Chaos Rising: The Erstallius Chronicles, Volume One

Bev Colli: Sapi

Cold morning rain pelted Bev as she walked with her parents to the Labor Bureau office in the clan administration complex. It was the day after her fourteenth birthday, the day her life would change. Born into the lowest social caste on Pigrell, the homeworld of Clan Polinda, her future would be limited to a life of service to the clan. Her appearance before the Labor Bureau would tell her what her service would be for the next ten years.

“We are sapi,” her mother often reminded her. “We serve the will of the high-born.”

Bev followed a clan official into the meeting chamber and was directed to stand in front of the seated Labor Bureau Committee. The four men and five women were unknown to her, and she wondered how they could decide professions for someone they never met.

The old woman seated at the center of the group focused her attention on Bev. She saw a girl short of stature, but a natural beauty—smooth tawny skin, bright green eyes, and thick, shoulder-length crimson hair. “Remove your coat.”

Bev slipped out of her heavy winter coat and held it at her side.

The old woman noted the toned muscle in the girl’s exposed arms, the firm set of her shoulders, and the shapely curves of her body, beneath the bland cotton dress that was hemmed at mid calf. “What is your name?”

“Bev Colli.”

The old woman looked down and reviewed her data pad. “You are from Shengri City?”

“Yes.”

“Your parents are Sanja and Merik?”

“Yes.”

“We base your labor options on clan needs. Hopefully, you will find comfort in one of the professions chosen for you.”

Hopefully, Bev thought. Her parents had warned her to choose one of the Bureau’s selections, even if she found the options unbearable. The alternatives would be worse. Alternatives were always worse for a sapi.

“Review your options,” the old woman said. She ignited a holoscreen on the wall behind her, above her head.

Bev watched as the screen displayed the luxurious apartments in the pleasure palace that serviced the clan hierarchy. The labor contract specifics rolled across the screen—they would train her in the art of massage and the intricacies of the pleasure arts. She would service the hierarchy in whatever capacity they required. The amount of the contract surprised her. “One million credits?”

“That’s standard for all ten-year agreements,” the old woman said.

The display on the holoscreen faded to an aerial view of undulating, rocky terrain, then dropped to ground level and focused on a cluster of domed structures beneath a star-filled sky. The contract specifics rolled across the screen. Bev would learn the art of ore extraction and work in the clan’s durillium mine on Alpha Cephei Four.

Bev stifled a giggle. The difference between the two options couldn’t have been more extreme. She shrugged aside her amusement and took the next few minutes to review the choices. Her mother had told her the Bureau often presented two different professions to steer the sapi toward the clan’s preferred choice.

“The clan prefers that a sapi choose, rather than be told,” her mother had said. “In choosing a path, one validates their freedom. When forced down a path, one validates their submission. In freedom there is hope. In submission there is only despair. The clan wants their sapi to have hope.”

Bev recognized the labor the clan preferred. “I choose the second option.”

The Labor Bureau Committee had not foreseen that outcome but stayed true to its principles and accepted Bev’s decision.

Alpha Cephei Four will be my home for the next ten years, Bev thought. Leaving the slums of Pigrell is a step in the right direction.

She glanced back at her parents and noticed her mother’s thin smile. Seeing her mother’s quiet approval bolstered her confidence.

Surviving in the mine will be hard, but I’ll preserve my dignity.

She returned a brief smile, then turned from her parents as she was led away through a side door.

Her first duty after signing her contract was to get stained. Every contract laborer had to accept the stain, the symbol of Clan Polinda infused into their skin with a rust-colored dye that would brand them for the length of their contract. They could get the mark anywhere not covered by hair.

“Where do you want the mark?”

Bev looked at the tech who held the stain tool and pointed below her left eye.

A brief sting and the stain was set. It was a shallow serif that ran under her lower lid and split into two prongs that pointed toward her ear. The lower prong had a slight bend, like the prong on a pitchfork.

“Most sapi get the stain where it can’t be seen unless they’re naked,” the tech said.

Bev smirked. “Why hide what’s obvious?”

After a day of farewells with her family, the Labor Bureau transferred Bev and twenty other new recruits to a cargo ship waiting in orbit. Their journey to Alpha Cephei Four took ten standard days.

Once the orientation meeting was over, Bev hurried with the other new recruits to the fitting room where they each received an environment suit. The bulky garment provided minimal protection from the intense radiation that bombarded Alpha Cephei Four’s airless surface, but was adequate for the deep tunnels and access structures inside the rock. The snug helmet demanded all miners had their heads shaved. Bev was glad her head had a nice smooth contour, unlike other heads she saw. The bulky torso limited the range of her upper body movement, despite the loose fit around her hips, which chafed her skin within an hour of her first shift in the mine.

“Expect calluses from the constant rubbing,” her trainer said after her first day. “To avoid blisters, use this.” He offered Bev a small tube of ointment. “Apply it before each shift.”

Bev took the tube. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before I put on this suit?”

The trainer shrugged.

Bev could hear him chuckle under his breath as he walked away and left her in the orientation barracks.

By the end of her first week, the physical discomfort faded. She acclimated to the sparse living conditions and defined her personal space among the other miners. She was small for her age, but the kentao instruction from her parents enabled her to discourage the rapists and she gained a cautious respect among the other miners.

“Smart sapi learn the martial art,” her father had told her after her fourth birthday. “Smart sapi learn how to survive.”

Her first year in the mine was spent as a Bucketeer, transferring ore from the narrow tunnels to the transport carts waiting in the loading rooms. In the middle of her second year she became a Splitter and spent her twelve-hour shift ripping durillium ore from the rock with a pickax. She toiled for five years as a member of Splitter Crew Nine and marked the passage of time by how many environment suit adjustments she needed. She grew twenty-five centimeters during that time, which demanded seven suit adjustments, but the garment always felt too tight in the torso no matter how much adjusting was done.

At twenty years of age she was still smaller than the other miners in her crew.

My size must be why I got the promotion, she thought. Fitting inside the cab of a Mobile Articulated Drill was difficult enough for her because of the bulky environment suit, she couldn’t imagine anyone else in her crew fitting inside the cramped space.

After a week of drill training she found herself on level twenty-two, at the end of a new tunnel. She cut guide troughs around the ore veins to help loosen the precious metal for the splitters. She was now a Mad Japer, the unofficial title given to those who drive mobile drills—a name taken from the vehicle manufacturer, Japerson Industrial, combined with the understanding anyone who became a drill-driver must be insane because of the demands put upon them.

Bev sat in her drill and punched up the coordinates for a pass along a narrow vein of the blue ore.

The drill bit bored silently into the rough rock wall to a depth of five centimeters, then pulled back half the distance to the surface, moved upward and gouged a three centimeter wide trough parallel to the ore vein. The cutting stopped when the articulated arm hit the limit of its reach.

Bev entered new commands. The drill pulled back, moved to the other side of the vein, and burrowed into the rock.

The only sensation Bev felt was the slight vibration that ran down the length of the articulated arm and into her cab. The only thing she heard was the sound of her rhythmic breathing inside her helmet as she watched the coordinate display screen on the control panel.

The drill reached the end of the laser-guided cut, and Bev punched in instructions for another pass to widen the trough.

An alarm shrieked, and the drill died.

Bev stiffened in the unexpected darkness, startled by the immediate stillness. She flicked on her helmet lamp and examined the master panel in the dim yellow light. Two breakers had tripped. She reset the circuits and the panel screens lit up. She checked the power flow monitor, then pushed the start button. A tiny spot on the rock face flashed red as the guide laser illuminated the rock.

The alarm shrieked again.

Bev pounded the dark control panel. “Eetah!”

She reached down by her left knee and pulled open the access hatch to the main bus relay, then paused as her foreman’s voice sounded in her headset.

“Colli, what’s happening?”

The calm inquiry cut through Bev’s anxiety. “Got a circuit problem.”

A heartbeat later, the cab door swung open and Josh Gridle leaned inside. His helmet lamp brightened the small cabin. “Probably another E.M. pulse.”

“Yeah, I know.” Bev leaned back in her couch so Gridle could get a closer look at the dead panel.

Dead drills were common in the deeper tunnels. The reason was always an electromagnetic pulse. Durillium amplified electromagnetic emissions, but why that problem persisted was a mystery. The engineers debated and hypothesized, and the drills kept dying.

Splitter Crew Nine began circling around Bev’s inactive vehicle. They could not make quota if the drill was idle.

Bev tensed at the sound of the crew’s grumbling in her headset. Making the daily quota was mandatory, regardless of any delays. Disgruntled crews had caused the replacement of many Mad Japers they felt had been negligent. “Will it take long to fix?”

Gridle backed out of the cab. “I’ll get a tech. Take a break, Colli.”

An hour later Bev relaxed against the tunnel wall, hidden in the shadow of her crippled vehicle. She avoided the hard light coming from the overhead lamps in the main tunnel so she could evade the angry glares from the splitters.

Not since her first few weeks in the mine had she felt so alone. Proving her worth in the mine wasn’t a onetime event, and she knew no matter how much respect she had earned during the last six years, if her drill could not be fixed the splitters would hold her responsible. Mad Japers had to watch the energy buildup in the ore to avoid E.M. discharges. Because of that, Gridle would not prevent her from being removed. The longer they waited for the tech, the more that possibility crept toward reality.

Gridle paced in front of the inactive drill, furious about the delay. “Where’s that tech?” He turned toward Bev. “Colli, get your ass up and go find that tech.”

Bev had learned long ago not to argue when a foreman gave an order. She hurried toward the main tunnel but had no clue where to find a tech. She stopped and glanced back at her dead drill. “Gridle, I’ll need to head up.”

“Of course you will,” Gridle said. “Do you see a tech down here?”

The idle splitters, maddened by the long break, jeered and hissed as Bev headed toward the evac lift.

Splitter Crew Seven had made quota and were jammed together on the lift.

Someone yelled, and Bev’s comm channel crackled with static. She whirled to see the end of the tunnel beyond her drill crumble as a brilliant burst of cyan light broke through and engulfed the drill.

Bev turned from the cyan glare and fled for the evac lift as pandemonium shrieked in her headset—a jumble of voices, horrible cries, and screams of confusion.

The evac lift began rising toward the next level.

Bev ran faster, straining against the stiff joints in her suit. She lunged for the lift’s undercarriage, grabbed a shock absorber strut, and held tight as the ascending platform lifted her into darkness. The noise in her helmet shifted to static. She glanced down. Cyan light filled the bottom of the shaft.

“What happened?” she cried, thinking the miners on the lift might hear her, but all she heard was static.

The lift passed level twelve and Bev readjusted her grip to swing out. If she stayed here, the lift would trap her when it stopped. She would be too far from the second level and blocked from level one by the platform. She glanced down again. The cyan light was rising, but it was not the swift surge from an explosion. It was pacing the lift. The control behind the light’s advance forced Bev’s awareness to another level of fear.

“We’re being attacked!”

She rushed past Level Ten and began to swing, building momentum for her exit.

She rushed past Level Eight.

Upon seeing the floor of Level Seven she pulled hard and swung into darkness. Her feet hit gritty soil and slipped. She fell backward and her backpack support frame slammed into her shoulders. She winced from the sting and scanned her life-support gauges on her chest pack.

No damage.

Her helmet lamp defined a large tunnel that faded to blackness in front of her. She pushed up and rushed into the abandoned passage, only to pause in confusion at an intersection of three tunnels. She put her helmet lamp on its brightest setting. Another lift was a kilometer away, but she could see no markings to identify which way to go. Tunnel three headed east. The lift will be there, she thought. She glanced down at her life-support gauges. Her suit temperature was rising. She opened her coolant feed valve one-half turn and felt a sudden chill migrate from her back to her arms and legs.

The main shaft brightened.

Bev glanced back. The blazing surge of cyan light had reached level seven.

She opened her coolant feed valve as far as she could turn it, and ran into tunnel Three. She ran until her temperature gauge crossed the red danger zone and a beep sounded in her helmet. Her suit temperature needed to drop before she could continue. The inner layer of her suit was damp from sweat and there was no way to vent the moisture. Her helmet visor fogged up, which turned on the anti-fog element embedded in the duraplex. That would add to the internal heat. She looked down the black tunnel—no cyan light. She leaned against the tunnel wall, dimmed her helmet light, closed her eyes, and let her body relax.

A few minutes passed, and she felt cool again along her spine. She also felt a vibration in the rock. It was a subtle sensation at first, then stronger, a rhythmic pounding that caused loose pebbles to spill down the wall.

She stepped away from the rock, fearful of what the vibrations implied. She reassessed her path. The lift has to be close. She checked her suit temp again and walked toward the eastern exit.

The ground rumbled beneath her feet.

She looked back and saw only blackness.

A few more steps and she was walking on a metal floor plate. She brightened her helmet light and saw the lift about fifty meters away.

She rode the lift as far as she could take it and stepped off into a circular maintenance tunnel lined with metal plates. The tunnel led to a large exit staging area. A closed oval hatch was in the eastern wall.

Bev checked the handle on the hatch. It turned without resistance. She pushed hard on the closed door and it swung open in the vacuum and rebounded back to block her exit. She pushed again with less force, shouldered her way through the hatchway, and stepped out onto the airless …