“By Any Other Name” – Chapter 2

There is only one lift that goes down past level 1,500, the marker between the lowest level of the Mids, and the beginning of the depths. The circumference of the planet is tight down there. The mines are clustered around the one shaft. The lift delivers food, water, clothing, and equipment. This is in return for the refined starstuff ore that is placed inside and returned back up to the surface. There are no other stops, there are always armed guards in the lift, and always a soldier contingent back up top to unload the ore when it returns to the surface.

Those in the Depths never return to the surface. Only the ore.

There have been escape attempts, of course.

Miners in the Depths once rushed the guards in the lift, killed them, and then waited for the topside to bring them up unawares. Except that there are cameras in the lift. Topside saw the whole thing.

The lift stayed put right where it was, and nearly everyone in the Depths died from starvation.

Other miners in the Depths fashioned replicas of the guards’ uniforms, slit their throats quietly while loading in the daily ore quota, and rode to the top. They were shot as soon as the doors opened by the soldier contingent. The lift has biometric scanners.

Once again, the lift stopped long enough for a large portion of the Depths to expire from no food or water.

Still others, more clever than the last, fooled the lift scanners and cameras, and loaded an entire squadron of miners, armed with modified mining tools, rode it up to the top and even managed to overwhelm the soldiers in the loading bay.

They were blasted out to space with the press of a button in the Warden’s office. It opened the airlocks, and again, the Depths nearly starved.

The final attempt I’d ever heard of was perhaps the most clever, and stupidest plan of them all. The miners loaded a bomb in with the starstuff ore, timed to explode once the lift reached the top. Their plan was to take out as many people and soldiers as they could manage in this sun-forsaken place, and they succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams, or tragically limited imaginations. The bomb exploded topside. They killed hundreds of people when it did, including the Warden. But, they also killed themselves. It destroyed the lift, shut it down for several months while it was rebuilt. No food would be sent down during that time, no water, nothing.

When the lift was rebuilt and resumed, the first guards to go down to the depths found a neat pile of ore, a month’s worth of daily quota perhaps, and a carpet of expired souls waiting in vain for the lift to return. They died waiting for forgiveness they’d made impossible with their own actions.

The daily quotas were not met by the Depths for several months after that while their numbers were slowly rebuilt by the newly-banished.

People went down to the Depths. They never came back up.

These may all have been stories, tales told to keep young miners like myself on the straight and narrow, but as I rode down in the surprisingly small, rickety metal box, plunging into the depths of 117, it all looked like it could be very, very real.

I was surrounded by four guards, each in full riot gear; carbon fiber chest and back plates, knee, forearm, and shin guards, with oversized helmets and gas masks. I couldn’t see their faces. On each of their left breasts was a number, not a name. They were tense. I’d seen the squadron take lots as to who was going to go into the ‘cage,’ as they called the lift.

‘Cage’ was appropriate. The lift was made from webbed metal top to bottom, side to side. Laser-cut rock ground past the walls, fully visible. Above us, the rock and the cables that suspended us faded into blackness. Below was the same: an endless hole.

I clutched Peep in my pocket, warm from the partial recharge I’d been able to sneak while I waited with the guards for the cage to be prepared. Not a full charge. There hadn’t been time. It didn’t matter. In my other hand, I clutched the long, thin metal box. I was simply heading down to make a delivery. I wouldn’t be gone long enough for Peep to run out of charge. I just had to hand this…thing, whatever it was, to Captain Balta, and then leave with the guards.

Simple.

“Eyes up,” called out the guard at the front of the cage, closest to its grated metal entrance. His voice was oddly muffled by his mask, menacing.

I glanced down through the bottom of the cage floor. A dim yellow glow was getting closer, cutting through the darkness. Light. We were there.

The lift shuddered to a halt, groaning like an old man, and wheezed its doors aside. The guards stalked into the small rock chamber beyond, and I followed. My half-decade-old mining boots, far too small for my growing feet, crunched on the fine dust that covered the floor, my first step into a new world.

It was less impressive than I’d imagined.

The stories had made the Depths sound like caverns of solitude, bigger than anything we had in the Mids or by the surface, and much darker. But the chamber I stood in looked no different than any lift loading chamber; thirty feet by thirty feet, perhaps ten feet high, with a rough and rocky floor, ceiling and walls. Tunnels led off in several directions, three of them, lined with tube lights strung together with power cables; the source of the yellow light.

In the center of the room was a stack of ancient-looking ore crates. Three of the guards surrounded the pile, weapons held up on their chests, and one—the lead guard—kicked open one of the crates. Dark rock, studded with multicolored crystals, glittered inside. Starstuff mined from the rocks themselves, not the giant crystals of the nodes. It was a thousand times less potent once purified for the particle, and so inefficient it was almost not worth mining.

Is that what they’re doing down here? Mining scraps?

The guard grunted, however, seemingly satisfied, and kicked the crate shut again.

“Load up,” he commanded, voice still distorted by his mask.

The three guards fell back from their positions, lowering their weapons while the lead raised his and stepped forward, between them and the tunnels. The three underlings grunted and began to heft the crates into the lift while their superior stood guard.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, speaking for the first time in as long as I could remember.

The lead didn’t look at me. “They know to stay away during pickups,” he growled, however.

I gulped. I couldn’t help but notice how he never took his eyes off the tunnels. “Why is that?”

“Nobody gets trigger happy.”

I nodded and gulped again. “How am I supposed to find my delivery?” I asked.

“Beats me.”

The guards behind the two of us were hustling. In the time that small, tense exchange had passed between their leader and me, only three ore crates remained in the center of the chamber. The rest had been loaded into the crate with lightning haste.

Everything suddenly felt claustrophobic in the chamber, like I could feel the weight of the entire planet, miles and miles of it above us, all pressing down on my chest and shoulders. My heart began to race, and the only thing I could think was that I needed to get out of there as quickly as possible.

The three guards each hoisted one of the last three crates, and in unison with them, the lead guard backtracked towards the cage, never lowering his weapons, and never taking his eyes off the tunnels. I bent down, and placed the metal box on the ground, and followed them. It was labeled. Surely whoever was meant to find it would find it.

I was about to step from the dusty ground back onto the left when the lead’s burly arm caught me by the back of my neck and shoved me roughly back out into the chamber.

“Oh no you don’t,” he growled.

I stumbled into the metal box and almost fell. “Wait,” I cried, and whirled to see that the guards’ weapons were now all trained on me. My hands flew up into the air, instinctively. “Wait wait wait. I’m a courier. For the Warden.” I pointed at the metal box at my feet. “I’m just down here to deliver this, that’s all!”

“Exactly,” the lead guard said. He pointed at the metal box with his raised rifle. “So deliver it.”

I looked behind me, into the tunnels at my back. “But, there’s no one here.”

“Oh, they’re back there,” he answered with a rough snort. He reached for the cage doors and began to pull them shut.

Panic surged through me, and I rushed forward, ignoring the guns trained at me. “No!” I cried, and I slammed myself into the doors, just before the guard could fully close them. I wedged my hands between them and desperately tried to push myself inside. “You don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I’m not supposed to stay down here. I’m just delivering a message.”

“For the Warden,” the guard said, and he made a quick movement with his rifle, spinning it around backward. He slammed the butt of it into my face, and my vision exploded with white pain and yellow dots. I staggered backward, and a round of laughter rose from the other guards in the cage. “Yeah. Warden says you make your delivery in person, or you don’t come up at all.”

The doors to the cage shut as I crumpled, dazed, to the dusty floor. The ground rumbled beneath my fingers as the lift lurched, rose up from the bottom of its shaft, and quickly disappeared. A forcefield snapped on with a crackle and hummed in its absence.

I lay on the ground for a very long time, unable to move. My heart was an oil drum, pounding in my chest and my ears. It was impossible to breathe, and my head tossed like an open sea. I had known the sea once, long ago, before I came to this place…emerald in the sun and gray in the storms…it was warm there…

I was going to pass out.

I didn’t understand.

Was I being punished? Had the Warden changed his mind? Or was this some cruel joke? The lift would reverse course, and the guards would drag me back inside laughing to themselves about how they’d convinced me they were going to leave me down here for real, down here where I didn’t belong.

But, the lift was gone. It wasn’t a joke.

Warden says you make the delivery in person, he’d said.

I had to find Captain Balta. But, how…?

Behind me, there was a scraping sound. I froze. Someone was in the chamber. Someone from the depths.

Another scraping sound.

I thought it had been footsteps the first time I heard it, but the second time, I recognized the sound of metal on rock. The metal box. My delivery.

I whirled to find a golden gun pointed at my face. A shadowy figure towered over me from behind it, stinking of sweat, dirt, and flame fuel. The figure was holding the metal box—my metal box—with its other hand, clutched tight.

“Hey,” I shouted, and scuffled to rise from my feet. “You give that back!”

The figure shoved the gun into my forehead, which exploded in pain. It was right where the guard had smacked me with the butt of his rifle.

“You make one more move,” the figure hissed, “and I’ll kill you.”