I commed Sanchez for a report, and it seemed like the chamber below the other bunker was similar but considerably smaller, probably an emergency or secondary ingress/egress point. I told him to proceed with caution. We'd killed a lot of their troops in the firefight, and even more of them were disordered and fleeing on the surface, cut off from at least these two re-entry points. But we still had no idea how many more troops they might have down here, and I wasn't taking any chances on either of our groups getting cut off and trapped.
The bank of lifts was along the wall not far from the ladder. They appeared to be large freight-sized elevators, and we had no idea how far down they went. We didn't need the enemy using them to bring troops up in our rear, so I had one of the rocket teams blast them. The cars were all somewhere on a lower level, but the explosions did more than enough damage to make the things unusable.
There were four doors leading out of the large chamber. One exit was a large set of double doors near the lifts, which appeared to be access to the mining areas. The other three were clustered on the opposite end of the chamber.
I checked with Sanchez, and his room didn't have the lifts or the large doors, just two smaller ones. I ordered him to move forward and clear one, leaving a strong guard on the other in case the enemy sallied out. I did the same thing on my end. I set up one of the SAW teams covering each door, and left a platoon in the chamber. Then we blasted open the door on the left and headed down the corridor.
The tunnel appeared to be bored out of solid rock and then covered with a white, plasti-crete coating. There was a long lighting track running down the center of the ceiling, but it looked like they'd cut the power. I had the lead troopers turn on their suit floodlights so we could get an actual look at the corridor and not just an infrared reconstruction. The tunnel had no branches, and we had no enemy contacts at all. We ended up in a single large room with rows of armor racks along the walls. There were half a dozen suits hanging, but the rest of the racks were empty. That didn't mean anything on its own - even if there was a whole army down here waiting for us, they'd be suited up by now.
I had Hector do an analysis the number of suit racks and estimates of the surface force we had engaged. His answer confirmed my initial guess. Most or all of the troops who'd suited up here were in the surface force. Of course, for all we knew there could be ten more rooms like this down here.
This was a dead end, so I was about to get everyone turned around and head back to the main chamber when I got started getting urgent reports. They had audio and scanner contacts on the other side of one of the doors. They were covering the entry with a SAW, and there was a squad against the wall next to the door.
I got everyone turned around in a hurry, and started back. I hadn't gotten 20 steps when I got the update. The door had been blown, and troops swarmed into the chamber. But the ID transponders flashed a warning to everyone, and at the last second no one fired. It wasn't the enemy, it was Sanchez' people pouring out of the doorway.
I commed him immediately for a report. It turns out the entry he'd taken his people through was in fact a secondary ingress/egress point. There were some storage areas directly under, but the only tunnel led straight back to the access chamber we were occupying, which was now crowded with both forces.
I sent Sanchez and one of his platoons down the middle corridor to check it out, but my gut said the double doors by the lifts were more important. While Sanchez was scouting I checked in with Jax for a surface report. The rout had continued, with small clusters of enemy troops rallying and fighting back, but most trying to escape. Jax estimated that there were less than 100 enemy troops left alive on the surface. He'd formed a command post and was sending search and destroy teams out to finish them off.
Good. Leaving Jax in charge of something was as good as seeing it done yourself. I also got an update from fleet command. Tyler Johnson's battalion had landed near the second planetary objective. Hopefully our reports would help them out. I had just signed off with fleet, when Sanchez commed me. The central corridor led to an extensive complex, which seemed to be mostly living quarters. They hadn't searched the whole place yet, but so far everywhere they'd been was deserted. It could take hours to go through every corridor and room in a complex that housed several thousand workers and troops. I wanted Sanchez back here before we went into that mine.
"Sanchez, have Sergeant Ho and one section systematically search the place to confirm it is deserted. Meanwhile, you get back here with the rest of your crew. We're going into the mine in ten minutes."
"Yes sir. On the way."
I started to get organized for entering the mines while two of the engineers prepped charges to blow the doors. When Sanchez got back we blasted our way in and started moving into the mine in three waves.
We might as well have walked through the front door of hell. For the next nine hours we fought step by step, level by level through the gigantic mazelike mine against a fanatical enemy determined to fight to the death. We made our way through booby traps and past hidden snipers. Our scanners and communication with the surface were out, the effect of the concentrations of super-heavy elements in the surrounding rock structures.
In one large chamber we found the bodies of the mine workers, the poor souls sentenced to this hell for one infraction or another. They were little better than slaves, and my first thought was someone decided they couldn't be trusted in this fight, and had them disposed of. But after looking I could see they'd been dead for quite some time.
The troops defending the tunnels were Mubarizun, elite Caliphate special forces that we certainly didn't expect to find there, and they fought us with suicidal determination. The combat was beyond savage, as bad or worse than anything during Achilles or Columbia, but in confined spaces deep underground. They collapsed tunnels on us and utilized their familiarity with the mazelike complex to try and outflank us. We fought with every weapon we had, and in the tightest areas the battle came down to blades and even armored fists.
I sent a runner to call down Jax's troops after they'd cleared the surface, and Ho's group as well for reinforcements. Trying to direct an entire battalion strung out through kilometers of twisting tunnels is virtually impossible, even when your com is working. The sergeants and corporals earned their pay taking the initiative when orders from higher up couldn't reach them. By the time we'd cornered the last group and wiped them out we were exhausted and near the end of our endurance. I'd never seen troops fight more bravely than those I led that day, but I also knew the battalion was nearly broken.
I came close to not making it out myself. I ended up separated from my troops and surrounded by 4 of the enemy. They'd have taken me down for sure, but just in time two of them went down under a pair of blades slashing so quickly my eyes couldn't follow them. PRC troops carried a blade in each arm, not just the one, as we did. Their military maintained a tradition of fighting with the blade, and Aoki Yoshi was an expert. I whipped around and sliced one of the enemy troopers nearly in half, then spun and shot the other one in the head. That was how my liaison officer, Captain Aoki Yoshi saved my life on Eridu, despite the fact that I had told him ten times to stay out of the fighting.
When we hobbled out of the tunnels, now absent any living creature but us, and climbed slowly up the ladders to the surface, less than half of us were left standing. The survivors slowly gathered around the rally area, waiting silently for the shuttles to land, while the medics did what they could for the wounded in terrible conditions. Sanchez wasn't one of the survivors. He died fighting half a dozen enemies with his blade while his troops pulled their wounded back to safety. He'd be decorated posthumously, I would see to that. For all the miserable good it would do him.