Red Sun Bleeding (7 page)

‘Your carriage awaits,’ said Zeno.

‘It just has to get us through their fence,’ said Lana.

They mounted the vehicle and pulled the 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 for the mine’s protective perimeter, the engine up front idling before it cleared the gates and rumbled on towards its 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 get a look at what they’re digging out and hitch a ride out of here,’ said Lana. ‘Is there any indication that Calder’s been here?’

‘Not that I can see. 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 a paranoid like Dollar-sign Dillard to deploy. He doesn’t even trust his own people, let alone us.’

‘Well, that’s fine. Because with him, 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 yellow industrial-painted 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. She and Zeno picked their way towards the tunnels at the foot of the mountain, using the empty vehicles for cover. Most of their illumination came from a perimeter fence circling the mine three hundred yards away, the peaks above casting heavy shadows in the triple-moons’ light. The fence wasn’t much different from the one that surrounded the main base. Automated sentry guns on tall posts scanning 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 would be back in the main base, 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 natural rock-falls. The mine head was a fraction of the size of the main base and its landing fields. But then, all the fence looked to be protecting here was a vehicle park and a few equipment sheds. She 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 was more noticeable for what was missing.

Lana nudged the android. ‘Where’s the storage silos for the ores they’re extracting? All those expensive drums full of promethium, samarium, gadolinium?’

‘Maybe they haven’t hit the mother-lode yet?’

‘They’ve spent a lot of money and time for the sniff of a promise, if that’s the case,’ said Lana. ‘Does that sound like the Dollar-sign you know?’

‘Always seemed more of a sure thing-guy to me.’

‘Precisely.’

With the exception of the automated forklift tasked with 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 of the passages cutting into the mountain’s brooding weight, taking cover behind a pile of hydraulic tunnel supports waiting to be carried into the mine. ‘Any temperature variance in there to suggest someone’s still working?’

‘Just you, me and the hamster-sized mosquitoes,’ said Zeno. ‘Of course, if they’ve got other androids working in there, 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 staff in the guard post 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 crossed the open space fast, reaching the tunnel mouth and vanished into cover. A tunnel, twenty feet high, wide enough to accommodate the digging equipment they had crept past. A chain of electric lights hung from the rock ceiling, thick green cables stapled into the walls. Two sets of narrow rails, so they could run trucks in and out simultaneously. Zeno examined the sides of the walls, then put a finger to his mouth and crept back into the open again. Lana waited nervously, not wanting to go any deeper down the tunnel without the android, anxious about being discovered every second she stayed here exposed like this. 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 out of here. There’s no sign of exploratory digging around the mountain. Normally, the slopes would be left like Swiss cheese 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 going immediately. Like they knew exactly where to start. Ground penetrating radar is good, but not
that
good. It’s like Olympus Mons on Mars 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? This stinks,’ said Lana. ‘It 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 edge of the tunnel, running her finger across the rock. ‘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, you’d use shaped charges. Go in dirty and only get delicate when you’ve got a good start behind you and want to avoid tunnel collapse.’

‘If there are any closet environmentalists on this team, they’re still hiding deep in their closet,’ said Lana. ‘They practically carved their base site out of the jungle with low-yield nukes. This world’s on its sell-by date… nobody here’s going to be restoring the landscape and planting two trees for 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 packed with
shouldn’t have
. She checked her rifle and the two of them slipped down the passage. Everything about these tunnel works felt too clean to her. As though Professor Sebba’s people were laying a subway system, not ripping rare-earth minerals out of the planet for a quick offworld sale. The tunnel led them straight ahead and stayed flat, a few side chambers drilled out on the way, but only to hold mining equipment rather than a serious attempt to dig into the ground. It felt as though they were heading for the heart of the towering mountain. Too deep now for their phones to have any chance of contacting the shuttle for help. After five minutes of walking, the tunnel terminated into two antechambers. The first hollow had a circle painted on the floor like a target.

Zeno knelt down by the circle. ‘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 wasn’t what she had been expecting. A narrow vertical tunnel had been drilled into the floor of the room; a dark unlit well ominously waiting for them with no hint of what lay below. A metal rack had been fixed on the rock wall with crude industrial epoxy that had run down to the floor in white rivulets. In the rack lay a series of gravity chutes, hand-held units like dark plastic knuckledusters that could lower or lift their owner as though they 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 to 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 way 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 made it bigger. A rescue shaft to a deeper part of the mine? But if so, where was the mine’s entrance, because they certainly hadn’t passed it up here? A single power cable ran along the room before disappearing into the well, stapled to the sides and powering whatever need energy below. Good for some lights, maybe. Hopefully.

Zeno took an anti-gravity float off the rack and tossed a second one 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 had been her 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 started warily into the circle of darkness. She really didn’t want to go 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 grab 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 she could see was a tiny green light blinking on the side of the chute. She could feel the warmth below, the air coming up from somewhere deep and hot. She resisted the urge to test the float’s ability at rising as well arresting her fall, allowing herself to drift ever down. The shaft’s side gently banged into her at times, and she had to use her boots to push herself away. Not wide enough to permit two people to fall side by side, that was for sure. No wonder they needed a modern mining virus to open up a second shaft. Nobody was bringing minerals up this pipe. She tried shutting her eyes but it made no difference. As dark with her eyelids open as closed. Her descent lasted half an hour. She 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 a 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, and growing lighter with every foot she descended. Her float had detected a surface below, as it began slowing, and then suddenly the shaft’s walls passed out of sight and she was in a chamber deep underground. Zeno was waiting for her, standing by a rack similar to the one they had left behind, a selection of gravity chutes.

Her legs trembled on contact with the hard rock floor. Fear or relief, she wasn’t sure which. Lana counted four chutes on the wall rack. Zeno had wisely attached his to his equipment belt, leaving nothing about his exit to chance. Lana did the same and looked around. A landing 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,’ said Zeno. ‘Let’s hope they’re 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 out beyond the base or the mine’s fence and she would be lunch for the local mega-fauna soon enough.’

Lana grimaced. Her hopes of finding Calder tied up down here had almost vanished too. Pity, it would have been good to have her prejudices against the professor confirmed. ‘If this is a working mine, I’m a carrier commander.’

They took the single exit, a tunnel little bigger 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 to a dead end? The money they’ve spent getting this far? Why plan opening a second bigger shaft down here? This is like 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 was ultrasounding 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?’