./\.+ Lycra +./\.

Inside the belly of the digger, it was a tedious fight.

Every narrow hallway and corner was a stronghold. Every door was a reinforced gate. The enemy held on like every inch of ground lost would be the end of their entire defense.

They weren't far off.

Ahead, a single long corridor connected two sides of the digger's internal structure in a H-shape, and a pair of Belar guards were taking turns firing blindly from either side of the far corners. Attempts to advance had been stopped by an effective flamethrower - and there were no other offshoots to work around that he had seen. The Vuxarinan soldiers returned fire, but hadn't advanced.

Time to fix that.

Lycra plucked a small crystal from the big pouch on his backpack, and threw it forward. As it tumbled through the air, the loose wires on each end curved with the rotation. He ducked back behind the corner as both ends of the tool landed on the metallic floor, and released a single jolt of electricity. Two heavy thumps rang through the space, and he poked his head out to see the armored guards smoking in their suits.

Lycra huffed.

Power armor - his power armor - had layers of insulation and resistance built in to prevent this kind of attack. Among others. It was easy to do if you had already defused the bomb. For some reason, Belar still hadn't done it with these suits of armor. All the better for him - and this mission.

Soldiers pressed forward with the enemies down, and met new resistance as more enemies flooded into the halls. Lycra peeked to get a sense of their numbers, then dug around in his backpack for the right tool to do this job. He pulled out a cube-shaped crystal half wound in copper wire, then changed his mind. The right one, here, was a fist-sized egg with divots where tiny bits of ice seemed suspended in a half-melted state. He nodded to himself and hummed as he slightly adjusted the output.

As he looked up, Lycra saw Hirvonen eyeing the egg in his hands. He flashed a smile at the old soldier.

"Hi Hirv! Which way do you want to go?"

"Uh, either is fine. Left, I guess."

Lycra tossed the egg down the right side. It landed with a soft tink, then erupted with a noise like cracking ice. Lycra was proud of this tool. It was inspired by the final beast lord, Crinoptera. The egg was a cooling core just inefficient enough to allow a bit of liquid water that never fully froze, and when activated, it pulsed icy cold out from itself in waves. The result was a creeping, exploding ice as new waves came and the bit of liquid water in the inefficient egg continued to push itself out farther. It was limited, and a little less effective than his other tools. But in a hallway...

Lycra peeked again, and saw more cracking, growing ice flash freeze the exposed head of a screaming Belar soldier. Down the other side, the enemies had stopped firing to watch their allies get frozen to death. That was a dumb thing to stare at. Lycra tapped Hirv on the shoulder, and the man stepped out to shoot the bewildered enemies.

This was going great.

#

Hall by hall, corner by corner, staircase by staircase, the digger fell to Lycra's control. Now, he had possession of the whole metal monstrosity. Not that he actually wanted to use it to mine. It was a dumb, inefficient, messy way to gather crystal, and all it was really good at was making a big ugly hole. Belar were stupid.

He looked around the smoking control room, and nodded to himself. Suits of power armor and bodies practically filled the space. Those still on the digger had made a final stand here, and those outside on the arm with the spinny buckets had tried to break in and retake control. They died - and he barely had to use any tools to make it happen.

Hirv and the soldiers had begun to toss bodies through a shattered viewing window. It cleared enough space for Lycra to climb atop a mostly intact control panel. It was a mess of gears, knobs, and buttons. If he had more time, figuring it out would be easy. Jenna could probably do it quick. But she wasn't here yet, and the fight was far from over.

They'd taken the first target, but there were more to go. Fire was still plinking against the metal walls on the digger, and many members of their group were stuck defending the same entry points they'd used to access the body of the digger in the first place. Lycra looked out the windows in the control room, and at the screens set to monitor the machine's processes. The bucket wheel was still spinning, and still sending dirt to the processor. He watched it rumble on.

Then Lycra tilted his head.

The plan was to push out from the digger and up the massive steps. It was one that everybody had worked on, really hard. It used the strengths of the soldiers to their advantage. It was an effective way to expand and solidify their control in the mine by owning the entire path from one hard target to the other.

But it was going to be slow. And dangerous. And even though she and Jenna had gotten inside the digger to the lower floors, Vidita needed more time to recover before she could safely make another big bubble.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

A grin spread over Lycra's face.

"Hirv! I wanna do something."

<+=/ Jenna \=+>

"YOU LET HIM WHAT?!" Jenna demanded.

The old soldier raised an eyebrow and shot a glance to Jenna's hip. She forced herself to focus on her breathing, and released the grip she'd taken on her rifle. Hirvonen gave her a thankful nod.

"We both know you're the only one he listens to like that. Better we help than try to stop him, you know? Plus, it's not a half bad idea."

Jenna's gaze flicked to the screens on the wall, then out the window that granted a partial view of the processor, far away and above them.

"Not half bad? You threw some dirt over him and let him ride an open-air conveyor belt, which is surrounded by enemies with guns, all the way up to the processor. The processor, which, if you've forgotten, dumps everything on the conveyor into a machine that compresses anything not made of crystal into tiny bricks. And once he's up there, there's still a building full of enemy troops, with weapons, and with transports! What is he going to do when he gets there?"

"He said he had a plan for that. I sent two squads in after him, on a two-minute delay. Tell me something - are you more upset that he went, or that you didn't go with him?"

She groaned and put a hand to her forehead. "I don't know. Gasten's ashes. We had a plan."

Hirvonen grunted his agreement. "We did - but it wasn't made with this much resistance in mind. They have ten times the number we were expecting out there, and we're fighting soldiers instead of miners. Do I think Lycra's suits and weapons can give us the day? Absolutely. We'd pay a steep price, though, even with our advantages in equipment. So if Lycra thinks he can make some miracles happen, I'm going to follow his lead. Speaking of," Hirv looked down at a timekeeper strapped to his forearm, then handed Jenna a pair of goggles. "You should take these. You have about 60 seconds before it's your turn in the dirt pile."

She gave him an unamused look, but took the goggles. The thought of being exposed to enemy attention and fire was not appealing, but neither was leaving Lycra by himself up at the next hardpoint.

"So, what is the new plan, then?"

Hirvonen shrugged. "He was light on the details, but he needed you for it."

#

#

Jenna sucked air through the long metallic straw, and blew a breath out into the dirt around her nose. She was glad they'd thought of the fact that there would be difficulty breathing, because she sure as heck hadn't. The goggles were a help, too, but there was no way to stop bits of rock and dirt from falling down into her power armor. It was going to be a long while before she could take the suit off. She relegated herself to the fact that the remainder of the fight would be much more uncomfortable than the first conquered target.

Hard, rough metal fins shifted over the back of her armor , and Jenna readied herself. This was the final step before the fall into the processor, where the conveyor jogged slightly to the right. She took a breath, wrapped a hand tightly around her gun, and steadied her breathing.

Jenna tumbled backwards as the conveyor looped back on itself, falling free with the dirt into a rectangular funnel. Her shoulders shook as her armor bounced against the sides, then impacted the bottom with a massive 'thwump'. Air blasted over her, a harsh wind filled with bits of stone that tried to chew through her skin. She couldn't see - but she could hear a series of soft thwacks somewhere ahead. Jenna managed to make it to a knee as the sound grew closer.

A large metal leg kicked her sideways into a separate chute, shorter in height but mostly free from rocks and earth. She blinked and let tears carry the dirt out of her eyes. She was surrounded by crystals. The things seemed to shimmer with the tiniest bit of light - and though they were rough and cracked from the harsh treatment of Belar's mining operation, they were beautiful things.

Ahead, a brushwheel the width of the chute spun fast and removed lingering bits of dirt from the intended resource. Beyond that, she saw light - and heard gunfire.

Jenna rose to her hands and knees, and crawled forward until the brushwheel pushed her prone. As soon as she was past it, Jenna got back up and readied herself as she rode the conveyor through a curtain of thick flaps. She was met with bright light, a smell like ozone, and a scene of mildly coordinated chaos. The crystal conveyor fed into a large sorting room with more than a dozen stations set up with buckets and baskets. The buckets were partly full, with sharded and fractured crystals. The baskets were empty. Chutes were set up next to the buckets, seemingly to dispose of the large number of broken crystals that would come through the room. Across from that, a series of tall wheeled carts sat waiting for loads of material to be brought out to the transport ships. One was stacked with burgundy-armored bodies.

The room had five doors - four large enough for the carts to move through, and one person-sized entrance. On the other side of each, an open hall sloped down and away before it leveled out. There were smoking remnants of mounted weaponry halfway down its length, and a cart full of larger, seemingly intact crystals was overturned on its side near the opposite end. Beyond it, Belar guards took potshots towards their doors and their Vuxarinan soldiers from a single, wide bay door of their own. Hirv's two squads flanked each opening, throwing or firing or casting towards the enemy whenever they had a spare moment.

In the corner of the room, the conveyor ended and looped back on itself. There was a pile of crystals there that grew with each passing moment. Near its base, Lycra was sitting on the floor. He carved into an intact crystal with one hand, and was sorting through the pile of crystals with the other. His attention snapped between the two tasks until Jenna's boots hitting the floor drew away his gaze.

"Jenna! You're early! Are you early? Maybe you're on time. I'm not on time. Look at this mess! They broke so many! How can anyone work like this?"

One of the teams shouted from the second door on the right. "Defensive refill!"

Lycra scooped a handful of seemingly half-finished crystals from a pile on the floor, and tossed it to the shouting soldier. Lycra pulled more of the same size towards himself from the pile, and quickly sorted the acceptable ones into a new pile. He didn't look back up.

"Lycra, Hirvonen said you needed me. For the plan. What's the plan?"

"The plan... is... delayed," he half-mumbled to himself. He picked up another small crystal, only to have a section break off in his hand. He tossed it with a huff. "I need good crystals. And I need to get stuff from storage, and Belar is going to hurt more of our people if I don't go fast, and I don't have time for both."

Jenna knelt next to him and put a hand on his back, then looked out towards the hallway.

"Hey. I'm here."

Lycra lifted his yellow eyes to hers. They were glassy and tinted from frustration and strain - and they reflected against the light from a hundred different shards sitting on the floor. Jenna gave him a squeeze, and rose towards the long hall.

"You focus on your storage. I've got the crystal."

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