It turned out that removing Bob from the street was a lot more difficult than expected. He was constructed from such dense materials that it was difficult for any of the other bears to move him, even in the most optimal conditions. Having him wedged in the ground just made things ten times worse.

  In the end it was easier for him to go down than it was to pull him up. It only took a couple of minutes for the bears to hack the street apart with their entrenching tools, slowly widening the hole until Bob finally slipped through.

  “I’m okay!” the big bear called a few seconds after falling.

  “How far did you fall? How deep is the tunnel?” I asked, sticking my head over the edge of the hole. I could just make out Bob’s silhouette in the gloom.

  “It’s only about five or six meters. You know, Twenty-Eight-sized tunnels.”

  “Great. That’s shallow enough that the bears can jump down and not take any damage. Get out of the way!” I shouted.

  “Ummm… I hate to be that guy,” Deadbeat muttered, stepping up behind me, “but do you have a plan to get us out once we’re down there?”

  “Nope! We need to get down there and destroy that hive ASAP. Once it’s taken care of, I figured we could spend a little extra time exploring the area and looking for the Antithesis’ access tunnels,” I said.

  “Or… we could spend thirty seconds now and check if there’s a ladder in that hardware store over there,” Deadbeat replied sarcastically.

  I slowly raised my head, looked at Deadbeat, and then the massive building sitting not even twenty meters away.

  “Okay, sure, that’s an option too,” I muttered.

  “Do I have your permission to…” Deadbeat started.

  “Yeah, yeah,yeah, it’s gonna take a minute for all the bears to get down there anyways. Just don’t take too long.”

  Deadbeat disappeared into the building as soon as I’d given permission, and she was back before the rest of my forces had finished jumping down. Behind her there were four bears carrying an extension ladder. I did my best to ignore the smug smile plastered on her face.

  “Thank you,” I said begrudgingly. “Now get that ladder down the hole, and join everyone else down there. We’re falling behind!”

  Deadbeat just rolled her eyes at me before directing the others to lower the ladder down.

  Even though there were only a handful of bears left to send down, the ladder did make things a tiny bit faster. Not having to wait and confirm that each bear had cleared the landing zone accelerated the process, but I did notice the ladder groaning slightly at the weight of all the bears scampering down at the same time. I made a note to make sure they took it slow on the way back up.

  I went down last, sliding down into the gloom. Once I hit the bottom, my helmet automatically swapped over to a low-light vision mode.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The tunnel we were crouched in was very reminiscent of the labyrinthine network I’d encountered under Jasper. Thankfully this one wasn’t covered in the same polymer goop that had disrupted our communications and obstructed our advances back then.

  It was, unfortunately, large enough to allow an entire horde through. If I encountered any Twenty-Threes, or anything bigger, down here, it wouldn’t have any problems fighting.

  “Any suggestions on which way we should go from here?” I asked as I pulled up the map Angeline sent me in my augs.

  “Everything around here smells like Antithesis,” Bandit grumbled. “They’ve been here a long time, and they use this tunnel frequently.”

  I sent everyone a copy of the map. “This is what we’ve got to work with. The Antithesis have been intercepting Angeline’s scouts, so we’re pretty much wandering blind.”

  “I’d suggest we focus our search in and around the tunnels nearest to the river,” Deadbeat declared after a minute. “If they’re sending the big boys out that way, they’d need a connection in that area.”

  “The other team is coming in that way. So unless they call us for backup, we can leave that exploration to them,” I said, as I scrutinized the map.

  “Why don’t we just follow the oldest traces?” Bob asked. “The older they are, the more likely that they will lead back to the hive!”

  “How, in the fuck, did you come to that conclusion?” I asked the big bear.

  “The longer they’re here, the more tunnels they’ll dig, the more places they can go!” Bob said.

  “He’s not technically wrong,” Deadbeat muttered after a second.

  “Maybe, but I think this hive is far too old and established to have smells from that far back,” I grumbled.

  “Then we just go down the busiest tunnels. Even if we don’t find the hive, I’m sure we can find something I can whump!” Bob declared.

  “I, surprisingly enough, can’t come up with any better ideas,” Deadbeat whispered.

  “Sometimes simple ideas are better,” Bob said, with a nod of his head.

  “Fine. Bandit, lead the way. Follow the forks with the strongest concentration of Antithesis activity. Even if we don’t find the hive, we’ll likely find a biomass collection pool, or as Bob puts it, something we can whip,” I said.

  “Whump,” Bob corrected.

  I slowly lowered my head into my hands. “Can we please go now?”

  As soon as I asked, Bandit shot to the front of the column, slowly leading the troops forward. It took us a couple of minutes to come to an intersection with a similarly sized tunnel heading south. Bandit didn’t even hesitate, immediately heading that direction without pausing.

  Once we stepped into the new tunnel, the Antithesis made their presence known. They dropped from the roof, launched themselves from various nooks around the tunnel entrance, and came charging from the deeper areas.

  As far as Antithesis attacks went, it was fairly pitiful. A single wave of single digits, backed up by a handful of Twelves, Fifteens, and, surprisingly, a pair of Thirteens.

  I think the shock of seeing the Thirteens did more to slow me down than the entire rest of the attack wave. It caused me to pause for just a moment. Unfortunately for the Antithesis, the bears didn’t care what was being thrown at them. They mulched the attacking plants long before most of them got into range to attack. The only damage we took was a single spine from one of the spiny hairball bolos that the tens fired, embedding itself in he head of one of the moose. I don’t think it even noticed.

  Once we dealt with the ambush, things went quiet again.

  “Okay, what gives? Where’s the slow but steady wave of Antithesis trying to keep us back? Where’s the rampaging pack of Twenty-Threes performing a suicidal charge, or the wall of Twenty-Eights using their bulk, trying to delay us? We haven’t even seen a Twenty-Eight yet,” I hissed. “Even if they emptied the hive to attack us earlier, there should be fresh Antithesis here somewhere.”

  “The attack on Okotoks was orchestrated by a Seventeen, right?” Deadbeat asked. “If so, it would make sense that there’s probably another one running around down here, coordinating the defenses. That would explain why there was a horde sitting there, guarding this tunnel, instead of running blindly at intruders.”

  “Ugh… I fucking hate that idea,” I muttered, knowing she was right. “Having a Seventeen directing everything is like a worst-case scenario. They’ll just make everything completely unpredictable. Ambushes, flanking, only attacking with sufficient reinforcements…”

  I paused as I thought about it.

  “Not that it’s going to actually make a difference, what could they possibly throw at us that has even the slightest chance of stopping us?”

  All three of my squad members turned to look at me. “You do remember what you faced only a couple hours ago, right? A Thirty-Two and a Thirty-Four? They threw a wrench in your plans,” Deadbeat said.

  “But we took care of them, no problem. If they wanted to stop us, they’d need to do a lot better than that,” I replied.

  “Don’t say something like that; you’re tempting fate,” Bandit exclaimed.

  “Please, I make comments like that all the time, and even though I’ve had a few close calls, I’ve never encountered a situation I couldn’t handle. Tempting fate? What’s the worst that could happen?” I declared.

  Bandit took a step back, Deadbeat covered her muzzle with both hands, and Bob shuddered.

  “We’re doomed.”

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