It was dawn and the mountain valley was filled with mist. Clouds wreathed the mountains at the head of the valley. I stood at the top of the hill in the center of our outpost looking outward and I couldn't even see past the first trees of the forest beyond our walls. A few scraggly shadows of branches emerged from the fog like skeletal arms.

I shivered and not entirely from the cold. Grandpa growled as he stepped out of the portal beside me. “Let’s get the sitrep here.” I covered a yawn and followed.

We had slept on the ride back down to Threshold, once I stopped ranting about what Waters was up to and why Veda wasn’t answering our calls. Juana nodding off quickly while I stared out into space as we descended the immense elevator back down to the surface of Ganymede. Space was so immense, so vast, it humbled me. It was hard to remember sometimes that all of this madness, these scenarios and worlds invented by the reality engine, was taking place under the surface of one of Jupiter's moons. When the other aliens talked about their own systems and their worlds and reality engines, it all felt unreal. But Jupiter hanging over us, looming like an ancient god with its ominous storms as ever-present eyes… that I couldn’t deny.

I heard a bird cry off in the mist somewhere as a breeze stirred my coat, bringing me back to, well, not reality, but the present at least. I pushed back my hat and focused."We've got six days before competition opens up for the Keystone. We need to focus on some of those other objectives the System hinted at in its opening briefing.”

"The team's been busy while we were off hob-nobbing with the Galactic elite.” Grandpa looked around as we strode through the camp and I followed his gaze.

Our bunkhouse had expanded. On the outside it now looked like an old-time saloon and hotel, with swinging half-doors in the front and an upper balcony outside the little rooms where gunslingers and drifters could rent a bed for the night.

It actually could hold almost a hundred people at a time now. We had plugged upgrades in over the course of Phase Two, and then as Phase Three kicked off, spent a bunch of upgrade points. Juana had taken care of that remotely while we traveled. She had been in contact with our base building team down here, and checked with me and Grandpa about our opinion.

Beyond the hotel was a big blacksmith shop for the crafters, and a long low line of sheds beside it offering more workspace.

There was a whole apothecary shop across the street, dusty brass scales and glass bottles in the picture window under painted gold letters reading “Apocethery”.

We were really starting to look like a little town with wooden sidewalks and a dusty open stretch in between. There was a hitching post out in front of the bunkhouse, even though none of us had horses. I liked the look. Made me feel at home striding down the street in my coat and hat, my gun belt hanging comfortably at my waist.

My combat boots weren't quite right for the picture, but they were damn good footwear, and I wasn't going to change them unless the System gave me some sort of upgrade.

The big wooden statue that had been our node was now transformed into a monument in the center of the town's single street. It looked like one of those old war memorials you'll see in small towns, a smooth white obelisk with names on each side, little plaques saying what war they had died in.

Instead of the names of the dead, it bore the names of those of us who had fought in Phase Two. One side for the fighters like me and Sage and Grandpa, and the other three for the crafters who had come to our aid.

A little old church building with a tall bell tower atop it and white clapboard walls had its doors open. Grandpa pointed. "That's HQ."

We mounted the steps, me right on Grandpa's heels and entered the church building. Instead of rows of pews, it had a couple of folding tables and those metal folding chairs you see at every community event. About fifteen people were hard at work, grouped into three different clusters.

Dwight was in the nearest batch. He looked up at me as we entered and gave a quick nod. "Good to have you both back," he said. "We're working on a list of supplies that we have and supplies we think we're going to need. Our informants have been telling us everything they found out talking to off-worlders about Phase Three. We actually learned a lot during that special mission back in Phase Two. You know, while you guys were busy playing with the other teams, me and my crafters were learning a lot of new skills.”

"That's right," I said. I'd been so busy thinking about base defense in the last few days of Phase Two, I had forgotten what the crafters had been up to. "Weren't they giving you a lot of recipes because they want us to supply stuff for their folk too?"

"That's right," Dwight said. "There's apparently rules about how many people they can bring into an exploit and since we haven't obliged them by dying fast enough, they're going to have to work with us."

I shared a grin with him. I’d had a small hand in keeping more of us humans alive than the aliens liked, and I was damn proud of it.

Dwight continued. “Mama Grace and I negotiated a deal with as many other humans as we could, like a union that says we won't sell any recipes to anyone who refused to get on board with our demands.”

“Most of the big players have already agreed, and we don't want to go back on our word,” Grandpa said. “We all agreed we would abide by the deal and we will. So, anybody that's signed gets a fair price for our work.”

“But,” Dwight said, holding up a finger, “we are all agreed that we,” he swept a hand around the room, taking in our whole team, “get to skip to the head of the line. What Misfits want, Misfits get.”

"So you're going to coordinate both operations?" I asked. I was worried about Dwight trying to do too much by himself. I wanted him to be in charge of making sure my team had what we needed for this phase.

"I'm going to liaise with a couple of outsiders," he said. "Some of Colonel Ames's people and one gal I've done some work with before. They'll take care of things on the Threshold side, helping set prices, arrange queues, make sure we don't make any of the aliens more angry at us humans than they have to be. I'm just going to take care of our team. I've already gotten started on lists, but we're going to need more information." He pointed in front of him.

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I came over and studied his table. He had handwritten sheets of paper spread all over with notes in six different colors of pen, obviously made by more than one person.

One sheet said "potions”. It listed at least 50 different recipes. There were fire resistance potions, water resistance potions, electric resistance potions, light resistance, dark resistance. There were speed potions separated into movement speed and attack speed. There were mob debuff potions and friendly mob buff potions.

"What, are we going to be going into battle clanking?" I asked, trying to imagine carrying that many potions even in my inventory.

Dwight chuckled. "We'll be picking and choosing. Oh, that reminds me.” He grabbed a couple of belts from his own inventory and set them in front of us. “Potion quick use belts that'll let you access them and other single-use devices faster. Remember those dummies you used with the boss fight?”

"How could I forget?" I said.

“Well, these belts have room to equip ten different types of potions or other consumables. You can use them quick as thinking. The advantage on this versus going through your inventory is that the potions from your inventory take two seconds to use. You've noticed that, right?”

I nodded. “Seems like it's one second to call up what you want and one second to apply it.”

“This cuts that time down by half. It's been a really hot item requested by the aliens of our crafters. So I figured they knew something important. I went ahead and got them made for all of our team.”

I stored that info away. Fights now might come down a single second. I picked up my belt. Grandpa was already threading his through the loops of his pants as he cinched it down. It changed in appearance, becoming a nicely tooled leather belt with ten small thumb-sized vials in loops along his left hip.

“Those are really just for show,” Dwight said as he saw me looking. “You don't have to pull the bottles off or anything.”

I shrugged off my coat, hung my gun belt over the back of a chair, and strapped on my own belt. I snugged it down and the buckle transformed into a big silver oval with an eagle with outstretched wings on it. I'd seen belts just like that on more prosperous ranchers at the county rodeo or community square dance. I sighed and went with it.

“You can put in your order for consumables and we'll get it filled,” Dwight said. “To start with, here's an array of different resist potions and an improved healing potion. This one does 60% of your max health right away and another 60% over the next minute. And the cooldown's only two minutes between potions.”

“That's way better than what Veda gave us.” I picked up my share and stored them in my inventory. A quick thought queued up the most useful ones in my new belt.

Veda’s disappearance was a nagging worry. She’d gone off and left us high and dry, she wasn’t answering our messages, and for all I knew she was about to sell us all out. I scowled as I worried, but Dwight seemed to misunderstand what was bothering me.

“Don't blame her, the galactic market charges exorbitant rates for these, but since we're farming the mats ourselves, we can afford as many as you and your team need.”

“How's the farming looking?” Grandpa asked.

“Check with Frank, he's in charge of that.” Dwight pointed to one of the other two groups. Our old friend Frank, the deputy sheriff from back home on the Arizona Strip, looked up and nodded as we met his eye.

“We'll be right with you,” Grandpa called. “Anything else we need to know?”

“The third team over there is working on upgrades to our creep. They’re already spawning, you know. It's really funny, watching them just being zapped into existence right outside our gate and streaming away into the forest. We're working on creep lures right now. It's a recipe some of us picked up back at the party. You put them down and the creep goes to that location until the lure is destroyed or replaced by a fresher one.”

I nodded. “Rally points. Okay, so we're still supposed to be using these guys here in Phase Three.”

“Right, so the team's working on a catalog of all of the enhancements we can give them. You just let them know what you want and where.”

“As soon as we figure it out,” Grandpa promised, and we moved over to talk to Frank.

He had one foot up on one of the folding chairs as he leaned across the table looking at a map someone was projecting. "Louis, Shad, good to see you again."

"You too, Frank," I said.

"So, you made my job a hell of a lot harder.” He grinned, taking the sting out of his words. "All those new recruits you and Ames called out of the Lotus Eater level have been coming to me looking for work. We just got word that the phase one levels have had safeties turned on. You don't die anymore. Instead, you respawn, and it costs you a soul coin penalty. That means all those farm levels, we need to get in there and hit them hard. I've got…”

His eyes went wide for a minute as he checked his numbers and shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. "Two million, five hundred and forty-three thousand, seven hundred fifteen miners willing to help us out. Most of them have never killed anything more than that first mob they needed for a soul coin to escape the initiation chamber. So I'm having to figure out team leaders, and then they’ve got assistants, and then those assistants are making up team rosters… it’s a mess. We're all sharing information now, but it's a hell of a job to coordinate and figure out what mats we're going to need."

"We don't even know that yet," I said.

"Get everything," Grandpa said. "It's all going to be useful for something. If not for us, we'll sell it to the aliens. We're not going to put all our eggs in one basket. The Phase Three team," he made a gesture that included me and him in that, "we'll push ahead hard to try to capture a share of the prize, but like we've been saying all along, in any gold rush, it's not the miners that strike it rich.

“It’s the shopkeepers and the cooks and the launderers," Frank said, rubbing his face with his hand. "I know, I know. I was listening. Between you and Mama Grace, I got that message through my head. Though, my great-granddaddy did make a big strike at a silver mine in Nevada back in the height of the Comstock load. If he hadn't spent it all on eight wives and 42 kids, I might not have had to be a deputy sheriff in a backwater county on the strip, but that's beside the point. Yeah, we're covering as many levels as we possibly can and I'll adjust where possible. Karen's looking for some assistance for me. People like Arjun, but not as skilled. I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep track of all this.”

“These aliens are cheating. They have their own computers that actually work for them, not like this stupid system that's just trying to get us all killed. We'll ask Veda if there's any kind of AI she can get for us,” I said. "Maybe they've got one they let kids use."

“Worth a shot,” Frank agreed. “Anyway, I do have an actual problem for you guys. We sent out scouts to get a look around the area and they spotted some interesting looking resources, so I sent a team of my best farmers out along with some of my security guys. They got wiped out hard. Big blow to their ego. I kept them back behind the walls after that because I didn't want to use up all of our respawns. Figured we'd get a team of experts out there to see what is going on and how to counter it.”

Grandpa looked at me and I nodded. "Sounds good to me," I said. "Do I get to pick or —?”

“I’d like to go." Frank took his foot down off the chair and stood straight, pushing his hat back on his head. He smiled, looking better and healthier than he had since we'd come to this place almost a year ago. "I know what my people can go up against. I want to make sure you don't over or underestimate their capabilities."

"Great," I felt a smile spread across my face. "It'll be nice to work with you again." I turned to Grandpa. "I'd like Jones, Annie,” and I thought for a minute, “Sage."

"That it?" Grandpa asked. He didn't sound critical, just like he wanted me to be sure. “Captains usually up for commanding more than four privates.” I felt myself get a little warm around my ears at that. I still wasn't used to thinking of myself as a captain.

“Reconnaissance. I don't want to be tied down with too many. The point here is to get a good look at what we're up against and figure out a strategy. Everybody I named can take care of themselves. We've got some good team mobility and of course Jones is essential for his camo and drone.”

"All right, get to it," Grandpa said. "I'll keep working here. Plenty more to do."

"Right." I sent messages to my chosen team members telling them to meet me down by the gate. "Let's ride, Frank.”