Tunnels and tunnel accessories.

The inside of the store was dusty and seemingly unused. That immediately marked it as odd - any shop of this size should have had way more footfall, to be able to keep up on rent if nothing else. Dustin checked the corners as he led his small group inside, further security teams flowing in behind them as they went.

This was definitely the right place. The state of the building was a massive clue - but so too was the sound of gunfire and the sight of one of his escorts being flung back through a doorway by the impact of a tunnel gun as Dustin rounded a display of pickaxes. The Uil’l slammed into the ground hard, but managed to roll to one side groaning before a follow-up volley peppered the floor with shot.

The Uil’l’s tunnel guns were incredibly powerful at close range. Body armour would do a lot to shield you from a fatal wound - Dustin could feel the shifting weight of the reinforced fibre vest Yril’k had insisted he wear as he darted forward to help drag the injured officer to safety - but you’d still be blown back by the impact, and a headshot would prove lethal.

More rounds erupted from the room that the escort had been investigating. As he half stumbled, half dragged the downed officer out of the way, Dustin called out an order. “Grenade!”

In response, a junior officer from Sola reached into the florescent shirt they’d apparently opted to wear as part of their ‘tourist’ disguise and pulled out a narrow cylinder. Twisting it and pressing the button on one end, they tossed it underarm through the door and ducked back out of the way, yelling “Fire out!”

The concussive sound of the detonation caused dust to fall from the ceiling. A dull bark of pressure rippled across the room as the grenade pulsed, sending out overlapping waves of air into the space around it. Dustin sucked in a breath, then exhaled hard through his nose, his ears popping even at this range. The device was a development of the crude flashbangs used by police and military forces pre-unification back on Earth. Utilizing rapidly compressing and decompressing air pulses, they were designed to disorient or incapacitate without killing targets and also didn’t have the risk of structural damage that a more traditional explosive charge might have done.

Picking their way carefully through the door a moment later, pulse-carbines and tunnel guns at the ready, the combined security forces saw just how effective the charge had been in the close confines of the shop’s back rooms. Three Uil’l dressed in suits and with heavy brass rings decorating their fingers lay slumped around the entrance, with a further two a little way back draped over what looked like a heavy weapon emplacement that they’d been rapidly trying to make ready.

Thanking the stars that the mobsters hadn’t had enough time to **** them to advance into machine-gun fire, Dustin gave the order for the **** mafiosi to be restrained and evacuated from the premises. While that was underway, he regrouped with the more senior locals - at least, the ones still standing - and looked past the gun-nest. On the far side, where the building should have backed into the plain stone wall of the cavern, there was a jagged hole in the brickwork - and a crude set of steps leading down.

The descent down the narrow, poorly carved and occasionally slippery stairway was highly stressful. Nobody knew what they’d find at the bottom; if there was another gun emplacement, things could go badly very quickly. To everyone’s relief, all that they found when they finally reached the end of the stairs was a crudely carved room and a passageway leading off into the darkness. Well, that and…

“Durathisian. And something else.” The Uil’l leading the charge directed Dustin’s gaze to crates stacked haphazardly on one side of the room, the label on the side of one of them clearly written in two scripts - neither of which was the local language.

Defia grimaced under the heavy robe she was wearing. Stepping forward, she bent and investigated the writing before turning back to Dustin. “Statement. Fractal writing. Translation: Shipping manifest code, followed by a number. Hypothesis. They are labelling their crates to be read by Fractal as well as Durathisian technology. The word structure remains incorrect, which matches our findings on Thif.”

That comment drew a lot of worried glances between the more in-the-know members of the local forces. “You don’t think they’ll be making zombies down here do you?” One of them asked, holding her tunnel gun pointed nervously in the direction of the onward tunnel.

Dustin shook his head. “I doubt it. We’ve not seen the same thing twice from them. It feels like they’re experimenting with these planetary missions. Which if my hunch is correct means whatever may or may not be reading that Fractal writing down here, it won’t be a zombie.”

His words didn’t seem to do much to relieve the overall tension in the room, but the Uil’l who’d asked the question seemed more at ease at least. Putting a brave face on things, she straightened up and gave a weak smile as she spoke again. “That’s something at least. Monsters I can handle, but zombies give me the creeps.”

The group paused to make plans before they headed down the passageway. Between the Fractal code and the gun emplacement above, no-one was eager to go running blindly into the dark. Equally, the longer they waited, the more likely whoever or whatever was at the far end of the tunnel would be able to prepare - or potentially escape down any other hidden passageways they might have dug.

As they began to move again, the assembled team bowed to Rye’s expertise to scout ahead. The Rabyth woman had already shown she could create tiny drones during her work on the pipe maintenance mission, and as a result the route ahead of the squad was charted by a tiny tumbling unit that rolled through the dirt of the tunnel floor.

As she needed to keep an eye on the data feed coming through from the drone, Rye moved in the middle of the group with Yril’k walking next to her in case of ambush. Defia led the way, flanked by a pair of stocky Uil’l guards, while Dustin took up the rear, much to his annoyance; while he understood the reasoning behind it in his role as unofficial tactician of the team, it still didn’t feel right to be behind his friends and lovers when they were potentially walking into danger.

The party walked forward in silence, adopting the careful movement of those trying to mask their passage and muffle their footfalls. As they made their way into the darkness, Dustin’s eyes flickered to the tunnel’s sides. Even to his surface-dwelling eyes, he could tell this route had been made without much care; while the roof and walls were clearly reinforced with supports and patches of quick-setting stone it was intermittent, dotted in between sections of wall that had just been carved roughly from the rock. The contrast with the smooth, well maintained tunnels elsewhere was stark, and he found his thoughts dwelling on the fact that the mob - or the Durathisians - had clearly not intended this passageway to be used long term.

Whether that meant they had made it rapidly for a specific purpose, or just made it with the minimal effort required as they might need to move at any time if law enforcement closed in he couldn’t tell - but it left him unsettled as they continued to walk onward.

Eventually, Rye held up a hand; while the Uil’l frontline didn’t notice her gesture, Defia had been tracking the Rabyth woman’s bio-electricity and brought all three of the lead members of the team to a halt without looking back. “Enquiry. You have something?” Defia’s voice was low, her red eyes glittering as she looked back towards the rest of the group.

Rye nodded. “The passage opens up into a cavern just around the next bend. There’s more boxes - no signs of any life, but that little drone can’t really scan too far ahead of itself. Also… ya got any idea why the Durathisians, the mob or the Fractals might want a fuck-load of water?”

“Water?” Dustin asked, moving forward to stand by Rye so that he could peer over her shoulder at the incoming feed from the drone. The picture was grainy, but behind black and white flickering images of crates the camera showed the distinctive shimmer and ripple of a massive pool of water extending into the distance. Glancing at the nearest Uil’l officer, Dustin gestured into the darkness ahead of them. “Should there be an underground lake around here?”

The Uil’l wrinkled it’s snout-like nose and frowned. “Not on any maps I looked at before this operation began. Nearest water should be the reservoir that feeds into the shaft your engineer there was investigating, but that’s a significant distance away.”

Rye tapped her tablet, leaving the drone feed as a picture in one corner as she checked her notes from her first mission on the planet. “We detected a unauthorized tap onto the water feed… yea, looking at that map it was heading in this direction. That still leaves the question though - what do they need all that water for?”