The infiltration team had sent one of their rare messages back to the core of the Scarlet Alliance. Just because they believed their transmissions wouldn’t be noticed didn’t mean it was worth risking it frequently. However, they needed to know that the Exalted Quadrant forces were still on their way. Indeed, they should be assaulting the Alliance’s borders within a week, if the predictions were correct.

At such a distance, even their fastest transmissions would take some time. They should receive a response with a few days to spare from the most recent projections, so they could adjust accordingly.

As for their plans before then, they were simply heading further into the core of the Citadel of Exalted Light’s territory. They were quite careful as they approached each system, and that caution quickly paid off as Koralo spotted tracking formations.

“I can’t negate the formations without risking some other sort of alarm,” Koralo explained. “But we’re not trying to get a whole fleet through. With our ship’s stealth capabilities, I can find the best route through. There are several layers to the formation so sadly we’ll need to do a bit of maneuvering.”

“Can you pilot the ship and assess the formations at the same time?” Alva asked.

“It shouldn’t be an issue unless we are being attacked as well… in which case the formation would be superfluous anyway.”

Velvet nodded. “Good. I’ll monitor the stealth systems. Let me know if you need something in particular.”

“And I’ll sit here and do nothing,” Durff nodded seriously. That was, in fact, the most helpful thing he could do in their given situation.

Picking their way through the formations was quite a bit slower, and if they were spotted doing so it would have been quite problematic. After all, nobody with legitimate business would be avoiding the formations. Then again, there were vast swathes of space where nobody was watching because the formations were supposed to take care of it. Said formations became more frequent as they drew closer to their final destination.

They received their reply, updating them on the status of the upcoming invasion. Zaur Beridze had not yet been spotted, but the fleets arrayed against them were approaching as expected. This time, however, the Scarlet Alliance would be prepared to face them in a properly fortified border system. Better than Lonkeon, though not nearly so well fortified as Xankeshan itself. That was expected, however.

That left the infiltration team a few days. Their mission needed to be completed before Zaur Beridze assaulted the system, because even with their best defenses they were uncertain about being able to defeat him. They couldn’t choose not to fight, even if it was perhaps a better tactical decision. The Scarlet Alliance was built on a promise, and abandoning a system entirely would ruin the trust they had built. They could afford to be defeated and pushed back, but they couldn’t afford to do nothing.

If they were lucky, Zaur wouldn’t bother to fight at first. But they couldn’t count on luck, because if he did fight he could rapidly begin taking out Augmentation cultivators. It wouldn’t matter if he was somehow defeated after that, because they couldn’t afford to lose any of their core strength. They didn’t have huge piles of spare Augmentation cultivators lying around. Of course, they wouldn’t want to have close friends and allies perish even if they did have ‘backups’.

-----

“I was kind of hoping they’d make a mistake,” Koralo said as they hovered just outside of their final destination. They could see the Citadel itself, visible even from space. Though only because they had the enhanced eyes of cultivators, since there were limits to how ostentatiously large even the greatest cultivators could make things. The actual sect grounds seemed to take up a good half of the planet, but the crystal citadel merely stood tall on a much smaller footprint.

“It’s…” Alva frowned.

“Brittle looking,” Durff said.

“Pointless,” Chikere commented.

“Difficult to infiltrate,” Velvet said finally.

Alva shrugged. “I was going to say it was kind of pretty. But we have things that look nice and aren’t pointless. Is that… a throne room a kilometer wide? With nothing else?”

“Maybe it’s more impressive up close,” Koralo pondered. “But I think the important thing here is the planet itself has a formation. Not only is it more profound than the rest, I feel constant surveillance.”

“We are invisible,” Velvet said. “But it looks a bit tough.” They were able to watch a constant flow of cultivators going in and out of the planet’s atmosphere. Hopefully, they would learn something useful. “I don’t suppose there’s any particular weak points?”

Koralo shook his head. “Not that I can pick out. If there are any, I’d expect them to be paid even greater attention to. I don’t want to give up when we’ve come this far… but we have to consider potential future missions. If we get caught pointlessly…” he shook his head. “But we’re also needed. Maybe they should have sent someone more qualified.”

“What does the formation do?” Durff asked. “It… looks for ships?”

“Something like that,” Koralo explained. “I imagine it’s looking for certain parameters.”

“So if we don’t send a ship,” Durff said. “It won’t notice us.”

“Well,” Koralo shook his head. “I doubt it’s that narrow. It would probably pick out cultivators. It might even be especially interested in lone cultivators. That said… I might have an idea.”

“Me too,” Durff said. “What if someone breaks the formation on the opposite side from where we want to go in, and then everyone else sneaks through while they’re distracted?”

“If it comes down to it,” Velvet said. “That might be a good idea. But I think I’d use that as a last resort.”

“Indeed,” Koralo nodded. “But it might be possible to sneak along with another ship. There are two possibilities. The first is slightly riskier but will ease our escape attempts, among other things. That is, following so closely after another ship that our vessel is assumed to be a part of it. Alternatively, we do the same but with only our persons. I assume our stealth expert can rate the viability of these options better than myself.”

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Velvet thought for a few moments. “Our ship’s stealth systems are meant to provide complete stealth. That means being noticed at all can screw things up. I don’t think I’d make the attempt. Unless the other option proves unviable, at least. We need to see how it reacts to transports carrying larger numbers of diverse cultivators.”

-----

They spent one of their few remaining days just watching the flow of people. In that whole time, one single ship was stopped- some smugglers foolishly trying to slip by, it seemed. That didn’t mean anything, though. Perhaps others had slipped through, if security was lax enough. Alternatively, most people just knew better. But some careful observation let them become more familiar with the formation’s detection methods.

“We’ll have to be inside a ship,” Velvet declared. “It’s too risky otherwise. I can help mitigate the magnitude of our apparent cultivations, but we need to seem as if we belong. Which means a ship large enough to not notice five temporary passengers. Specifically, if they have to declare number of passengers… it’s better if they think it’s a rounding error.”

“So how do we get onto the ship?” Koralo asked. “I doubt they’ll open the doors… or let us through their outer formations or the like.”

“We lie in wait,” Velvet said. “Then we drop in from subspace.”

“That’s a lot less noticeable than my solution,” Chikere said. “Spatial rifts are not subtle.”

“Indeed. They’re better for speed, but I believe Alva can help us position ourselves properly. What do you think?” Velvet asked.

“Yeah. We’ll have to predict their course, and I wouldn’t want to do it too close to the planet.” Alva shook her head. “But if we do it too early, then we risk being noticed by the people on the ship.”

“Right,” Velvet said. “It will be difficult to hide from their senses while revealing ourselves to the sensors. But a formation might help.”

“What kind?” Koralo asked. “I have some formation flags, obviously.”

“Some sort of… stabilizing or unifying formation? If we were all One Hundred Stars cultivators I could do it fairly easily,” Velvet said. “But it’s just three of us,” she gestured to Alva and Koralo.

“We’ll need to do some practice runs.”

-----

Alva waited. She was waiting for… a deer, yeah. She was just hunting deer. She’d done it so many times before. It was familiar, just waiting and watching.

Things were slightly different, in that she wasn’t going to shoot anything. But she was waiting for her target to be in position for her to do something.

She was worried they might change trajectory and force her to scurry at the last moment. Distance tolerances were already tight since she was working with subspace, and she hadn’t trained for this particular situation. Maybe she should have, though. It seemed useful.

She almost missed it, her senses barely leaking out into normal space. The ship tingled her senses, and she found an empty cabin. She twisted and… they dropped out into real space, past the ship’s barriers.

Durff’s shoulder was in the wall. He yanked it out with the sound of splintering wood.

Someone banged on the wall next to them. “Can you keep it down? I’m trying to sleep in here!”

There weren’t any other immediate responses, which implied their spatial ripples hadn’t been too extreme. Velvet was keeping their energy encapsulated as Koralo rapidly set up a formation. They just had to hope that nobody was looking for something like what he placed, and since it was inside all of the ship’s formations… it should hopefully be less obvious.

Alva barely noticed any change with the formation active. Velvet had been balancing them marvelously already. Then again, they were expecting high tolerances from the actual detection formations. They should be intersecting with them in about ten minutes. At this point, Alva could only wait once more but without the ability to affect their situation. Durff grimaced, poking and prodding at his shoulder. He couldn’t use his energy to disintegrate whatever was in there just yet, since they had to keep their energy usage to a minimum.

The formation slipped over them. Watching, searching. Tensing up wouldn’t help, so Alva did her best to look as relaxed as Velvet. Chikere probably was relaxed, which was a whole different thing.

Koralo had mentioned some of them might be on watch lists. If their energy signatures were connected to something, they might be picked up even with the alterations they had in place. There was no clear reaction from the formation, but perhaps that would come with a squad of soldiers when they landed. They’d have to pay attention for gathering Augmentation cultivators.

They hoped their ride was going close to the Citadel, but they couldn’t really be picky as there weren’t that many ships transporting people. Or at least not those with mixed cultivations.

Alva hoped nobody noticed the damage to their room.

-----

When they landed, Velvet led the group in stepping out into the hall. They clumped around her, into the middle of the pack. Just as they were walking down the gangplank, one of the crew stopped them. “Hey, what room were you?”

“27-A,” Velvet replied immediately. Various senses had been watching the whole ship as people scrambled off, so lying about that was foolish. Her thoughts lingered on the weapons at her waist, though killing this man wouldn’t provide much value. They’d have to make a mad dash for the Citadel if something happened here. Or come up with a very good excuse.

“What the hell did you do to the wall?” the man said. “We have to repair that. Which means you need to pay for it.”

Thoughts flicked through Velvet’s head. She settled on a course of action quickly. “Your crappy vessel was like that when we got here. No way we’re paying.” It was a risk, because arguing might reveal that they weren’t supposed to be on the ship at all- but trying to sneak out had been deemed riskier.

“You don’t have much choice.”

“How much is garbage like that worth anyway? It’s just wood,” Velvet said.

“Just wood?” the sailor said. “This is a vessel of the finest quality!”

It wasn’t. High quality vessels weren’t packed full of people going between systems.

Ultimately, Velvet went back and forth, haggling over the price. She was a troublesome customer, not a stowaway. She didn’t push too hard, but she didn’t give up right away. Ultimately, overpaying for some wood wasn’t as bad as actually causing a commotion. Velvet carefully monitored the reactions of people around them, and didn’t draw things out too long.

Then they were gone, leaving the starport behind. Velvet wondered what the next step was until it fell into her lap as they were passing by a bar.

“More boooze!” a clearly drunk woman called. “Nobody can tell me not to!”

Velvet hadn’t expected to stumble into anyone of import where they were, still a good few kilometers away from the core of the sect, and outside of restricted areas. But here was an Augmentation cultivator of some value, according to their information gatherers. Was it… Lelka? Velvet tried to recall as much as she could as she approached. “Looks like a good place. You four go on ahead and secure some rooms. I’m gonna get a drink.”