Freedom's Last Gasp Page 10

  “What are you talking about?”

  Priya hesitated, and then the words poured out. “First you leave that basket for me, which was really nice and thanks for that, and then my room was really more than I was expecting, and now this…” She pointed at her breakfast. She’d ordered shakshuka, a stew made from peppers, onions, and tomato sauce, with three poached eggs on top. “I mean, I thought the menu was speaking euphemistically. But this thing has eggs in it.”

  “Is there something wrong with it?” Terry asked. “You can return it and we can get you something else.”

  “No, it’s exactly what it said it would be. But there’s no way…” She craned her neck to look at one of the other interns’ breakfasts, and her eyes widened. “Is he eating… an omelet?” she whispered.

  Terry finally understood what was wrong, and he tried to keep his amusement from his voice. “You weren’t expecting real eggs, were you?”

  “Well…”

  “I get it. I’ve heard you guys are all vegans back on Earth. Just tell the chef, he’ll prepare it any way you like.”

  Priya shook her head. “No, we’re not all vegans. At least… not by choice.”

  She plunged her spoon into one of the eggs, breaking the yolk, and watching at the thick golden liquid mixed with the spicy tomatoes making a luscious sauce, which she shoveled into her mouth. She chewed, paused, and smiled.

  “Oh my god, this is so good.”

  Terry chuckled; clearly this ordinary breakfast was a sinful treat to her. “I’m glad you like it. And I’m glad you liked the fruit. But I promise you’re not being treated any differently from any other intern. You’re just beginning to experience life on the colony. We raise quite a few chickens, cows, pigs, and other animals for food. It might seem barbaric to you…”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Priya wiped her mouth with a napkin. She leaned forward and added in a whisper, “In fact, just before coming here, I had a beef slider at a place that’s sort of like a gray market for exotic items.”

  “The Bizarre Bazaar?”

  “Yes!” Priya smiled—a genuine smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. “How do you know about it?”

  “I was stationed on Earth for a few years. I got so sick of the food, I spent almost every credit I had just to get a taste of something that wasn’t some central government’s idea of what was healthy for me.”

  Priya laughed. “I spent more at that place in one day than I’ve ever spent in an entire month.”

  “Well then, you’ll be happy to know they serve hamburgers and sometimes even steaks for dinner. And it’s all covered in your tuition, paid for by the UN.”

  Priya grinned. “Oh my goodness, I’m going to get so fat.”

  Terry chuckled. “Well, try not to overdo it.”

  She focused her gaze on him, assessing him. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “I’m glad to have someone to talk to for breakfast, but… is there a reason you’re here? I mean, why is a colony security officer sitting with me in the miners’ cafeteria?”

  Terry drained his orange juice. “Just following orders. I’m supposed to see you safely to and from the mines.”

  “Why? Is there a problem?”

  There was, but he certainly couldn’t tell her all he knew. So he shrugged. “Not sure. It may be because you’re a Radcliffe. The higher-ups probably just want to keep an eye out for your welfare. If you were to have an unpleasant experience, well… I suppose it would reflect poorly.”

  Priya waved dismissively. “Trust me, there’s nothing special about me. I’m just a regular person who happens to have some historically significant ancestors.” She smiled and pushed her plate away. “So, does that mean you’re taking me to the mine in that crazy car of yours?”

  Terry grinned. “I’m afraid so, Miss Radcliffe. There will be no buses in your immediate future.”

  Chapter Eight

  “This is from the general’s office? Duhrer?” Terry asked.

  He was watching over Nwaynna’s shoulder as she began replaying the transmission.

  “Yes, we received it about thirty minutes ago.”

  This image was taken from a different angle than the last one. The video feed was still coming from somewhere near the ceiling, but now the camera faced the desk directly, providing a head-on view of General Heinrich Duhrer at work. Terry had done some research on this general. He was a career UN intelligence officer with an exemplary record—which basically meant that he left nothing to chance.

  A knock sounded on the door, and the general said, “Come in.”

  Dixon, the Special Forces washout, stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and stood at attention.

  The general motioned toward a chair. Have a seat, Sergeant. You’ve got an update on our colony asset?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Out with it.”

  “She’s enrolled in the mining class, as expected—”

  “Cut to the chase. Has she gotten down into level twelve yet?”

  “Not yet, sir. But they’ve had her under 24/7 surveillance since the moment she landed. She’s even been excluded from the usual transport to and from the mine, where we’d normally be able to reach her. Best I can tell is she’s got a private security escort.”

  Terry frowned and scribbled a note to himself on his handheld PC: Run a deep background check on all dorm route bus drivers.

  “Then what is your plan, Sergeant?”

  “Our guy will arrange contact.”

  The general set aside his writing stylus and focused on the sergeant. “We need this girl’s intel before we can make our move. This isn’t a game we’re playing. You understand me, Sergeant?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  The general waved toward his office door. “We’re done, soldier. Dismissed.”

  Nwaynna stopped the transmission and turned to meet Terry’s gaze. “I ran their voices through stress analyzers. None of that was playacting for our benefit. The intel integrity of what we just witnessed is high.”

  “Thanks, Nwaynna. Keep me posted on anything else you find.”

  “Will do.”

  Ranger hopped up and followed Terry as he left the lab. He tapped on his lapel transceiver, and Tom answered.

  “Hey, Terry. What’s up?”

  “Tom, where’s our girl?”

  “She’s at the dorm. Why?”

  “Where are you?”

  “At home eating dinner. Is there something going on?”

  “Who do we have at the dorms?”

  “Well, it’s past seven, so that would be Walsh. Terry, you sound agitated. What’s going on? Should I go over there?”

  Terry paused and took a deep breath. “No, you go ahead and finish dinner. I’ll reach out to Walsh.”

  “You sure? I’m only five minutes away.”

  “It’s fine. I have to go over that way anyway for something else.”

  “Okay, bro, but don’t be a hero. If you need something, just ask.”

  “Thanks, Tom. It’s no big deal.”

  Terry clicked off and headed for the exit.

  He needed to talk with Priya.

  Priya sat in the break room sipping a seltzer and watching a group of interns play a videogame. She’d rather be in her room reading, like she usually did at home, but she was trying hard to be social.

  It was exhausting.

  She was only twenty-four, just three years older than these guys, but to her they felt like kids. She tried to follow their game, but it was boring—just a bunch of shooting and fighting and explosions.

  As she watched, a holographic arm projected from the screen and bashed one of the interns on the head. He jumped to his feet.

  “One-shotted? What a load of crap! That boss totally cheated.”

  The others laughed. “Derrick, you have to have your shield up just right or you’ll get all of your hit points drained.”

  Priya rolled her eyes. Boys.

  At that moment the lights in the room flashed
on and off, and an alarm sounded. “Everyone clear out of the building!” shouted a voice in the hallway.

  Priya hopped up from her chair and walked with everyone else down the stairs. Along the way they blended with other people coming from other directions, some barely awake and wearing robes.

  Outside, in the cool of the night, the alarm blared even louder. Priya looked around, spotted the woman from the front desk, and walked over to her. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the fire alarm,” the woman said. “We didn’t have a fire drill scheduled, so it might be the real thing.”

  Sure enough, just then someone yelled, “I smell smoke! Get away from the building!”

  Everyone backed away, moving across the parking lot toward the street. As Priya passed between some vehicles, a man brushed past her and pressed a package in her hand while whispering, “A present from Agent Ted.”

  Priya turned, looking for the man, but he’d already vanished into the crowd.

  Stepping farther away from the crowd and turning her back to them, she reached into the envelope and pulled out a metal disc. She knew she’d never seen the thing before, yet some implanted memory told her that this thing was key to getting her past some door somewhere in the mine. She slipped the disc into her pocket and tossed the envelope.

  Her throat tightened. The UN was still watching her. Even here, they managed to reach out…

  Someone placed a hand on her shoulder, and she let out a shriek.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” It was Terry. He’d come up behind her. “Are you okay?”

  Priya stared blankly at him. She was anything but okay. “I’m—I’m fine,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  Terry shrugged. “I was in the area and noticed the commotion.”

  The alarm suddenly ceased, dropping a shroud of silence across the crowd. A voice yelled, “All clear! False alarm.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Terry asked. “You look spooked.”

  “I’m good, I just… thought there was an actual fire. Someone said they smelled smoke.”

  She started following the crowd back toward the dorm, and Terry followed.

  “Well, I’m glad it was a false alarm,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Yeah. See you then.” Priya tried to sound casual. But as she re-entered the building, all she could think about was where to hide the device in her pocket.

  Priya swiped her finger on the biometric reader and walked through the turnstiles.

  “Good morning, Miss Radcliffe,” said the guard manning the mine entrance. “I hope your day goes well.”

  “Thanks.” She returned his nod.

  She’d been coming here every morning for two weeks, and still it felt weird having strangers know who she was. They’d been greeting her in the same way since her first day of orientation.

  Evidently, her being a real Radcliffe had spread like wildfire through the folks working at the mine. That and there weren’t that many women in the mines, so it was pretty easy for people to put two and two together.

  As she walked through the caverns toward the classroom on the first level, she wondered when they’d actually learn something about the actual act of mining. So far, all they’d done was review mining safety—that somehow took the entire first week—and various refinement methods employed at the facility.

  “Hey, Priya, how goes it?”

  Mike had come up next to her—the same guy she’d met on the flight from Earth. She’d decided he wasn’t the shiniest apple in the class, and in fact, she tried to not sit next to him, since she didn’t have the patience to deal with his inane questions.

  “Not too bad,” she said. “You absorbing everything they’re covering in the class?”

  “Pretty much, though most of it’s reviewing old stuff,” he said dismissively.

  Then why all the questions, Mike?

  They arrived at the classroom, and Priya put her hand on the security panel. The door clicked open, and she walked through. Mike started to walk in behind her, but was stopped by a guard. They were stationed everywhere within this mine.

  “No tailgating,” the man said sternly.

  Mike’s eyes widened. “Oh, sorry.”

  As he was scanning himself in, Priya took the opportunity to find a seat between two other interns, so that Mike couldn’t sit next to her. Unfortunately, the minute she was in her seat, one of the interns saw a friend and changed seats to sit with them. Which left the seat beside her open for Mike.

  And of course, he took it.

  “These guys get really pissy about security around here,” he muttered.

  She shook her head. “There’s ‘no tailgating’ signs everywhere. Everyone’s gotta scan in.”

  “I suppose. I wonder why they call it that. Tailgating.”

  Priya closed her eyes and wished that he wouldn’t verbalize every single thought that came into his pea-brained head.

  “Okay, class, let’s get started.”

  A short man with a crazy mop of gray hair was pacing back and forth in front of the class. His accent reminded Priya of Boston.

  “Today, you’ll be receiving your first assignment.”

  A murmur rippled through the room, and the professor had to raise his hands for silence.

  “Yes, class, we’ll finally be moving from theory to practice. It’s very exciting, but I’d prefer you keep the murmurs to yourself. Now, in your mining career, it’s likely that you’ll spend most of your time on larger asteroids and planetoids that will allow you to work with gravity-based separation ore sifters, so that is where we will begin.

  “However, for now we’ll be working on a small scale. This is a very exacting discipline, and if you can’t do it on a small scale, you can’t do it on a large scale. One day down the road, you’ll be mining by the ton. You’ll have no choice, because for many precious metals, you’ll be lucky to find five grams of what you’re looking for per ton of rock. That means sifting through more than two hundred tons of ore to extract a kilogram of gold.

  “Anyway. We’ll be heading down to level two to begin the exercise. I’ll need you to split up into teams of two. Grab a partner, and let’s head for the freight elevators.”

  A partner? Priya had been as social as she could, but she hadn’t formed any close relationships. Yet as she looked around, she realized it probably didn’t matter. The rest of the class had almost immediately formed into pairs… leaving only Priya and Mike.

  “Hey, teammate,” he said with a grin. “This sounds like it’ll be pretty cool.”

  Without saying a word, Priya trudged to the door, taking deep breaths in and out, all the while praying for patience.

  It was surprisingly warm and humid on the first level underground—easily twenty degrees warmer than the ground level they’d been having classes in. The corridor they passed through was illuminated by lights embedded directly in the rock, and Priya could see cracks in the walls. She wondered if the mine had settled or if the moon was geologically active. Each crack had some type of metal funnel built over it—she couldn’t fathom what these might be for. It annoyed her that she knew so little about this place.

  As the class snaked through what ended up being about a quarter mile of iron-heavy rock, the professor’s voice boomed from speakers in the walls.

  “These upper levels are mostly dedicated to the extraction of high-value metals used in industry. On the lower levels we’re able to extract special-purpose elements, but that calls for mining techniques that won’t apply to your future assignments, so we’ll be sticking to the upper levels.”

  A jet of steam burst from one of the cracks in the wall, but the attached metal funnel shunted it up into the ceiling. Was that what it was for?

  “But even these upper levels are going to differ significantly from your future projects, because Chrysalis is built on a thermally active satellite. I’m sure you’ve noticed the cracks in the walls, which are strategically created to rel
ieve outgassing pressure from the lower levels. By contrast, your future mining locations will likely be geologically inert, with very low temperatures and no atmosphere.”

  One of the interns ahead of Priya raised his hand and yelled something that was hard for Priya to make out.

  “Excellent question. I’ll repeat it for the benefit of the others who may not have heard it. The question is, why is this moon geologically active when others—like Earth’s moon, which is larger—aren’t?

  “As you students already know, billions of years ago, the Earth was struck a glancing blow by a Mars-sized planet, and the Earth’s moon was formed from the jettisoned material. It took well over a billion years for the moon to cool. This moon was formed in a similar way—by an impact on Epsilon—but that impact was far more recent, and thus, unlike the Earth’s moon, Epsilon’s moon is still in its cooling phase. Hence the activity.

  “That brings up another interesting point: this moon has a much different, denser composition than Epsilon itself. Thus we believe that what we’re standing on is not the jettisoned material from Epsilon, but the jettisoned material from the planetoid that struck Epsilon. Specifically, we believe this moon is formed primarily of that planetoid’s metallic core.”

  The group exited the corridor and entered a massive cavern with an underground lake at the far end. The professor led the interns to the shore of the lake, where several tables had been set up, each table holding a set of old-fashioned mechanical scales.

  “Here is where today’s lesson will take place. I’ll have you working on a centuries-old technique for retrieving precious metal from otherwise useless dirt. Specifically… we’re going to be sifting for gold.” He held up his hands. “And before you say it, I already know what you’re thinking. You came here to learn new techniques, not an ancient pre-Exodus approach. But trust me, what you’ll learn here—including patience—will apply to the commercial-sized rigs that I’ll be introducing you to later.”

  The professor pointed to the lake behind him. “Stations have been set up on the shore for each team. You’ll find a shovel, a pan, and a hand pump to move water from the lake across your work. Your instructions are simple. Shovel a scoop of the shore composite into your sifting pan. Ensure that the material is nice and wet. Roughly shake and swirl the pan around to help the gold settle to the bottom of the pan—remember, gold is heavier than just about anything else you’ll find in this dirt. Then tip your pan at a very shallow angle and have your partner slowly pour water into it, so the current carries only the top layer of silt and sand away. Then pour again, always moving the pan back and forth in the current to help loosen the next layer and make sure you don’t let the good stuff get away from you. Eventually you’ll get to the bottom and all you’ll see is some very fine black sand. Swirl the water in the pan gently and look for the tiny flakes of gold. Some pans of dirt won’t have any at all; that’s okay. Patience will be rewarded.