An invisible wall of pressure slammed into Veta from the side, lifting her off her feet and hurling her a half dozen meters down the adit. She landed in the mud and slid another few meters on her belly. Her ears ached with speaker pop, her HUD flickered, and her faceplate was covered in orange slime.
	She lay motionless, trying to catch her breath and wondering whether she had been hit by a mauler blast or run over by mine equipment. It dawned on her slowly that she was more surprised than hurt, that her armor was intact and her only pain was from muscles knotting in shock. She checked her hands and found she was still holding her MA5K—combat training was good for something—then rolled to her knees and swiped at the mud caked across her faceplate.
	...
	“It was almost certainly a gelignite packet,” Damon said. “Gelignite is a stable form of blasting gelatin often used in small quantities to clear oversize boulders from stopes or ore passes. It seems reasonable to assume that someone found a blasting magazine and used a packet to improvise a grenade.”
	“That felt a hell of a lot more powerful than a grenade,” Fred said.
	“I am certain it did,” Damon said. “The adit focuses the pressure waves, so any uncontrolled explosion strikes with a force far in excess of normal. Had that blast been as powerful as an artillery shell, the only survivors would be the ones wearing Mjolnir.”