Edward Grant - Rebellion

Two men stood beside the rubble piles, one on each side of the mine entrance, both wearing armour, and holding a rifle.

They didn’t look much like the Compagnie men who had come with the fireteam on the truck, but it was hard to tell with the limited resolution of the goggles. Not to mention that the men seemed to be wearing goggles similar to his own. They’d need them, if they were going to see much of anything in the darkness on the plateau outside the mine entrance.

He ignored the two obvious guards for a moment. They were probably standing there as much to draw the attention of anyone who approached the mine as to stop him getting in. While he was shooting at them, their friends would be getting ready to shoot him.

He stared into the dark shadows on the hillside above the entrance. A grainy blob moved behind a rock. Another crouched beside a rock to the right. If there were two men on the hillside, there were probably more elsewhere that he couldn’t see.

The truck was parked outside the entrance, facing toward it with the trailers twisted along a curved path behind. The side of the truck was pockmarked with bullet holes, but no serious damage. So they’d got it here somehow, still pretty much intact. Logan had left the girl and horse in the barn after the sun set, and followed the truck’s tracks up the hill from the village on foot, moving as much as possible among the trees and rocks to stay out of sight of anyone watching the road. Bairamov and Desoto’s claw prints in the dirt of the road had accompanied the truck all the way to the mine.

Whoever these men were, they were guarding the mine. And they seemed determined to keep any uninvited guests out, so there was something in there they wanted to protect. These weren’t just a few villagers with shotguns and hunting rifles, they had military equipment, and knew what they were doing. They must have done, when Bairamov and Desoto arrived, or there’d be signs of a firefight on the plateau. The others had probably been glad to reach their destination, been taken in by whatever show of a friendly welcome the insurgents had put on, and the insurgents surprised them at a time when they could do little to protect themselves.

Either way, Logan had to get in there, and find out what was going on. He hadn’t expected to be able to walk in the front door, but how else could he get inside? And do it without any of the guards spotting him?

He’d expected to be able to sneak around the area with his goggles while the insurgents were blind in the darkness. But, when they had goggles too, the odds looked even. Worse in fact, with at least four of them and one of him. He might as well have come in daylight.

If only he had Alice to help, he’d have the schematics of the mine right on hand in the intel pack. He’d skimmed through them before they left, and he knew the mine had only this one entrance, and an emergency exit tunnel further up the hillside. But they’d surely be guarding that one, too.

He crawled slowly up the hillside beside him, moving away from the guards while gaining some height to give him a better view of the area around the mine. He paused every few metres in the cover of a rock or tree trunk, to peer around it and check that he hadn’t been spotted.

Then stopped and looked down. The plateau was barren, aside from a few dozen long trails of boot prints in the dirt heading in all directions. Men had been in and out of the mine many times since the last rain up here, and they’d left their marks behind in the dirt.

But that was all. Each of the trails either started or ended at the tunnel entrance. Some did both. So it didn’t look like they were entering or leaving the mine through any other route. And one pistol and a few grenades wasn’t going to get him in there, when he was up against at least four men with rifles or worse. Even if he could take one of their rifles from them, it wasn’t likely to be enough.

He thought back to the schematics, closing his eyes as he tried to visualize the image on Alice’s HUD. He’d grown so used to the technology in his suit that he suddenly felt ignorant without it. Not to mention weak and vulnerable. In many ways, he was just a machine that helped the suit get its job done, and believed it was a man using a machine.

But there was something else. There had been more lines on the schematic, leading away from the mine at an angle.

He remembered them, now. They were heading across the plateau toward the cliff face. He hadn’t taken a closer look at them at the time, because why would he need to?

He looked toward the cliff. His gaze followed the plateau toward it from the mine, but, from where he was up on the hillside, he couldn’t see over the edge of the cliff.

Maybe it was nothing, or he was just imagining he’d seen the lines. But it was all he had. He crawled back toward the cliff edge, following a path that curved slowly away from the mine, to stay out of sight of the guards.

Finally, he lay at the top of the cliff, and peered over. There was something below it. Half a dozen pipes protruded from the cliff face. Some were narrow, no more than half a metre across. They wouldn’t do him much good. But the one in the middle was more than a metre in diameter. Tall enough that he could crouch inside it, if not walk.

Maybe the boy he shot had had the right idea back in Gries. Crawl through the waste pipe into the nearest mine, then find another way out where the Legion wouldn’t be watching.

Logan crawled along the cliff edge toward where the pipe would be below him, studying the cliff face as he moved. There were ridges in the cliff, and a narrow ledge that ran below the outlets of the pipes. Which made sense. There had to be some way for the miners to get down to the pipes when they had to do some kind of maintenance.

And there it was. A rough, rusty metal ladder attached to the cliff face by thick, black bolts. He swung his legs over the edge, and carefully lowered his boots onto the first rung they reached, trying to make as little noise as possible. He clambered down slowly, passing the mouth of the pipe on his right as he did so. Then his boots clunked down onto the ledge.

He stepped along the ledge toward the pipe, trying not to look down, and keeping one hand on the ladder for support, as his boots barely fit on the narrow ledge. He leaned around the side of the pipe, and peered into it.

The faint starlight barely illuminated even the mouth of the pipe, so he risked turning on the IR illuminators. A dried-up stream of dark liquid marked the bottom of the pipe, running in a haphazard way to the mouth from as far back as the goggles could see. Whatever that crap was, it hadn’t been running out of there for some time.

He leaned in. There was a faint oily smell, but nothing that immediately alerted his senses to danger. He clambered into it, moving slowly to avoid making noise when his boots scraped against the concrete walls.

He had to crouch low to creep through the narrow pipe. His back was sure going to hate him in the morning if he had to follow the pipe for a long way. The mine entrance must be a hundred metres away across the plateau, then who knows where the pipe went inside the mine. Or whether he could even get out once he’d gone that far.

His boot crunched down on something in the bottom of the pipe that cracked beneath the sole, and the sound echoed back from the hard walls.

He slowed down. He didn’t need to make a noise that would alert anyone near the far end. He still had most of the night to scout the mine, and return to Saint Jean.

The pipe seemed to go on forever.

After a few minutes, all he could see both ahead and behind were a few metres of a circle of dirty concrete, as though the outside world had never existed. He stopped every minute or so, and listened. There was a faint tapping ahead, followed by a scratching as a rat stared up at him from the bottom of the pipe, with the light of the illuminators reflecting from its big, round eyes. It squeaked as Logan approached, then turned and ran away, its claws scraping against the concrete as it moved.