Devana Files, Chapter 2

Stay away.

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I am excited to bring chapters of the new Kate Devana series.

Space 2074 is the new Wild West. Mine machines are glitching, an FBI Agent is looking to avenge the death of his former partner, & Sheriff Kate Devana must wrangle a fugitive con artist who bilked retirees for billions. Bodies are piling up. Again. On the moon, Kate Devana is the law.

This is the second chapter. You can catch up here: wyattwerne.substack.com/s/kate-devana-s…

While this is the 3rd novel in the series, each is designed to be read independently.

For accessibility, there is a voiceover for each chapter.

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APRIL 7, 2074

MINING CLAIM 2193-38

Lunar Positioning System coords 56.7586°N, 81.3951°E, Mare Humboldtianum

Gravel pelted Leo Wilson’s spacesuit. His helmet popped and crackled like tiny firecrackers. After five hours of tangling with this drill at the bottom of a cramped lunar mineshaft, he tried to put the danger out of his mind, but exhaustion was creeping into his bones.

His job: sample this rock, run a conductivity test, and climb out filthy rich. He should have finished an hour ago.

A string of lights and a power cord receded to a pinpoint five hundred meters above him, lighting his emergency retreat, an aluminum rope-ladder of one thousand four hundred and thirty-seven rungs. Of course, they would hoist him out with a winch. The climbing rungs were only a backup, and he’d only used them in the seventy-odd hours of accident and emergency preparedness training the company gave him.

Still, the rungs were comforting. Drones couldn’t get down here because there was some sort of electromagnetic interference. He couldn’t use his bionic augments, either, because the interference jammed the neuroface signals between his brain and biomechanical limbs.

He wound the power cord around his hand to take up slack, braced his back against the rock for leverage, and then forced the drill as hard as he could into a dimple in the rock. Sweat beaded at his collar. His shoulders shook with the drills’s vibrations. Sound didn’t travel in the vacuum of space, but that didn’t stop the grating and scraping noises from conducting along his bones as the drill’s red hot metal bit ground rock.

Whatever mineral he was sampling was hard and dense, the hardest he’d ever drilled, and at the center of a gravitational anomaly. Such anomalies themselves weren’t unusual. Concentrations of dense rock littered the moon, like old lunar basalt, or remnants of asteroids that impacted the moon billions of years ago. Ordinarily, outside scientific interest, they were of middling value. But this one had some sort of electromagnetic distortion.

He gripped the drill, clenched every muscle in his body, and drove the bit against the rock. A pinwheel of green-yellow dust swirled from the hole and his teeth clacked as the drill hollowed the rock.

All he knew, a gravitational and electromagnetic anomaly together, equaled money. Why else would the company jump this claim?

Charlotte Martin, the mine boss that ran the surface operation and liked to be called Charlie, told him this was the most valuable claim in the solar system. What they were mining, she didn’t say. If she knew. It was always better not to ask. Claim-jumping was illegal, and he suspected they were outright trespassing. The company nerds probably hacked and stole geological reports, and then hacked the mining claim registry, so the less he knew, the better.

It didn’t matter anyway. A registered claim was just a bunch of easily manipulated electrons on a server. Possession, as they say, was nine-tenths of the law. They were in space, where there was no law, except the ancient law of finders keepers. A company owned what it could defend. If this claim panned out, the company would hire mercenaries with big guns, and whoever wanted it would have to pry it from cold, dead hands. Some Earthbound lawyers might whine about squatting, but in the vacuum of space no one could hear them scream. After ten years, this mine would be depleted along with the court’s patience and everyone would settle and move on, much richer.

More dirt exploded on his helmet. He pressed the drill with all his strength, grimacing, his forearms shuddering under the tension.

The drill bit snapped, and he cussed.

Whatever was here was the toughest mineral he’d ever sampled. He brought a seventy-two volt, thirty amp industrial hammer drill and high-quality bits, as hard as they came. But so far it was like he was sanding granite with cotton. After five hours, he’d managed less than a millimeter. He should be a over a meter deep. To drill a hole big enough to set explosives that would break the rock into chunks would take…months.

Maybe the engineers could widen the hole and drop drones with shielded cables. They always had a trick up their sleeve. But the company wouldn’t spend that kind of money until he had a sample to prove the deposit’s worth. So far, he had nothing but yellow-green dust.

He triggered the drill off and twisted the chuck at the end of the drill to remove the broken bit. Its ragged edge glowed red.

More dirt struck his helmet, scattering over his visor. “Charlie?” He only heard static on the comms. “Charlie, you copy?”

He took a ragged breath and felt the spacesuit fans cool his face as he gulped oxygen. The heat; the fans buzzing in overdrive; the cramped mine shaft; the sweat irritating his neck and face; the frustration of snapping drill bits trying to sample this deposit; and now debris tumbling on him. He was exhausted and ready to be done.

Someone wasn’t following safety protocols. Drilling a sample of lunar rock at the bottom of a five hundred meter shaft was dangerous, but more so when the chuckleheads on the surface let debris fall into the entrance. Safety zones around the shaft entrance existed for a reason. Lunar regolith was gravelly, trenchant glass shards that abraded everything it touched, including his nerves. It could puncture his suit and he didn’t plan to die at the bottom of a mine shaft.

Still no response from Charlie. She worked out of a booth on the surface the size of a shipping container, but sometimes she went out to tend the mine. Or, maybe, he couldn’t reach her because of the interference.

He eyed the aluminum rope-ladder to the surface, his retreat, just as dirt scuffed his helmet. He toggled the lights on the wire running up the shaft, blinking them on and off. “Charlie. Over. What’s going on up there?”

After a long pause, she said, “One of the loader drone’s navigation is glitchy. It’s having a fit and doing a little samba. I am working on it.”

A wave of tension rolled down his back. The electromagnetic interference seemed to have become worse since they arrived and was now affecting the surface machines.

“I’m getting rained on down here. And I broke another bit.”

“One of the drones must have kicked sand in the hole as it circled.”

“Its not sand, Charlie. Its little knives of glass. They are hitting me at a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour.”

The comms clicked. He listened to static, his own heavy breathing, and the keening fans struggling against the putrid body odor in his suit. After what felt like an eternity, she said, “All your gauges are green. The malfunctioning drone is moving away now. I’ll let it finish its run and then reboot it.”

“There is a safety zone for a reason, Charlie.”

“I can’t help glitchy LPS. Whatever is here interferes with satellite reception. Your suit is rated for meteoroids which are going a hundred times faster.”

“I love your little motivational speeches.“

“Therapy is line two. I want to close up shop here soon. How close are you to being done?”

“Not close. I will need to come back tomorrow.”

“We booked this venue one day only. Get in and get out.”

“If its worth it, we should stay.”

“We need confirmation. If we are caught, we have a big mess an nothing to show for it.”

“I am less than a millimeter into this rock. We need more time.”

“You’ve been at it for five hours.”

The tip of his drill bit had cooled to blue-gray. The heat in his suit was overwhelming. Inside this tunnel, the rock walls acted like insulation, so his suit had trouble radiating heat to relieve him. But his oxygen, battery, hydration, and nutrition reserves all gave him permission to keep drilling. Fortunately, he added an extra few scoops of meal powder to his reserves or he’d be starving.

“I can do three more hours in the suit. But I will need you to drop some more drill bits.”

“You took the last.”

“Shit.” What was he drilling that was so hard? “Get ready to reel me up then. I keep breaking drill bits and I used my last. I will definitely need to come back tomorrow.”

“There is no tomorrow.”

“The drill bits keep breaking. I’m telling you, Charlie, I’ve barely scraped a millimeter.”

“Bullshit.”

He didn’t have a camera in his suit to prove it to her. The first rule of claim-jumping: don’t record evidence. “Come down and see for yourself. I am telling you, this is the hardest stuff I’ve ever tried to sample.”

“Titanium?”

The hardest titanium he’d ever drilled was in a lab, some special alloy as a test run, and this deposit was harder than that. Maybe it was some freakish superstrong alloy unknown to materials science. But the color didn’t look right. All the titanium alloys he’d seen were silver-white, similar to aluminum. This deposit was yellow and green, and in some spots, blueish.

“I don’t think its titanium. This whatever-it-is we are mining is eating drill bits the way my dog ate bones.”

“You had a dog?”

“What’s wrong with a dog?”

“Nothing. I never knew that about you. You never struck me as a guy that could keep another living thing alive.”

“I can keep things alive.” He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

Charlie chuckled. “Certainly not that drill bit.”

He’d flip her off, if his hands weren’t preoccupied, and he wasn’t half a kilometer below the surface.

He couldn’t think of a retort, so he stared at the jagged edge of the broken drill bit as it cooled.

“It could be the drill bits,” she said. That was always a possibility: that someone swapped out the good drill bits for cheap ones. One drill bit looked the same as the next, except for the micro-printed headstamp, which no one checked. Company theft was rampant. “I’ll drop you a new one.”

He started to say, you said we were out, but halted himself and smiled. Charlie was a good mine boss. Tough, and like all good mine bosses, she kept a stash of tools hidden.

“Heads up below. Comin in hot.”

Above him, a new pinpoint of light appeared. Twenty-eight seconds was how long it took objects to free-fall the mine shaft. A drone couldn’t get down here because of the interference, so she’d drop the tools the old-fashioned way, on a rope.

He loosened the chuck on the drill and let the remaining splintered drill bit fall out.

The new bit appeared above him, precessing like a Foucault pendulum. He plucked it off the rope, inserted it into the drill, tightened the chuck, and spun the drill in the air to test it.

“Thanks.”

“You good now?” The rope rose out of view.

“Until this one breaks, too.”

“That’s a brand new drill bit, Leo.”

“I will guard it with my life. Still, stand by to pull me up.”

“I have to step out of the booth. Get your sample and get out of there, okay?”

“On it.” He fingered the drill’s trigger and spun it to check that the bit was locked in tight.

“And don’t forget about the conductivity test.”

The geologist had said to take measurements every centimeter into the deposit. He looked at the shallow dimple he’d scraped from the rock. He’d be lucky to get one centimeter.

“How could I forget? What’s going on up there? Why do you need to step out?” His muscles clenched and he eyed his retreat, the aluminum rungs hanging over his head.

“The gauges say the one of the drones has no power, but its still running. I see sparking and flames.”

“Is this the same drone that went berserk?”

She didn’t answer.

“Charlie?”

No answer. Another Charlie-ism: she wasn’t one for goodbyes. When she thought the conversation was over, she hung up.

A wave of dread washed over him. She was out of the booth, off wrangling a drone.

He reminded himself that panic kills. He had seventy hours of emergency training. There were one thousand four hundred and thirty-seven ladder rungs to the surface. He’d take it slow and steady. Doable, even in the dark.

As if the universe was challenging him, the shaft’s string lights dimmed, plunging the shaft to blackness except for his weak suit lights. Then they blinked back on. His heart sputtered in his throat, and he realized he’d been panting.

He ignored the temptation to climb out. “Play Titan Podcast. Time to see if this new bit has what it takes. ”

He leaned into the drill, driving it against the rock. His bones rattled when the drill grated rock. The pinwheel of dust spinning from the hole changed from yellow-green to blue-green.

In his headset, the podcaster’s seductive voice transported him far away, to Jupiter’s moon, Titan. She purred about its thick atmosphere of ninety-five percent nitrogen, rocky surface, clouds, rain, rivers, lakes, and seas. Much chillier than here, that was for sure. He pictured the voice as a brunette, wearing a bikini, a beer in one hand and the podcaster in the other as they slid through cool blue water.

She made it sound like a blue paradise because Titan had water. Titan’s water was minus three hundred degrees Celsius, buried under a sea of liquid hydrocarbons.

“Stop podcast.” When the podcaster got to the part that sounded like a cool lake, he pictured the woman in his arms sipping a daiquiri and laughing as Charlie.

The drill bit tip glowed red. Charlie was his boss. He drove the drill harder against the rock and then wobbled and rotated the drill to cut deeper. So what if she was? Maybe the company had rules about it, but there were also rules about hacking and claim jumping.

Gravel clinked his helmet. He jerked the drill, and the bit broke. “Fuck.”

The comms click-clacked. “Charlie?”

No answer from Charlie.

This bit shattered quicker than the previous ones, so it wasn’t the drill bits. He loosened the chuck, let the bit drop to the mine floor, then dropped the drill. It swung from his belt, banging his thigh.

“Charlie, this bit broke too. You copy? I am running the conductivity test at—” He eyed the hole in the rock. “About a millimeter. The rock turned yellow-green to blue green.”

Static over the comms. He retrieved the conductivity tester from his tool belt.

Maybe the color change was good news. He was exhausted and ready to be done.

He put the tester’s red probe into the hole the way the geologist showed him and then fingered ON.

His vision exploded white with black dots, and his brain felt like a million needles had stabbed his skull. Every muscle in his body clenched at once as if lightning struck, and he couldn’t breathe. He had an acrid, sintering metal smell in his nose.

The probes fell away. His heart pounded in his temples, his face flushed, and he gobbled air. The static in his skull ceased. The smell was gone.

Above him, the lights were out. The shaft had been plunged into darkness again.

“The fuck was that? Charlie, you there?”

His body trembled like he had sprinted a five kilometer run.

No answer. Shit.

A power surge from the surface would explain the lights being out. Maybe it was a coincidence. But the power surge felt like it was in his brain.

He eyed the dimple in the rock and the probe in his hands. He should climb out. Grasp the bottom rung of the ladder, and pull himself to the surface. He should drop the drill. It would be faster. But he was sure the static came through his neuroface. Was that possible?

Above him, white light blinked in the shaft, near the surface. Was Charlie lowering something? “Charlie, you copy?”

Still no answer. Fuck. The power surge must have blown the communications circuit.

The pinprick of light twinkled. It was getting bigger. He felt sick with adrenaline and couldn’t breathe. He had only vomited in a space suit once.

Don’t panic. Slow, square breaths. Charlie is lowering help. Maybe a hoist to get him out of here.

Slow, square breaths took the edge off. His heart slowed.

What if the conductivity test caused the power surge? It stood to reason that if this rock caused the electromagnetic interference, it was some kind of natural amplifier or transmitter, like a radio. The interference increased when they arrived. Maybe this mineral deposit amplified their communication signals and retransmitted them. It had to be ultra pure to interfere with his neuroface and machines all the way at the surface.

He grinned at the probe. A gravitational and electromagnetic anomaly together was a jackpot. Charlie was right. This could be the most valuable claim in the solar system. What was bigger than a trillion? A quadrillion?

“Hey, Charlie. I think I know why corporate was so hot to mine this claim.”

He needed to test it again to be sure, and at higher voltage. It hurt. He saw starbursts as if he were being electrocuted from the inside out. But whatever didn’t kill him made him richer.

He dialed up the probe’s power and then touched the red lead to the rock.

His vision exploded white again. This time, the needles in his skull screeched at him, STAY AWAY.

His muscles froze as if he’d been hit by a stun gun. The message repeated. STAY AWAY. STAY AWAY. Over and over.

His brain felt like it was melting. He tried to gasp for air, but his chest was rigid. Blue spots danced around his vision’s white canvas. He was suffocating.

Then the probe’s power sputtered, his vision returned, and his arms wrenched from the hole so hard his elbows jammed the rock behind him.

All the systems in his suit had shorted out. He gulped air, but his oxygen generator was offline.

His heart pounded in his chest. He tried to take slow breaths, but he couldn’t inhale enough air.

When he took this gig, his dad said that there were only two kinds of space miners: those who knew they were putting on the spacesuit for the last time, and those who didn’t. If he slowed his breathing, took the rungs slow and steady, this would not be the last time he suited up. He could do this. He had emergency oxygen. Enough to get out of the shaft, barely.

Reaching for the ladder, his bladder let go. The object falling on him was a spacesuit. Charlie’s ashen face and glassy eyes rushed towards him, arms outstretched as if she was rushing to hug him. The emergency oxygen and his training no longer mattered.

Most people never saw the bullet that killed them. His was Charlie, a seventy kilogram projectile careening towards him at one hundred fifty kilometers an hour. He had about ten seconds. He hoped it would be quick.

“Charlie?” As he said it, he knew he’d been talking to dead air for at least three minutes.

He shrank against the mine shaft wall, but he had no room to maneuver. His heart pounded. She was dead. Her vacant eyes and open arms welcomed him to a grisly end. It seemed so unfair. Someone was going to be filthy rich because of what he found, and he wasn’t even going to live to collect a bonus.

Devana Files, Chapter 3