A Mine Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

It was indeed a call about business, and not long after finishing breakfast, everyone was assembled at the entrance arch.

“Sorry I passed out on you before we got back,” Teri said to everyone as she jogged up from the village, summoned by a quick phone call.

“You were working all day without rest,” Verida replied, quickly pulling the unnecessarily contrite goblin into a hug. “There is no shame in being drained after that.”

Teri smiled slightly as she returned the goddess’ hug. “So, what’s the word?”

“It seems we were pessimistic about the dwarves’ commitment to our deal,” Vivian answered. “Tok called and said he was going to head over with the ones who’re going to run things so they can scope it out.”

“It’s interesting that Tok seems to be leading this effort,” Senka remarked. “A sign of respect for the efforts he put in yesterday, or are they giving him something to do away from the war effort?”

“There’s a third option,” Vivian said. “He’s the one with the most rapport with us. It makes sense to keep building that relationship up. It didn’t sound like Tok would be running things, just acting as the liaison as a known quantity.”

“Plus, it is a sign of faith in his capacity,” Estelle added. “A bit of an ego boost at worst.”

“Given that he fought his way through a jungle, then an invasion, and met one of his gods, I don’t think he needs it,” John said with a chuckle. “Not that I expect him to come waltzing in like he’s been ordained as the next best thing.”

“He was quite humble in the face of Gep’kes Ani,” Verida added. “I don’t think he’s going to have a full about-face in under a day, if ever.”

“We’ll see soon enough,” Vivian said. “But I think you’re right about him not having a dramatic change in personality. I think I’m more worried about them sending over an undermanned group and things taking longer to progress.”

“But some progress is better than none,” Aeolia chimed in. “Even if it’s just one guy with a hammer and chisel, it’ll be something.”

“Fair,” Vivian nodded, “going from a stand still to moving at one mile per hour is some development.”

Verida stiffened. “Our guests are arriving.”

The air shimmered at the entrance and the mining scouting party from Higaisha appeared. Like they had expected, they were a small group of only seven. Far from their expectations was the amount of equipment they had brought. They assumed they would only be bringing what could fit in backpacks at most, and while that was true, they had three metal crates walking behind them, propelled by spider-like mechanical legs.

‘Guess that’s why Lita’s here,’ John noted as he spied the cat girl. It wasn’t hard to spot her, standing more than a foot higher than her companions, and that was before the most dramatic change to her appearance. A long, segmentated tail of black metal stuck out from her rear, a blue diode at the tip twitching around, as if to see everything around her. It was likely attached to her via the thick harness she wore around her waist and torso.

“John, everyone! Good morning!” Tok greeted them with an enthusiastic wave. “I see you’ve all rested up nicely!”

“After yesterday, sleep was about all we could do once we got back home,” John replied. “I see you’re in good spirits too.”

“What a good night’s sleep can do, am I right?” Tok joked, but his laugh died a bit too quickly. “Right, so guess I should explain what the plan is.”

“It would be helpful to all be on the same page,” Vivian answered. “We weren’t expecting you to bring so much equipment. You made it sound like this was only going to be an assessment of the mine.”

Tok tilted his head to one side. “But that’s what we’re doing?”

“I think our friends are a little out of their depth, Tok,” an older dwarf cut in. He was bald, with a beard of brown and silver reaching down to his chest. He was dressed in much the way John figured the sort who would oversee a mine would: heavy boots, denim jeans and a flannel shirt. “Name’s Fel. Been doing mining jobs since I could swing a pick. You don’t half ass the first look. Great way to miss some weakness in the ground under the base camp and have the whole thing fall into a sinkhole a few months into things.”

“So all those are, like, scanning instruments?” Beth asked.

Fel nodded. “Never worked a mine that wasn’t in a Natural Barrier, so I figured going the whole nine yards was in order.”

“Boss’ been prepping since word about what you had here started goin’ ‘round town,” another of the dwarves supplied. Fel gave him a hardy jab to the shoulder.

“No harm in being prepared,” he defended his actions. “In any case, the gear’s job is to scan for cavities around the entrance, probe down what’s already there for easy locations for expansion and get a preliminary analysis of what we might find when we get digging. And I hear that things may be a bit developed already, so we might go a bit deeper than a first go round would normally merit.”

“Hopefully there will be no negative surprises,” Verida said. “While Pruzonia is my domain, my providence is in the forest and that which grows in it, not the stone it stands over.”

“No worries, er, your, um, godliness?” Fel trailed off, unsure how to address her.

“Verida is fine,” the goddess assured him. “I have no need for such lofty titles.”

“Right, right,” Fel muttered. “Good to know. Both how to speak to ya and that you’ve got no extra insight.”

“I wouldn’t say we’re going in blind,” John spoke up, taking an arcano fluorite gem out of his Inventory. “Found this in the mine when we stumbled upon it.”

He tossed it over to Fel, the rough dwarf’s hands deftly plucking it from the air. He examined it with sharp eyes, fingers running over its facets with an inquisitive care.

“Oh, interesting,” Fel muttered. “Means the caves have a good mana flow to them. Ups the chance to find some enriched ores and other sorts of crystals down there.”

He tossed the fluorite back to John.

“Now, we’re not going to see what’s there by rooting ourselves here,” Fel said. “Shall we head out, if everything’s in order?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we need to do before getting to it,” Vivian answered, gesturing towards the Waygate. “The site’s a fair distance away so we’ll need to use our teleport gates.”

“Huh, not that different from the one from yesterday,” Tok said as everyone’s attention turned to the wooden archway.

“Probalby not a lot of ways to design portals between two locations,” Verida remarked. “Or there is some universal constant that us gods subconsciously draw on for some things.”

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Aeolia rephrased it in simpler terms.

Out of the corner of his eye, John caught Lita looking at the Waygate, a look that mixed wonder and excitement clear on her face. He noticed her mouthing the word ‘Stargate’ and he felt his lips quirk up into a smile.

‘Figures Lita would make the connection,’ Senka remarked. ‘She does seem the type to enjoy science fiction.’

‘What, did the tail give it away?’ John jokingly asked. ‘Wonder what that’s about.’

‘Well, you’ve got two ways to find out,’ Senka said.

That was true. He could just hit it with Observe. But, between the slight fear that throwing out scrying magic would be some faux pas that could derail things and a genuine desire to make connections with people, he resolved to ask her directly when the opportunity presented itself.

Vivian quickly activated the gate once they reached it.

“We only have the two set up for now, but once we establish more points of interest, we should be able to travel between them seamlessly,” she explained. “For now, you just have to select the World Tree image to get back here or the mine doors to dial up the mine.”

“Doors?” one of the dwarves asked.

“If ya dug the wax from your ears, Bij, you’d have heard the mine came with some pre-installed infrastructure. Class Three at least,” Fel chided his underling.

“What’s that mean?” Verida asked Fel.

“When we dig in Naturals, we classify them based on how they formed,” Fel explained. “Class One is having no underground entrance, Two is having a cave or the like to start from, Three is there being some structure drawn from who knows where serving as the entrance. From your accounts, that’s what we’re expected to see, yeah?”

Verida nodded. “Yes. We didn’t explore it much, but there is a large excavated cavern with stone buildings just inside the mountain, with undeveloped caverns going deeper down.”

“Wise of you to not go exploring,” Fel grunted. “Cave-ins are nothing to sneeze at and who knows what else is down there.”

“We did see some things when we poked our heads in,” John cut in. “Animated stone golems and crystal serpents. We dealt with a few of them, but who knows what’s deeper in.”

“Noted.” Fel nodded. “Well, we’ve done enough pre-game talk. Let’s get this show on the road.”

Getting the show on the road was a longer process than John would have thought. Once everyone and everything had come through, the workers sprang into action, quickly spreading out to do their first survey of the land in front of the entrance. They moved with purpose, employing both magic and various bits of technology to probe the land. While they worked, John found himself approaching Lita. The cat girl stood by the crates she had directed to about the center of the clearing, their lids removed. A number of more advanced pieces of artifice sat inside them, waiting for a signal to be employed.

“Those are some advanced bits of gear, huh?” John asked, causing Lita to jump slightly.

“Um, I s-suppose so,” she nervously answered. “I’m just here to help pilot them. V-Vel figured it would make things more efficient.”

“If you can pilot these things like that mech you used in the fight yesterday, I’m sure it will,” John said.

Lita blushed, her ears quivered and her mechanical tail twitched about. “Y-you know about that?”

John nodded. “Yeah. Kind of wish I could have seen it. Sounded cool.”

“C-cool?” Lita stuttered. “S-so you like stuff like that? Sci-fi, I mean.”

“I was more into the fantasy stuff, but sci-fi is cool,” John answered. “I did watch a lot of reruns of things like Trek growing up.”

“Classic or Next Generation?” Lita asked, her nervousness fading.

“I like bits of both,” John replied.

Before Lita could gush about her preferred show, Fel barked out, “Okay, ground’s looking solid. Time to move in. Lita, get those scout units up and running!”

“G-got it!” She jumped at the sudden call out and turned her attention to the crates. John felt the slightest pulse of mana come from her and the machines came to life. They rose on metal limbs and climbed out, giving John a good look at them.

All three were roughly the same design: rectangular bodies of sheet metal on long articulated limbs. They had a number of cameras along their surfaces, and extrusions that wouldn’t be out of place on a starship: radar dishes, long antenna, and other things John took as sensor probes.

As Lita made the scouts move towards the mine doors John noted how her tail was moving around, almost as if it was acting as a conductor.

“Is the tail some kind of booster?” he couldn’t help himself from asking.

“Um, a little bit,” Lita answered. She chewed her lip for a moment, as if she was debating how much to tell him. “It’s like, um, an extra hand. Stuff this big takes a bit more focus, even if the scout bots can run on their own.”

“You kept the cameras going in the barrier when you were using the fighting bot,” John said.

“Those drones didn’t take much, even with the distance,” Lita informed him, her voice devoid of pride. “So it wasn’t too hard to keep them going while I got U-1 to fight. These have a bit more moving parts, so a small help was in order. I’ve used this before, so it doesn’t take a lot of focus and it helps me direct more towards the scouts.”

Something in her explanation didn’t feel right. He didn’t think she was lying, but still, using some of her ‘focus’ on the tail to help focus on the scout robots seemed counter-intuitive.

‘A placebo then?’ he wondered. He wasn’t entirely sure how her magic worked. Estelle mentioned it wasn’t technology control of some kind and more like possession, but given the items she was controlling, that didn’t really matter outside of maybe a small percentage. Regardless, he couldn’t help but wonder if she wasn’t living up to her potential and what was holding her back.

Instead, John kept up the small talk. “So you’ve done work like this before?”

“S-sometimes,” Lita responded. “It’s been a while. And only for the j-jobs that are pretty big. I’m mostly at the office for paperwork and what not.”

Their conversion petered off as they all entered the mine. Several of the dwarves let out appreciative noises at the sight of the stone buildings.

“Think you may have undersold how good this place was,” Fel remarked as he snapped his fingers several times, each time a look of concentration crossing his face. “Good acoustics and everything sounds solid. Once we give this the full once over, we’ll start probing one or two of the tunnels.”

“Will you be needing any of us?” Vivian asked.

“I think we’ll be alright. Won’t say you can’t stay. It’s your land after all,” Fel remarked. “I will say the first part’s the most boring. Lot’s of looking at stuff on the surface and the like.”

Before Vivian could say anything, her phone began to ring. She quickly answered it, the reception not hampered by the cave at all.

“Renoux Solutions. Yes? In an hour? That works. Thank you.”

“What’s that about?” John asked.

“That was the lumber company,” Vivian reported. “They want to meet today.”