Kendric was surprised to learn that the bosses who managed the mine allowed the underground workers to go to the surface at all. "I suppose it's part of the psychology of the place," T.C. explained. "If there were nothing to keep us going but the promise of death... well, after a while, the workers would all just lay down and die. Why prolong things, you know?
"So we have.. .alternatives. There are the tripods up on the surface if we disobey, refuse to work, or whatever. If we keep working and behave ourselves, there's...hope."
Kendric laughed then, a bitter sound. "Hope? Here?"
"Certainly. They let us go to the surface every twenty shifts, and that helps. You won't believe how it helps until you experience it! And there's the knowledge that we have a choice. If we can't go on, we can...take a walk."
"You mean leave the mine?"
"They won't stop you. No one knows, of course, since no one's come back, but it can't be any slower a way to die than on the tripods. And there must be cliffs, or lava pools, or animals that could be, well, used to hurry things along."
"And you call that hope?"
"After you've been here awhile, you'll understand. You can't keep going unless you know that...that this is not all there is.7'
Then the harsh rattle of a whistle ended the conversation, and custies armed with electric prods arrived to usher in the changing of a shift.
Most of the slaves at mine 12 were sullen, their expressions ranging from dull and vacant to dark and vacant. They said little and had the appearance of automatons who gathered when directed to, worked when ordered to, and seemed to possess all the enthusiastic individuality of a herd of bovos on the Alban Highlands Plains.
T.C. was an exception. Kendric quickly guessed that she was one of those people whose best armor was a tough demeanor. Behind the dirty face, she had a quick mind and a need to talk, especially about the universe outside of these hellish, narrow tunnels. He suspected that her ritual of seeing the sky was more than a means of keeping track of time. She seemed to need to know that the sky, and the worlds beyond it, were still there.
They could not talk during work periods, but T.C. had adopted him. She said she was always doing that with stray frits and new raw meat, showing them the routine and helping them to learn it. After the single long work period was over, they would sit together on the clay floor of Barracks D of 12-3 and talk.
Slowly and painfully, Kendric was learning what it was to be a crystal miner.
The light shed by the stars of our Cluster make all things possible. —Ancient Gael Proverb
"The star system is called Narbon," Elliot said. "It lies here, in the Orion-Sagittarian Gulf about eight-thousand light years default."
This time, Elliot had come to Morganen. The two were in Morganen's office aboard the Gael Warrior. The battleship was still docked at Alba Port, though rumors arrived daily that the squadron was soon to be redeployed. Elliot had come aboard as an Imperial Health Inspector assigned to Alba Port and had asked to see the Captain.
Morganen leaned forward and followed Elliot's pointing finger. The visual feed from his desk computer had been routed to the HV projector on top of his desk. The desktop was temporarily obscured by a three-dimensional projection spanning about a quarter of the Galaxy. White clots of massed stars hung suspended along frozen pinwheel arms. Green lights marked Sol close by the base of the Orion Spur, the Gael Cluster across the Gulf on the outer edge of the Arm, and Trothas, anti-spinward, further up the Arm toward the dull, red glowing amoeba of KessRith space, one-third of the way up the arm from Terra and Alba.
"While you made the crossing from Trothas to Alba, they put him aboard a star freighter that took a slower, more circuitous journey down-arm, winding up here." Elliot's finger hovered near the image identified as Narbon on the map. "Haetai-Aleph is the largest of the moons of Narbon IV, the system's inner gas giant. The giant is called
Haetai, the moon Haetai-Aleph. He's at a place—a mountain, actually—called Grod, in one of the mining facilities there." He touched something on the computer keyboard, and the holograph of the galaxy faded, replaced by a banded, dully glowing planet and the glittering traceries of the orbits of a dozen moons. Elliot indicated one of the inner orbits, just outside the powdery black ring that circled the giant.
"What sort of defenses are there? Local shipping? System patrols?"
"There are military bases on Aleph, of course, at Grod and elsewhere. There are usually naval escorts around when an ore convoy is forming up, but as near as my informants can tell, the only naval elements insystem are a handful of light stuff. Fighters, corvettes, armed shuttles, and the like."
He touched the computer keyboard again, and the gas giant collapsed in the blink of an eye into a single point of light. Other points of light appeared, crawling along the emerald traceries that marked their orbits around the orange-hued sun.
"Narbon II is inhabited," Elliot said, indicating the second planet. "Terralike...Albalike, if you prefer. Quite a bit drier, though, with large deserts, and most of the water locked up in small polar ice caps. Thin atmosphere. There are cities there, including a trader's market."
"Trader's market?"
"Call it a frequent stopover on the Galactic trade routes...especially for the independents."
"Doesn't TOG frown on such an activity going on in the same system as this mining facility?"
Elliot shrugged. "I doubt it. They take advantage of it, actually. The star freighters that bring in the slaves are often independents. Narbon II is their source for food and supplies for Haetai-Aleph."
"O.K. So we get a ship insystem there. How do we find one man locked up somewhere inside a whole planet?"
"I can tell you where in Grod Kendric is being held. My informant was able to find out that he had been assigned to Mine 12, Level 3. From what we've been able to learn, once a slave is assigned to a level, that's where he stays until he dies."
"They never come to the surface?"
"They're on a schedule. 'Ten down, two up,' is how it goes, I believe. When they're on the surface, they are kept in a barracks area near the shaft head. They're given a chance to wash, and maybe get a couple of decent meals."
"Huh. Can your... informant find out Kendric's schedule? It would be nice to hit the place when he's on the surface. I don't see how we can
get to him if he's three levels down."
Elliot shook his head. "That sort of information isn't posted at Grodport, which is where my man got the rest of this. It's worked out by individual bosses in the various works."
"Can he get at one of these bosses?"
"Commander, my informant is a freighter captain who owes me a favor. A very big favor, it happens. He didn't get sent to Grod or another place like it for smuggling several years ago because I intervened in his behalf. But believe me, by providing this information, his debt to me has been canceled. I can't ask him to go snooping around in a restricted TOG mining facility! It would be suicide...or worse. Instead of merely killing him, they might decide to keep him there."
"Then it's hopeless! Unless we gamble that Kendric's in the surface barracks when we arrive. A 20 percent chance!"
Elliot shook his head. "I first approached you, Commander, because you are a military man. I am a civilian...a bureaucrat. I can process a civilian bureaucrat's information, but strategy and tactics is something else. Surely you, as a military man, can come up with a workable plan for getting Kendric out of there?"
Morganen sighed. "I don't know, Citizen. It's not the military angle that bothers me. It's the sheer scale of trying to find one man in a literal anthill of tunnels and levels. And we don't even have a decent subsurface map of the facility!"
"You're saying it can't be done?"
"Oh, we can try." Morganen smiled, but with no humor in it. "We still have that one-in-six chance of finding him on the surface—if his guards don't shoot him first—or if we don't shoot him by accident. Let me take a look at these plans, and I'll talk with you later."
<
br /> "How much later?"
"Good question. Better make it 0900 or earlier, tomorrow. Scuttlebutt has been flying about our squadron being deployed. I've received no orders yet..."
"I'll look into that." Elliot stood. "I know there's been talk in the Governor's office about Arada wanting to split up your squadron. If I hear anything, I'll let you know. Until tomorrow, then. I'll come aboard as a health inspector again looking for legaldies in your galley."
"Fine. I'll tell Purcell to expect you. Uh, one more thing, Citizen."
"Yes?"
"Before we get into this much farther, I'm going to have to know what you plan to do after we get Kendric out of Grod. We can't just come back here to Alba. You mentioned possibilities, but damned if I can see any that make sense!"
Elliot smiled. "I'm still working on it, Commander. The hard part is arranging for the crew's families."
"Families?"
"To escape TOG's long arm, we're going to need a ship."
Morganen closed his eyes. "One of ours. A corvette, perhaps?"
"Think big, Commander. If we want to escape TOG's reach, we need a ship large enough to make a journey of considerable length. A very long journey. And that means we need a large ship with a large crew."
Morganen's eyes snapped open. "You're talking about this ship! The Gael Warrior!"
"Exactly."
"But good God, man, an Imperial battleship!"
"As I said, the hard part is arranging for the families of the crew. Most of them have people on Alba...a few on other worlds in the Cluster. Wives. Lovers. Parents. I doubt the Warrior's crew would wholeheartedly volunteer to leave the Cluster forever, with their families at the tender mercies of TOG!"
"I hadn't thought of that."
"There are a lot of angles to consider," Elliot said cheerfully. "Right now, you think of a way to get Kendric up on the surface when we need him! I'll leave all the computer data...charts, nav plots, and so on, with you. And I'll see you in the morning."
"All right. See you then." Damn him, he's avoided the question again! Where does he want to go.. .and with an Imperial battleship! Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow.. ."A rating will escort you to the quarterdeck brow, Citizen."
Morganen stared at the door for a long time after Elliot had left. Damn! Fraser would have thought about the crew's families, too, and he has no more family of his own here now than I do. I'm beginning to think 1 won't ever have what it takes to command a ship this big.
After a time, he leaned forward and touched the intercom switch on his desk console. "Personnel. This is the Captain."
"Personnel Office, Craig speaking, sir."
"I want a search run through the Warrior's officers. Her senior enlisted ratings, too. Find me the four or five people with the most combat experience."
"Combat experience, sir?"
"That's right, Mr. Craig. Priority is to be given to people who have fought in ground actions, if possible. I need the report as soon as possible. Tonight."
"I'll get right on it, Captain."
When he had switched off, Morganen smiled to himself. Craig was probably convinced that he was crazy, searching for combat experience among the Warrior's officers and crew. For a warrior culture, the Gaels had been remarkably peaceful for the past several centuries. Yet, each of the Five Worlds still had their lawless or rebellious elements, and the Alban militia included a small marine contingent and a somewhat larger special operations task force. It was possible that there were people aboard who had experience in ground assaults. And Morganen was going to need them if he was to have the slightest chance of coming up with a workable plan.
TOG plans in the Gael Cluster appear to he accelerating. It is clear now that they intend to eliminate any possibility that the Five Worlds will one day become a center of opposition to their rule, or an encouragement to other would-be rebels. The possibility of incinerating all five planets has been discussed among high-ranking TOG officials here, but that option has been set aside, at least for the time being. It will be more productive, it is felt, to adopt a different strategy-■■
—Report filed by agent Clarity, to Commonwealth Intelligence, Cathandra, Source: Classified: Most Secret, 15 Sep 6830
Kendric learned the new routine quickly. Reveille was the first call of the day, though there was nothing in Grod's subterranean world to indicate of the actual time of day or night. The slaves—some forty of them in this one barracks alone—mustered outside the barracks for roll call by one of the virga-wielding bosses, and any slaves who had died during the night were picked up and carried off by the other slaves. During Kendric's first night, two men and a woman died in his barracks, shriveled and wasted creatures who looked barely Human.
How long before I look like that, he wondered. He questioned T.C. and others about what became of the bodies, but no one would answer. Even T.C. would only say, "They take them away. They'll have some peace now, maybe." She was caring for Ellen, who was obviously ill and not getting any better. Kendric had read fear in T.C.'s eyes as she moistened the older woman' s face and lips with a dampened headband.
Once the night's bodies were taken away, the group was herded to an enlargement of the main tunnel that was euphemistically referred to as the "dining hall." Meals were similar to those they'd had aboard ship, gruel or stew served in plastic bowls and eaten with the fingers. One meal was served before each work period, an obvious concession to the fact that weak and hungry slaves cannot do the work of strong ones.
The slaves were allowed twenty minutes for their meal and were then marched by slickered custos to the Pit. The Hell Pit was a 100-meter wide sunken bowl at the far end of the main tunnel. Its floor was filled with mud and loose rock. Its ceiling was an open expanse lit by batteries of fluoros that illuminated the work area. Three flat, open conveyers stretched across the middle of the Pit on open metal frameworks, their belts rattling in an unceasing, chain-driven din. The black, mechanical snouts of two massive columns descended along one rock wall from this darkness and reached down to within two meters of the far end of the conveyors. These were conveyors of a different sort, covered belts mounting hoppers racketing up into the drizzling mists overhead with the shrill clangor of high-speed machinery.
The slaves descended into the Pit down ramps of packed gravel to stand knee- and waist-deep in muddy water, using shovels to scoop rock from the mud and dump it onto one of the open conveyors. Other slaves gathered along the horizontal conveyors, using hoses connected to twisting overhead pipes to spray jets of water across the piles of mud and rock as the belts moved past them faster than a man could walk. At the far end, relays of slaves more experienced than the others plucked certain water-cleaned rocks from the belt and chucked them into one of the maws of the vertical tube, while the conveyers fed the rest directly into the mouth of the other.
At intervals, Kendric was told, when the loose rock had been cleared, the Pit would be emptied and the machinery cleared away. Then a new batch of slaves, together with a number of TOG mining engineers, would descend into the Pit, bringing with them the massive fittings for rock-crackers. These were torpedo-shaped laser borers with plastic explosives mounted behind their heads. Powerful gravity fields within the borer tubes focused the blasts laterally, sending shock waves down and out, but not up. The floor of the Pit would be reduced to loose rubble ten meters deep. The ramp from the main tunnel would be extended by packing down more rubble, the lifts and conveyors would be mounted once more, and the job would begin all over again, shift after shift after dreary shift, as Grod's Hell Pits grew deeper and
deeper.
At any given time, there were always upwards of 200 slaves in the Hell Pit, shoveling mud, cleaning rock, and sorting it along the three horizontal belts. Bosses in their black and orange slickers and dural-eath harnesses prowled the Pit's perimeter on railed catwalks that circled the hole at several levels and also spanned it at several points.
Work was backbreaking and unceasing. Kendric, as befit hi
s status as newly arrived raw meat, started out as a mucker with a shovel, standing in steaming mud up to his waist, probing blindly for each scoopful of rock and mud. T.C., an obvious old hand, alternated between the relatively easy work of washing mud from rock and the demanding but prestigious task of selecting those rocks that experience told her were ore-bearing. These she tossed into the right-hand vertical conveyor. Kendric could see her as she shoveled, sweat band pulled down across her ears as protection against the deafening clamor of the machines she fed.
The work continued for what at first seemed an unendurable period until a boss blew a whistle, announcing Shift Change. Though the conveyors continued to clatter by, the workers left their tools and trudged out as another party of slaves filed in to take their place. Though his first work shifts/e/f as though each one were a full day in length, Kendric now felt that they were somewhere between four and six hours long.
There followed a break that was about as long as the work period, when the slaves took another small meal at the dining hall or collapsed into exhausted sleep in the barracks. It had been during such a "Rest Shift" that Kendric and the young man who later identified himself as Joric Casadren had arrived.
Then came another work period as grueling as the first, then another rest period that everyone, by common consent, identified as "night." There was no true night in the underground world, of course, because the fluoros were always on. There was no proof that the schedule was run on a twenty-four-hour standard day, either, but Kendric suspected that the shifts alternated six hours of work with six hours of rest, on and on and on. The Pit, he came to discover, was never deserted, for fresh work crews always filled the spots he and his companions vacated when it was time for the to return to the barracks. He learned, too, that The Pit was only one of at least 30 such areas dug out of the throat of that one volcano, that there were perhaps 100 such volcanos currently being worked on Haetai-Aleph. Besides the Pit Workers, there were dozens of other operations at each mine— horizontal shafts to be dug into the mountain's flank, strip-mining operations in the valley at the mountain's base, or the sorting and storing of raw ore sent to the surface. Added together, the Haetai-Aleph workings were of colossal size, and were sustained by an unbelievable amount of sheer physical labor and human suffering. How many more such worlds are there throughout TOG's Galaxy? Kendric wondered.
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