”Damnit!” Hope didn’t even twitch as her body locked up entirely.
I froze, my eyes staring at the back of her head in horror as the slight click reverberated in my head. My gaze slowly drifted down to her foot, ignoring the slight tremor in her hands. “Don’t move.”
”No shit!” Hope took a deep breath, though her voice still came shaky. “Okay, okay… we have two options. Either you continue the mission and leave me behind, or head back up to the surface and call bomb squad.”
I ignored both of the options, which were frankly quite shitty. Either way, I’d be leaving Hope behind to die. If the land mine didn’t ice her, the creepy plant cultists would.
I dropped to my knees, carefully checking her foot. Her step caused some of the debris covering the floor to shift, exposing the top of a mine pressed tightly down into the rest of the device. Some of the dust blew off, revealing ‘ASCorp BBM Mk. 4’. Knowing what it was wouldn't help though since we were far enough down to not connect to the Node.
Okay, okay, okay… Deep breathes. I could deal with this. It was just a dud mine. What’s the worst that could happen? Both of us splattered across the walls of the tunnel? That just means I can’t mess this up.
But before that, Hope’s tremors were starting to become more and more noticeable. I thought back to the training for First Aid’s Perk, speaking in a calm, even tone. “It’s not that bad. I’ll have you out of this in no time. It's just a dud anyway- won't even be an issue.”
Should I activate Cold-Blooded and get a hit of reinforced calm- no, I've been using it too much recently. That, I've noticed leaches the warmth out of the air around me like an endothermic reaction. The sudden cold might make things worse. If she started shivering it might 'fix' whatever was broken in the mine.
“Not that bad? I stepped on a fucking land mine, and you’re going to tell me it's not that bad?!” She barely kept herself from shouting, but it was a near thing. I looked up at her through her mask. It was hard to tell, but based on the way her eyes were trembling, I’d say the rage was just a cover-up for plain 'ole fear.
“It could've gone off immediately after you stepped on it like it was supposed to. And I've been in worse situations before.” Granted, most situations were my fault to begin with, and they didn’t rely on my fledgling technical skills, but still.
“Don’t even try.” Her shoulder twitched back, and the tremors stopped entirely as if she was rallying herself. “No point in both of us going up. You- you go on ahead. I’ll keep watch here. M-make sure no one sneaks up on us.”
I ignored her once more, breathing evenly and slowly. It wasn’t just normal breathing though. I intentionally made myself audible, trying to shift the atmosphere. It was a psychological technique from Calming and when telling someone to ‘just breathe’ wouldn’t go over so well. “Here, I’ll go disarm that other one back there to make sure, but this really isn’t an issue. Just don’t move.”
“Not like I have much choice. I’m telling you, go on ahead…”
I headed back to the first mine, keeping Hope in my view the entire time as I lightly asked. “How’d you meet the Inquisitor?”
“I- uh, I was picked out of the academy when I was fourteen. He was walking behind me and tripped, falling onto me.” Her voice took an odd tone.
I carefully dusted off the top of the first mine, shifting the debris covering it to the side. I wasn’t an expert in explosives in the slightest, but mines were mostly mechanical in nature. At least, outside of the explosives. If I picture it as just a really, really big one-time-use gun, then it was something I’d already dealt with in the past. “Then what happened?”
”I threw him over my shoulder. We- uh, we’d been practicing combat readiness that month, so it wasn’t uncommon for the instructors or other students to attempt a pin out of the blue.” Hope’s voice rapidly calmed as she spoke, and her breathing evened out somewhat.
I pulled my backpack off my back and rifled through it, finding my set of screwdrivers. After finding the right one, I carefully went around the top casing of the mine, unscrewing it to reveal the internals. Assuming it was the same kind of mine as Hope stepped on, which it should be, it wasn’t all that complicated.
I carefully looked it over, checking the firing mechanism for the device as well as all internal components. The mine was fairly simple all things considered. Stepping down on the pressure plate compressed a spring, which then launched a firing pin into... some kind of charge? It should've gone off as soon as she stepped on it... but what kind of explosive was it? Damn it, Shiro! You really should've brushed up on your explosives knowledge beforehand...
It took me a minute of carefully looking around to figure it out. I think. The mine seemed to be a bouncing betty type, using the charge's explosion to lob another explosive up into the air, maximizing damage to the chest and head. Then again, I was no explosives expert so probably not. It was just what the mechanical side of things suggested. I was quite hopeless when it came to explosives outside of fascination.
It was a brutal weapon, though Hope seemed to have stepped on a faulty mine. Maybe Inquisitor Ligh's insane luck rubbed off on her? Still, there was no telling what might set it off. Maybe the pin simply got jammed and the slightest twitch of a muscle would set it off. Maybe whoever made the mine forgot to put a spring into it. Maybe whoever laid it down even forgot to pull the safety pin- not that last one. The mine compressed, so the safety pin definitely wasn't still in it.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Right, Hope… I looked up to see her starting to panic again. “How’d that go down?”
”What- oh… I thought my life was over, hah, when I saw the flashes of silver go over me. I nearly had a heart attack as I realized I tossed an Inquisitor over my shoulder.” She laughed, though it sounded like it pained her to force one out.
”I can imagine. How’d Inquisitor Strumgard react?” Disarming the mine would be tricky. The firing pin was partially encased by the spring, so I couldn’t just remove it without setting the blasted thing off. The spring itself was held in by grooves on the pressure plate and the body of the mine. It would be hard to get out while the mine wasn’t primed, let alone while the spring was already compressed.
I checked it out further, trying to figure out what went wrong on Hope's. There was just too much though to tell for sure. For one, the firing pin was only loosely placed in its chamber. It could've tilted to the side during deployment, falling out of the way. Or maybe it was caught in the spring? Or the explosive was just a dud to begin with, completely invalidating the rest of the device?
”He was impressed. Offered me a promotion from Aspirant to Squire then and there. Been with him ever since.”
”Yeah? What’s the craziest thing you’ve done on the job?” I shifted the conversation, keeping it going to hopefully keep her mind off the impending doom under her foot.
Disarming Hope’s mine would be more difficult than I thought. The firing mechanism itself would be almost impossible to touch without setting it off, but I couldn’t just lift the explosive out of the device without setting it off either. Hmm… unless… no, that’d probably set it off too…
Hope continued to remain silent for a while, eventually speaking as I tinkered with the explosive. “There was this one time we got in the middle of a gang fight down at the docks. It ended up being a five-way fight, not including us. Over two hundred people died and thirty more were arrested by the time it was over.”
Damn, two hundred people? “What were they fighting over?”
”That’s the thing, someone messaged every one of the gangs mentioning a treasure trove at the docks, which kicked off the whole thing. There wasn’t even anything there in the first place though.” Hope sighed. “We never did find out who was behind it in the first place…”
Okay, okay. Maybe it wasn’t so hopeless. I could probably manually hold the spring down and then take off the explosives- ah, but then I’d need the casing off and Hope’s foot would block that… shit… Maybe I could unscrew- no, the screws would be hidden by the compressed pressure plate. What to do... what to do...
There was one method I could use, but it was risky and would require some precise timing. First, though, I need to have my stuff ready. I pulled my last tapper out of my bag, quickly disassembling it till I had the small hinge in hand. I slid the hinge under the payload of the mine in between the spring’s coil, blocking the firing pin entirely just in case. I carefully unscrewed the payload part of the mine, lifting it up and out of the area.
”Okay, this one’s disarmed.” I called out, trying to give Hope a boost in, well, hope. I tested the now disarmed spring with my hand, running some quick calculations. Then I went around and found a right-sized rock, weighing somewhere between thirty to forty pounds. It was a bit unwieldy to get over to her, but I managed.
I slid over to her, kneeling to get a better view as I hefted the rock closer. “I’m going to guide your foot with my hand. Don’t resist me in the slightest, and I’ll have you off this thing in no time.”
”Are you sure?” Hope asked. I could hear the weariness in her voice.
”Wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t.” I took a deep breath, working through what I needed to do in my mind before going into action. In one swift, but gentle, movement, I pried off Hope’s foot as I slid the rock onto the pad, holding it down. My heart hammered in my chest as I stared at the dastardly contraption, half expecting it to go off in my face. It never did.
With a calm I didn’t feel, I let go of Hope’s foot. “Th-that wasn’t so bad, now was it?”
Hope stared down, meeting my eyes with an expression of pure gratitude. It quickly faded as she regained her composure like a true professional. “No, no it wasn’t… what are we going to do with that-“ she waved to the mine.
”Leave it?” I said, half joking. It was an incredibly tempting suggestion though. “Or we could detonate it from a safe distance. I won’t be able to disarm it with my current tools.” Rather I could disarm it, but why play with explosives when I could just not… other than the fun factor? Dying in an explosion wasn’t fun though…
”Let’s finish the mission first though… the explosion would definitely alert anyone in the area.” Hope suggested.
I looked through the gaps in her mask, noticing the slight tremble in her eyes, as her voice returned to normal. I nodded along with her. “Let me take point then. Unless you’re confident in spotting other landmines?”
”No… you sure though?”
I flashed a winning smile she couldn’t see thanks to the masks. “‘Course!” Not. Who would ever be sure about face-checking a minefield? Er- mined tunnel, in this case. “Do we need to take a minute?”
“No! I mean, no. Let’s just get this over with, okay?” She wrung one of her hands lightly before taking a deep breath and raising her rifle back up, the action seeming to help her lock back into the mission.
“Chek.” I spared her one last glance then took the lead, heading further down the tunnel. She fell silent as she fell in behind me, though I could feel the anxiety of her gaze as she stared at me.
We ended up rounding five more mines before something changed. I spotted most of them well in advance, but Insight spared me from stepping on the second to last. I disassembled the five rather swiftly now that I knew how they worked, which I promptly stored in my bag. I now had the components for six landmines if I ever needed them. About half of them weren't functional for one reason or another. Most of them had a poorly aligned firing pin. Guess there was a reason the circle was made up of Magi and Adepts.
As we were walking, my periodic flashing of Aetherial Perception drew my gaze off to the ceiling of the tunnel. A massive plant, hidden in a recess by the darkness, hung ominously. It was a mess of tentacle-like vines and claw-like bark centered around one massive maw. It looked like the fucked up mutant cousin of a Venus fly trap, though this one came with plenty of spines, teeth, and claws. Just past where the plant hung, a little further down the tunnel, sat a metal door.
I held out a hand to Hope, stopping her from advancing as I silently pointed up at the roof. She paused for a moment, eyeing the plant. “Molotov? Or just shoot it?”
“What are the chances it’s friendly?” Hope asked rhetorically. “They must have a way of getting past it.”
Somehow, I doubted their way would work for us. It wasn’t some kind of magic, at least… no wait. A faint image of the silver tree necklace in the thief's stash came to mind. Maybe it was some kind of enchanted jewelry? Regardless, we didn’t have it.
”I guess this is where we go loud then.” I sighed, mentally preparing myself.