The Tartarus Directive

Chapter 14

No one made any attempt to leave the crawler for several minutes. No one said a word. It was as if everyone was looking around the vehicle seeking confirmation that they were crazy for coming here and should just head back. Even Karla had the look, only she knew that the crawler did not have enough supplies to make it back safely.

Just as Karla went to unlock the rear hatch, it opened preemptively. It swung open with a loud, ominous screech that caught the occupants by surprise.

Two miners entered without a word. Their hair was shorn and faces gaunt and pale and blotchy. Their two-tone blue-and-yellow work coveralls hung baggily over their thin bodies. Their eyes were sunken and emotionless--glazed over with trance-like emptiness.

Finally, one spoke: "He will see you."

"Who the hell is 'he?'" Harry asked, laughing nervously.

Griff cleared his throat. "We need to see your foreman," he asserted.

The two miners did not answer. They ushered the occupants out of the crawler and into the station. A few other miners waited outside the crawler. When the occupants had stepped out, the waiting miners began unloading the crawler's cargo, including its three exosuits.

The station was much larger than it appeared on the outside. On the ground level, there was a control panel for the drill machinery. The large central drill was just beneath the floor of this level grinding away at the rock below.

Like the command module of the Hub, the tall, cylindrical station was open in the center with catwalks all around the perimeter and ladders connecting each of the levels. This station lacked the many windows or portholes the command module had, and therefore was dark even in the daylight hours. A large, pressurized lift on the opposite side of the ground level brought miners to the subterranean sections of the station. The group watched a team of miners, tools in-hand with small respirators, enter the lift and disappear underground.

The two miners led the group up the ladders higher and higher. On each level, there were resting miners. They had no hammocks and many had no bedding to speak of except for makeshift bedrolls. Some cooked food on small electric burners and others writhed in the corner, muttering erratically to themselves in pain, in the throes of a nightmare, or perhaps both. The conditions on this station were far worse than even those at the Hub.

The poor quality of the recycled air in the station caused the otherwise healthy group to be out of breath by the time they had climbed the ladders to the top section. This section, however, was sealed off from the others as its own room. The miners halted the group outside a small hatch that led inside the room. One miner entered, closing the door behind him, while the other stayed with Griff's group. After a moment, the miner emerged and ushered the group into the room, closing the door behind them.

For a mining station, the room was furnished lavishly. It had its own bed, a desk and chairs, a couch, and the ceiling was constructed out of window panels that allowed sunlight to shaft in through the dusty air.

A man stood at the far end of the room only just shrouded in shadow. He took a step forward into the light and peered analytically at his visitors with a pair of pale green eyes. His eyelids and the muscles of his face were strangely relaxed, not from exhaustion but from an utter calm. He was, perhaps, fifty but appeared far older. His lips were parted slightly and the corners of his mouth in a slight frown. What most struck his visitors was the scarring on the left side of his face. The skin there was smooth, shiny, and sinewy and caused the left side of his face to droop more than the right.

The man wore a long, coarse short-sleeved tunic with a pocketed utility vest over top. A pair of wireframe eyeglasses hung from one of the vest pockets.