Chapter 17: Under The Rock

  They say the mine screamed back.

  Rigo hadn't believed it at first. He was two weeks out of cryo, still acclimating to daylight rotation, when they sent his crew down to stabilize a collapsed vein in Section Delta-Nine. It was supposed to be routine, re-bracing the conduit pillars, rerouting pressure valves, tagging data veins for later harvest.

  The first sign that something was wrong came when they hit the exposed core layer.

  “This rock wasn’t like the rest,” Rigo muttered, lighting another stim cig with shaking fingers. His voice cracked from too many hours breathing recycled dust. “Looked like obsidian but veined. Pulsed a little when the lights hit it.”

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  The bartender, a thick-necked synth veteran who barely glanced up, wiped down a glass and let him talk.

  “Then Marda started screaming. Not like pain. Like… forgetting something important. She clawed her helmet off. Just ripped it. No pressure suit. Gone before we could blink.”

  He tapped his temple.

  “She said it was looking through her.”

  Rigo took another drag. His eyes were bloodshot, not just from stimulants. He hadn't slept. Couldn’t. Said the echoes still showed up in the white noise of his suit comms, whispering in pre-human tongues.

  “Techs from Velstrat came and sealed the shaft. Gave us hazard pay. Told us we’d hit a gas pocket. But that wasn’t gas. And that wasn’t rock.”

  He downed the rest of his drink.

  “You think Emberfall’s just an old asteroid with a power grid and bad wiring? Nah. It’s a shell. Built over something else. Something with teeth.”

  Nobody argued. The bartender just poured another.