Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“The Cold Chaos assault teams are good at clearing the prospective mining sites before moving on. I’ve never seen their escorts deal with anything more serious than a skirmish. The most London had to do was to cut down an occasional left-over creature popping out of its hiding place. This – everything that happened – was the reason why Cold Chaos sent him into the breach. When the worst-case scenario occurred, he was supposed to step in and that fucker... All those people…”
A sob choked me.
I shut up.
Being an escort captain came with a lot of responsibility, and you didn’t just become one. It wasn’t enough to be powerful or trusted. The position required experience. London had put in years with the primary assault teams. He was seasoned. He looked at those hostiles slicing people like they were weeds in passing, and in a split second he knew that he had never encountered anything like them and nothing he had in his arsenal could stop them. He saw death, and he made a deliberate choice to save himself.
He could’ve waited. He could’ve stood in that gap with his invulnerable warden shield up and let the rest of us escape, but it was a risk, and he chose his life over ours. The only reason Melissa made it out was because she happened to be close enough and he would need a witness to back up his story. When your job is to put yourself between noncombatants and danger, coming out of the breach alone wasn’t a good look.
Even if they fired him, he would live. That’s all that mattered to him. And if he had been one of the ordinary miners, I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but he wasn’t a miner. He was a high-ranking combat Talent. We trusted him. I trusted him, and he threw an aetherium grenade in our faces and ran.
“When death stares people in the face, they revert to their true self, Bear.”
London’s true self was a cold, calculating coward.
I checked myself for scrapes and bruises. I didn’t find any. I had some red welts here and there but no broken skin. I’d crawled on my hands and knees across a rough cave floor dragging my broken leg behind me. My hands and knees should’ve been raw, but I didn’t find any abrasions. I rubbed some gel over the red mark on my leg just in case.
Don’t think about it. That was best.
The generator was next. The industrial model was rated for seven to nine hours run time. The fuel indicator was almost empty. I’d been in this cave for at least seven hours.
If London made it out of the gate, he would immediately report what happened to the guild. London and Melissa didn’t stay long enough to see how the fight turned out, so for all they knew, there were still active hostiles in this cave. Since bodycams only recorded static in the breaches, Cold Chaos would have to rely on London’s testimony, and I was sure that Melissa would confirm whatever he said. She wouldn’t just suddenly grow a heart and admit that she climbed out of the cave over her guildmates’ bodies. As she so often told me, she had mouths to feed.
This was going to go one of three ways.
One, London made it out and reported that I was dead. This was the most likely outcome, because otherwise he would have to own up to leaving me behind.
Two, London made it and reported he left me behind. Not likely. If the DDC found out that he bolted out of the cave abandoning me, Cold Chaos would face heavy sanctions. There would be a fine at best and revocation of gate access at worst. Cold Chaos would come down on London like a ton of bricks.
Three, London and Melissa died en route. Like Elena said, this breach was a maze, and we hiked half a mile to get to this cavern. It was possible that something equally terrible burst out of a side passage and killed those two. I doubted that. London was a fucking cockroach. He would survive.
Even if they died, by now carts filled with resources should’ve been coming out of the breach. The procedure was to grab the good stuff and get it out ASAP. At least seven hours had passed without any activity. Even if London and Melissa didn’t make it, the guild knew that the mining crew was either in trouble or dead.
No matter which of these three outcomes happened, protocol required the assault team to be notified. Radios didn’t work in the breach, just like the rest of the electronics, but each assault team carried a “cheesecake.” A beeper stone.
Beeper stones occurred in the steppe and mountain biomes and had a core of denser material running through them. When shocked with electricity, they glowed and vibrated. If you broke a piece off and then shocked the core of the main stone, the broken off piece would also light up and vibrate. Distance didn’t seem to matter. As long as both fragments were in the same breach, shocking the core would activate the other chunk. The first gate diver who discovered this effect compared it to the Cheesecake Factory’s restaurant pager and the name stuck.