The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

  But then she slammed to a halt, feet not more than half a meter from the ground, her rack caught on a knot that shouldn’t have been there, was only there because she’d screwed up packing her gear. Without it, she would have hit the ground, twisted her ankles or broken her legs. She spluttered, her hands finally gripping the metal and squeezing tight, obsessively, as her heart pounded. Water continued pouring over her, soaking her to the core. She’d been giddy on the adrenaline; she’d survived her first brush with death.

  By the time she’d made it back to the surface, everything but her hair was dry. Her manic energy had faded, as had her excitement; she’d been left with a bruised chest where her harness had jerked her to a halt, and exhausted, trembling muscles. She’d limped back to town, to her house in the western reach by the cliffs, and collapsed in her kitchen, close to hypothermic and with the aftereffects of adrenaline still twisting up her insides. Her dad hadn’t been home.

  With nobody else to talk to, she’d stared up at the photo of her mother hanging on the kitchen wall. Your fault, she’d thought, over and over again. Her mother had made her into this. Your fault, she’d thought.

  Your fault.

  Gyre twitched, then swore, eyes shooting open. Her HUD was on full brightness, and her heart was pounding, just like it had back in that waterfall. White noise blared in her ears. Her suit unlocked a second later, and she scrambled to right herself, to get up on her feet.

  But there was no red flashing readout on her HUD, and as she came to full wakefulness, the noise lessened and her screen dimmed to normal levels.

  “Good morning, caver,” said her handler. “Time to get to work.”

  Gyre cursed.

  “Your goal for today,” the woman continued, ignoring Gyre’s invective, “is to reach Camp Two. I’ve adjusted your HUD to show the way. Each trip with your supplies is estimated to take roughly three hours. Return trip will take two. Your schedule allows three days for this segment.”

  It was the most she’d said all together, but Gyre didn’t care. She pressed her hands to her chest, willing her heart to slow down. “Screw you,” she hissed.

  “Walking is the most expeditious way to work off the epinephrine injection, caver.”

  Epinephrine injection— “That’s supposed to be for emergencies only!”

  Her HUD flashed. Text began scrolling across it, quickly, until it stopped on an excerpt that read:

  THE CAVER AGREES TO SURRENDER BODILY AUTONOMY TO THE EXPEDITION TEAM FOR THE DURATION OF THE EXPEDITION PERIOD, IN ORDER TO FACILITATE THE SMOOTH OPERATION OF THE EXPEDITION AND TO PROTECT THE CAVER’S WELL-BEING. AT THE EXPEDITION TEAM’S DISCRETION, THE EXPEDITION TEAM MAY PERFORM THE FOLLOWING, NONEXCLUSIVE TASKS:

  ADMINISTRATION OF CERTAIN HORMONES AND NEUROTRANSMITTERS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ADRENALINE, DOPAMINE, AND MELATONIN.

  ADMINISTRATION OF CERTAIN PHARMACEUTICALS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANTIBIOTICS, OPIOID PAINKILLERS . . .

  And then it scrolled again, until it reached her signature.

  “‘In order to facilitate the smooth operation,’” Gyre repeated through gritted teeth.

  “Caver, please prepare for your first trip to Camp Two.”

  Gyre hesitated a moment longer in opposition, then began securing the first duffel.

  She’d made her decision. She was doing this for the money, for her mother. A power-tripping, asshole handler working without backup didn’t change that.

  It just meant she’d have to stay on her toes and get good at swallowing her anger.

  * * *

  The contract had been more or less standard. No matter how many times she thought up a new biting retort to her once-more taciturn handler, she couldn’t move past that fact. Caving was lucrative, but ultimately a horrible job, and one you could only do for a few years at most before you were too injured to keep going, or you couldn’t take the isolation and the strain anymore, or the cave just straight up killed you. The smart ones cashed out early, with both their paycheck and their health. But there was always the allure of bigger, more lucrative, more dangerous jobs. The temptation was what dragged them all in; it didn’t let them go easily.

  Most cavers were young these days, under twenty-five, a few even younger than she was. They’d all grown up on this colony where every job was wretched, where general life expectancy was low by the standards of other, more “civilized,” well-supported worlds. Backbreaking labor and low pay were the general rule. If you had the skill for it, then why wouldn’t you trade a little bit of bodily autonomy for enough money to feed your family or to start a new life?

  Why wouldn’t you accept a single handler, if you’d already lied to get this far, if the money on offer was so good, you’d only need to do one job?

  Trade-offs. Always trade-offs.

  So instead of voicing all the biting comments bubbling up inside her, Gyre attempted a different approach during her second trip to Camp Two, her muscles burning and her thoughts buzzing in the dark.

  “Base, that still you?”

  Nothing. She ignored it.

  “Because if it is, I hope you get some sleep soon. With what they’re paying me, they can afford some shift relief. I don’t want you falling asleep right when a Tunneler jumps me.”

  She hoped that made the woman smile. Or frown. Honestly, she just hoped it made the woman react.

  She maneuvered herself along a narrow ledge, belly pressed to the cavern wall.

  “But if it is just you, we should get to know each other,” she continued, working the articulated toes of her suit into a better hold and levering herself and her pack along the line she was clipped to. “You got a name?”

  Still nothing. Gyre tamped down the flare of irritation.

  “Moller didn’t tell me much about you when he hired me.” Moller was the expedition owner. She’d met him twice: once at her interview, and once in the hospital where she’d been given a full examination and gone under for surgery, waking up properly rearranged for her suit. He’d been less sleazy than the other expedition owners she’d talked to. Off-worlder, with enough holdings elsewhere that he wasn’t overly invested in the colony. That worked better for her; he didn’t want an indentured servant—he wanted a caver. She couldn’t say the same about most other male owners. She’d counted herself lucky.

  Now, though, she was starting to suspect she’d been played. She’d been lulled by how kind he looked. Good clothing, a soft voice. Salt-and-pepper hair. And yet he’d stuck her with a single handler—why? Why increase the odds of failure so much? Some sort of arcane tax-evasion scheme? Or maybe he got off on watching a woman flail in the darkness, struggling to survive.

  No, that didn’t add up; he’d spent the money on the technology and her paycheck, if not the topside staff. Nobody would pay this much just to watch her die.

  Right?

  “Actually,” she said, her curiosity turning genuine and a little desperate, “he didn’t tell me anything about you. Didn’t mention that I wouldn’t have a whole team. He talked about the high-tech suit but didn’t mention that this wasn’t an existing cave system. Is he always like that?”

  “Often,” the handler replied at last.

  Gyre shuddered, a surge of endorphins cascading through her at the fear and relief triggered by hearing that voice. Her handler was still there. She clipped into the next anchor as she transferred to a new, descending line. Just a few meters down to the next platform.

  “Is he there with you?”

  “No, he’s not,” she said. “He doesn’t stay long.”

  “Is that normal?” Gyre asked as she rappelled down in a few quick, easy bounces. “I got the sense that he wasn’t personally invested, but it’s a lot of money.”

  “It’s not his money.”

  Her handler sounded as if she were standing right next to her, and Gyre thought she sounded amused, like Gyre had just told a half-decent joke. A joke Gyre wasn’t getting.

  “Rich dad?” Gyre hazarded.

 
“Rich employer.”

  Gyre frowned, hefting her supply bag and moving along the rim of an old breakdown while skirting the boulders. “Most expedition owners don’t like working for anybody but themselves, in my experience,” Gyre said, leaving off that her experience was limited to assisting on two expeditions and listening to a lot of shit-talking in bars.

  She looked around. It was another short descent to Camp Two, but there was a nice wide, flat stone nearby, and she set down her duffel and hopped onto it, settling in for a break. “So, who’s he got holding his purse strings?”

  The other side of the line went silent again, and Gyre frowned. She’d felt like she was getting somewhere with the woman, at last—and talking about Moller hadn’t seemed too risky. Gossiping about the boss had always seemed like a constant of the human condition.

  Gyre stretched out on her back as she waited for a response. Her gear bump propped her up, and she bent her legs at the knees before triggering the armor lockup, creating a hard couch for her to rest on. She groaned as her muscles relaxed those first few millimeters.

  Gyre was just considering a short nap when her HUD blinked—activity on the comm line. She took a deep, anticipatory breath.

  “Mr. Moller,” her handler said without preamble, “is my employee. As are you.”

  The breath came out as a confused whine, and she quickly muted her side of the comm as she spluttered and unlocked her armor, sitting up.

  Oh.

  She’d never considered that option.

  “Caver?”

  “Here,” she said after unmuting herself. “And it’s Gyre. Call me Gyre. Miss Boss.”

  “Em is fine,” the woman said, and there was that hint of amusement again. “Now: get up.”

  “I’ve been making decent time—ahead of schedule,” Gyre protested.

  Something on the left side of her HUD began to glow, and Gyre turned her head until it was centered. It wasn’t a goal marker, and it wasn’t directly on the path to Camp Two. Curiosity outweighed her annoyance, and she stood, then reached for the duffel.

  “You can leave that,” Em said.

  Gyre frowned, her hand dropping back to her side. “What’s the marker for?”

  “Something I think you’ll appreciate, based on your file,” she said.

  Gyre imagined the woman sitting at her station. Was she finely dressed? In pajamas? She didn’t sound much older than Gyre herself. Her voice wasn’t scratchy or squeaky; instead, it had a low, smooth richness. It was the kind of voice that would’ve turned Gyre’s head in a bar.

  Off-world accented, too. Educated.

  Gyre hesitated a moment longer, that marker burning on her screen, before giving in. The climbs hadn’t been hard the last two days, but they’d been constant, and she hadn’t explored nearly as much as she’d wanted to. She hopped down from the rock she’d been lying on and made for the glowing marker.

  It led her to one of the cavern walls and faded in intensity as she neared. The image on her screen shifted, its colors adjusting to something closer to what she’d see if she had a proper light.

  On the wall was a small growth of a pale white plant with substantial, translucent stalks. They were topped by what looked like tiny glowing flowers, and she crouched down to get a better look. The never-ending dry season up top meant that most of the local flora were tough, spiky, hard-rinded. Flowers were rare, and rarely attractive.

  This, though—this looked like what she’d seen in pictures and vids from the garden colonies.

  Em had been right. Gyre could feel herself smiling in wonder. This was what had kept her going down farther and farther into those pseudocaves, far beyond avoiding her dad, well before she’d ever thought of leaving Cassandra-V.

  Back then, she’d wanted to see something special. She’d wanted to be strong enough, clever enough, to make it to places others had only ever dreamed of. Somewhere along the line, it had gotten twisted, focused entirely on success and money and getting off-world, but that initial impulse was still alive inside her.

  “What does it grow on?” she asked. “It’s just stone down here.”

  “It’s a fungus. Similar growths are all over this system, especially lower down. There are creatures that live in the water in the cavern and sometimes they wash up and die,” Em replied. “Up here, sometimes insects fly in. And when the rains come, they wash in soil and everything that’s in the soil. This one’s been there for several months, though, so it’ll probably drain its host soon and die.”

  “So it’ll be gone by the time I come back up this way?”

  Em hesitated before saying, “Possibly.”

  Possibly—because she thought Gyre might bail soon, or because she was a perfectionist and hadn’t done the math? Gyre didn’t intend on bailing, so she leaned in closer and reached out to touch it.

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” Em said. “I don’t have data on any interaction between its spores and your suit.”

  “Can I take a picture?” she asked, frozen in place.

  “I’ve taken it already.”

  Her smile fell. Maybe Mr. Moller wasn’t a voyeur, but Em certainly enjoyed controlling her suit from her seat on high. Most expeditions, from what she’d learned from veterans, left their cavers to their own devices except in cases of emergencies—like the adrenaline injection should have been. Even if the contracts allowed it, those weren’t usually used to rouse cavers in the morning when their handlers were ready for them to start moving.

  “Right,” Gyre said, straightening up. “Well, thanks.”

  Em didn’t respond, probably tapping at the feeds of various metrics coming off her suit, or maybe reading a novel. Gyre didn’t care. Whatever connection they had started to make had already been severed. She stalked over to her duffel and hefted it, then headed off for Camp Two.

  Chapter Three

  It took several trips over the course of two days to haul all the required gear to Camp Two. The climb was long, but relatively easy, barely providing a challenge now that she’d gotten used to moving in the suit and managing the duffels. On the third day, at Em’s direction, she didn’t push out from Camp Two. There was no explanation. She simply woke up naturally, with no input from Em, and when she reached for the first gear duffel, Em interrupted her with a curt, “No hauling today.”

  And that was it.

  It was probably just a rest day. She was ahead of schedule, and prolonged expeditions were taxing on the body, even with the support of the suit. A good handler would have taken Gyre’s input on it or explained her logic, but they’d already established Em was far from a good handler.

  It didn’t make the change of routine any easier to take. Her mind rushed through scenarios. And she fixated on one in particular:

  Maybe something was wrong with her suit and Em was working on a fix.

  Her stomach twisted as she inserted her nutritional canister for the morning, and she tried to ignore her imagination telling her the cannula had been jarred. More likely, really, was that a small crack somewhere in her suit was venting heat. Death by infection or by Tunneler—both stirred up a keen edge of fear in her gut.

  She paced, refusing to allow the air surrounding her to warm up.

  But nothing changed. Em’s side of the comm line was still silent, and her readings remained green and stable.

  After the first hour, the fear began to feel hollow and useless. Exhausting. And as crazy as she was, Em would have said if Gyre was in danger. Even she couldn’t be so callous.

  Probably.

  Gyre shoved those thoughts—and the fear—aside and began to explore the space around Camp Two, desperate to keep herself occupied.

  There were towering stalagmites in this section of the cave, and when she adjusted her sound pickup, she could hear the faint dripping of water farther out. Her camp was set atop a large plateau, surrounded on two sides by tumbling breakdown boulders, one by a sheer drop, and the last by an easy slope that led up to Camp One. She pointed herself off the oth
er three sides until her sonar readings built up a better picture of the cave, sinking into the vastness of the chamber, the humbling mass of natural architecture rising up around her.

  Then she called up the marker for Camp Three.

  Nothing came up.

  “Em? Have you loaded in the route to Camp Three?”

  “You’re not going to Camp Three yet,” Em replied. Well, she was there, at least. Not sleeping. Not out having some fancy lunch with an investor.

  Not leaving me here to die.

  Gyre wasn’t sure if she was relieved or annoyed.

  “I’m not sitting on my ass all day,” Gyre said. The constant, unyielding presence of her suit made that physically impossible. If she’d had a bed, a chair, even a vid to pass the time with, it would’ve been a different story. But with nothing but her suit—no comforts, no distractions—there was no way she was just going to sit around patiently until bedtime. “I’m going to go take samples and scans. You are going to try to sell this route to a mining company, right?”

  “Sure.”

  Em sounded distracted, noncommittal. Gyre’s skin prickled in a mix of frustration and unease that was becoming too familiar, like a pinch in a bad pair of boots, rubbing a blister into her flesh.

  If you’re not going to sell it, what the hell am I doing down here?

  She opened her mouth to press Em on the topic, then stopped herself. She was still close enough to the surface that an extraction was possible. If she pushed too hard, if she pissed off Em, then Em could pull the plug. Em might have been a bad handler, but she was also the purse, the director, the dictator.

  But there was no way to fund an expedition like this—even without a full surface crew—without at least intending to survey the mining prospects and sell them to the highest bidder. That was the whole point. That was where the money flowed from. Nobody spent so much capital on exploration for curiosity’s sake. So where was her paycheck going to come from? The thought of this all being for nothing—of coming topside to find the whole mission had gone bankrupt—made her face burn. Just her luck. She’d been a fool to hope, to believe, that this job wasn’t some kind of scam.