The 1st Reconnaissance Squad was on a reconnaissance mission in the subterranean depths of DMA-2365. Crankshaft, the veteran draftee miner from chapter 1, who reenlisted and was reassigned to the Kobalt Force was in a friendly argument with Dorn, the royal family’s publicists. They had just finished talking about the Inevitables.

Their conversation was immensely painful for Barnaby to listen too. Their grasp on key details and facts pertaining to the theory of the Inevitables were ludicrous. He kept wanting to interject into their conversation, but he was deciding to stay on task and on mission.

Suddenly, a stalactite fell from above and nearly missed hitting Crankshaft.

“Derek all mighty!” screamed Crankshaft as he leaped out of the way.

“Are you okay, friend?” asked Dorn.

Everyone else pulled their carbines to their cheeks and scanned their sectors for an ambush. There wasn’t a spider in sight.

“Calm down everyone, it’s just DMA-2365 trying to take my life too soon,” said Crankshaft as he dusted off his uniform.

“You know this might be a weird time to ask but what does DMA stand?” asked Frackleberry.

“At this moment, it’s Dwarven Misfortune Area,” said Crankshaft with a chuckle.

“I thought it was Designated Mining Area,” said Dorn.

Barnaby was just about to lose his mind. He started to breath deeply trying to calm himself. He knew the answer, but he wasn’t going to pull himself into this conversation. It never ends well. He felt like people hated him for correcting their mistakes or just trying to inform them. This social issue between him and them was something he couldn’t quite grasp.

“Designated Mining Area? No. That’s not right it’s, Deep Meteor Area. I’m sure of it,” responded Crankshaft.

“No. I’m sure it’s Designated Mining Area. I saw it in a manual once back on the home world,” responded Dorn who was becoming agitated.

Barnaby couldn’t take it anymore, “You’re both wrong!” He took a second to breathe and regain his composure. “The Acronym Delta-Mike-Alpha stands for Derek’s Mineable Asteroid.”

Both Crankshaft and Dorn looked utterly confused and then laughed.

“That’s funny,” said Crankshaft.

“I’m not joking, it’s Derek’s Mineable Asteroid,” responded Barnaby.

“That can’t be right, I think you’re mistaken,” said Dorn.

“I’m not mistaken. They used to be called Hotel-Mike-Mike, which stood for His Majesty’s Meteor. My great-grandfather King Derekus Maximus Derekon Stone named them. My father redesignated them to Derek’s Mineable Asteroid when I pointed out that they aren’t technically, scientifically speaking, meteors.”

“I miss the old names,” interjected Fry.

“That can’t be right,” said Crankshaft. “I’m certain that it’s Deep Meteor Area, that makes the most sense!”

“Things don’t always have to make sense for them to be right,” said Barnaby. “It all happened around the time when all the rockets were redesignated from Hotel-Mike-Romeo, for His Majesty’s Rocket to Delta-Mike-Romeo for Derek’s Mighty Rocket!”

“See now I know you're pulling my pickaxe. The ships are designated Romeo-November-Charlie for Royal Navigator Corps,” said Crankshaft.

“You’re partially right,” said Barnaby. “The full designation is DMR/RNC. The ship we came here on is DMR/RNC T-6. Which stands for Derek’s Mighty Rocket, Royal Navigator Corps Transport-Six.”

Crankshaft and Dorn appeared to take this information as a personal attack. Everyone else on attendance started to yawn and check the time on their watches.

“I’ve never heard the captain say that! He’s always saying, ‘RNC Transport-Six’. Do you think the pilot is wrong?” questioned Dorn.

“Just because one thing is right, doesn’t make another thing wrong. The pilot does say RNC Transport-Six. He’s just saying the backend, because it would be a mouthful to say DMR/RNC T-6 as a callsign every time he’s on the radio,” said Barnaby.

Crankshaft and Dorn both simultaneously scoffed at Barnaby. Crankshaft waved his hand in the air as if he was slapping Barnaby's hand away.

After a moment of reflection, Crankshaft and Dorn stopped talking. They were stumped, that last bit sounded logical and made sense to them. They both grumbled a bit longer as they took a split-second thinking of a response.

“Can you nerdy twats shut up and get back on mission?” said Clive snapped at them as quietly as he could. He was visibly livid, "Even dead spiders could hear this gabfest, between the three of you."

A moment later Dorn and Crankshaft went back to arguing about anything and everything.

Barnaby got a little closer to whisper to the other two, “I’ll send you the royal declaration in an email later showing the resignation from HMM to DMA, but for now when we get back just look at the side of the ship.”

“You’re still going on about the acronyms?” said Crankshaft.

“Prince, we moved on a while ago. To be honest, we really don’t care,” said Dorn.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

At that moment Barnaby felt hurt, which made him think about how much he missed being around other academics. Academics would always appreciate finding and knowing the truth. Wading through extraneous data to find nuggets of useful information. Not just knowing the truth but exploring copious amounts of firsthand accounts, government documents, scientific and academic texts and peer reviewed articles.

He did enjoy some aspects of being around soldiers, mostly the camaraderie, but many times it felt like they just talked to speak. It didn’t matter if someone was right, they just wanted to be right. To be honest, it wasn’t just soldiers that had this trait. The whole damn species except for a few select Gnomes.

Sometimes he felt like they all just took turns pretending to be right. Like it was just an unwritten rule he didn’t know about.

These social issues gave him the push to start researching more of the light side of academia. He usually only had interests in dark science (physics, chemistry and biology) he found comfort in the distinct objectivity, use of math and obviously having control over the variables. The light side was too unknown and ambiguous. There were no definitive answers. Always so hard to test. Psychology seemed like a game of chance and the data was too easily corruptible. Not to speak of all the pesky ethical rules.

He tried to run social experiments months ago with Fry on some of the support staff but Layra yelled at them about their ethical responsibilities to do no harm.

After some thought it seemed a bit out of character for her. She always seemed down for some mad science on the unsuspecting masses. She was probably upset she wasn't included.

The group after all their hiking and arguments had finally reached a precipice. Literally, not figuratively. Before them was a giant abyss, a natural cave that connected to the mining tunnels. At the cliff, was an industrial elevator and some safety railings.

“The mining elevator seems to be broken,” said Crankshaft.

“I could repair it,” said Barnaby.

“No. We don’t have the time. Let’s repel,” said Clive.

“Well at least drop a messenger bot to get a tech out here. You don’t really want to climb all the way back up here if we get into a firefight, do you?” said Barnaby.

“While I’d normally insult you for being weak and lazy, strategically, that’s a really good point,” said Clive. “I don’t intend to die today, send it.”

The tunnels were so deep that radio communication did not work in the deep mines. The dwarves used little robots with wheels to send messages back and forth.

Barnaby handed the robot a handwritten note. “Here you go little buddy,” said Barnaby to the robot. It beeped with pleasure and dashed off into the distance.

“Why did you give it a handwritten note?” asked Fry. “It’s a semi-autonomous robot, it would have just verbally passed the message.”

“You like the old names, I like the old ways of passing a message,” said Barnaby.

“To each his own,” said Fry. Fry performed the customary doff and flourish to Barnaby as he leaped off the edge of the cliff.

The recon squad, two Kobalt soldiers and of course the camera crew repelled to the bottom of the abyss. The soldiers continued with their mission to confirm or deny the presence of an adult spider on DMA-2365. The camera crew continued with their never-ending quest for more b-roll.

Near the bottom they started noticing a sticky silk like material on the ground.

"What is this?" said Fry.

Clive signaled for everyone to freeze and be quiet. He looked around and gave the rally signal. The team met on Clive's position.

"This is serious. This silk substance is spider webbing from a Terrarachna adult. Nobody has seen this in a long time," said Clive.

There are two common and several more rare types of species of spiders that exist. The two most common are the Terrarachna and the Dreadrachna. The dreadrachna are smaller and faster while the Terrarachna are larger, stronger, stealthy and crafty.

Spiders go from the egg, spiderling, juvenile and adult stages. They can start to reproduce in the late spiderling to early juvenile stage. During the juvenile stage the increase in size radically increases and when they reach the adult stage they continue to radically grow in size and weight.

"Terrarachna adults create nests for their young. While we all know spiderlings and juvenile reproduce they don't have the ability to create nests with this webbing ability," continued Clive.

"I don't want to know where this webbing shit even comes from out of the spider," said Frackleberry as she pulled it from her skin.

"Pun intended?" rhetorically asked Fry.

Frackleberry laughed and smiled, froze for a moment and then pulled out sanitizer and started rubbing it over her body.

"Oh, Derrick! You don't think it comes out of their anus, do you?" said Frackleberry.

"I'd almost guarantee it some out of someplace near their anus," said Fry.

Barnaby snickered, "It comes from their abdomen. Though I'd still use that sanitizer."

As usual Clive wasn't happy with how loud everyone was being. He gave them the universal sign of shut the fuck up and come over here before I murder you all. While it sounds complicated, it is not exactly that elaborate of a hand signal.

"We're going to split up. Everyone except Fry and Barnaby and myself will set up defensive positions here and collect some samples. I don't want any camera crew coming in, we need to stay quiet. The recon element will go deeper into this tunnel and attempt to get a visual. I want to give that robot we sent back to headquarters enough time to get a repair team out here so we'll move in twenty minutes," said Clive.

"I want to send a camera drone with you," said Dorn.

"How loud is it?" asked Clive.

"The hum it emits when it hovers is a lot quieter than your footsteps," said Dorn.

"Fine. Probably for the best we get this on video," said Clive.

The team exchanged equipment and established defensive positions in case the recon team came back running. After waiting twenty minutes they moved slowly down the tunnel.

The webbing got thicker as they went further in. Each team member had to slice open slits in the webbing with a knife to move forward. There was a visible path to enter and exit a few feet up on the wall. The spiders have no problem scaling and walking along walls.

Approximately, two hundred feet down the winding tunnel it opened up into a larger cavern. There before them were opened and unopened egg sacks.

The team was trying to be as slow and quiet as possible. There right before their eyes was not one or two but countless numbers of juvenile spiders asleep.

Barnaby thought this was a nightmare. Nobody experiences this type of adversary any longer. While frightening, his senses were aroused. He felt so much dread but he sort of liked this feeling. A challenge, he thought.

Then he heard a growing hum. Damn, he thought. The camera was getting to loud and he didn't want to be exposed. He looked over at the hovering camera and the sound wasn't coming from over there. It was coming from above.

He looked up and what he saw cut through him like a hot knife. The largest spider he's ever seen. Nothing in the database ever looked like this.

He thought, did it see them, as it descended down from above. Much of sight is detected from movement and at this moment they were being as still as possible.

As almost like an answer to his question the spider smirked and let out an enormous screech. The juvenile awoke and began to fan out.

"For Derrick's sake, move!" screamed Clive.

The recon team started to bound to the rear with suppressive fire. The massive spider disappeared and some of the juveniles moved in to attack.

"Go! Go!" screamed Fry.

"Moving" screamed Barnaby.

He got behind a rock and began to open fire and screamed, "set."

Clive got up from his position, screamed, "moving" and ran several meters behind Barnaby.

They continued to bound back to the rest of the team. The suppressive fire slowed down the spiders, but they had thicker armored skin than baby spiders and it took several rounds to punch through to damage them.

What felt like an eternity, they reached the defensive positions of the rest of their team. Once they were out of the firing arch they safely engaged the spiders with precise and direct fire.

"We need to go!" screamed Clive. "The elevator has to be fixed by now!"

"It's not," said Frackleberry.

"We're going to have to climb out of here or we're going to be overrun," said Clive.

Several in the group started looking nervous. If they started climbing as the spiders came they would be quickly picked off since they were natural climbers and it would be very hard to continue to apply suppressive fire as they ascended back up the cliff.

"That's going to be impossible," said Fry.

As Fry finished his sentence, all of the spiders just disappeared.

"Cease fire, cease fire," said Clive. "I don't believe this but I think they retreated."

"Has that ever happened before," asked Barnaby.

"No. I've never seen that behavior before, and while I'm glad we're not dead, it concerns me. They usually mindlessly attack. This is new," said Clive.

"There's not even a single corpse. If we killed one, it's going to be from blood loss, not a single spider actually died in this tunnel," said Barnaby.

"Tough bugs," said Dorn.

The team ascended back up the cliff slowly. Working in teams they provided overwatch. This way if they got attacked again they would not be caught off guard.

The reached the top and there was nobody there. They walked back to base camp to find one the operations captain arguing with the robot they sent to deliver the message.

"We were expecting you to send a tech team, what the fuck happened," said Clive.

"You all look like shit. This robot came to deliver a note, but none of us could read the writing. The penmanship is terrible," said operations captain.

"Why didn't you just ask the robot what the situation was? It's one of the fully autonomous models," said Clive.

"We did, but he was being very cheeky and coy. He wouldn't say. Kept saying his master wanted the message to be read the old fashion way. After awhile he said he would tell us if we guessed the message," said the operations captain.

"What a cheeky robot!" said Clive.

"It said he would give us 100 chances before he let us give up and tell us. We were at 79 when you arrived," said the operations captain.

Clive was very upset.

Barnaby reached down to pick up his robot. He put it away in his satchel.

"That robot is never coming with us on a mission ever again!" said Clive.

The little robot emitted a sad sigh from the satchel and looked up at Barnaby and frowned.

"It's okay little guy, let's go get you charged," said Barnaby.

The robot cheered up and snuggled up against a blanket.

Clive assembled all the key leadership for a briefing on the tactical operations center.

"We need to assemble everyone for an emergency mission. Get me the general on the radio, I got some crazy shit to tell him," said Clive