The entrance to the lower limestone quarry cave looked like the mouth of an open grave.
A forty-foot section of the heavy concrete retaining wall had snapped away under the direct hit from the bio-artillery shell. Massive slabs of broken stonework, twisted iron rods, and hundreds of tons of shattered limestone gravel had collapsed inward, fully choking the main access ramp. Thick, greenish-yellow bile from the blew up artillery payload was weeping through the cracks in the ceiling. It hissed aggressively as it dissolved the leftover timber wooden props beams.
From deep within the darkness beneath the rubble, the muffled screams of trapped women, wounded soldiers, and scared orphan cadets echoed up through the fractures.
“The backup supports are buckling!” Cadet Ethan Miller yelled, his hands bloody as he desperately tried to pry a six-ton iron girder off an access hole with a bent crowbar. Beside him, Brutus the slum mastiff was digging wildly at the gravel with his front paws, his razor-sharp belly dressing covered in gray dust, whining in wild distress. “Commander, the ceiling is pancaking! If the central limestone keystone slips another four inches, the whole cave roof will collapse!”
Behind them, three junior officers from the high-born guard post guard arrived on a light transport buggy, their eyes wide with terror as they saw the size of the cave-in.
