by J. N. Chaney
“I’m guessing that, from the sounds of what you said earlier, you showed him one of the artifacts you found?” I asked.
Monty nodded. “I just wanted my mother’s freedom. I wanted to be able to take care of her… to make her well again.”
“But he didn’t let that happen, did he.”
“Nope. He kept the one I showed him, and then said I needed to find more for that to happen.”
“And you didn’t tell him about the rest?” Rachel asked.
“If he was really going to let me and my mother go, that one artifact would have bought our way out. No one has ever found something that important down here. That’s when I knew it was bunk.”
“Bunk?” I asked.
“Yeah. You know… bunk. Scratch? A scam?”
“Scam, got it.”
“Anyway, I decided to keep the presence of the other artifacts to myself. Figured maybe they did something special, or… I don’t know. I just didn’t want to give up the only leverage I’ve ever had down here. So I led the overseers down a wrong tunnel and told them I’d found it at the end. They’ve had miners digging that direction ever since.”
“You really are a smart kid,” I said.
“Thanks, Mr. Flint. But right now, I don’t want to be smart. I just want to get my mother better.”
“I hear you, kid. I hear you.”
I couldn’t imagine how much this kid had seen in his short life. But I’d met kids like him before, back in the parts of Sellion City that didn’t make the holo brochures. They’d been forced to grow up too fast too. And I hated it, because the majority of them ended up being perps that I had to lock away. Sure, they made stupid decisions and got caught for it. But I wasn’t willing to put all the blame on them. Again, like gravity, life could be a bitch, and sometimes you just got dealt a bad hand. But how you played that hand made all the difference in the world for your future. And this kid—this one right here—he had a future. I believed that with all my heart. If only you can keep him alive, Flint.
“Why are you willing to help us like this, Monty?” I finally asked. “I mean, you only met us half an hour ago. You sure we’re not spies working for Ozzie just trying to lure would-be revolters out into the open to trap you?”
He shook his head. “Nah. For one thing, you’re too nice to be lying.”
“That’s a first,” I said.
“Eh, not you so much, Mr. Flint. I was more talking about Miss Rachel.”
I looked at her. “This kid’s a terrible judge of character.”
“I beg to differ,” she said, sitting up a little straighter.
“And second, you picked the least important revolter, if we had any. I mean, who wouldn’t want a chance to challenge Ozzie and his overseers? But they’re too strong. Too many weapons.” Monty swallowed and then thought in silence for a second. “Mr. Jones? He’d lead a revolt. Same with Mr. Longman. Draw those guys out, and I see your point.”
“But what if we’re just using you to get deeper into your cell?”
“Then you’re wasting your time.”
“And how’s that, kid?”
“Because I don’t snitch.”
“Even if we threaten your mom?”
Monty turned his head slightly, studying me carefully. “You really don’t get it, do you…”
“Afraid not, kid,” I replied.
“My mom’s dead.”
Rachel’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“Not today, and maybe not tomorrow,” Monty replied. “But she’ll be dead soon enough. And how many more years do I have? Twenty? Thirty if I’m lucky? We’re all dead down here, it’s just a matter of time.”
Gods, there were few things sadder than a child in touch with their own mortality.
“So,” Monty continued, “even if you are lying, you’ve given me something that I’ve never had before… something I’d be happy dying for now that I’ve had it.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Hope,” he said.
Damn, if this kid wasn’t getting to me. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced the tears from welling up in my eyes. The little bastard.
“Truth is, I’ve been trying to think of a way to save my people for the last couple of years… and to stick it to Ozzie and his men. But I’m…”
“What?” I asked. “Just a kid?”
He lowered his eyes and nodded.
“You know, when I was your age, I wanted to join a boxing gym.” Monty raised his head toward me. “You know what that is, right? From your books?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You wear gloves and stand in a ring that’s actually a square and you fight each other with your fists.”
“You got it. Well, I wanted to learn to box, to fight. But my old man, see, he said we didn’t have the money. And, looking back, we probably didn’t. So I offered a deal to the owner of the gym. I proposed to be a sparring partner for every one of his fighters if he’d let me work out for free on my off time.”
“Sparring partner?”
“Think a human punching bag,” Rachel said.
“Right,” I replied. “Anyway, he turned me down.”
“Why?”
“Because who wants to spar with a kid?”
“So you didn’t get to join the gym,” Monty concluded.
“Wrong,” I said. “I showed up, climbed into the ring, and stood there until one of the boxers took a swing at me.”
“And you blocked it?”
“Hells no, kid. I got the living shit beat out of me. But I kept getting up. I learned how to move with the fighters… learned their rhythms. And I learned how to take a punch without getting rattled. I was just a kid…”
“But you learned how to fight with adults,” Monty said.
“We have a winner,” I said to Rachel. “The point is, kid, don’t let your age stop you. As far as I can tell, you’re one of the brightest kids I’ve met in a long time. Maybe ever. But I don’t meet that many kids.”
“You have any of your own?”
“Gods, no. Don’t ever ask me that again.”
“I just thought that you and Miss Rachel—”
“No kids, kid. Move on.”
He nodded.
“We’re going to save your people, and we can’t do it without you, Monty.”
“Really?”
“We need someone to open the door for us,” Rachel said. “We need a gatekeeper.”
“As in, open the door to the enclave?” Monty asked.
“Not the physical door,” I said. “Lars will take care of that.”
“Your AI.”
“Right,” I said. “We mean a proverbial gatekeeper, someone who can help connect us with your people. That person, Monty, is you.”
Monty looked between both of us a few times. “You must really be desperate,” he said at last.
“How’s that?”
“I’m the last person you want as this gatekeeper…”
“Because you’re just a kid?”
Monty hesitated. I put my fists up and started shadow boxing in slow motion.
“I’ll do what I can,” Monty said, smiling at me.
“And that’s all we’re asking for.” Rachel placed a hand on Monty’s shoulder. “You’ll do just fine.”
“For now, let’s check out this mine shaft of yours.”
Monty stood up and walked toward the back of the pod, holding steady with the railings hanging from the ceiling. The vehicle continued to jostle back and forth as we plunged deeper into the planet. I saw the kid rummaging around in a storage locker. When he returned, he carried three full-face oxygen masks with small red canisters under the chin.
“You’re going to need these,” he said, handing us each a mask. Then pulling three new cartridges from his pants pockets, he added, “And take an extra air cartridge too. Never hurts to have more than you think you’ll need.”
“Is it that bad down here?” I asked.
“You ever been in a myst
mine, Mr. Flint?”
“Can’t say that I have, kid.”
He nodded as if sizing me up. “First, these help keep the blight away. But that’s the least of our concerns.”
“The least?” I asked.
Monty nodded. “On the street, I hear myst is something you have to ingest or inject to get high. But down here, in its purest form, you just have to breathe it in.”
“I can think of worse things,” I said, smiling at him.
“Only it’s so potent that you get about three whiffs before you’re gone.”
“You can get high from it that fast?” I said.
“Not high, Mr. Flint. Dead.”
“I guess that changes things.”
“Hey,” Rachel said, fitting her mask’s strap over her head, “as least you die happy.”
We walked down a curving corridor about twenty meters wide. My feet rose and fell with the sloped ridges that undulated every meter or so. The grooves were so predictable, so patterned, that only a machine could have made them. But for what purpose, I had no idea.
I also noticed that the tunnel was hot. Damn hot. Unlike the barracks level that maintained a cool even temperature, we’d arrived at a depth where lava and geothermal forces ruled. I even noticed certain patches of the walls and ceilings glowed red hot.
“How much further?” I asked Monty through the masks’ short-range infrared comms system.
“Just a little further,” he replied. “We’re almost there.”
While my feet seemed to clomp along on the peaks and troughs of the ridges, Rachel seemed to glide across them, bounding from one peak to the next with almost no effort. “Show off,” I said.
She didn’t even bother to look at me. I was about to physically get her attention, thinking maybe our comm link had broken, when she raised her middle finger at me.
“Classy. Super classy, Rachel.”
“I do what I can,” she replied, not missing a beat with her feet.
So far, we hadn’t seen a single other soul down here. I wasn’t sure if I should be elated or concerned, but it was worth asking Monty about. “Where is everyone?” I asked. “You typically work this section alone?”
“Nah,” he said. “It’s a mandatory rest period.”
“Not bad,” I said, wondering if maybe Ozzie had at least some virtue in how they ran this operation. Given how much I was sweating, I imagined the miners couldn’t work long in these conditions. “Like a break or a nap or something?”
Monty didn’t turn back to look at me, but his pace slowed for the quickest second. “No, for sleeping. Two hours off, ten hours on. Then we get a six-hour extended rest session every other cycle.”
“Two hours?” I asked with a strained voice.
“Yeah. Why? You seem surprised.”
Gods, I didn’t have the heart to tell this kid that such expectations were insane. And unhealthy. And probably one of the reasons everyone died so young.
Changing subjects, I asked, “How much time do you think we have before everyone returns?”
“Well, how long do you guess I’ve been helping you?”
I hesitated. “Why does that matter?” Then I connected the dots. “Are you saying they pulled you from your sleep in order to help us?”
“Yeah, Mr. Flint. But don’t worry about me. If everything you’re saying is true, then it was the best reason to miss sleep I can think of.”
Strange things happen when you stop thinking about a group of people and start thinking about an individual. Your mind works differently somehow. Before, I knew we needed to help these miners get free. But knowing some of Monty’s story… knowing how much heart this kid had… it changed things. Now I would give my life for this kid to see sunlight again. By the gods, we were going to get him free or die trying.
14
Monty led us into a small tunnel branching off the main corridor. Unlike the larger one, this tunnel had apparently been dug by hand, or at least by pneumatic jackhammer judging by their prevalent numbers scattered throughout this section of the mine.
“You dug all this yourself?” I asked Monty, impressed with the amount of work it must have taken if so.
“I did, Mr. Flint. It’s not as hard as you think—if you take care of your equipment, that is.” He nodded at a jackhammer at the end of the tunnel.
“You… you know how to maintain it yourself?” I asked. The kid was twelve, for crying out loud.
“I do. Fix almost everyone’s broken gear down here. The overseers are slow and hate doing the work even though they’re supposed to help us. And most of our own mechanics are too old to be as fast as we need them to be.”
“How fast do you need them to be?” asked Rachel.
“Fast enough that we don’t get tased.”
My thoughts went back to the sight of Monty getting shocked on the holo feed. “Seems you’re a pretty handy guy to have around then.”
He shrugged. “Just part of my job, I guess. Here, come this way.” He motioned us further into the tunnel. The ceiling height declined as we neared the end where his jackhammer lay. I was about to ask him why he was leading us down a dead end when Monty sank to his knees and moved a sizable rock away from a hole about the size of his torso. “In here.”
Monty withdrew from the tunnel’s end, allowing me to pass by, and handed me a flashlight. My heart was pounding as I realized I was about to lay my eyes on an artifact for the first time. I didn’t even know what the damn things did, but I was excited to see one. After all, people had died for these contraptions, and if we weren’t careful, any one of us could be next.
Being significantly larger than Monty, I had to slide forward on my stomach, mask skimming along the rock floor. The stone was uncomfortably warm, and I couldn’t imagine spending more than half an hour down here. Sweat ran down the inside of my mask as I pushed myself into the hole with my legs. Once partly in, I pointed my flashlight around and noticed I was passing through layers of composite materials—metals, plastics, cross sections of trusses. Once I was buried past my hips, my head poked through into a small square space made of metal. I immediately noted how much cooler it was.
“What the hells?”
“What do you see?” Rachel asked. I could hear the eagerness in her voice.
“It’s… just a boxy little space,” I replied. In the middle of an underground mine? This was nuts. And what were all those layers of material about?
“A little boxy space?” Rachel repeated.
“And no artifacts. What’s going on, Monty?”
“No, that’s just the first space,” he said. “Push the panel to the left.”
“Panel?” I laid my palm against the left wall. Unlike the rest of the tunnel, it was cool to the touch. And it felt loose. I pushed hard and it gave way on one side. The thin metal wall flexed as I pushed it harder, barely able to see into a second similarly sized compartment. But this one wasn’t empty.
“Holy gods,” I said.
“What do you see?” Rachel was practically yelling in her microphone.
“I see…” I shined my flashlight on four mysterious looking devices slightly larger than my fist. These, I had no doubt, were our artifacts. My heart was beating in my ears. Relax, Flint. Take a breath. I reached in and touched the nearest device. My fingers grazed it, and I could feel a chill run down my spine. For all I knew, Monty and I were the first people to touch these objects in hundreds of years—maybe thousands. Who knew!
“I see artifacts,” I said at last, unable to hide my exuberance.
“You do?” Rachel asked. “Gods, this is so exciting!”
“So these are what you’re looking for?” asked Monty.
“Yes,” I replied. “Well, I mean, I believe so. We won’t know for sure until Lars sees them and runs his scans. But from everything we know about them, these devices certainly fit the profile.”
One artifact had numerous flat sides making it appear more like a complex geodesic sphere, while another was more cube-lik
e. But each device had small protrusions and extensions that made them unique from one another. What they all shared was the grayish finish covered in strange white etching, the troughs of which had a subtle blue tint.
I placed the first one down and touched a second, examining it as best I could from my awkward position within the first small compartment, which begged the next question: “What are these spaces?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Flint,” replied Monty. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“And you said you found the first artifact in this first chamber?” I asked.
“Yup. All by itself.”
“And you drilled through all that other stuff to get to it?”
“I did.”
I started pulling the artifacts out of the second compartment and stowing them in the first until I had all four. Then, I slid out of the small channel part way so that I could start passing the artifacts back to Monty, one at a time. I had to wiggle the devices past my chest and suck in my gut each time. But as I passed them back, I started noticing more details about the layers of material that Monty had dug through. There was a lot more to them than I’d first realized. I started noticing welds, rivets, and wires…
“Rachel?” I asked, my voice rising.
“Yeah?”
“I think you need to get in here and take a look at this.”
“Why? What for?”
I pushed myself out the rest of the way and made room for her. “Just take a look. I want to know what you think.”
Rachel looked at me, puzzled, but nodded. She slid past me and pressed herself into the opening Monty had made. She was up to her stomach when she said, “Flint… this is really interesting.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied, inviting her to go on.
“These layers… it seems like their order was meant to keep something out.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But Monty’s drill made fairly quick work of them, it seems, which means they weren’t built to withstand mining operations.”
“Keep going…”
“And the wire and connections are more reminiscent of—”
She stopped.
“Of what?” I asked.
“A starship.”
I looked at Monty, who’s dark eyes went so wide I thought they might explode. “Just what I was thinking too.”