I headshot a gnome, sending it tumbling backward over the wall of the castle. The System excitedly proclaimed that the gnome team had failed their attempt against the boss. Wearily, I holstered my revolver. "Nice job, team," I said.

There were tired smiles and some exhausted sighs all around. The last three days had been a blur. My current team had been going for six hours straight. This was the fifth boss attempt in a row that we had interfered with.

"Let's get back to headquarters and grab a bite to eat," I said. "Some of you are due for a rest shift." They gave me tired nods and disappeared down the staircase leading to the kobold tunnels.

All but Sage. Sage was staring out from the battlements, her arms wrapped around one stone crenellation. I stepped over to her and saw the silent tears running down her face.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" I gave her an awkward side hug.

She leaned against me. I could feel her chest heaving. "I'm just so tired," she said.

I tried to remember how long she'd been fighting alongside me today. Certainly, we'd both taken the shift before this one, but she'd had some rest before that, hadn't she? I had been fighting alongside Team Mongoose on a spawn camp attempt. We had successfully gotten so many kills off on one ConSweGo-backed team that they had retired from the game.

Before that had been another round of boss attempts, and Sage had been there for that. We'd been running pretty solid for the last three days trying to catch up. I had slept, I couldn't remember, 18 hours ago? Maybe 24? I was due if I could find the time.

"When did you last get a nap?" I asked, trying to focus on one problem at a time.

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I need to be doing this." Her voice was full of pain. “Just a little while longer. We're almost there, aren't we?”

I checked the latest update Juana had sent. “We've made 60 teams retire in the last three days. Some of the others have to be getting close. We'll be able to rest soon,” I promised, even though I wasn't sure I believed it was true.

While we were down to only about 20 teams left in the game, those were the ones with the deep pockets. Proxima's and ConSweGo’s special teams and a few multinationals with the power of seven or eight star systems behind them. Their bills were mounting up, but they didn't seem to care. I was worried they'd found some sort of loophole that was letting them get away with shirking their bills.

"All right, sweetheart. Let's go back and get something to eat, get you a nap. You'll feel better after that."

"No, I won't." She turned to me and gave me a full-on hug, clinging to me. "I have to keep going. I have to do everything I can do. Otherwise, if I know I didn't give this my all and then we don't make it, I..." She broke down in full sobs.

I patted her back. "Sage! Sage! Nobody's done more than you have. I swear. We're not going to lose."

My words felt hollow. We were still in this, but it was getting harder and harder. My team was getting sloppy. I'd had to bench two different squads, sending them back for mandatory eight-hour downtime, telling them to get their head back in the game. It was part of why I was running so ragged. We were desperately undermanned.

"Come on," I said, and pulled Sage along with me down into the caverns. Instead of taking the path back to our base, though, I connected through a door into Threshold.

Sage blinked. "What's this?"

"You," I said grimly, "need to go up to the Hub and get your ethereum levels checked out. How long has it been?" I knew the answer because it was the same as for me. Ten days. And we were only supposed to go seven between checkups.

"Only if you come, too," she said, grabbing me.

I shook my head. "No, hon. This won't take much longer. I can hold out another day or two."

"Then so can I.”

“Grandpa and I will fight a lot better if we know you're being taken care of. Besides," I said, "I'll let Veda and Ames know you're coming and see if we can't find some sort of PR opportunity for you."

"I don't want to," she said, but she let me tug her along toward the great space elevator up to the Hub.

"You need a good night's sleep and a full checkout. You do that, get back down here, and be ready to kick some more orc butt."

She gave me a wan smile. "How about space elves? They're more fun to kill. I like how mad they look when you gank them."

"Sure. Proxima's got a whole team of those. They'll probably still be in this."

"I don't want you to feel like I'm letting you down."

I crouched so that our faces were level. "Sage, you're the only reason I'm in this. Everything I've done is because you've been here, inspiring me, keeping me moving forward. Right now, I'm telling you, I need you to take care of yourself, okay? Let's get that cowgirl cheer back up."

She sniffed and rubbed her nose. "All right. I think you're right. I don't think I have a choice here."

"You don't," I told her. "Go take care of yourself."

She stepped up into the elevator, and a moment later, she was gone, soaring upward toward the almost too small to be seen hole in the roof of our cavern. I followed her pod for as long as I could see it, then stepped back and headed for our outpost.

As always, headquarters was abuzz with activity. They'd strung a curtain across the back and put a couple of cots behind it where the command team could catch a little sleep in between fights. Allison and Juana were on duty. They looked up as I entered.

"How many more miners are overdue for rest or for getting checked out at the Hub?" I asked. "And don't include me. I know how bad off I am."

"About 10% of our combat miners are overdue on checkups. None by more than three days. Veda says it's not ideal, but we should be able to hold out," Juana said. “As for sleep, it's hard to know. I've been asking people to check in and out when they come off of rest shifts, but not everybody's remembering to do that.”

"We're getting sloppy. We're making mistakes," I said.

"How about you yourself? You need a nap."

"I know." I took a deep, shuddering breath and looked around. "Can I get a status update?"

Allison moved over to our command table and worked it. The display glowed to life. "We have another four teams announcing their retirement, including Firebrand."

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I bowed my head in respect for Mak'gar. "Sorry about that, buddy” I muttered.

"We have six more teams that were making excellent progress, whose 24-hour timers expired in the last few hours but haven't started their attempt yet," Allison continued. "Here, here, here, and here," she pointed.

We had a big diagram on the table with circles representing each of the 87 different instances. More than 60 of them were dark now, indicating that all teams assigned to that instance had since retired. The others were color-coded in various different shades, representing how many bosses still remained, one, two, three, or four.

None of the active instances had more than four bosses left. Too many of them were sitting at one.

I studied what Allison was telling me. The six teams who had yet to engage their boss all had two or three bosses still remaining. "Maybe they're considering pulling out," I suggested, "but haven't made it official yet."

"Maybe," Allison agreed.

I frowned. Something was bothering me. I pointed at the circle in the center. "That's us, right?"

"Yes," Juana said.

"Isn't it supposed to be blue?" Now the circle was yellow.

Juana's eyes narrowed. She leaned over it, her fingers dancing along the table as she sought out information. She gasped.

"What's wrong?"

"You know we had written off all of the other teams in our instance. We hit them hard early on, made them back off or retire."

I nodded. "Yeah?"

"Well, Team Eternal Dominion is back in it. They've just downed a boss."

"Wait, what?"

"I'm requesting information." Juana stared into space, then turned back to me. I could see the dismay before she even started speaking.

"Eternal Dominion's been bought out my the big conglomerates. They’ve brought in some of the elite combat miners from Proxima and ConSweGo both."

"It's a Hail Mary attempt," I said grimly. They'd found another avenue of attack. "All right, we'll deal with them when they get a little farther in." I said, "I need to check on the main Proxima team. They should be getting ready for another attempt on their final boss here in the Lost Guardians of the West.”

Proxima's team had slipped past our defenses and downed the Phoenix yesterday. We had foiled them on the final boss, the Golden Sun Dragon, but they'd be back soon and I was going to be there.

"Shad, a quick word?" Juana pulled me aside to a back corner of the room. She held up a hand and a bubble surrounded us.

"Nice trick."

"It's a tool, not a skill," Juana said. "Privacy curtain." The bubble blacked out the rest of the room, leaving us in a small circle of isolation. I couldn't hear anything beyond either. The bubble was small, leaving Juana and I very close together, face to face.

"You're pushing yourself too hard, Shad. You're going to have a breakdown. I got word from Veda about you sending Sage up and I'm glad, but she's not the only one who needs to take it easy. You've got to rest or you're going to be no use to any of us."

I rubbed my face. "I know, but how can I sit and do nothing while we're fighting like this? We're only barely staying ahead. One good push by Proxima and they could get a final boss down and win the whole thing."

"It's not all on you," Juana began, but I interrupted her.

"It is, because I'm the one who made this decision. I didn't consult anyone else. I just went with what the reality engine was telling me without really thinking it through. I thought we could do this. I was wrong. I made a choice for all of us and I was wrong, Juana. And I can't just sit by and wait while someone takes this all away from us.”

Juana put a hand on my arm. Her touch was warm and grounding. I felt suddenly tired. No, more like I'd always been tired and now I was being forced to recognize that fact.

"It doesn't matter if we lose," she said softly. "They were never going to let us win. You've already beaten them, Shad. You've given all of us something to hope for, something to fight for, something to remember. Whatever happens after this, wherever they take us, we're going to know that we did the best we could and that we still have a chance. We can rebuild somewhere, somehow. I don't know where. I don't know when. We will find a way forward."

Tears were glistening in her eyes. "You did the right thing."

"Then why does it feel like I fucked up so bad?"

She didn't have an answer. I looked at her and she looked back and we stood there like that for a good little while.

I took a deep breath. "What do I do, Juana?"

She smiled at me and I felt unaccountably warm. "You go and you take a nap. You can have one of the cots in the back room. We've got them specially made so they have an enchantment that puts you to sleep as soon as you lay on them. You can set an alert that will wake you up if anything important happens."

"It's all important."

"I'll get a team in there to check on Proxima," she said. "From Allison's analysis, we should have at least one more good spoiler attempt before they figure out a way to counter us. If anyone else starts causing trouble, I'll let you know. You're no good to anyone like this."

My shoulders slumped. Juana was right, as usual. "All right." I agreed. "Thank you." She smiled up at me. "And when was the last time you got any rest?"

Her cheeks went pink. "I had a nap about 18 hours ago," she confessed.

"Then you need to go to bed with me," I said. Then I realized what I'd said and felt my cheeks heat up. The worst thing about my Williams-side heritage was just how badly I blushed when embarrassed. Sage had more of Mom's coloring and it didn't look nearly as visible when she did it.

"I didn't mean like that," I said hastily. "I mean, you need a nap too. I mean, not that I don't want to go to bed with you or anything, but..."

Juana reached up, pulled my face down to hers, and kissed me. After a moment, she stepped back. Bad timing,” she said. “Try again when this is all over.” She gave me a quick wink. "I'll take a nap right after you do, I promise. Somebody’s got to mind the fort here. You'll sleep better knowing I'm on it."

She was right about that. I went to the cot, Juana's quip about timing still ringing in my ear. When we got done with all of this, I was going to have some serious thinking to do.

I sat down on the cot, setting a bunch of priority alerts to bring me awake. The enchantment worked beautifully. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I jolted awake, alarms blaring at me. I leapt up. "What? What?"

Juana pulled back the curtain. She looked worse than she had when I'd last seen her. I checked my clock. I'd had a three-hour nap and felt worlds better.

She handed me a mug of coffee and a power bar. "Eat," she said tersely. "Things are bad. Get in here and we'll brief you."

I took a big swig of the coffee. It tasted like the inside of a boot, but it packed a kick. Chomping half the power bar in one bite, I followed her to the command table. Grandpa was there, and so were most of the rest of our command staff. Dwight, Frank, Juana, Allison, Tall Smith, Arjun.

"The situation's bad," Juana said without preamble. She highlighted seven circles on our map, all of them shown with the orange of a two-boss-left encounter. "These are all instances where the progression team had reached the end of their 24-hour counter and then didn’t engage. Well, in the last ten minutes, they've all started an attempt. We think they're trying to overwhelm us. Not only that, Proxima just started in on the Lost Guardians of the West, and the ConSweGo team in the Last Days of Machu Picchu raid got their second-to-last boss down. They're queuing up for an attempt on their final boss right now.

I swore. "This is bad. We don't have enough people to cover everything."

Grandpa looked grim. He turned to Dwight. "How many kamikaze can you get us?"

Dwight swallowed hard. "I've got the bombs made for five. It's hard to farm all the mats."

"That's all right," Grandpa said grimly. "It's a one-time-use plan anyway."

Plan Kamikaze was just what it sounded like. We'd been holding it in reserve for an emergency. We had several farming miners who had volunteered to rush into a boss attempt with a colossal bomb sized to blow up the whole place. Since we were allies to the bosses, it wouldn't hurt them, but it would take out all of the attackers.

Dwight said that there were defenses on the marketplace that would stop that kind of attack. They were just extremely expensive. As soon as we showed the Galactics that they needed such a thing, they'd buy them. The kamikaze plan would work only once. We had to make it count.

"All right, get five of the kamikaze ready to go. Juana, I'll let you pick which instances to send them into," Grandpa said. "That'll buy us a little bit of breathing room. Shad, you and I are each going to have to lead a team for one of the two final boss pushes. Any preference?"

"Uh, yeah, I was studying up on the Ukhu Pacha encounter in Macchu Pichu," I said. "I'll take that."

"Then I'll handle the sun dragon," Grandpa agreed.

My eyes were drawn to the circle representing our own instance. It had changed color again. Now it was a hot pink, representing three bosses left to go. I pointed at it. "I think we need to get a look at this team.”

“I’ll send a tunnel rat to try to assess, someone with an advanced inspect," Juana said. "We'll deal with them after we get these other bosses down.”

“Let me know who you're taking on your raids and I'll try to draft a plan for the two that we can't kamikaze," Allison said.

"I'll be ready to shift over there and help out once I'm done in the Machu Picchu raid," I promised.

Grandpa nodded. "Us too, but don't underestimate that Proxima team, Shad. I was blocking them yesterday on the prior boss and they're good. They've got an animalkin leader. Looks like a bear and he's able to think on his feet better than a lot of these Galactics."

“Shad, we’re going to need close coordination. Don’t forget to put on the All-Seeing Eye vests and the ear pieces. We’ll call the shots from here,” Juana said.

“Sounds good.” I fished mine out of my inventory and fixed them in place, then contacted my chosen team and told them to meet me in the Kobold King's throne room.