When the Red Wolves made their way down into the underground facility, the hallways came to life with motion-detecting lights and the whirring sounds of air filtration systems that hadn’t been turned on in decades. The air within was stale and dry. The copper-colored walls and floors of the tubular hallways were strangely pristine. It was easy for the group to forget that they were in a centuries-old structure. It had the opulent yet menacing design that the hated Queen was known for, and her Hawthorn emblem was featured prominently on the doors and floor segments.

  “This facility is ancient...might even have been built before the war…” Jaik said while looking around in awe.

  “You're probably right. Our reports didn’t mention how antiquated this place truly is. It has the veneer of more recent Kingdom design, but it’s clearly just a fa?ade.” Ursun said while running his fingers along the smooth copper walls of the corridor they walked within.

  “This place was hermetically-sealed. Not a trace of mold or dust. Strange, since the air filters haven’t been on for decades.” Leanna commented.

  They all walked in a formation that provided a complete view of their surroundings.

  “They must’ve cleaned the place before they locked it up tight. Sounds like something Her Royal Highness would’ve ordered.” Srell replied with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Don’t be silly. The Queen builds things to last, plain and simple.” Lorias said.

  “These copper surfaces are anti-microbial in nature, so they clean themselves. It’s low-tech, but effective.” Ursun said in a matter-of-fact tone. “There may be some conduits in the walls supplying just enough energy to electrically sterilize the air every so often, just like we use back at HQ.”

  “Ever the expert on Kingdom technology, sir. There’s still much about it that I don’t know.” Leanna said with a smirk.

  Ursun shrugged and continued leading his group down the lengthy corridor.

  “You’re an analyst, not an engineer. You know enough to get into their systems, and that’s good enough for me.” Ursun stated.

  As RED-1 continued walking through the upper level of the facility, their collective anxiety grew each minute that they didn’t encounter any resistance. There were no robotic security guards or automated turrets in sight. If they didn’t know better, they would have assumed that the place was simply a civilian research station. The few rooms that they passed by were full of old computers, medical devices, and other tools that they didn’t recognize. They didn’t have time to do more than a simple threat assessment of the areas that they moved through.

  “I don’t know why the internal security system hasn’t been activated.” She whispered.

  “It’s like we’re being welcomed with open arms…” Jaik also whispered.

  “Don’t count on it. We’re coming up on what Data Girl believes is the central security room.” Srell said more loudly than the others.

  When they rounded the corner of the hallway that they were in, they entered into a massive room that featured two open freight elevators that both led down to two separate wings of the facility. At the center of the room was a smaller room with a panoramic window that provided an unobstructed view of both of the freight elevators to either side of it. Leanna paused in front of the others and scanned the room. Before she could initiate any sort of wireless connection with its door systems, a loud sound began to blast through the area.

  “And there it is…” Lorias said with a loud sigh and a flip of his long hair, which hung down from his red helmet.

  “Tandem operation of dual protection rooms was not performed. Extended Away interrupted.” A masculine, robotic voice blared from the ceilings, along with the cacophonous alarm.

  “Damn…” Jaik cursed quietly.

  “The Queen will not be disrespected. Destruction of trespassers begins now.” The voice continued before falling silent.

  Several sections of the hallway’s walls opened up, revealing dozens of sentry constructs lined up in the hidden access-ways. The constructs were seven-foot tall bronze-colored humanoids with various weapons affixed to their oblong bodies. Mirror-like orbs were attached to various parts of their bodies and acted as sensors to scan their surroundings. The bulky machines could barely be called androids with their blocky limbs and their long, cylindrical torsos. They looked like vestiges from a bygone age.

  The mercenaries immediately began firing their weapons as they ran to the center of the room, aiming at the constructs’ sensor orbs first. They ducked behind the small panoptic room near the elevator platforms and used it for cover.

  “Leanna, get one of these lifts online now!” Ursun yelled while he fired his PAW at the nearest slow-starting construct. He knew that his team wouldn’t stand a chance against the dozens of constructs in the room once they were fully activated.

  “Yes sir!” Leanna yelled.

  The security lockdown had severed her wireless connection to the facility. She quickly leapt over onto the nearest elevator platform and plugged into its control panel. Jaik jumped in behind her to cover her hacking attempt.

  “These constructs…I’ve never seen so many this freakin’ big and this freakin’ out-dated!” Srell yelled as he effortlessly shot precisely at their sensors.

  “We’re lucky that they’re so old. It looks like they can only barely function.” Lorias said coolly.

  His shots caused one of the constructs to explode in a fiery blast. The access-way it had been in collapsed, sending several other constructs beside that stood upon it to fall into the recesses of the wall.

  “Imagine if these were all plasma soldiers. We’d be dead for sure!” Srell shouted before cackling loudly as he took out five of the sentries in quick succession.

  “That’s my little marksman. Keep firing just like that, but keep your deranged thoughts to yourself.” Lorias said with a smile. He didn’t want to consider that the Queen’s latest constructs could be lying in wait in the lower levels, not while he was busy defending his allies.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The room began to shake from the increasing number of exploding robots. Jaik looked up and worried that the ceiling might collapse on their heads. He could barely believe how old the robots that had appeared were. They looked to him like the machines the Queen had used to launch her initial takeover of the world a millennium ago. He’d seen such constructs in historical recordings from the Old World that he’d studied in school.

  “Get in! This elevator’s about to start moving!” Leanna yelled to the others after removing her cord from the control panel.

  Lorias, Srell and Ursun rushed to the lift platform while continuing to fire on the constructs. When they were all aboard, the large platform began to descend diagonally along a large, angled shaft. The room they’d been in disappeared above them when a massive hatch quickly closed overhead. Each of them breathed a sigh of relief at the temporary reprieve. The alarm, however, still blared through the elevator shaft.

  “If the sentry constructs have all been activated on the lower levels…” Leanna began to say.

  “Then they are probably going to be fully-functioning by the time we get down there.” Lorias finished her statement.

  “So what! They’re no match for our weapons. One of our bullets rips right through them. I don’t even think they’re properly armored.” Srell said so dismissively that Jaik shook his head with annoyance.

  “Even if those machines are archaic, their numbers alone are a threat to us.” Jaik mentioned softly.

  “I’ve got it handled.” Ursun said vaguely to his team.

  Before their commander could explain himself, the mercenaries felt the platform they were on shake violently. Large cracks suddenly began to form on the gears that were controlling its motion, until the largest gear exploded into a shower of sparks and shrapnel. A silver liquid began to pour out of what was left of the gears. Each of the mercenaries grabbed onto whatever handholds they could find on the edges as the platform descended faster and faster.

  “We’ll be dead when this thing hits the ground!” Srell screamed.

  Without missing a beat, Lorias pulled out his variable sword. With a fancy flick of his wrist, he switched its operating mode to refrigerate. He ran over to the broken gear assembly and shoved his sword in between what was left of the mechanism. He then began to twist the sword’s hilt, causing the blade to unleash a frigid mist that caused the silver liquid to freeze. The lubricant soon changed into an especially durable ice. The ice quickly spread across the mechanism and created enough friction between the platform and the elevator shaft’s walls to slow their descent.

  In a matter of seconds, the platform had slowed down, but not enough to avoid striking the malfunctioning hatch leading to the lower levels. The force of the collision threw the mercenaries slightly into the air before they fell back down hard onto the platform. A hole leading to the lower level’s elevator platform room was ripped into the middle of the platform. Luckily, no one had been standing there.

  Jaik was the first to recover from the crash, mainly due to him being the most physically-fit member of the team. He got up slowly and checked himself for injuries as a doctor would. He was surprised when he didn’t find any, save for a slender scrape on the red piece of armor covering his right forearm. He was relieved when the rest of his team began to get up from the floor without his help. After checking on each of them, he found nothing worse than a few painful bruises beneath their armor.

  “Damn…we almost died…” Srell said in disbelief.

  “Lorias…you saved us all.” Jaik stated with gratitude.

  “Yeah, at the cost of my blade…” Lorias lamented while glancing over at its shattered remains near the still icy mechanism. Wisps of cold mist still wafted from its blade-less hilt.

  “We’re even luckier that the lubricant that leaked from those old gears was some sort of bismuth grease. It’s about one of the only things that could’ve expanded like that to slow us down.” Leanna noted while sliding her then crooked glasses back up the bridge of her nose.

  “Lucky guess.” Lorias shrugged.

  He retrieved the hilt of his former sword, disengaged its refrigerate mode, and placed it on his belt. Even as just a handle, it could be useful. Most of the powerful mechanisms that gave the variable weapon its name were contained within that handle.

  “It’s not as loud down here…” Jaik noted.

  They could make out the echoes of the alarm from the room above them, but it had stopped blaring within the shaft they were all in.

  “Let’s report what’s happened to the ship.” Ursun said.

  He looked over at Leanna, who was in charge of mission communication.

  “Sorry sir, but our radio communication with the surface has been cut off since the alarm went on. Active jamming system, I’m sure.” Leanna said with a shrug.

  Ursun looked at her intensely while he thought of their next course of action. He knew that she must’ve already tried her best to re-establish mission comms, but she thought that he was criticizing her. When he saw the worried way that she was looking at him, Ursun rubbed the back of his head and grinned at her.

  “Since everyone seems alright, let’s keep moving. Leanna, let’s see what’s down that hole.” Ursun said a bit light-heartedly after making sure his coilgun was in one piece.

  Leanna nodded curtly and tapped the sides of her glasses once again. A section of her backpack began to shift, revealing a small, flying insectoid drone. It had a spherical shape and featured two sets of buzzing wings that shimmered with a myriad of colors. Leanna directed the drone to descend down the hole that had been ripped into the middle of the platform.

  The drone’s eye-cameras streamed images to each of the mercenaries’ arm displays. They saw the bent and ripped metal that surrounded their eventual exit, and were surprised by how wide the chasm actually was. It only took the drone a few minutes to exit the hole and enter the large elevator room below them.

  The room was nearly pitch dark, save for a few eerie green linear lights that framed the room’s general shape. The diagonal shaft that the team stood in would have opened into the room, and would have traveled straight down along a rail track that rested on its wall. The living drone’s small, yellow bioluminescent orbs, which sat just above its eye-cameras, shined bright lights on the solid ground several meters directly beneath them.

  There was a recessed divot where the platform elevator would have come to rest. The divot was two meters deep, which would be manageable for them to get out of.

  “Looks like the lower levels are in a low-power state…” Lorias reasoned.

  As the drone continued to descend, its sensor organs picked up movement within the room below them. Just when its eye-cameras were beginning to focus on the moving object, the drone was shot out of the sky. Its arthropodal body burst in the air into a mess of organs and vital fluids that splattered across the area. The sudden loss of the drone’s signal sent a painful shock of biofeedback up through Leanna’s spine, where her dronepack was actually connected. She grunted and clenched her teeth, but was otherwise fine.

  “Something’s down there. Something big.” Leanna said while rubbing her neck.

  “We don’t have much time left before the Queen’s forces storm our location. Let’s rappel down there, neutralize the threat, and then proceed to the target. I’ll create a distraction with an illuminator grenade so that we aren’t gunned down on our way down.” Ursun commanded.

  He was the first to unfurl a bundle of thin rope from his gear belt, along with a small foldable grappling hook. He quickly connected the rope to the hook and secured the line on one of the lift’s guardrails. After tossing the rope down the hole and shining a light to check the depth, he realized that his fifteen-meter rope didn’t cut it.

  Ursun then motioned with his right hand for Jaik to hand him his rope. Jaik fumbled for a moment with his belt before handing Ursun what he wanted. It only took their commander a minute or so to tie the two ropes together at their ends, making it long enough to rappel down to the floor of the lower level.

  “We’ll need another one, so that we can cover each other’s descent.” Ursun said. It was an indirect order, but his team understood immediately.

  Lorias and Srell got to work doing the same thing that he had done. In a few minutes, there were two ropes securely attached and dangling down a safe person-sized gap in the torn metal hole. Despite their thin appearance, the ropes could support more than three hundred kilograms at any given time.

  “Lorias, you’re with me. You’ll cover my descent. There’s no telling what’s down there, so scan your surroundings at all times. Once we’re halfway down, Leanna and Srell will rappel down too, followed by Jaik once all of us have touched down safely.” Ursun said.

  “Yes sir.” The others replied quietly.

  Once Ursun and Lorias were clipped into the rope and ready to begin their descent, Ursun withdrew a small transparent orb from his gear belt, squeezed it, and then threw it down the hole. With a quick nod to Lorias, the two men jumped down into the hole and began sliding down their ropes at a moderate speed. Seconds after they jumped, a bright light began to glow from the illuminator grenade that Ursun had used.

  The two of them immediately saw two large, spider-like robots on the ground twenty meters below them. They weren’t as antiquated as the constructs on the upper level, but their boxy design and mounted guns were still at least a few centuries old. The machines reacted to the sudden light by affixing gun turrets on their backs at the grenade and firing. Their shots failed to hit the small object, as it was being obscured by the depression that it had fallen into.

  “I have to use it now.” Ursun said quietly to Lorias while the two locked their rope clips and stopped their descent.

  “Right,” was all Lorias could say.

  Ursun quickly grabbed the bulky coilgun that was on his back with both hands and slid its safety mechanism off. The device came to life instantly, with a blue light shining from its small display screen. Ursun aimed at the two spider-like machines and pulled the trigger. The coilgun began to vibrate, and then began to make a low humming noise. Just as the spider machines began to focus their guns on Ursun, the coilgun beeped and released an invisible pulse of high-intensity microwaves at the machines.

  Sparks began to fly from the robots as they soon collapsed motionless on the ground. Ursun and Lorias waited for a few seconds before continuing their descent and making it down to the ground beneath them.

  “Looks like it works.” Ursun said with a satisfied smile before slinging the coilgun back onto his back.

  “So that’s the special feature that Gnapp added to it.” Lorias said with a scratch of his head. He wasn’t sure how the weapon had stopped the machines, but he was glad that it did.

  It didn’t take long for the rest of the mercenaries to make it down to join Ursun and Lorias in the six-foot-deep elevator depression.

  “Glad you were able to neutralize those spider-tanks so quickly. They would have definitely killed us coming down those ropes.” Srell said to Ursun with a smile.

  “Well, let’s not rest easy yet. These spider-tanks may be old, but they might have some auto-repair functionality built in. The Queen’s technology has always been advanced, after all.” Leanna reminded the group.

  “Let’s get to the next security console.” Ursun ordered.