TH - Book 2 - Chapter 38 - A tight space

“There’s another one, that makes five entrances,” Skyler announced, pointing at another shadow on the truck’s display screen. My drone was pretty messed up so I didn’t want to risk sending it into the tunnels to check how extensive the system was. Instead, Skyler and I decided to head into the crater and take a look ourselves. Even on the flight over we noticed a lot of things we’d missed earlier.

“Artymis, you’re forwarding all this information to Cascadia command, and The Family, right?” I asked my AI.

{Arty: Yes, but both organizations have made it clear that their priority is to clean up the antithesis which were outside the range of the orbital strike, before they can scatter and develop new hives.}

“Makes sense, take advantage of momentary confusion to deal with the obvious threat before investigating something that may, or may not, be an issue,” Skyler muttered.

“Honestly, that orbital strike probably collapsed most of the tunnels in the area. I probably wouldn’t have given these tunnels a second glance if we hadn’t seen that Model Three retreat into one,” I said as we passed over the lip of the crater. “There’s the entrance.”

“It’s probably nothing anyways, we’ll catch a couple antithesis that retreated underground after the strike and clean them up, that's it,” Skyler whispered to herself.

“Right, quick in and out,” I added half heartedly.

I jumped out of my seat as soon as we landed and quickly went around to the back of the truck to release Skyler’s drones from their storage compartments. Once they were released I went to check on my drone, which was pretty banged up. Losing half of its melee weapons before its second engagement was disappointing, but it was otherwise functional. 

My other drone, however, was in terrible shape. Skyler and I retrieved the drone before heading into the crater. The hover jets had been completely mangled in the blastwave, they were practically unrecognizable when we picked it up. I could probably replace them if we had a couple hours, and someplace to work, but doing a field repair was out of the question. Still, the frame was completely intact. The heavier armor really saved both drones from being completely ripped apart.

“How’s our boy looking, you think we can take him into the tunnel?” Skyler asked from the other side of the truck.

“Yeah. He’s banged up, but he still has half his weapons. The tunnels are narrow enough that he doesn’t have to worry about something coming in on the damaged side. Those arms are long enough to cover his frontal arc,” I said.

“Good. I’m going to grab a couple new scouts, using your improved sensor catalog. I don’t know how stable that tunnel is, so hopefully they’ll be able to warn us of any problems before things start collapsing down upon us,” Skyler explained.

“You’ll get no argument from me,” I replied.

I waited at the opening to the tunnel until Skyler got her new scouts setup. They were actually smaller than the old ones, not much bigger than my hand, and were shaped like a flying saucer instead of a quadcopter, like the old ones.

“I decided to upgrade them to Class II,” Skyler explained when she saw me examining one of the small drones. “Faster, tougher, and only slightly more expensive. The sensor upgrades actually cost more than the drones themselves.”

“And they can detect instability?” I asked.

“Along with biological and radiological threats, they have built in ground penetrating radar, sonar, and a variety of specteographic sensors. Plus I can have them explode upon command.”

I yanked my hand back from the tiny drone and turned to stare at Skyler. “Why would you even want that?”

“In case of emergencies. I can’t fire mortars in the close confines of the antithesis tunnels, but I could use my scout drones to make precision strikes, or collapse the tunnel, if we need to.”

“Okay, good point. Just… please warn me before I start petting the flying explosive device next time,” I grumbled.

“Alright,” Skyler replied with a sly grin. “Are you ready to go spelunking?”

“As ready as I can be,” I muttered as I stepped up to the tunnel’s mouth. 

Before I could actually step inside Skyler’s drones shot past me, deep into the tunnel systems. 

“The tunnel’s surprisingly completely clear and stable for the first three hundred feet. I would have expected more cave-ins, considering this thing was right on the edge of that impact, but nothing so far. I’ll let you know if I see anything sketchy,” Skyler reported.

“Then let's proceed,” I replied quietly. 

I gently prompted my drone to go first. It had a small light array which wasn’t that powerful, but it was better than a flashlight and meant that I didn’t have to wear my night vision goggles. The tunnels themselves varied between six and eight feet wide, and appeared to be constructed out of highly compressed earth. The soil was so tightly packed that I couldn’t even chip it with my fingernails. I didn’t try that hard, I didn’t want to accidentally compromise the tunnel, but the extreme hardness of the walls could definitely explain how the tunnels survived despite being so close to the orbital strike.

The main tunnel also appeared fairly linear, traveling vaguely westward. It did branch out occasionally, but these side tunnels almost always ended within a couple hundred meters next to some bedrock, or other impassable terrain. They looked more like exploratory tunnels, which were abandoned when the path was blocked, rather than any sort of expansion.

“How far do you think this goes?” I quietly asked Skyler after we’d been walking for about half an hour.

“I don’t know, but my drones are about five hundred meters ahead of us, and they still haven’t found anything. No antithesis, no hive, just more tunnels,” she whispered back.

“Five hundred meters? That would almost put us at the city’s perimeter walls, wouldn’t it?” 

“Not quite, but they’re getting close,” Skyler replied as she stared into the darkness ahead of us. “You don’t think they breached the walls do you?”

“No, they couldn’t have. The outer wall has seismic sensors, and even if they had punched through someone should have noticed them running around the street by now and raised the alarm,” I replied, before biting my lip. “That being said… perhaps we should pick up the pace. I don’t like that we haven’t seen neither hide nor hair of those antithesis we saw earlier. They’re usually so aggressive, I don’t know what would cause them to retreat like that.”

“You think the commander is still around?” Skyler asked.

“I don’t know. I hope that it was sitting in the middle of the swarm, and took that iridium rod straight to the head, but experience has taught me not to believe anything that I haven’t verified myself. It might still be out there somewhere.”

Skyler just nodded quietly in response. 

We did pick up our pace after that, moving swiftly through the main tunnel. It started to slope downwards, and the branches became much more numerous the closer we came to the city, so Skyler’s drones had to split up to explore all the possibilities. There weren’t any forks, just more dead ends, but I found the sheer number of branches concerning. This couldn’t have been a small operation, dug by a few dozen antithesis, this was an organized, methodical advance. 

We were definitely approaching the outer wall now, but there were so many branches that Skyler’s drones couldn’t map them all efficiently. In the end, we came to a massive crossroads, with dozens of tunnels branched off into slightly different directions.

“Fuck, now what? Do we just choose a random tunnel and hope we get lucky and run into those runaway antithesis?” I grumbled.

“Reina my dear, exploring random dead end tunnels is what the scout drones are for. I think you and I should take… this one!” Skyler announced, pointing to what appeared to be a random tunnel.

“Why? What’s so special about that tunnel?” I asked sullenly.

“There’s a moist breeze coming out of it, and I can smell the barest hint of salt,” she explained triumphantly. “The antithesis must have burrowed out to the sea.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, to get to the sea they would have had to dig all the way under the city, and into the harbor. We can’t be that far,” I said as I walked up next to her. Sure enough, just like she said, there was a slight salty breeze.

“Well, shall we go find out if there’s another explanation?” Skyler asked, before stepping into the tunnel ahead of me. 

I rushed to catch up with her, then took the lead deeper into the unknown tunnel. It wasn’t that long, just a hundred or so meters, but it ended abruptly in a concrete wall, with a perfectly cut hole right in the middle. As I poked my head through the hole, I was struck with the smell of not only salt water, but sewage, and decay. There wasn’t much light, but I could just make out the splattered remains of a Model eight a couple dozen feet below. It was on a metal catwalk suspended over a massive flooded area. The catwalk went along the wall, before branching off towards some massive pillars in the distance. I could just make out a chaotic jumble of wires, pipes, and lights crawling up the side of the pillar, along with a few hovels.

“Shit…” I hissed.

“What is it?”

The antithesis didn't go through the walls, they went under them. It looks like they used Eights to do the digging to limit the vibrations. We better call the Cascadia command, because it looks like the antithesis loose down here in the canal district.”