Chapter 30 – Explosive Results

  “We have tried a number of ways to be more efficient at destroying rifts. Our problem lies in mitigating damage to what the rift can handle. If we detonate a rge explosive in the rift, it will likely be destroyed then colpse on itself, imploding then exploding causing far more damage that the explosive used.” - Researcher expining why they send people into rifts.

  “Well, that didn’t go as pnned.” Val said dryly as she and Kurt inspected the test group of rift monsters they had killed.

  “I was wondering if those bundles were explosive or not.” He responded while kicking the splintered shield over to reveal the charred insides.

  After their lunch of comfort food, they had changed into their st sets of clean fatigues and hopped right back into the rift. Val had insisted that she could walk again, and the numbness had completely faded which was the deciding factor.

  Upon reentering, they discovered a few patrols sweeping through the tunnels at the crossroads. The three squads all seemed to ignore the tunnel with the portal, instead focusing on the tunnels that led deeper into the network of caves.

  Eventually the search was called off and they began to move away, all going down the tunnel where Val had been shot. Naturally, they followed, keeping a safe distance while using the complete darkness as cover.

  The squads paused after entering the mined-out section, seeming to set up a sort of hasty camp with their shields propped up on the perimeter. They pced their nterns in the middle, making a sort of firepit with the lights opened a little to give off a wider beam. Kurt and Val observed them for a while before deciding to ambush them once they settled down.

  The squads all sat in the center of their shield wall, rifling through their satchels and pulling out what appeared to be rations. It was that moment when Kurt and Val chose to strike, each of them firing into the encampment at the unsuspecting elves.

  Kurt had to give them credit where it was due, they reacted very fast to the sudden ambush. Six of the thirty died in the opening shots but after that, things got much more difficult.

  The elves quickly brought the shields on the back of the formation to the front, setting them behind the front row, doubling up the armor which rendered Val’s rifle almost useless against them. From there, the squads hunkered down, firing quick pot shots over the top of the shield wall in the general direction of the agents.

  When one of them decided to stand up, a sparking bundle in one hand that was ready to throw, he was instantly dropped by Val who had been waiting for such an occasion. The bundle in his hand fell to the ground, alongside his lifeless body.

  “Cover!” Kurt yelled. Both him and Val hunkered down behind the bend in the cave, covering their ears and heads as best they could.

  The detonation that followed was substantial, and likely the result of the initial explosion setting off the rest of the satchel the elf had been carrying. In a one-two fashion, two detonations ripped through the caves, buffeting Kurt and Val with the over pressure even from around the bend in the tunnel. An echoing rumble followed the bst as the sound bounced its way down the tunnels. The sound seemed muted to Kurt, like it was absorbed faster than it should have been.

  When Kurt poked his head back out, there was little to see besides debris in the now completely dark room. The limbs of the elves were scattered around the room and their shields had turned into twisted pincushions of wood, held together by the contorted remains of the metal faces.

  They moved forward and inspected the damage, also looking for any that survived and need some extra attention. After seeing that none of the elves were intact, they quickly surveyed the area.

  At the far side of the surprisingly still intact room, were two additional tunnels, leading in a general level slope. The room itself had a few bits of stone that had broken loose, falling from the mined walls and ceiling, leaving the ‘natural’ surfaces undamaged.

  “Which way?” He asked Val, cracking a chem light and dropping it near the entrance of the tunnel they had come down. They both stopped and listened, Kurt couldn’t make out much even after his eardrums quit ringing.

  Val crouched and looked deeper into the tunnel mouths trying to see as far as she could. “Let’s go left again. If this skirts us around the outside, then we can take the other tunnels to move inward.”

  They proceeded down the left tunnel, occasionally stopping to listen for any pursuers. After a while of walking, they encountered something they hadn’t expected. A rge light source. The opening to another rger space was ahead and they could see a general glow from the area. Peeking around the corner, Kurt saw that the tunnel ended in a long open hall.

  A hall like an audience hall or perhaps a ball room would be a more apt description of what he could see. The room was at least a hundred yards across and two hundred long with a high vaulted ceiling above. The curve continued from its apex, all the way to the floor, having no proper ‘walls’. All of it was carved out of the natural rock, leaving little tool marks on all the surfaces.

  Along the sides of the chamber were stone benches and tables that looked like picnic tables, with a few dozen elves scattered across them, eating and resting. The center of the room had a rge ptform with light shining from underneath that had the same glow as the carbide mps the elves carried.

  Hovering above this stage, was a gem like core that seemed to glow despite being bck in color. The core appeared to be smaller than the st one but not by very much. As he watched, an elf was suddenly spawned into existence on the stage directly under the core.

  The newly minted elf adjusted its equipment, picked up his shield, then wandered off to a table along the far wall. Kurt frowned as both he and Val ducked back into the tunnel.

  “I thought they couldn’t make anything until after the first phase.” Kurt said to Val once they had backed down the hall a little way.

  “They cant. Unless…” She trailed off and summoned a chunk of the bck stone they had collected from the previous room. “Unless it has a fuel source.” She finished.

  Kurt remembered the ptform and how it seemed to glow. If he was a betting man, his money would be on the ore being the fuel and the energy source for the core. He once more looked at the ore, noting that, while bck, it wasn’t at all close to coal in nature.

  “Hang on. We have to go back.” Kurt said suddenly after getting an idea of what was going on. It might also be the reason why Penny hadn’t detected much in the way of energy depletion despite them having killed several of the rift made elves.

  They back tracked all the way to the crossroads, only stopping briefly to engage a half squad that was investigating the room where the explosives went off. After reaching the crossroads, they went down the right path, following the slope downward.

  The tunnel twisted around a few times, meandering its way along but still gently sloping down. They passed a pair of the small storage rooms, each on opposite sides of each other but otherwise empty.

  Then Kurt had to slow down because they could see the light of the nterns ahead. They quietly crept forwards and found another mining operation that was following a couple veins of the bck ore. The elves in the expanded room were mostly focused on mining with their manual tools, breaking away sections of the shiny ore and pcing it in carts.

  After one cart had been filled, two elves began moving it further down the tunnel, but they stopped to let an empty one back into the room. The full cart went down the tunnel while the empty one took its pce to be loaded.

  “I count eighteen of them.” Kurt said after surveying the room.

  “That’s two full squads if you count the two that took that first cart away.”

  Nodding, Kurt did a quick check behind them. “I think this tunnel eventually leads under the great hall we were in. I bet there is a furnace down there that is converting the ore to more energy for the core.”

  Val was nodding along as he reasoned out what was happening. “I bet if we disrupt the furnace or whatever, the core will send the rest of its minions running. We could set an ambush here or maybe at those small storage rooms.”

  “I say we do it here, depending on how deep that other tunnel is.” Kurt wanted a little extra room now that he knew how potent the explosives were. “Let’s drop these guys then go explore.”

  They set up a firing position in the mouth of the tunnel, easily staying concealed in the darkness while the miners were none the wiser. They got lucky with the two missing elves returning with their empty cart and joining in on the vein of ore.

  Val signaled she was ready, and Kurt opened up, taking three in quick succession that happened to be standing near each other. Val worked her way in from the other side of the group, getting one that tried to bolt for the other tunnel.

  Before the elves had all been killed, a few had managed to return fire, sending pistol shots into the tunnel but missing wildly. Naturally, they didn’t get a chance for a second volley before Kurt and Val gave them acute doses of lead poisoning.

  One interesting development in this brief fire fight was that it actually attracted attention, unlike their previous encounters. Kurt and Val had just reloaded when they saw movement in the tunnel opposite them.

  Another squad of the elves was steadily advancing up the path, covered behind shields with pistol barrels poking out between the gaps. Kurt and Val both fired into the wall of metal, sometimes getting a double kill from the nature of the elven formation.

  After another quick magazine change, they quickly policed up the loot and began to cautiously make their way down the tunnel. After passing another storage room that had some carts piled in it, they saw the faint glow from down the tunnel. Kurt could feel the heat as they rounded a corner. While not hot, it was noticeably warmer than anywhere else in the tunnels. All that heat and light came from the center of a circur room with a tall ceiling.

  In the center of the room was a cone shaped furnace, its ‘chimney’ reaching up to a square impression that had vents around the edges. Kurt would bet that the core was directly above them, and they were looking at the underside of the great hall’s central ptform.

  “Ok, now how do we…” Val began asking but stopped when Kurt held up a satchel they had just recovered from the miners in the previous room. “Oh. Carry on then.” She said with a big grin.

  “Let’s go prepare our position first.” Kurt said and they returned to the previous room. It didn’t take long for them to make a stack of the broken rocks, creating a defensive wall with a few view ports to fire from. They also took down the hanging nterns, making the room completely dark.

  When they returned to the furnace room, Kurt walked around the structure, thinking on how to get his satchel inside. As he passed along one side, he noticed there was a sb of rock covering a protrusion from the base of the furnace.

  He pulled the rock aside and found what likely was how they fed the ore into it, since there weren’t steps or any way to get to the top. He immediately noticed that it got hotter in the room. Not hot like a normal furnace or even a fire but more like holding a hand near a heat mp.

  Kurt closed off the furnace and pulled out his satchel of explosives. The sticks were all loose, each with a few inches of fuse sticking out of the end. It really did look like a stick of dynamite but in a yellow wrapper.

  He then took out a roll of duct tape from his storage ring. Kurt was really beginning to like having the ring since he was able to carry so much more than he normally would. The tape and trauma bag were just the start to the stuff he kept stashed away.

  The sticks were formed into a bundle and tapped together, fifteen sticks forming a rough flower shape. Kurt then taped the fuses together, making a cluster and trying to get as much contact as possible so they all went off at the same time.

  After a few minutes of futzing about, Kurt had a cartoon like bundle of explosives, ready for a light and a toss. “Val, head up the tunnel a way, I don’t pn to stick around.”

  Val gave him a kiss on the cheek and moved off toward the rger room. Kurt waited a moment before moving to the furnace door and pulling it open. He retrieved a Bic lighter from his ring and proceed to light the bundle of fuses which caught easily and burned at a slow rate. He then under hand chucked the bundle into the furnace and took off running.

  He didn’t think the furnace was hot enough to ignite the explosives but also didn’t want to be around to find out if he was wrong. A few moments ter, Kurt was clearing the mouth of the tunnel into the rger room just in time to feel a wave of pressure buffet him from behind.

  The sound of an explosion followed the bst of air as Kurt ducked around the corner and covered his ears with Val. Shortly after, they felt the rumble of colpsing stone and a wave of dust washed up from the tunnel.

  Coughing, Val turned to Kurt. “Ach, I think, ack. I think you got it.” She said having to summon a bottle of water from her ring to clear her mouth.

  Kurt also drank some water, feeling the grit on his teeth even after swishing and spitting a few times. He had forgotten about dust possibly being a thing since most of the tunnels were completely free of dirt. He looked down the tunnel, not able to see much so he went on a quick exploration.

  The end of the tunnel had indeed colpsed, right where the natural stone had ended before, confirming his theory that the mining weakened the rock somehow. The good news was that the tunnel was completely blocked by several tons of fallen stone and they wouldn’t have to fight from both sides.

  “Hey, I think I hear something.” Val said over the radio, causing Kurt to run back to her. He rejoined her in the darkened room just in time to see a flickering light at the far end of the tunnel.

  “Let’s wait till they commit.” He said and took his pce behind their prepared fighting position. “I don’t want to have them break away to regroup.” Slowly, the lights approached, moving only slightly quicker than they had come to expect of the shield formations. When the elves came into view, it was in a new format they hadn’t seen before.

  The shield wall was able to be five across, given the width of the tunnel, but those five were tightly packed and overpping at the edges. Above that, there were three additional shields, creating a sort of oversized crenetion like a castle wall. From between these upper shields poked the barrels of several guns as well as nterns, shining down the tunnel.

  Kurt and Val waited for them to get closer, bringing more of the formation into view. The column of elves coming down the tunnel was long, their nterns showing their numbers in the darkness. With the front four rows having shields and guns up, this was a well-designed fighting force for the environment.

  Once the lead elves had come within fifty yards, Kurt and Val could see the majority of the column. It was at that point, they opened fire. Kurt put his rounds into the front ranks, punching through the shields while Val began pouring rounds into the ranks behind.

  Screams echoed down the tunnel along with the desperate return fire from the primitive guns. A few of the shots from the elves hit the wall Kurt and Val built but the majority spshed against the tunnel walls and ceiling. The shots were either barely aimed or not at all, given the chaotic pattern of impacts.

  Kurt changed magazines after killing the front ranks, Val still had a couple rounds left before she too needed to freshen up. His next twenty rounds went into the middle ranks since the front was all either dead or dying, crushed under fallen shields with the rest of the column advancing over them. The tight formations were working against the elves as there was no true ‘miss’ when Kurt and Val fired.

  Val had just inserted a fresh magazine when the first of the rift elves broke and ran. He was one of the ones in front, so he didn’t make it far, but he did start a trend. One by one, the remaining couple dozen elves started to turn and run. While their idea to flee was good, their luck was not, and they were gunned down from behind.

  The fight was a sughter, over in moments with one side clearly the victor. They had fired two magazines each while the mass of elves had barely managed twenty shots in total, all of which was ineffective. Neither of them moved from their positions, instead pcing a few shots into the still moving and wounded elves.

  After a minute of silence, the agents stood from behind their positions and began to slowly walk forward. Kurt slipped briefly on the now blood-soaked stone floor, and they had to slow as they approached.

  “Cover me.” Kurt said and began touching the fallen elf’s equipment, piece by piece storing it in his ring. He did this with his glock in hand since he couldn’t effectively wield the rifle while checking the dead. On three occasions they found a live one and put them down, one of which was the elf pying possum and he only narrowly avoided getting shot.

  They counted the bodies as they went moving them to the sides of the passage to create a rather macabre aisle in the narrow tunnel. The total for this engagement came out to fifty-six of the rift made elves, a number that raised some suspicions.

  “Think that’s all of them?” Kurt asked Val.

  She shook her head before replying. “I doubt it. Other than that first group of eight, the rest of the squads have been at least ten members. I would put my money on the core having at least some guarding it, not sure if it’s the remaining four or what.”

  Giving each other a look, they decided to go find out for themselves and began headed through the tunnels, back to the core chamber. Not a single patrol was seen, the tunnels remaining dark and elf free for the entire trip.

  Upon reaching the core room, Kurt’s thermal overy picked out a few outlines. There were at least six stationed around the room, taking cover behind the tables. When Kurt told Val, she came up with a clever idea.

  She moved into the room under an illusion, essentially making herself invisible but still creeping slowly to the opposite side from their tunnel entrance. Once she got set up, she clicked her radio once, signaling Kurt to get the party started. Kurt picked two elves that were in line and more exposed to the tunnel entrance. They both had their guns pointed his way so he knew this would be a quick exchange.

  Bang, bang. Two rounds as fast as his supernatural mind and body could move. Both elves took a hundred and fifty grains of lead to the upper chest and crumpled, one of their guns going off and the shot hitting the wall next to the tunnel mouth.

  There was a sudden hail of lead that streamed into the opening. Kurt had the impression of more than four of the lead balls hitting the tunnel walls but pressed onward once the echoing booms faded and he heard the sharp crack of Val’s silenced rifle.

  Pushing into the room, Kurt and Val eliminated the remaining six elves, two had been hidden from view, before turning on the glowing core that hovered over a colpsed pit of rubble. He gestured to Val to do the honors and she happily obliged, sighting in on the crystal before sending a single bullet into it, knocking it into the far wall where it fell to the floor, completely dim.