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)
Gate dives had stages. Of all of them, the assault phase was the main and most important. Humanity entered the gates to destroy the anchor and collapse the breach. Everything else was secondary to this goal, no matter how much some people wanted to twist it. Yes, mining paid the bills, but the focus of the mission was to keep the invasion at bay.
Like many others, Elias felt the anchor the moment he stepped through the gate. It tugged on him, a knot of energy, a distant nexus of power that demanded attention. The stronger you were, the more it pulled on you. To Elias, it was inescapable, like an evil sun. It called to him, and he hunted it down until he cut through its defenders, forced his way into the anchor chamber, and shattered it.
The trick wasn’t just carving a bloody path to the anchor. The real challenge was to destroy the breach and come out alive. Successful gate dives required preparation. The breach protocol was written in the blood of the gate divers.
On the surface, Malcolm, the leader of the assault team, had followed the Cold Chaos protocol. Like Elias, Malcolm could feel the anchor and he also had the benefit of Lila Mason, a pathfinder, with enhanced anchor sensitivity. They quickly identified the most likely assault route. It punched almost straight north from the gate. They mapped about three miles of it, clearing the hostiles, went back to the gate, and began looking for the prospective mining sites.
Determining a good mining area was more art than science. Things would have been so much simpler if they could hire their own assessors, Elias reflected. As it was, they were forced to play the guessing game.
It was about control. If the government didn’t trust the guilds to share the spoils, the DDC could simply station observers to log everything that came out of the gate. Instead, they chose to hoard the assessors. They wanted to dictate what came out of the breaches and how much. If the DDC wanted more sebrian, the DeBRAs would find sebrian deposits and ignore aetherium that would sell for ten times as much.
It was also the way to bring problematic guilds in line. Three years ago, the DDC had an issue with Halcyon, and the DeBRAs stopped finding valuable resources in Halcyon’s gates. Six months later, Halcyon was on the brink of bankruptcy, and they threw in the towel.
The DeBRAs were spies. They mingled with the guilds, they saw how they operated, and they were actively discouraged from forming any personal attachments to the guild members. That’s why most guilds limited the assessors’ access. They were given a survey to review, came in during the mining stage, and then left as soon as the last of the mining was completed.
Except that Ada Moore never left Elmwood.
The mining site Malcolm chose lay off to the east, roughly a mile from the gate, at the end of a branching tunnel. It ticked all of the boxes outlined in the guild protocol for cave biome mining: a large stable cavern, close to the gate, with a good mix of promising mineral deposits and an abundance of vegetation in case those minerals turned out to be trash.
It also had to be defensible, and that’s where they ran into a problem.
Elias looked at Leo. His XO leaned forward slightly.
“You are Malcolm,” Elias said.
Leo nodded.
Elias tapped the map of the mining site on the screen. It showed a massive cave with a stream running north to south. The entrance, through which the mining team had accessed the site, lay in the lower left, in the west wall. The east and south walls had no accessible egress. The north wall, at the top, showed three tunnels spiraling into a labyrinth of passageways and small chambers, half of them carrying running water.
“You find this site,” Elias said. “You sweep it. It’s clean. Your next move?”
“I set up aetherium charges in these three tunnels and detonate.”
Exactly. “Why?”
Leo swept his fingers across the three passages and the maze beyond. “It’s a mess. Everything is connected. The only way to secure the mining site is to prevent access completely. One way in, one way out.”
“Agreed. Malcolm would have known that.”
“Yes.”
The two of them peered at the map. This was basic shit, and yet Malcolm left the tunnels as they were.
“Why?” Elias murmured.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your best guess?”
Leo considered the map. “Perhaps he was unsure whether he picked the right path to the anchor and thought he might have to double back and take one of the tunnels instead.”
“Yes, but with the firepower in that team and the mining crew’s equipment, he could easily reopen one of the entrances. Why gamble with the miners’ lives?”
Leo shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Malcolm had been with Cold Chaos for five years. An Interceptor class Talent, he was a maneuverable, fast damage dealer who positioned himself behind the tank, which allowed him to rapidly respond to the changing battlefield. He fought with a spear, could summon plasma javelins, which he hurled at incoming threats, and could teleport about twenty yards once every hour or so.