Third basement level of the shelter. The former storeroom had been converted into a makeshift tactical intelligence center.
Dozens of monitors lined an entire wall, filled with dense static and flickering streams of green data. The air was thick with the acrid smell of overheating electronic components and Gamma-9's furious roaring.
"Unit 74! Unit 74 is offline again!"
Gamma-9 slammed his wrench onto the table, making the nearby water cup rattle. "Which brain-dead idiot was responsible for Unit 74? I stepped out to use the bathroom for one minute—who drove Unit 74 into a high-voltage distribution box?!"
A young tech-adept apprentice huddled in the corner, clutching a joystick and trembling. "Mas... Master, it wasn't me! It was the Machine Spirit... the Machine Spirit wanted to taste the electric sparks itself..."
"Bullshit!" Gamma-9's single eye looked like it was about to pop out of its socket. "That's because you didn't soothe its logic circuits in time! That's a short circuit, not a Machine Spirit having a snack!"
Ever since Andy deployed five hundred "Black Spirit" stealth servo-spiders into the sewer network of Sector 9, Gamma-9 and his men hadn't enjoyed a single full night's sleep. These fist-sized, six-legged recon bots were advanced and featured auto-navigation, but the environment they faced was simply too hostile.
The Mid-hive sewers were not just filled with discarded industrial equipment; they were also home to toxic corrosive gases, irradiated wastewater, and mutant rats larger than cats. Just moments ago, Gamma-9 had watched a screen as a Black Spirit spider was snatched away by a two-headed rat, causing the feed to cut to black.
This wasn't just the loss of a reconnaissance node; it was the loss of sacred property entrusted to them by Magos Andy. Every lost spider felt like a knife twist in Gamma-9's heart.
As a result, their workload was immense. Besides monitoring hundreds of feeds to prevent damage, they had to manually piece together the fragmented information sent back by the little scouts. For instance, if one spider saw the left side of a corridor and another saw the right, Gamma-9 and his team had to stitch those images together in their minds and mark them on a massive holographic map—locating Helios sentries, blind spots in automated turrets, and the entrance to the starship wreckage.
The work was agonizingly tedious and allowed no margin for error. One wrong mark could lead to Andy and his team being wiped out by a heavy security squad around a corner.
"Stay sharp, everyone!" Gamma-9 gulped down a large swig of a low-grade machine oil blend to force himself awake. "Switch the feed to Zone D!"
"The Magos said Zone D is critical. I want every fly recorded if it passes through there!"
The apprentices scrambled at their consoles. The largest central screen flickered a few times before the image sharpened. It was a real-time feed from three Black Spirit spiders hidden behind ventilation louvers, facing the wide starship landing deck in Zone D—the same entrance the Helios Group had previously tried to storm.
Gamma-9 widened his eye, ready to record enemy troop deployments and fire patterns. However, in the next second, he froze. His wrench hit the floor with a clang, but he didn't even react when it landed on his toe.
"This... this isn't right?" Gamma-9 pressed his face against the screen, the aperture of his mechanical eye contracting frantically.
On the screen, there were no sounds of gunfire, no crisscrossing webs of laser fire, and none of the tragic charges from before. Several Leman Russ main battle tanks, bearing the "Iron Skull" mercenary emblem, were reversing. Their massive cannons were no longer pointed at the starship entrance; instead, they were lowered and even fitted with dust covers. Engines roared and tracks kicked up dust as these behemoths withdrew from their combat positions in an orderly fashion.
Beside the tanks, swarms of Helios security soldiers were busy—not building fortifications, but dismantling them. Twin-linked heavy stubbers that had recently been set up were being stripped from their tripods and packed into transport crates. Boxes of ammunition, once piled high like mountains, were being reloaded onto trucks. Even half of the floodlights used for illumination had been turned off as workers coiled up power cables.
The entire front line of Zone D was becoming empty at a visible rate.
"Why are they... retreating?" Gamma-9 felt his brain hitting an overload.
Logic dictated that for an STC Black Box and an engine, the Helios Group would sacrifice anything. They had been fighting tooth and nail just days ago; why the sudden cessation of hostilities? Was it a trap? A feint to draw them in?
Not daring to be careless, Gamma-9 grabbed the communicator on his desk and slammed the button for Andy's core workshop.
"Magos! No matter what you're doing, please come to the command center immediately!"
"The Helios people... they seem to have stopped fighting!"
...
Ten minutes later.
Andy, wearing his oversized bright yellow modified robe, strode into the command center. He still smelled of machine oil, having clearly been hand-assembling parts in the workshop.
"What's the situation?" Andy walked straight to the big screen.
Gamma-9 pointed at the images, his voice hurried: "Look, Magos. Starting thirty minutes ago, Helios's heavy units began to pull back. Now even the infantry lines are shrinking. The massive force that was blockading the Zone D entrance has been reduced to less than two platoons on guard duty."
Andy crossed his arms, quietly watching the screen. In the footage, the Helios retreat was extremely orderly, showing no signs of panic. Tanks covered each other, supplies were packed away, and they even recovered spent shell casings from the ground. While Helios had certainly taken a beating lately, this clearly wasn't a rout; it looked more like a strategic relocation.
"Did they give up?" an apprentice whispered nearby.
"No, they've likely wised up," Andy sneered. "Helios Group is a business, not a charity. The losses from the previous assaults were too high—billions invested without even a sound in return. Their board must be feeling the sting. Besides, the starship's main AI is too fierce; conventional firepower can't crack it."
"If they keep this up, they'll just bleed themselves dry." Andy reached out and drew a large circle on the holographic map. This circle didn't enclose the Zone D entrance; instead, it expanded far out to the outer perimeter of Sector 9.
"I suspect they're thinking: if they can't break in, they'll wall it off. They want to turn this place into a giant prison, cut the power, cut the signal, and starve that crazed AI inside. Then they'll wait, likely while diverting heavier firepower from elsewhere."
"Of course, that's just my guess. If they have other plans, I wouldn't know..." Andy paused as another thought struck him. "Wait."
If they had withdrawn their main force, it meant that the interior of Zone D was currently in a surveillance vacuum. While the starship AI was formidable, she would certainly have lowered her guard after repelling the enemy. And though the Helios blockade was being established, it would take time to fully close.
This was a god-sent opportunity to scavenge!