by Stephen Hunt
‘There’s a vehicle coming,’ said Zeno. ‘Robot . . . nobody in the cab.’
Lana nodded. She’d been counting on the night-shift running more or less automated. Too few hands at the camp to operate on a twenty four hour rota with a manned presence. Time to let the android earn his keep with the codes he’d hacked from the landing field. ‘Slow it down and let’s see what we’ve got.’
The Gravity Rose’s skipper was almost blinded by the truck lights when the drone rumbled into view. A big robot engine up front with a high bank of arc-lights, the vehicle riding six spherical rubber wheels taller than her head. Lana blinked her eyes to clear them. A storm of insects fluttered in and out of its beams. Three freight cars sat behind the engine on similar ball wheels, each car linked to the next by snaking cables. Two sealed trailers, one open flat-bed. Zeno popped the doors on the closed cars, easily bypassing its simple locking mechanism in a couple of seconds. After all, who is going to steal the supplies out here . . . tree squirrels? He rolled the doors back. One car was too full of the supplies they had hauled down from orbit to even attempt to hide inside, but the second trailer had enough space for them to conceal themselves amongst its piled crates and drums.
‘Your carriage awaits,’ said Zeno.
‘It just has to get us through their fence,’ said Lana.
They mounted the car and pulled its heavy doors shut, hiding in darkness as the hacked truck received the all-clear from Zeno and resumed its drive towards the mountain mine. Ten minutes later they slowed down as they reached the mine’s protective perimeter. The engine up front idled before they cleared the gates and rumbled on towards their destination.
‘I’m inside the local network,’ announced Zeno. ‘The truck’s been told to open its doors in two hours when there’s a spare loader available, then head back empty to the landing field for more supplies.’
‘Enough time for us to sneak a look at what they’re digging out and hitch a ride home,’ said Lana. ‘Is there any indication that Calder’s visited here?’
‘Not that I can see from the hack. But I’m only nosing around the low-level stuff – vehicle routes and cargo schedules. The real security systems are every bit as heavily encrypted and fire-walled as you’d expect from a paranoid like Dollar-sign Dillard. He doesn’t even trust his own people, let alone us.’
‘Well, that’s fine. Because with DSD, the feeling’s always mutual. Let’s see what we can see.’
Lana cracked the door enough for them both to squeeze out. They dropped into a vehicle park at the foot of the mountain range, irregularly lit by electric lanterns hanging from the granite rise. A variety of drone and manned vehicles – a couple of large lorries, oversize dump-trucks, a heavy mole-like drilling rig, small manoeuvrable staff-transporters, caterpillar-tracked water-knife carriers stamped in industrial yellow steel. A little robotic forklift moved up to one of the other lorry’s trailers and fished out crates on magnetic loading arms before humming away, an activity warning light rotating on top of its metal roof. Lana and Zeno picked their way towards tunnels at the foot of the mountain, using the empty vehicles for cover. Most of their illumination came from a perimeter fence protecting the mine three hundred yards away, the peak above them casting heavy shadows in the triple-moons’ light. The fence wasn’t much different from the barrier surrounding the main base. Automated sentry guns on tall posts scanned the rain forest beyond. A couple of human silhouettes were visible moving behind the armoured windows of a concrete guard post squatting behind the entrance gate. No sign of anybody else out here. With any luck, most of the miners were tucked up inside the main base and asleep in their bunks. Lana spied a variety of pre-fab buildings set up within the fenced area, none taller than two storeys, as well as large dark mounds of slurry piled by the digging equipment. A mesh canopy ran above the camp to protect it from the slope’s rock-falls. This mine-head was a fraction of the size of the main base and its landing fields. But then, all the fence here looked to be protecting was a vehicle park and a few equipment sheds. Lana halted by a sign carrying a hard hat icon, which read “Protective clothing at all times”. Ahead, rails ran into multiple tunnels.
The mine-head is more noticeable for what was missing. Lana nudged the android. ‘Where’s the storage silos for the ores they’re extracting . . . all those valuable drums full of promethium, samarium, gadolinium?’
‘Maybe they haven’t hit the mother-lode yet?’
‘If that’s the case, they’ve spent a lot of money and time for the sniff of a promise,’ said Lana. ‘Does that sound like the Dollar-sign you know?’
‘Always seemed more of a sure-thing kinda guy to me.’
‘Precisely.’
With the exception of the automated forklift unloading cargo the only other things moving out here were Lana and Zeno, but this wasn’t the time for overconfidence. They sprinted low towards the largest passage cut into the mountain’s brooding weight, taking cover behind a pile of hydraulic supports waiting to be carried into the mine. ‘Any temperature variance inside to suggest someone’s still working?’
‘Just you, me, and the hamster-sized mosquitoes,’ said Zeno. ‘Of course, if they’ve got androids working the mine, they won’t need smart suits with cooling fibres.’
‘You’re one of a kind,’ said Lana.
‘Well, they wouldn’t be as smart as me.’
Lana glanced behind her. The guard post staff were behind them, monitoring the rainforest for anything dumb enough to amble into their fence. ‘Smart-mouthed . . . I’d agree. But that’s not the organ I need. Keep your enhanced peepers peeled.’
They rapidly crossed the open space, reaching the tunnel mouth and vanished into its cover. A tunnel, twenty feet high, wide enough to accommodate the digging equipment they had passed. A chain of electric lights hung from a rock ceiling, thick green cables stapled into the walls. Two sets of narrow rails on the ground, so they could run trucks in and out simultaneously. Zeno examined the wall, then put a finger to his mouth and crept back into the open again. Lana waited nervously, not wanting to go deeper down the tunnel without the android, anxious about being discovered every second she stayed here exposed like this. Come on Zeno. This is no time to disappear on me. Zeno was gone for five minutes before he returned.
Lana frowned at the android. ‘What, you’re tagging their equipment with graffiti now?’
‘Checking on something . . . what you said about the lack of ores stored for shipping offworld. There’s no sign of exploratory digging around the mountain. Normally, these slopes would be left like Swiss cheese from where the team went in with survey worms, exploring for the richest lodes to start with. It’s as though they arrived here, set up shop, and just got digging immediately. Like they knew exactly where to start. Ground penetrating radar is good, but not that good. It’s like Olympus Mons on Mars rising above us. There’s a lot of rock for them to have got this lucky this fast.’
‘You think I’m still wrong to mistrust the professor?’ asked Lana. ‘This stinks like only a Dollar-sign Dillard job can.’
‘Hey, I’m the android here,’ said Zeno. ‘If my hunches were any good you’d be working for me rather than the other way around.’
Lana walked to the tunnel’s edge, running her finger across the rock. Smooth as a baby’s bottom. ‘Look at this. It’s been cut with a water-knife.’
Zeno inspected the walls. ‘Well, we know they’ve been doing a lot of pressurized water work . . . Janet Lento went missing on a tanker run to the local river. But you’re right. For quick entry, they should have used shaped charges. Go in dirty and only get delicate when they’ve got a good start behind them and want to avoid tunnel collapse.’
‘If there are any closet environmentalists on this team, they’re still hiding deep in that closet,’ said Lana. ‘They practically carved their base site out of the jungle with low-yield nukes. This world’s reaching its sell-by date . . . nobody here’s going to be restoring the landscape and planting two trees f
or every one they cut down. So why choose a scalpel over a saw?’
‘Only one way to find out,’ sighed Zeno. Lana knew how he felt. She glanced down the tunnel. People disappearing. First the driver and now Calder. In Lana’s experience, people only vanished like that when they’d stumbled across something they shouldn’t have. And she had a feeling that the other end of this tunnel was just packed full with shouldn’t have. She checked her rifle and the two of them slipped down the passage. Everything about these tunnel works feels too clean. As though Professor Sebba’s people were laying a subway system, not ripping rare-earth minerals out of the planet for a fast offworld sale. The tunnel led them straight under the mountain and stayed flat, a few side-chambers drilled out on the way, but only to hold mining equipment rather than serious attempts to mine into the rock. It feels as though we’re heading for the heart of the mountain. Too deep now for their phones to have any chance of contacting the shuttle for help. After five minutes of exploration, the tunnel terminated with two antechambers. The first chamber had a circle painted on the floor like a target.
Zeno knelt down by the paint. ‘This is where they’re planning to deploy that nanotech mining virus we brought along. Looks like they’re going to be burning out one hell of a big shaft here.’
‘Let’s see what the other chamber holds.’
The answer was nothing she had expected: a narrow vertical tunnel drilled into the floor of the room; a dark unlit well ominously waiting with no hint of what lay below. A metal rack had been fixed on the rock wall with crude industrial epoxy that ran down to the floor in white rivulets. Inside the rack sat a series of gravity chutes, hand-held units like dark plastic knuckledusters that could lower or lift their owner as though the person occupied an invisible elevator.
Zeno whistled. ‘They’re the most expensive thing I’ve seen on this planet.’
‘Alliance tech,’ said Lana. Anti-gravity floats were common enough in the lawless fringes of Edge space, but only in shuttles, trucks and industrial loaders. Miniaturization at this level cost big bucks. Probably military, special forces-grade. Far too fancy for mining.
The android found a piece of thumb-sized rubble and dropped it down the dark shaft, listening for its landing with his enhanced hearing. He shook his head. ‘Long ways down. I can control my claustrophobia. How about you?’
‘This shaft’s been drilled slow and careful. Whatever they’re after is down there.’ A shaft this narrow was going to drop a long way down, otherwise they would have opened it out wider. A rescue shaft to a deeper part of the mine? But if so, where is the mine’s entrance, because we certainly didn’t pass it up here? A single power cable ran along the room before disappearing into the well, stapled to the sides and powering whatever needed energy below. Good for some lights, maybe, please.
Zeno took an anti-gravity float off the rack and tossed a second unit to Lana. ‘The phrase “like a rat down a drain-pipe” comes to mind.’
‘Check the power cell on your float,’ said Lana, examining hers. ‘Going down is one thing. But I want this to be a return trip.’
‘Amen to that, sister.’ Zeno went over to the edge of the well, shrugged, and stepped into darkness. The chute instantly detected the drop and activated, the android sinking into darkness and disappearing. Lana felt like a coward for not volunteering to go down first. This side-trip was my idea. But it made sense for him to go before her. Zeno was a lot harder to kill than she was, ten times as strong and could see in the dark to boot.
Lana stared warily into the circle of darkness. She really didn’t want to fall down there, but what choice did she have now? Second rat coming. Lana lifted the float over her head as though it was the handle of an umbrella and stepped into the void. For a terrible second she thought she was going to plummet to her death, the tug of gravity around her ankles, but then she felt the device vibrate into life and the chamber slide out of view, replaced by darkness. The only illumination Lana could see was a tiny green light blinking on the side of the chute. She could feel warmth rising from below, the air coming up from somewhere deep and hot. She resisted the urge to test the float’s ability at rising as well as arresting her fall, allowing herself to drift ever down. The shaft’s sides gently banged into her at times, and she had to use her boots to push herself into what passed for the centre of her narrow descent. Not wide enough to permit two people to fall side by side, that was for sure. No wonder the miners needed a modern mining virus to open up a second shaft. Nobody is bringing minerals up this pipe. She tried shutting her eyes but it made no difference. As dark with her eyelids open as it was when they were closed. Her descent lasted half an hour. Lana was used to enclosed suits in vacuum, walking the Gravity Rose’s hull on magnetized boots, the endless void of deep space. She had never thought of herself as claustrophobic. This shaft was almost enough to change that. At first she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. But no, the sides of the tunnel were definitely shifting from inky black to dark grey. Illumination below, somewhere, growing lighter with every foot she descended. Her float detected a surface below, and it began slowing, and then suddenly the shaft’s walls passed out of sight and she landed inside a chamber deep underground. Zeno waited for her, standing by a rack similar to the one they had left behind, a selection of gravity chutes stored on the wall.
Lana’s legs trembled on contact with the hard rock floor. Fear or relief, I’m not sure which. Lana counted four chutes on the wall rack. Zeno had wisely attached his to his equipment belt, leaving nothing about their exit to chance. Lana did the same and looked around. A chamber the same size as the one above, a single passage leading out.
‘Are those chutes spares, do you think? Or do we have company down here?’ asked Lana.
‘Nobody else walking or talking that I can hear with the trusty android super-lugs,’ said Zeno. ‘Let’s hope they’re stored in case of equipment failure.’
‘If the missing driver is down here, it would explain why nobody’s found her in the jungle yet.’
‘Hell of a lot effort to water-knife a shaft this deep just to dig a cell,’ said Zeno. ‘Kick her outside of the mine’s fence and she would be lunch for the local mega-fauna soon enough.’
Lana grimaced. My hopes of finding Calder tied up down here have almost vanished too. Pity, it would have been good to have my prejudices against the professor confirmed. ‘If this is a working mine, I’m a carrier commander.’
They took the single exit, exploring a tunnel little larger than a corridor on Lana’s ship, bare walls and simple electric lighting. It stretched out for a minute or two’s walk, before terminating in a rough rock wall, bare except for a single instrument panel. Zeno inspected the panel. ‘I think this is a power interface.’
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ said Lana. ‘All this way down here, only to lead us into a dead end? The money they’ve spent getting this far? Why plan opening a second bigger shaft down here? This must be the dictionary definition of “money pit”. Is there a concealed entrance?’
Zeno opened his mouth but said nothing – at least, nothing within Lana’s range of hearing. He ultrasounded their surroundings. ‘Solid rock all around us for hundreds of feet. No openings or concealed doors.’ He turned his attention back to the panel. ‘So, what does this do?’
‘As long as it isn’t drown us in sand or start the walls moving towards us, I’ll be happy.’
‘Sure isn’t an intercom to the surface,’ said Zeno. ‘There’s no wireless connection available this deep.’ His little finger broke open and a cable snaked out, interfacing with a port at the bottom of the panel. As soon as the connection was made a screen in the panel’s centre started rapidly scrolling with moving numbers, blinking green against black. ‘I think this is a lock.’
What to? ‘Can you break it?’
‘Not by brute force. But give me a second and I can trick its memory into repeating the last code entered. From the time stamp it was entered a couple of hours ago. You might want to get
ready to tear back to the shaft, you know, in case a large granite sphere starts rolling down the corridor.’
‘I was joking about drowning in sand.’
‘Let’s hope whoever installed this panel feels the same,’ said Zeno. ‘Three, two, one . . .’
Lana leapt back as the wall started to shimmer. It disappeared, revealing a long horizontal tunnel stretching ahead. This tunnel was different, though. Its walls seemed to be made of a shiny black substance, slightly wet, and the ceiling glowed green as though the rock had just been nuked. ‘Hey, I thought you said that wall was solid rock, not a hologram?’
‘It was solid rock,’ said Zeno. ‘Jeez. Abracadabra . . . now you see it, now you don’t.’
Lana ran her hand where the wall had been. ‘It had to be a hologram!’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Zeno. ‘The operations I sensed within the panel were too complex for that. I think they were activating a smart matter sequence.’
‘Programmable matter?’ laughed Lana. ‘That’s science fiction. Doesn’t exist.’
‘Not quite,’ said Zeno. ‘There’s one species believed to have made extensive use of smart matter. The Heezy.’
Lana’s eyes narrowed. ‘They’ve been extinct for billions of years.’
Zeno pointed to the passage behind them. ‘Careful tunnelling with water-knives and no explosives. That’s not mining. That’s archaeology.’
Lana’s heart sank. Nobody knew much about the Heezy. But that was only because every time one of their artefacts, fossilized ships or long-abandoned settlements was discovered, the Triple Alliance moved in and shut everything down, classifying every rumour and report about the find within a light-year-wide exclusion zone. The one thing Lana knew was the same history every spacer had on file. How the Triple Alliance had been fighting the Skein in a war seven-hundred years ago, and humanity and its two allied species had been badly losing against their nearly indestructible virtual enemies. Until a human colony dome had found something – a very nasty Heezy something – buried under the ice of Neptune. And whatever it was had given the alliance the capability to turn Skein systems into smouldering ruins, one by one, until the Skeins had finally had to acknowledge defeat. An uneasy peace that had lasted to the current day.