by John Mierau
“There’s dozen of metres of uncharted surprises below the current tunnel floor, then I can guarantee solid rock on down. The mine is still viable, we just have to take operations offline, detonate each pocket, and erect new support pillars for the shafts. A day to erect the pillars using wave-guided crysteel scaffolding, a few days of detonations tops, then a week, ten days of excavation tops. Then, back to business as usual!”
Lee’s lips twitched despite the seriousness of this moment. The speed and precision of the latest generation of crystalline-steel lattice-generating tech was so much more precise, and he was eager to get a chance to play with it. Doubly so if it could save miners’ lives.
“He’s one of my best men,” Helman assured Dhawal. “I trust his findings with my stock options.”
Dhawal chuckled sourly, not looking up from the map. “You’re trusting him with far more than that.” He looked back down and glowered again at the display Lee had shown him.
“The cost to evacuate the gas isn’t the problem,” Dhawal muttered. “The time required is.” One of his skinny fingers flicked through Lee’s findings. “You’ve only proved the gas pockets are a threat to half these tunnels, the rest we can mine at full capacity and they might never explode. We’ll keep those ones running while we excavate the problem shafts and deal with the gas.”
Lee went cold. “Our data set is incomplete! We’ve had a blind spot on the maps we never knew about, and people have died because of it! We can’t be sure there’s not a gas pocket a foot below the surface in every one of those tunnels! “
“Or, those tunnels could be solid as ever!” Dhawal shook his head. “We can afford to lose a few miners. We can’t afford to miss our contract deadline. Offer them 300% danger pay,” he snickered. “I’ve seen rats fight each other over who’d buy it first, to get the survivor’s benefit.”
Lee stared at Helman. He couldn’t believe his ears. He knew the administrator was a prick but this was…this was murder.
“I can’t authorize any further mining, sir,” Lee said, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he’d consciously decided to take a stand. “I won’t sign off on a return to operational status until repairs are complete!”
Dhawal straightened. “Administrator, get your colony birth under control.”
Lee glared at the VP. The VP glared back, wearing his loathsome Earther privilege proudly.
Lee didn’t look away. “If you go through with this, I’ll report you to Earth Gov for criminal negligence.”
Dhawal laughed. “You’ll report us to the Gov that just demanded we increase our quota? Earth is hungry for what Reach sends them. They don’t give a damn who dies to get them their supply.”
“Let-let me speak to him, sir!” Helman almost touched Dhawal’s arm, then backed off, head bowed. “He’ll sign off, Vice Pres—”
“He’d better!” Dhawal’s bulging eyes fixed Lee with a venomous look. “Caran Corporation didn’t only receive a quota increase, Engineer Zhang!”
The way Dhawal smiled at him set Lee’s guts churning again.
“Gov upgraded this facility and our quota to Protected Priority. If we don’t start mining today, I can declare Facility 12 under Martial Law. Under Martial Law, this work stoppage is an act of treason.” Dhawal stood straighter, clasping his hands behind his back. “Do you know what I will be required to do to those dirty little diggers under Martial Law, Zhang?”
Lee wasn’t fooled by Dhawal’s straightening posture and serious face: the man was excited by the prospect of what he would be ‘required’ to do.
He’ll kill them all.
Dhawal relaxed his posture, adopting a perfect facsimile of a reasonable, concerned expression. “Earth has eight sons and daughters,” the VP said. “But Reach is the only son talking to us right now.”
As soon as he trotted out the tired excuse corporations had used since the first colony had gone dark, Lee clenched his jaw so hard it cracked.
Now he knew there was nothing he could say that would change the VP’s mind.
Sure enough, the false fatherly advice was followed up by a threat.
Dhawal tapped Lee’s shoulder. “So be a good son, and choose your next words carefully, Zhang. You’re only a demotion away from working in the mine yourself.”
He wished this wasn’t happening, that he was sitting with Maggie, holding hands between their rocking chairs in front of their farmhouse hab-module and staring at another patch of Reach foothills.
Something squirmed in his guts. If he were back there, would he tell Maggie about this? Would she look at him the same way when she found out he’d taken no for an answer, when he stood by and did nothing knowing people would injured or killed?
At least his protestations had led to a danger pay order. And Dhawal was right: Zhang had seen miners viciously battle each other for more a big payout. Yes, even when cashing in could kill them.
But he’d never been the one sending them to their deaths before.
“Can…can I take a minute to process this, Mister Vice President?”
Dhawal sneered at Lee, as if he’d just called his bluff at poker. He waved him away. “Take your minute, then do as you’re told.”
Lee nodded, feeling numb, and walked past the group to the access door on the far side of the table.
Dhawal turned to Helman. “If they don’t come up before end of shift, we turn off the oh-two and drag their bodies out. I want the mine ready for the day shift.”
Lee closed his eyes and stumbled forward to the door. It tugged open with a hiss, and he put his shoulder into it on the far side to shove it quickly shut again. ‘Cut the oh-two?’’ As above, so below: cut the oxygen to the mine and people would die, just as surely as if VP Dhawal had tossed them out on the surface of Reach without air tanks.
The air inside the long warehouse on the other side of the door carried an earthy scent, but damp—a rarity on Reach—and mixed with a metallic tang from the pipes feeding down into the mine. The hum of the scrubbers a level below vibrated through Lee’s shoes. He folded his hands over the back of his neck and squeezed his eyes shut.
He’d come here to calm down since his first shift in the mines, before the scholarship sent him on a different path.
Calm wasn’t coming.
He couldn’t stop Caran corporation. It’s not like he had any power. If he did not obey Dhawal, the VP would have him replaced. And have him thrown down the mine with the next shift, most likely.
What good would throwing his life away do? He laughed, a choking sound.
He gusted out a long breath and let his hands fall to his sides, accepting the good it would do: it would keep blood off his hands. It would let him sleep, after the inevitable.
No qualifications and no excuses, he told himself.
“It’s wrong,” he whispered.
Saying the words out loud, committing himself, made everything that came next easier.
By the time he’d loaded the cart with a selection of supplies running against the wall of the warehouse, he was smiling.
“Sorry, kids,” he said, his voice stronger, determined, as he hauled the cart back to the Operations Center door.
“Ah, it’s our friend the chief engineer,” Dhawal taunted, turning from the table towards the opening door. “Glad to have you back on the clock. Start spinning down the ventilation system.” The skinny man with the bulging eyes leaned against the table and waited.
Lee didn’t answer, except to pull a long, narrow box with yellow arrows all around it off his cart and place it on the floor. Arrow-side faced out towards the warehouse, he stood and kicked the safety plating on the back of the unit.
“Chief Zhang?” Administrator Helman asked. Lee ignored him, too, and kicked away a safety plate. Beneath the plate were three wide buttons. He nudged each button with his boot, and each lit up: first yellow, then orange, and finally a blinking red. He nodded, satisfied, and walked back to the cart.
VP Dhawal’s grin faded as Lee trund
led past him.
Administrator Helman stepped into his path. “Just what do you think—?” he began, then he bleated in surprise and stumbled back up against the table, so as not to lose his kneecaps to the cart.
Lee was halfway across the room before Dhawal found his voice. “Insubordination!” he shrieked, poking a trembling finger at Lee’s back. “Dereliction!”
Lee continued on, humming a half-remembered mining song as about boots, dust, and blood as he propped open the door leading out to The Green and set up a second box.
One of the security guards crossed over to examine the first case Lee had set up. “Sir? There’s a danger label on it!”
Lee raised his handheld over his head. “You’ll want to back up,” he called over his shoulder over the guard. He kicked the second box’s safety plate free and again nudged three buttons inside.
When he turned, he saw he had the room’s undivided attention. Blinking lights and danger labels had that effect. He chuckled, enjoying his moment of ‘insubordination’ and ‘dereliction’ and being careful not to think of what was sure to follow.
He’d made his choice.
He tapped the screen of his handheld. “Back up?” he warned again. Despite the insanity and finality of his chosen course of action, Lee felt good. He was enjoying himself.
Suddenly, everyone was scrambling. Administrator Helman and the VP’s assistants elbowed past each other up the short flight of stairs. The guards swooped into action, pushing VP Dhawal up to the second row of workstations. One of them landed on top of his very important personage.
“Should be far enough,” Lee said. He turned his head over his shoulder, out toward The Green, to face the stretchers of injured miners.
He tapped his handheld a second time.
Blue light and a thunderclap overrode his senses. The shockwave tossed him through the air. He hit the ground and rolled into the blinking lights of the second explosive device.
Coughing, blinded by a whirlwind wave of dust and debris, Lee let out a wordless scream. Had he underestimated the force of the blast? He stood, peering through dust and smoke. Creaks and groans from the Operations Center began to filter back into his ears. Light fixtures swung near the ceiling, held in place only by their wiring.
Nothing moved.
The dust fell quickly in Reach’s slightly higher than Earth-normal gravity, but it was a few more seconds before he could see through it to the far side.
“He’s okay! The VP’s okay,” one of the bodyguards coughed to the other. “Check the rest.”
One uniformed guard stumbled from the gloom, a pistol in one hand, and the other holding up one of the VP’s assistants.
Lee sagged with relief. Nobody seriously injured. Hearing loss, maybe. Possibly soiled underwear and lost dignity, but that was it.
Well, that and his career.
The guard caught sight of him and shouted to his partner, raising his gun.
Lee calmly held his finger above the handheld and shook his head. The bodyguard’s eyes whipped back to his, then slowly lowered the muzzle of his sidearm—which seemed the size of a cannon to Lee—down to the floor halfway between the two men.
“Drop it!” called the other bodyguard. Lee saw him in his peripheral vision, walking toward him behind the top row of workstations.
He shook his head. “Take a look.” He nodded at the far doorway.
The Operations Center’s back wall was destroyed. The metal buckled in some places, outright shredded in others by a deep blue, rippling wall of crystal. It looked like a deep-blue glacier had appeared in an instant.
The other bodyguard looked back and froze, mouth open. Lee had made the same face the first time he’d seen a shelter bomb go off. A crysteel scaffold had saved his life during a cave-in during his first year as a miner. The scaffold was really a bomb, but with the explosion was channeled into erecting a crystalline-steel matrix. In mining environments they could quickly reinforce weakening tunnel walls in the caves, saving lives.
Amazing things.
It had been his first experience with crysteel that ignited his passion for engineering. He had come full circle, saving more lives just as he ended his career. Now, if he could only get out of here without getting killed in the bargain. Skin flushed, only half-believing this was happening, Lee took advantage of the second bodyguard’s distraction and stepped backwards over the box.
Just crossing the barrier made him bolder. “Duck and cover, friend,” he warned, the wolfish smile returned to his lips.
They ran. The instant their backs were turned, Lee ran too, following the outside wall of the Ops Center. Ten meters away from the door he tapped the screen, and screamed right along with the roar of the explosion.
Carmen slipped through the elevator doors as soon as they were wide enough, and wrapped Lee in a bear hug. The other miners slapped him on the back, too.
Some wanted to help when he told them his plan. He refused and pointed to the bubbly, misshapen wall of crysteel in a silent reminder of what would happen to him the moment Vice President Dhawal was freed from his improvised prison.
Five older miners from the night shift didn’t take Lee’s ‘no’ for an answer. With no families to support -and no respect for Lee as the very temporary ranking authority in Facility 12- they organized themselves and helped collect the supplies Lee’s plan called for.
With only hours, perhaps minutes before the next dropship arrived, Lee relented—but he drew the line at the ‘old farts’; no family men were allowed to stay in the mine and play along.
The replacement crew could have put up a fight when they trudged across the tarmac from their temporary quarters, but when Lee announced the work stoppage, they only cheered. Then, everyone alternated thanking him and avoiding his gaze, knowing how much today would cost him.
After all the prep was done he ordered all personnel back to quarters, and collected the old farts out to the tarmac. The landing jets of the first of three incoming craft pinged by ground control lit up the sky just then, so there was no time for fine words.
Lee ignored the ship’s hails. With the old farts gathered all around him, he tapped the screen of his handheld one more time.
The old farts cheered with him as the shockwave rumbled through their feet. Moments later, air pushed up the throat of the elevator shaft billowed into the sky, raising a cloud of dust that bought Lee a few more minutes of freedom as the landers hovered above the now-hidden tarmac.
Then, all three ships came down…along with the full might of Caran Corporation.
The old bachelors were beside him, jeering and shouting at the dozen armored security officers lining up between them and the drop ships.
A nervous-looking administrator, flown over from Facility 14, demanded explanations from behind the wall of black boots and batons. When he had answers, he ordered his men to take Lee into custody.
The farts must have known what would happen. What were they planning to do, smuggle Lee off the facility? It made no sense to him, but they formed a line and when the security goons came, they fought.
The goons pummelled the old miners. They drew blood and cracked bones and kept on hammering their crumpled forms when they went down.
When the batons fell, Lee fought back. He hadn’t planned to. He’d known his fate was sealed when he’d prepped the crysteel bombs in the mines, detonating every gas pocket at once. It would take months to repair the damage, and cost Caran Corporation millions, but no miners would die.
Lee had wondered, even before he blew the first shelter bomb in the Operations Center, if he would ever see light of day again…but he was ready for whatever came next. He was proud of his actions, now the choices had all been made, the buttons all pushed.
Until the saw the insides of an old miner’s skull spray across the tarmac.
Then he fought like hell.
He lost.
The beatings ended when the replacement day shift miners collected all around the tarmac, clicking their
radios to create an avalanche of squawks. The guards didn’t need to be ordered off: they just had to look around.
The guards dragged Lee and the old farts to the nearest drop ship and tossed them in. Through the barest slits in his bloody, swollen eyes, he watched miners along the tarmac salute him as he was thrown into the ship. They left him in a pile with the dead miners, gasping for air. The cannulas were still in his nostrils, but the tubes had been cut.
His lungs ached for air as the door closed, leaving him in the dark as the rumbling of the engines built beneath him. He felt bones crack as the thrust drove him into the floor. He couldn’t feel the new pain through the still-searing explosions of his beating.
His mind conjured up a view of the hills from the porch on his farm.
He squeezed his hands around nothing, remembering the feeling of Maggie’s hand sliding inside his.
The world, and the pain, faded away.
CHAPTER THREE
February 16 2347
‘Landing Plain’ Spaceport Fairgrounds
Outside South Reach City
Frankie laughed and dragged her man by the hand.
“Through here!” she hissed, pushing open a loose segment on a long, high wall of security fencing. She ducked her dirty-blonde hair inside, ponytail whipping either way.
The coast was clear.
“Babe!” Her husband looked nervously behind. “They call it restricted for a reason!” he hissed back.
“Yeah, Nate: to give us privacy!!” She wiggled her backside and squeezed his hand in hers.
He pulled back.
She turned around wearing her best bratty sulk. “Babe? You worked Valentine’s Day.” She wiggled her eyes. “You owe me some sugar!” She pulled harder, dragging him inside the construction fence. On the other side, she slammed the segment back in its groove as far as the buildup of sand in its tracks would allow.
She wanted to show Nate a good time, but she didn’t need an audience.