Empty Between the Stars (The Songs of Old Sol Book 1)

by Stephen Hunt

  Jenelle was born half a millennium too late to pick up the rest of the lyrics. I had to settle for imagining her singing back to me, She bid me take love easy, as leaves grow on a Jovian tree; I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

  ‘You’re a strange fish, William Roxley. Where were you born?’

  ‘Arius.’

  Jenelle snorted. ‘Heaven itself.’

  ‘Home of a great many of the gods and pleasant enough in its way. Hardly heaven, though.’ Heaven held its promises for me later.

  ‘So why the hell did you leave Arius to come here?’

  ‘All careers end in failure, before a person’s life finally dwindles and follows suit. My many careers seemed long over. Playing the free trader is a worthy whim to whittle away my final few years.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘A game. A rich moneyass’s diversion to stem the boredom of living too long.’

  ‘Rich? Only rich enough to sell my cleverness and buy bewilderment, I fear. I take it that this is not a problem you have on Hexator.’

  ‘No. Many problems on Hexator, but not that one. Just remember, this is my investigation. You and your menagerie are visiting Hebateen solely on sufferance. Another of Lady Blez’s charitable whims…’

  I felt I had disappointed Jenelle, which I hadn’t meant to. ‘You’ve heard about the Merge back in the Humanitum?’

  Jenelle nodded. ‘Is it true … immortality’s your reward?’

  ‘True enough in its way. But I’m not planning to join the gods. When this life finishes, it’s finally over for me.’

  ‘You’re playing for keeps here, then?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Well, welcome to the rest of the human race, doctor. The Derechors are going to be mighty touchy about us serving them with an interview under caution. I’ll need to ease the way for that. Smooth things over.’

  ‘I’m sure honeyed words will be better heard from your lips than mine.’

  ‘Are you saying you find me attractive, doctor?’

  ‘I’ve lived long enough to know that neither of the two viable options for answering your question would prove the correct one.’

  She made a zipping gesture across her lips. ‘Then keep on living a little longer.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Deep trouble.

  We stood on the slopes of the mountain, tiny ants among the ancient mills, hoisting houses, processing sheds, crushers and conveyor belts which comprised the mine. Its newest structures were stables for the horses and oxen, beasts needed to drive the spindles and power the works, as well as ponies to haul mining wagons; the old fusion plant as useless as the spaceport girdling the mountain.

  I currently wondered if my ears were as non-operational as the ancient shuttles’ magnetic rail launchers. ‘The twins want us to conduct an interview under caution inside their mine?’ I asked Captain Cairo, not certain I’d heard her correctly the first time. ‘They’ve already kept us waiting a day as it is.’

  We hadn’t been left anything to do inside our allocated quarters except kick our heels. Of course, that was entirely the point. And now this?

  Jenelle shrugged. ‘That’s what the Mine Master told me. Our Lords Derechor have been inside the mine for three days, apparently. It’s an obvious ruse on their part to discomfort us. Returning to the surface would just acknowledge our authority for an interview.’

  I sighed. Always power games with the warlords.

  ‘Bleeding hole-in-the-wall gang all over again,’ said Mozart.

  ‘A guide is presently being found to take us down into the tunnels,’ said Jenelle. Not that I need one, but it’s how visitors are kept on a leash.’

  ‘You don’t need a guide?’ I was surprised.

  ‘I was born at Hebateen, doctor. I slaved in these mines from the age of five until leaving for Frente at sixteen.’

  ‘Hard work,’ I said.

  ‘Hard enough to make a living breaking heads and dragging corpses from canals for the Watch taste like duck soup off a warm spoon.’

  Yes, I thought I had detected some reluctance on the airship on the good captain’s part about returning here. That explains it. I decided I would use my time waiting to teach Simenon to use the prayer mat. It would make a fine gift for Simenon after leaving Hexator. A bridge to the new life that awaited him. I unrolled the mat, asked Simenon to kneel on it and started to teach him the mantras used to reach out to Modd. He made for an uneasy student, although he remembered the words with an accuracy that put me to shame, m-brain augments and all.

  ‘Ask according to the will of Modd,’ I suggested. ‘Do not conform to the pattern of your world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’

  ‘The gods never answer me, Master Roxley. I exist beneath their notice.’

  ‘A little faith, lad, a little faith.’

  Simenon knelt as still as he could on the mat, closing his eyes and repeating the mantras I gave him. Varnus’s old mat started to glow at one point, barely perceptible to the normal eye, but my m-brain tracked the activating circuit threads for me, labelling each one as it powered up.

  Simenon faltered self-consciously as Jenelle Cairo started laughing. All the threads immediately lost coherence.

  I glared at the captain. ‘If our universe has no meaning, we would never have discovered it has no meaning.’

  ‘I am sorry, doctor. Believe me, if the gods take an interest in anything that happens at Hebateen, it really will be a miracle.’

  ‘Don’t give up so easily, Simenon,’ I advised. ‘You’re closer than you realise.’

  We were about to head into the buildings to find our guide when a Watch officer came jogging from the direction of the airship docking tower, seeking out Captain Cairo. He pulled her aside for a quick urgent conversation.

  ‘Problems, captain?’ I asked.

  ‘The Citadel is on the radio. Informants are talking about rebel action timed to coincide with the spore-spice auctions. The Skylander might be needed back at the capital sooner than expected. I need to head back to the ship to talk with the commander general.’

  ‘Heaven’s teeth, the Four Families wouldn’t order Frente to be bombed, surely, good captain?’

  ‘Only districts which defect to the rebels and start piling up barricades.’

  I winced. A low-level insurgency breaking out on Hexator wasn’t something Sweet William had planned to coincide with his visit. Ah, yes, matters can always get worse.

  ‘Make a start with the Lords Derechor,’ sighed Jenelle. ‘They’re allowed to keep us kicking our heels, not the other way around. Don’t go in hard and don’t break anything you can’t fix until I join you for their questioning.’

  ‘Don’t go in hard?’ griped Moz, as Jenelle strode away in the direction of the airship docking tower. ‘I was looking forward to playing bad robot.’

  ‘A role is something you’re meant to play, not be,’ I told my friend. I glanced over at Simenon. He rolled up the prayer mat and made to pass it back, but I shook my head. ‘Keep it, lad. How much trouble do the auctions bring to the streets?’

  ‘The Watch has been hard on it, recently,’ said Simenon, stuffing the prayer mat inside his backpack. ‘Master Jomont, the baker I was apprenticed to, died in auction fighting when I was ten. That was the last serious outbreak of violence.’

  As serious for Simenon as the dead baker, I guessed. Doubtless the start of the boy’s life running on the streets as a masterless wastrel. ‘Was it unusual for a Wrongman to be given the chance of an apprenticeship, lad?’

  ‘Lady Blez pays fees every year to the craftsmen for hundreds of orphans to be apprenticed, sir. Not all, there’re too many of us. Every town and village abandoned brings more homeless trekking into Frente. I was one of the lucky ones.’

  Ah, indeed, lucky enough for his employer to end up face down in a warm puddle with a slit throat.

  ‘See if you can scare up our missing mine guide, young journeyman. And remind me to test your baking skill
s one day. I’m partial to poppy seed rolls of a morning.’

  Simenon obviously wanted to ask what a poppy was, but he departed in search of our guide all the same.

  I prodded Moz. ‘And what does Big Data’s analysis suggest about the chances of a revolt; all those arrest files you purloined back in the Watch should give you some indication of the temperature here?’

  ‘Big Data says if you’ve got a taste for aggro, then Hexator’s the right moon to get properly cabbaged on. Here’s the pertinent bar on the line graph…’ Mozart raised his middle metal finger at me.

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Well, if the capital kicks off, it all kicks off.’

  ‘I would rather it didn’t.’ Bloodshed follows bloodshed, that’s the way of it out here in the Empty.

  Simenon returned with our guide, a stout-looking fellow introduced to us as Arto Jagg. A stocky miner with a once-muscled face running to hanging flesh, reaching late middle-age and finding he couldn’t toil as hard as he once had. The man sported a thick moustache with long points curved steeply upward, as though pulled towards the surface he’d abandoned. The ground called him, still, but not as powerfully as the mines.

  We introduced ourselves to Arto before heading for the mine’s main entrance.

  ‘Why have the Lords Derechor been underground for so many days?’ I questioned our guide. ‘Do the twins enjoy mining?’

  Arto shrugged. ‘Hah, I doubt it. They’ve come for the nest of skeg moles we broke into.’

  ‘By skeg moles, do you mean small brown mammals with reduced hind-limbs and powerful paws well-evolved for digging?’

  Arto stroked his mustache thoughtfully. ‘If by small, you speak of one of the six-hundred-pound male moldwarp rather than the nine-hundred-pound females, then yes. And I presume, being a foreign moneyass who only speaks our language as a machine trick, you are slurring paws for claws?’

  ‘And these skeg moles have some value to the Lords Derechor?’

  ‘Oh yes, they’re very good at eating all of Hebateen’s workers, until there’s nary a bugger willing to climb down inside the mines. Which is why their lordships rode a barge with two companies of their best warriors to cull the nest.’

  ‘You know,’ Mozart said, ‘I really don’t think this pair of bleeding nobs want to be interviewed.’

  It appeared Billy Bones had no wish to attend the interrogation, either. Our bloodhound paced around in circles, whining and glancing in the direction of the mine’s entrance, before twisting around on the rocky slope as if in pain.

  ‘Well, there’s an augury from the gods,’ said Moz. ‘Hound what sees the future develops a bad case of the claustrophobia wobbles!’

  Simenon stared anxiously at me. ‘Master Roxley?’

  ‘Let the dog stay up here. You too, if you don’t find enclosed spaces to your taste.’

  Simenon shook his head, but I noted how tightly he now gripped Varnus’s prayer mat. Most Hexatorians’ first experience of venturing below the surface would be huddling in shelters riding out the worst energy storms, terrified and anxious. I ventured claustrophobia was a common phobia on the moon.

  ‘We won’t need to climb too far down,’ said Arto. ‘I heard their Lordships discovered the main nest in the deeps last night, poured barrels of tar into the passages and burnt the monsters out. Any skeg moles that escaped are digging for the high tunnels. We’ll cull them close to the surface.’

  Simenon appeared nauseous. ‘So, they’ll be heading straight for us?’

  ‘It’s why we use fire. Skeg moles mistake fire for magma and their nature’s to claw towards the surface and safety. Two of the Derechor’s toughest brute squads are here to deal with the blighters,’ said Arto. ‘It’s when the house fighters aren’t inside the mines you have to peer a little harder into the deep of the dark. Don’t worry, my son Rauf’s working with the hunting party.’ Arto spoke with pride. ‘All our best miners are down there assisting their lordships.’

  I hummed a ballad to help calm Simenon’s nerves. ‘They steal his duds and cutters as well. And they hoy them down the belt of hell. Down you go, and fare you well, you blackleg asteroid miner!’

  ‘Aye, there’s an ancient tune,’ said Arto. ‘Did Red teach it to you?’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘Cap’n Cairo,’ said Arto, throwing a thumb back in the direction of the airship docking tower.

  I smiled. I suspect if I called the good captain Red, her nickname would match the colour of the bruise gracing my ugly mug. ‘No, Master Jagg, the good captain didn’t teach me the tune. It’s one of The Songs of Old Sol. The ancient ballads are as fine a way as any for a simple trader to while away a long passage through the void. Did you know the captain when she worked here?’

  ‘That I did. Cairos are an old mining clan. Or at least, they were, until a tunnel collapse carried the best of them down to the happy halls of Magh Meall.’

  ‘But not Jenelle Cairo?’

  ‘Never our Red; kissed by mischief, that one, just like her ruby locks. A couple of clans blamed her for the collapse that killed her folks, claimed it was her unlucky hair angering the cave spirits. A few fools tried to bury her alive to appease Uku Mell and Habur Mell.’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to be the cheeky monkey carrying a spade on that job,’ said Mozart.

  ‘Aye, no oxidation clogging your noggin, old ruster. Quick of blade, quick of mind, quick of temper, was the Jenelle Cairo of my day.’

  ‘Little’s changed,’ I noted.

  ‘Blood feuds, they’re never a gift for ore quotas,’ said Jagg, ‘digging graves instead of tunnels. The last Mine Master called in a favour with the capital, got Red a cadet’s commission with the Watch. Quickest way to stop the feuding. She’s carved herself a fine name, now. No surprise, there. Our people are granite, not the capital’s soft clay.’

  ‘Still digging graves,’ said Moz.

  ‘Aye, but they’re the graves you get given medals for, not a broken spine strapped to the wheel for murder. Red lost her parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, and cousins working these shafts for the Derechors. Even without the feud, leaving Hebateen rescued her soul. Staying at the mine would have crushed her.’

  We entered the mine, passing through vent and service shafts spreading out under the mountain. We stopped at a metal equipment tank full of gear. Arto Jagg passed us each a steel helmet that resembled a medieval infantry kettle hat, as well as a copper carbide lamp with a large reflector. Only Mozart didn’t receive our sole concessions to safety, but then he needed neither. Arto also halted us by a safe-like vault door. He opened it with a set of large keys, entering on his own. When he returned, he had a belt weighted with packages that made me wince. Oblong parcels of nitroglycerin wrapped in greased brown waterproof paper.

  ‘Are those truly necessary, Master Jagg?’

  ‘Aye,’ said our guide. ‘Blasting charges are our best way out should we get trapped behind a rockfall. A chuff fellow can also use charges to bring the roof down on a skeg mole company.’

  I’m fairly certain I wasn’t nearly as “chuff” as Arto, then, given how fast nitroglycerin degrades towards instability. Heading inside an ancient mine was dangerous enough a venture without risking explosions if our guide slipped.

  ‘Bleeding amateur hour,’ Moz muttered at me.

  I said nothing but found it hard to argue.

  This close to the surface the mine’s tunnels appeared wide and well-built, constructed during the moon’s lost age of colonization by machines long-since rusted away or re-purposed as pick-axes and shovel blades. Smooth surfaces and angular corners which spoke of laser-cut accuracy. As we continued deeper, our passageways narrowed and became more ramshackle. Wooden supports, rough rock surfaces and the occasional brick arch to hold up difficult sections of strata. Counterweight-hoisted lift shafts were replaced by corkscrewing ramp shafts no wider than ore-filled carts dragged out by pit ponies.

  It grew warmer the deeper we descended until I was left sweating, droplets rol
ling itching down my nose. I considered allowing my clothes to chill me but decided to show solidarity in discomfit with Arto Jagg and Simenon. We had been descending for the best part of half an hour when I realized overheating was to be the least of our discomforts.

  ‘Vibrations!’ warned Moz. ‘Things are about to get proper hectic.’

  Arto Jagg dropped to one knee on the rock floor, laying a palm across the surface as though taking a pulse. ‘Big lad is right. It’s a male younger approaching fast; shouldn’t be overlarge. No time to set charges to slay it. Make ready!’

  I never wanted to meet Master Jagg’s definition of big. Passage walls crumbled behind us as a shower of rocks blew in, a writhing mass of chitin-armoured skeg mole flailing across the tunnel’s open space. Its tank-sized head possessed a pyramid-shaped rock punch of a beak splitting into four parts, roaring in our direction with the ferocity of a DNA-resurrected Spinosaurus. A fine flash of its razored teeth which actually seemed to be twisting on alien rotary muscles. A distended abdomen composed of dozens of linked segments thrashed behind the monster, so many clawed legs to cut away rock and drive through the subterranean realm that it was difficult to make an accurate estimate. Though, to be fair, perhaps the stench of acid sweating through its chitin armour was putting me off my count. Such excretions, it seemed, are what it generated inside its abdomen to make a nutrient soup of the moon’s abundant but solid minerals. Luckily for the skeg mole – far less so for us – humanity required comparatively little effort to digest.

  ‘Turn your lamps up to full,’ yelled Arto. The reflector on his carbide lamp suddenly blindingly strong as he flooded the gas’s flow rate.

  Simenon and I struggled to follow suit, three miniature lighthouse beams quickly focusing in on the skeg mole. Our efforts seemed a shockingly thin soup to keep this beast sated. It shook the passage with its bulk, hissing and salivating at the thought of a quickly snatched mankind meal. Perhaps it dimly recalled being burnt out of its nest by such as we, too. Not a thought to make you kindly disposed to Sweet William, when he might lie sweeter inside the gullet.