“What do you mean?” Samson asked.
Visha nodded toward the three glowing dots that indicated the mines. “What do you see there?”
“The Jantari mines,” Samson said.
“I know that, but where are they exactly?”
“On the mountainside,” Akino said slowly.
Visha nodded expectantly, waiting for him to continue, but Akino only stared at her. He shrugged.
Visha sighed and touched the mountain, her finger slicing through the holo and tapping the table. “They’re all downslope.”
They stared at her in silence.
“Honestly, guys, this isn’t alchemy.”
“Just get to the point,” Samson said.
“The ore deposit beneath the northern mines is just one fat lump. It’s deep but concentrated. The Jantari planted three mines to pump all that shit out. They’re distanced for safety, but they didn’t count the mountain grade. If one mine collapses, the others risk falling too because they’re all downhill.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Akino rebutted. “Why would the Jantari make such a stupid mistake?”
“Greed,” Samson said. He saw it now. How had he not seen it before? Farin had built these mines to reap the land, damn the consequences. If there were landslides caused by the nearby drilling, he didn’t care. After all, Sesharians were working those mines. Sesharians and lowborn Jantari soldiers. They were all expendable to him.
“It works in our favor,” Visha said. “General, you and Elena can burn through the tunnels as our first offense. We and the Cyleoni soldiers can follow as the second wave. Once we take out Mine One, the others will topple like dominoes.”
He hesitated. He remembered his weakness after capturing Magar, the waning of his Agni. He had already given too much. Even he knew he could not lead another attack like Magar, at least not for a while.
But there was something else. He tried not to recall the memory, but it came anyway, sticky and vile. The closed walls, the stale, fetid smell of sweat and blood. Screams echoing beneath the earth. Him, frozen in the dark tunnel, palms sweaty around his pulse gun.
How could he tell them? These men who fought and bled for him, these men who would follow him blindly into battle. How could he tell them that their Blue Star, their infallible Prophet, was afraid of the dark?
Before his ascent, before he had become a war hero for Jantar, he had become a traitor to his own people. He had joined the Jantari army after he had fled the Arohassin, thinking he could sell his secrets for safety. Buthe had been foolish. With one look, a Jantari officer had sent him to serve in the mines. Not as a miner. He hadn’t been that merciful.
The officer had made him an overseer of the Sesharians.
He wore the garb of a Jantari soldier, armed with a zeemir and a pulse gun, and patrolled the underground tunnels while his people toiled. He had hated the cramped walls. The dark, wet scent of the earth. His Jantari counterparts snickered whenever he passed.Coward, they had called him. Some even went as far as to ridicule him, stealing his clothes from their shared lockers, jumping him in dark tunnels. On one occasion, he had wet himself. They had lorded that over him for the rest of his service.
But their taunts hadn’t really bothered Samson. It was the miners’ whispers that had threatened to undo him. On his patrols, the Sesharians had glanced at him with disgust.Rustblood, they spat as he passed.Traitor.
He had wanted to tell them that he was one of them. Couldn’t they see?
But they only saw the gleam of his zeemir and the glare of the winged bull on his chest.
Beneath the table, Samson gripped his knees. That had been long ago. The officer who had assigned him that station was long dead now. The soldiers who had taunted him were buried deep within the earth. He had made sure of it. The same Sesharians who had worked in those mines were now free men, serving him. He was the redeemer. The ember that had sprung from the ashes. He would lead them to glory and free their home from the silver shackles of the Jantari.
And he was afraid.
Visha and Akino looked at him, expectant, but only Chandi met his gaze. Only she recognized his hesitation as fear.
“No,” she said, and silently, Samson thanked her.
“What?” Visha turned to Chandi.
“Exposing Samson and Elena is too risky. Especially in enemy territory.”
“But we did the same in Magar,” Visha began, but Chandi held up her hand. She pointed at Mine One.
