SU&HM Ch 52

As Gambit asked if they could loot the boss first, Rick saw the body had already faded and turned into a large chest.

"Just take it all!" Rick yelled. "Give it to us later."

Gambit shrugged. "Sure!" He raced to the chest and opened it. As he took the loot, the chest faded away.

"Come on, there's no time!" The self-destruct countdown was still at the top of their screen. The whole place trembled. As the vibration shook the room, a door clanged open at the back right corner, and light streamed through. There was a balcony out there where you could go out, deploy a glider backpack, and escape the destroying city moments after you'd looted the boss. That’s what Slate had described all the other parties doing. But it wasn’t what he was going to do.

He turned back for a look at Sam, and jumped. Her body was gone. The trinket – please let it have worked, he prayed, but there was no time now.

"Come on!" Rick called. He jumped up and ran across the room. In the back corner of the room, ten feet from the Leyline Energy Reserves plinth, was a door set in the stone wall that had been all but invisible before. Now it stood just ever so slightly open.

As Rick pulled the door open, Nia and Gambit came running up. "What are we doing?" Nia asked.

"Don't worry. I have a plan," Rick said, and stepped into the darkness. His boots clanged on a metal walkway, and he could feel a slight breeze of air in his face. The space was lit by dim, flickering bulbs dangling from the ceiling. They were on a catwalk, suspended over hollowed-out stone.

The voice of his host body was loud in his mind now. This was an open space inside the quarried mountain that made the city. There were gaps of weaker rock that had been reinforced and left as maintenance spaces or voids within the rest of the city.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Rick picked up his pace. Every time he looked up and saw the timer inexorably ticking down, he urged himself to go faster, until his feet were pounding on the metal walkway. It curved around a giant stalactite. How was a cave this big inside the middle of the city?

The walkway rounded the bend and then ended at a small platform. Rick skidded to a stop. At the side of the platform, a large cylinder was strapped to the wall of the cavern. There was a blinking red light on it. Gambit and Nia came pounding up, breathless behind him.

"Whoa! A bomb!"  Gambit gasped, and Rick nodded.

 "It's the self-destruct system, or part of it." The voice in the back of his head took over and he felt his hands moving on their own accord. He popped off an access panel.

Daniel stepped up beside him and cleared his throat. “Do you want me to get that?”

Rick froze for an instant. “Uh... Normally yes, but the voice in my head seem to know what it’s doing.”

The whole party just started at him.

Rick’s hand moved, almost of its own accord and grabbed one wire inside the access panel. He yanked. The self-destruct timer blinking on his interface suddenly gained an entire minute just as the red lights on the bomb winked out.

Rick looked up into Daniel’s wide eyes. “Damn, dude,” the EOD tech said. “How the f – it’s never the red wire!”

"Nice!" Gambit exclaimed.

"Uh, but the timer's still there," Nia pointed out.

"Yeah, there's more bombs we have to find and defuse.”

Daniel shook his head slowly. “Please let me get the next one?”

Rick took a deep breath and let it out as the blood and adrenaline pounded in his ears.

“Yeah. Sure.” He turned away from the inert bomb. “This way!”

At the side of the platform was a thin metal ladder. Rick started down as the others followed him with more than a little hesitation into the blackness. The ladder went on and on, down into the depths. The walls of the cavern closed around them until they were in a tunnel just big enough for the ladder and a person climbing down it.

Finally, it ended at another of the maintenance walkways like they'd been in before, only this one’s leyline was dim, barely glowing at all. Only the faintest trickle of ley energy ran through it. That was what the voice in his head expected. It knew that with only one ley energy collector left and no power reserves, the city was falling, but not plummeting from the sky. They hadn't been that high before, Rick thought. Surely they would have hit the ground by now. The voice told him not to worry about that. They still had minutes to go.

Thirty yards down the tunnel, Rick and the others found another bomb. This time Rick let Daniel look it over for a minute. The experienced EOD tech puzzled at the wires as the timer ticked down. Rick squashed his impatient urge to do it himself – and the voice reluctantly conceded it might be wise to let a technician handle this.

Daniel at last pulled out a small knife and cut through a single wire. A minute was added back to the countdown.

"Now what?" Gambit asked brightly. “Timer’s still ticking, so we can’t be done.”

Rick looked at the other three members of his group. "There's one more. But it's going to be a challenge."

Gambit shrugged. "Lead on!"

Rick took them out of the catacombs and into the halls and corridors of the city.

Several twists and turns later, they found themselves at a balcony overlooking an atrium far below.

They were at the edge of the navy docks. Row after row of gossomer-winged flying ships lay in the distance. Closer at hand was a large guard barracks. Rick could see the cylinder of the bomb sitting just beside their training area.

The training area which was filled with guards standing at attention.

 An officer stood on a raised platform in front of them, yelling something to the assembled crew. Rick could just make out occasional words about intruders and protecting the city.

Nia looked at Rick in disbelief. "Don't tell me it's down there."

Daniel was peering over the edge, looking intently toward the group. "Yeah, I can see it."

The others all looked at him. "It lights up on my interface." He shrugged at their questioning stares. "It's something to do with my EOD skills, I guess."

“Do you want to get this bomb too?” Rick asked.

Daniel shook his head. “Whatever is in your brain was faster. You get it.”

Rick took a deep, shaky breath before looking at the others. "Alright, here's the deal. We need a distraction, and then I go in and defuse the thing. The shipyard is through that far door. I defuse the bomb, then we head there as fast as we can.”

Gambit stood up suddenly from where they were crouched. "Then there's no time to hide. Let's go." He set off briskly though a market bazaar. "I have a plan. Wait for my signal," Gambit murmured out of the side of his mouth.

"What signal?" Nia asked, not even lowering her voice.

"You'll know it when you see it," Gambit hissed. He walked straight up to the guard on duty. "I'm here on orders to inspect your... Great Scott, what's that?" Gambit pointed over the man's shoulder. When the guard turned to look, he punched him in the side of the head. The man's armor clattered as he staggered back. Gambit snatched his fire staff from his hands and took off, dodging around the man and charging straight into the open training yard.

Rick and the others gaped after him for a moment before taking off running. “Everyone head for the far door into the shipyard!”

As soon as he was in the training room, Rick turned hard to the right and there it was. Sitting amongst a pile of crates and next to a rack of spears was another keg. Metal straps bolted this one to the wall just like the others had been. Behind them was a cacophony of shouts and yells, but Rick didn’t pay attention to them. He shoved a crate aside and popped the bomb’s access panel

[Fall of Skyrend. Bonus phase one complete.]

[Achievement unlocked. For completing a hidden quest, you have earned +1 to System Insight. The next steps in hidden quest chains will now be revealed.]

The second announcement popped up on top of the first, and when he waved it away, the first was still there. Only now it had another line.

[Bonus phase two: Escape the city.]

A hand fell on Rick's shoulder. "Hey, what are you doing?"

Rick turned. An armored guard stood in front of him, holding his baton menacingly and glaring through the visor on his helmet. "An outlander!" he shouted. "You're with the other one!"

He lifted his weapon, but Rick wasted no time. He dodged to the side and ducked under the man's outstretched arms. Then he took off across the room as fast as he could.

In the few moments he'd been busy with the bomb, the place had dissolved into pandemonium. The mass of guards was all headed towards the back of the compound, with a few here and there milling about, looking confused. He caught a glimpse of Gambit on the far side of the pack, being chased through the archway on the far side. Daniel and Nia stood waving frantically in his direction. Rick could see the icon of traps on the floor in front of them. He adjusted his course and pounded across the room in their direction with the guard hot on his heels. They passed a few confused guards looking around wildly, but most of the crowd had been cleared out by Gambit’s distraction.

Rick had almost made it to the exit when the guard caught up with him. A baton slammed into his shoulders, sending blinding pain across his right arm and spine. He tumbled forward but managed to turn his momentum into a roll and spring back up. When he came to his feet, he was facing the other direction and the guard loomed in front of him.

Then there was a crash of metal and the guard went tumbling off. Gambit was standing there, grinning at him.

"Hey, I put more points into charge! Now the cooldown is tiny!" He made a gesture with his fingers close together.

"Never mind that!" Rick yelled. "Run!" He turned and dashed for where Daniel and Nia were still frantically waving. As they approached, Nia and Daniel turned and ran up the hall away from them. The guards were hot on their heels as Gambit and Rick reached the traps. Gambit ran straight over them. Even though there was no actual sign of the trap being there and he was sure it wouldn't trigger on party members, Rick couldn't help but hop as he ran over them to keep from having his foot land squarely on the icon on the floor.

There was a bend in the hall up ahead. Daniel and Nia stopped to look back. The guards had hit the traps. There were crashes, screams, a fwoosh, a feeling of heat on the back of his neck, droplets of tar flying past and splattering the walls, and above all of that, screams that went on and on.

Rick saw the glow of a level up wash over Daniel as his shocked look turned into a grin. He and Nia ducked around the corner just as Daniel and Gambit arrived. They slowed their pace slightly, taking three more bends in the hall and ducking through two doorways before they found themselves in a deserted warehouse filled with barrels and bales, piles of rope, and all the paraphernalia a sailing vessel could want.

"Do you think we lost them?" Nia asked.

Daniel was still grinning and just shook his head. "I don't see how they could get past all of that."

Gambit grinned back at him and punched the ex-soldier in the arm. "Hey, nice work man. That was sweet."

"Yeah, it was, wasn't it?" Daniel laughed and shook his head again. "I mean, kaboom!" He mimed an explosion with his hands and stuck his fingers out like spikes going in every direction. "Wow, that was incredible."

They smiled and nodded to each other for another minute before everyone turned to look at Rick.

"Okay boss, now what?"

Rick opened his mouth then trailed off as he saw the quest indicator on his mini-map. The ghostly outlines of rooms and more importantly, flying ships were also on the map. And the grin spread across Rick's face.

"Now it's time for a little piracy."