Adrian sat for a moment as the gears turned in his head. He played with the scope of his rifle in half successful attempt to peer into the darkness. [i]Rocks. Not sure what I expected.[/i] He sucked on his teeth as he willed the L-68 to lower its rifle. “No, you stay back here and cover me,” he said as he turned around to scan the horizon behind the team. He stowed his rifle on his back and withdrew his pistol from its holding clamps. “I’m gonna go smash my face against a landmine or two.” 

	The L-68 inched out of cover on its skates and loosely circled the perimeter of the mine’s entrance. It stopped at regular intervals to scan the ground in front of it as Adrian made notes of his path. [i]By all appearances, they just picked the good stuff and moved on.[/i] He eventually reached the open mouth of the mine. [i]But this place probably[/i] looks [i]like a great hangar, doesn’t it? [/i] Adrian manually widened the aperture of the L-68’s camera array and peered into the darkness. The picture was much clearer than what his rifle’s camera had shown.

	From the entrance, the mine extended some ways as a straight tunnel into the earth, before it broke off into an array of intersections. Adrian turned back to his teammate and signaled, [One minute,] before he slowly advanced into the darkness. It quickly became apparent to him that the mine had seen recent use. Fresh tracks from the skates and feet of GEARS marked a clear path down the center of the entryway, with any junk that had obstructed the flow of traffic pushed against the walls. There were definite efforts to patch up the crumbling, unstable, badlands rock that lined the tunnel, but some had clearly fallen loose. “That’s, that’s very reassuring.”

Adrian had not moved very far when one of the poorly applied, metal plates that had been [i]drilled[/i] into the ceiling came loose and fell to the ground in front of him. [i]Thunk![/i] A rock bounced off the head of his GEAR and Adrian threw himself against the back of his seat. The L-68 flew backward on its skates as though it was carried by its pilot’s momentum as a slightly larger rock tumbled to the ground where it had been. The GEAR burst back into the outside light with a trail of dust behind it. Adrian never missed a beat in his retreat as he retraced his path back to the hill and signaled, [No go,] the whole way.

“The place is falling apart,” Adrian said to Aidan after he collected himself. “But it looks like this is where they hid their mech units. So there’s that. If we’re going in, we need to find another entrance. Preferably one that won’t collapse at a moment’s notice.”