Deep Deception

by Cathy Pegau

  The cage door opened, and the crew poured out. Natalia followed them down a well-lit shaft, where cutters would bite through the ore, sending it to loaders, and roofers would secure the ceiling so the cutters and other workers could continue without fear of collapse.

  That was the theory. It had worked well for centuries, starting in coal mines back on Earth. But Natalia, and the men and women around her, knew that nothing was certain in the void.

  Chapter Seven

  MacDonnell had warned Gennie she’d be getting shit work, and he wasn’t kidding. Her first task, to refill the coffee machine, had taken little time to master. Learning the ancient comm system, and who in Grand Meridian merited interrupting Mac’s day, required a bit of memorizing and smacking of the SI console to get the device working. But it was figuring out the controls on the loader to clean up around the mouth of the tunnel that had Gennie ready to hit something. Something other than the things she was running into, that is.

  She toggled the bucket control in an attempt to slide it along the frozen ground and gather up a pile of ore that had been dumped outside the bin. The bucket didn’t move. She eased the toggle a millimeter. It shot forward at least a centi. The bucket jerked out, its edge digging into the ground and lifting the front of the machine.

  “Shit!” Gennie pulled back on the toggle, raising the bucket, and the vehicle dropped to the ground. Her teeth clacked together, and she bit her tongue. “Fuck.”

  She set the controls to neutral, took a deep breath and leaned over the door of the open cockpit to spit out blood seeping into her mouth. The one-person machine was supposed to be easy to operate. Like the damn 1500 lorry she’d bought. Maybe for someone who grew up in the pirq life, but Gennie was more familiar with the touch controls and responsive joystick of air cars. She missed her car.

  “Moore!” Mac barked from the steps of the office. “I need you to quit messin’ with that damn thing and hold down the fort.”

  “Thank God,” she muttered as she flipped off the power. She unbuckled the safety strap and climbed out of the cockpit. The hard hat Mac had issued her slipped over her eyes, the adjustment straps inside having loosened yet again. She pulled the thing off her head and met him at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I have to go to a Worker’s Comp hearing at the main office. Go inside and keep an ear on the radio. Call me if anything happens.”

  “Right.” Gennie flicked the ear protectors out of her ears.

  “Clean up while you’re in there,” he said as he headed toward a dented ground car. “The place could use a scrubbing. The floor’s sticky.”

  Lovely.

  Gennie went into the office, grateful to be out of the cold, and stripped off her coat and gloves. The office was the size of the living room she and Natalia shared, with a desk, cabinets, maps pinned to the wall and a door that led to a lav. A permanent layer of keracite grime covered all but the most used surfaces. She didn’t want to know what the lav looked like.

  Somewhere in the files on the SI or in the cabinets full of shipping manifests, personnel records and God knew what, there was something to link the Reyeses and their underhanded dealings. No, she didn’t know what, exactly, she was looking for. Only Simon’s files, a few seemingly unrelated documents and her gut instinct told her she’d find it. Whatever it was.

  The desk and SI would be the best place to start. A black box with several knobs and an oval microphone sat beside the screen. Above one of the knobs, a green indicator light showed it was on. The old-fashioned comm, or radio, as Mac had called it, was the only connection between the surface and the miners in the void. Short bursts of conversations between pirqs working their shift cut through the quiet of the office. Nothing that sounded like an emergency or required Mac’s attention, as far as Gennie could tell.

  She ran her finger over the smooth edge of the console, wondering how Natalia was faring. What was it like down in the void? How could she function, knowing there were mega tonnes of rock over her head?

  Gennie’s knees wobbled, and she sank onto Mac’s chair. Damn it, she hated the way her mind and body reacted to closed spaces. She hadn’t had a bad reaction since she was a kid, but then again, she hadn’t thought much about tunnels either. A windowless room was fine, if the door wasn’t locked. She’d learned to tolerate elevators, because as long as they moved she knew she’d get out. Air and ground cars weren’t a problem. She’d had a touch of anxiety when forced to take PubTrans. Luckily, that wasn’t often. She’d never had the need to go into a dark tunnel and hoped she never would.

  There was no way she would have gone down into the void, no way she could have done this alone, and no way Natalia would have had the opportunity to check the tunnels and the office files on her own. Natalia had been torqued about her not wanting to go into the mine, but in the long run it would work out even better than planned. She and Natalia made a good team, even if they were approaching the task from different legal perspectives.

  Gennie tapped the old SI console. Manipulating apps, files and data was more her style. The unit hummed to life, and the screen flickered awake. She played around with the operating system for a few moments, getting a feel for what it could and couldn’t do. A simple search of terms was easy enough, but wading through thousands of documents would take much longer than she had.

  Gennie called up shipping documents for the past five years. Manifests showed regularly scheduled pickups by the Reyes Corporation, including dates, tonnage of ore and price paid. There was no record of where the ore went afterward; that wasn’t Grand Meridian’s problem. An analysis of significant variations in each of the variables showed nothing out of the ordinary.

  Before she started on the personnel files, Gennie straightened the piles of synth papers tossed on top and haphazardly shoved in drawers of the cabinets. She had to give Mac at least the impression that she was doing her “job.” She glanced through the pages to make some sort of sense of where they belonged. Nothing jumped out as being suspicious or questionable.

  Gennie slammed the cabinet drawer shut. The bang of metal on metal hurt her ears. She scrubbed her palms over her face and through her hair. What if she didn’t find anything? What if Simon’s files and all her wishing the Reyeses were guilty of something were just that—wishes? Was she looking for something that wasn’t there?

  Even if there was no evidence of misdeeds, she wasn’t imagining the fact that they were after Melaine and Branson. They were so devious and cold. Simon had refused to tell the elder Reyeses when Gennie had become pregnant. They’d only want access to the children so they could make a public show of being grandparents, he’d said. They’d told his sister, Helena, but that had been a mistake. She’d obviously told her parents.

  Then when Simon died, there was no longer a buffer between the Reyeses and her soon-to-be-born twins. No one to tell the Reyeses to back off. No one except her, and they ignored her.

  Gennie had no intention of letting her kids anywhere near the people responsible for Simon’s accident. Their attention only got worse once she’d given birth. The endless efforts to wedge themselves into the children’s lives and strangers paying too much attention to them finally forced Gennie to hide, fearful that the Reyeses would attempt to snatch Branson and Melaine off the street.

  It broke Gennie’s heart and made her feel guilty to not claim Simon as their father, but that was the only legal move she could make. The Reyeses would have to petition for DNA testing to acquire any rights to see the twins. If they could find them. She’d changed all their names, paid many credits for new documents and data alterations, and enlisted Delilah, a good friend of hers and Simon’s from his days on the cage-fighting circuit, to help protect and care for them.

  To this day, the twins had no idea they were related to the owners of one of the most successful companies on the planet. And never would, if Gennie
had anything to say about it.

  She checked the chrono on the desk. Mac had been gone for over an hour and could be back any minute. Best to do a more in-depth search of his SI files later, when she had more time. She made a mental note to access personnel and shift data next. Finding cleaning supplies in a closet, Gennie headed into the lav.

  * * *

  Keegan gave Natalia the promised tour of the section currently being worked. Even with hearing protection, the void was loud with the rumbles and whines of machinery and voices. The bite of hydraulic fluid and hot rock hanging in the stifling thirty-five-degree air made breathing unpleasant, if not difficult. At least the lighting was better where the cutter and loaders worked.

  The cutter, Johnny, strapped himself into the body of the machine, donning it like an exoskeleton. The “hands” at the end of each articulated arm were whirling ripper heads made of ion-hardened ceramic that tore through the ore seam. Everything that came into direct contact with raw keracite had to reduce the chances of a spark. The idea of a fire in the void, with its limited escape routes, struck fear in miners’ hearts.

  The machine’s arms funneled ore between its legs or off to the side so loaders could collect the keracite and deliver it to a conveyor belt. The conveyor then transferred the ore another klick closer to the surface, to a larger tunnel where the hauler would be loaded. The hauler and its crew drove back to the surface with the bulk of the day’s production.

  Natalia wiped sweat from her brow as Johnny backed away from a fresh cut. Finn and his partner jumped in front of the cutter body with their rig and immediately got to work raising the thin carbon-fiber ceiling sheet. They inserted meter-long ceramic bolts into it and the rock overhead, the whine of the drill drowning out the idling cutter. An experienced roofer team could place the sheet and drill the final bolt in less than two heart-pounding minutes. Silently, she urged them to be quick and safe.

  Skill with the tools, knowledge of the material and speed were required to be a successful roofer, but even having all that going for you couldn’t prevent a tragedy.

  Natalia knew that from personal experience.

  “Those guys are nuts,” Keegan said. Natalia had to agree. “Come on. I’ll show you the best ride on the planet.”

  Riding the belt was not her idea of a good time, and she suspected Keegan didn’t really like it either.

  He led her down the passage, behind one of the loaders laden with a bucketful of ore. The red hat driving sat stiffly in the open cage, glancing at the mesh cover over his head as if he didn’t trust its ability to keep him safe.

  Natalia shed her jacket and slung it over her shoulder. She should have left it on the surface. “You and the other hauler the only ones down here?” she asked.

  “Yep.” Keegan lifted his helmet and scratched his scalp through his short gray curls. “But I’m fixin’ to leave and need another body.”

  “Moving on?” It wasn’t unusual for pirqs to head off without much notice to the shift boss. His giving Mac time to train a noob was a testament to Keegan’s integrity.

  “Wife’s in the hospital over in Garner. Need to go see her ’fore she leaves me for some young medico.”

  Natalia chuckled and caught the gleam in Keegan’s eye. He was trying to put her at ease on her first day. A good man, she sensed, who’d worked the circuit for years before she was born. The kind of man the CMA was supposed to help get fair treatment in the void.

  At the end of the passage, the loader dumped its bucket of ore onto the conveyor, the rock-on-metal din nearly deafening. A woman with a blue hard had stood beside the tunnel opening, near a control box and a comm mounted to the rock. An unlit cheroot was tucked under a band around the crown.

  “Taking a ride?” she asked when they got within conversation distance.

  “Is that an offer?” Keegan retorted.

  The woman, whose hat read Bentley, laughed, loud and braying. “Not sure I could survive the likes of you, Keegan.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” he said, not even cracking a smile. “This here’s Kuzmin. She’ll be runnin’ the loads with Ria while I’m gone.” He turned to Natalia. “This is Celine. She don’t do nuthin’ but press buttons all day.”

  “Screw you,” Celine said, grinning. She stuck her keracite-rimmed hand out to Natalia. “Saw you and your girl at the dining hall last night. Settle in okay?”

  Her girl? Gennie certainly wasn’t “her girl,” but should she let Celine and the others assume she was? If they were considered spoken for, it might be difficult to entice information from anyone interested. But it might cut down on trouble if they were known as a couple.

  “We’re just friends.”

  Celine quirked an eyebrow at her, disbelief clear on her face. Natalia’s cheeks and neck heated. They weren’t a couple. Hell, they weren’t even friends. So why did Natalia feel like she’d stepped into a furnace? Why did the thought of someone sniffing around Gennie make her want to hit something?

  Because you don’t share.

  Ridiculous. Gennie wasn’t hers to share or not.

  The belt operator pressed the red button on the controls, and the conveyor slowed to a stop. Natalia sat on the edge of the thick rubber belt and swung her legs around until she faced the dark tunnel. Keegan got on beside her. They sat with their knees bent, feet flat on the belt and arms braced slightly behind them.

  “Please keep arms, legs and bodies from the edge at all times,” Celine said. “We are not responsible for lost limbs.” She cackled at her own joke and pushed the green button. The belt jerked forward.

  “Thanks, Celine. We’ll let you know when we’re on the other side.”

  Light from behind them quickly diminished, leaving Natalia and Keegan in utter darkness except for the glow coming from their hard hats. The entire hat emitted a soft light as photo sensors were triggered, and there was also a directed beam that came from the front of the helmets. The surreal sensation threatened to make her dizzy. She faced forward, her head slightly down so her light shined on the belt a meter in front of her.

  “Takes some getting used to,” Keegan yelled over the echoing rattle of the metal wheels beneath them. “Won’t be long.”

  She nodded and wiped sweat from her brow. The closed space of the tunnels didn’t bother her, not liked it bothered Gennie. Natalia just couldn’t help but wonder what her parents had gone through that day. Her mother, she’d been told, had died instantly when the ceiling she was securing had collapsed during a shaker. Her father had been in a deeper tunnel, along with six other miners; their bodies were still under the mountain near Dunlin. Her mother had taken an extra shift—she would have been home otherwise. They would have lost her father, sadly enough, but at least Natalia and her sister would have had one parent.

  Pain squeezed her chest like a vise. Natalia drew in a slow, steady breath, willing it to ease. She’d been angry at her mother for a long time but eventually understood Ana had taken the shift so her family could have a little more. The shake and cave-in could have occurred at any time. No one was at fault. It was just terrible timing.

  “Light’s up ahead,” Keegan said.

  Natalia squinted, not sure if she saw it or a reflection from their helmet lamps.

  The pinpoint grew, and loader engine noises rose over the rattle of the conveyor. After a few minutes, the light became the mouth of the exit, and Natalia saw the squat vehicle moving beyond it.

  When the belt reached the opening, she and Keegan hopped clear of the pile of ore that had been dumped earlier. Stray chunks rolled beneath her boots, but she kept her balance.

  Keegan thumbed the comm beside the conveyor controls. “We’re through, Celine. Thanks.”

  “Any time,” came her garbled response. “See you at The Hole later?”

  “Copy that. Out.” He dusted his hands on his trousers. “The
Beast’s down here.”

  They passed a loader parked in a slight recess of the tunnel. This end of the operation required two miners, but Keegan had let his partner start without him while he gave Natalia the grand tour. When a cutter was deep in the seam and sending ore through at a good rate, the loaders and haulers were kept busy. Backup along the conveyor could be frustrating as well as dangerous. The pile dumped at the end might interfere with the belt and damage it, or cause a jam in the wheels and start a fire.

  Having a partner was also a safety issue. Solo mining wasn’t unusual for a small claim, but it wasn’t necessarily a good idea. Even though this was a pirq operation, its size meant it fell under CMA code, which required working no more than fifty meters from the next guy.

  Natalia and Keegan rounded a bend in the tunnel, the sound of the approaching loader growing. The driver, a young, dark-skinned woman with a red hard hat, noticed them and stopped the vehicle.

  She climbed out of the driver’s compartment and held out her hand. “I’m Ria.”

  “Natalia.”

  They shook, leather glove to leather glove. Her coloring was lighter than Keegan’s, but there were similarities in their features, particularly around the eyes.

  “My daughter,” he said, confirming the relationship.

  “It’ll be nice to have someone other than Da down here.” Ria winked at Natalia. “He’s not one for girl talk.”

  “Back to work.” Keegan tapped Ria lightly on the helmet. “I’ll show Kuzmin the hauler then have her help load until it’s time to go up.”

  Ria nodded, fired up her vehicle and returned to the conveyor. Natalia followed Keegan to the Beast.