>>5255893The veteran handgunners in Alberico's regiment had taken to the training particularly well due to their prior experience skirmishing and harrying organized enemy forces. At your recommendation, the group had been split: the older men had been allocated to the line infantry to serve as squad leaders, while the younger soldiers were formed into two scout squads that were already aiding your budding surveillance operation. Equipped with camo-cloaks, las-carbines, and light environment armor, they had successfully infiltrated the edge of the settlement yesterday night, burying a network of nail-sized plastic explosives into the loosely-packed dirt. When you had detonated the explosives next morning - timed perfectly with ringing of the morning bell - the LIDAR array beneath one of your recon drones was perfectly positioned to measure the intersecting shock waves. The resulting data stream built a volumetric map of the underground heat source (see picrel).
You spend a few minute mulling over this image. When you had showed Alberico and Liscia the thermal trace a few days ago, you were strongly considering the possibility that you were observing an Aeldari structure - such as a hidden outpost or a buried equipment cache. It was one reason why the two of them were drilling so aggressively. For Alberico, the prospect of another battle was an opportunity to avenge his men and restore confidence in his company. For Liscia, her motive was more politically oriented - perhaps relating to her family's bargaining position in the kingdom's capitol. That said, the relationship between her and the mercenary company had warmed notably since their first battle. More than one soldier dropped by her mech between rounds to pin a wax-sealed oath onto its hull- a sign of shared goals, at least according to the good captain.
Now, however, you were unsure what you were looking at. Volumetric imaging had revealed none of the alien alloys and resonant warp-materials characteristic of Aeldari construction. Instead, the heat signature was localized to a long, unevenly shaped cavern reinforced with rock and low-density organic materials. This cavern itself was linked to nearly a dozen passages scattered around the town, with entrances ranging from half of meter to tens of meters in diameter. While there were a few sections showing strong metallic returns - likely weapons deposits or local "mechs" - they were too distant to be responsible for producing the heat signature itself.
