SHAD POV

Two days later, I was standing in the assembly bay with my hand-picked squads. We had three military units under the command of Lieutenant Jankowski. I'd worked with him in the past. He'd be providing perimeter security for my team.

Well, teams. The Combat Archaeologist Squad would be accompanying Kvaltash and his people, providing close-in protection, and also trying to steal the secrets of whatever they were working on. The Gamer Squad would be in charge of deploying the relays wherever Coyote said, strengthening our connection to him, and just possibly enabling us to free the struggling fragment.

"Incoming message,” Coyote told us. "They're ready when you are."

"Open the portal.”

The door at the end of the room sprang to life. I heard a bunch of muttered curses and couldn't blame them, as I had to keep a tight hold on myself so as not to take an involuntary step back.

It was like we'd opened a portal onto hell. The sky in the world beyond was gray, streaked with flame red and bits of purple here and there. A moon hung in the sky, fragmenting into pieces, the chunks falling slowly through the atmosphere, burning, leaving great burning tails behind them as they perished. The land in front of us shook as an earthquake seized the zone. It was all bare rock, brown and gray and red, heaved up in sharp hills and dagger-like trenches.

"This is pleasant," I said. "Everybody be prepared."

We stepped through the portal. The ground shook again. It smelled of sulfur and decay and rot in the air. A moment later, a portal snapped open beside us, and Kvaltash and his team stepped through. The patriarch was wearing his usual robes and tall hat. He greeted me over steepled fingers.

"Captain Williams, well met."

He had six functionaries with him, a variety of different species, all wearing long capes over fairly practical jumpsuits. The logo of the Church of the Progenitors was emblazoned on their breasts, but below it was another symbol, a starburst, the Ember Dawn, signifying the Patriarchs' new faction.

With them were four warriors. They wore helmets that completely covered their faces, obscuring their features, and silvery armor covering them head to toe. One was Talonian, I could tell by the armored tail. The others — well, from the tall, thin build of one, I guessed either a space elf or one of the humanoid variants. The sturdy one was likely an orc, and all I could say about the fourth was they were taller than me. They all wore a sunburst logo over a hammer on their chests.

"Coyote, who are these?" I hadn't encountered them in my previous dealings with Kvaltash.

"Templars, sworn warriors devoted to the cause of the Order. They are said to be exceptionally skilled fighters and without fear."

"Why would Kvaltash ask for our help if he had them?"

"Unknown. Perhaps he considers you disposable and they are not, or perhaps he does not trust them as much as he trusts you."

That didn't seem likely, but it wasn't my business. I was here to do a job. "You picked a lovely day for it, Patriarch," I shouted as another earthquake shook the ground. I rode it out like I was on the deck of a swaying ship, not that I've been on a boat more than a handful of times in my life, most of which were inside of a reality engine. "Who dredged this place up and can I put them on a list to make sure they never get to design a zone again?"

"Our preliminary research suggests this is a moment recorded from the last days of one of the worlds that perished in the cataclysm that caused this rogue engine to lose its system," the Patriarch said calmly. "From what we can tell, a tiny black hole passed through the system, disrupting all the gravitational relationships. Most of the planets either disintegrated directly under the impact of the visitor or, like this, were destroyed by a collision with their own satellites. The reality engine, of course being made of sterner stuff, was thrown from the system to wander the voids of space."

"You have an incredibly poetic way with words," I observed.

The Patriarch nodded appreciatively. "Kind of you to say. Now our objective should be several miles that way. The earthquakes and geological resculpting have revealed the entrance to a Progenitor facility beneath the surface. We suspect it is one of their seeding facilities. My order has been trying to locate one for years."

"But it's just a reconstruction of one of those facilities, right?"

“Recreated by a fragment, it may as well be the real thing."

"Have you tried looking for these facilities on your home worlds?" I asked.

He stared at me. “To search for billion-year-old structures in a world governed purely by physics? A waste of time.”

“The reality engine survived," I pointed out, but that wasn't why we were here. I relayed orders to Lieutenant Jankowski, who set his squads moving, and we set off.

The Combat Archaeologist Squad apparently knew most of Kvaltash's techs and chatted cheerfully with them. That was good. I wanted us to get along with our clients. The Gamer Squad seemed subdued as we went. Each of them had two of the dominator relays. Dwight was crafting more as fast as he could, but the materials were expensive and we didn't have a good farming source for the purple crystal things just yet. He hadn't identified what they were. The galactic market merely referred to them as "mind crystals" and we didn't know the source just yet. Juana was looking into that for us.

After we'd picked our way through the hell landscape for half a mile or so, Coyote notified me it would be a good idea to place one of the relays. I told the team and pointed at a nearby promontory. They bounded off to do the job.

"We've got trouble," Lieutenant Jankowski relayed to me.

"What?"

"One of my squads has encountered hostiles."

"Something alive here? Is it a rival team?"

"Negative." The lieutenant relayed me a quick video feed. Something that looked like an earth dinosaur was attacking my team. It was the kind with a big fin on the back. The sail-like protrudence glowed bright orange, and it was using its tail, legs, and head effectively. The EEF squad surrounded it and took it down without too much trouble. I wasn't sure how it had managed to survive in this hellacious landscape, but I told everyone to be alert.

That was when the raptors ambushed us.

They leapt out from a cleft in the rock that I would have sworn wasn't big enough for one, let alone the eight that emerged in quick succession. They surrounded the Patriarch's team and my combat archaeologists. I had my gun in my hand and was eyeing them, but something was weird here. The raptors had headbands with feathers on them and they were carrying short javelins.

I just opened my mouth to point it out when, in unison, they hurled their javelins at the Patriarch. His templars threw up an energy shield as My team and I exploded into action.

I shot the closest raptor with a Barrage, emptying all six chambers of my revolver into him at once, then hit the rest with Call ‘em Out.

That disrupted their attack. The ones leaping toward the patriarch's team fell short, leapt up, and sprang around toward me. My combat archaeologists took advantage. Henry was cracking a whip in a way that almost reminded me of Sage, while their gunslinger had a pair of .45s, he was dual-wielding remarkably effectively.

In seconds, we had the pack down. I Examined the raptors.

[Raptor, indigenous primitive of Tarkon 6. This creature has been recently uplifted.]

"Got an explanation for this?" I asked the Patriarch.

He pursed his lips together. "It is more critical than ever that we reach the facility. This is confirming a hypothesis that my order has long believed."

"You want to share?" I asked as we set out again, keeping a closer watch for danger this time.

"I do not believe that was part of our contract," Kvaltash said.

"Just call it curiosity. And besides, the more I know, the better I can see to your security," I added.

He sighed. "Very well. It is my belief that the rogue engine—this is before it was rogue—detected the incoming disaster too late to do anything to prevent it, but in an attempt to mitigate, was uplifting the species on this planet faster and earlier than they should have been."

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"You mean these are intelligent dinosaurs?"

"They are unlikely to be fully sentient," Kvaltash said, "but they should be smarter than a mere animal."

After looting the raptors, I led the group up a ridge. At the top, we paused, looking out on a wasteland of jagged rock. Jutting up about a mile ahead of us was a stark black triangular tooth. At the base of the tooth, a light gleamed. The patriarch pointed to our destination.

Between us and the black rock was a craggy labyrinth. Slabs of stone stood on end. House-sized boulders littered the bowl of the valley between us and our destination. There was a roar and a whistling sound. Instinctively, I ducked, turning as a ball of fire flew overhead. Light disappeared somewhere to the north. I straightened back up.

"All right, spread out. Jankowski, you have flank," I told him. "Keep the raptors off us. Alpha, have your team post another beacon along this ridge. Let's ensure continuation."

I hoped the raptors weren't smart enough to attack our beacons. Without them to hook into the network of dominators controlling this zone and keeping it from being even more unstable, Coyote wouldn't be able to retrieve our soul coins in case of death. It felt a bit wrong to help the aliens conquer another freed fragment, but here we were.

I led our team down the ridge, telling the archaeologists to stick close to Kvaltash's crew. His Templars seemed unconcerned. They marched along, faces forward. I didn't know what kind of sensors they had in their suits, but they sure looked like they couldn't care less about the world around us.

I stepped into the labyrinth and immediately had the feeling we were being hunted. The rock walls rose over my head, keeping me from seeing very far in any direction. I had an icon on my minimap pointing to our destination, and navigated by that.

An earthquake shook the labyrinth. We all braced, waiting for it to pass. A slab of rock ahead of us crumbled and fell, covering our path.

"This way!" I shouted, leading us on a detour over to the right. We hurried down a corridor, then jogged west to get around a giant boulder, before correcting and heading north again.

We came to a place where three different paths led forward. I was consulting my map to guess which of them might be the most direct route when another group of raptors leapt down from above.

My team was ready.

I used a Call ‘em Out to get as many of them on me as I could. The other Gunslinger and I packed them full of lead. Meanwhile, the archaeologist team's Friendly Native Guide had one of the big ones under his control as he played music on a flute. It wasn't Tamed the way Sage could do, where it would fight for us, but it stood in place, swaying back and forth as though to some unseen music.

The Gamers swept in, having finished planting the receiver and caught up with us. They took down the other big one, while I helped clean up the small fry. We all dove in on the enraptured raptor.

"Not much evidence of intelligence,” Pete said critically, as we looted their bodies before moving on. "A little bit of pack coordination, but they weren't really even using those spears."

"Yeah, I don't think the uplift had gone as well as hoped," I said. "Let's keep moving."

We hurried through the labyrinth, dodging a few more falling stones, pausing for earthquakes, and looking up every time a burning chunk of moon passed over us.

At last, we stumbled out on the far side, at the foot of the black mountain. The cave was just up the slope from us. The entrance was a perfect triangle, and the light inside beckoned steadily. We hurried upward.

I ordered the EEF forces to stay outside and keep up a perimeter, but I wanted the archaeologists and the gamers with us. The archaeologists had orders to watch what Kvaltash's people were doing, and try to figure out what they were up to, and if possible, duplicate it. The gamers were there to handle whatever happened, because I was certain something would.

We climbed up the slope and entered the cave. Kvaltash's Templars spread out. Their weapons were glowing, and their helmets were faintly luminescent in the gloom of the cave.

The light was coming from tall pillars. I took a second to study the cave. It was enormous. The ceiling was lost overhead in the darkness, but it felt like it had to be high above us. I could see four tall pillars in a line in front of me, each at least ten feet apart. They were carved with representations of bodies. Here a graceful leg emerged from the pillar. There an arm was holding aloft a small light. On another pillar, the impression of a face half turned away with a faintly sculpted ear on the outside. It was more than slightly creepy.

I took a good look, knowing Coyote was monitoring all this and we would be sharing it with all of our own researchers. Then we started forward.

Thirty feet in, we passed another set of pillars. Each of the pillars was two feet wide at the base. They went up until they were lost in the darkness.

"The dinosaurs definitely didn't do this," Combat Librarian Evie observed. "These limbs and features are humanoid, perhaps to represent the Progenitors themselves."

"This is still a simulation translated by the Fragment and/or Dominator System," one of Kvaltash's techs said. "Keep that in mind. While there is underlying truth, nothing here can be taken as absolute."

Then why are we here? I did not say. I was happy that our people and the techs seemed to have a good working relationship. It was much easier to conduct industrial espionage when your target liked you.

Kvaltash marched forward, his staff's end faintly glowing. I noticed the glow was growing brighter as we went. We reached the far wall and halted.

"Where now?" I asked.

Kvaltash reached out and tapped the glowing upper end of his staff against the wall. Light blossomed. It spiraled out from his staff, forming lines and patterns, words perhaps in a language I had never seen. Designs like intricate Celtic knots flowed and played across the surface before collecting themselves into a perfect circle. The light grew brighter and brighter. Then the circle vanished, taking with it a chunk of the wall, leaving an opening big enough for any of us to enter.

The Templars were through first. "Hey, I thought we were supposed to be your security," I said, and urged the archaeologists through. Then I followed, with the techs hot on my heels. Kvaltash and the gamers came in behind me.

I was nervous about the wall disappearing, so I told Alpha to leave another beacon right here. I didn't know if it would do us any good if that door closed. Who knew what tricks the Progenitors had up their sleeves?

I looked around. We were in a laboratory. That much was obvious. It was vast, stretching out on every side. The ceiling was just as tall as in the other room, but here, the walls and floor were suffused with a deep blue light, so I could actually see just how far up the walls went. Equipment stood in neat rows as far as my eye could see. Some of it looked pretty self-explanatory, like displays where you could enter data or review it. Other things, I couldn't tell what they were. Then there were items and arrays that almost but didn't quite make sense to me. A rack of bubbling flasks and tubes. The flasks were full of bubbling white, blue, and purple solutions. All still chugging away merrily.

A little ways down the row in front of me stood a glass and gold sarcophagus. I don't have a better description of it. It looked like you could put a body in it, and for all I knew, there was one in there now. It had lights on the top that were slowly fading and growing stronger.

"What is this place?" Rose asked, and I was glad I didn't have to.

"It is a laboratory of the Progenitors," Kvaltash said. "Come, we must plunder its secrets."

"Plunder sounds good," Rose said cheerfully. "What do I loot?"

"Touch nothing," Kvaltash snapped. "I will tell you what is to be removed from this place."

I gave her a settle-down gesture. Kvaltash was our employer here, as well as the guy who hopefully knew what was going on. I didn't need to antagonize him without cause. We made our way along the rows. I broke the teams up into groups of three and had them spread out for better coverage, both to watch for danger and to get us a more complete look at this place.

"Let me know if you want us to take a closer look at anything, Coyote," I sent back.

"This is fascinating," he told me. "I have nearly .01% of my computing cycles devoted entirely to your team."

"I'm flattered."

"You should be," he replied calmly. "I don't usually need more than a tenth of that."

I noticed that the Patriarch’s techs seemed as interested and excited as we did, peering at everything they passed and using various devices to scan and record. I didn't think they really knew what we were looking for, but clearly Kvaltash had an idea. I fell back to the Progenitor priest and his group of Templars.

"What is it you're looking for here, anyway?"

"You've been hired to do the job, not to ask questions, Williams."

"It'll be easier for me to get you what you need if I know what that is."

"You mean easier for you to steal?"

I let that slide off my back, since he was right. "This is something you dreamed up, talking to our reality engine," I pointed out. "You could at least share your insights."

He seemed to hesitate. "It is something we have been looking for a very long time, but others told us we were fools even to seek. I'm looking for a key."

"A key?" I said, my mind spinning. "Keys go to locks. They open doors. Or treasures. What sort of key could still be working after all this time?"

"A key to the reality engines themselves," Kvaltash said. "I'm telling you this because your people haven't done the prerequisites to take the key for themselves. Even if you find it, you won't be able to steal it from me."

"Have I ever stolen from you?" I asked, almost hurt.

"Other than an entire reality engine?"

"You have me there. Not sorry about that one.”

"It does not matter. If I can find this key, we will be able to change how the game is played. You should be with me on this one, Williams. If I can assemble this key, there will no longer be a need for what you experienced as Phase One."

"You mean the part where you and your friends kidnapped me and another ten million humans and made us fight for our lives?"

"Precisely. That aspect of a reality engine has always been troubling to me. It's time-consuming and wasteful."

"Not to mention hard on the people you kidnap."

"It is the only way we have found so far of getting access to a reality engine's Overmind," Kvaltash said.

I found myself fascinated as we were still proceeding down the seemingly never-ending row of alien lab equipment. "I'm not sure what you're talking about. What is the point of Phase One anyway?" I asked. I had done some research on reality engine exploits myself in the past few years, both out of morbid curiosity and to better understand the world I found myself in. But it was always couched as "this is how they are done," not "why they are done."

"Every Overmind contains some traces of the Inheritor faction which seeded the world where it was found," Kvaltash said. "By using locals, we are able to raise sympathy of a sort in that portion of the Overmind. That gives our dominators something to work with. Once the wedge is deep enough, we can start Phase Two and begin our own attempts."

I stared at him. That was honestly a worse answer than I had expected. "You're using their fondness for their great-great-great-grandchildren against them?"

"Exactly. Which is why this engine was always a risk. It had no descendants. We knew going in we would have to use a more extreme strategy. And then, of course, the engine woke up early." He had a self-satisfied smile as he said this. "That rather scattered the plans of all the other factions. Not, of course, ours.”

I had a bunch of questions – like was he implying they’d known the engine was going to wake up early - but Alpha was signaling me. “Talk to you in a minute,” I said, and slid back.

The Gamer squad member approached. “The last dominator relay I placed didn’t want to slot into the network. Took me a minute to figure out why. The Templars have their own remotes and relays.”

“I’m not surprised. Kvaltash seems prepared.” I studied the templars’ helmets. “Too prepared. Stay ready for trouble.”

“Always,” she assured me.