The events of this story take place in the Starstuff Universe some years before (or after?) those of the Starstuff Trilogy.
In the low light of the chamber, I could see a dirty face behind the golden gun. It was smeared with dirt, starstuff dust, and grime. Two dark eyes stuck in the middle of it, glittering like wet stones.
It was a woman.
“Not me,” I shot back. I swiped at the metal box. “You are. That’s my box. It’s not for you.”
“Can’t nobody take the food crates on their own,” the woman growled, again pressing the gun deep into my pounding forehead. “You know that.”
“That isn’t a food crate.”
The woman took a step back, not wavering in her aim, and looked down at the metal box she held in her free hand. She frowned. Then she looked back up at me with another step forward. “Still can’t be in with the food crates and not raise the alarm,” she said with another snarl.
“That isn’t a food crate.” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Those are.” The woman waved her gun off to my left. It was the first time she’d taken its aim off me.
I took the opportunity to take a step back, away from her. She didn’t seem to notice, so I took another step back, and almost fell over. My heel banged up against…something. I looked down. A crate. A small stack of them. I hadn’t noticed them before. The guards must have left them…
“Thief!” The woman shrieked.
I threw my hands up and stepped away from the stack of crates, barely more than shadows in the darkness of the elevator chamber. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said quickly, though I was starting to put it together, “but I’m not from here. I’m not trying to steal those crates, and what you’re holding in your hands is not food. Okay? See?”
I pushed my hands up higher in the air. My distance from the crates and the hurried explanation seemed to at least stun the woman into not shooting me. I pushed forward.
“I want nothing to do with those crates. I’m from the topside. I’m here to deliver a message from the Warden.”
The Warden. Oops. Wrong word. Her face darkened. “You a Striper?” The word was spat onto the ground.
I hesitated. The woman narrowed her eyes, which wrinkled her face like old paper. The gun was point back at me. “Don’t like Stripers down here. Could shoot you just for that.”
“Please, don’t,” I said. I turned myself sideways, trying to make myself a smaller target, and hiding my right arm, the one with the red strip of fabric. I could see the woman’s hands, long and spotted with age, squeezing and unsqueezing around the butt of the pistol. Her knobby finger twitched beside the trigger. She was liable to shoot me any second. “I’m just here to deliver a message to Captain Balta.”
The twitching and squeezing stopped. The woman’s face flashed with a different kind of recognition. “Balta?” She said, and her eyes narrowed again. “What business does the Warden have with—?”
Her question was cut off by a rustling from deeper in the passage behind her. A pair of bobbing lights were suddenly in view, pointed in our direction. Behind them, a pair of shadows. Men.
“You!” One of the them shouted at the woman with the gun. “What are you doing in here?”
The woman threw her own hands up to match mine. Her gun glinted in the light of their handheld beacons. “Nothing,” she said. She shuffled herself away from the stack of crates until she was standing right next to me. “Nothing, I say. Now, you tell Cap that I found this one, here. Thought she was trying to sneak into the crates. Make sure he knows that.”
The name “Cap” rang in my ears as two men entered the elevator chamber. They were covered in dirt and grime, from head to toe, and the whites of their eyes shined almost as bright as their beacons. Each was carrying a fore-arm length weapon; bulging in the back with a balloon-shaped tank and a power pack, trigger, a barrel, and a small flame in the front hissing with a tell-tale noise. They were modified rock torches. You’d use them to blast away useless dirt and minerals clinging to a starstuff crystal. On humans…well, it would be a horrible way to go.
“Who are you?” One of the men demanded of me, stepping up close with his beacon to scour my face.
“I’m from the Warden,” I said. “I’m here to deliver a message.”
The man reached out and grabbed my right arm, eyeing the red stripe that was present there. He looked up at me, his mouth tight. “You’re gonna have to ditch this if you want to stay here,” he said, tugging at the crimson fabric. “Cap don’t allow no Stripers.”
There was that name again: Cap. Short for “captain,” perhaps?
“I’m not staying here,” I said back quickly. “I’m delivering a message.”
“I heard you,” the man said, dropping my arm as rough as he’d grabbed it. He took a step back, rubbing his chin and looking like he was deciding what to do with me.
I didn’t understand what was unclear. I pointed to the box that the old woman held in her hands. “That’s my delivery,” I said, “right there. She took it from me, but it’s not for her.”
“Who’s it for?” The other man asked. His voice was higher than the other man’s. Younger.
I took a leap of logic. “Your leader, boss, whatever, the guy you call Cap?” The men nodded. “It’s for him. From the Warden. I’m supposed to deliver it in person.”
The first man addressed the old woman. “You take that from her?” He pointed at my box.
“She was up here trying to get into the food crates,” she hissed, clutching the box tightly.
“Like you were?”
“I already told you,” the woman exploded, “only ‘cause she was here first!”
“Hey!” The second man shouted back, raising his weapon. The flame at its tip hissed menacingly. “Back it down.”
Breathing heavily, the old woman zipped her mouth shut. Her eyes were still wide and wild, but she didn’t speak again.
The second man shook his head. “What are we gonna do?” He asked his colleague.
“We’ll take them both to see Cap,” the first answered. He raised his own weapon at the woman. “Hand over the box,” he commanded.
The woman looked like she was going to explode again. Instead, her jaw muscles flexing, she said “It’s not for Cap,” and handed the box over.
When the first man turned and began to march off down the tunnel deeper into the depths, I pushed past the old woman and yelled after him. “Hey! That’s my box!”
“We’re taking it to Cap,” the younger man fell in behind me and the woman, his torch up. “And you two.”
* * *
There wasn’t much to see of the depths until we reached the central chamber. I knew the second we set foot onto its muddy floor that it was a starstuff nodule. Lit with string lights anchored into the stone walls, hung from catwalks and shanty structures, it was hard to get a clear view of its size. Their dim lines of illumination hinted at craggy sides, empty crystal root depressions, and a spiky ceiling of stalactites. But to be in a nodule and not see a single crystal anywhere, not one…that was astonishing.
Just what was it that they were mining down here?
“Through here,” the first man said from the front of the small procession. His name was Unther. The second man with the high voice had called him that. I didn’t know the second man’s name. Nor the woman’s.
Faces appeared in the metal shanties as we marched past, blinking in the low light, and watching us with interest. We amassed a small crowd by the time we reached the large tent in the center of the chamber.
The tent was made with tunnel-spanners for posts, the kind that the mids stopped using ten years ago when I first came here. They stuck up from the mud, and were lashed to a giant red cloth tarp. Light was burning inside, making the whole thing glow.
Unther ducked inside, and the second man pushed me and the woman after him.
Inside, it was warm. Surprisingly so. The same string lights as those outside were in there, but somehow, their cumulative effect was so much stronger. The tent was bright. Very bright.
“My apologies if they’re hurting you,” a new man said, stepping forward from a small group of men that were clustered around a table in the very center of the tent. He was square-jawed, rugged, and he wore a round fabric warmer on his head. Red, like the tent. A cap. He gestured to the lights. “Those of us who still have our sight come here to make sure they keep it.”
Cap? It had to be.
“I’m fine,” I said, squaring my shoulders.
There was a murmur behind us, and I turned to see that a crowd of grimy-faced miners was filing into the tent. They were all looking at the man who’d spoke to me, watching him intently. He must be their leader. Captain Balta. The legend. I looked him up and down. He wasn’t quite what I expected. A bit smaller, though certainly not small. Younger. Not quite…legendary. Maybe it was that red cap on his head.
He gestured to Unther, who handed him the metal box. “They tell me you have a message,” he said slowly. “From the Warden.”
I nodded. “I’m to deliver it to you personally.”
Cap tilted his head to the side. “And now you have.”
Beside me, the woman surged forward a half-step before the Unther and the second man grabbed ahold of her, and wrestled her away from Cap. “It’s not for you!” She shouted, taking a swipe at the metal box.
Cap didn’t move, even as the large woman’s fingers passed no more than an inch from it in his hands. He simply looked at her with a pained expression on his face.
“Unther also tells me that you were up in the elevator room post-delivery again.”
“Only because she was,” she said, throwing her weight again in a futile attempt to break free. “I thought she was getting into the food. Breaking ration rules.”
Cap shook his head. “But she’s not from here,” he said, taking a step towards me and holding up my right arm with its stripe for all to see. There was a murmur from the crowd. “She came down on the shipment. She wasn’t there breaking ration. You were.”
“I was not!”
“You were up there without ringing the alarm.” Cap raised his arms and then let them flop, as if there was nothing else that needed to be said. “If you thought someone was taking food before we collected it for rationing, you should have rung the alarm.” The woman stopped struggling and bowed her head. What Cap was saying was right. “Or…was it that you were up there trying to take food before rations? And you didn’t expect to see our new arrival here?”
The woman raised her head, and her eyes looked like steel. “I wasn’t trying to take food.”
Cap shook his head and stared at her for a long while, then shook his head again and turned to me. “I’m sorry you were brought down like this.” He waved to the woman. “We have strict rules down here, as you will soon learn. Food shipments from topside are always varied, day and time. We never know when they’re coming, and we need every man and woman working in the tunnels to meet quota, so we rely on an honor system that anyone who sees a new shipment has been dropped off to ring the alarm so the food can be brought here and measured out for everyone. Equally.” At this, he stared back once again at the woman. “To break that rule is…quite the offense.”
The woman stayed silent.
“Well,” I said, sensing the tension in the air, “I suppose that’s not my concern.” I pointed at the metal box he was still holding. “I just want to get that to you, Captain, and then be on my way. Those were my orders.”
Cap had his head cocked to the side once again. “Did you call me captain?” He asked.
I nodded. “Sorry. If you prefer ‘Cap,’ I can certainly call you that instead.”
“Who, specifically, is this message from the Warden to be delivered to?” He asked.
“You,” I answered, nodding again. “Captain Balta.”
There was a murmur from the crowd, and a small smile played over Cap’s lips. “What is your name?” he asked me.
“Squints,” I answered, feeling heat rise in my cheeks and on the back of my ears.
Cap nodded kindly. “Nice to meet you, Squints of the topside,” he said. “I am Cap, the head of the depths.” With that, he touched the red hat on his head, as if to underscore why he was named ‘cap.’ He then looked down at the metal box, and ran his fingers over the label on the top of it, his small smile disappearing. “But, I am not the recipient of this message.”
I blinked.
Cap held the box out to the woman. “The Warden sent this to Captain Balta.”
The woman reached out and took it from him.
She was Captain Balta.