Passing through the door of mist felt a little like passing through a wall of water—though that might have been the billowing steam on the other side of the door that filled the caldera from many bubbling pools.
“Fan out,” said Cole. He pointed to an elevated position to his right. “Howie, take the high ground with Nona and Artian.” He handed the snake-bite rifle off to Nona. “Besson, Roxy, either side of me. Fifteen meters. Provide security while they get in position.”
One good thing about their group is that everyone in it could hustle. Besson and Nutmeg traversed hills as though they were flat ground, with a seemingly limitless supply of energy. Nona had supernatural ways of crossing distance, and both Howie and Roxy had top-notch endurance. Despite Roxy’s insistence that she hated cardio and Howie being more of a sprinter, both she and Howie were up to Marine standards, with high baselines further enhanced by the Lewis Field. A trek which would have taken a day or m...
Back under the oppressive heat of the artificial sun, they followed the trail Besson and Nutmeg forged, descending down from the shadow of the pinnacle before starting the climb back up toward the portal to the next floor at the top of a caldera.
Steam from vents and springs climbed all around them, making what should have been long, clear sight-lines over the entire floor feel more like a closed off world of mist. They passed bubbling pools and geysers, like in videos Cole had seen of Yellow...
“Cole! COLE! Shit, Roxy, I think the apes must have poisoned him. Get over here! COOOLE!”
Howie screamed in Cole’s ear, shaking him out of his meditative state. He could feel the man scrambling for his AIFAK and had to push Howie’s hands away. Nutmeg was barking in panic, and even Besson was standing over him.
“I’m fine, Howie,” he mumbled. God, his mouth was dry. He reached up to grab the tube of his hydration pack on his plate carrier and stopped. His hand was black. Not like t...
Cole headed back to where Roxy and the others were dumping out the loot hastily collected from the apes they’d killed—an assortment of weapons, ammo, and armor pieces that looked more medieval than anything. Two plates of bone looked like front inserts for the MSV armor, and one helmet with the visage of an ape skull. And a cloak of shimmering, white velvet.
Cole passed it as Howie held up an over-under grenade launcher to his LF analyzer. “Hey Cole, you want to check any of this stuff?”
2025-11-06 04:00:49 +0000 UTCView Post
Cole and the others made their way out of the steam-filled, blood-soaked ravine, returning to the high ground that offered better sight lines. Once out of the valley, the heat started to mount again as the occlusion dropped away.
Once Howie and Nona joined them, Cole pointed out a pinnacle a few kilometers east. “Looks like permanent shade, there on the backside. High ground. That’s where we’ll bivouac.”
Artian blanched. “Tis some distance for one in my condition,” he admitted. He w...
“We can’t move him,” said Roxy. “It may kill him.”
“Well we can’t stay here,” said Cole. “Not unless we want to be ape food if that hairy-ass mage comes back with reinforcements. So either we leave him to die, or we take him to work on.”
Roxy growled and pulled a pair of cutters out of her bag. “That arrow has got to come out, then. Help me get behind him.”
The arrow had punched a hole right through the man’s breastplate, out the other side, and pinned him again...
Hey everyone! The treatment plan for my eye has worked tremendously well over the last week, so I'm able to look at a screen for long enough to get some work done much sooner than I expected (though I still have to break it up into shorter sessions over the course of the day).
Regular chapter updates here and on Royal Road will resume tomorrow, pending any crazy relapses.
Hey all, just wanted to leave a quick update with my situation. I was able to get in to see a doctor, and apparently I have an infection and an ulcer on my eye, which feels about as pleasant as it sounds. The long and short of it is, I'll be fine and so will my eyesight. The doc gave me antibiotics and steroid eyedrops. The bad news is that it's still too difficult for me to read text on a screen, so I can't really write, edit, or proofread at the moment (even proofreading this update is a challenge). It's a bit of a problem for me ...
Note: Just as a heads up, I've had a slight medical issue pop up that's making it difficult for me to write and edit, so the pace is going to slow here for probably another week. Sorry for the delays.
Chapter 74 – Survivors
“Cole, look at this,” said Nona, nudging one of the ablating ape bodies with her fist. Its fur had gone stark white after death, losing the natural camouflage it had. He knelt down and touched it, pulling out a tuft of prismatic fibers.
“Some sort of stealth skill?” he asked. “Maybe that’...
“Contact front!” shouted Besson. The full auto staccato of his otherworld machine gun echoed off the canyon walls as multiple shrieking cries . “Multiple hostiles, non-human, primitive weapons.”
Apparently, whatever had won the fight in the slot canyon had stuck around. Cole refreshed his target marking and poured as much of the ability’s charge as he could into it, surprising himself when he managed to drain almost half of a charge. Several outlines began to appear in the dust...
Quick note: Only two chapters next week so I have some extra time to work on editing for Book 3 of My Big Goblin Space Program. Book 1 launches in a month, so be sure to pre-order! I've attached a link to this post.
Chapter 72 – Not Risking Maybe
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Howie, visibly nervous. “And look, maybe we wait an hour? Maybe that debt-audit guy looks at my tattoo, says its not a brand, and just lets us out?”
“And maybe he realizes we match the descriptions of the chasers who fucked up the...
“Just like that?” asked Cole. “You just said the other path was really, really good!”
“Fuck what I said. Take the bouncy bullets path.”
Roxy chuckled. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen Howie serious, Cole. Might want to listen.”
Cole pried Howie’s hands off his shoulders, and the kid seemed to realize for the first time that he’d grabbed them to begin with. “I didn’t think it was possible either,” Cole said, tossing Roxy a half-smile before tur...
Sorry for this chapter coming in a day late! Wednesday and Friday chapters will be coming in as normal.
Chapter 70 – Field Chatter
“We don’t know how high level they are, but they’re clearly not afraid of us,” said Cole. “Maybe they’re here as challengers and we’re a target of opportunity, or maybe they’re hunting DOR or Beth specifically. I’m betting they’re here for us. Either way, we need to get out of town and track down Beth.”
“Agreed,” said Roxy. She was reclined on the couch, next to the...
The permanent cover is finished! And the artist really made something phenomenal, I feel. And that's taking my absurdly high standards into account.
Chapter 69 – Those Who Fear the Road Ahead
Tallorax was nearly twice the size of Last Fall Hold and packed to the brim with creatures of all shapes and sizes. A multiversal melting pot of souls summoned to Babel, the city played host to those who had lost the ambition or the means to progress through the next floors. The safe room may have kicked climbers out, but a manned curtai...
The transition through the otherworld portals was getting more and more bearable with each new crossing. When he stepped out the other side, into a featureless, gray stone room with a fog-filled doorway, he barely felt queazy at all. His gun was up and level, and he swept for threats as the others stepped out behind them and cleared their own sectors.
“Clear right,” said Cole.
“Clear left,” said Roxy.
“Last man,” called Besson, coming through behind Nona and Howie. The portal winked ou...
Ahhh here we go! The start of a brand new mission! I'm glad you guys are enjoying the story so far. As a special treat, I have a sneak peek at the work-in-progress of DOR's forever-cover. After one artist failed to deliver, setting me back a couple weeks in terms of getting this project together, I commissioned a new one from Tres Kiddos, a small illustration studio, and damn am I glad the first one fell through. Because this cover is going to look amazing when it's finished.
“Two, one, three. Transition. One, one, two. Aim and shoot, don’t just swing and fire. Three, two, three.”
Cole watched Nona transition between her carbine and her pistol and back, moving, if not smoothly, then at least purposefully. The three silhouette targets ahead of her slowly became peppered with holes in the A and B zones, the two innermost rings, as he told her what order to shoot them.
An extra minor affix might not make or break a high-level Kicker’s gun, but to a kicker in the low teens like his teammates? Only Field Strip had charges. Tinker just required time and mental effort. After a quick text for Howie’s approval (and some choice words about leaving him sweating it out in West Texas), Cole sat in the lab with a crate of tagged and labeled parts that Jefferson had saved up.
Field Strip usually produced either one or two parts, but most Kickers only ...
“Alright, looks like we’ve got all the team leads, so let’s get this shit started.”
Cole took his seat in the conference room, scooting his chair in. He recognized the woman giving the briefing as one of the senior Kickers he’d seen around the DOR compound more than a few times but only greeted her in passing. Other than her, he recognized Morganstern sitting close to the projector, and Moriarty leaning against the back wall.
“I’m Anne-Marie, but most of you know me as Hard T...
With three weeks to go until the Babel insertion, Cole absorbed all the information he could on Babel in order to disseminate relevant details to his team. And there were a lot of details. He spent a whole week just studying the various floors and layouts other Kickers had charted and established. And it still only covered a handful of the myriad routes through the tower. Like Curahee, several Kickers had been to the world multiple times.
“These aren’t the only missions you have access to,” said Sophie. “Or even the only ones you’re qualified for. But based on information provided by the data collectors on your Curahee and Vael expeditions, I think these will most play to your strengths.
She brought up the screen to mirror her tablet and flicked through the profile on an area covered in thick swamp. Tall buildings could be seen in the distance, covered in plant mass and half-collapsed.
Cole rolled over as the sun shining through the slit in his blinds managed to perfectly lock onto his eyes, seemingly no matter how he moved. He groaned and sat up, wondering if someone was grinding coffee downstairs before realizing the noise was coming from Roxy facedown on the bed beside him. He should have been surprised that a tiny human could make such a noise, but for weighing in at a buck twenty-five soaking wet, the woman ate, lifted, and apparently snored far above her stature. But she s...
Nona started to get the hang of things after the first hundred rounds or so, at which point Cole started her on a handgun, making more corrections to her grip and form, and had her loading her own magazines. As the sun started to drop in the sky, Besson showed up with burgers and Cole got the grill going. The retired general had left him with a kettle and a bag of charcoal, and the grill nice and hot by the time the crickets woke up.
Nona sat separate from everyone else, feet drawn up on her chair ...
Bricker drummed his thick fingers on the conference tabletop and sighed. “Well, at least one of you is capable of owning up to mistakes. Moriarty, I expect better, next time. You can’t have junior Kickers picking up your slack. Without the second team in place, this extraction would have ended in failure. It’s only happenstance and blind luck that we didn’t lose Cole and his entire team, and practically a miracle that we were able to extract Mr. Jacobs at all.”
Cole spent the afternoon in the armory lab with Norn and Bjorn. He filled two more work orders—one for a midlevel kicker’s shotgun, to which he added a fire elemental effect, and one to a bolt action rifle. As he’d suspected, the minor quality part he’d stripped out of an otherworld carbine, once transplanted into a bolt action rifle, gave almost a guaranteed effect, rather than the 6%-8% percent he got when adding minor parts to automatics. In this case, the rifle now had the ability to shut-down ...
“This is it, turn here,” said Sophie, looking down at her phone for directions.
Cole pulled off the road and onto a dirt path. Twenty-five miles southwest of the DOR compound, they were at the rental house Sophie had secured for him. The dirt path leading deeper into the woods went on for a quarter of a mile before it opened up to a 2-story house and old barn. His truck was parked out in front on a circular gravel path.
Pulling the rental up and putting it in park, Co...
Hey guys! Just wanted to drop a reminder, even if you're reading ahead on here, please don't forget to stop by the Royal Road page and leave a rating or review! I've put a link to the story in this post. Right now, the story is in the top 250 stories on Royal Road, and I'm betting we can push it even higher. Thanks everyone! And enjoy this week's chapters.
Chapter 55 – Baby Steps
The brightness of Earth stabbed through his eyes—protected didn’t mean painless, and it still took his pupils a moment to contract in r...
Moriarty’s hands were blistered from carrying the front half of a field stretcher for the better part of a day. He couldn’t believe how sideways the op had gone. Not just two mages in the steam carriage, but two mages and a knight, twenty musketeers with otherworld armament flintlocks, and no Leon to boot.
His source hadn’t been lying or trying to set them up. Moriarty was sure of it. But he had been wrong, and the bad intel had cost one of his teammates a leg—hastily treated with an...
