The glass hall over the magma was hotter than hell, the grates even glowing in spots where the tube had cracked.

He looked up through the soot-darkened tube at the catwalk across, racks of rockets lined up on a trolly, obviously abandoned mid-task.

Erb looked back at Dog, “Careful boy,” he said. They walked carefully along, the whole tunnel creaking as Dog followed him. Things were going pretty good till they were about three quarters of the way though when Dog took a step on a cracked grate by mistake. It even cracked more, sending a jet of hot air right at Erb.

He rolled back from it, his suit catching fire instantly, falling back into the window which cracked to. The whole tube rocked as pressure seemed to shift and Dog suddenly sprang into action grabbing Erb and spraying him down in a flame retardant.

He shouted, “Go!”

But Dog needed no command, and bolted grabbing Erb by his pack and carried them both down the hall in a few leaps as the whole thing collapsed behind them.

Thankfully his halo gear filtered the air for him or he’d have been a corpse when they cleared the bridge, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen halides, the levels skyrocketed, and his gear shot into the red.

“Crap, let’s go,” they ran hard, staying ahead of the smoke as best they could till they came too a door they could seal.

He slammed his crowbar into the special lever slot and twisted it, with a snap the door slammed shut.

“Crap, all that gears good as gone now,” he punched the door, wishing he had taken more.

Dog gave a little thumbs up though and turned to him, his holodisplay showing a second route from outside the complex, then another, and another.

“Well, okay, maybe not a total crapshot. Guess I’m just suprised. You’d think with that many routes in one would have been found and looted a long time ago?”

Dogs spare arms gave a little shrug gesture. “Well, how’re we doing. Did we miss the mark?” The map came up again, this time a little stick figure him and a little dog icon showing that they had gone past the door they needed.

“What’s this tunnel than?”

A glowing circle with a yellow glow appeared, and the letters, EXIT, appeared above it.

“Wait, than, this is the way out?”

Again the map showed multiple exits.

“But this, this one, this is a way out?”

Dog barked.

“Well, alrighty than,” Erb said, the air seemed clear, and it seemed bright up ahead.

“What is this?”

The display showed, Hanger Bay.

“Well, okay, that means flights units in the lockups there.”

So without another option he climbed the steps up to the hanger and found the heavy glass doored airlock cracked open a little.

There was a tool lodged in the door that had been used to pry it open, or maybe to prop it open. But it was hard to tell, it looked like a body had fallen here, but when Dog, and Erb pried the doors open there appeared to be indications that someone on this side had been trying to get in.

“In or out, make up your mind. What were these people, cats?”

Erb again chuckled at his own joke, laughing as he walked along the wall towards the massive cave entrance that split the far end of the hangar. Fresh air blew in, cold and crisp it felt good, the system on his suit already returning to yellow as it regenerated his reserves.

But, Erb was so engrossed in seeing the outside world, he didn’t pay attention to Dog, whose motion sensors were going crazy, sensors detecting something large moving in the dark depths at the back of the cave.