Scorching sunlight burned from above and hot sand burned from below as Dexter took a large swig of his canteen before uttering an exasperated sigh and reporting.
"Mine is stuck again."
Beside him a Lynx transport had started throwing up sand as it was sinking, this had been happening a few times as dunes of 'impossibly fine sand' wasn't exactly the best terrain for them.
[Yeah, I can see that. Standby…]
While Dexter had gotten mostly used to these wondrous machines there had been more of these mistakes over the past few days, the Lynx's had especially gotten stuck on this floor, causing delays as the convoy of scattered transports would get bogged down quite often.
[Starting the shake and bake.]
Coming to a stop instead of throwing up sand, the Lynx sank into the sand a bit more before its hydraulics started working, shaking the entire frame and its wheels as it started compressing the sand underneath.
[Launching now.]
Having compressed the sand below it the Lynx made good use of its horsepower and launched forward out of the settled sand, maintaining its speed before it got stuck again 5 minutes later.
"Mac, are you doing okay?"
Watching her own Lynx get stuck again, Liz knew enough about how the craft operated on Mac's direct orders to realise he might not be feeling so well.
[Yeah, just a bit tired…]
"Then shouldn't you get some rest?"
[It's not that simple… But yeah. Properly.]
Only realising that Liz's transport had been bogging itself down for a while now Mac took a deep breath and attempted to centre his mind again.
[Yours is stuck again I see, give me a second.]
While Mac didn't really need to rest or sleep, per say, it had been a while since he recalibrated his neural uplink and the damage from overloading his gravity engine hadn't really helped his noise to information ratio.
[I might need to rest a bit, but we'll talk about that later.]
Restarting Liz's Lynx, Mac's focus shifted to the convoy on the whole. The terrain had necessitated the need to spread out his vehicles, but the low monster activity on the floor seemed to allow it. Still, low activity didn't mean no activity, and as the sand shifted in front of Mac his attention shifted again as he brought his rifle up.
"That's pretty smart, hiding beneath the sand like that and pouching on prey that comes close… Too bad I've spent a bit of time developing anti-mine sensors that pick you up without issues."
Talking to the monster which did its best to hide, Mac fired a single shot that killed the man-sized antlion waiting in ambush. As he removed the magazine on his M-227 to top it up another shot sounded in the distance as one of Mac's armed transports had found and disposed of a threat itself.
(Perhaps I do need a bit of downtime…)
A part of Mac had identified the threat and issued an order to eliminate it, but he hadn't consciously registered it. Needless to say that shouldn't have happened, there were several safety checks that were supposed to have prevented this and they seemed to have failed without even alerting him. Clearly there was something going wrong with his link, but while Mac would like to just hot swap the glitching component he didn't bring the clean room needed for open brain surgery on himself.
It took the entire rest of the day to fully map out the floors away from the desert one and find another place to go, but as the sun started setting Mac and the others had set up camp in the middle of a marsh field.
"Well, that was frustrating…"
Finally able to breathe without feeling the heat, Dexter took a deep breath as he sat next to the campfire.
"Frustraiting but still impressive. Even with all vehicles getting stuck we crossed that floor faster than we could've done without them carrying all this great food for us.."
Reminding Dexter of the bright side of the situation as he continued eating from his ration, Jack didn't miss the time before he had the option of such quality meals this far inside a dungeon.
"Just to be prepared, are there any other places these craft will struggle to move around? Any other surprises waiting with poor terrain?"
"No, not unless we'll need to cross any particularly molten lava fields."
"What, would they melt then?"
"No, lava is far too sticky for the wheels and the vapors aren't good for the internals in the long run."
Thinking through Ula's question for a moment after answering Carl's rhetorical question Mac continued.
"The Lynx is a platform that's built to perform in every environment possible, not perfectly, there are other craft that are more optimised for low gravity environments, for example, but generally. That's why I picked them for this mission, that and resupplying dropships isn't feasible this far into a dungeon."
If Mac knew exactly how long inside the dungeon the fabled first banner was he would've bumrushed it with an entire formation of dropships, losing most of them be damned. But he didn't and so now he suffered the consequences of that.
"Tomorrow I'll need some time to recalibrate my uplink, the thing that allows me to talk to the machines, so we will be staying put."
Declaring plans for the next day, Mac felt hesitant to reveal another weakness but figured this was so far outside the normal he would never need to expose himself like that again.
"While I recalibrate the machines will be shut down, as I can't guarantee they won't cause friendly fire in some edge cases. While shut down I'll leave their, and my own defence, in your hands."
This wasn't something Mac wanted to do, he hated being vulnerable to attack given what was at stake. Having lived as long as he had Mac was fine with dying at this point, but not failing his mission was what kept him alive. Failing his mission and dying was once and the same, but he hated the idea of the latter far more than the former.
"Okay."
Studying Mac's face for a moment Elizabeth saw he clearly didn't like anything to do with this, he hated being or appearing weak so leaving his life in her and her party's hands must've taken a great deal of trust in them. Liz herself knew a lot about that specific kind of pride, and she knew how hard it was to put that aside.
"We will endeavor to protect you, thanks for trusting us."
Talking for a bit longer, the adventurers eventually turned in for the night. Save for Elizabeth, who chose to keep Mac company for a bit longer like she had done for the past few days. While Mac and Elizabeth would sometimes talk about whatever came to mind, about the stars and beyond, Mac hadn't really asked much about the half dragon sitting next to him.
Realising that he decided to start.
"What's your favorite meal?"
"... That came out of nowhere."
"Best to start at some point, I figured I don't really know much about you, or your other party members for that matter… Figured I ought to start somewhere."
Seeing Mac was genuinely interested and not just fucking around, Liz started smiling.
"In that case why aren't you asking about something more personal, like me and Carl's family or something like that?"
"Because I know family can be a touchy subject, my own family wasn't that great… My shitstain of a dad used to pay people to beat me up on the daily and called it discipline."
Mac could say a lot about his own family, and little of it was positive.
"In that case my family is a bit better, since they abandoned me and my baby brother from birth."
"Then do you want to go back to talking about food?"
Seeing neither of them had good experiences with family Mac pivoted to change topic with the grace of a sledgehammer and the sheer whiplash of it made Liz laugh.
"Hahaha, Yeah, sure. I like steak a lot."
Eventually morning arrived, but instead of packing up to move on the camp stayed put and the adventurers gathered around Mac.
"I expect the downtime will take anywhere from 8 to 10 hours, in that time I will appear to be sleeping, but won't be able to wake up. Like I said yesterday the same will be true for all the drones, so don't go shutting any doors on the Lynx transports, because they will lock and remain locked… Any questions?"
"No, we will keep you safe, so have good rest."
Confident in their role, Liz spoke for the rest of her party who had all grabbed weapons and seemed prepared, so Mac decided to sit down and begin.
"Okay then, please keep me safe."
Sitting down on his knees, Mac closed his eyes and in no time his arms fell limp along the sides of his body as his consciousness faded away as automatic repair and recalibration commenced.
Next thing Mac knew he was laying down, looking up at the yellow sky and with his head in Elizabeth's lap of all things.
"... Did anything happen?"
Deciding to take full advantage of the heavenly pillows his head rested on, Mac remained where he was.
"Not really, a few monsters appeared, but nothing we couldn't handle, but you did fall over after a while, and I kinda felt bad seeing you face down in the dirt so I cleaned you up and put you here instead."
Seeing she had a hard time looking him in the eye, Mac figured out what had happened pretty quickly.
"... Someone pushed me over, didn't they?"
"No comment."
Leaving the embrace of betrayal, Mac stood up as his machines all around came alive again as he started running tests. Virtually deploying and weapons and running combat drills, Mac checked and triple checked things to find the recalibration had worked great. Another night quickly passed before the party started advancing again, leading to another floor of disconnected sky islands that needed jumping.
"Okay, I am clear here. How is it looking?"
Just finished reloading his M-227, Mac didn't really pay attention to the vaguely humanoid lizard monsters that laid dead around him as he confirmed his part of the route was clear.
[I'm clear here too, no monsters.]
[Clear here, just finished up.]
[Same, clear.]
Getting responses back from the adventurers that their parts of the route the Lynx transports would need to clear in order to make the jump across the abyss, Mac cleared the first transport for launch.
"First Lynx is a go in 10 seconds, call for abort immediately."
Checking in on all his surveillance drones, Mac cleared the area from the sky as the adventurers and Mac's human type drones cleared the area from the ground. After the final delay the Lynx started rolling, it being one of the general transports with a somewhat light load the machine accelerated quickly, but it needed every single part of the prepared launch strip. About half way down the craft lit its attitude control thrusters and they throttled to maximum output just before it ran out of ground. Airborne for several seconds the Lynx landed with a thud as it breaked hard, eventually coming to a stop as it deployed its turret to cover for the others.
"Okay I'm sending the next."
Keen to get this over with, Mac assumed things were still clear and sent the next Lynx. If he had looked at the area a little more carefully he would've noticed the unnatural way the blood sunk into the ground around him, silently pulsing with magic as it did.
Already halfway down the launch track, the Lynx, a gun carrier this time, lit its attitude control thrusters, but as it launched into the air between the floating islands a massive pulse of magic swept through the area like an angry sensor growl. Identifying its target instantly, the malignant pulse of magic spread throughout the area from the blood and body parts of the dead monsters around Mac, pulsing through the floating island to attack.
[SOMETHING'S WRONG!]
Liz's warning came too late, as a spear made out of rock shot out from the cliff edge like a bolt of lightning, cutting through the airborne Lynx like it was made of wet tissue paper.
"SHIT, CONTACT!"