by Cathy Pegau
Both headed for the bedroom. Natalia stashed her toiletries on the shelf at the foot of her bed and hung her damp towel on one of the several wall hooks. Gennie’s side of the room had the same setup.
With Gennie’s back to her, Natalia watched her straighten her things then pull the tucked sheet and light blanket from under the edge of the mattress. The green pajama bottoms stretched over the curve of her buttocks. Natalia turned away and focused on the light switch. The rustle of covers and squeak of springs came from Gennie’s bed.
“Ready?” Natalia asked, unable to resist looking over her shoulder at the other woman. She had the covers up over her chest, her arms folded beneath her head.
A crooked smile formed on her lips, as if she knew Natalia was thinking about her. “Ready.”
Natalia tapped the switch and waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust. Though dim, the light coming through the window between the beds was enough to allow her to discern Gennie’s body.
“Goodnight,” Natalia said. She made her way to her own bed and climbed under the covers.
“Goodnight,” came the breathy reply from across the room.
Natalia closed her eyes and tried to think of anything but the woman lying two meters away.
* * *
The next morning, Natalia and Gennie grabbed a quick bite of breakfast and picked up two pre-packaged lunches before heading out with a couple of dozen other day-shift workers from their dorm. She and Gennie followed several workers to Tunnel Four as the rest drifted toward the three other tunnels.
Natalia held her mother’s blue hard hat in her hands, running her fingers along the largest dent. The familiar ache of loss was a part of her, even after twenty years. She’d worn the hat like a talisman for days after her mother was pulled from the collapsed tunnel while the rescue teams searched for her father. They’d never found his body. Natalia had her mother’s hat packed away, until now.
Gennie glanced at the scratched lid with Kuzmin stenciled on the front. They’d discussed each other’s alias for the job, but Natalia had never told Gennie who Kuzmin was. Or what had happened to her. Or why Natalia had the well-used hard hat in her possession. No need for Gennie to have that sort of personal information. Though now that she knew Natalia had grown up a pirq, Gennie probably had a pretty good guess about the hard hat’s origins. Natalia appreciated her silence on the matter.
The walk to the shift boss’s office was filled with quiet conversations among workers and the constant distant rumble of machinery echoing off the canyon walls. At each tunnel, a bin half the size of Natalia’s apartment house back in Pandalus waited to be filled with raw ore by the haulers coming up from the depths of the void. The trip from vein to bin could take as long as two hours and was usually the last thing a hauler did on his shift. The monstrous machine was then left for the next hauler crew to return to the section being worked. Natalia didn’t see or hear Tunnel Four’s hauler at the mouth. That was odd.
The rest of the crew congregated outside, sipping coffee and chatting in the chilly morning before the pre-shift briefing. Natalia and Gennie climbed the plank stairs to check in with the shift boss. Finn strode by, offering a nod and a sleepy smile. Natalia refused to check Gennie’s reaction. She knocked hard on the door then opened it without waiting for an answer.
The shift boss sat at a battered desk, reading his SI screen and drinking from a mug with the Reyes Corporation logo etched on the side. He was a square, squat man, broad-shouldered and thick-necked with graying brown hair cut close to his head. On the desk was a keracite dust-stained hard hat that used to be white. It read MacDonnell on the front.
“You the two noobs?” he asked without looking up from the screen.
Natalia tucked her hat under her left arm. “Yep. Kirkpatrick said you’d have something for us.”
“Need a hauler with some mech skills.” He glanced up, his brow creasing above sharp blue eyes. “Shit. You two ever work a site before?”
Natalia stared right back, frowning. “Office has our info. Been a little while, but yeah. I grew up on the South Rim.”
MacDonnell grunted and turned his hard gaze on Gennie. “What about you, cupcake?”
Cupcake? Gennie tensed beside Natalia.
“I don’t work the void,” Gennie said, her voice quiet and controlled, “but I’m up for anything else ya got.”
Natalia gave her points for keeping calm, and for imitating her and MacDonnell’s speech patterns. Blending in would be a big help for the job ahead.
“It’s shit work for shit pay,” MacDonnell said. “Cleaning up around the site, filing in here. Can you make coffee?”
The tension eased from Gennie’s shoulders and she smiled. “Best damn coffee you’ve ever tasted.”
MacDonnell grunted again, pushed his chair back from the desk and rose. “Come meet the rest of the crew.” He donned his hat and moved toward the door, muttering, “Just what those jokers need, a coupla stunners.”
Heat traveled up Natalia’s neck. She quickly stepped in front of him, blocking the door. MacDonnell narrowed his eyes as he looked up at her, his face darkening a shade.
“We’re here to work,” she said. “Don’t want trouble, yeah?”
He held her gaze for a few seconds. Natalia knew better than to back down or even blink. Pirq bosses were tough, no-nonsense sorts and appreciated honesty and frankness in their crews. Usually.
Mac reached into a box beside the filing cabinet and withdrew a plastic packet. He tossed it to Natalia. Earbud hearing protectors. “Fair enough,” he said.
Natalia moved aside to let him pass. That would be all she and Gennie would hear about it unless someone made trouble. She had no intention of doing so—not that sort of trouble anyway.
She set her hard hat on her head and nodded for Gennie to follow. MacDonnell lumbered down the steps to the crew gathered nearby. The expressions ranged from open curiosity to bland indifference as Natalia and Gennie descended the stairs. Everyone was bundled against the cold in multiple layers to keep warm. Natalia was grateful for her tech-imbued clothing.
Most of the hard hats were blue or black or yellow; two baby-faced teens wore the red lids of rookies in their first year in the mines. Only white—for shift bosses—and red held any significance.
“Listen up, you mooks,” MacDonnell called. The chatter died down and the crew shuffled closer to get the morning report. “This here’s Kuzmin and Moore. Kuzmin’ll be workin’ the hauler.” He gestured toward a tall, thin man with dark skin and a grizzled beard. “Keegan, show her the Beast.” Keegan nodded to MacDonnell then to Natalia. “Moore, here, will be with me, doin’ general chores.”
“Poor Moore,” someone said from the back.
Everyone laughed. Except MacDonnell.
“Zip it,” he said loud enough to carry over the crew. “We’re still in Section Twenty-Five. Need six cuts to make quota today, Johnny.” Natalia couldn’t tell who MacDonnell was talking to. “Swing and night shifts did shit, barely cuttin’ four each. I’m not surprised.”
Cat calls and insults toward the other crews filled the air. Natalia recalled some fierce rivalries between shifts. Some things never changed.
“Seismology says they’re seein’ some deep shakers,” MacDonnell continued, “centered about a hundred fifty klicks west. Shouldn’t affect us, but we’ll be watchin’.” He looked over the crew as if waiting for someone to speak up. When no one did, he gave a curt nod. “Right. Get in there. Get it done. Be sa
fe.” He turned back toward the office door and gestured for Gennie to follow him.
She leaned close. Her breath warmed Natalia’s ear. “Good luck.”
MacDonnell would have her doing the crappiest work he could find, but Natalia felt she could rely on Gennie to get down to business. Gennie didn’t want to be here, and that was perhaps the best motivator for finding evidence against the Reyeses as quickly as possible.
“Come on,” Finn said from behind Natalia. “I’ll introduce ya to the others.”
She faced the younger man, determined not to let her unease with him show. He smiled, his gaze flicking to the office door where Gennie had disappeared. Natalia’s gut tightened. It wasn’t surprising the pirq roofer found Gennie attractive. No, the surprise was Natalia’s reaction to it.
“Much obliged.” She refused to let jealousy get the better of her or let Finn see it. Or worse, let Gennie see it.
So why was she feeling it?
If Finn found Gennie attractive, and vice versa, so be it. She was an attractive woman. A single kiss didn’t merit the sort of response Natalia was having. Especially not a kiss that was initiated through deception. There was no denying the physical attraction between her and Gennie, but there would be no acting on it either. If Gennie wanted Finn, Natalia wouldn’t get in her way. She wouldn’t like it, but she wouldn’t stop them.
Finn pointed out where the rest of the crew gathered beneath a metal lean-to near a board listing the names of crew members by shift. Though newer hard hats were embedded with locator chips, many pirqs wore older lids, so everyone tagged in and out. Beside each name hung a metal disc on a nail. The night shift, all ten of them, had their discs turned to the black side, tagged in to indicate they were still in the tunnels. The incoming crew were all turning their discs to the black. Personnel not in the tunnel or not going in showed the white side, tagged out. The night crew would tag out when they came up.
Finn chalked Natalia’s name in a blank spot at the bottom of the day crew and dug a spare disc out of a box by the board. He hung it, showing the black side, then flipped his own to black.
A flash of memory made Natalia’s chest ache. Two discs beside her parents’ names turned black side up when most of the others were white. Then someone erasing their names altogether, a slow-motion swipe that sent chalk dust floating to the ground.
“You okay?” Finn asked, breaking the recollection.
Natalia released a shuddering sigh as a slow breath. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Beside the lean-to, a low, twelve-seater skid shimmied, its engine warming as it waited for the crew to pile in. The doorless, roofless transport would take them deep into the tunnel, to a lift that lowered the crew into the bowels of the mountain or carried them up into narrower tunnels running through the higher strata. The night crew would take the same skid back out and end their shift.
Natalia settled into a seat, Finn beside her. He rattled off names as the rest of the crew got in. She nodded greeting, but her mind was elsewhere, bouncing between haunting memories and determination to learn what the hell the Reyes Corporation was up to in Grand Meridian. If it turned out they were risking miners’ lives for the sake of gaining credits, Natalia wanted to nail them to the wall.
A light snow started as one of the miners kicked the skid engine into gear. It ascended the incline into the tunnel, whining like a cat having its tail pulled. The solid tires followed established ruts in the hard-packed ground. The huge collection bin on the left was butted against a ramp leading out of the tunnel, where the hauler could easily dump ore. Surrounding the opening was a plasti-crete collar ten meters in diameter, wide enough for the hauler and plenty wide for the skid. No cracks, as far as Natalia could tell as they passed beneath it. That eased her mind some. Shakers probably weren’t too bad in these parts.
Fifteen meters in, the tunnel branched. The skid followed the narrower route, veering right. To the left, absolute blackness. The hauler should have been coming up, if not at the surface already, but MacDonnell had mentioned trouble with the Beast.
The skid’s headlights came on, illuminating the narrower tunnel. Lights spaced every few meters were required by CMA regs but were too dim to be of any practical use. Wasted money this close to the collar. Better to save your light energy for where it was truly needed, down in the void.
Engine and tire noise echoed off the rock walls. Natalia followed the crew’s example and put her earbuds in. They filtered out the machinery noises and allowed for conversation, but everyone rode in silence. Except for Finn.
“It’ll take half an hour to reach the lift,” he said. The poor lighting kept his face shadowed. “Ever worked a site like Meridian before?”
Natalia nodded. “Grew up on the South Rim. Tango Pass, mostly.”
The site where she’d spent her early years wasn’t quite as big as Grand Meridian, but it had deep tunnels. A ride to the lift took about the same, but the two-kilometer descent to reach the vein was a good forty minutes.
“I’ve worked a few South Rim sites,” Finn said. “Dunlin, Tarrow. Grew up near Minister’s Gap. Ever been to those?”
“Dunlin, but a long time ago.”
She caught Finn’s stare as they passed through a puddle of light. Did he think he knew her? Nomadic as pirqs were, they bumped into each other from time to time. She hadn’t been on the Rim for nearly two decades, when Finn was no more than a child.
Families like Natalia’s, and probably Finn’s, tended to stay on at a single site for several years at a time if the keracite held out, but moving every now and again was a way of life. Given the large size of the South Rim Reserve and the number of pirqs who worked the circuit, it had amazed Natalia when her parents ran into people they knew at a site. Still, no one expected a pirq to make lifelong connections. There was no way Finn would know her.
The skid hit a bump, rocking the crew against each other. Finn grabbed the seat in front. The next ten minutes were filled with the low rumble of their transport as it made its way to the lift. The ambient temperature had risen to about twenty centigrade, comfortable enough. Two or three kilometers down in the void, however, it would be as high as thirty or thirty-five. Hotter if there was a thermal river or pool nearby.
The skid lights picked up the dozen night-shift workers waiting near the cage. Dust-covered men and women watched the next crew approach with little enthusiasm. A few exchanged greetings as Natalia and her shift-mates got out and the others climbed in. Natalia entered the cage, standing with her back against the steel bars under the bare light attached overhead. When everyone was in, someone at the front shut the doors and lowered the safety bar. The skid retreated down the tunnel back toward the outside world.
With a thunk, the cage began its rattling descent. Wind rushed between Natalia’s feet through the grated floor, fluttering the legs of her canvas trousers and lazily blowing loose strands of hair across her face. Old, played-out tunnel openings with their dull red warning lights flew past as the car dropped at sixty-five kilometers per hour. They’d be at the working section in less than half an hour.
Natalia leaned against the cage, shoulder to shoulder with Keegan, the man who would introduce her to the Beast.
“Been haulin’ long?” he asked over the rumble of winch and wind.
“Since I was a red hat,” she said. “Did a little cutting too. Would like to get back to that.”
“Takes a delicate hand.” Keegan nodded toward the working tunne
ls below. “Hauler’s been balking for a couple of days. Goin’ slower than Mac likes, so we’ve got the go-ahead to head up to the surface earlier than usual. The other driver’ll bring the hauler to the conveyor and work the loader on that end ’til we get there. I’ll give you a tour. Then we’ll ride the line to the hauler.”
“Ride the line?” Natalia had heard of the practice. Workers perched atop the ore and rode the conveyor belt to where it was dumped into a bin or pile. CMA regs put a stop to it years ago as too dangerous. Apparently some sites didn’t bother following all of the CMA regs. What a surprise.
“Got a problem with it?” Keegan asked with more than a little bristle in his tone.
“Nope. Just don’t hear of it that often, is all.”
That seemed to satisfy the older man. His shoulders relaxed, and he leaned on the cage. “Heard you talkin’ to Finn.” Keegan gestured at her hat. “I knew a bunch of Kuzmins on the South Rim circuit, oh, thirty years ago now. One of them was a helluva roofer. Anya? Ana? Something like that. You know her?”
Natalia shivered, despite the increasing temperature as they descended. Anastasia Kuzmin. “My mother,” she said, surprised her voice was steady. “She and Da were in the big Dunlin shake twenty years ago.”
Keegan nodded, his lips pressed together. He knew exactly which shake she meant and what had likely happened to Anastasia Kuzmin and Justin Hallowell. “They were good people.”
“They were.” She glanced away, not interested in discussing family. Kuzmin was a common name along the Rim. It hadn’t occurred to her that wearing her mother’s hat would spark such a conversation.
He studied her for another few seconds then turned to talk to the man beside him. He’d known her parents before she and her sister had been born. Had he seen some sort of resemblance? Natalia took after her father more than her mother. Bekka had their mother’s dark hair and eyes. The cage slowed then came to a teeth-rattling stop at the bottom of the shaft. The air filtration unit sat near the elevator, its half-meter-diameter conduits snaking along the walls into the tunnels. The intake/exhaust conduit followed the elevator shaft back to the surface.
