He shivered in cold air that stank of mould as he clambered out, and closed the hatch behind him. The IR illuminators on his goggles lit up the few metres of the rocky tunnel nearest to him, beyond which the tunnel faded into blackness except for a faint glow in the distance to the right.
In the other direction, above the pipes on the walls, stood a row of wooden wheels taller than Logan, lashed together from poles and attached to wooden axles that protruded from the wall. Wooden rods protruded from the side of each wheel, maybe twenty of them around the circumference, as though someone could grab them, and turn the wheels by hand.
Beyond the wheels, the tunnel ended in black. There was only one sensible way to go.
He crept along the dirt floor of the tunnel toward the glow, stopping and listening every few metres.
The mumbling grew louder, but was hard to decipher after it echoed from the hard walls of the tunnel. A few metres from the light, he turned off the IR illuminators, and slid the goggles up onto his forehead. The tunnel curved to the left, and he put his back to the wall, pressing himself as close to it as he could as he crept around the corner. The light was coming from an open doorway on the far side of the tunnel, just a few metres ahead of him.
He could make out a voice now. A familiar voice.
Volkov’s.
“I need to know where my men are.”
“Sergeant,” another male voice said, “your men have already loaded up their truck, and left.”
“And they didn’t even inform me?”
“I believe they tried. Comms are bad right now with these solar storms. You’re lucky you were able to get through to us now. You may not be able to later.”
“When did they leave?”
“You just missed them by a few minutes, I’m afraid. Their truck was damaged in an insurgent attack on the way here. It required repairs before it could return to you.”
“Thank you. I’ll expect them soon.”
“The truck is heavily loaded, and travel will be slow at night. I wouldn’t expect them too soon.”
“Perhaps I should send a team to meet them en route.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. I doubt the insurgents will want to tangle with the Legion a second time so soon.”
Logan crept to the doorway, and peered around the corner, into the room. A tall, muscular man, maybe thirty years old, leaned over a console at the far side of the room. Volkov’s face filled the console screen in front of him.
Volkov said nothing for a few seconds, then spoke. “Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you for sending your men. We will now be able to reopen the mine, to send the motherland the supplies it needs.”
Logan could see the other man’s face side-on as he looked at the console. Logan almost recognized that scarred face.
The insurgent attack the previous day had been too intense to take a good look at the attackers, but he was sure Scar-Face had been one of them. That face was hard to miss, or mistake. No wonder they’d been trying to stop trucks getting to the mine. They owned it.
The screen faded to black as Volkov closed the connection.
Why would Scar-Face even tell Volkov that?
Volkov would find out it was a lie very soon. If the team and the truck weren’t back in a few hours, he’d be sure that something had happened, and would certainly send out more men or a drone to look for the truck. The lies were just buying a little time.
Logan tightened his grip on the butt of his pistol. He could try to capture the man, or just kill him. But what good would that do? There must be at least another dozen insurgents here. He’d get himself killed, and no-one would be able to tell the Legion what was going on here.
Scar-Face tapped the console screen. A few seconds later, another familiar face appeared.
Chaput. The department Governor.
Logan triggered his helmet camera to start recording.
“Your friends are getting antsy,” Scar-Face said. “You should never have sent them up here.”
“I did my best to convince them to stay away. And I told you to stop their truck before they reached the mine. But their political officer is determined to open the route.”
“They won’t be when they see what comes next.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re staging a little distraction with the Montagnards. The Legion will soon have more important things to worry about than this mine.”
“I need more than a distraction. You said you could beat the Legion and free this planet.”
“And we will. In time.”
Chaput’s face grew red, and glistened with sweat. “I don’t have time. I’ll be recalled to France at the end of this year. You know that.”
“This planet will be free of France before then. Just relax and let us do our job.”
Chaput opened his mouth, but Scar-Face reached out to the console screen, and it went black. A light flashed beside it.
Logan ducked away from the doorway as Scar-Face stood.
Logan locked the helmet recording. So Governor Chaput was part of the insurgency. He probably expected to be in charge when the planet broke free of France and they sent Porcher packing.
But he didn’t look like the kind of man who could keep Scar-Face or the Montagnards in check if the insurgents gained their freedom. Chaput was more likely to find himself staring up at his bloodstained neck from the bottom of a bucket as soon as the Legion left.
And how did Scar-Face plan to beat the Legion, anyway? Once they heard about his base here, they’d obliterate it. He couldn’t fight them off for long, with just rifles, RPGs and body armour. The Marine LePen could sanitize the mine from orbit, or just drop a nuke on top. Scar-Face and his Montagnard friends had already eliminated any civilians in the area. So it would hardly matter any more if the Legion turned the whole mountaintop to glass.
Footsteps moved away from Logan. He peered around the doorway again. Scar-Face was disappearing into the shadows of a tunnel on the far side of the room, shining a flashlight ahead of him. Logan waited a moment, listening to the footsteps and their echoes fade away, then crept toward the console.
He touched the screen, but it remained black. If must be locked to Scar-Face’s fingerprints or DNA. He should have guessed it wouldn’t be that easy. His helmet wasn’t finding any kind of open comms network it could connect to, either.
More voices mumbled from the tunnel where Scar-Face had gone, the words lost to the echoes from the rock walls. Not just male voices this time, but another voice, more high-pitched, and definitely female.
A voice he was sure he recognized.
Oh, crap. Why couldn’t she just do what she was told?
Logan moved that way, staying in the shadows again as he left the light of the communications room.
The voices grew louder as he moved, and he followed them past two side-tunnels. Then his tunnel came to an abrupt end at a ledge about two metres across, where the floor dropped away just beyond a wooden railing at waist height on the far side of the ledge.
The ledge rose in a spiral around a central shaft, maybe ten metres in diameter. No wonder they had those huge rubble piles outside the mine, if they’d had to dig this out.
A drop of water splashed on his helmet, and another on his shoulder. Over the mumble of voices from up above, he could hear the faint echoes of more water splashing down below. It must be dripping from the roof of the shaft, like the caves on the Channel coast back home.
He peered over the narrow wooden railing. The joints creaked as he leaned on it and looked down. The shaft became a black hole at the limit of what the IR illuminators could light.
Thick brown ropes hung down the centre of the shaft, from pulleys in the roof. Big pulleys, almost the size of Logan’s chest, that must be designed to lift heavy loads. A narrow wooden platform protruded from the ledge near the pulleys, and the ends of the ropes were tied to the wall beside it. Some cables ran across the roof, but the illumination was too dim to see much detail that far away.