfway through the gauntlet.”
He helped Ryker to his feet.
Ryker stumbled once, his legs shaky, but he managed to balance himself by leaning against the basalt wall.
His hand remained close to his collar, as if he expected the foam to dissolve at any moment.
Jack checked his HUD.
The scoring display had dropped to seventy-eight points.
The penalty for leaving his position and assisting a disabled squad mate was severe, but he did not care.
He had kept them alive.
The archive access was still possible if they reached the exit gate within the target window.
The path ahead of them was a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor constructed of rough basalt blocks and steel floor grates.
Below the grates, Jack could see the dark, shifting shapes of the primary ventilation ducts.
Every few seconds, a blast of hot steam and toxic yellow gas would erupt from the vents, hissing against the metal bars.
“The vents are on a timer,” Vance said, looking at the boiling clouds of gas ahead of them.
“There is no pattern. It is random. We will have to wait for the system to cycle down.”
“It is not random,” Jack said.
He closed his eyes for a second, letting the cold sensation from the device on his arm settle into his mind.
He listened to the sound of the pressure release.
The steam had a distinct cycle.
There was a low, mechanical click from the valves beneath the floor, followed by a three-second buildup of pressure.
Then, the hiss of the release.
The gas followed a separate cycle, triggered by the thermal sensors in the walls.
“The steam vents release every six seconds,” Jack said, opening his eyes.
“The gas vents release every eight seconds. There is a four-second window where both are closed. We have to move during that window, block by block.”
“How do you know that?” Ryker asked, his voice still raspy over the comms.
“I listen,” Jack said simply.
“Vance, you lead. Kayla, follow him. Ryker, stay behind me. I will count the seconds.”
He stood at the edge of the first vent grate.
The hot steam flared, obscuring his vision with a white cloud of moisture.
He waited.
The click of the valve sounded beneath the floor.
“Three,” Jack said.
“Two. One. Move.”
Vance stepped onto the grate, his boots clicking against the iron bars.
He crossed the first section in three long strides, reaching the solid stone platform on the far side.
Kayla followed him immediately, her movements fluid and silent.
“Next one,” Jack said.
“Wait for the release.”
The steam erupted with a loud, wet roar, then faded.
“Now,” Jack said.
Ryker was still slow, his movements clumsy from the lingering effects of the gas.
Jack kept a firm grip on his harness, pulling him forward before the next cycle could begin.
They reached the second platform.
“The third section is wider,” Kayla said, looking ahead.
“There are three grates in a row. We cannot cross them in four seconds.”
Jack looked at the layout.
She was right.
The distance was too great for Ryker to clear in the safety window.
“We use the cross-vents,” Jack said.
He pointed to a secondary pipe running along the base of the wall.
“That pipe has a pressure relief valve at the joint. If we jam the valve, it will force the steam to bypass the third section for one full cycle.”
“How do we jam it?” Vance asked.
“With this,” Jack said.
He reached down and picked up a heavy, discarded steel bracket from the floor, a piece of scrap from a previous training run.
“We wedge it into the valve handle.”
He looked at Kayla.
“Can you hit it from here?”
Kayla took the bracket from Jack’s hand.
She weighed it, then looked at the valve twenty feet away.
The yellow gas was beginning to rise from the edges of the grates, swirling around the pipe.
“I can,” she said.
She drew her arm back and threw the bracket with a smooth, powerful motion.
The steel bracket sailed through the yellow haze and struck the valve handle with a sharp metallic ring.
The bracket wedged itself into the mechanism, forcing the handle down.
The steam below the third section hissed, then stopped, the pressure diverted into the auxiliary lines.
“Move,” Jack said.
They ran.
They crossed the three wide grates, their boots hammering against the iron.
Ryker stumbled on the final step, his toe plate catching the edge of the stone platform.
He fell forward, but Jack caught him by the back of his suit, hoisting him up and dragging him onto the solid rock just as a blast of yellow gas erupted from the vents behind them.
They were through the vent grid.
The air here was cooler, but the corridor was narrowing, the basalt walls closing in on both sides.
“We are close to the exit,” Vance said, pointing to a heavy steel door at the end of the passage.
The door was grooved and massive, its edges reinforced with heavy locking bolts.
Above the door, a red warning light was flashing.
“The gate is locking down,” Kayla said.
“The automatic timer must have triggered when we disabled the turrets.”
The heavy steel gate was beginning to descend, moving downward with a slow, grinding crawl that left only four feet of clearance above the floor.
“We have to run,” Jack said.
Before they could move, a low, mechanical hum echoed from the ceiling.
A third turret, smaller than the others but more compact, rose from a hidden recess in the floor right in front of the exit gate.
Its three barrels began to rotate, a high-pitched whine that signaled an immediate targeting lock.
“Get down!” Vance shouted, diving toward the side of the passage.
The third turret fired.
It did not fire yellow bolts; it fired high-density kinetic rounds that chipped the basalt walls, showering the squad with sharp stone fragments.
Kayla raised her rifle, but the turret’s shield plate was fully closed, protecting its inner mechanisms from direct frontal fire.
“The pneumatic valve,” Jack said, his mind searching through the schematics again.
“Under the main barrel assembly. There is a small, black hose that controls the elevation cylinder. If we cut that, the gun cannot raise its barrels.”
“I do not have an angle on the hose,” Kayla said, her voice tight as she ducked behind a small projection of rock.
“The shield is too wide.”
Jack looked at the turret.
The device on his arm sent a cold, sharp spike of pressure behind his eyes.
He could see the small gap between the shield plate and the mounting ring.
It was less than two inches wide.
He did not have his rifle ready, but he had something else.
He reached into his utility kit and pulled out his heavy-duty maintenance shears.
“Vance, draw its fire,” Jack said.
Vance did not hesitate.
He leaned out from his pillar and fired three quick shots at the turret’s upper casing.
The sparks distracted the automated sensor, the barrels turning toward Vance’s position.
Jack lunged.
He covered the distance in two long strides, his boots sliding on the wet stone.
He reached the base of the third turret.
He thrust his hands through the narrow gap beneath the shield plate, his fingers searching for the rubber hose.
His hand found the slick, cold surface of the pneumatic line.
The turret began to rotate back toward him, its heavy steel casing brushing against his shoulder plates.
Jack clamped the shears over the hose and squeezed with all his strength.
The reinforced rubber severed with a dull pop.
A spray of pressurized hydraulic fluid erupted from the line, coating Jack’s visor in a greasy, dark film.
The turret’s barrels immediately lost pressure, dropping down to their lowest angle and striking the stone floor with a heavy thud.
The motor continued to whine, but the weapon was useless, its kinetic rounds firing harmlessly into the dirt at its own base.
“The gate!” Kayla shouted.
The heavy steel door was now only three feet from the floor.
“Go,” Jack said, wiping the grease from his visor with his forearm.
“Slide under it!”
Vance went first.
He threw himself flat onto his stomach, sliding beneath the descending steel edge with inches to spare.
He scrambled to his feet on the other side.
“Kayla, next,” Jack ordered.
She moved with athletic grace, diving headfirst through the gap and rolling onto her feet beside Vance.
“Voss,” Jack said, turning to Ryker.
Ryker was standing near the wall, his face pale, his limbs still trembling.
He looked at the narrowing gap beneath the gate, then at Jack.
“I cannot make it,” Ryker whispered.
“My suit… the hydraulics are failing from the gas exposure.”
“You can make it,” Jack said.
He grabbed Ryker’s arm, pulling him toward the gate.
“I will help you. On my count.”
The gate was now two feet from the floor.
“Go!” Jack shouted.
He shoved Ryker forward, throwing his own weight behind the push.
Ryker slid through the opening, his shoulder plates scraping the descending steel with a shower of orange sparks.
Vance and Kayla grabbed Ryker’s hands from the other side, pulling him through into the exit chamber.
Jack was alone on the other side of the gate.
The gap was now less than eighteen inches.
He dropped to his knees, preparing to slide through.
A deep, low-register vibration shook the stone beneath his boots.
It was not the rhythmic pulsing of the steam vents or the mechanical hum of the turrets.
It was a violent, erratic shudder that seemed to come from the very core of the mountain.
The basalt walls groaned, a sound of immense structural strain.
A sharp, explosive crack echoed from the ceiling above them.
Jack looked up.
A massive basalt slab, twenty feet long and weighing several tons, had sheared loose from the roof of the corridor, its structural integrity destroyed by the combination of the steam vent heat, the turret fire, and the sudden tectonic tremor.
The slab was tilted, its support columns crumbling into dust.
Directly beneath its shadow, on the far side of the gate, Ryker was still lying on his back, unable to move his damaged suit.
The slab began to fall.
Jack watched as the massive stone descended toward Ryker, the shadow expanding across the floor, the air filling with the roar of grinding rock.
“Ryker!” Jack screamed.
The gate slammed shut, the heavy steel pins locking into the floor with a final, echoing crash, cutting off Jack’s view of the chamber.
Inside the dark corridor, the ceiling began to collapse.
Jack threw himself backward as the world dissolved into dust and falling stone.