Under Cold Stone
Julia stepped out of the shuttle and into a wave of tropical humidity. Though she knew this was a mining outpost, she had a feeling the smell of iron was coming from something else.
The outpost hadn’t responded to hails, but the atmosphere was probably not letting any signals through. It might be why they’d settled down here in the first place. They were well hidden. Small operations like this one had no defenses unless you counted a few rifles.
Their best defense was to not be found in the first place.
She admired the view from the landing platform, projecting out from the side of a steep, jungle-covered mountain. It would be a beautiful place to live, if it weren’t caught in the friction of a decades-old, internecine war between several leading worlds of the lost colonies.
It took a certain kind of madness to throw your dice on a place like this. You could make yourself rich, but the chances were at least as great that you’d end up dead.
“Commodore!” One of her crew waved urgently from another platform on the next outcropping.
The new title was going to take a little getting used to but she’d won the vote by a landslide. There was no question of refusing it.
The man pointed to a tunnel cut into the rock at the back of the landing pad she stood on. “Through there!”
She walked through the winding tunnel, slightly cooler than the jungle, but not by much. She emerged beside the man on the next platform, thirty meters away from their shuttle. “What did you find, Banksy?”
Banksy, one of the sparkies from the Ava Klum, pointed down another tunnel. “Habitats are through there,” he said grimly, “and so are their owners.”
His tone left little doubt in Julia’s mind. The folks who’d lived here lived no more. Nonetheless, a day might come when precision might save lives. She had to get him past his anger and remind him of his duty.
“No sense in you leading an advance team, Banksy, if you’re not going to give a proper report on what you find.” Had he been a Marine, she’d be blistering his ears right now, but he wasn’t professional military. No such thing existed out here. She had to let Banksy know what he was doing wrong before she could expect him to do it right.
“Are the residents alive or dead? How many are there? What happened to them? Are there hostiles present?” She leaned in slightly, one eyebrow raised.
Banksy’s face flushed. “All dead. About a hundred and it looks like they were lined up, shot and then burned. No hostiles in sight.”
“Better,” she told him. “You don’t want me making decisions based on half-assed reports, especially when your own ass might hang in the balance.” She waved for him to lead the way to the habitats.
They wound their way through a much longer tunnel to emerge into a small canyon. The sheer walls rose up nearly a hundred meters on three sides and a platform had been built across it at the level of the tunnels. A ring of two-storey structures ran around the outside of the platform, backed against the rock face, leaving a central open area in the middle.
What lay in the middle, surrounding an industrial elevator, was the reason for Banksy’s tone.
A sad collection of charred corpses lay in their final poses, some on their own and some in pairs, holding each other for eternity.
“Looks recent,” Banksy suggested. “No soot-streaks on the platform around them so at least since the last rain, and it rains a lot here, I’d guess.”
He waved at the vibrant foliage clinging to the canyon walls. “Takes regular moisture to keep all that from dying out.”
She nodded at the heavy-duty elevator. “Anyone check down below?”
“Not yet.” He turned to look at the corpses. “We should take them down with us,” he said quietly. “Miners usually have a place for their dead in a side chamber from the main shaft.”
Julia shivered. Paul had grown up in a place like this, back in the Imperium. It had been a lot bigger and run by an oppressive conglomerate, but he’d spent his short childhood in the rock shafts of Hardisty.
She nodded. “After we clear the complex. Leave a team up here to hold the habitat level and get a party ready to go down and clear out the mine.”
Banksy moved off to organize the necessary teams while she drifted toward the nearest house. The door was open and she stepped inside. A mouldy breakfast was half eaten on the table. Two large plates and two small ones. An empty coffee mug lay smashed on the floor.
She tried to imagine living this way, completely unprotected and vulnerable to any passing ship. For the daughter of a planetary governor, the descendent of Imperial Senators, it was difficult to grasp.
She stepped through an open door at the back to find the master bedroom. It was simple enough. A small bed and collapsible dressers served for furniture. It looked as though the owners might walk in at any moment, tired but proud of what they were accomplishing.
She turned to leave and bumped into something behind her. A small crib lay against the wall facing the bed. It held a threadbare stuffed animal and rumpled covers. A rickety homemade mobile dangled an assortment of small toys over the top.
She felt a catch in her throat. Her helmet startled her, quickly folding into the fully deployed position in response to her elevated vital signs. She retracted it and took a few deep breaths.
She was giving serious thought to going back and wiping out the survivors on that asteroid base. The records on the Walter Currie showed a stop here. They’d taken on no new cargo but the sparse report mentioned forty-six rounds of small arms fire expended.
She touched a hand to the roughly shaped wood of the crib. They’d come down here and killed everyone for what? Their only accomplishment had been to prevent Roanokans from operating here and perhaps to increase the level of hatred felt for the Spirians.
She exited the small home and flinched as a net swung past her face. She raised a warding hand, both for the net as well as the flurry of insects that fluttered around her.
“Sorry, ma’am,” a young crewman stammered.
She resisted the urge to snap at him. He wasn’t responsible for the deaths or her current mood. “Don’t tell me we have an entomologist on the crew?”
“A what?”
She waved at the receding insects. “Bugs…”
“Oh…” He shook his head. “Not bugs, ma’am. Those are seeds from climber shrubs. Cook’ll bust a nut if I bring him some of those. When you dry ‘em and grind ‘em into a powder, they make a great spice.” He hefted the net. “Found this laying behind one of the houses. I figured it might not be the worst way to remember these poor folks, so…” He trailed off.
She smiled. “Not such a bad idea. We’ll raise a glass to them tonight in the mess. Go catch us some seeds.”
He scurried off after the flying seeds and she walked over to the elevator. Four dead miners lay against the back grating.
The ride down was gloomy enough without having charred corpses for company. Julia’s thoughts drifted back to the asteroid base and its severely messed-up inhabitants.
She wasn’t the only one.
“Maybe we should go back and crack that asteroid open with a few rounds from the Klum’s main guns,” Banksy muttered. “Damned animals!”
“I’d say most of the people that did this are already dead,” Julia replied. “And they died under pretty strange circumstances.” She frowned. They were so quick to kill themselves when they realised the fight was lost. It was as if they couldn’t risk capture.
“I could’ve come up with stranger,” he shot back defiantly.
They came to a stop and the heavy grille lifted out of the way. Now that the elevator was no longer moving, they could feel the constant flow of warm air down the shaft, pushed by the blowers mounted under the living platform. It felt pleasantly warm, given the lower temperature in the mountain’s heart.
A boring machine sat in front of them, bullet holes hinting at a final stand by the miners who’d probably used the vehicle for cover.
The suspension had been shot out, the heavy magnetic ribbon spooled out onto the rock floor from a gaping hole.
Five men and two women were on the floor between the machine and the elevator. Their weapons, almost antiques, were still by their bodies. One man must have gotten pinned under the boring machine when the suspension gave out and dropped the heavy vehicle to the ground. His left leg was crushed beneath the lower foot rail.
Julia stepped over to the back corner of the vehicle and crouched down to grasp the rail mount. Without a word, Banksy moved over to grab the shoulders of the trapped body. She lifted, relying on her armor to do the heavy work, and he pulled the dead man free.
If they were going to lay this community to rest, they weren’t leaving anybody behind.
“Miners usually have a crypt near the elevator,” Banksy said, nodding toward a cleanly carved opening. “Lets family visit without getting in the way of the heavy equipment. I’d bet it’s that door over there.”
“You four check the room for hostiles,” she ordered, pointing to indicate who she was talking to, “then hold here. We’ll be clearing the main shaft.”
She led them back out to the chamber where the elevator entrance had been guarded from behind the tunnel borer.
She looked down the gently sloping tunnel, frowning.
“They probably came in through the overburden ramp,” Banksy nodded down the tunnel. “They wouldn’t have known which ravine to search for the upper landing pad but a big-ass pile of rock on the side of the mountain’s a dead giveaway.”
“Speaking of which,” she nodded down the tunnel where a couple of blood trails led off into the dimness between lights. “Let’s go see if we can find any reason for this.”
They moved down the gentle curve, passing workshops and storage rooms on both sides. Where the massive corkscrew tunnel came close to the edge of the mountain, large galleries had been carved out with forty-meter-long, five-meter-high openings to let the air circulate more effectively.
Every vehicle had been destroyed. Whether it was an ore carrier or a personnel transport, they’d all been disabled by the quick expedient of shooting at the suspension casing. The link-belts holding the electromagnetic fluid had spooled out to lie in a pile beneath each rupture.
At the third gallery, they came upon two men. They weren’t dressed like miners. Both had been wounded; one had a wet red bandage on his right thigh while the other had been shot in the left calf. They were lying against a pile of rock.
Skid marks in the rubble and dust indicated they’d found the over-burden ramp where non-ore-bearing rock was pushed out of the mine.
The first man saw Julia and her shore party come around the bend and he calmly pulled out his pistol. The calm face quickly began showing fear as he realized what his own hand was doing. His partner watched him in alarm.
Julia was ready this time. She brought her assault rifle up quickly and snapped off a single round into his right arm. She swung the weapon to bear on the second man but he just raised his hands.
“Not going to give you any trouble, luv,” he said earnestly. “I’ve no idea what’s got into my mate here, but I promise not to shoot myself if you hold your fire.”
“We’ll bring them with us,” she told Banksy. “Send two teams on to clear the rest of the shaft and the third can come back to the elevator with us to start moving the bodies into the crypt.
They reached the elevator landing, finding the four men detailed to guard the tunnel entrance.
“Crypt is clear,” one of them assured her, “and only one entrance.” He waved at the opening.
She nodded. “Take these two prisoners in there and keep an eye on them while we bring the bodies down.”
They brought out the miners who’d died in the elevator before riding back up to the surface. The habitat area had seemed cool and shady before but, after their time in the mine, it now felt almost oppressively hot.
The work of loading the bodies into the large freight elevator was easier than expected, aside from the emotional toll. With no water left, Human bodies weigh only a fraction of their live weight.
Julia placed her sixth body in the elevator and returned to the tragic row of charred corpses. She looked down and her breath caught in her throat, her right hand coming up to the base of her neck.
The next body in the pile was holding a much smaller one and her mind flashed back to the empty crib. Blinking back tears, she knelt and gently worked her hands under the parent, keeping the child in its parent’s arms as she lifted.
She, of all people, could identify with the parent. Hundreds of crewmen depended on her to keep them alive and she knew the impossibility of that expectation. These privateer crews were a far cry from the professional soldiers she’d been trained to lead and it was a miracle half of them weren’t already corpses. War meant death and she’d had her fair share of Marines and dragoons die on her watch.
She couldn’t even imagine how much worse it must be to know your own child was about to die, that it was unable to understand what was happening, nor even realize how you had failed to protect it.
She didn’t want to set them down for fear of separating them, and the work party had already loaded the last of the bodies, so she simply stepped into the elevator and held the two bodies as they descended into the mountain’s heart.
She stepped out and walked across to the crypt. The opening proved to be a short tunnel with smooth, straight walls and a vaulted ceiling. An ornately carved wooden door stood open at the far end. She stepped into what was unmistakeably the small community’s crypt. A wide hall stretched away from her, niches adorning the side walls in columns of three.
Each niche held a wrapped body. An extension had been excavated at the back, but no new niches were ready yet.
“All we can do is lay them out together on the floor.” Julia looked over at Banksy. “They were probably making the extension for themselves, so let’s put them in there.” She walked over and laid her grim burden on the cold stone.
It didn’t take long. Julia brought in the defenders from beside the tunnel borer. Her armor made easy work of their full-weight bodies.
She was just bringing the man who’d been caught beneath the machine when a pinging hail of bullets bounced off her side plates. She dropped the body and spun to face her attacker, her helmet snapping shut.
“Shit!” She jumped forward, blocking the return fire from her crewmen, and rushed her assailant. She snatched the weapon from his hands but left him in his hiding place behind one of the bodies in a niche.
“Hold fire!” she shouted. “Hold fire! He’s just a kid.”
She turned to find the youngster had slid out of the niche and was now pounding in impotent fury on her segmented torso plates. She opened her helmet and knelt in front of him, gently grasping his angry fists in her armored fingers.
He didn’t look like he’d even made it to double digits. He’d be eight or nine at the most.
“It’s over,” she told him softly. “The people who did this won’t be hurting anyone again.” That was technically a lie. They were still hurting this young man.
He looked at her uncertainly. He’d probably thought Julia’s crew had been the ones who killed everyone. Considering that he fired at her, it was a safe enough bet.
“You can’t promise that,” he whispered.
“They all died when we found them,” she told him.
“There’s always more…”
She couldn’t argue. Sometimes kids had far more sense than any adult.
His eyes kept darting to the body she’d dropped.
“Your father?”
A nod. “I saw you carrying him and…” His voice failed him.
“Do you want to help me pick a spot for him?”
A nod.
She picked the man up and walked to the newly excavated end. The charred bodies lay at the back and the other six defenders were laid out closer to the entrance.
A small party of crewman arr
ived with armloads of blasting blankets and set them close to the two rows of bodies. They moved back to stand with the rest of the crew, most of whom were looking in her direction.
What do you say about strangers, especially with one of their kids watching? She fell back on what she’d learned from Paul. He’d been raised under cold stone as he liked to put it.
It was one of the ancient, customary forms of expression used by the miners’ guild in the Imperium. He’d never achieved full membership, having left as a child, but he’d learned a lot from his father.
And he’d attended a lot of funerals on Hardisty, ending with his own father’s.
“We commit these men and women to the rock they once worked,” she intoned. “They will live on in every ounce of ore wrested from their mine.” She paused for a moment, not sure where the standard invocation went from there.
“We didn’t get a chance to meet these people,” she continued, “but there’s much we can say we do know about them. They were all tough, hardworking, adventurous individuals. Nobody looking for an easy life would have thought to find it here.
“In many ways, they represent the best in our species. They had the ability to recognize the potential in this world and the willingness to put in the hard work necessary to bring it to fruition.”
The proper ending came to her, just in time. She was in serious danger of rambling which would have made a hash of the business. “And so the living must leave them beneath the cold stone, never again to see the sun. Long may they rest.”
“Long may they rest,” Banksy repeated and she thought she heard the youngster mumble the same thing.
Two crewmen stepped toward the pile of blasting blankets, but Banksy waved them off. “They’re properly buried now, lads. The stone’s their grave.”
He turned to look at Julia. “You did a decent enough job, laying those folk to rest.” He grinned. “For a squinter, that is! You know a miner, do you?” The respect in his voice had lost much of its grudging tone.
Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2) Page 14
