by Scott Moon
He took his time facing the scene, then walked forward knowing once he began, there was no turning back and no slowing down. Hesitation would be as bad as running away. “Mast, I want you to hang off my left flank and try to look tough. Don’t say anything. “
The tall Unglok moved very near to him and walked so close he almost touched Thad’s left buttocks.
Thaddeus pointed towards the left wall. “Stand over there. Watch my back.”
“I will very muchly do my best.”
Ike’s crew stepped aside to form a clear space as though Ike was some type of duke or king holding audience.
Thaddeus stopped short, refusing to enter Ike’s small area of influence as a supplicant.
Silence spread across the room.
Ike sat in his chair, but leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You the lawman?”
Thaddeus looked at Shaunte, not really liking where she was positioned. If a brawl broke out, she was going to be stampeded or hit with flying bottles. He wondered if he should flip up the table for cover and draw his sidearm.
“Cat got your tongue, lawman?” Ike said.
Thaddeus looked him straight in the eyes. “You ever fight your way up a hill so slick with blood, you had to jam your boot knife into the dirt to pull yourself upward?”
Ike rolled his eyes, then looked around the room as he got to his feet. He took a step forward and hooked his fingers into the belt of his jumpsuit. “I might have. You think I got these scars working for SagCon? Digging buddies out of mines or toiling in the fields on one of the agricultural planets?” He spat on the floor.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Point is this. I can read you like a book, and I know more about you than your friends do.” Thaddeus faced the silent crowd. “You might think real hard before you do his fighting.”
Ike stepped forward, chest out and hands clenched into fists at his side. “I never needed anyone to fight for me, lawman. Not even against the lawman, if that’s what you even are. Look more like a security guard for SagCon.”
Without moving his feet or changing his stance, Thad lashed with his forearm across the side of Ike’s neck, hammering his brachial nerve. Ike went down like a sack of rocks, revived about the time he hit the ground, and sprang quickly to his feet as he stumbled backward.
It was a good recovery even though the man was in no state to do anything besides maybe crap his pants. Most of the tough guys Thaddeus knocked out stayed on the ground until a medic revived them.
“That’s enough fighting!” Shaunte shouted.
Thaddeus lifted one hand toward her, hoping she would be quiet and let him handle this. She wasn’t wrong. As the Company Man, she needed to assert her power and influence. It would’ve been better if she hadn’t been there to see this or participate. Thaddeus needed to put these dogs in their places before they became a constant problem.
Ike shook off several people who tried to help him stand. “You’re the law. You can’t do that. Hit a man for no reason,” Ike said as he marched forward.
With his left hand, Thaddeus slapped him across his face, knocking him off his feet.
This time when Ike stood up, he was laughing slightly. “Okay, all right, I get it. You’re one of them sheriffs. Real frontier type.”
Thaddeus stared at him, feet placed just wide enough to be in a fighting or shooting stance, hands at his side but ready to do what was needed, whether that be punch or draw and shoot.
Ike raised both hands as he backed up, silently queuing his posse to retreat toward the front door. “It’s all right. We’re good. Didn’t come here for no trouble. Law and order are good for a mining dump like this.”
CHAPTER SIX: T-R-O-U-B-L-E
“Elliott. You need to calm down. Yelling at me isn’t in your best interest,” Shaunte said in measured tones, trying not to screech. She knew what she sounded like when angry.
Hysterical.
And not in the funny way. She had little enough credibility as the Company Man as it was. She fought every single day for respect and couldn’t destroy it because of the likes of Elliott Goldman.
“The ore shipments have stopped! We must get them going or we tell them to skip the next monthly shipment of supplies. What would you do without your monthly fix?” the production foreman asked accusingly.
A veiled threat.
Shaunte closed her eyes as she felt the heat rise up her neck and into her cheeks. He’d been there when she peeled off her special clothing shipment from a separate container. It had not been logged through the shipping accountability people.
He was now watching her, looking for her use of Company shipping for personal business. There were separate containers for personal purchases, and space within those came at a hefty premium.
Her guilty pleasure gave him leverage that she didn’t like. He had no proof, she saw to that with each shipment, but still, he was annoying.
“Elliott. If you would be so kind as to report to the mine and address your concerns with Foreman Dickles, I think you’ll find that he is doing everything he can to restore the transfer of ore to your facility.”
“He’s a madman! I’ll never go into the mine when he’s in there.”
“Then shut your stinking pie hole. We’re all doing our jobs. Maybe you can take your idled crew and clean up your plant, do some scheduled maintenance ahead of time? When you start receiving ore again, I expect it’s going to come fast and furious. I need you to be ready. Be warned. If you can’t keep up, I will crush you like the bug that you are.”
An unveiled threat.
“We’ll just see about that, missy!” The screen went blank. She gave her computer the finger.
“Maybe the sheriff could show you the error of your ways,” she suggested to the empty chair. “What do you think? Can he be influenced?”
***
“The roof is solid. A new vein of exotics is in there, and that’s why it split. We believe the shifting is done, which means we should be able to break through the fall and get into the lower mine, find our people,” Jotham explained.
“This bit here doesn’t look stable.” P.C. pointed at the ceiling above the area where they’d removed the rock and started a breach through the roof collapse.
Jotham put his hands together as if he were praying and then pulled his palms slightly apart. “The two sides have found balance. These shards go deep into the ground. They will support all that is above. A jack stand right here would not hurt, if you would like to install one,” Jotham said clearly and slowly, in spite of wearing a respirator.
The foreman held a finger to his lips. The sound of shuffling feet came to them from the tunnel leading out. P.C. signaled to the last man in line to bring one jack stand forward as soon as it arrived. The foreman turned back to the Ungloks.
“I want you four to the lead the way removing the rock. Get us through there.”
“They say it is a great honor to lead a rescue.”
“Then the honor is yours, Glok,” P.C. replied coldly.
Jotham pondered a reply as the sheriff rolled his eyes. The alien talked with his fellows in their language before getting to work.
The sheriff never was one to hold his tongue. “You want them to save your people, but you can’t call them by their name. Unglok. Is that so hard?” the sheriff growled. The foreman glared back, before pushing the sheriff out of the way as he headed for the group of human miners.
Thad joined the Ungloks and started hauling out the rocks that they handed back. He hurried to the intersection, but the other miners just looked at him. “Come on!” he snarled. “Those men are still down there.”
Once the first miner leaned in, the others quickly joined in and restored the human chain.
“Thank you,” the sheriff told the first man. Thad’s sincerity must have been clear because the man smiled behind his mask and nodded.
Jotham and the others tore into the fall, pulling rocks while sliding on rubble, then pulling more. The chain of miners passed the
stones back to the intersection at a frantic pace.
Jotham raised his mask and said loudly, “Dozer.” P.C. gave the thumbs up and fired up the walk-behind. He maneuvered it to give him the best angle into the fall as the alien indicated with arm signals. They stepped out of the way.
“Jack stand!” the foreman yelled through his mask, pointing to spots on the floor and on the ceiling. Two men hurried in front of the dozer and torqued the stand into place, checking that it was set before retreating behind the dozer.
P.C. checked the area in front of the dozer one more time before he sent the machine forward, using the hand levers to guide it along the path that Jotham had directed. It rammed into the remaining fall. Smaller stones tumbled down the pile as it was dislodged. The foreman backed the dozer up a few feet and rammed into the pile a second time.
Then a third. Backed up farther and hit it again and again. A space formed above the pile as stones from above rolled down the other side. The foreman started yelling at the fall as he revved the machine, hitting the pile harder and harder.
With a final lurch, it broke through, forcing the foreman to jog after the dozer. The Ungloks hurried into the breach, grabbing a few boulders remaining at head and shoulder height to keep them from falling. With superhuman strength, they move the rocks out of the breach, dropping and rolling them to the side of the tunnel down.
The fall had cut the power lines. It was dark below, but the foreman knew the mine. His headlamp illuminated the dust in the air, keeping the beam from shining too far ahead.
The aliens, miners, and sheriff worked their way through the breach, each following the aliens’ lead and removing a stone or three on their way through. They threw them aside and gathered around the foreman. He removed his mask and pulled hard to get enough air.
“You five, widen that breach. Put in a couple more jack stands. The rest of you, follow me, and don’t take off your masks. The air is bad on this side. We need to restore power to the air handlers.” He looked at the eager faces.
One young woman raised her hand. “Billy. Get on it.” She nodded and ran uphill. Everyone had multiple jobs. She was one of a few miners who were also electricians. She needed her gear and was running toward the entrance.
The foreman turned and headed downhill, waving at the dwindling group to follow. Thaddeus Fry hurried to walk alongside Mast Jotham. “Thank you!” he yelled through his respirator. “Great work back there. How do I say thank you in your language?”
“Boonodd.” The sheriff said it back to him. Jotham nodded. Thad looked at the others and told each of them thank you. They looked back at him without acknowledging that he’d spoken.
He shrugged. Regardless, he was thankful that they were through and heading deeper into the mine. Thad was confused that the other miners hadn’t been by the fall. He expected them to be waiting.
Thad had not known that there had been multiple collapses within the mine. Nothing happened in a vacuum. When one wall shifted, another would move, and then another.
The foreman had left the dozer behind. The sheriff was confused. No one else seemed worried. They looked determined. Thad continued marching downhill with the rest.
***
“Any news from the mine?” Pierre asked while rolling the end of his mustache between two fingers.
“None,” Shaunte replied as she tried to get past Pierre. He blocked her way.
“Business is way off. Maybe you can do a little something?” he said in his weasely way.
She turned on him. “Get out of my way,” she demanded.
“I’m just saying…”
Shaunte glared at the man in his perfectly cleaned and pressed jumpsuit, the kind that she should have been wearing—service class with management stripes on the sleeve. She was dressed up as always, as if she were going to a business meeting in one of the inner systems.
Miss Dixie stood to the side, chuckling and shaking her head. “You’re just saying that you don’t care about the people trapped in the mine, only your own pocket,” she suggested.
“Of course. Was there any doubt about that? But Anglelook still turns and we still have a business to run with quotas and all,” he said, looking first to Dixie and then to Shaunte.
“It’s pronounced Ungwilook,” Dixie corrected.
“Yeah, just like I said. Anglelook.”
“You’re still in my way,” Shaunte said in an exasperated voice. Pierre slowly moved aside, frowning while holding his hands up.
“Thank you. Next time you interfere with Company business, I’ll turn you over to the sheriff,” she said in a low voice as she passed. She kept walking.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he said too loudly.
She stopped and turned. “I won’t dare you, because you’re just stupid enough to try me. Be warned, Pierre. I am not putting up with your BS. And you need to stop helping yourself to your so-called staff. That won’t just get you dismissed, it’ll earn you a berth on the trash rocket into the sun.”
He stammered incomprehensibly as Shaunte returned to the task at hand—getting another glass of orange juice and a snack. It was going to be a long night ahead, especially if the miners hadn’t yet broken through.
From one to another, her management team was self-destructing. She knew that she had been given a weak team. It fell to her to develop them. She gritted her teeth thinking of the turd sandwich she’d been force-fed by her father. He knew she was determined to prove herself and had given her the most difficult assignment in the universe.
At least that was how she saw it. She grabbed what she wanted from the restaurant, paying on the way out and hurrying back to her office, then worked her way around the chair in the middle of the room and tapped the screen to call the mine foreman as she sat down.
He didn’t answer. Neither did Pavel Stasenko. She tried contact after contact until, finally, the equipment office answered.
“What the hell is going on out there? How come no one is answering?” she demanded in a rush.
“Damn. You just called me no one,” Davos, the equipment manager, replied.
Shaunte stammered a quick apology.
“Just kidding. They’re all in the mine. The cave-in cut the power to the repeaters. They cleared the first two falls, but they’re deeper in the mine now. We won’t be able to talk to them until Billy restores the power. She’s working on it right now. I wouldn’t know anything if she hadn’t told me about ten minutes ago when she checked out the electrician’s kit.”
“Thank you. I am tasking you to let me know when power is restored.”
“Will do,” Davos said, unsure of how he was supposed to know when power was restored to the lower sections of the mine.
***
Thad found his hand resting on the butt of his weapon. The darkness was inky black. Only the areas directly in the headlamp beams were lit. Everything else was dark. It reminded him of an operation to clear a tunnel complex between one of the enemy installations on Centauri Prime. The enemy had used the darkness to their advantage.
Even with low-light enhanced displays, the op had been a horror show. He’d lost men to both enemy and friendly fire. The soldiers sent rounds into the haze of enhanced darkness, not knowing what was there. The enemy set traps.
So many traps.
The sheriff slowed his pace and the Ungloks left him behind. He moved to the side as his head started to swim. One of the miners slapped him on the shoulder and gave him the thumbs up as he passed. The small group of eight miners continued downhill. With his back against the wall, Thad took long deep breaths, pulling hard against his respirator.
He looked up and down the tunnel, letting his light shine through the darkness. The dust was settling now that the shuffling miners had passed.
A horrendous screech tore up the tunnel, then thunder, and finally, a dust cloud billowed his way.
His reverie broke and the former captain’s mind sharpened, focusing like a laser beam down the tunnel from where the sounds had come.
He bolted downhill, running into the dust cloud before slowing, trying not to outrun his light.
The sidewall had collapsed, but the roof was intact. Scaling bars and rock pikes protruded from the rubble. The humans were injured and trapped. The four Ungloks were away from the collapse, with their backs against the wall, standing perfectly still. Covered in dust, they looked like ghosts.
The sheriff waded into the fall and started throwing rocks out of the way, freeing one miner after another. He stopped after a minute and looked at Jotham. “A little help, please?”
The Unglok pointed to the wall and shook his head. “Can we brace it? We have a couple jacks,” Thad suggested.
“Yes. Put one there against that crack and one over there.”
The sheriff got to work as the men groaned and pleaded for help. First one brace, using the wrench to crank it tightly into place, then the second brace. As soon as he turned back, the aliens were furiously digging the humans from the rocks.
Broken bones, bruises, lacerations. Their helmets had saved their heads. Thad and the aliens propped the miners up, five men, three women, but no foreman. “Where’s P.C.?”
Jotham looked back with a blank expression on his thin face. “P.C.!” Thaddeus yelled and scrabbled across the rock on his way downhill. He found the foreman past the slide, bruised and bleeding, but mostly undamaged. His eyes were vacant.
The foreman’s helmet was cracked. “Look at that! Takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” Thad told the man before turning serious. The Ungloks circled the pair. “Here’s what we’re going to do, P.C. We’re going down there to find the others and bring them out. We’ll be back for you, with the others, or we won’t be back at all.”
P.C. looked at him. His jaw worked for a bit before anything came out. “But you’re not a miner.”
“Today, I am. My friends and I are going deeper into the mine, look for survivors, because miners refuse to give up. We know that no matter what, someone is going to come looking for us. All we have to do is hang on until they get there. We are their someone. We gotta go, P.C. Stay here and keep the others comfortable. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”