Chapter 16

This time, the transporter pad was located beside the mouth of an extensive cave that was the entrance to a diamond mine. Oops, we were attacked the moment we arrived. In this case, it was a mass of little creatures that resembled Norway rats, but were about three times the size of that species of rat back on Earth. Ed launched what he called a “fan of knives” and killed most of the creatures in one cast. However, we did have some fun with our Demon Banes before the episode was over.

Since we had no way to plan for what we might encounter, and Bill was the one with the curative amulet, he led the way. I went second, and Ed worked drag. You talk about guesswork, that was all we had to plan with, so guesses were what we were forced to use. Oh, Man, that place was dark! However we did have enough light coming in the entrance to get us down the cave about 50 feet. That was when we began to notice that the walls were glowing with a blueish light that got strong enough for us to see by after we got around the first bend in the cave and lost the light coming in the entrance to the cave.

Okay, this was enough light to see our enemies, so we figured that it was enough light for fighting. Wow, the surprising thing was that the amount of light seemed to increase as we made our way down the cave and away from the entrance! We had progressed about 400 yards more down the cave and we were suddenly blinded as an artificial light turned on. It must have worked by sensing the presence of our bodies. At least, I could not come up with a better idea than that.

We turned another curve in the cave and there in front of us were about 8-10 goat men who seemed to be waiting for us to show up. They were using clubs that were charged with lightning spells, and Bill was the first one hit simply because he was first in line. The goat man’s club caught him just under his rib cage and knocked him for a loop. He would surely have died were it not for his special amulet.

I did the only thing I could do and jumped over Bill’s prone body. My goal was to give his amulet enough time to repair the damage that had been done to Bill’s vital organs. It was fortunate that the goat man’s club missed Bill’s ribs because it would have taken much longer to repair the bone structure than it did to repair the flesh that was damaged by the club. Had Bill been hit in the rib cage, he would have been out of the fight for 15 minutes at least, but the flesh of the vital organs could be repaired without having to wait on bones to meld together. The result was that Bill was back ready to fight in less than two minutes.

Ed helped him to his feet, and the two of them joined me in the chaos of a fight in the limited space of the cave. Whoever or whatever chose the weapon for the goat men to use had blundered, or else demonstrated abject stupidity! The confines of the cave were just not great enough for either the goat men or us to swing our weapons in the manner most desirable for clubs.

Only the ceiling was high enough to allow for a full swing, and that had to be overhead. There simply was not enough room for the proper sidewise swing that took full advantage of the physics of a fight to the death with clubs. Of course, we had the same kind of problem with our Demon Banes, but the blade on the end of the weapon turned it into an excellent stabbing spear. That was the ideal weapon for the kind of fight we were embroiled in, and that gave us the edge we needed to overcome the numerical advantage held by the goat men.

The goat men were reduced to poking us with the rounded end of the club, and that did jar us and cause some problems even with our protective leather armor, but the sharp point on the end of our Demon Bane had no trouble in passing through the skin of the goat men. Once inside the goat man’s body, the lightning charge from our electrified blade gave us even more advantage. I think the whole fight from start to end did not last as much as 15 minutes, and that was a further help to us because we did not get as tired as we would have with a longer fight.

The problem we had following the fight with the goat men was that we were immediately attacked by more of those oversize Norway rat creatures. We fought them much the same way as we fought the goat men: we stabbed the rats with the blade of the Demon Bane. Our metal sheathed feet and lower legs were a great help in this phase of the fight because the rats were totally unable to bite through the steel plate on the outer surface of our boots.

The rats exhibited the stupidity of sending that kind of fighter at us, because once the rat bit down on a boot, its instinct told it to hang on until its victim could no longer fight. That tactic pretty much immobilized the rat and made it much easier to stab where the wound would be fatal. Even it death, the rats didn’t turn loose the bite. That meant that it was more difficult for the next rat in line to get to us until the first rat had vaporized. The rats did not drop anything that we could count after the battle was over so that it was impossible to know how many rats had attacked us, but we later estimated that it had to be within 40 and 50 of the damned creatures!

At last! We had a short respite after the attack by the giant rats, but we had still not made much of a dent in the number of demons and monsters we estimated were still to be killed. Hopefully, in our next fight, my amulet will be able to help out in killing our enemies. As it was in this fight, especially against the giant rats, there was no way for me to stand so that the amulet could aim at the rats. It was damned sure that I was not going to sit on the floor! Had I done something as foolish as that, there was a good chance that the rats could have overpowered me in less than a minute.

We rested and caught our breath in the few minutes we waited before continuing to move down the cave. By this time, the lights were so bright that they put out as much light as the sun. That was really too much light because it was difficult to keep from looking directly at the bright lights as we constantly scanned for more enemies. That first attack had taught us just how vulnerable we could be. We were in a section of the cave with a lot of twists and turns, so there were plenty of places for ambushers to hide.

Furthermore, there were a number of side tunnels that might lead to more enemies, but we stuck to the lighted path. Our eyes were now adjusted to the bright lights, and we didn’t know how long it would take us to become used to the natural light given off by the cave itself. Surely, the lights showed us the way to go to find the enemy we wanted to fight, and we could not care less what lay off to the side in those secondary tunnels. An expedition into a cave like this certainly called for more than three men to do a thorough job. For practical purposes, we were just a scouting force, and we had already done more fighting than scouts should have to do.

There was no question that we had advertised our presence, and a scout detail of our size should never do that. Oh well, who ever said that this was a standard or routine mission?

Our next move was to continue down the cave. Bill showed a man-load of guts by continuing to lead our little column. Finally, we came to a section of the cave where it widened into a fairly large chamber, and there were several secondary tunnels leading off from this chamber. Two of the tunnels were obviously man-made, and the other three were natural. The string of artificial lights changed at this point. One string led into a natural tunnel and the other string led into a man-made tunnel. Both strings were lit, so we were going to have to choose one of the strings of lights to follow. No way were we going to split our trio; that would have meant that a single man would be going down one of the lit tunnels, and I was certain that even I was not lucky enough to come out again on my own two feet!

I mentally flipped a coin and chose to investigate the tunnel that was man-made. We could hear the sound of men working in this tunnel, so it was one that we should obviously take a look at. This tunnel was wide enough that we could walk in a group until we got close to the area being worked. Though the noises could have been made by human workers, I would have bet that they were really made by demons. The only way that humans could have been working here at this time was if they were somehow cooperating with the demons. Frankly, I couldn’t see the demons not killing any human it came across, so the human wouldn’t even have time to surrender, much less negotiate a worker’s contract.

Therefore, we went down the artificial tunnel toward the sounds of work being done as diamonds were extracted from the walls of the tunnel. From what little I knew about diamonds and how they happened to be made, I could not see that the source of the diamonds could be anything but volcanic lava. That was going to require power equipment to operate drills.

Man, was I in for a surprise. These diamonds were quite small and were hidden in a layer of gravel that had come from a lava flow. Okay, I had the right general idea of where the diamonds came from, but I was caught like an idiot when I saw the way the workers (goat men) were pulling gravel from a layer of rocks that had once been on the planet’s surface. Oh, well, I could laugh at myself and be relieved that I had not revealed any of my ideas to my friends.

We were now a couple of hundred feet below the nominal ground level, so the gravel was pressed down by a heavy load of rocks and dirt over it. Yes, the goat men were using power equipment to break the gravel loose from where it was trapped, and they were enlarging the chamber that they were working in as they did it.

I suddenly had a flash of an idea. Why not let the demons mine as much of the diamonds as they wanted to and then steal the diamonds from them before they could ship the diamonds to wherever they went from here. I figured that would save us a lot of trouble and would drive the demons nuts. I could hardly wait to pass the idea along to Pete.

Okay, I didn’t want to start a fight while the goat men were busy extracting diamonds for us, so I pulled us out of the working area and back to the main chamber. I figured that we should take a similar look at the other work area to see if what they were doing was the same as what we had already seen.