Page 14 of Escape from Nova Nine
And if he was ruthlessly frank with himself, spending idle time so close to Julke made him want to activate his talent rather than contain it.
She intrigued him. Her attractive, strong-angled features and muscled small body belied his mistaken first impression that she was delicate. And her pale skin and emerald-colored, intricately braided hair complimented her mesmerizing blue eyes.
As much as he liked the shape of her, though, the one brush with her empath talent had left an indelible imprint on him. Maybe it was her pirate clan…, no, Volksstam heritage, but he’d never felt such a strong sense of compatibility. Like reuniting with a close friend he’d somehow forgotten. Even now, she riveted his attention when he should be focusing on escape plans.
Deliberately looking away, he eyed the refinery equipment to see what he could identify. Not much, unfortunately. What he knew about raw materials processing would make for a very short conversation. Furthermore, before watching the orientation vids, he’d never heard of the three dangerous elements they were extracting and still had no clue why they were so valuable.
Of more immediate interest was a crowd of ore carts that occupied the far end of the space. He wondered how many more the mine had, and if they were used for anything else besides taking extracted ore from full hoppers and transporting it through the tunnels to the processing center. For example, could they go to the pressurized freight hangar or the exterior landing pad with refined ore to load for sale? Maybe they went to other useful places, too. With the right tools, he could disable defenses and fool monitoring tech, but not minders. But did the mine have enough guards to check each cart?
Leaning forward to touch his toes gave him the opportunity to eye the center area. The few mine guards who had ended up in the refinery had commandeered padded chairs and a couple of floating desks. They moved them to a spot that gave them a good view of the prisoners scattered about on the cavernous refinery floor. The guards barely glanced at the refinery workers who were chained to their stations, and didn’t look at the ceiling at all.
“Sutrio said my stowaway stealth griffin went up to join the dracos.” He kept his voice barely above a whisper. The guards had given up enforcing the “no talking” rule after the first thirty minutes, but no sense in being obvious about it. “What are those?”
“Another griffin species. Bigger, with broader wings. They nest in sponge rock and like heights. If you hear hissing, it’s probably them.” She flicked a glance upward. “I think the original miners found this closed void and decided it’d be a good place for the refinery. The sponge rock up top has thousands of nooks and crannies for griffin nests.”
The chofi seam they'd been working had a lot of sponge rock, too. The orientation vids said it contained trapped oxygen that the refinery separated out to augment the enviro systems. On starships, they’d need a good supply of carbon dioxide for the hydroponics systems. Did sponge rock also capture nitrogen or other useful gasses?
The refinery equipment rumbled in the background. His ear protection implants apparently couldn’t tell whether to block it, so he’d been subjected to a maddening intermittent buzzing for the last four hours. “Were you ever assigned to work in here?”
He gathered the refinery shut down processing operations the moment the blowout alarm sounded. Everyone in the refinery had heard the echoing announcement telling the refinery workers to stay at their workstation until further notice. Like they had a choice.
“Yeah, right after I was captured. Then a Volksstam prisoner got caught using the refinery’s transport system to secretly direct some gravity-plate bots to excavate toward the visitor’s ship hangar instead of following the ore seam. The warden decided all pirate clan scum were a flight risk and removed us well away from anything that put us near the surface or anything important.” Her electric-blue eyes flashed with annoyance. “Beschaafdassholes probably believe their own scare-mongering and think we can teleport.”
He’d always thoughtbeschaafdmeant “civilized” in Dutch, but not the way she used it. Something to ask her later. Right now, he had survival questions to ask. “How do the griffins stay alive?”
“It’s a mystery from the Chaos God of Dark Energy to keep us entertained.” A crooked smile flitted across her face. “Or to piss off the red-robed twist. He detests them.”
From what Zade had overheard during meals, the prisoners had dozens of nicknames for the warden. As if saying his name would conjure him.
Julke flexed one foot, toe forward, then the other. “Sutrio’s best guess is that decades ago, someone on the mine staff was also a freelance genetic designer working on new griffin species to sell to the pet trade. The designer is long gone, but the asteroid now has four species of feral griffins that can thrive in an oxygen-poor, dust-rich environment. All they need is humans to bring food, water, insects, and vermin.”
“What’s the fourth species?”
“Rock griffins. Very pale. Big eyes, bigger claws, and a barbed tail for hanging on rocks. They live in the Abyss.”
“Hmm.” He affected a prissy, condescending tone. “Must be another attraction the orientation vids neglected to mention.”
Her eyebrow twitched in wry amusement. “It’s a huge fissure inside the asteroid. Looks like someone once tried to enclose part of it. Multiple trails of miner-type gravity plates with built-in perpetual lights that lead nowhere. These days, it’s mostly a dump pit for trash tailings and non-recyclables.” She drew her knees closer and rested her elbows on them.
“How big is ‘huge’? Is it close to the surface like the refinery?”
“No idea.” She shook her head. “I’ve only been there twice. It’s darker than deep space where the lights can’t reach. Oxygen and humidity levels fluctuate with the wind. Which shouldn’t be possible, but enough for the rock griffins to breathe and fly. The guards swear they’ve seen little explosions.”
“Explosions, like blowouts?” That sounded dangerous. Escape routes were only good if they didn’t kill the escapees.
“Who knows? Scares the daylights out of them, that’s for sure.” Her mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “They’re even more superstitious than the Volksstam.”
A hamstring pinch in his right thigh made him separate and splay his feet. The stretch of spreading his heels out wide and leaning over to touch his elbows felt good. Or at least better than before. For all that his life seemed to involve running from one thing and another, he hated the actual activity.
“You’re very flexible,” she murmured.
“Born that way.” He twisted at the waist to hover over his right knee. The impulse to show off made him conscious of a desire to impress her as much as she impressed him.
She snorted. “I was born short.”
He turned his head up to give her a crooked smile. “Short people don’t whack their heads on hopper maintenance doors nearly as often.”
A pulse of laughter escaped her. “Good point.”
