Chapter One
Scar
The seam runs wrong on the east wall.
I hold my head lamp up to it, even though I technically don’t need the light to see. Down here at level twenty-six hundred the dark is total, but my eyes see fine. The lamp is for the detail work. And there it is, a fracture that’s hairline thin, running up through the rock where the new shaft meets the old. The kind of crack that means nothing today but could result in a collapsed ceiling in a rotation or two if no one corrects the load.
I press my palm flat to the stone and feel the cold of it through my glove.
Then I mark it.
We do most of this by hand down here. The big drills are faster, but the Illibrium doesn’t like them, the vibration makes the crystal flinch and pull back into the rock, so they go dull and small. Therefore, we drill slow, haul debris out the old ways, one cart at a time, and mark the fractures by hand. It’s punishing work and this is probably the worst job on the crew.
But I asked for this.
I load the cart. My personal crystal sits warm in my chest pocket, glowing its low steady blue, the way it always does when the seam is good and the rock is honest. It likes it down here too. We’re alike that way, my crystal and me. Neither of us has much use for company.
I haul the cart to the cage line and stack it with the others and go back for more. The shaft echoes with the sounds of the crew further inside the cave. Cannibal’s grunt as he sets a charge, the scrape of Trunk’s blade through soft rock and somebody laughing at something I didn’t hear. Their voices carry down here and bounce off the walls and come back wrong, doubled, like there are twice as many of us in the tunnels.
The Fever Brothers are the most productive crew in the mine. We’ve been awarded that status for the last three years in a row. And now we plan on keeping it that way.
“Time,” Chief calls out from somewhere deeper in the shaft. A cheer goes up that rattles down the tunnel.
Lunch.
There is nothing this crew loves more than the announcement that ends the morning stretch, except maybe the food waiting for us when we arrive. We’ve been very lucky with the addition of Jana, Heavy’s bride, as Head Chef of the Minecorp employee cafeteria.
“Finally.” Claws shoulders past me toward the cage with his lamp swinging. “I could eat the rock.”
“You’ve tried,” Cannibal comments, following. “I’ve seen you.”
“Once,” Claws chuckles. “When I was young.”
I stack the last cart and head with them for the cage. All of us are finishing up and filing out of the dark in a loose, loud knot, lamps bobbing.
First, we all pause to wash up very carefully, so that we arrive with clean hands and our claws free of debris.
Trunk falls in beside me as we head toward the lift, a load manifest in one claw. “Did you sleep well last night?”
“No,” I grumble, annoyed that he continues to ask such personal questions. What does it matter if I’ve slept or not? My mind is full with the matter at hand—solving the murder of our parents by mysterious assholes on Chronos. I only recently discovered that there is a plot to replace the Margol Xylan who mine on Timbur. House Vaszneth on Chronos wants to force the Illibrium to bond with Royal Pigment instead of Margol, preferably with members of House Vaszneth only.
My jaw clenches.
Not on my watch.
Finding these assholes who are trying to tear down life as we know it on Timbur and taking them down is a big job, and someone has to do it. It’s all I can think of and I will end this and get justice for my parents, who were murdered in their own home for the original sin of trying to take down this conspiracy. I will finish what they started, one way or the other.
“Cannibal said you didn’t sleep last diurnal either.”
“Cannibal should mind the Illibrium and not me.”
Trunk grunts in response. “We appreciate all you do, but remember you are not alone in this, Scar. You can delegate, you know. There’s no reason to work so hard you make yourself sick. You need sleep in order to think clearly.”
I don’t bother to answer. But my personal crystal flickers in my pocket, letting me know it secretly agrees with my brother. “Traitor,” I mutter.
We reach the lift along with the rest of them, all of us packing in shoulder to shoulder. The door shuts and we start to rise.
“Heavy’s getting us a special dessert today,” Rook announces.
