We had a location, a basic layout of the facility, and priority targets. It seemed that more detailed information was difficult to obtain, but the priority targets were a valuable piece of information. We took a day for Scrying, though I had to be conservative with my mana usage. Though it wasn’t quite as bad as last time, Bunvorix was still pretty low on natural mana. The good news was that the best option they had for doing magical shenanigans was no longer available to them, but they likely still had some others with portal powers.
After Scrying the first target… I regretted it. If not for the certainty that the base form of Scrying only worked on living entities, I might have presumed that the targets were dead. Their forms were skeletal in a way that I didn’t even know was physically possible. It wasn’t merely that I could count their ribs, but most of their fur had fallen out and it seemed almost as if they had no lower organs with how much their abdomen clung to their spine.
Needless to say, the Bunvorixians and my other companions were just as sickened as myself. “This is horrible,” Magnet Man commented. “This isn’t okay at all.”
Khithae just shook her head. “We were aware this was a dystopian dictatorship masquerading as something great. We must expect the rest to be in a similar situation.”
She was correct. At least, for those that were alive. It was disheartening to learn that some of the leaders of the resistance would never be returning… but at least people could begin to properly mourn. Except we needed to stay focused for the mission, and that included the resistance.
Though we had no need of medical assistance at the moment, we did need to consult a doctor. That was where I once again met Starla. On Earth, she would have been called a german shepherd.
“There’s no way,” she said. “We can’t move them like that.”
“But…” Flopan’s head hung. “We have to rescue them!”
“They wouldn’t survive any jostling,” Starla said. “Even with proper medical gurneys, it’s too risky to transport them through a high energy situation. We likely don’t have the forces to suppress the whole facility.”
I was already looking at the next individual in the line. I’d done my best to reveal any and all clues that could narrow down their location. We knew what facility they were at… and fortunately their cells were tiny. That meant my viewing area could slip beyond the cells if I did it right. In some cases I was manipulating the spell to do things it wasn’t meant to, which rapidly drained what time I had left, but I managed to catch a few glimpses of block designations with numbers and Bunvorixian alphabetical markers.
“They should all be close together. The priority targets, I mean. Assuming we can transport them down a hallway, I can try to Gate out.”
“But what about the suppression?” Kirk asked. The demolitions expert had been on the previous mission with me. “The facility is in a different area.”
“Is it above ground?” I asked. I’d seen no windows, either in my Scrying or the various blueprints.
“No. Underground. They don’t like people being able to see how many they keep captive. And the limited access to elevators means escape is impossible without interference of some sort.”
I frowned. “Don’t they have stairs?”
“No.”
“... That should be illegal.” Then again, I recalled the final facility we had broken into when I was last on Bunvorix. It seemed they were fans of ultra-deep facilities with only elevator access.
“It is,” Kirk said. “But do you think the government here cares?”
I grimaced. “No, probably not.” I pondered for a moment. “What are the floors made out of?”
Kirk shook his head. “Don’t think about it. There’s no way we could carry enough explosives to carve our way through the reinforced floors.”
“... Metal?” I asked.
“Not entirely.”
That meant there was metal. I looked over towards Magnet Man. “Think we could get something similar to test? And at least one equivalent battle suit to what they would have.”
Flopan tilted his head, his floppy ears adorable. “The suit we can do. The facility will use high tier protection, but not military grade. It’s impractically expensive, and even if there was a budget for it… corrupt leaders would have siphoned off much of the cash for themselves. Unfortunately, the closest thing we’ll have is rebar reinforced omnicrete.”
Magnet Man folded his arms. “I’d like to try it, at least. How much power suppression do you think the facility is imbued with?”
“Power suppression?” Flopan asked.
“Yeah. You know, anti-power tech. You’re pretty advanced here.”
I leaned over to stage whisper to Magnet Man. “They didn’t have any contact with supernatural powers until two years ago. I’m pretty sure only the wide area anti-teleportation towers have been augmented with anything like that.”
“Minus one,” Kirk said happily.
“... The tower might still technically be enchanted,” I pointed out. “It was just dropped from a significant height onto another planet.” Though given my own experience. “Then again, the enchantment probably required significant upkeep, unless Spot had some sort of source that skipped him years ahead on enchanting skills.”
It didn’t really matter how it was except in a technical accuracy sense. They were rebuilding that tower, but it took time.
-----
Magnet Man learned two things. First, gear on a personal level for a Bunvorixian was trivial for him to dismantle. He might have been even better against Celmothian nanotech suits, but there were enough small wires and the like going through Bunvorixian tech that he could kind of just disable a suit in moments. It wasn’t something they could fix in the field, either. Not without magic.
Tearing rebar out of reinforced concrete like stuff… was much more difficult. He barely even made cracks in the single thing we brought. Because as much as the metal significantly improved the structural stability of the material, everything around it was already durable.
“This method will not be a success,” Magnet Man commented. “I do believe we will have to look for alternate routes. I recall you mentioning elevators? How many do you think they would have?”
“About that,” Khithae said. “Part of the plan was to disable them. As much of the facility as possible, actually.” She had already demonstrated her ability to shut off Bunvorixian tech. “So optimally the elevators won’t be functional.”
Magnet Man shrugged. “As long as they’re not physically damaged I should be able to manage something. Though… I might need some idea about the specific elevator design. It might not be like Earth, but worst case I can just lift a whole elevator. They are metal, right?” he looked to the Bunvorixian advisors we had.
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“As a majority, yes,” Flopan explained. “I can get you some blueprints of typical elevators, though the details of this facility probably have some reinforcement and strange bits. Can you actually lift one, though? It will be a significant weight. Looking at these Earth unit conversions… a personnel could be as much as a quarter tonne.”
“... Are you sure?” Magnet Man asked cautiously.
“Elevators are large metal boxes. Even if they are made of more lightweight materials than you normally encounter and are smaller, they are still quite heavy.”
“... That’s so light.”
“Well, relatively,” Flopan said. “But you had issues with the rebar, didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t free moving. I had to distort the form against outside pressure. An elevator is supposed to move. I’ll merely have to overcome any emergency braking system. Though it would also be fine if Khithae could selectively activate just the elevator.”
She shook her head. “I’m planning a cutoff to the external power flow. If that doesn’t shut down the whole facility, it will at least force them to rely on backup generators. So it’s unlikely I can selectively activate something without allowing them access to more than we intend.”
“Great,” Magnet Man said. “I’ll expect to lift an elevator then. Plus whatever weight we put inside it. How many can even fit in one? I don’t think we can effectively manage multiple squads.”
-----
Bunvorixian elevators were short. On average, at least. The previous one was kind of tall, but we chopped through the floor so we hadn’t really experienced it. There were good reasons not to act the same with this one.
They were not at all friendly toward people that were six and a half feet tall or taller, but then again even Great Girl at her actual normal height would find them too short. Everyone had to crouch, and we couldn’t fit much more than the squad we brought with us. Fluffy and Miss Flutter were part of that equation.
So we would be using Reduce. None of us power users actually benefited from being larger, at least most scenarios. I wasn’t planning to go around kicking Bunvorixians. Ice Guy and Magnet Man didn’t get less powerful if they were small. Fluffy needed to maintain his size, though. Zeb was already the right size. Miss Flutter was only going to be temporarily small, which meant if we had to take multiple elevator trips she was going to have to fold up at some point.
That allowed us to get a few more Bunvorixian members. Flopan wouldn’t be coming with us, because he wasn’t trained for combat. Starla wasn’t trained for combat either, but she insisted that we needed a medic on site. Kirk was going to blow up some things. With Reduce, we could fit another handful of members of the Bunvorixian Freedom Initiative, armed with weapons and carrying other things in little spatial pockets I made. It probably would have been troublesome if the dimensional suppression hub had been active, but that one facility had covered quite a wide area. The general towers just didn’t do as much. Especially if they weren’t enchanted to stop me.
Last time, I had just broken my magic when I arrived on Bunvorix. This time? I fully understood the flaws of negative mana… but I could handle it. And mana regeneration wasn’t quite as bad as it had been, so I was confident.
It seemed that not all secret underground facilities were accessed by unassuming doors. Some were beneath military compounds. That was necessary when people were regularly coming into the area. It wasn’t just a number of scientists and guards, but also vehicles transporting prisoners. Secretly, of course. The official prisons were nicely groomed to seem somewhat humane.
“Don’t worry about getting in,” Kirk said as we stepped off of another suspicious subway ride. “My crew has that all taken care of.”
We had to go a few blocks through surface streets to reach the facility, but nothing on Bunvorix was really outside a city. A couple parks, but that was one reason there weren’t any squirrels left. Plus the overhunting.
This particular place had been chosen because it wouldn’t require transporting four humanoids far around the planet. We couldn’t access teleportation stations, and even if we could they were public.
I wasn’t sure how well the illusion covering most of us would work if anyone was really paying attention, but we did look like a number of large dogs walking upright for some reason. Disguise was only so powerful, and it had to mostly cover the physical position of the people it was disguising. We couldn’t exactly move fast on all fours, so we would look weird.
The important thing was that nobody stop us before we reached our destination. Being spotted might actually be beneficial. After all, we did have tons of squirrels with us.
The time had finally come.
I ducked as I heard an explosion, but it was pretty far off. The following one was closer. Smoke began to rise from several places around the military facility we were infiltrating.
“Just through here,” Kirk said, leading us through the least flashy opening in the walls. He actually didn’t have any business being in front except to make certain all the explosives had already triggered. “Watch your step, there’s some sharp bits.”
I had boots for that, but even if Bunvorixians had footwear it was generally thinner. And Khithae kept her feet bare. It was a matter of practicality.
Magnet Man helpfully waved away all the metal shrapnel. Meanwhile, I was gathering mana.
“Enemy spotted!” one of the resistance members at the forefront called out. “They’re blocking the entrance!”
I was nearly trembling with magic. Having significantly overcast magic before, I could handle it… but I needed to release the spell quickly. My fatigue limit was 25.5 points of mana… but it was better to leave a bit of leeway. 20 points of mana went into a Sleep spell as soon as I spotted the target location.
A half dozen Bunvorixian soldiers fell over. It didn’t matter if they had combat experience or high willpower. Unless they were extremely exceptional, they couldn’t withstand something like that. Nor could any people behind the doorway behind them.
Magnet Man ripped the doors open. Or rather, he swung the doors open after undoing a simple latch.
A beam shot at us, but deflected upwards off of an invisible wall Ice Guy was sustaining. He could make his ice opaque, and indeed that was the norm, but currently he was pushing a slanted and clear sheet of ice ahead of us to protect from anything like this. The one remaining soldier who was shooting at us happened to be further down the hallway, out of position.
I let Magnet Man take care of him, severing a few wires inside his mouthheld weapon. The guy then turned and fled. Our presence already wasn’t a secret, so that was how it had to be.
We turned a few corners and opened a few doors that shouldn’t have let us through. There were also a number of automatic turrets that tried to kill us, only to be torn apart themselves. Metal controllers were actually kind of scary when going up against typical construction. Then again, he’d half incapacitated Iron Shell on his own, so he was actually much more terrifying for cyborgs like her that could actually think and feel.
He still needed the cover from Ice Guy, and he couldn’t do everything himself. Though he did end up making Khithae partially redundant as we found our elevator.
I felt her gather a good chunk of mana, turning off everything in the area. Magnet Man wasted no time starting the elevator’s descent.
“The main power conduit is on the other side here,” Khithae pointed.
“The big one?” Magnet Man asked.
“Yes, I-”
We slowed slightly. I thought I heard a few faint snapping sounds.
“It will be harder for them to turn things back on like this.”
Khithae shook her head. “You’re going to make all the Bunvorixians who developed magnetic shielding cry.”
Magnet Man shrugged. “Too bad for them that they didn’t think about direct metal control.”
He was confident, but I could tell he was pushing himself. Aside from the elevator, he could likely only focus on smaller efforts after this. Then again, he was pretty efficient with his power usage- always flipping open doors instead of tearing them apart. And with the right foreknowledge, he was excellent at disabling Bunvorixian weapons. The only question was how many we would find down below… and how many reinforcements would follow after us.
They wouldn’t be able to use the elevator, but well… Bunvorixians did Teleport. I wasn’t sure I could lock down enough area from spatial travel, but that was my next spell. Another huge chunk of mana. I immediately followed it up with a Knock spell.
The whole underground facility here wasn’t really any bigger than that one with all those mice, and I’d gotten open many doors at once. The same should work here. The sound was loud. The safety on my gun turned off. I guess that was a latch.
In a few moments we would reach the first underground floor and be able to determine how well it worked. We weren’t exactly intending to free everyone in the facility, but if the government wanted them imprisoned I figured it was best to let them out. And our escape route could bring more than a couple extra people along with us.
