Chapter Text
Iteration: 1.0
“Listen to my one simple rule. Heller? What’s my one simple rule?”
The young man, covered in dirt and scratches, rolls his eyes as he adjusts the gloves on his sealed-environment suit. As though he’s said this hundreds of times before to all the previous dusties, and he’ll say it infinite times again.
“Listen to Lin, boss lady knows best!”
Lin turns back to the newly hired dusty in question and adjusts the oxygen tubes that connect to her tank and wrap around the collar of her suit, tapping the dusty’s helmet.
“Exactly! Listen to me, mining’s just like any other job. Go steady, go safe, go home with a pocketful of credits at the end of the day.”
Chatter from the miners leagues below them and the comforting (though loud) buzz of mining lasers swims up past their descending elevator. It escapes to the surface above, where the dusty is starting to wish she were instead; has she traded one prison for another? The beeps of safety equipment and reversing vehicles. Water dripping, dripping, dripping throughout an otherwise lifeless world. Straps adjusting and tugging, bickering back and forth between two exhausted employees who seem to speak their own language of affection.
Heller chuckles, struggling with a rock stuck in his boot, “Yeah totally! It’s just like… um... working the stardock! Except with more cave-ins, lasers, and accidental dismemberment!”
It’s Supervisor Lin’s turn to roll her eyes, “Very helpful. Thank you.”
Heller shrugs and looks up at the new dusty, “You’re going to be fine. Your first outing was solid. And, you know, let’s be honest― it ain’t exactly astrophysics!”
The cave elevator rattles, the air around them darkening as sensors in the dusty’s suit alert her that oxygen levels are lowering. She won’t be down here more than four or five hours, tops. Argos Extractions may be sketchy, and they may prefer the Freestar Collective’s leniency about miner safety, but there’s no point in allowing the employees to drop like flies from carbon dioxide buildup.
“That’s why I keep him around,” Lin says, adjusting the straps on the dusty’s pack one last time. “Good pep talks.”
Quinn nods, still afraid to say anything. She’s still so new. The culture around this workplace appears to be based on experience― haven’t been on that many trips beneath the surface? You don’t know shit, newblood. Heller and the Supervisor continue to bicker about ore quality as Quinn stretches and readies herself for a day of hard work. It’s not like she isn’t used to it; from factories to construction to housekeeping. Whatever keeps her under the UC radar.
“More minerals, more money. And so the cycle repeats itself,” Heller says, as Quinn’s attention snaps back to her superiors, “Just… no more jumps into House Va’ruun space, okay?”
Lin kicks at the young man’s ankle as he prepares to step off the elevator, “He’s just a big baby. There are worse lives.”
The mineshaft opens up into an illuminated cavern, stalagmite or stalactites (or whichever ones they are) hanging from the ceiling and poking from the floors. The safety lights cause the rocks, damp with condensation, to glitter bright, revealing silver beryllium strewn throughout the caverns. Creepy, though― all these shadows and jagged edges. As though Quinn walks into the maw of a carnivorous beast, eager to swallow her whole.
Shut the fuck up with the poetry, kid, she mentally slaps herself. It’s mining. You’re digging rocks. You’re not exactly hunting the white whale.
She reaches up and turns the dial on her helmet, illuminating a small patch of dirt flooring with her helmet.
Supervisor Lin is no nonsense, but knows what she’s doing. She barks commands but gives pats on the shoulders of passing miners. It’s obvious that she works for Argos, but cares more about the employees than the corporate. She seems distracted today; as though she’s expecting something. She lashes out at Calvert and Bening, but shoos Quinn to pick up a mining laser and begin working down a side passage.
The junior dusty is still so new to the weight and power of a handheld cutter. She… well… she’s fired a gun before, but this is meant to cut through rock itself after a period of exposure to these high energy beams. You can easily slice through someone’s flesh and bone if you’re not careful― again, there’s a reason Lin loves mining in systems where the United Colonies can’t send their safety inspectors.
God the thing rattles her skeleton the second she presses the trigger, though. Pipeline to carpal tunnel. Good that her… well… her DNA gives her a bit of a resistance to certain syndromes ailing humans. Not that she can verify that at the walk-in clinic. Quinn adamantly avoids creating any records that MAST can access with a warrant.
As the beryllium chunks fall to the floor, she bends down and chucks them into nearby minecarts, following the leads of the more experienced miners she shares the corridor with. It would be generous, and lying, for her to call this work peaceful, given how busy and cantankerous these caves are… but… she could get lost in her own comfortable thoughts down here.
After about thirty minutes of excavation, sweating up a hurricane in her spacesuit, Supervisor Lin finally radios for Quinn to rejoin them at the breach site. She fastens the mining laser to her pack with a pair of carabiners and tosses a few loose chunks of ore into nearby crates. Hopefully she earns enough credits to buy over the counter aid-packs. She’s going to be sore as shit tonight. (And she’s only worked thirty fucking minutes!)
A giant vehicle of some sort nearly backs over her, its operator focussed somewhere else entirely as they remote control it away from a breech in the mines; Quinn walks around the mechanical excavator and joins Heller at the mouth. Their flashlights illuminate some of the dark, but god there’s something scary about a big, empty cavern.
Heller, however, seems a bit more intimidated by the little handheld computer that he points down the path.
“Problem?” Supervisor Lin snaps.
“Not if you consider a spike in gravity readings a problem?”
“I don’t,” the older woman says, flat and to the point.
“.... you don’t?”
Lin tugs on the new dusty’s straps, forcing Quinn to follow them down the breach. The caverns are slippery here, untreated terrain that taunts even boots with the best grips. Quinn has to grip a stalagmite (or a stalactite, or whatever) just to keep herself steady.
“What we’re after, it will read as an anomaly. That’s what I was told, anyways,” Lin mutters.
Her voice is distant, as though she’s lost in thought and memory. As though the mining director is in a kind of trance.
Heller glances back, raised eyebrows and all, “Okay, now you’re starting to freak me out.”
“Relax, it’s just another job. Come on.”
It almost sounds like downpour, the water that pokes through these caverns and dances down the walls. Quinn wonders how many centuries, decades, years, until erosion gleefully crashes down on this natural room. Will the breach caused by a single machine swallow them whole within the next few minutes? Something inside her tugs to turn around and run for the elevator.
And it’s not just the existential threat of a rocky collapse. Heller seems spooked by the gravity readings on his tablet, and the more he mentions it… the more Quinn realizes that she feels something odd too. Footsteps don’t place as much weight in the mud as they proceed. Her mining laser, swinging from her pack, feels half as heavy. It’s as though they’re mining on a small moon rather than a planet.
Lin waves at her, snapping her back into focus, “Okay, you. You’re up. Something goes wrong, we’ll come get you.”
“You want me to just, go look inside?” Quinn asks. “Am I prospecting, checking for threats, or structural damage?”
“Just… get the fuck in there, alright? The client is on his way.”
She’s already contacted a client over an unexplored shaft in a mine? What the fuck? Now Quinn really feels like she’s stumbled into some sort of cult. Lin doesn’t look like she worships Va’ruun, and surely the other miners would have acted weirder if this whole thing was a sacrifice or something. Heller bites his lip, clearly worried for the new dusty, but gives Quinn a nod to proceed. She runs her hand along a wall as she stumbles her way over a natural bridge and down another corridor.
Okay. Okay… couple of veins of beryllium… iron? No, no idiot, it’s europium. And there’s a few spots that she thinks might be neo… neodymium! Yes, neodymium. Maybe that night she spent reading the Argos Extractors Employee Handbook wasn’t completely useless! (Though, it’s pretty obvious how to hold a mining laser, and you probably don’t need to dedicate three pages of the book and seven questions on the hiring quiz to it.)
She unclips her laser and fires at a few chunks, expecting them to fall to the ground. Instead as the lasers break up the ore… the pieces float around her. They bounce off the wall and her suit, as though they have lives of their own.
“Do you see anything?” Lin’s voice cuts in through the weak radio in her helmet.
Quinn’s flashlight finally shines on something. Beautiful veins of glittering crystals, certainly nothing out of the Argos Extractors Employee Handbook. All around her, the chunks of inorganic material shimmer and float, and there appears to be a light source stemming from beyond her own helmet. Quinn reaches up and flips the dial back, dimming her vision momentarily as her eyes adjust.
Lin tries to send another message, but the static makes it impossible to decipher. Instead, Quinn shuts off comms, her ears picking up something else.
The rocks. They’re singing to her.
She’s definitely going fucking crazy, but there’s an odd metal glint beneath the crystals that… almost looks like an object. She hoists her mining laser back up and starts to cut, eager to determine if the mining operation has hit some sort of jackpot.
There’s a piece of metal stuck to the wall, symbols carved into it. What the hell? What the actual hell? It lights up the room of its own accord, the glowing not unsimilar to the way water will reflect on walls when the sun is out, causing dancing movements akin to a movie.
It’s not the first time Quinn has been unable to control herself before doing something stupid. And it certainly won’t be the last. She reaches out and touches the piece of metal.
Lights. Technicolor. Spinning. Symbols. Music? Stars. Dreams. Definitely dreams of some kind.
Well turns out they dragged her and the object to the surface. Nothing beyond a minor bruise when she collapsed to the ground. Fortunately her cutter broke her fall, and she broke the cutter. That’s going to come out of her pay.
Lin’s holding the hunk of metal, prying Quinn about what happened but… it wouldn’t feel right if she told her. Lights? Music? Heller’s already looking at her like she’s the cultist and they’re the sacrifice. Jeez, how do you even begin to explain what that was?
Her boss drops the questions after a bit, remarking that the buyer is arriving soon. Fucking hell, Lin knew this metal piece was down these caves and everything? Heller gives her a medical pack, an injector for any injuries she might have, though the scanner next to the bed shows nothing.
They give her some breakfast while they wait for the client; apparently it’s been a day since she was out and they waited to contact “Constellation” until they knew this piece of metal hadn’t killed her. So that it wouldn’t potentially harm any of the other miners. Considerate. She pours the synthetic milk into her synthetic cereal and wishes she could work at a job where the rations were a bit nicer. She’s tired of a shit life doing shit work so that she can avoid being tortured by―
“Client’s here. Eat up dusty, he’s going to want to talk to you after all that”
An hour or so passes, occasional updates sent to Lin’s tablet, notifying her that the Client is being “held up”. Held up, of course translates to this mysterious man, Barrett, being followed by Crimson Fleet pirates. The curious gentleman doesn’t seem particularly phased by the murderous bandits that touch down, and while he makes a face and draws his pistol, it’s up to the miners to defend themselves.
This is… what Quinn had wanted to avoid. And she can’t even help herself as her vision begins to turn slightly red― her hands reaching for a utility axe on a workbench and her blood already boiling.
Fight. Fight like you were trained to do.
Senses heighten, sharpening like claws. The Crimson Fleet ship is only just opening its passenger bay as she breaks into a furious sprint.
Survive. You are the apex, Quinn.
Something roars within her as her axe sinks into a young male pirate’s spacesuit. His eyes slump immediately, no grace period as death overtakes him. A hit like that? His body didn’t stand a chance. She doesn’t savor the kill, ripping her weapon out and moving on to the next doomed soul. Before she knows it, she’s standing over a pile of bodies, her chest heaving and the hand holding an axe trembling. There’s blood splattered on the glass window of her helmet, and something awful rings in her ears.
The other miners of Argos Extractors look at her warily, clearly terrorized by what they just saw. Some have their pistols pointed at her in self-defense. Heller clearly wants to bolt, and Lin only seems to emit pure anger.
And she doesn’t even… what just happened?
“What did that hunk of metal do to you? You just went berserk?” Heller.
Quinn lets the axe fall from her fingers, “I don’t… I don’t understand…”
Surprisingly, it’s Barrett that approaches her, hesitantly reaching out and placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Easy there, tiger. You’re okay. Has this ever happened before? Lin, this ever happen before?”
She hears genuine panic in the supervisor’s voice, “Of course it hasn’t fucking happened before, Barrett! She was just a miner, a normal person! Your Artifact did this to her!”
Everything’s starting to come back into focus, the world has stopped spinning. Quinn shakes her head, deciding to be silent rather than telling a verbal lie (she’d be found out, and captured if anyone knew the truth. Better to blame it on the weird hunk of metal she’s found).
“Huh. Noel’s going to want to see this. I imagine she can do a scan and detect if this Artifact has given you a temporary aggression. But she’ll take good care of you, okay? Vasco, can you escort this young woman― what did you say your name was?”
“Qui… um… Quinn.”
Barrett’s face is warm and inviting, all smiles and wrinkles. He knows more than he lets on, and she should feel hesitant to accept his help, but it’s obvious she needs to keep moving.
“Quinn, then. We don’t exactly know what the Artifact has done to your head, and Constellation is really the only group qualified to help. Our base is in New Atlantis, Vasco will get you there. Vasco! Protocol Indigo, okay?”
“Indigo, again? Very well.”
“I’ll stay here. Lin’s looking at me like she wants to pull my helmet off and let me suffocate. This adorable face of mine wouldn’t look so cute if it froze to death, Lin! But I get it, I get it! I’ll help you clean up and work some shifts until Argos comes and assists in the evacuation. Plus, I’ll throw in a few extra credits for all the trouble. You go on to Jemison, now, Quinn. We’ll catch up later.”
Shit. The last place she wants to be is New Atlantis. But the gawking of the miners only spurs her to quickly walk up the ramp and towards the ship Barrett came in on. She doesn’t even look at Lin, who does nothing to stop what can only be surmised as a “freak” as she boards the Frontier. The robot follows behind her, a lone eye closing its shutters to mimic blinking as it watches her climb into the cockpit.
Fuck, can she even bypass the calculated grav route? Pirate the ship and get to the other side of the galaxy? The Kryx system would be a dangerous gamble, but at least no one there would know the value of Quinn’s… well… her DNA. Fuck, what if Constellation learns the truth and sells her out?
She sits in the pilot’s chair and closes her eyes. Quinn knows damn well that the Artifact has nothing to do with what just happened but… what was the vision she saw? Something equally fucked up, yeah, but is it worth flying into the belly of the beast for lights and music and dreams?
Quinn starts the Frontier’s engine, her fingers moving of their own accord. The hull of the spacecraft begins to tremble, and for a brief moment her head slumps back against the headrest. She has to face her past someday, might as well get a free starship and a couple extra answers out of it.
In the years since she’s been on Jemison, she’s changed her hair, her name, hid her face as much as possible in public spaces just to keep anyone from being able to remember what she looked like. She keeps her spacesuit and helmet on as she rides the NAT, much to the gawking of well-dressed diplomats and merchants. At least she passed the scan at the spaceport― Quinn nearly had a heart attack when she saw they were going to scan her. Yet… nothing happened as she walked up the rampway and into the city proper. Could have been a glitch in the system, mistaking her for someone else? Good. She’ll have to ask around and see if there’s another way in and out of the city. Only so many times she’d be able to have her face scanned by the sleepy New Atlantis infantry before they realize her file has been corrupted and there’s definitely something suspicious about her.
Keeps her helmet tilted down, so that cameras can’t quite record her. Lets Vasco lead her on up through a beautiful park of foliage native to Jemison. A UC guard even smiles at her and welcomes her to the city, and Quinn gives a “mmhmm!” with as much of a grimacing smile as she can muster.
The Lodge, as Vasco calls it, is overgrown and neglected on the outside. There are some graffiti markings in places and enough cracks in the foundation that it’s obvious an earthquake inspector hasn’t been by in a decade or so. The garden is overgrown and trashcans are overflowing. People don’t come by here often.
It’s a trap, this whole thing is a trap. She’s going to hold up this stupid little watch Barrett gave her and the doors are going to swing open and someone’s going to grab h―
Sheesh. It’s just a hallway, Quinn. Calm down.
She listens to a pair of men playfully arguing on the other side of a grandiose wooden door, a woman interjecting that she’ll ban wagers if they continue to spat. Vasco gives her a blank stare, as blank as can be considering his robotic nature, and it’s obvious the robot wants Quinn to proceed through to the next chamber.
“Welcome to Constellation. We have a lot to talk about.”