Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (25 page)

‘When you dig a mine it’s always you who gets shafted.’

‘Maybe for us back home, but not here, though,’ said Willow. ‘That stratovolcano must be throwing out ore from the bubbling core of the world, deeper than any mine works can reach.’

‘God,’ said Duncan. ‘No wonder Vandia has the steel to build that warship. They must be the richest country in the world.’ He had to marvel at their ingenuity, wicked though it was. Vandia had even tap­ped the perfect resource to undertake the backbreaking, dangerous labour of working the sky mines. Slaves. Well, what was the point of being rich if you had to do the hard work yourself?

It felt cooler inside the station than it had been outside on the transporters, but the heat still weighed down oppressively. Duncan’s tunic was soaked with sweat by the time they reached their dormitory – a large featureless oblong of a chamber, fifty cots on either side, iron beds with mattresses cut from some soft cork-like substance, no sheets or blankets or pillows. There were hollows in the wall with spigots and a foot pedal to release a stream of drinking water. Duncan and Willow took a turn at the nearest tap, slaking their thirst. The sky miner in charge of the dormitory was a man called Cannelle Ram, hailing from a country called Attijaf that Duncan had never heard of before meeting the man. He bore a calm, learned expression. As head of the dormitory, his advice to the new slaves was simply to learn what they could until their work assignments came down, duties to be allocated based on their previous trades. Their tutors were to be fellow slaves who had survived long enough to be counted old hands in the techniques of sky mining. Cannelle Ram began the task by calling for silence. He approached a blackboard where teams and quota numbers had been chalked up for the previous occupants of the station. He rubbed out the numbers and outlined the basics of sky mining for the new slaves.

‘Okay, all you greenhorns, listen up. Stratovolcanic eruptions are graded into seven levels of significance. Anything above a level three discharges material large enough for us to mine. Rocks are ejected at high velocity. Where an initial assessment of a rock shows promise, we intercept it with transporters, slow it down and attach antigravity stones to stabilise it at a neutral buoyancy. Then we land prospectors on top to confirm our initial appraisal, locate mineral veins and calculate where shafts and tunnels can be safely dug without causing fatal fracturing. Everything that follows is raw, backbreaking work.’

‘Why not let the rock land and mine it on the ground?’ Willow asked.

‘An intelligent question,’ said Ram. ‘Princess Helrena is the owner of more than just our sorry hides. She holds title to a sky mining territory, a sector of the firmament where she controls the imperial licence to mine what she stakes. There are similar territories on the ground that belong to rival nobles; minor houses, because surface mineral fall is not as valuable… all the ground worms are doing most of the time is panning dust-rain. They receive little, because, with the volcano left to its own devices, eruptions push ejecta mass higher than the sky mines can operate, where the sun’s hot enough to melt rocks, gravity so light the rocks can stay up there for months. There’s high-altitude cross winds fierce enough to drag them millions of miles, landing them somewhere other than Vandia. The empire will not allow that to happen, which is why we intercept ore-bearing rocks first. The imperium’s monopoly on metals is what keeps them wealthy. Rich enough to pay for nations to act as the empire’s lackeys and enforcers, rich enough to buy slaves to work the rocks. A mono­poly that allows the imperium to turn off the spigot of resources to any neighbour who might be tempted to try and seize control of the stratovolcano. The sky mines
are
Vandia. Without them, the imperium would be nothing. This is the original source of trade metals that reached you with the caravans and the travellers and the peddlers. The iron you haggled over back home left the empire centuries ago, acquiring scarcity value with every mile travelled away from the sky mines.’

‘What if we refuse to work?’ asked Duncan. ‘Demand freedom in return for our labours?’

‘A
dangerous
question,’ said Ram. He drew out a circle, sketching a smaller one inside, and then bisected the outer ring into twenty different segments. ‘A high-ranking member of the imperial family, one of the
celestial-upper
caste, controls each of these sky mines. Our territory is this one here—’ he filled in one of the sections, ‘—but the princess is one of many children. The imperium’s emperor is a mad old goat called Jaelis Skar who keeps a harem of hundreds of wives and thousands of feuding offspring. His children’s relationships mirror those of Vandian society – they loathe each other; they compete with each other; they plot and scheme against each other. Not a single mining force, but twenty separate ones. If our station stopped working we would be abandoned to die of thirst, while the sky mines of the princess’s siblings worked on, no doubt clashing to see how they could turn Helrena’s woes to their own advantage. The Vandian caste system, the slaves, the power, it is a web of internecine loyalties, shifting alliances and infighting. Everything designed to keep the emperor secure at the apex of Vandia, with the imperium at the apex of all nations. Vandia is power without limit and she maintains her grip with ruthlessness and cruelty. If that ruthlessness ever fails, Vandia is surrounded by nations who have endured millennia of subjugation, countries who would gladly step into the breach and assume the imperium’s mantle. It has happened in the past. Once the skels controlled the stratovolcano’s resources. Now they are little more than itinerant nomads and paid lackeys of the conquerors who overthrew their rule. History has many lessons to teach, and few of them are gentle.’

‘What happened to the last group of slaves who worked here?’ asked Willow. ‘Why is the station empty?’

Cannelle Ram looked pained at the memory. ‘The rock we were working broke apart and fell into the dead zone. It happens. There was an accident in the blasting powder stores – a detonation that blew our claim into pieces. Some survived, but not many. Most of the dead were Weylanders, the same as you, but taken years before. Sky mining is dangerous. You can choke on poison outgassing or be torn apart by shrapnel blasts of lava. Bad mining or plain bad luck can shatter a rock with too few antigravity stones to hold each piece stable in the sky, sending hundreds plummeting to their deaths. There are cave-ins and natural gas explosions and blasting powder deaths and limbs lost to machinery. But all of that pales in comparison to what happens here.’ He tapped the inner circle he had drawn. ‘This central area is where the ejecta mass is blown from each new eruption. It is open sky for any station to stake a claim to new rocks before we tow them into our territory. And out there, there are no rules or laws to protect us from the ambitions of Helrena Skar’s siblings. When we find a good claim, we must fight to keep it.’ The head of the dormitory noticed the look of horror on Willow’s face. ‘That’s the real danger of working in the sky mines. Not the stratovolcano or working the rocks, but our fellow slaves from neighbouring territories. You must fight to survive, or the rock you land on will become your grave.’

Duncan and Willow settled into the bare dormitory as best as they could. The station was only used as a barracks, long since mined-out but retained as living quarters because of its structural integrity. Princess Helrena Skar’s territory held no more deposit-bearing rocks captured to mine. Her new slave force from Weyland had arrived for training during the fallow period; waiting for the next eruption to bring them a stake. There was little natural light inside the warren of passages and vaults. Most corridors were bare of portholes, only the transporter hangars and a few air vents on the top of the station to give a view on to the stratovolcano’s all-enveloping smoke and the fetid humid air outside. With the heat clinging to every corner of their chamber, Duncan never missed his sheets. The loss of privacy was another matter entirely. Even the lowliest servant at Hawkland Park had more seclusion than they did in the dormitory here. No sanctuary in the shower chambers either, where water blasted you clean for all of a minute until the sweating started anew, men and women expected to shed all modesty together. The place was clearly designed to break slaves down, discard the last vestiges of being a free citizen.
Property, not people.
Also unfamiliar to Duncan were the day-to-day tasks they were expected to perform alongside their training. Washing tunics and clothes in massive stone tubs, uniforms stirred like soup with paddles. Cooking the food issued to them, preparing it in communal eating areas shared with the other dormitories, those spaces made unbearably hot by ovens and gas boilers. Strange-looking root vegetables and pulses and tiny quantities of meat, all boiled together in vats that were little different from the vessels where the slaves’ rags were cleaned. Evenings spent fixing rips and tears and darning their clothes. Acclimatising to the enforced novelty of being kept constantly busy by menial tasks, surrounded by people all the time – and none of them Duncan’s servants. But keeping busy was necessary to stop yourself dwelling on what you used to be; on what Duncan might be doing now if only he had stayed at home that day, rather than visiting the warehouses. When he wasn’t attacking the array of common chores, he divided his time between searching the station for Adella and learning everything he could about the sky mines. Anything that might help him, the woman he loved and his sister survive. Strangest thing were the flies. You couldn’t leave your rations for a second without insects buzzing around the gruel. How the hell they flew this high, he would never know. Maybe they just followed the stench of so many sweating bodies crammed into a hollowed-out rock.

He explored the station’s maze of mine tunnels with Willow, following numbered passages in search of the other dormitories. There were graffiti in every corridor, chipped out of rock with hammers and steel gouges designed for mining. Insults, prayers, names, art, dates, declarations of love, declarations of despair. Their presence gave every passage its own character and helped the new slaves learn to navigate the labyrinth of tunnels, stairwells and chambers hewn out of the rock. Eventually, Duncan found the chamber containing Adella.

Willow grabbed Duncan as he caught sight of the man by Adella’s cot. Carter Carnehan! The smug look on Carter’s face as he saw Duncan enter the dormitory was just a little more than the heir to Hawkland Park could stand. ‘Enough!’ Willow hissed at him. ‘Didn’t you learn anything back in the skels’ punishment cell?’

I learnt how good it felt to stick my fist in that selfish fool’s face.
‘I won’t swing for him if he doesn’t go for me first. That’s more than he deserves, Willow.’ Duncan strode up to Adella’s cot. ‘I was wondering why you hadn’t come looking for me. I guess now I know.’

‘This is just where I ended up,’ said Adella. She met his gaze without a trace of shame or embarrassment. ‘After the fight the last time we were together, staying out of your way seemed the safest thing.’

‘Safe,’ snorted Duncan. ‘People who hang about with this hothead don’t end up safe; they end up like the idiots who followed him down into the old town.’

‘Not much that’s safe here, as far as I can see,’ said Carter. ‘Apart from a handful of maintenance staff on the station and a few old hands, you notice anyone over forty? We’re equal here, Duncan. Both shit. Just the muscle behind a pick and shovel, all owned by the same folks who paid for the spade.’ He pointed down the dormitory and Duncan recognised the others from the skels’ slave pen – the gask, Kerge, a few of the men from the town… Eshean and Joah. ‘We’re going to have to stick together to stay alive and we’re going to have to keep our wits about us to escape this flying prison.’

‘Carter’s making plans,’ said Adella. ‘He’s already talked to the sky miners, trying to learn how people have been caught escaping before.’

Duncan shook his head in despair. ‘Escape? Escape to where? Even if we could get past the dead zone, we’d die of old age fleeing through foreign lands; places where every man and woman would know our brand and turn us in for the bounty on our heads.’

‘Not if we learn how to fly one of those Vandian warships and get home the same way we arrived,’ said Carter.

‘Would that be one of the big metal ones with thousands of heavily armed soldiers and crewmen? The kind patrolling the edge of the sky mines, just itching for a chance to turn their cannons on a handful of bare-arse slaves bearing shovels?’

‘Well, there’s the thing,’ said Carter, slapping the brand on his shoul­der. ‘Doesn’t make me a slave. This is just a scar on my arm, and I’m going to make the bastards that put it there pay for every inch of the thing.’

‘Talk sense, Carter!’ interrupted Willow. ‘Listen to yourself. There might well be a way for us to escape, but you’ve got to take your time, not do anything rash. Learn how the imperium works, learn what you would be escaping into. You’ll need maps, knowledge of their society, supplies, clothes to blend in – a plan that’s more than flinging a stolen pickaxe at the first Vandian soldier you run into.’

‘There’s not a library in the station with a section on slave escapes,’ sneered Adella.

‘That’s fine,’ Willow snapped back. ‘Because you’d have to be able to read it, and not just use the pages as toilet paper.’

‘I’ll leave when I’m ready,’ said Carter. ‘One thing’s for sure, I’m not going to die here like a worked-out plough horse in harness for these Vandian sons-of-bitches.’

Duncan looked pleadingly at Adella. ‘Are you going to switch cots to my dormitory?’

She shrugged. ‘You can switch across here if you want.’

Those weren’t the words Duncan needed to hear. Couldn’t she see Carter was still using her? Just another weapon in their long, ongoing duel. He struggled for an argument he could throw at Adella to change her mind, but he had none. Duncan felt the bite of shame, of being bested in this mean manner. Being a Landor was currency that only worked at home, it seemed. Out here, his name was worthless.
He
was worthless. ‘I crossed cells for you on the skel carrier, and that didn’t work out so well, did it?’