Vartika leers, “Choosing to save the galaxy over your home planet again?”
“My people choose to not accept help. Those in the galaxy are begging for it.”
“DIG!”
Unable to maintain her bearings, Amye staggers from a shove to her gut. Metal clinks on the floor next to where she lands as something slides along next to her.
Before she wakes from her hangover, she hears the bolting of durasteel. Cold bites at her naked arms, and the poorly filtered air causes a cough.
As she blinks off the drug haze, a small green alien, malnourished and in tattered rags, approaches her. The alien has lost enough weight that the cybernetic jacking implant juts from its neck, about to fall out if it weren’t bonded to the loose skin.
It chatters.
Female. Amye recognizes the Scalterrian language, but scarcely identifies this creature as once female.
“I don’t understand you,” Amye lies.
The creature continues its bleats.
Better she think I don’t understand. Osirians lack the tongue, the actual tongue, to make whatever diphthong moment necessary to speak Scalterrian, but she understands parts of it.
Dig or die is easy enough. Dig what, is a better question. Amye places her hand on the wall. Rock is rock. It feels like rock. What were they mining here? The hazy light, no brighter than a single candle, forces her to squint. A few aliens chip away at the rock. Amye knows better than to lean over one of their shoulders to learn what they are digging for. They are all slaves. Some by their own choosing, she bets. The Scalterrian used all her money to enjoy whatever fantasy Scalterrian indulged in. Now they threw her down here to earn more funds. She knew this place smelt of a scam when they stepped off the Silver Dragon.
So that pirate rolled her. If she could check her DNA implant information, she would bet her credit level’s zero. So they threw her down here to not only hide what they did, but by the time she earns enough to escape, those pirates will be long gone.
Dig. Dig. Dig.
Amye wishes the Scalterrian would chitter on about something useful. Like what she should dig for. She should just snap the creature’s neck and put her out of her misery and prevent the betrayal—it will come—later. The creature will wait until Amye has dug up something, whatever it is, before attempting to steal it. The poor thing’s desperate. But not desperate to escape, desperate to return to her fantasy life. It’s worse than a drug addiction. The brain experiences no punishing hangover. Nothing to make a person feel worse. Nothing to convince a person not to imbibe again. The fantasy reality just continues on, and those engrossed in it no longer want anything to do with the outside world.
Amye scoops up the metal pail the guard tossed on her. In it is a small rock hammer, sifting screen and a trowel along with a plastic case with marking lines. Each line is a credit amount of whatever she is to dig. Whatever’s left of the mineral they want remains in flakes. What could be so valuable they still want flakes?
Amye snags her bucket and marches past those already digging. Whatever it is, this is only the way to find what’s left, and if not for slave labor it wouldn’t be feasible. Too bad this place wasn’t an IMC mining facility. I’d could crack the code on the door and escape. No, if this was just an asteroid she doubts they would have even built a mine. They would have drilled the rock and blown it into smaller boulders, running it through a processing ship. The IMC would pulverize the stone to powder and siphon away what it wanted.
Amye picks a spot no one seems interested in digging at. She runs her fingers over the stone. She chips away a gravel-sized piece. She inspects it short of putting it in her mouth before tossing it on the ground.
The Scalterrian chitters at her in such frantic levels she could go into convulsions.
“What do you care, lady?” Amye grips her rock hammer ready to impale the creature’s skull to stop the high-pitched noise. Then she gets it. They have to police their waste rock. All rocks go in the bucket. The mineral goes in the plastic case.
The gravel has to be dumped into a chute and could be a means of escape. So could finding this mineral. She only needs enough to buy her way out. She’ll simply go back to the Dragon, unlike most of these people who will dig enough to return to a gaming table. She wonders how many are down here a second or third time.
“What am I looking for?”
The creature chitters. Amye makes out only one word: Khonarigte. A type of coltan and highly sought-after, as it’s one of the few metals found to comprise the electronic components of a hyperdrive engine. Once refined, the heat of the hyperdrive doesn’t melt it the way it does other metals.
If they abandoned this facility only flakes remain. Amye contemplates other methods of escape. It could take weeks to dig enough Khonarigte to reach the first line on the plastic tube.
Just do to this Scalterrian what she plans to do to you. She’ll show me where to dig and once I’ve collected some of the Khonarigte assail me and steal. No other reason for her helpfulness.
The Scalterrian computer jack catches the pale light, acting as a constant reminder how humanoids who are willing to augment themselves become dangerously addicted to the machine attachment. Some authorities claim the electric jacker connected to the synapsis emits a low-level radiation that warps the mind. Osirians are highly susceptible. It pushes them to insanity. Many species, however, seem to lose their mental faculties the longer they stay jacked in. This female
