Chapter 21 - Huntly Mine (part 10)

The next morning, again, arrives peacefully on the prosperous and peaceful Australia. Being in the Southern Hemisphere, it is currently summer here. The soft sunlight shines through the window of my hotel room, where I am currently sleeping and restoring energy from an exhausting yesterday, only for another exhausting today, and likely for the rest of the week.

It is currently seven in the morning, and since there are no scheduled activities today, we are free to travel to and from the mine at any point in time. Our timetable will be quite flexible, only if I turn to my right and see that Mirai is doing something on her bed with some mechanical components

- Mirai, what are you doing? It is like seven in the morning.

- Finally you are awake. Thanks to the early lights-out time yesterday, I finish charging at three or four in the morning, so I automatically wake up and prepare for the trip later.

- We have like a whole four days, and our progress is already like fifty percent. Why don't ya slow down and enjoy a bit?

- How about we finish all of our objectives and enjoy on the last days?

- OK, makes sense.

- By the way, wake up and finish your basic hygiene. I have arranged for a car to pick us up at eight sharp.

I jump out of the bed.

- Why? - I leap at Mirai.

- The earlier we finish the expedition, the more time we have in the evening. So that I can go around and enjoy the view.

- At the expense of my sleep schedule?

- I have told you before. There is no way I let you revert back to your sedentary and health-damaging lifestyle you have before.

I do not know whether I should be happy or sad. Anyway, the conversation has made me fully awake already, so I go to the bathroom and brush my teeth.

The hotel dining hall is serving breakfast, so after dressing up, we go to the dining hall. We have a healthy breakfast, and at eight sharp, we enter the car which has been waiting for us as we walk out of the hotel entrance.

On the car, I send a text message to Issac to thank him for helping us arranging the trip, and I invite him on a lunch on the second last day of the trip. Mirai is busy processing some information in her head. The silence overwhelms the car, but it is neither awkward or frightening. Just a tranquill silence that will maximise one's work efficiency. The silence lasts for half an hour, before the car arrives at the mine and drops us there. We exchange greets with the driver and enter the mine.

- So, as mentioned, we will have to split up. Your task is to locate which part of the mine is connected with the anomalous factory, while I will infiltrate the factory and assess the neighbouring factories. - Mirai instructs me with the objectives of today again.

- That is all, right?

- Now, some safety measures. Note that even if we have legal access to the mine, try to keep a low profile, since causing a ruckus or getting into any trouble will raise the Intruder's alert. Today's mission is not to attack. It is to collect information. Lastly, if you find yourself getting into any troubles that you think you cannot solve by yourself, either escape, or call for my support.

- Noted.

After fully gearing ourselves, we part. As the shadow of a certain humanoid robot ascends further into the building that links to the underground facility and away from my sight, I walk towards the remaining part of the mine except the factories. Yes, the mine.

The first thing that hits my eyesight is the busy quarry in which autonomous machines and vehicles are travelling around, extracting stones and minerals and transport them to various portals that link to the underground facility. Although the ore extraction happens underground, I take out the EM headlight and wear it on my head as a helmet, then I walk around the extraction site.

The headlight is currently adjusted to gamma ray mode to penetrate the thick layers of soil and dirt to detect any hidden portals or other suspicious facilities. The satellite information, plus the scanning data from my EM headlight, would together form a map of the mining area.

- This is not going anywhere... - I let out a loud sigh.

After walking throughout the mine in a whopping one hour under the intense sunlight of the Australian summer, there has not been any evidence of a possible hidden facility, and my stamina is draining as fast as a toilet flush. I take out a fully charged UAV coated with an invisible, anti-radar layer, equipped with an EM light source to do the rest of my job under the sun, while I proceed to investigate the underground area. The satellite would be linked to this drone to immediately notify me if something is discovered.

This is the main part of the mine, where mineral ores will be extracted. According to the primary evidence coming from the satellite, it is a complex structure of many interconnected mines spanning across many floors and covering an area comparable to that of the quarry up there. However, I just need to locate which exact area and floor links to the anomalous factory. I call Mirai.

- Mirai, have you detected which conveyor belt links with the factory?

- Yes. The entrance of the belts is in the elevation of negative fifty metres from the sea level, near the left end of the underground facility. Taking the central mine as the point of bearing, geographic North as zero bearing, the conveyor belt entrance is at bearing 240 to 250. Please use the EM headlight to scan.

- Roger that.

My spectacles update my live coordinate relative to the central mine and continuously stores them in the tablet. It then calculates the angle and EM frequency that I need to direct my headlight towards.

After five minutes, the spectacles give me an instruction to direct the EM ray. I take out a tripod and mount my headlight, setting the angle of mounting and penetrating frequency as instructed by the tablet. I attach the transmitter with an evacuated and reflective tube. If I accidentally let an energetic EM ray escape into the mine which is filled with flammable gases like methane, it will definitely trigger a cascade of gas ionisation that releases thermal energy, and boom! I will be buried alive with hundreds of tons of soil and dirt and die from the immense pressure. Not a recommended experience.

When my setup has aligned with the spectacles' vision, a green light appears, allowing me to turn on the headlight, and I click on the switch.

There is a trench on the headlight to serve as a sight. As I close one eye and look through the trench with another eye, the spectacles would send further instructions to slightly shift the mounting angle, and I rotate the knobs on the tripod to do so. After a while, the receptor of the EM headlight gives a signal of a long, metallic object running in the ground. This is the entrance of the conveyor belt.

Then, I manually track the path of the conveyor belt by rotating the EM headlight up and down, left and right so that the EM headlight always register the presence of a long metallic track. Finally, the signal comes to an abrupt end, meaning that the end of the conveyor belt has been reached. At the end, the coordinates relative to the central mine and to my position is located. That is a jackpot.

After pinning the area on the map, a path lights up from my spectacles' vision, telling the shortest way to go to the pinned area. I follow the highlighted track, which is approximately half a kilometre long.

In any time era, it is just impossible to get rid of the characteristic smell of the reeking hydrogen sulfide of a mine, which is exactly the smell of rotten eggs. Without proper protection, one can choke on this gas and die. With proper protection, it is fine, but the occasional smell of rotten eggs that infiltrate your nose is pure demoralising. Not only that, the flammable gases means that if I fire a bullet, either photon or projectile, the heat will cause the mine blows up.

The headlight has been switched to visible light mode, but I still keep the tube on just in case. The five hundred metres distance is the straight distance between my position and the endpoint. To actually reach there, I climb ladders, move round and round, following a seemingly endless path that just loops itself into nothing. Then, there is finally the light of hope at the end of the tunnel for me.

I see two suspicious figures completely wrapped up in mining the aluminium ores with two pickaxes definitely not belonging to Earth's technology.

- Mirai, two mining Intruders located, overall rating of fourty. Please send further instruction. - I whisper into the built-in communication device in the spectacles.