It was dark in the Xen-Nuchek mines, with weak lamps lighting the passage that led into the slumbering volcano. The tunnel led down at a steep incline; not quite enough to make the descent treacherous, but certainly at a sharp enough angle to raise the heart rate. John took the lead, with Alyssa at his side, leaving Dana and Rachel to cover the rear as they delved deeper along the foreboding tunnel.
Their cautious footfalls were drowned out by the clanking and mechanical grinding of the conveyor belts, as tons of sulphur were hauled up to the surface. When the tunnel eventually opened out into the huge cavern below, the belts took a curving turn to follow the walls, taking the deafening racket with them. As John and the girls descended further down the ramp, the noise faded away behind them, and the eventual silence came as a blessed relief.
"This place is enormous..." Dana murmured softly, as she gaped at the colossal tunnelled out chamber. "They must have been excavating here for years."
"The view is breathtaking," Alyssa agreed, staring at the flickering glow from the streams of lava that wended their way across the cavern floor.
Rachel had brought her medi-scanner with her, and she took a quick reading of the atmosphere in this subterranean hall. Her worried frown spoke volumes, and she looked at John and said, "The air quality in here is appalling. If the prisoners aren't wearing comprehensive safety gear, their health will deteriorate rapidly."
John looked grim as he replied, "I suspect that prisoner safety isn't the Kintarks' main concern."
He turned back to the ramp and they continued on their slow downward progress, with the girls taking cautious steps behind him. A flashing red warning light in his GUI drew his attention, and John realised it was some kind of temperature alert. As he gazed at the warning icon, the optical-driven GUI began to display more details. According to the sensors built into his armour, the external temperature had started to creep up as they travelled further below ground, reaching a stifling forty-one degrees. Although they were out of the blazing sunlight, the magma flowing through the huge cavern was more than making up for it.
The ramp eventually levelled off into a causeway that crossed the rest of the room, flanked on both sides by languid red flows of molten rock. Up ahead was a high ceilinged tunnel that stretched out into the murky darkness, the light from the lava not shining too far down the passageway.
"Switch to low-light amplification, ladies," he said to them as they walked forward, their weapons held at the ready. "I doubt the lizards will show up on mag-view, and all the ambient heat down here is going to overload thermal imaging."
The three young women dutifully activated low-light amplification in their helmet huds, and the clear-crystal faceplate showed an enhanced view of their surroundings. The walls were edged in a latticed wireframe, clearly highlighting the flat surfaces in the dim light.
"This looks new," John noted in surprise, turning to glance at his Chief Engineer.
Dana winked at him, and said, "I built in a low frequency sonar system to help in the dark. We've been so busy recently I haven't had a chance to demo it, and it's not the kind of thing that makes for a showy presentation anyway."
"It's pretty cool," Alyssa said appreciatively, looking around at their surroundings.
They walked forward with more confidence now, crossing the last of the causeway and striding into the big tunnel beyond. The ground was hard rock, but there was a thick layer of powdery yellow dust spread across the floor, and amongst the booted humanoid footprints were huge clawed reminders that something on an altogether vaster scale lurked down here too.
After they had travelled down the unwavering corridor for over a hundred metres, John raised his hand, bringing them to a halt. He listened carefully, then nodded as he said, "I can hear drilling, off in the distance to the right. The mining face must be near here somewhere, along with the prisoners I'd assume."
It didn't take long to reach the end of the tunnel, which finished in a T-junction, with broad tunnels leading off into the inky blackness to their left and right. The girls were able to hear the drilling sounds now, coming from the right, while the left seemed ominously quiet. A glance at the floor showed Terran and Kintark bootprints heading off to the right, while the massive clawed depressions went off to the left, disappearing into the stygian darkness beyond.
"So, which way?" Alyssa asked, straining her eyes to see down the tunnel to the left. "Do we go after the prisoners, or go dragon hunting?"
John thought it over for a minute, while the girls covered all approaches to the junction, then replied, "We'll eliminate any guards in the mine, and check on the prisoners. When they're safe, we'd better come back here and deal with the Consort and her mate. I don't want any ambushes from them while we're trying to lead out the prisoners."
She smiled at him, and said, "Alright, sounds good to me."
Turning to Dana, John said, "My chemistry's a little rusty. How flammable is all this sulphur?"
She shook her head, and replied, "It's not going to explode or anything. It's a pretty stable element, but we can set it on fire, which we don't want to do because it'll make a load of sulphur dioxide."
Rachel nodded, agreeing with the redhead, and replied, "Yes, we definitely want to avoid any fires. That gas is toxic, and the last thing we want to do is raise the sulphur dioxide levels with the prisoners still trapped in here."
When John looked her way again, Dana smiled at him, and said, "Don't worry, I'll watch it with the laser rifle."
"We should hold off with grenades as well," he said with a tinge of regret, as he glanced down the corridor to their left.
There were no objections from the girls, and they followed after him as he started down the right hand tunnel, with Dana and Rachel keeping a wary eye behind them. The ground beneath their feet was the same solid bedrock as the causeway, and any Sulphur in the tunnel had been dug out years ago. The walls were rough-hewn rock, the dark-grey stone heavily scored by marks from picks and drills.
The noise from the drilling intensified as they steadily approached the mine-face, and the corridor took a sharp left turn when it sounded like they were about to stumble into the miners. John hugged the left wall, then gingerly poked his head around the corner to get a glimpse into the room beyond. The view took his breath away, and he gaped at the scale of the mining operation before him.
They were up on a gallery that overlooked one end of a dimly lit canyon, with ramps leading down to the lower levels, where hundreds of miners drilled away at the sulphurous rock. Conveyor belts ran below the miners, and as they broke chunks of ore away from the cliff face, it dropped onto those clanking metal channels which carried it away to the surface. He'd expected to see Terran prisoners down here, but surprisingly, all the miners were Kintark. They were being carefully watched over by armed guards in shimmering-green armour, which made him fairly sure the Kintark miners weren't here of their own volition.
He pulled back, and said to the girls, "There aren't any Terrans there! It's all Kintark prisoners."
"So where the fuck are they?" Dana asked, with a pensive frown.
