Once Zayd reached the entrance of the mine he paused for a moment to consider his next step. According to Tael, there were three ‘objective’ obelisks that had been set within the mine. His mission was to destroy each of the obelisks and escape the mine afterward. He wasn’t strictly required to incapacitate Fist Leader Sioban’s entire team but it was likely that he would have to do so anyway.
The main mine shaft extended a full kilometer into the volcanic rock of the pit, but starting fifty meters in, it supported branching tunnels that angled away from the main shaft at sharp angles. Every fifty meters, a side tunnel would appear on alternating sides of the main shaft. All of these tunnels were massive bores into the rock more than ten meters in diameter to accommodate the movement of multiple mining mechs moving through them at the same time.
Hunting through so many tunnels to find three obelisks would have been bad enough but things were more complicated when you weren’t piloting a mech. In between all of the major tunnels, smaller person-sized tunnels used by members of the prospecting team could be found in a completely unplanned and organic network that followed mineral deposits or otherwise served the needs of the planners who prioritized the development of the mine. As the pilot of a mining mech, while Zayd was aware of these tunnels, he didn’t have great familiarity with any of them or where they might lead. If his opponents had been piloting four to eight-meter-tall mechs, it would have been relatively easy to narrow down their locations but without mechs, the possibilities were considerably greater.
“I’m sure someone is stationed at the first fork,” Zayd thought as he considered his options. They don’t want me loose in the tunnels to surprise them any more than I want to dive into the tunnels to dig them out. Well, let’s see what’s waiting for me.” Having made a decision, Zayd rushed forward another twenty meters before crouching behind a pile of rubble and fishing a golf-ball-sized sphere from the utility harness at his waist.
The ball that Zayd sent rolling down the hallway was a simple scouting robot that served to extend his senses. While Tael insisted that it was possible to split his senses between multiple inputs, every time he attempted to do so the resulting nausea was so overwhelming that he had to open the helmet of his combat armor to vomit. Instead, he took the risky approach of blocking off his awareness of his own body and environment to focus fully on the input from the little sphere.
The imagery from the little sphere was poor even by the standards of Zayd’s former employer. It wasn’t because the little robot was poorly engineered, rather, it only collected data passively in order to prevent any potential enemies from detecting it. With a command, the bot could go active with radar, lidar, and a number of other advanced active imaging techniques to deliver a much higher resolution image of the surroundings but if it did so it would instantly reveal its presence to anyone who knew to look for it. It might work to use against Zayd’s former employers when they assaulted Bad Penny Station but against another member of Lady Nimue’s guard, it was almost certainly a bad idea.
After several tense moments of the little bot’s slow roll down the tunnel, Zayd finally got his first look at the person stationed to meet him. If it had been Zayd, he’d have stationed the biggest fly swatter in his unit here, something that could stop him cold or leave him so battered that any of the individuals behind him would have a significantly easier time taking him down.
Looking at the grainy imagery from the drone, however, it looks like the opposing leader had made a different decision. The sphere estimated his enemy at between 180 and 190 centimeters in height. At most, it was as tall as Zayd’s unarmored body. The armor plating was significantly lighter than the hulking figure of Zayd’s own armored form and it carried a short spear along with a curved shield the size of its torso.
Zayd slowly edged the sphere forward, hoping to refine the image with a closer inspection. If he was lucky, he’d be able to slip his little probe past the first guard and down the side tunnel immediately behind it! Unfortunately, Lady Nimue’s guards didn’t believe in allowing luck to define their battles. Once the sphere moved another meter closer to the spear-wielding guard, it ran into a blinding snowstorm of interference before the link to Zayd’s combat armor broke entirely.
“Crap,” Zayd muttered, hefting his Firelance and charging down the hallway as rapidly as he could. He didn’t know whether he’d given himself away with the drone or not, it was entirely possible that he’d run into an area jamming field, but he didn’t want to take any chances. The longer the enemy had to prepare themselves, the worse it would be for him.
Suddenly, an alarm blared in Zayd’s ear and a glowing circle appeared in his vision tracking an egg-shaped projectile slightly larger than his scouting sphere. Several lines of Fae text appeared next to the circle, of which Zayd recognized only the most important one: ‘grenade.’ Zayd immediately triggered his flight system, opting to charge forward faster in the hopes of getting out of the blast radius of the projectile. In the corner of his vision, a meter indicated that he’d consumed twenty percent of his available dark energy and the bar started to fall rapidly as Zayd pushed his flight system to deliver more speed.
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A concussive blast from behind flung Zayd forward and sideways into the volcanic rock wall, rattling his senses and nearly knocking the Firelance from his hand. Thinking rapidly, Zayd concentrated on the settings for his Firelance, changing it from an explosive fireball to the widest area dispersion the weapon was capable of. Pointing toward the rapidly advancing guard, Zayd triggered his weapon and unleashed a wave of scorching heat that would have burned the flesh from the bones of an unarmored human.
The attack did little to slow the rushing spearman but it did trigger the explosive force of a second grenade that had been arcing through the air toward him. The early detonation broke the charge of the spearman who ducked behind his curved shield to ride out the blast before resuming his charge. Meanwhile, Zayd tossed the Firelance onto his weapon rails and retrieved the maul as he rushed toward the crouching spearman.
As soon as Zayd drew close enough to land a blow he launched a furious assault of repeated strikes at the shorter guard. Unfortunately, the guard had a different idea for how he should deal with someone as bullishly aggressive as Zayd. Rather than attempt to strike back, Zayd’s opponent became as elusive as smoke. He darted in and out, floating at the edges of Zayd’s range and using a combination of well-angled shield deflections and sudden bursts of speed to prevent any of Zayd’s hammer blows from landing on his armor.
“He’s playing for time,” Zayd realized. “Reinforcements are on the way.” Glancing at his diminishing Dark Energy meter, Zayd decided to go for broke to bring things to an earlier end. Suddenly, the dark energy meter dropped by ten percent as Zayd fed energy to the Mech Destroyer System.
[DARK ENERGY EMPOWERMENT:]
[AGILITY: 5 -> 6 (TEMPORARY)]
[SPEED: 4 -> 5 (TEMPORARY)]
[TIME REMAINING: 5 MINUTES]
Power surged through his body, increasing his raw, explosive speed, his reflexes, his sense of balance, and a dozen other things that were defined by the attributes Speed and Agility. The Saighdear used Dark Energy to magnify his own physical capabilities. The stronger Zayd himself was, the more force he could exert through the armor. The faster he was, the faster the armor moved. There were limits, of course, but Zayd was a long way from exceeding the capacity of the armor to magnify his might.
Still, Zayd didn’t use his enhanced abilities instantly. Instead, he stumbled and overextended himself on a deflected strike from his maul, creating an opening for the shorter guard’s spear. Sadly, a single telegraphed vulnerability wasn’t enough to fool the other warrior. The telegraph had been so obvious that the shorter guard immediately sensed a trap and backed off by several meters before tossing a smaller explosive at Zayd.
“Son of a bitch,” Zayd muttered as he dove for cover behind a pile of rubble. The loose stones didn’t provide enough cover to completely protect him from the blast, and a schematic of his armor in one corner of his vision flashed from healthy green to lightly damaged blue but at least it was only a few sections of outer plate and not anything vital.
Desperately looking for an option, Zayd aimed the sensors of his suit at the pile of rubble before smiling when he found a chunk of low-quality gyucite the size of his head. The quality was so low that it would cost more to process the hunk of ore than the resulting minerals would be worth but the crystalline structure of the mineral was strong enough and the material was dense enough that it would suit his needs perfectly.
Leaning into his enhanced agility, Zayd kicked the lump of gyucite into the air like a soccer ball before swinging his maul like a bat at a giant ball.
The loud CLACK of impact, when his maul struck the ore, echoed off the walls of the tunnel and down the side shaft moments before the dull CLANK of impact against the shield of the short guard. Unlike Zayd’s hammer blows, however, the heavy projectile struck solidly enough to knock the shorter man off balance.
Zayd hadn’t waited to see if his gambit would work. As soon as the maul had struck the lump of ore, Zayd pushed his enhanced speed to the limit to rush the smaller man, swinging his maul in a heavy upward arc that slammed into the off-balance guard directly in the center of his chest, crumpling the outer plates of his armor and sending him sprawling to the floor.
Alarms flashed in Caedril’s vision as his combat armor mirrored the actions of Broll’s armor, declaring him ‘incapacitated’, locking his limbs, and shutting down his coms. Unlike Broll, however, Caedril smiled behind the mask of his helm. His mission had been to buy time and the last thing he’d heard before his head bounced off the floor of the tunnel was the rapidly approaching footsteps of two of his teammates.
He might have gone down, but he’d bought them the time they needed to converge on the Champion. Now, all Caedril had to do was sit back and watch the show as the Champion had to face off against two opponents at once!