After only a few more days of marching, and Chuck Horner was finally there. On September 17th, 1994 he finally arrived at Latitude -6.80, Longitude -35.62. Borborema, a town and municipality in the state of Sao Paulo so small and insignificant, you needed a map with a scale of 1 cm to 1 km before it started to be listed on maps. The town was about 15 kilometers from the more important town of Bananeiras, 10 kilometers even as the crow flies. The mine was a few kilometers south of Lake Açude Canafístula II, and used to be an iron mine before demons commandeered it in 1975. Had the demons been humans, they likely would have concentrated en masse around the location to protect it, but as they were not, the army only encountered he usual small bands of demons that it had been used to since the victory at Rio Verde. It was equally impossible that the demons were scared as it was impossible that every living demon that had come from the gate since 1975 was killed already, but perhaps they had concentrated somewhere else. Looking around, Chuck couldn't blame them. There was barely a weed growing anywhere, and he stepped over bare dirt, glad that it hadn't rained in a few days so he wasn't sloshing through mud. The army set up a defensive perimeter while plans were drawn up for the next action. Losses on the journey so far had been heavy. Though seven IBIS walkers and 43 thousand soldiers had started the trip, now finally at Borborema there were 21 thousand soldiers and six IBIS walkers, two of which had suffered moderate damage in the journey. The lion's share of the casualties had come in the climactic battle of Rio Verde, but the rest had been the result of attrition.
A day after arriving at the gate, he learned it was command's decision to first send a battalion into the opening for reconnaissance-in-force, to find out how deep the mine now went and what exactly was underground. Chuck's battalion was selected, and his platoon was on point. So, in the early morning he prepared to go down the mine and see the gate himself. There were large piles of dirt around the underground entrance, and it was obvious that demons had excavated it greatly since first arriving on the scene. The primary entrance would have been large enough to drive a truck in and out of back in 1975, but had been massively excavated to allow Diablo to exit through the mine, and was now large enough to allow two or three IBIS walkers to enter the mine shoulder to shoulder. Chuck wondered why then the planners wouldn't send an IBIS walker in first, but then quickly realized the reasons. First, the IBIS walkers, despite their lack of pilots, were very much not expendable, and were the very lynchpin of the incursion. If one were ambushed within the mine, it would have very little room to maneuver and would likely be overwhelmed and destroyed, jeopardizing the entire operation. Second, a force of 500 soldiers out of more than 20,000 was expendable, so if something happened to them there would be plenty more left to take their place. It was a sobering thought, but Chuck was glad he at least understood the decision and it made sense.
Chuck's platoon was at the mine entrance, preparing for battle. Demons emerged from the Gate to Hell at irregular intervals, such that there was no telling whether they would encounter any fresh demons coming from the gate. They would not be taking their heavy backpacks in with them, and everyone was carrying as much ammunition as feasible, and what tools would be useful underground. Chuck made sure he had his entrenching tool, several flares, and that the flashlight attachment under his gun had fresh batteries. The night vision attachment would be cumbersome and unwieldy at such short ranges as an attack could be expected, and was only really useful for the nighttime skirmishes the army often had with demons in the field. So, he didn't attach it to his gun, and no one else in his platoon did either.
He was about to put his dagger in his sheath when Private Kade noticed.
"You won't have use for your knife," he said. "Demons are pretty much impossible to kill with just a dagger."
Chuck thought for a moment, and then put it in his sheath anyway.
"You're probably right. But if worse comes to worst, I'd like to have something better than my fists and the butt of my gun."
Kade shrugged. "Suit yourself."