Further in, the tunnel was lighted up by LED lamps and sloped down and to the right. The door behind them slid shut.

Bantay was frowning. ‘It seems that the Hilistani Alliance made a different bargain with Deputy Minister Duso and his faction in the Alogostani leadership.’

Lili sighed. ‘You know that he’s an extreme nationalist. He’s not a criminal per se out for personal profit. He is acting according to his own ideal. The Hilistanis see that just as they see we are motivated by a different cause. So that’s what they’ve offered Duso and his fellows. The Hilistani High Clerics already admitted this in our computer generated meeting.’

After several meters they arrived at two blast doors. Lili placed her palm on a control panel on the wall beside the left door and stared at a sensor above it for a retinal scan. The blast door slid up.

‘If the Hilistanis can lie to Duso, why can’t they lie to us?’ Luto pointed out. ‘They’re probably just using us.’

‘Then it’s like they’re riding a tiger.’

Bantay, Luto, and Ihap looked at Lili in puzzlement, but she just walked on, while Lupad nodded knowingly.

They repeated the same procedure for the next doors. On the ninth fork, they stopped. Three meters above the left door was a small grate.

Bantay leaped up and hit the wall above the grate with his mace. Crack! Rock crumbled into dust, and in place of the grate there appeared a man-sized hole.

The avatars and Lili, with her Tamawo strength, easily jumped into the hole.

‘OK we’re now in the service tunnels to the Presidential bunker. We follow this map Duso uploaded into my tabcom.’ Lili’s tabcom flashed a holographic 3D map above her wrist.

‘I hope Duso’s map is reliable.’ Bantay commented.

‘There’s no reason it would not be. We’re going to the main entrance of the bunker,’ Lili announced. ‘It’s under siege by the Hilistani Alliance Possessed. Bantay will clear obstacles along the way with his mace.’

‘Think we’ll be meeting more Possessed in here?’ Ihap asked. She, Luto, and Lupad produced small shovels from their satchels.

Luto chuckled, waving his shovel like a knife he was about to plunge into a piece of steak. ‘I hope so. After the buffet we had at DATA HQ, I’m all out for dessert.’

Lili shook her head. ‘These tunnels are closed off to the Presidential Palace where the Hilistani Possessed are. All we’re going to meet are humans, and that’s where I’ll be useful, since your programming prohibits you from attacking them. All you need to do is protect me and dig a hole.’

The next several minutes saw the squad navigating a maze of smaller tunnels where they had to stoop and crawl most of the time, their tabcom lights turned on to provide illumination. Lili trailed behind the avatars. Taking precautions against potentially toxic or unoxygenated air, she donned on a face mask and lit up a commando’s oxygen lamp from her satchel. It was a fireproof air-tight translucent contraption in which an oxygen candle burned. A malleable tube from the lamp connected it to her face mask, supplying her with O2. The avatars simply ceased breathing, relying on the dark energy which they had taken from the Possessed they had slain in DATA HQ. In case of emergency, each also had a supply of Bugo coins in their pockets.

‘Thanks to Bantay’s mace,’ Luto said. ‘My knife and your polearm can do the same. Have you forgotten that Ihap?’

‘No, I still have that memory from the Dark War; but I can also now recall that Bantay’s blunt mace can do it a lot faster than our edged weapons.’

‘It’s amazing,’ Lili observed, walking in a crouch behind them.

Lupad shrugged. ‘In the Great Dark War, many combat avatars were also designed to dig tunnels into bedrock. The ability was useful in infiltrating fortresses or busting out of prisons. Their dark-powered weapons, if they choose, can separate the components of hard rock into individual molecules, although that would consume a lot of dark energy. Bantay is merely turning rock into smaller pieces of grit and sand so he won’t run out of fuel, so to speak.’

Lili nodded. ‘No one considered these tunnels navigable given their small size. Whenever servicing was needed, small specialty robots did the job.’

Bantay was smiling as he destroyed another part of the wall. ‘They simply did not consider that Veteran combat avatars can break through them so readily.’

The air soon grew cooler and a discernible breeze swept their faces. ‘We’re close,’ Lili announced.

Following Duso’s map they finally came upon a larger space in the middle of which was a small grate on the floor from which human voices could be heard. They peered down.

‘Only tigers could have gone to where we are now and do what we are about to do,’ Lupad whispered softly.

It was the command and control center of the very high tech Presidential bunker. Ranking military officers, soldiers, Presidential Security Guards and Aides, high government officials, occasional cyborg technicians, and various specialty robots of all sizes and shapes, milled about table computers. Various holographic monitors filled the air. President Tagas was pacing nervously in the center of the chamber near a command chair.

In the tunnel darkness Bantay gazed at Lili. ‘Will President Tagas survive?’

‘Not if we are faithful to our purpose,’ Lili answered.

‘To liberate Alogostan?’ Luto asked.

‘Just the provinces.’

‘Then Tunga City must fall?’ Ihap inquired.

‘So that our peoples shall be free.’ Lili took off her AK from her back and aimed its grenade launcher at the grate.

Bantay smashed the grate open with his mace.

Lili fired a grenade into the Command Room’s central table computer. It exploded, disabling the computerized defense and locks for the Presidential bunker. She fired a second grenade straight at President Tagas, who burst into a thousand fleshy pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC...

http://www.gocomics.com/9chickweedl...

Is this a position from a real game? The setup actually looks realistic, but I can't make out which piece is which...

I am still busy writing language syllabuses. In the following audio-video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw5...

Happy belated birthday anyhow, hon. I'll aim for more accuracy next time, honest.

<The most profound lesson to be learned here, I reckon, is that intentional evil - if and what little of it may exist - will never come anywhere near to causing a small fraction of a percent of the damage that blithe stupidity manages with the greatest ease alla time. Eat your heart out, evil.>

You'll love them. Brooke is one of those select few who know terms like 'l'esprit de l'escalier'. ;)>

I know 'l'esprit de l'escargot'