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"I'm watching the overhead, Talon. If anything shifts, I'll yell." It more or less went without saying that subsequent to the yell, it would be a good idea to move. Fast. "Shouldn't have to move too much, I doubt we'll be able to get our Zoids inside anyway." As he spoke, he touched his display panels, programming the message he had mentioned previously. "I've got the message set up, and set on a two-hour delay. After that, the message will transmit. Might want to make sure you've got some gear with you before we go in, there should be a survival kit in the leg panels of Tyrant that contains some useful stuff.

As he spoke he was slapping his own pockets, making sure that the stuff he carried was where it usually was. "Unfortunately I don't have much on me, but I've got enough basics to pull off a simple exploration mission though."

Watching Talon shift the rocks, Kelly saw nothing that would cause him to doubt the stability of the overlying wall, a fact that made him feel a lot better about exploring inside said rock face. "Well, you know what they say about living and learning. If we find anything that we are not really set up to handle, we can always leave it and come back later with proper gear." He triggered the standby on Black Knight, cycling the canopy open. He spent a moment inside the cockpit shoving things into pockets on his flight suit, then pulled a set of web gear from behind the seat and slug it around his shoulders. From the rifle case he took his magazines and cleaning kit, sliding them into the provided pockets on the MOLLE harness, then pulled out the rifle and slid the last magzine into the empty mag well. He racked the slide with the familiar *Chick-CHACK* metallic ring of the shell being loaded into the chamber, then slung the weapon over his shoulder.

He jumped down from the cockpit to the ground, using Black Knight's forearm as a fire pole to control his descent, and walked to one of the legs. He pulled open the cargo panel there and removed a number of items, either sliding them into his pockets or clipping them to the web gear, none the least of which were several green-plastic-wrapped bricks, and a good-sized spool of thick, rubbery-looking cable. "Well, I think I've got everything I'll need for this one... as much as I can, anyway. Time to poke our heads in and see if anyone's home!" He grinned as he walked over to where Talon was, pulling a headlamp on over his helmet.

"Hmm, looks like we were indeed beaten here, but they couldn't take those." He gestured to the relief carvings that adorned the walls. "I would wager that the historians will find them most interesting." He looked around, sweeping the head-lamp beam around the room, and mentally cursing himself for the lapse of preparedness that had left him without even a single pair of low-light goggles. A careful inspection of the ceiling revealed no obvious fissures or significant cracking, making him feel much more secure about their position.

"Honestly, I'm surprised that those carvings have held up to the repeated flooding this place has undergone so well, they don't hardly look degraded at all. This place can't have been exposed that long... I wonder if the rock slide we cleared was deliberate?" He thought out loud as he walked the perimeter of the room "In any case, it appears that the treasures in this area are the kind for archiologists. Personally, I'm more interested in ones that have more immediate value. Shall we continue?"

He gestured forward to the unblocked way ahead, turning his head lamp beam to shine down the opening.

A chuckle was his response to Talon's commentary on historians, a somewhat ironic acknowledgment of humor-couched truth. "If you've got a camera with you, it might be a good idea to get some photos in here, if for no other reason than to draw interest from our CO. Not sure exactly how he looks on side-explorations, but this at least looks like something they'd want to detail a scientific team to."

Kelly moved carefully in the open passage, watching the ceiling frequently, and placing his feet with great caution. His low-light goggles were fairly effective in here, but as they traveled farther from the entrance, they became less so. Talon's LED light helped that quite a bit, the small amount of ambient light it threw off was enough to light the cavern like day to Kelly's amplified vision, as long as he didn't look too close to the light's spot itself and dazzle the AN/PVS-10s intensifier tube. "Let's take it another couple hundred meters, and if we don't spot anything, call it a dry hole and head back. I don't want to get too far away from our Zoids if we can help it, and we're probably out of contact this far into the ruins." His eyes scanned the floor as he spoke, searching for the telltale rise of a pressure plate or line of a tripwire. Old habits die hard. "Looks like you've more or less got it pegged, interesting for the historians, and that's about it. Oh well, can't expect to strike gold the first time out."

"You'd be amazed how much crap you can shove into a good set of pockets. Heck, a set of cargo pants can carry almost a dozen frags if you're creative." He reached up and flipped the latches on his NVGs off, going pretty much instantly blind as he removed the goggles and handed them to Talon. "Don't drop 'em, but try sticking the lens up against the optic here and taking a shot. It's not going to be great quality, but should let you get at least halfway decent shots."

He blinked his eyes, trying to adjust them to the near total darkness, broken only by the light green glow shining from the inside of the goggles, and Talon's flashlight. He normally didn't like using any kind of flash light or projection device if he could avoid it, you were essentially presenting yourself as a beacon target if you did, but he briefly regretted not bringing a tactical light for his weapon. "Next time we go out exploring like this, we need to remember some decent exploration gear. We really don't have any safety stuff for this, if there was a cave-in, we'd be totally hosed."

So saying, he turned back toward the entrance, hunting for that vague glow that would indicate open sky at a distance. "Next question, do we seal this place up behind us again and wait for the historians to open it, or leave it alone?"

"Huh... weird, I thought I didn't either..." Kelly rubbed his head. "Where the heck did I HAVE those things? Don't remember stowing them on my web gear. Oh well, I suppose "Don't look a gift optic in the battery case" or something like that would apply here?" He shrugged, and snagged the goggles back from Talon as he headed for the door, snapping them back over his face with a silent sigh of relief. He didn't LIKE not being able to see what was around him, even when there were no present threats.

"I hear 'ya about the shower, Talon. That's one thing that I never really did get used to. Well, I got used to it, but it was always annoying. Seems like you can never get CLEAN in the field." He followed the younger guy toward the exit, eyeballing the ceiling toward the entrance to the cave. "It looks fairly solid back ten or so feet, this should be easy enough. Trick is NOT to bring the whole ceiling down on the place."

He flipped the goggles up and turned them off as he came close to the daylight, blinking his eyes a few times to adjust them to the sudden change in illumination. "This should only take a few minutes. You ever rigged charges before, Talon?"