Rock rift, p.1
Rock Rift, page 1
Rock Rift
Edge of Sunrise
Elsa Jade
Red Circle Ink
Copyright © 2019 by Elsa Jade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Cover Design by Victoria Cooper
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Editing by Razor Sharp Editing
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Published by Red Circle Ink, Portland, Oregon USA
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For information about all books in the Obsidian Rim series go to: https://obsidianrim.com
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Rock Rift: Edge of Sunrise / Elsa Jade. -- 1st ed., Book 2 in the Obsidian Rim series
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-941547-31-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-941547-34-2
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
SNEAK PEAK - TRAITOR’S CODE
Books in the Obsidian Rim
SNEAK PEAK - FIRE STRIKE
Also by Elsa Jade
Chapter 1
When the call came down from the overseer’s satellite, qubition miner Gavyn Grey’s blood ran colder than the vacuum of space.
“Yes, sir. On my way, sir.” He could’ve chewed through a mountain of slag with less effort than biting back the hatred in his voice as he toggled off the comm.
“They know,” Arjay said tightly.
Not so long ago, it would’ve been dangerous to say even that much aloud. They’d had to play antiquated word games right under the guards’ noses to disguise their coded conversations. But the clever engineer had been working surreptitiously to disable and redirect all the surveillance methods that QueCorp put in place to control their workers.
Gavyn had always known it was dangerous to rely on too many others, but he’d needed the engineer’s expertise if they were going to survive. So far, his closest confidants had stayed true, although he’d never put all his Q in one ore cart.
But maybe the gig was finally up.
So close. So freezing close.
“I have to go or it stops here for sure,” he said finally. “I’ll take the chance.”
Arjay drummed his fingers on the comm board. “It’s always you takes the chances.”
Gavyn nodded. “Since this is all my doing, it’s only fair.” When he pushed to his feet, the heat of the metal decking scorched through the worn soles of his boots. But even the planetoid’s internal seething couldn’t melt the stone-cold fury in his heart. “Besides, if they knew, they wouldn’t bother contacting me. They’d nuke us all from orbit.”
Arjay snorted out something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “And risk their precious qubition? Not likely.”
“True.” Q-bombs, powered by the wildly unstable element qubition, had been outlawed since the Oblivion Wars. Not like anyone on the Rim would waste that much power to kill someone anymore. A good old blaster plug between the eyes was just as effective, plus so much cheaper. And QueCorp was nothing if not cost-conscious.
Gavyn traveled through the older, shallower tunnels up to the surface base, nodding at the few miners he encountered along the way. With the whomper-dug shafts going ever farther and deeper into Ydro-Down’s lethal mountain ranges, it could be days before he’d see some of his crew.
After the worst excavations, some were never seen again.
He clenched his jaw as he thought of his people lost in the darkness. But when he crossed to the space elevator cable that tethered the overseer satellite to the planetoid, he schooled his expression to blankness. While Arjay had circumvented the security measures underground, they’d decided to leave the surface systems intact lest their tampering be noticed. Management never went below.
In the small elevator car, despite his intention to remain aloof, Gavyn’s skin prickled at the sight of the planetoid’s stark, contaminated surface. If the company did know about the unrest, this would be their chance to eject him into the toxic atmosphere. Or wait just until he got above the light pull of gravity. They could pop the door remotely and vent him into space. He’d have fifteen seconds or so to curse them before he ran out of air and froze to death. Maybe he should’ve taken one of the old emergency e-suits from the surface base. But the bulky coveralls hadn’t been serviced in many turns. Anyway, the real danger wasn’t hazardous surface conditions or even the unsentimental void of space.
The real threat was other people. As always.
As the elevator zipped through the mesosphere, he had a brief glimpse of the transport docked alongside the satellite in orbit. The transport was an older model, not huge, but it had a quantum entanglement drive that could take it anywhere in the galaxy. Or what remained of the galaxy, anyway.
His people, who were responsible for finding and processing the dangerous ore that made that ship something more than a deadweight floating in space, made crossing the incomprehensible distances of the Salty Way possible. Ironically, most of them had never been off this rock.
Usually the transport carried away all the evidence of their hard work, leaving nothing behind but some nutrient deliveries and a soul-deep weariness. One way or another, that would change before the transport left orbit.
The elevator zipped into the satellite’s receiving bay, cutting off his view of their one path to freedom. This time, for them, the ship represented a link not to the rest of the galaxy but to their future.
Stepping out of the cab, he took a short, sharp breath. The air was filtered, just like down on the planetoid. But somehow, it smelled different up here and it was always a shock. Not that he’d been here that often, not even a handful of times since he’d inherited the foreman position after the last explosion. He’d been so naïve, thinking that the flood of fresh blood might at least dilute the burdens on his people. But the overseer had brought him up only to show him how much time and material they’d lost in the explosion. And to explain, in exacting detail, what would happen if he let production falter.
“We trust you’ll see how important it is to make right these losses.” Overseer Harris Scraff had stared at him through slitted eyes. “We wouldn’t want to have to enforce punitive measures for falling behind.”
Gavyn had always known that their version of right and trust was far different from his own. The air in the mining tunnels might be sweltering, even toxic if the damps—the vapors of carbon monoxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and others—weren’t properly sequestered, but at least it didn’t carry the antiseptic tang of profits drained out of someone else’s sacrifice.
In the receiving bay, there was no one to greet him. There never was. So he made his way along the corridor to operations. Since he was the only miner ever allowed on the station, he kept his eyes and ears open. Every time he went, he’d return to the surface to recall everything he could, sketching and notating, and Arjay was reasonably sure they could take control of the station along with everything else.
Arjay had no more confidence in the people then Gavyn did, but the engineer still believed in machines. To Gavyn’s way of thinking, machines were made by people and so deserved the same level of trust.
Which was to say, none.
His heart beat faster. Just the lighter gravity, he told himself, and he hoped the specs for the transport were up on the board in the operations room. Knowing the schedule for its departure would be useful.
Not that his uprising aimed for the stars. He didn’t aspire so far. He just wanted to let his people come up from the depths, breathe a little, share in the treasures they unearthed.
“Miner.” The brusque announcement of his designation was part scorn, part command.
He understood well enough. He halted and turned slowly to face the other man. “Sir.”
The guard sneered at him. “Overseer wants you in the ready room.”
Gavyn hid his grimace of disappointment. Any little bit of detail he could pull from the command center would help when the time came. The ready room was nothing more than a place to meet with buyers for the ore. And sellers of the disposable hardware, software, and bioware that mined the ore.
He jerked his head in a nod and diverted to the ready room. The door was open, and through it was framed a view of the planetoid below. Since the satellite was locked in geostationary orbit to allow the elevator to move between the station and the surface, the view never changed, reminding anyone who looked down at the twisted, pitted hills just how rare and dangerous was their most valuable resource.
Although the elevator had been the likeliest place to murder him, Gavyn couldn’t help the twinge at his nape as he stepped through the doorway, half expecting a drill screw to the tender part of his skull. Instead, he locked gazes with a woman, and the jolt that went through his nerves had nothing to do with rage or fear, although the sensation was equally primitive.
Ydro-Down had some women. Miners, support staff, other unlucky souls sucked into the outpost darkness. The monotony of peril and the toxic air corroded the shine off any potential desire. This one…
She didn’t shine, not exactly, not in the matte black uniform of QueCorp admin personnel. But there was a subtle glow to her, like the strange luminescence of the rare, delicate coldfire crystals visible only in the terrifying moments when all the lights went out below ground. That was when a desperate miner, longing to see again, might stumble toward the light, knowing if he touched it, he’d extinguish it.
Beyond that first glance, she didn’t move. Didn’t smile, didn’t even shift her weight in the way of most people first exposed to the sight and smell of a Q miner.
She didn’t flinch in horror but neither did she reach for the pistol holstered at her thigh as most station personnel instinctively did. The weapon was company issue, meaning not a newer model, nor even one of the nicer ones when it had been new. But the way she stood with it comfortably at her side—not toying with it, not nervously avoiding it—made him wonder if she was an enforcer. Just what he didn’t need on Ydro-Down: another spying eye.
She wasn’t tall, maybe a meter and a half, which brought her barely up to his sternum, and she had the oddly slender but elongated bone growth of someone who had grown up in insufficient gravity with insufficient calories. The sleek cut of her chin-length black hair gleamed in the artificial lights like the fresh honed edge of a cutter blade. And the intensity of her amber eyes was even sharper in the instant that she met Gavyn’s stare.
Then the overseer was talking and she half closed her eyes. The short black fans of her lashes felt like a signal to him, a warning. Of what, he didn’t know.
Or actually, he did know, but if she or the overseer really had any inkling, his ill-advised revolt was doomed before it even started.
“Yumi Swinton,” the overseer was saying. “This is Miner 488. He is the mine foreman and will be your primary contact as our new crew intercessor. 488’s been foreman for the last two turns after an unfortunate accident. But he has worked here for”—Scraff tapped the info deck on his board—“ah yes, for his whole miserable life.” The man smirked. “488, this is the new intercessor. All crew issues should go through her. But you know the drill.” He sniggered.
Gavyn didn’t laugh at the pun—it wasn’t required. Management didn’t need anything from miners except to dig. Their new intercessor stayed equally deadpan. Maybe she didn’t think puns were funny. Or maybe it was the indentured servitude that didn’t amuse her.
Sometimes the people who worked aboveground at a Q mining outpost were as desperate as the ones underneath. Though that didn’t change the fact that she was the one with the weapon.
The new intercessor nodded at him. “Citizen. What is your preferred title? Do you go by the numeric, your work title, or some other honorific?”
“Grey is fine,” he started.
Scraff interrupted with a snap of his fingers. “488 doesn’t need an honorific. He and the other miners are committed to Ming Waller’s company until they work off their debt. It doesn’t matter what you call them because most of them will dig until they die.”
She turned that amber gaze to the overseer. “Except for the one who escaped recently with two children in cryo stasis,” she noted. “He went somewhere, as fast as the Q could take him.” When Scraff sputtered, she stood, still unmoving. “Citizen Waller hired me to improve production and reduce costs. To do that, I’ll be working closely with Grey and the others.”
“We don’t work together,” Scraff said with stiff reproof. “They do what we need, like any tool.”
“I take good care of all of my tools because they keep me alive. Just as qubition keeps us spinning through the Rim.”
Though a studiously blank expression had saved his life more than once facing the guards on Ydro-Down, Gavyn couldn’t stop one eyebrow from popping up in disbelief. Her tone was as cool as his face usually was, but the words were as inflammatory as a pure oxygen mix.
And left him almost as heady.
He tamped down his response. Pique would only make Scraff more vengeful. Yumi Swinton looked old enough to have come from some other career, but she’d have to accept that she was obviously in a downward trajectory if she’d ended up running interference between Q miners and management. Under the best of circumstances, it had been a thankless position—caught between the excessive demands of the company and the realities of qubition mining. And for all that her serene stare left the overseer sputtering, her slender bones would crack under a single harsh blow, whether from an enforcer’s staff or an unbalanced ore cart.
Not that Gavyn appreciated being compared to a tool. But he’d never deluded himself that the company thought any more highly of him than that—and actually, somewhat less. The brutal truth was, human life was one of the cheapest resources on the Rim.
The overseer’s scowl was almost as bemused as Gavyn felt. “Talk to me in a turn about how well we should treat these tools.” He flicked a contemptuous glance at Gavyn. “Slow, dull. A newly thawed cryoborn launched before the Oblivion War would be of more use.”
The new intercessor inclined her head. “Until AI and robotics are capable of the instinct and delicacy needed to find and remove the ore, I suppose the company is stuck with mere people.” For the first time, the corner of her mouth curved, not quite a smile. “And my contract says you pay me not per turn but quarterly.”
Gavyn restrained a snort. She wasn’t fazed by Scraff’s bluster, and that impressed the freeze out of him.
Too bad she’d never collect that first paycheck.
When Scraff dismissed them with an angry wave, Gavyn stepped aside to let the intercessor pass through the doorway first, but she murmured, “After you,” as she slung a standard-issue kit over her shoulder. The heavy weight didn’t seem to unbalance her at all.
Fine. This wasn’t a moment for some ancient concept of chivalry, dead even before Q-bombs hollowed out the galaxy from within. He didn’t remember much from those old stories told in his childhood before he’d been traded into the servitude of QueCorp, and she had no reason to trust a virtual slave at her back.
Despite the thin soles of his boots, his steps rang with bottled rage on the deck plates as he left. Let her follow or not. Another set of company eyes on the surface—that hadn’t been sabotaged by Arjay’s clever engineering—was unfortunate but not an insurmountable problem. And she was bringing a weapon down to them, all unknowing. See, there could be a bright side to even a tidally locked dead moon.
She was so silent behind him that for a moment he thought maybe she hadn’t followed him, and he glanced over his shoulder to confirm. Her gaze was parsing the close surroundings just as he did when he was here, but when he turned, her gaze flicked to his, the focus so intense he felt it like a finger tightening on a det cord trigger. Something inside him tensed, anticipating the inevitable boom.
But she only lifted one eyebrow in wordless question.
“The elevator is this way,” he told her. “It’s the only transportation to or from the surface. For us, anyway. There’s also the EM catapult for heavy cargo, of course, and the ore transport ships, although those don’t usually land.” He launched a diffident probe of his own. “I assume you came in on that transport. It’s not too late to jump it back through some wormhole to wherever you came from.” He paused. “Although who knows how long it’ll stay.”
His unlikely hope that she would offer that information was dashed—as most of his hopes routinely were—when she gave her head a small shake that sent the sharp forward cant of her hair swinging past her wide cheekbone. “This is my mission now,” she said softly. “I’m not going back.”
He wondered at her word choice. Mission implied more than a job. But there was a faint lilt to her accent that suggested Baseline wasn’t her only language, maybe not even her first. It wasn’t unusual for smaller, remoter worlds on the Rim to rely on their own patois.
