Abandoned Mineshaft

Crynn POV

"How many hours has it been?" I yawned as I threw a sack ball into the air and caught it back by my fingers in boredom, like we're chilling, talking, doing nothing in this aerodyne for what felt like ages now. "5 hours, not including lunch," Aria said as she continued typing rather loudly and mechanically, I personally love keyboard sounds, especially typewriters, those are the most satisfying ones.

Anyway, it's been five hours since virtual reality, we've been travelling for 5 hours and we're basically already at the State of Washington. And last night, the convoy and aerodyne has been travelling for 9 hours while we sleep. Obviously with giant caravans like those, we can't travel that fast totaling 70 miles per hour.

And because we started travelling from the edge of California, it would take about 15 to 16 hours to make it to Washington DC with our current speed. and I'm predicting we'll arrive in a short while though still extremely bored. "So, what can you tell me about Washington DC," Calian appeared from out of the cockpit and asked.

"Washington DC is the capital of the NUSA with almost no crime rates attributed by a certain fact, the military largely controls the place. It is where all the upper government officials live in and is sort of peaceful. but one thing to first pay attention of is border, Washington DC has an absurd border security," Jill looked up from the computer.

"Trump might be joking when he said to build a wall but the NUSA isn't in terms of Washington DC, they built a 5 meter high wall surrounding the entire city, 5 meters," to further emphasis, Aria put one hand down and the other above to show just how high it actually is. "How are we going to past that?" Calian wondered.

"On my time surfing, I've found a rumor of an abandoned mineshaft directly connected into Washington DC," mineshaft? Hmm... don't really know about that. "Where is this rumored mineshaft located?" I decide to question first, think about it later because we have plenty of planning time to be used.

"The mineshaft itself is not rumored. It's an old closed down mine just southeast of Washington DC. The rumors is that the construction of the Washington Subway tunnels is directly next to one of the caveway paths of the old mineshaft. But we can't for sure know that unless there is substantial proof," Aria sighed and shrugged, we need some building plans then.

"Found it, blueprint of the subway construction spanning the entire city of Washington DC. An inconspicuous tunnel on the southeast edge of the city seems to be shaped rather weirdly," Jill spoke and shared the zoomed blueprint t the other monitors and indeed what she said, it is quite strange.

The subway tunnels in general on any other spot on the map has smooth curves, straight pathways but this on isn't a smooth curve at all. It's very bent, the angle's gotta be between 95 to 110 degrees which is a very sharp turn for a subway. "Look, I found some old information regarding the construction on the subway," Jill called out again and read it to us.

"Apparently the Minister of Transportation had a bit of a scuffle with the CEO of Rock and Silver Mining Corporation. Guess who owns the old mineshaft, that's right, Rock and Silver Mining Corporation. Because the NUSA still puts freedom in a relatively high speaking, Rock and Silver Mining also has freedom to reject the intrusion of the construction of the subway on their grounds."

"And that results in that unnatural bend right there in the southeast, the same direction the abandoned mineshaft is at," that's very clever and an architectural mishap if I've ever seen one, this is not just useful, it's priceless. "The only thing left to do for us is to either do an underground geographical survey on the underground of the mineshaft, or we can use GPS to try and find our way into the caveways next to the tunnel," Jill suggested.

"Underground geographical survey? Have we even got the tools for that?" Calian asked back because yeah, I don't have the right equipment to do a survey. "Nope, that's why option two, we use GPS," that's another problem for us which is, "Doesn't GPS not work underground? I thought the satellites' weak radio waves couldn't penetrate through the dense ground?"

"Now that, the abandoned mineshaft is built in 1950 and do you know what else is invented way before the time? Radio wave transmitters," this time, Aria answered and it made me realize as well, transmitters, why didn't I think of that. "It's an absolute must in this era for mines to have transmitters in every path to directly link their GPS to the transmitters which will then carry the wave back to the initial transmitter on the surface then it can connect to the satellite."

"And these transmitters are active? Is the place even powered?" Wow, I and Calian are such critiques in this matter, guess we need to a bit judging and careful especially in this sort of technological world where bulletproof guard bots just exist. It would be a total pain to take those out, I can imagine it right in my head.

"Don't worry, the mine comes equipped with an active transformer," okay, good then, actually not good yet, I still have some questions that are needed to be answered. "How do we get to the tunnel through the caveway? I'm thinking with explosives but I don't think we have explosives enough to blow through the cave walls not to mention the tunnel walls."

"Another point, are the caves safe enough to blow an explosive through. Wouldn't it create tremor that would potentially collapse the roof on us?" because I heard a lot of stories about a lot of explosives and a lot of caves collapsing, it doesn't look one bit exciting, I would be totally horrified and scarred for life.

"Oh, I'm sure the Aldecaldos have some explosives they can borrow and don't worry, the cave is definitely secure and safe," that doesn't sound very assuring, does it?