“This is completely illegal,” one of the executives was saying. “Your contracts clearly state that strike action cannot be called without management being notified and consulted beforehand. Nobody warned any of us that this was in the offing.”
“What’s that?” said one of the miners, cupping an ear. It was none other than Ben Thorne, head of the Fair Dues Collective. “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the deafening noise of all this machinery. Oh, no, wait. There isn’t any machinery going, because we’re on strike.”
“I could have your jobs for this. Click of the fingers, and you’d all be welfare fodder.”
“Oh, yeah? And where are you going to get anyone to replace us? Anoshkin Energiya’s going to magic up another eighteen hundred fully-trained employees just like that?”
The other miners growled and jeered.
“For your information,” Thorne continued, “this strike is not illegal. We’ve called it for health and safety reasons. You may not be aware, but clause twenty-eight, subsection two of our contracts stipulates that should workers’ wellbeing be in any way endangered or compromised, we are within our rights to walk out without giving prior notice.”
“That means literally walk out of the mine, as in finding refuge elsewhere,” said the executive.
“We choose it to mean walk out as in down tools and go on strike.”
“A specious interpretation.”
“Use big words all you like, but it’s simple enough. Can you guarantee our safety right now? All these earthquakes – can you be sure that not one of us is going to suffer injury or lose his or her life because of them? There’ve been deaths over at Heinkel-Junger Erzbirgbau, and at the X-O-Geo Corporation mine. Maybe we’re next.”
“Anoshkin provides every conceivable measure of –”
“Can you tell us this mine is absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent quake-proof?”
“We abide by all the TerCon regulations concerning –”
“Put it this way,” said Thorne. “Would you yourself, Mr Konstantinov, be willing to go into that mine behind me during a tremor?”
The executive, Konstantinov, blustered.
“Or you, Mr Savin?”
The other executive took refuge in purse-lipped silence.
Thorne said, “Thought as much. Therefore I and my brethren and sistren are legitimately calling a halt to drilling and excavation activities until such time as we have a cast-iron reassurance from you that we are no longer in jeopardy.”
“I shall have to contact head office about this,” said Konstantinov. “There are protocols I have to follow.”
“You do that, Yuri old pal. Take your time. We’re not going anywhere.” Thorne turned. “And who’s this? Captain Kahlo and friend. Thank you for coming. Much appreciated.”
“Thorne,” said Kahlo. “Rabble-rousing as usual.”
“Merely fulfilling my remit as democratically-anointed leader of the FDC to look out for my members’ interests. Yes, goodbye,” Thorne called out to the departing Konstantinov and Savin. “Let me know what head office come back with. If it involves a pay rise of, ooh, about five per cent, tell them I’ll consider it. Only consider, mind.”
“So, money,” said Kahlo. “That’s what this is about.”
“When is it ever not about money?” replied Thorne. “But it never hurts to exercise one’s right to protest, either. Every once in a while, management needs to be reminded who’s in charge. And you can’t deny that these earthquakes are putting us pit folk at risk. It’s high time somebody made a fuss about it, somebody decided to stand up and let their feelings be known.”
“What a surprise that it would be you.”
“You and I, captain, we don’t have a disagreement,” said Thorne. “I’m aggrieved about last night, but I realise now that force majeure was in play. For that I’m prepared to overlook your part in it.”
“We’re all right as long as you and your members keep the strike law-abiding and peaceful,” Kahlo said.
“I do have a bone to pick with him, though.” Thorne pointed at Dev.
Dev looked over his shoulder, then back at Thorne. He touched a finger to his own chest, with an expression of feigned innocence. “Me?”
“Yup. You, Mr ISS Man. That’s what you are, isn’t it? I should have worked it out sooner. What else could you be, with all that Plusser talk? You messed up my evening good and proper yesterday. I’d like to return the favour.”
“Yeah, about that,” said Dev. “I’d be happy to apologise. In fact, I’m going to. Any minute now, an apology is coming. Hang on. I’m sure it’s due. Any... minute...”
Thorne shook his head sourly. “Oh, you’re so funny.”
“Please. If you’ll just be patient. Apology loading. Buffering.”
“Listen, dipshit. You don’t fuck with me, understand? Fuck with me and you fuck with the whole of the Fair Dues Collective. That’s one of the most powerful organisations around. We have majority union control at this mine and eleven others. I really want to cause trouble, I can make a couple of calls and have half this planet’s industrial base on its knees within the hour.”
“And that matters to me why exactly? I’m not in mining. I’m not even an Alighierian.”
“My members get upset, they start to break things – expensive things. Those things get broken, management call in the riot cops. The riot cops weigh in, people get hurt, maybe even killed. Once it starts, it’s an inevitable progression.”
“Again, no skin off my nose.”
“Harmer,” said Kahlo. “He’s serious. Don’t antagonise him.”
“I’m not antagonising him,” said Dev. “He’s letting himself be antagonised. There’s a distinction.”
“I am serious,” said Thorne. “And you’d better start being serious too. I won’t be treated the way I was last night. Not by some jumped-up jackbooted ISS bullyboy who thinks he can just wander in and boss people around, accuse them of being Plussers, break any number of laws to get his own way.”
“So I offended your fine sensibilities, Thorne,” said Dev. “So what? Suck it up and get over it. It was for the greater good. There’s more at stake here than your ego, ridiculously inflated though that is. What do you want me to do instead? Put your interests ahead of the interests of everyone else on Alighieri?”
“I can make this all go away, whoosh, like it never was. No strike. Happy workers toiling away at the heliumface like before.”
“In return for...?”
“You. Humbled.”
“Huh?”
“Put in your place.”
“You’re joking. You mean if I kiss your behind, the strike’s off?”
“Not quite like that, but close.”
“Are you hearing this, the rest of you?” Dev said, addressing the miners assembled behind Thorne. “Does it make any sense? What kind of leader is it who claims he represents you when all he’s out for is petty payback? Is that someone you want to follow?”
“We’re okay with it,” said one of the miners. “Ben’s never steered us wrong in the past.”
“Not much love for the likes of ISS here,” said another. “Corporate security firm. Private sector. Capitalist tool of government.”
“Interstellar Schutzstaffel,” said a third, the tallest in the group, with a shock of ginger hair.
“Wow, a Nazi Germany reference,” said Dev. “That’s not reaching far back at all.”
“Smug bastard,” said Thorne. “I’m giving you an opportunity to make amends. All you have to do is accept a challenge, and honour will be satisfied. We go back to work. End of story.”
Dev looked at Kahlo. She, not very helpfully, just shrugged.
“A challenge,” he said. “Like eating a whole box of doughnuts or something?”
Thorne’s grin was sly. “Or something.”
19
“WE CALL IT the Ordeal,” Thorne said. “If a miner gets out of line, offends a colleague, brings disgrace on the pit folk community, whatever, thi
s is how he or she can earn back trust.”
They had gone deep into the main access tunnel, walking for several minutes. Dev sensed an excitement among the miners, the eagerness of an audience about to witness a spectacle. He hadn’t a clue what Thorne had in store for him, but he was sure it would be difficult and most likely unpleasant.
“The longer you hold out, the greater the respect you gain,” Thorne continued. “I went through it myself, not because I did anything wrong, but in order to prove my worthiness to be union leader. I can safely say that no one in living memory has lasted as long as I did.”
“Does it involve boring people senseless with a pompous, self-aggrandising monologue?” said Dev. “Because I can see how you’d win at that.”
“I doubt you’ll be so witty five minutes from now, Mr ISS Man.”
“My friends call me Dev.”
“I’m going to stick with ‘Mr ISS Man.’”
“My point exactly.”
One of the miners sniggered, until Thorne shot him a dirty look and he stopped.
“Now, you don’t have to take part,” Thorne said to Dev. “I’ll understand if you chicken out once you realise what you’ll be facing. But then we’ll all know you’re a gutless coward and the strike will carry on.”
“Well, when you put it in such an even-handed way like that, how can I refuse?”
They came to a T-junction, two lesser tunnels leading off at right angles from the main one.
“Left down this haulageway,” said Thorne. “Not much further now.”
They took another left into a large chamber, a workshop where items of mining equipment were parked. Alongside a couple of transportation carts, there were several fearsome-looking exoskeleton rigs fitted with tools for ripping, drilling and shearing. Most of them hung in cradles, partially dismantled, in the process of being mended or serviced. Pistons and hydraulic cables stood exposed, robotic muscles and veins.
A handful of mechanics were toiling away with blowtorches and screwdrivers. Thorne swanned in and told them to drop what they were doing and leave.
“You shouldn’t be working anyway,” he said. “You may not be proper miners, but what about pit folk solidarity? I’d hate for people to start thinking you’re scabs.”
The mechanics took the hint and, duly cowed, shuffled out.
“Should I do this?” Dev murmured to Kahlo.
“If you ask me, you’ve gone too far to back out now. At least, not without losing face.”
“Do you even know what the Ordeal is?”
“I’ve heard rumours.”
“And?”
“They’re not good ones.”
“Well, it sounds to me like it might be something that’s against the law. Just saying.”
“My jurisdiction has its limits. Miners prefer to resolve their own problems when they can – keep it within the community.”
“But if it means hurting me...”
“You think I can arrest all these people? On my own?”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to stick or fold.”
“I really wish I could help you, Harmer.”
“So do I.”
“Come here,” Thorne ordered, and Dev ambled over to join him on a hoist platform above a vehicle inspection bay.
“Stand there. Like so. Legs apart.”
Dev straddled the platform’s two runners.
“Arms out. Parallel to the ground.”
Dev extended his arms.
“I hope you’re not going to tickle me.”
“No.”
Thorne nodded to two miners, who together went to fetch something from the rear of the workshop. They brought over two sets of chains attached to steel trays.
They fastened the chains to Dev’s wrists so that the trays hung free, suspended a few inches above the platform. He now resembled a human pair of scales.
“I didn’t realise this was what you were into, Thorne,” he said. “I don’t mind a bit of bondage myself, but we ought to set a safeword first.”
Thorne ignored him, evidently feeling the time for joking was past.
That was when Dev spotted flecks of a dark, crusty substance on the trays. It was, by the look of it, dried blood.
He too reckoned the time for joking was past.
“Okay,” he said. “What happens next?”
“You stay like that,” Thorne replied. “Don’t lower your arms. Either of those trays touches the platform, it’s over.”
“Hmmm. They’re pretty heavy, but I think I can cope.”
Already his arms were beginning to ache. Each tray-and-chain combo must have weighed thirty pounds.
“How long did you go for?” he asked. “So I know the target I have to beat.”
“Fifteen minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”
That was doable, Dev thought. His host form seemed to have sufficient strength.
“But,” Thorne added, “this is only the start.”
“There’s more?”
“Much more.”
Thorne beckoned, and one of the miners came forward with a socket wrench in his hands. Before Dev could object or even prepare himself, he swung it hard. The wrench hit Dev square in the midriff, knocking the wind out of him.
He staggered, just managing to remain upright.
The miner tossed the wrench into one of the trays. Dev, still gasping for breath, stiffened the arm on that side to compensate for the extra weight.
Another miner stepped up, this one carrying a sock stuffed with nuts and bolts.
Dev tensed his abdominal muscles. The blow, when it came, was swingeing. Fire exploded all across his belly.
The makeshift cosh went into the empty tray. Dev hauled up his other arm to steady the tray.
“Tell your people,” he said to Thorne through gritted teeth, “they hit like schoolgirls.”
Thorne laughed. “You can end this any time. Just let either or both of your arms drop. That’s all it takes.”
“What’s the time so far?”
“I started a stopwatch on my commplant. Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-nine. Your first full minute.”
Dev stared hard into Thorne’s eyes. “Bring it on.”
A miner stood in front of him, a piece of chain wrapped around his fist. It was the tall, ginger-haired man who had made the ‘SS’ quip.
“Nobody likes a smartmouth,” he said, and delivered a piledriver punch.
Dev bit back a groan of agony. “Nobody likes a ginger either,” he managed to say.
The miner looked as though he might hit him again, but apparently there were strict rules in force. One blow only per turn. The chain joined the wrench in the right-hand tray with a rattling clank.
A fourth miner came onto the platform to clobber Dev, and a fifth, and a sixth, each using some implement they had found lying around the workshop. The trays gradually filled up, becoming heavier.
Dev withstood the punishment. He kept his arms out horizontal, even as his shoulders knotted and grew sorer. The trays dipped and wavered, but didn’t drop.
He wasn’t doing it for the sake of industrial relations. He couldn’t have cared less about strike action or Anoshkin Energiya.
This was about him and Ben Thorne.
The union leader had thrown down a gauntlet. He had settled on humiliating Dev as a method of restorative justice. But if Dev outlasted him, beating his Ordeal record, then Thorne would surely go down a few notches in his co-workers’ estimation. Dev’s only real chance of victory lay in hanging on through the pain so that he could humiliate Thorne in return.
His commplant signalled an incoming call. Kahlo.
Harmer.
Little busy right now.
He glanced across the workshop, meeting Kahlo’s gaze. There was that peculiar frisson you got when you were holding a commplant conversation with someone you could physically see, that sense of disjuncture. You could hear the voice. Why wasn’t the mouth moving to match? The face making the appropriate expressions?
No choice.
Quit. Thorne’s done enough to you. Let him have this.
You mean let him win? If you knew me better, you’d know that isn’t an option.
Fine. Be like that.
Thanks for the concern, though.
Not concern. I just hate stubbornness for stubbornness’s sake.
Someone whacked Dev with a piston rod. It was a good shot, dead centre of his solar plexus. The pain was sickening.
Ben Thorne smiled and dropped the piston rod into a tray.
“Seven minutes,” he said. “Almost halfway there. Give in. Those trays aren’t getting any lighter. Nor are our blows. If you let it go on much longer, you’ll be pissing blood for a week. Trust me, I did.”
“I think I just felt a butterfly’s wing brushing past my stomach,” Dev said. “Did you see it go by?”
Another minute passed, and another. Oddly, it was the pain from his shoulders that became hard to tolerate, more so than the pain from his battered belly. His trapezius muscles had gone into excruciating spasm, and stabs of agony were shooting up the back of his neck into his skull. It was like wearing a yoke made of red-hot iron.
Both trays were now laden with tools, spare parts and pieces of scrap metal. They must have weighed at least fifty pounds each.
Dev’s left arm sagged. The tray came perilously close to touching the platform. He raised it, trembling.
Something with a sharp edge bashed him just below the waistline. A stripe of blood appeared across the front of his overalls.
“He’s had enough on that side,” Thorne declared. “Let’s try the back instead.”
Dev braced himself as the blows slammed against him from behind, one after another.
“How – how many...?” he croaked.
“Minutes? Ten and three quarters,” said Thorne.
Less than five to go.
He could do this.
He could do this.
Dimly, through a kind of greasy throbbing haze, he saw Kahlo. Her eyes were urging him to relent, not to stick it out any more.
World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) Page 11
