Black Hole Sun

CHAPTER 16

Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00

When the door swings open, the room is dark. Spiner clicks on his headlamp and sweeps the chamber, searching the four corners but only finding empty tables and benches. “The room’s empty,” he says, confused, rubbing his neck. “There’s nobody here.”
“Astute observation. Regulators, secure the area.” While they move to defensive positions, I quickly scan the arcade and the courtyard for signs of life. Hell’s Cross is hushed as a graveyard. The hammering I noticed earlier has stopped.
Taking the stairs back down to the courtyard, I check for tracks on the tiled floors. None. But there should be, unless someone covered them. No other signs of an attack, either. The miners left willingly or they were never in the meeting room in the first place. For whatever reason, the people we’ve traveled a thousand kilometers to save are hiding from us.
“Mimi?” Then I check the entrances. Even though it’s quiet, it could still be an ambush. “Any signatures?”
“None within a thirty-meter radius. That’s as far as I can extend the telemetry in this space.”
Damn it. Where are they? Did the Dr?u get to the miners before we did?
“Regulators! Expand the perimeter,” I call out, my voice echoing too much. “Mouths shut. Eyes and ears open.”
Ockham leaves his post to join me, Jean-Paul in tow. He points his armalite at the statue in the middle of the courtyard. “Maybe the bishop is hiding them.”
“It’s not a time for jokes,” I snap, and step up on the dais. From this vantage point, I have clear line of sight on all the entrances, as well as the second-floor stairwells, which are lit with iridescent glow lights. It’s going to take a while before my eyes adjust to the darkness that blankets the Cross.
“Vienne,” I say, “search the arcade. Use the right stairs. Jenkins, start searching from the left. Ockham, check out the corridor at twelve o’clock. Fuse at three o’clock. I’ll take the one at nine.” They all acknowledge the order, although Ockham takes his time about it.
“What about me?” Jean-Paul asks, grabbing my empty holster.
Stay out of the way, kid. “You can guard Spiner.”
“But I have no weapon, chief.”
“Improvise.” And don’t call me chief, I think. You’re not a Regulator yet. I move into position. Kneel down and sweep the dimly lit corridor.
“Anything?” I ask Mimi.
“Not yet.”
“Open a vid link with the crew.” Vienne, Jenkins, and Fuse have found no hostiles. “Ockham? What’s your status?” Then I realize that we’re not communicating with Ockham. “Mimi, remind me to synch with the old fart at the next opportunity.”
“I’ll put old fart synching on your to-do list.”
“Ha-ha.”
Vienne is the first to reply. Fuse is next, followed by Jenkins. All clear. So far. After a quick glance back at the statue—Jean-Paul is guarding Spiner with a length of rebar, and Spiner is scratching his head, befuddled by the whole production—I move deeper into the corridor. The light dims as I walk. My eyes take a few seconds to adjust because I don’t want to use the helmet lamp and alert anyone.
Wish my bionic eye had heat vision.
“Me, too,” Mimi says.
No doors here. No windows or portals. Just a long stretch of corridor that leads into God knows what. If any of the fossickers are hiding here, they don’t have a pulse, because Mimi would pick up their signatures.
“Regulators—” I say into the vid. But before anyone can respond, a siren sounds, and I clap my hands over my ears. “Wkào! What the hell?”
“A raid siren, cowboy,” Mimi says. “It’s coming from the courtyard.”
I race back down the corridor and hit the courtyard at full speed. Spiner is bent over, hands clasped over his ears. Jean-Paul is still guarding him.
“Vienne! Report!” I shout into the aural link.
Static. A quick visual of the arcade. It’s Vienne, signaling okay from the left corner. She heads down the stairs. Fuse and Ockham reach the courtyard.
Without Jenkins.
Where is he? “Jenks, report!” I say, upset at the thought of losing a soldier. “Before I shoot you for desertion!”
With a laugh, Jenkins swings down from the arcade. Lands like an artillery shell on the paved stone ground. The sound of the siren begins to fade, and I realize by the self-satisfied grin on his face, he’s the one who set it off.
“What is wrong with you, Regulator?” I ask as Jenkins swats the dust from his knees. “Why’d you pull that stunt?”
“Didn’t feel like taking the stairs.” He shrugs. “What? It didn’t hurt. Honest. My suit took the hit for me.”
“No, no, no.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. A lecture about the shortsightedness of abusing your symbiarmor isn’t what I had in mind. “Why. Did. You. Soundtheairraidsiren?”
He grins. “To make them come running.”
“Who’s them?”
“The mud puppies, chief,” he says, like it all makes perfect sense. Does he expect me to read his mind? Yes, as a matter of fact, he probably does.
“Cowboy,” Mimi interrupts, “my sweep is showing multiple signatures bearing down on this location.”
“Is it the miners?”
“Probably. They’re human.”
“Probably human is better than probably Dr?u.” So, Jenkins was making sense after all. Then I say aloud, “At ease, Regulators. Jenkins’s little stunt might just work, and we don’t want to accidentally shoot our hosts.” So the miners were hiding after all. Why would they do that? We’re here to help them.
As they move out of the shadows and into the courtyard, I count heads. There are thirty to forty miners, almost sixty percent of them male, although the females wear the same brown coveralls and are streaked with just as much soot and grease. They eye us with a mix of contempt and fear and keep their heads half bowed, as if shielding their eyes. I recognize a familiar face among the men—Jurm, the other man with áine and Spiner.
They begin forming a circle around us. We take position around the dais.
“These rusters ain’t used to civilized folk,” Jenkins tells Fuse. “They act all proud about squatting in their black holes, like it makes them holy or something. They’re always whining about how they got abandoned and how everybody hates them, but when a helping hand gets offered, they run and hide like babies.”
“Settle down,” I tell him.
Ockham steps forward. “Is it me, or are they giving us the stink eye?”
“It’s just you,” I reply. But maybe it isn’t. Something’s missing from the equation here, and one quick look gives me the answer. There are maybe fifteen children, all under age-five. The rest of the miners are oldies, all of them well past age-twenty.
Vienne notices the same thing. “There are no young adults. How can we train children and oldies to fight the Dr?u?”
Nodding, I bite my lip. “We’ll get by. We always find a way to make it work.”
“More company,” Vienne says, pointing to the arcade. It’s the area that Fuse searched. “Mimi, new item for my list: Speak to Fuse about doing a more thorough search next time.”
Two women stand at the railing, looking down on us. The younger of the two is áine. I don’t recognize the older woman, who has long silver hair and a face that looks as if it’s been chiseled from sandstone. She’s wearing a tan frock and robes the color of mud.
I glance at the circle of miners, who are carrying wrenches as long and heavy as their arms. They’re squeezing us, drawing the circle tighter, dragging the wrenches on the ground so that they squeal. Fuse and Jenkins stand back-to-back, eyes darting around, looking to me for guidance. I shake my head no, even as their hands inch compulsively toward their armalites.
“Welcome, Regulators,” the older woman’s voice rings out.
“Funny, I ain’t feeling too damned welcome right now,” Ockham says, and draws his weapon, and my heart almost stops.
The miners all swing their wrenches up to their shoulders. Ockham responds by aiming the red dot from his laser sight right between the old woman’s eyes. His finger’s resting on the trigger. His free hand is hovering near the three light-mass grenades clipped to his belt. “How’d you want to play it, rusters?”
The circle closes like a noose tightening.
“Ockham,” I say, moving close to him. “Stand down. This isn’t the way to start a job.”
“Tell that to the lynch mob,” Ockham says.
“I’m telling you!” I bark as the oldie moves the sights from the old woman to áine and back again. He could be Vienne’s twin, technique wise, but that’s where the comparison ends. “Now stand down! I’m giving the orders here.”
He’s about to argue when Spiner jumps up on the statue dais. “Hold on, Regulators. We don’t get many visitors down under, except them that wants to rob us of our little bits of nothing, so our people ain’t much on courtesy and the like. If they meant to do you harm, you’d be wandering the tunnels instead of standing here, I’d warrant you that.”
“That,” Vienne says, moving next to me, “was oddly reassuring.”
“I’m not sure reassuring is the word I’d use.” But still, I feel the tension drop a few decibels. Time to put this situation to bed. Staring at the old woman, I hold my arms wide to show that I’m bearing no arms—other than my armalite, a sidearm, a combat knife in either boot, and a shiv tucked up a sleeve. “Me and mine came here in good faith for a fee that frankly isn’t normal rate. But when we get here, you treat us like plague carriers. Where I come from, that’s not copacetic.”
“My sincerest apology, Regulator,” the old woman says, her voice like the sound of a soft metal bell. “When we saw the man who threatened to kill áine, we were worried.”
“Fair enough,” I say.
The old woman comes down to join us. She sticks out a boney hand. Her skin’s so thin, the veins underneath look like bloodworms. When we shake, my own hand engulfs hers, and it feels like a gentle squeeze would crush her bones.
“Come upstairs,” she says.
We follow her and áine through a metal door. It’s supported by iron straps, and there’s a heavy throw bolt on the inside. It’s strong enough to keep out your average thief, but against a trained, determined enemy, it wouldn’t last more than a minute. Maybe that’s why the miners are so good at hiding. It’s the only defense they’ve got.
“Where’s the grub?” Jenkins asks. He takes a seat on a long bench next to a stone table.
“Give it a rest, right?” Fuse sits between him and Jean-Paul, with Ockham at the end. Vienne stands behind the bench, ostensibly waiting for me to sit, but she’s actually sweeping the room for threats.
“Mimi?” I ask, just to make sure that Vienne hasn’t missed anything. “All clear?”
“No new biosignatures,” she says. “And no boogeymen hiding in the closet.”
“Thanks, but I think we’re the boogeymen in this room.”
“Excellent point,” Mimi says.
“About that grub,” Jenkins says, his mind still on the same track.
“We’ve some food to share later,” the old woman says.
“Not much,” áine says quickly. “We miners ain’t used to eating like you rich folk.”
“We understand,” I say, trying to keep to the subject at hand.
“Understand like blazes,” Jenkins blusters. “Them rusters out there, they looked fat enough to me. We come thousands of kilometers on TransPort, walk an hour through tunnels, and you ain’t even decent enough to feed us? Don’t cry poor to me. You got food hid, I know you do. Ain’t like miners not to have something set back.”
“Poor thing,” Ockham interrupts. “His belly’s empty, and he’s at nobs end about it. Shame, no? Tell me, chief, do you have to change this boy when you’re done feeding him? Or is wiping his own ass something he’s capable of?”
Jenkins whips a combat knife out of his boot. “How’s I wipe your ass with this, oldie?”
Ockham yawns.
“Stop it,” I say in a low voice that echoes off the rock walls. “Both of you.”
“You’ll not be giving me orders, chief,” Ockham says. “It’s not you paying my freight.”
“I’m in charge of this job,” I snap. “And I say no bickering. You don’t like that? Find yourself different work. I don’t care a whit who’s paying your damned freight.”
“Is there a problem?” the woman asks. Beside her, áine smiles coyly. Plays with a strand of brown hair.
“We’re just cranky from the TransPort,” I say. “It’s been a long ride.” I clear my throat and introduce my davos.
“Welcome, all of you,” she says. “You met Spiner, Jurm, and áine before. I’m named Maeve, but the miners call me old woman.”
“It fits,” Jenkins says.
Fuse slaps him.
“Ow! Oy, I’m just speaking the truth.”
“Yes,” Maeve says, “he’s right. It does fit. But we got off to a bad start. My apologies for the greeting you got. As I said, miners are wary folk by nature.”
Jenkins huffs. Fuse elbows him. Maeve ignores them both.
“Now to business,” she says. “These past months, we were raided by the Dr?u again and again. They attack out of nowhere, take what children they can carry, then disappear. We all know what the Dr?u do to children. CorpCom law is useless out here, and we’ve got no weapons nor training in defending ourselves, so I sent áine to hire a Regulator to train us. Blessedly, you all came instead, but we know that if we rise against the Dr?u, they will try to kill us all.”
“Which is why you need us to force them to move on,” I say.
“Move on? Tch.” áine clicks her tongue softly. “Not likely, handsome.”
Maeve pats áine’s hand, a loving gesture that I interpret to mean Enough with the flirting. “What áine is trying to say is, the Dr?u are not reasonable folk, so them moving on would not be achievable.” Maeve goes on to state the terms of the contract and what will bring the final payout. “Either the Dr?u are defeated, or they agree to sign a blood oath to never attack this outpost again.”
“The Dr?u sign a blood oath?” Mimi says. “Not likely, handsome.”
I can’t help but smile. But across the table, áine smiles in return. Oh no. What have I done?
“Stepped in it,” Mimi says.
Maeve unrolls a sheath of electrostat. The contract is imprinted on it, and there’s a box for my thumbprint. I scan the document to make sure it’s all kosher, but I pause with my thumb hovering over the signature line.
“Before I endorse this. Once I’m in charge, I’m in charge of everything: fortifying defenses, training your folk in the use of weaponry, defeating the enemy in battle. You provide the support, the materials, and the food.”
“We’ve not,” áine says, “promised to just turn ourselves for you to use any way you’d like, Regulator.”
“But if that is what needs done, then we’ll do it,” the old woman says. “We agree to your terms. Our lives are in your hands.”
“You can count on us,” I say.
“Let’s see if you can still say that,” áine murmurs, shifting the weight off her wounded leg, “after you’ve had a taste of the Dr?u.”


In battle school, our masters drilled this mantra into our heads: All warfare is based on deception. From the recon we could pry out of the miners, the Dr?u have a hundred fighters. We have five Regulators, a pint-sized acolyte, and about forty ornery miners. So my first job is to deceive the Dr?u into thinking we’ve got beaucoups more personnel than that and the personnel is well-trained.
My other job is to make use of the skills the miners have to build defensive structures to control the enemy’s route into the mines. If the Dr?u can’t reach the Cross, then they can’t attack. The problem is, there are dozens of tunnels, and we can’t defend them all.
“There are forty-two tunnels, to be exact,” Mimi says.
Vienne, áine, and I stand in the dim light of Hell’s Cross. Our faces are illuminated by the glow of a open electrostat, which displays a cross-section map of the Fisher Four mine. From this angle, it looks like an ant colony. The tipple and ore houses are on the surface. Six different lifts lead to the tramway. Twelve different exit stations lead to elevators connected to the maze of underground stations. Most of the active mine shafts and worker settlements are a kilometer south and four hundred meters below us.
Vienne looks over my shoulder, pointing out the route that we took to reach the Cross via Crazy Town, and áine stands close, pointing out landmarks.
“So we have forty-two tunnels of varying sizes,” I say, tracing the lines with my finger. “All of them lead either directly or indirectly to the four main corridors that lead to the Cross. There are only a handful of paths the Dr?u can use to attack with a large force, like the way we came in. But there are too many spots where they can send in a skirmish line to harass us.”
“‘You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked,’” Vienne says, quoting from The Art of War and glaring at áine.
“Right,” I say. “So we’re going to do this in two phases. First, we’ll close all but one of the corridors.”
“Why not close them all?” áine asks. Then sticks her tongue out at Vienne.
“Because we want the Dr?u to attack,” I explain.
“What?” áine squeaks. “That’s madness!”
“No, it’s plumbing. We know the water is going to flow. We just decide where it’s shunted to. Which brings us to the second phase.” I tap the map. Sweep my fingers across it. “This corridor leads to a bridge, which leads to where?”
“The surface,” áine says. “And we call that the Zhao Zhou Bridge. You’d never heard of it? We use it when we go foraging. But it’s full of junked-up machines.”
“Which makes it perfect,” I say. “The debris will slow down any rush attacks, and the Zhao Zhou Bridge will funnel them into our redoubt.”
“Our what?”
“Redoubt,” Vienne says, smirking. “A defensive structure designed to fight against sieges.”
áine sticks out her chin, letting Vienne know that she doesn’t appreciate her little lecture. “Well, Miss Know-it-all, we don’t have one of those here.”
“No problem,” I say. If I don’t do something about their bickering now, there will never be an end to it, and it might jeopardize the job. Then I hit on a plan. “No problem at all. In fact, you’re going to build us one.”
áine chokes. “Excuse me? You’re having a laugh, right? We don’t know about building redoubts or whatever you call them.”
It’s my time to smirk. “Vienne is going to show you.”
“Chief!”
“Not her!” áine snarls. “There’s a fair suck of salve!”
“Tough.” I roll up the electrostat. “I’ve got to talk to Fuse. There’s some blasting to do, and he’s the right one for the job. You two enjoy yourselves. And oh, you’ve got twenty-four hours to get the job done.”
“Twenty-four hours?” they chime together.
“But how?” áine says.
“With what?” Vienne asks.
“You’re both smart girls,” I say. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
As I walk away, a silent argument rages. I grin and ask Mimi to locate Fuse for me.
“Fuse is on the Zhao Zhou Bridge,” Mimi says. She shows me his coordinates on the aural vid. “You know what was going on back there, don’t you?”
“Yep. I decided to let them hash it out.”
“Hash what out, precisely?”
“Their little turf war. We’ve got to be one unified force against the Dr?u, so the sooner they learn to cooperate, the better.”
Mimi is silent, but I have the unnerving feeling that if she still had a head, she would be shaking it.
“What?” I say.
“Sometimes, cowboy,” she says, “I wonder if you are as dense and impenetrable as symbiarmor.”
“I am who I am,” I say, and head out to check out the bridge.


When the corridor ends, I step out into an open cavern. All around me, there are high cliffs. Check that. Not really cliffs. Cuts. Most of the walls of the massive cavern were cut by machines. Cut from the walls in large chunks so that the walls look like steps to a giant’s house. It’s like an open pit mine underground. The walls are dark brown but look black where the overhead array of lights doesn’t touch them. It feels like there’s no end to the cavern, but the lack of a sky overhead leaves me feeling claustrophobic. It doesn’t help that a deep gorge splits the cavern in half, and that the gorge is supposed to be bottomless.
As casually as I can, I walk to the edge of the gorge and toss a chunk of rock into its black maw. I count off seconds, waiting for the sound of it hitting bottom. When I get to one hundred, I quit.
Thank God for bridges, I think, and start walking toward Fuse.
The Zhao Zhou Bridge measures about one hundred fifty meters in length and is twelve meters wide. Built of slabs jointed with dovetails, the main semicircle arch rises high above the gorge that separates the corridor leading to Hell’s Cross from a wide cliff on the opposite end. There are ornamental railings on either side and an arched swing gate on each end.
The deck of the bridge is littered with the carcasses of broken machines and tools. Which will have to be cleared. Off to the right, I count six heavy cranes. Rust covers the cockpits where operators once sat, and the massive cables that hang from their booms lay in heaps beside the treads. Farther away, near the side tunnels, I see an endless supply of shipping containers stacked ten high. In the before days, they were used to transport ore via the beanstalks. Now they’re scattered like a gigantic child’s building blocks. Building blocks. There’s a thought.
“Mimi,” I say, “keep scanning the area. Let me know if you pick up anything.”
“Will do,” she says. “But cowboy, these repetitive scans are putting a strain on your suit’s capacity and therefore, you. Your body needs to sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“Which will happen sooner than later if you do not rest.”
“In the meantime, give me a pinch if I start nodding off.”
When I reach Fuse, he’s holding a piece of electrostat. But it’s turned upside down, and he’s scratching his head like the map’s an impossible puzzle. Clearly, cartography is not this soldier’s forte.
Fuse jumps when I sneak up behind him. “Oy! Chief!” He pats his chest. “You almost gave me a coronary. Let a jack know you’re coming, right?”
“Sorry, Fuse,” I say, turning his map to the correct direction. “First order of business is for you to close up every secondary and tertiary tunnel connected to this corridor. We’re going to funnel the Dr?u from that main tunnel over there and across this bridge to a redoubt that Vienne and áine are designing.”
“So that’s a bridge?” He points at the map.
“As in, the one you’re standing on?”
“Oh, right. I see now. That’s more like it. So, I’m to shut down a bunch of tunnels. Right. What’ve I got to work with?”
“Anything you can scavenge to do the job. If it’s not nailed down, use it.”
Fuse surveys the area, pointing out the small mountains of discarded machinery and mining equipment. “I dunno, chief. Not much here that’s not falling apart. What about the cranes? They might be handy for moving some junk around. Think they still work?”
“Fix them if they don’t,” I say. “Also, the old woman Maeve says there’s some C-forty-two in storage if you need it for closing down the tunnels. In the before days, miners used it for blowing tunnels.”
“Explosives?” Fuse’s eyes light up. “This changes everything.”
I give his shoulder a shake. “Thought it might.” I turn to leave but find Jenkins at my elbow.
“Fuse is going to blow things up?” he asks.
“He is.”
Jenkins’s eyes sparkle. “Can I help?”
“No carking way!” Fuse says. “Remember the last time you helped? I lost both my eyebrows.”
“Aw. They grew back.”
“The miners are collecting scrap in the back,” I say, cutting their argument short. “How about you lend a hand?” I steer Jenkins away from Fuse and toward the archway that leads to the Cross. “Gives you a chance to show off your muscles.”
Jenkins grumbles. Looks longingly at Fuse, who has already climbed into the cockpit of a crane. He tries to crank the motor, but all we hear is the clicking of a solenoid. He’s got his work cut out for him.
“Come on, Jenkins.” I’ve got no idea what job to give him to occupy his hands, but I breathe easy knowing he won’t be near the explosives.
“Cowboy,” Mimi interrupts. “I have an urgent message from Maeve.”
“Hold up a second, Jenkins,” I say. Then tell Mimi to route Maeve through. “Put it on aural.”
“Durango,” she says, her voice popping with the bad connection. “We have a situation with you and yours. It’s Ockham. He’s causing a ruckus.”
That schei?kerl. I’ve had about all I can swallow of him. “What kind of ruckus?”
“It’s better you see it in person,” she says. “Please come to the Cross. Before somebody gets killed.”
“The scrap collection will have to wait,” I tell Jenkins. Then signal Vienne and Fuse to join us in the Cross. “Seems there’s a patch of trouble with Ockham.”
“There’s always trouble with that oldie,” Jenkins says, almost under his breath. “Is it time to shoot him yet?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Can I shoot him when you do decide?”
“No. Vienne can.”
“Aw,” Jenkins says. “I never get to have any fun.”