I swept my gaze across the mining machinery that looked like the rotting corpses of giant alien insects. I did not see the kabebe nor could I hear its angry cheeps or clicks. It was like the thing had simply evaporated. I was beginning to wonder if kabebes had developed teleportation technology when I came around a chunk of twisted metal and saw the hole in the far wall.
A circular opening, about five feet around, had been cut in the center of the wall. The bottom of the hole was even with my eyes. Its edges were rough, like it had been dug with hand tools, unlike the machine-cut wall it was dug into. A hill of sand and small rocks formed a ramp leading up to the opening. There was only one place that hill could have come from... it was obviously decades-worth of debris that had been scooped out of that hole. I had found the kabebe mine.
I climbed up. The hill was not used to human footsteps. Tiny landslides cascaded down the slope behind me with every step I took. I did a little slipping and sliding... once I fell forward and crawled for several feet... but I eventually gained the summit.
The top of the hole was just beneath my chin. It was too small for a human to walk upright, too big for a kabebe to touch the ceiling, and just right to accommodate a giant rat with a full load of cargo. I bent over and peered inside. It was pitch black. The weak light in the chamber did not put a dent in the darkness in there. It looked like a black circle painted on a solid wall. It was hot too... way hotter than the chamber. I could feel it on my face, like my skin was being cooked by invisible fire. The sweat pouring from my brow flowed even faster. My hat was soaked through. It felt like a warm, wet rag weighing heavy on my head.
I thought about going in there, creeping through the dark, the air sucking all the liquid out of my body, maybe running face first into the jaws of a giant rat. A dagger of anxiety jabbed me in the gut. Muscles all over my body clenched and refused to relax. A little voice in the back of my mind whispered that I did not have to go in that hole, that I could just walk away, that I could call this job a lost cause. I pushed the voice out of my mind. I had contracted to find innocent, little Penny McKellen and there was a chance that she might be in there. Giving up was not a viable option. That was all there was to it.
I loaded the last of my dope into my hypo-injector and fired it into my neck. The anxiety backed off a bit as the drugs hit my brain. It was not enough to kill the anxiety completely but my muscles were able to relax and free me from that pesky temporary paralysis. I made sure my soggy hat was firmly on my head, pulled my revolver out of my trenchcoat, and stepped into the hole.
The darkness swallowed me. I crept forward, hunched over to keep from cracking my head open on the ceiling, taking baby steps into the void. My revolver was in my right hand, pointed ahead, ready to kill the first thing that I ran into. My left arm was thrust out to the side, my hand running along the wall, the only way I had to judge my progress in the dark. The tunnel ran mostly straight, occasionally curving slightly to the left or right but always eventually returning to its original course. Other tunnels branched off the main drag. I knew of them only because my left hand would periodically lose contact with the wall for several moments. The branch tunnels seemed to be narrower than the main drag. I did not think they were wide enough to accommodate a giant rat. That was the only reason I did not try to explore them... well... that and the fact that I was fucking terrified of getting lost in that pitch black underground labyrinth.
The darkness was absolute. I could not see a damn thing and my other senses grew stronger to compensate. The air reeked like an animal’s lair. My nose was filled with a pungent stench that was half fecal matter and half rotting flesh. The stench intensified with every step. My taste buds were assaulted by the salt in my sweat and the occasional obscene flavor of the air when I made the mistake of breathing through my mouth. My sense of touch was overloaded. The hot air baking my skin and cooking my lungs, the comparatively cool droplets of sweat running down my arms and legs and face, the warm and soggy pressure of my fedora pressing down on my head, the rough rock beneath my left hand and the smooth pistol grip in my right... they all competed for my attention. I tried to focus on my ears most of all. I strained to hear any approaching threats... but all I could hear was my own scraping footsteps and labored breath... and the roaring silence from the darkness ahead of me.
I stalked onward, slowly sliding my feet forward to keep from tripping over some invisible obstruction. My left hand slid off the wall and fell on open air. Anxiety flared in my chest. I breathed deep to calm myself, fighting back a retch as that animal stink filled the back of my throat. It was probably just another side tunnel... no reason to get my panties in a twist... but my body was not in the mood to listen to reason. I took a step, then another, then another and my hand made contact with the wall again. The anxiety eased back to simple blind-in-a-hostile-environment levels.
I slid a foot forward... then froze. It was pure instinct, a threat-detecting sixth sense I had developed over decades of looking for trouble. I forced every shred of my attention out my ears. At first, I only heard my own breath and the rapid thump-thump-thump of my heart. Then a deep animal growl emanated from the darkness ahead of me. It was a rat. I knew that immediately. It was not right in front of me but it was close. I heard the growl again, followed by a hiss. The rat was getting closer.
My first impulse was to start blasting away. I quickly decided against that. Opening fire would have been the same as announcing my presence to every inhabitant of the mine. If I had started shooting, I would have had to make a hasty exit and I would not have been able to learn what I had gone there to learn.
I backed up until my hand fell upon the open air that was the mouth of the most recent side tunnel. It was much narrower than the main tunnel. I turned my body sideways and sidled into the opening, keeping my revolver pointed toward the main drag. It was an awkward fit. My back scraped against the tunnel wall behind me. I had to stay scrunched down to keep from banging my head on the ceiling and, therefore, my bent knees scraped against the wall in front of me. The tunnel curved sharply about five feet in. I sidestepped around the bend, moving as fast as I could to avoid being detected, and sidestepped right into a wall. I pawed the rock with my left hand, frantically searching for an opening, but it quickly became apparent that the side tunnel was a dead end. I was trapped. Five feet and a slight bend was all that separated me from the main drag and the giant rat coming down it.
The growling got closer. The heavy footsteps of a large animal thumped their way down the main drag. I heard the cheeping and clicking of several kabebes talking at once. There were too many voices for my translator implant to decipher. It was all high-pitched gibberish... but that was fine. I did not need to understand them. If they detected my presence, their tone would tell me all I needed to know.
The noises reached the mouth of the side tunnel. I froze, trying to stay as quiet as possible. I breathed slow and deep, but my breath still sounded horrifically loud in my ears. Giant rat footsteps thumped past the opening. A handful of kabebe voices followed. Then another rat went by followed by another collection of kabebes. A third rat began to thump across the opening... and suddenly stopped. I heard a loud, long hiss come from five feet away.
I held my breath. If I could have held my heartbeat, I would have done that too... anything to keep the kabebes from discovering me. There was nothing to do about the rat. The thing had smelled me. That was not exactly a surprise... I had been pissing out of my pores since I had stepped foot in the mine... but that did not change the potentially disastrous consequences of smelling like a sweat and ass-funk aromatherapy candle. I pointed my revolver at the darkness, placing my finger on the trigger, something I had been trained never to do until I intended to fire. I waited for something to happen.
I heard a single kabebe speak. “What the fuck, you stupid fucking rat,” it said in its obnoxious high-pitched language. “Fucking move!”
The rat moved, but not in the direction I had hoped for. Footsteps thumped de
eper into the side tunnel. A low, predatory growl drifted at me from the darkness, much closer than before.
“Do you fucking smell something?” the kabebe cheeped. “It’s a dead fucking end. What the fuck do you motherfucking smell?”
The rat hissed again. I heard a grinding sound as it tried to wedge itself farther into the side tunnel. I prepared to fire.
Another kabebe cheeped and clicked from farther up the main drag. “What the fuck is the fucking hold-up?”
“This fucking rat fucking smells something!” the first kabebe clicked.
“It’s probably just some motherfucking rat shit! Get fucking moving! We need to get this motherfucking load fucking topside and we’ve got a long motherfucking way to go!”
“Fucking come on, you stupid fucking rat,” the first kabebe cheeped. “Fucking move!”
The rat hissed again. It sounded like it was almost on top of me. I heard that grinding sound again. My trigger finger twitched. Then a little voice from my subconscious told me that the grinding sounded slightly different from before. A slight glimmer of hope lit up a back corner of my brain.
The grinding continued. It became apparent that the little voice had been correct. This new grinding was from the rat backing up. Once it was out, the kabebe drove it down the main drag, with the rat hissing and growling the whole way. I swear, it sounded like giant rodent frustration and disappointment.
No fourth kabebe/rat team followed. I waited while the sounds of the convoy faded then died away completely... and I finally allowed myself to breathe.
I eased myself out of the side tunnel and continued down the main drag. The encounter with the rat had fried my nerves. My instinct was to move even more cautiously than before. Logic and reason argued for the opposite. There was no telling when another convoy would be going out or coming in.
I ran through the dark. My left hand traced the wall. My right hand gripped my revolver, pointing it dead ahead. My body was hunched forward and my head was ducked down. I moved as fast as I could in that environmentally-handicapped state. I think that I covered a lot of ground.
The tunnel made a sharp turn. It happened so abruptly that I blundered into the wall. My right hand bent back and my face slapped the rock. Fireworks flashed behind my eyes. I felt something warm and wet flow over my nose and wash over my lips. The coppery flavor of blood mixed with the salty taste in my mouth. I took a short stumble backwards. I was bringing my arm up to wipe my nose when I realized that I could see.
Dim light was coming from somewhere up ahead. The sides of the tunnel were just barely visible, a slightly darker black than the air in between them. They ran on a straight path down to a weak yellow light that waxed and waned erratically like a miniature dying star. I forgot about my achy wrist and bloody nose. I pointed my revolver at the light and moved toward it.
The light got brighter as I approached. The tunnel walls gained definition. The rough-hewn irregular curves of rock looked like the skin of an endless tumor-infested black snake. I began to hear sounds. I heard some that were entirely expected... the cheeping and clicking of many kabebes and the growling and hissing of giant rats. I heard some that made sense... the banging and ringing of metal tools on rock. I heard some that were unpleasant, but not entirely unexpected... shouts and screams that sounded distinctly human and young. The light and the sound both grew in intensity and clarity with each step that I took down the tunnel.
I emerged onto an outcropping overlooking an expansive open space that dwarfed the mining equipment graveyard I had come from. I ducked behind a nearby boulder, then poked my head out to get a better look. A slope led from the outcropping down into a large-scale mining operation. It had been centuries since a mine of this size had operated within the spaceport.
My attention was first drawn to the children. The area below was an enormous shallow bowl. It was filled with young human laborers. There were hundreds of them, both male and female, ranging in apparent age from five to fifteen standard-years. They were all filthy. They were all clothed in rags. They all looked like they were either starving or in the process of getting there.
The kabebes were there as well. There were some on the rim of the bowl, at fuel ore collection sites fifty feet above the mining floor. There were some riding giant rats among the children, armed with electric whips and magnetically-propelled projectile weapons. There were a lot of kabebes... however, they were drastically outnumbered by their child slaves.
There were children working fuel ore veins at dozens of locations smattered around the bowl. There were children swinging pickaxes and shovels, children removing rubble from the veins by hand, children pulling carts piled high with rocks. There were children turning massive wheels that powered the machinery that crushed large rocks into pebbles and the conveyor belts that moved those pebbles around. There were children filling ore-sacks with pebbles. There were children hoisting those sacks up to the ore collection sites using the expansive rope and pulley system that crisscrossed the air above the bowl like vines in a jungle canopy.
There were so many children, hundreds upon hundreds of children, that I found myself wondering how in the holy blue fuck their disappearance had gone unnoticed in the spaceport. I felt an unfamiliar twinge of emotion at the thought. A part of me, albeit a small part, wanted to liberate them all. I smothered that part before it had a chance to grow. I knew that there was nothing I could do to free these children and, besides, I had a very specific job to do.
I looked out over the mass of children, trying to visually divide it into manageable chunks and pan my eyes over them, chunk by chunk by chunk. I started at the far wall and worked my eyes across the bowl. It quickly became apparent that I was wasting my time. There were too many kids. My eyes kept skipping and backtracking and getting blurry and occasionally inadvertently zeroing in on something shiny. To make matters worse... the children all looked the same. Some were really short and some were less-short but, aside from that, they were all dirt-covered emaciated bundles of walking rags. Sorting through them all without being detected by their kabebe guards was going to be the most difficult part of the case thus far.
I dropped my gaze from the far side of the bowl and rubbed the blur out of my eyes. I was pulling my head back behind the boulder when something caught my eye. It was not something shiny... it was something red.
My eyes homed in on a shock of bright red hair almost directly beneath the outcropping. It was a tangled mess and streaked with dirt but the vivid red color was still unmistakable. My focus expanded to encompass the rest of the child. The kid was too caked with muck to determine gender but I could tell that he or she was approximately five feet tall, looked to be about seventy pounds, and was swinging a pickaxe in a left-handed manner. My focus narrowed on the kid’s face. The dirt there was thick but not thick enough to hide the minefield of freckles or the bright green eyes that I had been studying for the past two weeks. I was convinced... innocent, little Penny McKellen was alive... mining fuel ore for kabebe slavers barely thirty feet from me.
I slipped my revolver back into its holster then moved out from behind the boulder. I crept down the slope into the bowl. The kabebe guards were too few and far between to notice one adult human sneaking into the sea of children in their slave pit, even if he was dressed like a private investigator from Old Earth. I managed to reach the floor of the bowl without getting spotted.
I was a head taller than the crowd of slaves so I had to move in a perpetual crouch to avoid being seen. The children did not engage with me. They saw me. They knew I was there and that I was something different, but they avoided eye contact and moved away from me, as if I was an unwelcome disturbance. They scurried away when I approached and immediately returned to work once I had passed. It was like I was moving through a pack of animals in a barnyard. A ripple of disturbance surrounded me like an aura, marking my progress through the crowd.
I was worried that the guards would notice the disturbance. The nearest kabebe was about a hundred
feet away, presiding over the slaves from the back of a giant rat. It did not seem to have noticed the disturbance surrounding me like ripples in a lake. Its attention was occupied with firing bursts from its electric whip into the throng of slaves around it. Screams and howls rose up from wherever the bursts landed. These cries of agony were obviously made by human throats but there was no humanity in them. They were the cries of tortured animals. It was as if this place had caused the de-evolution of its captives, reducing these children to their most basic, primal nature.
Penny McKellen was swinging her pickaxe with frantic intensity. She rained down blows on the rock like she was dismembering a murder victim. I approached from directly behind her. The other child slaves working that vein noticed me and shied away. Penny did not turn... she was too intent on mutilating that rock. I stopped a couple feet behind the limit of her backswing and sank to my knees. My legs ached from crouch-walking for so long but I barely noticed it. My attention was dominated by the big-ass payday that was swinging a pickaxe just a few feet away.
“Penny,” I said.
She did not turn. She swung and swung, again and again, grunting like a grindle with a head cold with each swing.
“Penny McKellen!” I said, raising my voice.
Still nothing. She did not even flinch. She kept right on swinging away, slamming the head of the pickaxe into the rock over and over and over.
“Hey kid!” I yelled.
That did it. Penny McKellen spun around. She stood, staring at me, gripping the pickaxe with one hand, shoulders heaving like they were rapidly inflating and deflating with each breath she took. Her coveralls were so covered in muck it was impossible to discern the original color. Large ragged tears in her coveralls revealed bulging muscles that looked out of place on a twelve-year-old girl. The swatches of skin that showed through were as grimy as her clothes themselves but not enough to hide the array of cuts, scrapes, scars, and burns that marred her flesh. Her hair was a snarled, red and dirt-colored rat’s nest. Her eyes were the only part of her that was neither filthy nor wounded. They blazed at me like tiny balls of green fire.
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