In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘What happened to the last group of slaves who worked here?’ asked Willow. ‘Why is the station empty?’

  Cannelle Ram looked pained at the memory. ‘The rock we were working broke apart and fell into the dead zone. It happens. There was an accident in the blasting powder stores – a detonation that blew our claim into pieces. Some survived, but not many. Most of the dead were Weylanders, the same as you, but taken years before. Sky mining is dangerous. You can choke on poison outgassing or be torn apart by shrapnel blasts of lava. Bad mining or plain bad luck can shatter a rock with too few antigravity stones to hold each piece stable in the sky, sending hundreds plummeting to their deaths. There are cave-ins and natural gas explosions and blasting powder deaths and limbs lost to machinery. But all of that pales in comparison to what happens here.’ He tapped the inner circle he had drawn. ‘This central area is where the ejecta mass is blown from each new eruption. It is open sky for any station to stake a claim to new rocks before we tow them into our territory. And out there, there are no rules or laws to protect us from the ambitions of Helrena Skar’s siblings. When we find a good claim, we must fight to keep it.’ The head of the dormitory noticed the look of horror on Willow’s face. ‘That’s the real danger of working in the sky mines. Not the stratovolcano or working the rocks, but our fellow slaves from neighbouring territories. You must fight to survive, or the rock you land on will become your grave.’

  Duncan and Willow settled into the bare dormitory as best as they could. The station was only used as a barracks, long since mined-out but retained as living quarters because of its structural integrity. Princess Helrena Skar’s territory held no more deposit-bearing rocks captured to mine. Her new slave force from Weyland had arrived for training during the fallow period; waiting for the next eruption to bring them a stake. There was little natural light inside the warren of passages and vaults. Most corridors were bare of portholes, only the transporter hangars and a few air vents on the top of the station to give a view on to the stratovolcano’s all-enveloping smoke and the fetid humid air outside. With the heat clinging to every corner of their chamber, Duncan never missed his sheets. The loss of privacy was another matter entirely. Even the lowliest servant at Hawkland Park had more seclusion than they did in the dormitory here. No sanctuary in the shower chambers either, where water blasted you clean for all of a minute until the sweating started anew, men and women expected to shed all modesty together. The place was clearly designed to break slaves down, discard the last vestiges of being a free citizen. Property, not people. Also unfamiliar to Duncan were the day-to-day tasks they were expected to perform alongside their training. Washing tunics and clothes in massive stone tubs, uniforms stirred like soup with paddles. Cooking the food issued to them, preparing it in communal eating areas shared with the other dormitories, those spaces made unbearably hot by ovens and gas boilers. Strange-looking root vegetables and pulses and tiny quantities of meat, all boiled together in vats that were little different from the vessels where the slaves’ rags were cleaned. Evenings spent fixing rips and tears and darning their clothes. Acclimatising to the enforced novelty of being kept constantly busy by menial tasks, surrounded by people all the time – and none of them Duncan’s servants. But keeping busy was necessary to stop yourself dwelling on what you used to be; on what Duncan might be doing now if only he had stayed at home that day, rather than visiting the warehouses. When he wasn’t attacking the array of common chores, he divided his time between searching the station for Adella and learning everything he could about the sky mines. Anything that might help him, the woman he loved and his sister survive. Strangest thing were the flies. You couldn’t leave your rations for a second without insects buzzing around the gruel. How the hell they flew this high, he would never know. Maybe they just followed the stench of so many sweating bodies crammed into a hollowed-out rock.

  He explored the station’s maze of mine tunnels with Willow, following numbered passages in search of the other dormitories. There were graffiti in every corridor, chipped out of rock with hammers and steel gouges designed for mining. Insults, prayers, names, art, dates, declarations of love, declarations of despair. Their presence gave every passage its own character and helped the new slaves learn to navigate the labyrinth of tunnels, stairwells and chambers hewn out of the rock. Eventually, Duncan found the chamber containing Adella.

  Willow grabbed Duncan as he caught sight of the man by Adella’s cot. Carter Carnehan! The smug look on Carter’s face as he saw Duncan enter the dormitory was just a little more than the heir to Hawkland Park could stand. ‘Enough!’ Willow hissed at him. ‘Didn’t you learn anything back in the skels’ punishment cell?’

  I learnt how good it felt to stick my fist in that selfish fool’s face. ‘I won’t swing for him if he doesn’t go for me first. That’s more than he deserves, Willow.’ Duncan strode up to Adella’s cot. ‘I was wondering why you hadn’t come looking for me. I guess now I know.’

  ‘This is just where I ended up,’ said Adella. She met his gaze without a trace of shame or embarrassment. ‘After the fight the last time we were together, staying out of your way seemed the safest thing.’

  ‘Safe,’ snorted Duncan. ‘People who hang about with this hothead don’t end up safe; they end up like the idiots who followed him down into the old town.’

  ‘Not much that’s safe here, as far as I can see,’ said Carter. ‘Apart from a handful of maintenance staff on the station and a few old hands, you notice anyone over forty? We’re equal here, Duncan. Both shit. Just the muscle behind a pick and shovel, all owned by the same folks who paid for the spade.’ He pointed down the dormitory and Duncan recognised the others from the skels’ slave pen – the gask, Kerge, a few of the men from the town… Eshean and Joah. ‘We’re going to have to stick together to stay alive and we’re going to have to keep our wits about us to escape this flying prison.’

  ‘Carter’s making plans,’ said Adella. ‘He’s already talked to the sky miners, trying to learn how people have been caught escaping before.’

  Duncan shook his head in despair. ‘Escape? Escape to where? Even if we could get past the dead zone, we’d die of old age fleeing through foreign lands; places where every man and woman would know our brand and turn us in for the bounty on our heads.’

  ‘Not if we learn how to fly one of those Vandian warships and get home the same way we arrived,’ said Carter.

  ‘Would that be one of the big metal ones with thousands of heavily armed soldiers and crewmen? The kind patrolling the edge of the sky mines, just itching for a chance to turn their cannons on a handful of bare-arse slaves bearing shovels?’

  ‘Well, there’s the thing,’ said Carter, slapping the brand on his shoul­der. ‘Doesn’t make me a slave. This is just a scar on my arm, and I’m going to make the bastards that put it there pay for every inch of the thing.’

  ‘Talk sense, Carter!’ interrupted Willow. ‘Listen to yourself. There might well be a way for us to escape, but you’ve got to take your time, not do anything rash. Learn how the imperium works, learn what you would be escaping into. You’ll need maps, knowledge of their society, supplies, clothes to blend in – a plan that’s more than flinging a stolen pickaxe at the first Vandian soldier you run into.’

  ‘There’s not a library in the station with a section on slave escapes,’ sneered Adella.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Willow snapped back. ‘Because you’d have to be able to read it, and not just use the pages as toilet paper.’

  ‘I’ll leave when I’m ready,’ said Carter. ‘One thing’s for sure, I’m not going to die here like a worked-out plough horse in harness for these Vandian sons-of-bitches.’

  Duncan looked pleadingly at Adella. ‘Are you going to switch cots to my dormitory?’

  She shrugged. ‘You can switch across here if you want.’

  Those weren’t the words Duncan needed to hear. Couldn’t she see Carter was still using her? Just another weapon in their long, ongoing duel. He str
uggled for an argument he could throw at Adella to change her mind, but he had none. Duncan felt the bite of shame, of being bested in this mean manner. Being a Landor was currency that only worked at home, it seemed. Out here, his name was worthless. He was worthless. ‘I crossed cells for you on the skel carrier, and that didn’t work out so well, did it?’

  ‘All that we’ve got now, I reckon, is each other,’ said Carter. ‘You bunk down here if you want. As far as I’m concerned any fight we had is behind us, in Northhaven.’

  ‘I’ll stay where I landed,’ spat Duncan, trying to keep hold of his temper. ‘And if you get Adella hurt or dead in your wild schemes, we’ll find out how far our fight travels.’

  ‘You’re still a Landor, all right,’ said Carter. ‘Nurse a grudge for a million miles.’

  ‘You’ve got the distance about right, if nothing else,’ said Willow.

  ‘We’re a long way from your family’s fine and mighty name, Willow,’ said Carter. ‘The slave drivers running the sky mines don’t care if you’re a Landor or a Smith, just the tonnage you can dig out for them.’

  ‘At least they care about something that matters.’ Willow tugged Duncan away, back into one of the connecting tunnels. ‘Leave them. This isn’t helping anything.’

  Duncan followed reluctantly, another lump taken out of his pride. Willow shook her head, exasperated. ‘Of all the stubborn, pig-headed…’

  ‘I can’t believe that man,’ said Duncan. ‘All this way, so far from Northhaven and he still treats her like a gun dog on a hunt. Only fit to trot along behind him, while he makes up his mind which way he’s going.’

  ‘I think you should take a second look at which one’s the master and which one’s the hound,’ said Willow. She seized him by the arm. ‘I need your head fixed on staying alive in this hellhole, Duncan. Please. Not a single thought or tear or regret wasted on Adella Cheyenne. Not with us held prisoner here, no better than stolen ponies.’

  She was right. They were still family, still together, whatever else fate threw at them. ‘I’ll look out for you, Willow. You have my word on that.’

  ‘We’ll look out for each other, and I mean more than just the two of us. Because if we really are alone out here, every Northhaven man and woman on the station is going to need to pull together.’

  Hell, I couldn’t even save us back at home, could I? All three of us plucked from the riverbank by slavers. It’s no wonder Adella feels safer with Carter. I’ve driven her back into the arms of that blockhead. And, eventually, he’s going to give these Vandian slavers all the excuse they need to toss her corpse into their ugly damn volcano.

  SIX

  A RUDE AWAKENING

  A heavy splash of icy water brought Jacob back to a groggy conciousness. His hands had been bound behind his back, his legs tied tight near the ankles with rope. The pastor’s first thought was that he must have been captured by dog-riders, but as his eyes focused on the surroundings; he saw he was seated in a forest clearing. A line of army tents in Weyland colours had been pegged out in front of a rocky outcrop, four or five royal guardsmen on sentry duty. A groan to Jacob’s right drew his attention. Wiggins was tied to a tree with coils of rope, his face a patchwork mess of blood and bruises. Beneath the constable, Sergeant Nix was building a pile of kindling. Each of the trees in the clearing held a body, blackened and burnt remains of rail guild uniforms smouldering on the corpses.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ coughed Jacob, the hands of a soldier reaching down to grab Jacob’s black duster and drag him across the grass towards Sergeant Nix. The soldier emptied the rest of the cup of water in Jacob’s face by way of an answer.

  ‘This, Father,’ grinned Nix. ‘Is what we call… an interrogation.’

  ‘Where’s Major Alock?’

  ‘Oh, he’s gone back to the train to announce that you all died as heroes, courageously attempting to bring back the railway men’s bodies.’

  Jacob stared in horror at the burnt corpses ringing the clearing. ‘Sheplar, Khow!’

  Nix just laughed. ‘The leatherneck and your Rodalian friend are still snoring off the sleepy juice we slipped into your canteens. Don’t want you all awake at the same time.’ He raised a piece of kindling. ‘Only got two hands to work with, ain’t I? Roused Stumpy here first, thought he’d tell me what I need to know, and then we could just put bullets in the rest of your sleeping heads, do you the favour of a dog-rider bonfire after you’re dead.’

  ‘You’re a real friend,’ spat Wiggins, from the tree. His voice sounded hoarse, probably exhausted from screaming.

  ‘Sure I am, Stumpy. Remember you can stop it if you talk to me.’

  ‘I talk and you’re going to kill us all anyway.’

  ‘True enough,’ Nix smiled. ‘Otherwise you’d only go and tell everyone how those two money chests on the train weren’t lost to the dog-riders when it was taken to ransom the guildsmen.’

  ‘You’re ex-cavalry,’ spat Wiggins. ‘How the hell can you do this to us?’

  ‘Only served a year on the frontier,’ said Nix. ‘But that was all the time we needed to show the bandits it was healthier for ’em to move on to parts foreign.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ coughed Jacob.

  Nix turned around and booted Jacob in the stomach, sending him rolling across the grass. ‘That’s not how a questioning works, is it, Father? But I’ll tell the both of you, just so you know how far this is going to roll. A few years ago we were a mercenary regiment, Weyland men, fighting in the Burn for princes, dukes, barons, bishops – lots of fancy titles and most ruling over not much more land than the range of their best brutes’ guns. They called us the Army of Bad Justus. That’s a play on words, right. Bad justice. In the end we got ourselves more than just a name, we got an offer from the government at home too. To come back to Weyland with full pardons for all the shit we’d done over here that had made us cross the sea in the first place. All we had to do was get rid of the nomads, raiders, bandits and ne’er-do-wells plaguing the country out east. Easy work, because the one thing you get out in the Burn is an education in real soldiering.’ He indicated the blackened corpses tied to the tree trunks. ‘You think this was hard? Radioing ahead, getting a few friends to come down from Talekhard to bushwhack a train and that patrol of amateurs from Ivah? Taking a torch to a living soul is nothing compared to what we did in the Burn. Land’s seen centuries of blood spilt on the other side of the water, warring just for the pleasure of it. Hell, we really got to hone our craft.’ Nix plucked out a long, heavy lump of wood from the kindling under the constable. ‘Here’s the thing, Stumpy, I know you won’t talk to save yourself. I can tell the sort of man you are. But how about you watch me work the pastor over, just Mister Oak and me, before I light you up? Will you talk to save the churchman?’

  ‘You’ve already stolen a fortune in rare metals,’ said Jacob. ‘What the hell else do you want from us? The recommendation of a good bank back in the capital to stash your plunder?’

  ‘I need to know who’s supplying you with the skel slavers’ location. Not much to ask, is it? Don’t like leaving mysteries behind us, not the sort that might come looking for a couple of pilfered money chests.’

  ‘You can keep our money,’ pleaded Jacob, ‘but in the name of God, leave the four of us alive. I have to find my son. Please, I’m the only chance he has…’

  ‘Alive,’ snorted Nix, amused. ‘Your boy’s dead meat and you know it. So are you, your way or mine. Hell, none of my men are going to do it your way. We didn’t survive years soldiering in the Burn to die for you on a suicide mission.’

  Jacob hating pleading with this murdering thug. He knew what the answer would be, but he had no pride left. They had to stay alive to find Carter and the others. They had to. ‘Just let us go back to the train.’

  ‘It’s already left with the major. The six of us will be heading back on the maintenance train after we’ve finished “unsuccessfully” tracking the dog-riders. You and your friends only got tw
o choices, Father. Slow or quick. Which is it?’

  Jacob moaned, rolling over across the grass. ‘I’ll tell you how we were tracking the slavers. Bend down, so I can whisper it – your men must never know.’

  There was a spark of greedy curiosity in Nix’s eyes as the sergeant knelt down in the clearing’s damp grass.

  ‘I wrote the answer down on a piece of paper. Then, last night, I crept into the barracks car and stuck it up your arse.’

  Nix stood up, face grim, and tested the heft of the wooden club in his palm. ‘All you’ve got to waste is my time, Father.’

  He whiled away the rest of the afternoon on Jacob’s body.

  Carter sat in his dormitory, still savouring his moment of triumph when Duncan realised that Adella had no intention of following the big man of Northhaven. His reverie was broken by the arrival of more station staff. Sky miners had arrived to allocate work to the newcomers, one of the slaves carrying a machine on a strap around his neck – a scanner able to read the marks tattooed on their forearms and match slaves to their names and previous occupations. The sky miners showed great interest in Kerge – the gask’s mechanical talents meant he was a perfect candidate for the engineering pool – helping keep the station’s machinery oiled and running; as well as operating the survey equipment. Even Joah in the bunk opposite attracted their attention with his stone mason’s training, though with Joah’s shortsighted gaze peering at them through his thick spectacles, a more unlikely miner was hard to imagine. So, what opportunities are there for Carter Carnehan, son of a churchman and a reluctant librarian? He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Two sky miners stopped by his cot – the woman maybe four years older than Carter, the male slave the same age. The man carried the arm-scanning device while the woman had a pad of paper with work assignments listed. The female slave didn’t look old enough to be a sky-mining veteran. Adella eyed the woman suspiciously from the bunk next to his. Was it apprehension at the duties she might allocate Adella, or a hint of jealousy at the new woman’s sharp, beautiful cheekbones, her skin as dark as polished ebony? That was one thing even an unobservant lunk like Carter had cottoned on to… as far as Adella was concerned, other women were always potential competition, never a potential friend.