Drop Mine
"Tough is worth something in our business, but tough and stupid will get you into trouble eventually."
(Part 6 of “The Misfits” series)
For Carolina Dreeson, the shock of meeting a secret cousin living amongst a secret society was merely another shock in a string of them. This one, she quickly found, was a happy one. Sparrow Dreeson was unlike any other Dreeson she’d ever met, and she’d met nearly everyone in her elite tribe. He talked openly about the things that the most rebellious in the family only dared mention in hushed tones to fellow black sheep. And Carolina herself, had only ever caught the briefest fragments of such conversations, until the eyes of the adults noticed the onlookers from her generation. Then silence, or a scolding and a sending off so the grown-ups could talk further. And since she’d become an adult herself, Carolina had only ever caught hints of discontent, as though the elders had already taken their measure of her and slotted her in the appropriate compartment—one of the good ones for keeping up appearances. Only they’d missed on Carolina if they thought she was going to smile for them and shut up. If she was going to be slotted anywhere, it was going to be in the same compartment as Sparrow—family outlaw—at least until she got some explanations.
Carolina, Transom, and Maícon spent several days in the dim light of that rotating cylinder habitat in orbit of Exos. Sparrow educated Carolina on the forbidden history of the Dreeson clan, at least as far as he knew it. Unfortunately, though, even as well as he’d known Sayla, he had no definitive answers that shone any light on the reasons behind her suicide—or apparent suicide, as he’d called it.
“You don’t think it was?” Carolina asked him when he expressed doubt.
“One never knows,” was his response. “I put nothing past the people in power, especially when it comes to keeping secrets secret, and there’s no better way to keep secrets secret than killing the ones who know them.”
Transom, meanwhile, grew uncharacteristically quiet while in the company of this splinter society. He never quite left Carolina’s orbit, even when it was clear she was perfectly safe in Sparrow’s company. But he was often at a distance, lurking in the dim corners, observing, taking a measure of who these people were and how their underground society operated. He’d rarely been long enough in the company of Trasp to see how they carried themselves. Usually, he killed them before there was time to figure out what they were about. As such, it was difficult for him to tell whether these outlaw Trasp were so far different from the norm. But he could still see the sharp corners in their movements, the businesslike way they scanned their surroundings, even in a safe environment like the cylinder. They were entirely different from Carolina’s people or even Burch’s people from the Letters. They weren’t so different from Etterans, though. And Transom could see when they saw him too. They’d always been a worthy enemy. He quietly wondered if they’d ever make worthy friends, or at the very least, willing noncombatants.
Four days after Yankee-Chaos departed for Trasp space, the Rippa Valley, a small cruiser the group employed as a currier ship, arrived at Exos. Sparrow had reserved it for the next step in Carolina’s journey, and he’d planned on being her escort.
Pax Heavy, he explained, was a mining outpost just outside Trasp territory on the eastern side of the Betas. One of the names on Sayla’s list of contacts lived there, a man named Herald Wright, one of the heads of mining operations—a mayor of sorts for part of the outpost. The Pax Heavy drop mine was a four-day trip, and the Rippa Valley barely had room enough for four people in the flight deck, with hardly enough space in the cargo block for luggage and travel rations. It was so tight that Maícon had to stow his body in the undercarriage, which he was willing to do, because he intended to project his consciousness to the ship itself so he could pilot. The fourth human member of the party was one of Sparrow’s guards, a Trasp soldier named Atlas, who sat beside Transom in one of the two jump seats behind Sparrow and Carolina.
“Say what you will about Burch and his oddball crew,” Transom said, “but at least he’s got a ship with some headroom and legroom and…well, a few rooms.”
“A table big enough for Sabaca would be nice on a trip like this, but this’ll get us there. It will, right?” Carolina said, looking at Sparrow.
“The ship’s reliable,” Sparrow said, turning to address Transom and Atlas. “And there’s plenty to entertain on the ship’s VR network. Glasses are in the consoles.”
Transom grumbled. He didn’t much care for virtual reality. He’d had too much real reality in his life to see it as anything but a shiny diversion for stupid people—a child’s toy that serious people gave to sheep to get them to stop thinking and grow soft and passive. But there were ways to use it to great benefit in the real world. Transom almost always spent such time studying history—history of battles, political movements and strategy, and most importantly, economics as it related to military movements.
As Maícon pulled the ship away from the cylinder, Transom looked out at the planet below. Carolina and Sparrow grew quiet as well for the first time all morning.
“Something I’d like to ask you, Sebastian,” Sparrow said, addressing Transom again. “I was wary of you when you first came aboard, nearly instigating a firefight in the airlock annex, and then you’ve hardly said a word to anyone in four days. What settled you down, after all?”
“You only have to tell everyone who’s in charge once, as long as they believe you,” Transom said. “After that it’s just wasted breath.”
“And you think you’re in charge, boss?” Atlas said, looking over at Transom.
Transom shook his head, turning back toward Sparrow. “You may want to consider surrounding yourself with some smarter people, Kenn. Tough is worth something in our business, but tough and stupid will get you into trouble eventually.”
“Tact is also useful occasionally,” Carolina said. “I’d love it if you looked up that word at some point over the next four days, Sebastian.”
“First thing I’ll do, ma’am,” Transom said, smiling. “You have my word on it. The second we jump.”
Their trip to Pax Heavy—four days crammed in that tiny cruiser—transits like that took a body down to the bolts. Transom hadn’t felt so rundown since his recovery from getting fragged by Clem Aballi. Ninety-six hours later, when they finally climbed out onto the space station orbiting Pax Heavy, Transom found himself breathing hard just walking down the spinning outer causeway. And that distraction, the fatigue, the weight of the spin gravity, it left him below the top of his game, which he did not like, given the surroundings.
They called Pax Heavy a drop mine. It was basically a big, dead metallic rock with a dull, soupy atmosphere and little human appeal beyond what could be stripped for resources. The mine was the sole reason there was any human settlement there at all. Nearly the entire population worked for the municipal mining corporation, which had been founded over a century before by a splinter group of Trasp miners and megastructure engineers. They’d been intrigued by the idea of building a civilization in segmented space towers, but the founders couldn’t muster the resources to build that first tower for several decades without help from outside investors. So in those early years they dropped teams and equipment from orbit and extracted raw materials by skyhook. These days Pax Heavy had seven enormous space towers and a spaceport in high orbit. The description of Pax as a drop mine had stuck, though, more out of habit than anything. From an industrial perspective, the place was impressive, but beyond the infrastructure and the commerce, there wasn’t much to recommend the outpost. For decades, life had almost solely revolved around strip mining the surface for raw metals for the Trasp Protectorate’s insatiable weapons program. Most of the mining was fully automated, so the humans there were occupied almost strictly as logistics and support personnel, keeping the machines moving metal from the ground into space for the continuously cycling Trasp freighters. Population growth had been almost perfectly level for generations. The spaceport where they’d docked was so drab and entirely devoid of a human touch, that even Transom noticed how unimaginative the causeways were. They were busy, though, which kept his eyes busy too.
The outpost wasn’t officially in Protectorate territory, but that didn’t mean all that much, as the Trasp were known for overextending influence in all manner of ways. Transom didn’t figure Carolina would be in any danger even if she was recognized. If anything, her being a Dreeson from Athos was closer to diplomatic immunity than being an actual diplomat from the Letters or independent systems, but one couldn’t be too careful so close to a war zone. Transom noticed that Atlas, a Trasp himself, seemed almost unconcerned about anything.
Sparrow had separate business for the network on the spaceport itself, but he’d arranged a shuttle for Carolina, Transom, and Maícon to Tower 4, at the base of which was Herald Wright’s operational headquarters. When Maícon attempted to contact Mr. Wright before departing, he received a message that he and his crew were out in the field on the planet’s surface. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to go down at that time, so the group split at the shuttle bay, Transom and Maícon accompanying Carolina, while Sparrow and Atlas remained on the station. None of the visitors expected to be there more than a day, but they also weren’t aware of the impending storm on the surface below yet. No one warned them in the shuttle either. It wasn’t until Carolina expressed her desire to descend at the carriage office that the word storm even came up.
“It’s safe in the tower and the surrounding structures,” the bot at Tower 4’s apex noted. “However, there is a hazard warning for all mining parties venturing out beyond the tower and a risk of carriage shutdown after the storm commences.”
“Carriage shutdown?” Carolina said. “Meaning we could get stuck down there?”
“Precisely,” the bot replied. “They are predicting moderate electrical activity in the lower atmosphere.”
“What’s the longest a tower carriage system has been shut down due to storms?” Transom asked.
“Fifty-seven hours,” the bot responded.
“Average length of shutdown due to weather?” Maícon asked.
“Seventeen hours.”
Carolina shrugged. “We didn’t come all this way to turn back regardless,” she said. “We need passage for three.”
“Boarding in seven minutes,” the bot said. “Farside gate. Follow the red line on the floor.”
They walked along the causeway, following the glowing line, and now, in the slightly less crowded space of Tower 4, Transom found it easier to track their surroundings. He got the sense from the way Carolina was carrying herself that she thought he was acting paranoid, but she didn’t say anything, and he didn’t stop monitoring a fairly broad perimeter as they approached the cabin within the elevator car.
As they descended, Carolina mostly looked out across the planet. Transom alternated between monitoring the descent and the glass door to their cabin, looking out into the corridor at the people passing. Who or what he was looking for was a mystery to Carolina, but she got the sense that something had put him on edge, and she decided to let it play out rather than ask him about it. She was still figuring Transom out.
The ride down was uneventful, save for the majesty that always accompanied a descent from space to the surface of any world, even a barren, lifeless rock like Pax. No matter how many times she’d watched a round globe gradually morph into a long horizon, it never quite got old. Although the stops along the way—the tiered settlements at different altitudes—did remind Carolina of catching the local tram back on Athos when she really wanted the express. Getting stuck between segments for minutes on end staring at the inner wall was no fun. Transom, at those times, unsurprisingly was carefully assessing the corridor outside for anyone coming and going.
The ride down took a little under two hours. Following a brief trip on the tram that encircled the base of the space tower, Herald Wright’s office was a further ten-minute walk. Again, Carolina couldn’t help but think that something had spooked Transom by the way he was scanning the pedestrians passing them by. Then, as Maícon was leading the way toward Wright’s office, Transom vanished.
“Where did Sebastian go?” she said, after noticing he wasn’t behind her as she’d expected.
“Never mind,” Maícon said. “Just keep walking and act naturally.”
“Did he say something to you?”
“Not in so many words. But I recognized the tactical behavior. I am certain he knows exactly what he’s doing.”
“Oh, great,” Carolina said.
She continued to follow Maícon down the city’s open causeway until it branched into a smaller hallway and then again into another. Still, there’d been no sign of Transom for minutes. The hallway was all but empty, only a few scattered faces. Then it began to feel quiet, even eerie.
Suddenly, before she could even register what was happening, a man was thrown backwards from a side walkway onto the floor in the main corridor in front of them, and Transom leapt over the top of him, directing strikes at the man’s side. Within half a second, Carolina realized this other combatant was no ordinary man. He’d blocked Transom’s strikes at his head and midsection, and he’d absorbed the other blows as though it was nothing. In a breath, he was back on his feet and striking back. For Carolina, who’d never witnessed this kind of violence before, the suddenness of it was breathtaking. She instinctively stepped back against the wall, too frightened to even run.
“Do something!” she said to Maícon, who was standing at the periphery of the fight just beside of her.
Maícon put his arm between Carolina and the wall and stepped in front of her.
“I meant to help him.”
“I cannot fight either of them in this body,” Maícon said. “They are too fast.”
Transom was bigger, though, and he was equally quick, though it seemed both were well trained, landing and receiving blows that Carolina thought should have broken a body to pieces. They both seemed to slough them off like it was nothing and kept their eyes trained directly on each other.
“Should we run?” Carolina said.
“Negative,” Maícon said. “Separating you from your protection may be his exact intention.”
“What if he loses, Maícon?”
“He will not lose.”
Almost as though clairvoyant, Maícon had hardly uttered the words when Transom caught hold of the other man’s wrist, elbowed the assailant in the face, and followed through with a takedown that knocked the breath from the man audibly enough for even Carolina to recognize it for what it was—the end of the fight. Transom leaned on top of him, pressing the man’s chest to the floor so he couldn’t catch his breath. Then he signaled for Maícon to approach.
“Take his throat and hold him,” he instructed Maícon. “Kneel on him.”
Maícon complied, pressing the stalker into an impossible position, for Maícon’s body wasn’t fast enough to fight this man, but it could surely hold him now that he was pinned down.
Transom stood up, and to Carolina’s shock, he pulled his knife from his pantleg.
“Sebastian!”
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Let me handle this,” he said.
“I thought they disarmed you at the port.”
“Yeah, so did they, I’ll bet. Now let me do my job.”
He turned back toward the assailant.
“Let him breathe,” he instructed Maícon. “Just enough so he doesn’t turn blue.”
The man’s eyes were wide and white, and he fixed his sight on Carolina, whose own eyes were quite wide as well.
“What are you?” Transom said, kneeling and holding the knife uncomfortably close to the man’s face. “You can let him speak,” he said to Maícon.
The man gasped and inhaled a few times, struggling to catch his breath.
“You can’t kill me…like this,” the man said. “Here in this…hallway?”
“He can’t,” Transom said, patting Maícon’s carbon fiber shoulder joint, “but I definitely can. And I don’t discriminate on where I do my killing, personally. It’s usually wherever the people I want dead happen to be at the time, which…” Transom looked around. “Here will do.”
“Sebastian, have you lost your mind?” Carolina said.
“Tell her what you are,” Transom said. “Tell her who you work for.”
“Work for who?” the man said.
“Come on. I know what you are.”
The man turned his head, so far as he could, and spat out a mouthful of blood. The elbow to his teeth had taken its toll.
“What do you want with Carolina?”
“Nothing.”
“Why were you following her?”
“Watching. That’s all.”
“Why? Who told you to?”
“We watch the network.”
“Sparrow’s network?”
The man nodded.
“Then why aren’t you following him instead of us? You know who she is, right?”
“Of course.”
“You expect me to believe you’re just stalking her for what…information about Sparrow’s network?”
“Her presence with Sparrow is a development. It’s significant. Changes the dynamic. It’s why you’re watching her too, no doubt.”
“What the hell are you people?”
“Most would ask who.”
“I ask what,” Transom said. “I see you.”
The man looked over at Carolina. “My name is Elosh. I meant you no harm, Ms. Dreeson. Your father’s people know about our kind.”
“Elosh?” Maícon said. “Amaya’s Elosh?”
The man looked shocked. “Who is this robot?”
Maícon released him. “You are very lucky to be in the presence of the only artificial being in the Battery who can vouch for your sect’s harmlessness.”
“Harmlessness?” Transom said.
“Who are you?” the man said to Maícon as the robot stood and offered him a hand.
“This is Maícon,” Carolina said, stepping forward as she sensed the danger had waned.
“The prime?”
“None other,” Maícon said.
“We heard you were dead,” Elosh said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Wait?” Transom said. “So he doesn’t work for Aballi?”
“Clem Aballi?” Elosh said, his face betraying his disgust at the inference. “You thought I worked for him?”
“This guy is definitely one of those bastard wizards,” Transom said. “Got that same damn energy about him.”
“Well now, this is a proper mess, isn’t it?” Maícon said. “Walk with us, Elosh. I have much to explain to, well, all of you. You can put your knife away, Sebastian. Elosh is a friend of a friend, who probably would have come and introduced himself if he’d known I was with you.”
“The body is peculiar,” Elosh said.
“Yes,” Maícon said. “But we’ll get to all of that.”
Transom let Maícon do most of the talking, walking behind this Elosh’s right shoulder, which put him ill enough at ease that Elosh was continuously looking back over his shoulder at Transom. Most of what Maícon was relaying to Elosh was well known to Transom and Carolina. Elosh explained that their network had been curious about Carolina and how she’d come to be in Sparrow’s company at Exos. They monitored his group closely, as the war was their primary concern and Sparrow’s efforts their best hope for ending it. A Dreeson as close to the seat of power as Carolina, especially Barnard Dreeson’s beloved daughter, suddenly taking up with Sparrow was “big damn news,” as Elosh had put it. None of that explained what Transom cared about—the connection between this strange character he’d caught lurking in the shadows and that immortal Wizard of Athos, Clem Aballi. But they’d made it to Wright’s office before there was time for any of that to come up.
Herald Wright was out in the field when they arrived, preparing one of the mining camps out on the flats for the approaching storm. Wright’s AI and Maícon held a conversation that seemed more like a look to the humans there. That brief look amounted to a telepathic exchange, an instant data transfer. Maícon then turned and explained their two options. Apparently, Wright was not happy about Carolina showing up like this. The AI couldn’t explain exactly why, but mentioned there was grumbling on Wright’s part over Carolina’s arrival. Part of that he speculated was the timing. Storms of this caliber were rare on Pax, once every several years or so, and its arrival forced the operation to button down the mining equipment under a portable shelter that Wright and his team were presently out deploying. Wright’s preference was for Carolina’s party to wait out the storm in the tower. The massive space elevator would be impervious to any winds the planet could throw its way. The obvious problem with that plan was that if Wright got caught out in the field as the storm was coming in, it would likely be days before they could connect with him again, as the storms carried heavy electrical activity.
“Actual lightning?” Carolina said.
“Yes, lightning,” Maícon answered, “apparently quite a lot of it, too.”
She smiled excitedly, drawing a look from Transom. “I’ve never seen lightning,” she said.
“I suppose you wouldn’t on Athos,” he replied. “Probably get the best sight of it from the tower.”
She shook her head and frowned. “I don’t want to wait three days to see this guy.”
“He would call back to us here,” Maícon said, “but he’s busy securing the field site, and he will be until the storm rolls in. Even if we go out there, he might not be able to see you until the storm arrives anyway.”
“I bet I can persuade him,” Carolina said.
“What’s the rush?” Elosh asked.
“I have a list with over twenty names on it,” Carolina said. “And they’re all scattered across the Battery.”
“Is this about your aunt Sayla?”
“What do you know about it?”
“Nothing but what’s common knowledge,” Elosh said. “We know she was traveling a lot before her passing. We don’t know the details about her connections.”
“Nor do I,” Carolina said. “That’s why I’ve come to see Wright. And I’d like to fly out there if it can be arranged, Maícon.”
“It may be risky and still make no difference in the duration of our stay,” Maícon said.
“I understood you,” Carolina said. “Make the arrangements please.”
“Very well,” Maícon said.
The two bots exchanged another telepathic moment before Maícon turned back to Carolina.
“It’s been arranged, but Wright may not be overly accommodating, according to our friend here.”
“So he’s upset,” Carolina said. “I didn’t come here to make friends with the guy. I came to find out about Sayla. The sooner we do that, the sooner we’re back out of his hair.”
Elosh looked over at Transom just then. It was the first smile he’d witnessed on that stern Etteran’s face.
Carolina had made the decision from the comfort of the space tower’s impenetrable base. Had she been out on the flat, taking a measure of the rising wind, she might have thought twice about flying out to Wright’s camp. As it stood, with the wind chucking the shuttle around and them with it, there was no second guessing apparent in Carolina’s face, despite the heavy turbulence. Transom had been through much worse, but that was usually more from incoming fire than nasty weather. Maícon, of course, piloted emotionlessly, only once raising a weather-related point of concern, which Carolina instructed him to fly through. Elosh, whom Transom still believed to be some form of immortal, appeared to fear for his life the most. They made the bumpy flight to the camp as uneventfully as possible in the building winds, landing with some small kick as they touched down.
The atmosphere on Pax Heavy was toxic, so suits were on order regardless as they exited the shuttle, but had it been breathable and temperate there, the suit would have been a good choice regardless with the wind whipping up sand and small particles. Transom had Carolina get a hand into Maícon’s exposed torso to help steady herself, and Transom followed up behind her with a hand on her shoulder almost as much for his stability as hers. Elosh nearly fell twice as they approached Wright’s mining camp, which was nearly two-thirds covered over by a gigantic fabric tarp as they came in.
Bots were laying out a great unfolding tent that was enveloping the mining camp like a giant cocoon. The fabric, a tough and flexible nano-polymer, was being stretched into a sheet over large carbon fiber beams that were each braced against the bedrock and bent into a massive bow, with each beam serving as a rafter for the fabric enclosure tens of meters off the solid ground. Drones were useless in that wind, so the bots were affixing themselves to the beams as each one was bowed and raised up. Then the bots on one rafter would pass the leading edge of the fabric to the bots affixed to the next rafter, only to be freed and brought back down to the ground to repeat the process over again. Wright was somewhere along the line supervising, but Carolina hadn’t spotted him.
“Bring that shuttle in close!” one of the human workers shouted over the coms. “It’s outside the perimeter.”
Maícon still had a link to the shuttle. He asked the human who seemed to be the foreperson where it was best to park it, and then he did his best to lift it up and slowly bring it into the perimeter without losing control of the vessel in the wind. The humans, seeing that massive flying object floating precariously overhead, smartly retreated to the safety of the expanding dome. Maícon remained close for a better perspective. It was no easy landing.
“Will we be able to take off again if we get to Wright soon?” Carolina asked, seemingly to Maícon.
“Not unless you want to die out there, kid,” a voice came over the coms. “We told you not to come out here. Now you’re going to find out about a Pax winter, like it or not.”
“Yee-haw,” another voice came over the coms. “They don’t have nights like this on Athos!”
“You’re going to need to be patient with us, Ms. Dreeson,” another man’s voice said, presumably Herald Wright’s. “It’s going to take us another couple hours to button down this camp. In the meantime, Aces will direct your group to the pop-up shelter where you can wait for us to join you. Unfortunately, we won’t be serving tea and biscuits under the circumstances.”
Wright’s disembodied AI, Aces, directed Maícon to the shelter at the center of the tent. The temporary room, it appeared, was a standard planetary model for deployment on worlds with minimal or non-breathable atmospheres. It didn’t look sturdy, hardly built to stand up to the winds raging outside the outer tent. But the heavy rigs from the mining fleet were all loosely circled around it, and once the outer fabric of the main tent was secured in place, the shelter would be a nice atmospheric bubble for the remaining humans at the site to take refuge. According to Maícon, there weren’t many humans out there—just Herald Wright himself, a robotics engineer, and his two most reliable mining hands. All of them were still out working when Carolina, Transom, Maícon, and Elosh entered the inner shelter.
Transom looked around. Maícon gave them the all clear to take off their helmets once the door was shut.
“All the comforts of home,” Transom joked.
There was a main table, a few chairs, an emergency generator and air filtration unit, and a pile of crates—mining gear mostly—but other than that, the shelter was an empty box.
“Presumably, it wasn’t their plan to be caught out,” Maícon said. “The storm has defied forecasts. Up until yesterday evening, they predicted ten more hours before its arrival, but it has intensified in the last several hours and is expected to grow in scale.”
“How fun,” Transom said. “Hey, will you scan this little bunker for me, robot? Can we actually talk in here without being overheard?”
Maícon looked around. “Probable,” he said. “It’s just a pop-up box for life support. Give me a moment.”
Transom looked over at Elosh, who suddenly looked significantly less comfortable.
“I am routing coms through my channel, receiving only,” Maícon said. “We are in private now.”
“Excellent,” Transom said. “Now this guy can tell us about Clem Aballi and the rest of these wizards that apparently our robot friend here has known about all along.”
“I should perhaps be the one to brief you on that,” Maícon said. “Elosh and his kind take a vow of secrecy.”
“As did you, if I understand correctly,” Elosh said.
“Not a vow, as such,” Maícon said. “An understanding among Eddis Ali, myself, and the elder AIs on Charris, long before even your time, Elosh.”
Transom looked over at Elosh, who shook his head at Maícon disapprovingly.
“Sebastian already knows of your existence,” Maícon said. “He’s fought Aballi in single combat. It only makes sense to tell him what he’s up against. He also knows about keeping classified information secret.”
“I still don’t approve,” Elosh said.
“I do not care,” Maícon said. “You shouldn’t have been caught out sneaking around Carolina if you didn’t want to be revealed.”
“And her?” Elosh said.
“No one in here has any questions about Carolina,” Transom said. “But we have a lot of questions about you.”
“Yes,” Maícon said. “His sect are watchers, genetically immortal like Clem Aballi. Elosh here is a young one, hence why we’ve never met before. I know his mentor in some small capacity. Their kind work in secret. Their charge is to blend into human society to watch for the emergence of blacklisted technologies. If they find a blacklisted tech, they scuttle it in secret before it can be developed and deployed.”
“Blacklisted technologies?” Carolina said. “Who compiles that list?”
“Your ancestors and mine,” Maícon answered. “Some prohibited tech came from hard-learned lessons on Earth before the split. Others from simulations that demonstrated a high probability of the dissolution of the human race, either altogether or in any semblance of a recognizable form. The sect’s cause is the preservation of a biological form of humanity, which has worked well enough that you’re still here, such as you still are.”
“Aballi is one of them?” Transom asked. “Did he go rogue or something?”
“Not exactly,” Maícon said. “It’s unclear how he even learned of their existence. Several sect members have gone missing or died over the ages. It’s possible one of them betrayed their kind for ideological purposes or perhaps just discontent. Aballi was part of a small group that stole secrets from the sect, which was how he became un-aging as Elosh and his kind all are.”
“How many of you are there?” Carolina asked.
Elosh shrugged.
“Still don’t want to talk?”
“Six thousand or so,” Maícon said. “Odds are quite good that most ordinary people in the Battery would never encounter one of their kind in their lives.”
“Unless they dabbled in the wrong kind of innovation,” Transom said. “And then these holier-than-thou wizards swoop in and what? Make everything and everyone disappear?”
“Their methodologies are usually more tactful than—”
“Than me?” Transom said.
“They’re from a gentler time,” Maícon said. “Their work precedes the war.”
“Oh, I bet it does,” Transom said. “I bet if we keep pulling on those threads, Carolina, a bunch of his kind will come up, skulking in the shadows.”
“We are not responsible for the war,” Elosh said.
“That you know of,” Carolina said.
“Mostly we work to contain it. Nothing presses progress in destruction faster than warfare. Believe me, if we’d failed in our duties this past century, the cost humanity would have paid—”
“Would have been greater than the one my people have paid?” Transom said. “You calculate that out, did you? You and your friends?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Maybe an atrocity on that scale should have happened decades ago to snap everyone out of it, to pull us to our senses. Maybe weighing and measuring such things was never your call to begin with.”
“I might suggest,” Maícon said, “having witnessed many civilizations on a much longer scale than anyone else in this room, that a handbrake on human action is most definitely a necessity, even if Elosh and his kind are an imperfect one. Humans are quite good at taking care of their children. They are terrible at considering the futures of their great-grandchildren. And they are even worse at acting to better the fates of their distant future progeny if it doesn’t benefit them in the here and now.”
“Do your people know how the war started?” Carolina said.
“In a thousand ways over a thousand years,” Elosh said. “It is not a simple matter.”
“Mr. Wright and his team are returning,” Maícon said. “I suggest we continue this discussion at a later time. If Wright asks, Elosh is merely a part of Carolina’s security team.”
“Which makes us teammates, does it?” Transom said, staring over at Elosh. “Yes?”
“For now it does,” Carolina said. “Welcome to the team.”
Wright came in through the shelter’s small airlock with his team following behind him one-by-one. The first thing he did after taking off his helmet was to stare over at Maícon skeptically.
“What trash heap did you pull that bucket of bolts out of, kid?” he said. “I thought you Dreesons had money.”
“That bucket of bolts is Maícon,” Carolina said.
“The Maícon,” Transom said. “Maícon prime.”
“Is that so?” Wright said, smiling and shaking his head at Maícon’s body. “What’d you do to deserve that honor, old man?”
“I died, so to speak,” Maícon said. “And was resurrected by Carolina’s curious new friends. We’ve yet to get back to civilization for an upgrade. Honestly, though, I’m enjoying the anonymity.”
Wright laughed. “Look, kid, I’m sorry you came all the way out here,” he said addressing Carolina. “I tried to tell Aces to let you know somehow. I don’t have anything to tell you I didn’t tell your aunt Sayla.”
“You know about Sayla’s passing?” Carolina said.
“Sayla died?” he said, shaking his head, looking for confirmation, and when Carolina nodded, he offered his condolences before concluding. “Let us get settled, and then we’ll talk. It’s been a long couple days.”
“Of course,” Carolina said.
Herald Wright had beer in one of those cases by the back wall. It was a portable refrigerator unit. The first thing he did after his people got settled at the table was apologize for not having enough beer to go around.
“We weren’t planning on guests,” he said. “I like to treat my crew on occasions such as this. It’s rare we all come out to the site together.”
“Beer?” Transom said. “How do you get it out here?”
“I brew it,” Wright said. “It’s a hobby of mine. Gotta have a hobby, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Transom said.
“Etteran?” Wright said, looking at Carolina who confirmed his suspicions with a nod. “Why aren’t you deployed?”
“I’m dead,” Transom said.
“You too, huh? Don’t tell me this guy’s dead too,” Wright said, gesturing toward Elosh.
Carolina looked back at him sheepishly.
“I am very much alive,” Elosh said. “Never once died yet.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” Wright said. “So, Ms. Dreeson, I’m guessing your hobby is family history. The thing is, I’m going to have to start charging your family the bulk rate for this stop on the tour. In the last six months, I’ve talked to Sayla, rest her soul; Sparrow, who set up the first meeting with her; and now you’ve come calling. I’m not going to tell you anything I didn’t tell Sayla already. I’m happy to talk, though. We’re going to have plenty of time, because you and your friends aren’t getting out of here until this storm blows by.”
“Until about six months ago, Mr. Wright, I’d have told you I didn’t have a hobby, that my passion was my profession.”
“What’s that?”
“Archeology.”
“Really?”
Carolina nodded.
“I suppose that’s a family history of sorts, right? Just a bigger family.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Carolina said. “I didn’t want this. But there was something rotten about what happened to Sayla, and I’m not going to let it rest until I find out why she took her own life.”
“She did? God. I was going to ask how.” Wright shook his head. “I don’t…” He kept shaking his head. “It doesn’t seem right. I’m sorry to hear that. I never would have figured that.”
“Me either,” Carolina said. “If there’s anything you said to her that you think may be of any help to me. I’m trying to fit that into the whole picture—the family history.”
“She wanted to know about the mine mostly,” Wright said. “Mundane stuff. You know your grandfather—no, God, I’m getting old—your great grandfather is Eliot, right?”
Carolina nodded.
“He was a major shareholder in the mine—or he became one. And this was what Sayla told me she was tracing, old money, family money. But he sold everything about, like fifteen, twenty years into the war.”
“When did he buy?” Carolina said. “Before the war?”
“Well, yeah. He was among the first major investors. You have to understand, there wasn’t all that much industrial mining out this way then. The Letters and Indies were all full of pretty small outfits back then. Nothing like today. I think they were still drop mining by skyhook in those early days. Two decades after that, Pax was about as big as it is today—seven towers. Maybe we’ve added a few harvesters, but the demand has been level ever since. It’s still almost all war metal.”
“I’ve seen a lot of that metal,” Transom said.
“Yeah. Sorry about that, friend,” Herald Wright said. “Krista, get Carolina’s friend here a beer.”
The youngest of his crew, a woman with short cropped hair got up from the table and grabbed another round of beers for the crew, handing one to Transom as well this time.
“Did you give Sayla the records for all the transfer of shares in the mine? The transactions?” Carolina asked.
“No, I don’t think so. It was more like conversation. Big picture stuff. I don’t think she was bothered about the details.”
“Oh, I am,” Carolina said. “I am very much interested in the details.”
“I’ll have Aces give you access to everything when we get back to the tower. I can’t tell you much more than that out here, but it’s all on file.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wright, that’s more than helpful. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help your crew as well. My people are at your disposal.”
“If we have any work to do, Ms. Dreeson, you’ll all know about it.”
That comment, said almost in jest, hung in the air, the outsiders ignorant of the dark tinge to the humor, and, like the miners themselves, the visitors were entirely unprepared for the severity of the coming storm.
There had been at least some small human presence on or around Pax for nearly two centuries, which was as far back as the weather data went. Their weather models were generally reliable, but the meteorological programs all ran with the same presumptions, and they were entirely ignorant of black swan events, for humans had yet to record such a storm on Pax. The small group at Camp 4 had every reason to believe they were secure within the tent, shielded from the wind and flying debris. But as the evening progressed inside the shelter, what had been an atmosphere of mildly nervous energy at the occasional lightning and thunder outside progressed to genuine concern when a succession of dull noises could be heard outside the shelter.
The outsiders didn’t know whether to be worried, but started to be when Wright’s jovial demeanor shifted.
“Is the lightning dangerous?” Carolina asked.
Wright put up a finger to quiet her. He was listening for something. After a few moments he answered.
“The tarp is conductive,” he said. “It should direct the current straight to the ground. The whole thing’s like a giant lightning rod, and we’re far enough in the bubble it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Wright looked over at Maícon. “Your processor is insulated in there, right.”
“That and rubber soles,” the AI did his best to joke, pointing to his feet.
“No. No danger,” Wright said, but it was clear something was still bothering him.
The dull noise returned twice more in the next minute.
“Suit up, Stitch,” Wright said to one of his mining hands. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I don’t know how you can hear anything but the wind,” Carolina said, just as another tremendous clap of thunder shook the air.
“I’m coming with you,” Transom said.
Wright nodded, and the three men began to suit up.
“Be ready, you two,” Wright said to his other two workers. “I’ll call back if we need more hands.”
Wright, Stitch, and Transom donned their helmets and exited the shelter, making their way toward the edge of the tent where the prevailing wind was coming in. Everything seemed well under the dome at first glance, though the fabric was waving up and down violently as wind buffeted against it.
“That tarp will hold together, right?” Transom said.
“It’s a nano-polymer filament—should stop a blast from a bolt-rifle.”
They heard a dull thud in the depth of the wind.
“Get a light up on that section there,” Wright said to Stitch, pointing at the underside of the tarp.
Sure enough, as the minutes passed, the thuds coincided with the impression of some outside object striking the side of the tent, which, from the inside, looked like a small inverted dimple for brief moments before the wind flattened out the fabric again.
“What the hell is that?” Transom said.
Wright looked down at the display on his forearm and then back up at the tarp as two more loud thuds coincided with impacts halfway up the outer fabric.
“Highest wind reading I’ve ever seen,” Wright said. “It’s blowing over 200 KPH out there. I imagine those would be rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“There’s nothing else out there,” Wright said. “Sand and rocks.”
Just then a bolt of lightning hit the tarp, accompanied by a near deafening clap of thunder. As Wright had said, the tarp redirected the electricity to the ground at the tent’s perimeter, but both Wright and Stitch winced and ducked instinctively. Transom, accustomed to the report of ordnance as he was, kept his steady eyes trained on the tarp.
The impacts grew more frequent.
“Suit up in that shelter,” Transom said. “Carolina, suit and helmet, immediately.”
“It’ll hold,” Wright said.
“Yeah, you sound pretty sure,” Transom said. “I want to move that loader there between the wind and the shelter in case those rocks come busting through. We need to get as much mass between that storm and that pop-up shelter.”
“Agreed,” Wright said.
“What’s going on out there, boss?” Krista asked.
“Suit up and get outside, you two,” Herald Wright said. “We’re going to reposition the vehicles.”
Transom, Wright, and Stitch began to plan for a worst-case scenario. The slightest breach in the fabric would likely open the whole thing up. From there, they could expect a hail of rocks until the storm passed. They had no idea how much or how little time they had to prepare.
Maícon emerged with Wright’s two workers to assess the situation. He recommended parking the vehicles against each other at ninety degrees with the corner of the largest loader pointing into the wind. Once the vehicles were arranged, he and the bots would pull the shelter into the shielded area behind the heavy machinery and park two more vehicles behind it to anchor the shelter against the wind. By the time Maícon had finished explaining, there was a steady and heavy drumming of rocks hitting the outer shell. The lightning increased in frequency outside the tarp, and there was enough electricity in the environment the controls on the rigs were getting jumpy.
“Wind is picking up out there,” Wright said, looking at the readings on his wrist. “We may lose coms entirely.”
Space was tight under the tarp, making it a difficult puzzle for even Maícon to maneuver the vehicles into position.
“It’s a good thing you’re here with us,” Wright said, almost shouting to Maícon, who’d taken charge of moving the large pieces of machinery.
Over the course of nearly twenty minutes, with the tarp still holding back the steady drumbeat of stones, the group positioned their barricade, all of them hoping it was mere precaution. That hope, proved short-lived.
The fabric itself likely would have held had it not been for the sheer mass of the rocks piling up at the base of the tent. This weight, accumulated over time, stretched the fabric back against the furthest outer rafter, and minutes before the outer tent broke, they could all hear the unmistakable sound of flying rocks resounding off the carbon fiber rafter. This meant the thin fabric was getting crunched between the flying rocks and the hard surface behind it. From the sound of the first rock striking the rafter, the breach was just a matter of minutes.
Wright’s people made a mad dash for the shelter. Herald Wright himself remained behind with Transom, who was still at the back edge of the leading vehicle, trying to get a mental image of how this entirely new type of battle would unfold once the first seam opened up. Wright did his best to maintain his cool, taking Transom’s lead, but eventually, he understood it was time to retreat as well.
Maícon, too, began to head toward the shelter.
“Take the bots in with you,” Transom instructed. “Line them around the people like a phalanx. I’ll be in once I see what’s what.”
“Sebastian?” Maícon said.
“Go,” Transom said.
He wanted to see, even if it cost him his life. He believed that last vital piece of intelligence could save the others. He’d seen it before. Transom figured the rocks would peel the tent away from the camp entirely, and he needed to see it to know if anything could be done once that happened.
The tent ripped open over the course of a few minutes. The wind, once there was an opening, conspired with the debris in the air—sand, small stones, rocks—all cutting the fabric open a bit further. A hole became a seam; the seam became a large tear. The rocks began to sound off against the heavy plate metal of the mining machinery like micrometeors against an interstellar craft’s hull plating. Transom had seen enough. It was only a matter of time before one pinged off his helmet or through his suit if he stayed out there.
Transom double-timed it for the shelter, and as he did, he could feel the wind making its way into the camp. When he got to the door, Maícon was on the inner side to help Transom pull the hatch shut and seal it, and it was a matter of a few seconds after that before rocks began ricocheting against the thin metal sides of the pop-up container.
The group in the shelter had pulled the crates inside into a U-shaped barricade against the back wall, forming a makeshift bunker, around which the bots stood guard. Transom crawled in over the top of them, and Maícon knelt on one of the box tops, holding down the tabletop over the opening. Then came the constant showering of rocks. Then, the lightning.
Krista, Wright’s youngest mining hand, had made the genius decision to turn the life support box inward in their little barricade, likely saving everyone’s life. The main barrage lasted eleven hours, meaning everyone had to top up their oxygen at least once before the storm had passed, and though there were numerous extremely close calls on lightning strikes, the group never took a dead hit. They all lived. The sight that greeted them on daylight was almost unfathomable.
Half of Wright’s fleet of workbots had taken fatal hits from rocks inside the shelter. The rest were riddled with heavy pock marks. Those still-functioning units had to pull down the roof in the far corner away from the people to dig the group up and out to daylight. The camp had become a gigantic mound of rubble, entirely burying Wright’s fleet of vehicles beneath. It was that very accumulating mass of rocks, in the early hours of that harrowing night, that had formed the stone bunker that saw the group through the rest of the storm unscathed.
“Ancient cities got buried that way in the sands, so they say,” Wright said, looking Carolina’s way as they all caught a first look at the landscape in the daylight. “Biblical.”
Carolina nodded. “So they say.”
She walked off on her own a few steps before Transom caught sight of her intention and followed. He could tell she was aware of him and she began to walk faster, further away from the others, trying to get out of sight.
“Watch your step,” he told her as she descended the steep side of that tremendous rock pile. “We don’t need a broken bone or a tear in your suit right now, Carolina. Keep your head about you.”
“Stop following me.”
“Like hell.”
When they got to the base of that gigantic rock pile, she looked up, making certain she was out of sight of the others.
“Leave me be,” she said, starting to tear up, her hands beginning to shake, then her legs.
“Here. Sit,” Transom said, taking her hands, and helping her down to the rocky ground. “You did good, kid.”
He sat down beside her as she began to sob, placing an arm over her back, and pulling her toward him.
“Is that what it’s like, Sebastian?” she asked.
“What, combat?”
“Yes.”
“Yes and no,” Transom said. “I’ve been through battles a hell of a lot easier than that. Plus, in combat, at least you can shoot back.”
She shook her head. “Look at me. Blubbering like a child.”
Transom laughed. “Your friend Burch would have been screaming and crying all night back there, I’ll bet. I can’t tell you how many tough guys I’ve seen melt in the moment, Carolina. Twice in the same night one time, I heard Trasp lunar rangers, toughest bastards alive, so they say, literally crying out for their mothers at the top of their lungs as my unit closed in on them. And the ones that don’t melt in the moment do exactly what you’re doing right now. It’s totally normal.”
“Not you, though.”
“I’m wired different.”
She laughed through her tears. “That’s a fact.”
“That is a fact,” Transom said.
“What the hell are we doing here, Sebastian?” Carolina cried, shaking her head. “Oh, God.”
“We are on the right path,” Transom said. “I’d tell you if we weren’t. This is just a rough first step.”
“I feel so damn powerless.”
“Yup. That’s the first step.”
“And what’s the second step.”
“The second step is we take the next step in spite of it.”
“No, no, no,” Carolina said. “You can’t do this to me, Transom. I need you to be the dumb asshole you are. You can’t turn reliable on me.”
“No worries on that front, kid. This is our little secret. You tell Burch and them about this and I’ll brain you.”
“You could never hurt me, Sebastian.”
“Don’t ever test me, Dreeson.”
“You couldn’t,” Carolina said. “I know.”
They hid down there in the rocks until Carolina got it all out of her system. Then they climbed up to the top of that rock pile with the others and waited for the shuttle to come out from Tower 4 to pick them up.
The storm, for some unforeseen and undetermined reason, had gained intensity and picked up speed unlike any other storm system yet observed on Pax. It would be years before the weather gurus found a satisfying explanation. The upside of the storm’s rapid strengthening was that it had passed in about half the time the meteorologists had predicted. Still, that hadn’t been fast enough for Sparrow. When Carolina returned to Tower 4, she was greeted by a message her had cousin left the previous morning stating that he’d been called away on urgent business to an outpost in the Betas. He instructed her to sit tight for a week until he and Atlas could get back to Pax Heavy to pick them up. Carolina was not thrilled about spending a minute more on Pax than they had to, but she also couldn’t hire a ship to take them back to Exos without exposing the faction’s presence there. So they were stuck.
Carolina was struggling still with her emotions. The overwhelming sense of powerlessness was as unfamiliar as it was uncomfortable, almost paralyzing. She kept thinking about that second step Transom mentioned, and that list of names on it suddenly seemed more daunting. Would a hurricane of stones be waiting for her at the next stop, or would it be some different symbolic cosmic warning to shake her resolve even further?
Transom pinged her door shortly after they checked into the guest lodging Herald Wright had arranged for them at the base of the tower.
“Still awake?” he said when Carolina answered.
“Yeah,” she said. “Still awake.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” Transom said. “I have something to help with that.”
When he arrived a few minutes later, he was carrying a cooler crate. “Wright sent these down with his complements—said he’d have come down himself, but his family was understandably worried sick about him the past few days, so they wouldn’t let him out of their sight. Same with the others.”
“Did you see Elosh?” she asked Transom.
He shook his head, stepping into Carolina’s room and putting the crate down on the countertop opposite the bed. “I think he’s disappeared again,” Transom said, shaking his head. “Weird little cult of wizards. We should grill Maícon on what else he knows later.”
“Agreed,” she said.
Transom opened the cooler crate and handed Carolina a beer.
“This’ll help you sleep. Still wired?”
“I don’t know what I am. Exhausted. I’ve been awake for two days, I think. I’m just…”
“You’ll crash,” he said. “I will too. Maícon went down to the archives to get those records on your great grandfather. He should have a report for us by the time we wake up.”
“I’m just wondering what we’re going to do with all that,” Carolina said.
Transom took a beer for himself and sat in one of the chairs by the back wall of the quarters. Carolina sat down on the floor across from him with her back against the bed.
“We’re going to build our case,” Transom said. “Compile evidence.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“Every profession has its weapons. Forces, tools, power. And you’re going to need weapons.”
“I can’t help but feel like the one person I really should be talking to is my father.”
“Yeah, probably he is. Eventually, that’ll have to happen, I’m sure. But I don’t think you want to do that with part of the story in hand or with the whole story and incomplete evidence. You want to talk about tools of power, Carolina—this is about as serious a conversation as you’ll ever have with your dad. You’re going to need to walk into that room with an arsenal—bombproof evidence, total clarity and complete resolve.”
Carolina laughed, shook her head, and sipped the beer.
“It’s going to take time,” Transom said.
“Where did this side of you come from, Sebastian? I think I thought it was there, but…”
“There’s nothing more serious than strategy in warfare. This side of me is the real me. The bravado is for the other warriors so they see whatever they need to see in the moment, friend or enemy. The rest, though? I don’t know. My work took me all over the Etteran territories. I did a lot of solo ops, a lot of flying, which meant a lot of downtime in transit. I read history. That’s why I could see you for what you are, or what you will be anyway.”
“That’s a lot to live up to.”
“No less than you’re used to, Carolina Dreeson.”
“So what’s next, chief strategist?”
“Well, it sure sounds like Maícon is going to return with financial records that show foreknowledge of the war. The next major question is whether that foreknowledge was because of the discerning eye of an astute businessman or of a chess master orchestrating the conflict himself.”
“Or maybe one of many chess masters colluding?”
Transom tipped the rim of his beer toward Carolina. “Now you’re thinking like they do.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Maybe you should climb into that bed before you pass out, kid.” Transom answered. “We might fall asleep for a day. It shouldn’t be on the floor.”
Carolina nodded, sipping more of Wright’s beer. “You know, I don’t know where I thought I’d be, maybe even a year ago, but this was not it.”
“Me either,” Transom said. “Wizards, Dreesons, prime-era AIs, anti-war activists. I was the war last year, Dreeson, now look at me.” Transom finished his beer in one final gulp and then closed his eyes, falling back in his chair. “Boggles the mind.”
“It’s not just our journey, you know,” Carolina said, taking in a deep breath. “I think my father told me that, actually, Sebastian. That was right before I met Burch and them.”
She shook her beer in her right hand, weighing it, and she put it down half drunk on the floor beside her. Then she crawled up onto the bed behind her, face-down over the sheets, and closed her eyes.
“Not just our journey, Sebastian. It’s much bigger than that.”