What Do You Mean I'm The Captain Of A Yandere Mercenary Company?

Chapter 1036: Down Into The Tunnels Again

I stood in front of the tunnel entrance with my girls, all of us staring at the dark hole in front of us.

Well... Umm... More like I was standing alone because my girls were a distance behind me since the dogs were all gathered directly in front of me.

While the entrance of the tunnel was huge, I could see that a few feet past the entrance, mounds of earth had been piled against the tunnel walls to shrink the opening until it was only big enough for a person to walk through.

If you were wearing Power Armour, you would have to most likely crawl to get through it and that might still be too small for you to pass through.

Thankfully, Ries and I managed to squeeze ourselves through in our Power Armour while the rest of our group walked through the gap rather easily. The dogs, of course, having no problems moving through the gap as well.

Following behind my girls were several other soldiers with supply and worker drones that would be setting up the outpost at the first intersection.

The shrunken part of the tunnel continued for a good few dozen meters before it expanded out to a large tunnel again, which was more of what I expected to see for a nest this size.

The main tunnel was already big enough that I think even our Exo-Knights might have been able to fit in here if they were to crouch down and duck their heads. Which explained why the bugs only bothered to block off the entrance since the amount of earth they would need to move to completely cover the tunnels would have been immense.

But actually... Considering how many bugs should have been in this nest, they could have just kept digging to cover more of the tunnels so it was also kind of surprising that they did not choose to do so.

I let the dogs gather in front of me, the tunnel big enough that they were able to arrange themselves into roughly rows of twenty dogs per row scattered in front to cover the entire width of the tunnel.

The others followed behind me while I scanned the area to look for bugs, finding it odd that there wasn’t an entire horde of them just waiting here to ambush us the moment we stepped through.

Freyja sniffed the air and tensed up as though she had smelt something.

That reaction seemed to be shared amongst the dogs as well with most of them lifting up their heads to start sniffing around the place.

I recognised that as a warning and shouted behind me, "Watch out! We might have bugs coming!"

No sooner did I shout out that warning, Freyja looked up and let out a bark at the ceiling in front of us.

As though realising that their ambush had failed, several parts of the ceiling fell away to allow bugs to start crawling out of hidden crevices, just like what we saw happen in another nest.

Not only that, they even popped out of the ground as well and started rushing towards us, our flashlights illuminating them as a giant horde of shadows skittering in the darkness.

Tsk... So they already expected us to send in a squad of people through the gap and then they would just ambush them from above and below to wipe them out while their guards were down.

Unfortunately for these bugs... We came prepared to kill a horde.

"Aim for the ones on the ceiling! Dogs, take care of the ones on the ground!" I shouted.

Everyone obeyed as I started firing my guns at the ceiling, mowing down the bugs that were still trying to crawl out of those crevices.

The dogs also let out a bark before they charged and I was worried for them at first but they showed me there was nothing to worry about by tearing into the bugs like they were made of paper.

Some of the bugs thought they had the bright idea of jumping on the dogs from above but we did not allow that to happen as our bullets shredded through them as they felt, blasting even their corpses away from the dogs to crash somewhere amongst the rest of the bugs.

The small horde was quickly thinned out and the last bug had its head bitten off by one of the dogs which she then spit out before kicking its corpse away with its paw.

We waited for a moment to see if another wave of the bugs would appear but all was silent in the tunnels.

"Form up... Advance carefully," I ordered, prompting the dogs to return to their formation before we begin our descent again.

We stepped through the pile of dead bugs and I noted that none of them were humanoid shaped so either those were still rare even in this nest... Or they were just sending out the cannon fodder to test us first.

With how things were going, I would say the latter was more likely.

The dogs continued to lead the way, sniffing the ground and the air as they moved along as though they were now aware that there could be bugs hidden in the ceiling and floor and were now being more cautious about it.

Fortunately, it seemed like they did not prepare another trap as we managed to reach the location of the intersection where the tunnels split off into three different paths without meeting any other bugs.

Here, I could see blood and bodies of both people and bugs scattered around as well as broken pieces of machinery and walls that were either torn apart or ripped out from the ground.

No doubt this was the first team that had attempted to set up the outpost here before they were overrun with the bugs and the survivors were forced to retreat.

We moved to watch over the other three paths that led away from the entrance tunnel while the soldiers and workers started their work in setting up an outpost.

None of them even showed any hesitation at the sight and they split off into two groups with one group focusing on tearing down the broken fortifications and machines while also moving the corpses aside. The other group focused on placing new fortifications up and setting up the defenses quickly.

I got to watch them quickly set up deployable covers before placing down automated turrets which they set up to point towards the three tunnels and then loading them up with ammunition and powering them up.

They also brought in high powered flood lights that illuminated the entire tunnel, shining down into the depths brightly enough that it almost felt like it was daytime here.

I then felt a rumbling coming from beneath our feet and I thought we were going to be attacked by more bugs until I realised that there were drilling sounds coming from the tunnel that we had descended from.

They must have also received the signal from this group of soldiers that we managed to set up the outpost here and they could begin drilling the tunnel to excavate the dirt the bugs used to block it off.

We stayed for a while more to watch over the soldiers complete their set up and I was honestly quite impressed by what they managed to do.

In just ten to fifteen minutes, the outer walls were already complete with a few turrets coming online to train their sights down the tunnel.

They were not done of course, since the cover was comparable to cardboard against the bugs and they would need to fortify the place even further. But the fact that they were able to set this up so quickly... If they were up against normal humans, this would already be a big threat to a fighting force attempting to pass through here on foot.

We continued our lookout as the engineers started building upwards and the wall got higher and thicker as they layered some kind of building material which came out as a liquid that they sprayed on the metal covers that solidified themselves on the walls after a while.

They even brought in giant gates which they installed between the spaces, which would allow the war machines to pass through but they would shut themselves if the bugs tried to attack this place.

They even mounted towers on top and even more turrets were placed on them, covering every angle.

Not satisfied with just the walls, they even covered the ceiling and the ground as well, which I realised was necessary since the bugs might burrow their way above or below the camp and the plating they used would prevent the bugs from surprising them within the camp.

Another group then came down from the entrance tunnel carrying more supplies and materials to reinforce this outpost and even bigger guns were mounted on the turrets with a few of them looking like flamethrowers.

I want one too...

Oh well, I do have a living flamethrower called Amber at least~

Finally, after about an hour, one of the soldiers came up to me.

"Captain Tera? We’re just about done here. The General told me to tell you you can head to the next objective."

Right. Rescuing the stranded groups. Let’s go.