by Aileen Erin
I stared at the keypad next to the door for a while. No one had told me that I could go into the previously restricted areas—there hadn’t been any alerts or updates on my wrist unit—but that didn’t mean I needed to knock. Not that it necessarily meant anything bad if I couldn’t open the door, but it felt like the beginning to my way out if it opened.
I blew out a heavy breath. It was just a freaking door, and I wouldn’t know if I could open it unless I tried.
I pressed my hand against the black pad and got a sharp buzz of energy. A second later, there was a beep. I jumped back and dropped my hand before I realized that the beep was the door unlocking. I tried the knob, and it turned.
Here goes everything…
I stepped into the room and was a little confused. There were rows of desks in a semicircle. The front of the room was a blank vidscreen. It was a classroom?
Carl sat in a chair at the front of it, snoring away. Aside from him, the room was empty.
I walked down the stairs, not worrying about being too loud. I made my footfalls a little heavier than usual, hoping that would wake him up for me. But as I made my way to stand in front of his chair, he just kept on snoring.
Oh man. If I woke Carl up, he could get pissed. To do anything to piss off the man who held my fate in his hands was idiotic. He’d accepted my transfer when no one else would. He figured out I was Aunare, yet hadn’t turned me in. And if I was going to survive my mining runs, then it’d be because of his knowledge. Pissing him off—
Another loud snore ripped through the room, and I knew I was going to have to do something more to wake him up. I needed whatever training he could give me too badly to waste time.
“Carl?” I whispered.
Nothing.
“Carl?” I said a little louder.
Nothing.
“Carl!” I expected him to jump at my yell, but he just sat there. Another snore ripped through the room.
Clearly, noise wasn’t going to wake him up. I reached out and touched his shoulder. As soon as my fingertips made contact, he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward him as he punched.
I ducked, narrowly missing a fist to my face. “Carl! It’s Maité Martinez. It’s oh-six-hundred,” I said as I broke his grip.
He jumped out of his chair, knocking it to the floor with a bang. He was still coming at me, but his eyes weren’t seeing me. They didn’t look focused.
“Hey! Wake up!” I yelled as I continued to block his hits. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I wasn’t about to let him hurt me either.
After a few seconds, his movements slowed, and then stopped altogether. I kept up my guard as I watched him hunch over, catching his breath. It took him a moment, but eventually he stood upright and nodded at me.
“Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to fall asleep.” He rubbed his fists roughly into his eyes as if he could wipe away whatever he was seeing. “PTSD can be a real bitch.”
I’d heard about it but had never seen it in action. I wondered what had happened to make him wake up like that, but it wasn’t any of my business. “Not a problem.” He rubbed his forehead as he stared at the ground, and I felt like I should change the subject.
I spread my arms wide. “So, what is this?”
He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the room as if reminding himself where he was and what he was supposed to be doing.
“We’re in one of the officers’ meeting rooms,” he said after a minute. “I like to prepare people as much as possible, and the screen helps.” He motioned to one of the desks. “Sit. Then we can go over what you need to know to survive mining on Abaddon’s moon, Apollyon.”
I moved around the desk and sat down, more curious than anything. This was going to be the first time I flew a ship anywhere, and even if it was dangerous, I was excited to learn something new.
“Do you know the history of the lucole mine?”
I shook my head. “No. Not really.”
He tapped a few fingers in a sequence in the air, and the vidscreen behind him came to life. “This is the mine.” He jerked his thumb toward the giant hole in the surface of the moon.
“Huh.” It wasn’t at all what I expected.
“What?”
“I pictured a cave.” But it wasn’t a cave. It looked like terraces cut into the surface of the moon. The hole spiraled, each terrace a little smaller circle than the one above it until it got to some watery looking stuff at the bottom.
“Lotta different types of mining out there. This is open-pit. Each ring that spirals down strips off another layer of lucole. The pit widens until the top ring has no more lucole, then we expand the bottom ones until it’s all cleared out. Only a few spots on Apollyon have the crystal, and we’ve got five fully excavated mines. This is the sixth. We’re currently looking to see if there are any more spots ready for mining.”
And if there weren’t? SpaceTech had a massive stockpile, but if the crystal on the moon was finite, then what were they going to do when it ran out?
No wonder they wanted the Aunare’s tech so badly. They needed something more sustainable, especially if they ended up burning through a lot of lucole in war.
Focus. I had to focus. That wasn’t my problem. At least not right now. “How wide is the mine?” There wasn’t anything I could see from the image to help me understand the scale of the mine. It could be five meters wide or five hundred, and I wouldn’t know.
“About three hundred seventy kilometers.”
“Kilometers.” That was massive. “How big are the others?”
“They average nearly seven hundred kilometers and about that deep all told.”
“Shit.” Mining out seven hundred kilometers of crystals seemed like a lot, maybe even more than what the bays could hold. “I’ve been working in Bay One, and it’s at capacity. When I got here, most of the other bays were at capacity, too. It seems like SpaceTech should have enough lucole by now. Does SpaceTech even really need to be mining anymore?”
“What’s enough?” He shrugged. “There’s plenty, but SpaceTech plans to mine this moon until they’ve got every last crumb of lucole. We store most of it here on the base because they can’t use up all this. Not in a couple centuries, even accounting for growth.” He paused and stared off at nothing. For a second, I thought he was waiting for any questions from me, but he just kept staring.
A second later, he swiped a finger through the air and kept right on going like nothing had happened.
“Twenty years ago, bots did this job, but it was too costly to keep replacing those that got blown up. So SpaceTech found volunteers.”
“Wait. I thought that it took something special from me—or any human—to get the lucole.”
“Eh. It’s all iffy ethics. A bot can do this, but humans are cheaper.” He shrugged that off like it was nothing.
“Iffy ethics is right.” I couldn’t keep the disgust from my voice. “But maybe I’m bitter because I’ve already been risking my life doing a job a bot could do.”
“SpaceTech at its finest.” He looked back at the image of the mine behind him. “But mining the lucole correctly is tricky. Humans have a much better success rate, probably because they value their lives more than a bot controlled by SpaceTech’s greed does.” He swiped his finger, and the image was now a close-up of the mine. Crystal shards stuck out from the rings carved into the ground.
“Bots ensured no loss of human life, but two billion dollars per robot cut heavily into the bottom line. Especially when they started blowing up faster than they could be replaced. SpaceTech figured if they offered up a high salary, enough desperate people would show up. They were right. The trick is not to get blown up.”
“So how do I train for that?”
He tapped his finger, and the image of the mine shifted to a video. It was a compilation of people mining. The miner would tap the crystal with a hammer. Sometimes it was once, and sometimes it was three times. Then he’d either move on or flip the hammer around to use the tiny pickaxe o
n the other end. They’d carefully tap around the base of the crystal with the axe, while holding onto the crystal with their other hand, chipping until the crystal came free.
It seemed pretty straightforward. I didn’t get why a bot had so much trouble doing this.
“The first tap will tell you a lot.” He paused the video, rewinding for a second before it started again. “See here.” The person tapped once with the hammer side of the tool. “Each bit of rock emits a special frequency—a tone. Tapping the crystal—firmly, yet gently—emits it. Only those with the correct frequency will work for SpaceTech’s purposes. The rest? They’re unstable.” He walked to the side of the room and grabbed a box.
Maybe the test wasn’t so random after all. “This is why the test had questions about tones?”
He started walking back to me. “Exactly. I added that. Tone-deaf people can’t do this job. Too damned dangerous for them to even try.” Something rattled inside the box as he set it on the table in front of me.
I wasn’t tone deaf, and being Aunare meant that I knew all different kinds of frequencies, so I should be okay, but… “How will I know which crystals have the right tone?”
“The crystals have four specific classifications of tones: neutral, first ring, second ring, and explosive. You have two taps to decide if it’s harvestable or not. If it’s harvestable, a third tap will make it neutral again. If not, the third tap will make it explode.”
That was definitely something I wanted to avoid. “Is that why the miner in the video sometimes only hit it once?”
“Yes. Good observation. Harvestable crystals go through three safe stages: the first ring has a loud, medium-toned hum that makes it active. The second ring has a softer, medium-toned hum, which makes it less active. Then it goes back to neutral with the third tap, which sounds like hitting a normal rock. Nothing special.”
That sounded easy enough to get. “What about the unharvestable ones?”
“They go through two safe stages, but they’re never neutral. Their pitch can also vary. They either start out a soft, very high-pitched hum, then get louder and higher-pitched with each tap until they explode. Or they start out at a soft, very low-pitched hum, then get louder and lower-pitched until they explode. The important thing to remember is that with an unharvestable crystal, it starts out as neutral before it’s ever touched, but one tap activates it. The second tap makes it even more active—which is the opposite of a harvestable crystal. So, if you hit a crystal and it gets louder the second time, then the third tap will make it explode.”
“How can I be sure if a crystal is harvestable or not?”
He tapped the box. “Going to show you here once you’re done with the questions.”
I ran my hands down my face as I tried to think. I definitely had more questions. I needed to find out everything I could before mining. “Do you have to make it neutral to harvest it? Can you just hit it the one time and then take it?”
“No. If you don’t hit it three times, then it won’t come free from the surrounding bedrock.”
I suddenly got why he added all those music questions to the test. If a miner wasn’t paying close attention to the pitch or tone of the crystal, then they might easily mistake it as harvestable and blow themselves up. Add in a bit of desperation and nerves, and it was easy to see why so many miners didn’t make it.
“Anything else?” Carl asked.
I wasn’t sure what questions I had. It all seemed confusing to me, but maybe I’d understand once I started doing it. “What should I know that you haven’t told me yet?”
“Ah. No one’s ever asked me that.” He scratched his cheek as he thought. “Okay. Here’s something. Be careful how many unharvestable crystals you tap twice.”
“Why?”
“You can hit a bad crystal two times, but I advise against it. You really need to know with that first hit. But, if you hit it a second time and it gets louder, walk away. That’s fine. You made a mistake. But you don’t want to do that too many times in the same area.”
“Why not?” I wished I had something to take notes on, but instead, I rubbed my temples, hoping that all the information would somehow stick.
“Because if you make a mistake and one crystal blows up, but the surrounding unharvestable crystals have only been hit one time, you might not die. Only that single crystal you hit three times will explode. You might lose a limb or get a few bruises or a concussion, but you’d have a chance at surviving the blast.” He pressed his hands down on the table in front of me. “But if one crystal blows up and you’ve left a bunch of them very active—meaning two taps—it’ll set off a powerful chain reaction. I’ve seen a guy leave four crystals double-tapped and when he third-tapped one…” Carl shook his head and looked back at the vidscreen. “They didn’t bother to dig his body out of the avalanche.”
I sucked in a quick breath.
“So, unless you know without a doubt that it’s harvestable, don’t you dare hit any crystal a second time.”
“Okay. I won’t.” I had one hit to know if a crystal was harvestable or not. That was a lot of pressure.
“Once an unharvestable crystal is activated, it’ll take about a day for it to go back to normal from one tap. It’ll stay very active for a few days when it’s hit twice. No one’s been out there in weeks. So everything in that mine is—as of this moment—neutral.”
“That’s good to know.” At least I was starting with a clean slate out there.
“Good. A while back I started giving miners special markers to note which crystals are unharvestable crystals. Put the number one on any that you hit once. The number two on any that you hit twice. If you have twos, you keep them well spaced apart. Just in case. And you can use the marks from previous miners as a bit of a guide. Sometimes the crystals become harvestable later, so it’s always good to check, but if you think it might be a volatile crystal and it already has a mark on it, don’t hit it again.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Any more questions?”
My mind was trying to keep up with all the information that he’d given me. “I’m sure I will later, but I think I’m just trying to process what you’re telling me. I really need to grasp this before I go out there.”
“Of course.” He patted the top of the box. “I have a bunch of harvested neutral crystals here that you can tap all day if you want. Every crystal sounds a little different, but you’ll get a feel for them. After that, we’ll do some simulations of unharvestable ones. You’ll get a feel for those tones, too. Then we’ll do simulations with a mix of crystal types so that you get used to making a choice. We won’t leave here today until you’ve got it. Your first run’s tomorrow.”
All the air whooshed out of me with his last statement. “Tomorrow?” That seemed too soon. “I thought I’d have more training.”
“Usually, it’s a couple days of training, then a readiness assessment, and then once you pass that, it’d be time for a first run. But the order is for you to get an accelerated version. It’s bullshit, but most of SpaceTech is.” He gave me a hard look. “Especially when it comes to you.”
Right. I wasn’t their average volunteer. I gave myself a second to come to terms with that and then soldiered on. “Okay. Tell me everything I need to know.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
After a couple hours of Carl and his theories on how to stay alive, my brain was filled to the brim and then some. He was starting to give me a theory about how he thought the crystals might actually be living beings—which was making me question his sanity—when someone knocked on the door.
Carl turned toward the sound. “Come in.”
Ahiga entered. “I need to speak with Ms. Martinez.”
Carl waved him forward. “Go ahead.”
“Alone.”
Carl swiped a finger through the air, most likely checking the time. “I guess it’s time for a break anyhow. I have some other work to prepare for tomorrow. Meet me back here at thirteen hundred.”<
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I nodded. “I’ll be here.”
As soon as the door closed behind Carl, I turned to Ahiga as he walked down the stairs to the front of the room.
He always looked serious, but right then the stiffness in his shoulders made me think something awful was about to happen. “What’s going on? Did you hear something?”
“Not yet, but I have someone that wants to talk to you.” He made a few motions with his finger, and the screen that had been displaying some frequency charts went black.
I had a second to wonder who it could be before Declan appeared on the screen.
“Maité?” Declan asked.
I leaned back in my chair as I blinked, trying to believe that it was him. He was really there on the screen. I—I couldn’t believe it.
“Hi.” It was lame, but I didn’t have any words. Seeing his face meant that maybe I was going to be okay. Like, really okay. “Is this line secure?”
“Yes,” Ahiga said as he walked down the row toward me. “This room is for IAF meetings, and therefore not monitored. We’ve found that people don’t speak up when they know everything is being recorded and could be used against them.”
Declan leaned closer to the camera, making his face take up the whole screen. “Why in the hell are you on mining runs?” He didn’t raise his voice, but he might as well have. He was really pissed.
“Declan—” Ahiga started, but I shut him up with a glance.
“You haven’t told him?” I asked Ahiga.
“No, and from this reaction, I don’t think he’s caught up on any of my messages either.” Ahiga leaned against the desk behind me. His matter-of-fact tone told me that he was waiting for me to drop the bomb on Declan. “He woke up, called me, and asked for you first thing. Barely even said hello to me.”
I closed my eyes, trying to calm down, but no. Declan didn’t get to be pissed about me switching to mining runs. Not after everything I’d been through.
I turned back to the vidscreen. “You told me to survive. This is me surviving.”
“Mining is dangerous, and—”