Twelve bondsmen rode the ore hauler south in a cargo bay that still smelled of akulite, and every one of them had worked out that nobody had told them when they were coming back.
The hauler was a repurposed bulk lifter with a cracked viewport in the forward bulkhead and a drive that whined at a pitch the corporation’s maintenance log had been ignoring for two years.
It shuddered on every attitude correction.
The men braced without thinking about it, the same as they braced against a roof that talked, and none of them looked out the viewport except Mara.
She sat across from Kael with her back to the wall and her boots planted, her own boots, not the issue ones, and she watched the desert unspool underneath them.
“You’ve known about the ruin longer than she has,” she said.
Low.
The drive noise ate it before it reached anyone else.
“Since before she decided to go.” Kael didn’t answer.
“I’m not asking what you are.” Her eyes came off the viewport.
“I stopped wanting that answer about an hour after the yard.
I’m telling you I’m not walking into a hole in the ground blind.
You owe me that much.” “That’s not a debt.
That’s a request.” “It’s the same thing when I’m the only one on this crew who signed her name to what happened to Drest.” Below them the hauler crossed the last of the tailings country and put six hundred kilometers of ochre between them and the camp.
The pull had been getting stronger the whole flight, and about forty minutes out it stopped being a pull.
It resolved.
Not into words.
Kael was clear about that with himself, because the moment he started calling it words he would start believing the words were his own idea.
It resolved into a voice without language, a low patient pressure under the floor of the world that had a direction and an appetite and something perilously close to attention.
It knew he was up here.
It had been waiting a very long time and it had no particular objection to waiting a little longer, and that patience was the most frightening thing about it.
Come here.
Find me.
Open me.
He held onto the wall bracket with his good hand and let it go through him, and didn’t answer it, and understood that not answering was already a kind of answer.
Then he made a decision that was closer to arithmetic than to trust.
“It’s a Sith site,” he said.
Mara went very still.
“Old.
Built before the Republic drew its first borders, which means old enough that nobody’s records go back to whoever put it there.
It’s been calling to people like the foreman since this planet didn’t have a name.” “Calling.” “That’s the only word for it and it’s not a good one.” He kept his voice under the drive.
“I don’t know what’s inside.
I don’t know what it wants.
I know it’s worth more than one Force-sensitive laborer, which is the only reason that woman is spending her contract on it instead of hauling somebody off in a collar.
She thinks she’s working for herself.” “And she isn’t.” “No.” Mara sat with that.
When she spoke again her voice had gone flat.
“You’ve been using her since the day she landed.” “I’m using everybody.
That’s the whole method.” He met her eyes and didn’t dress it.
“This is a world where the foreman sold your name to a recruiter and the corporation budgets for how many of us die per quarter.
You use what’s in reach.
She has a ship, a crew, and a relic.
I’ve got a voice under the ground and a body that can’t stand near her instrument without going hollow for twenty seconds.” “And me.
What have you got in me.” “A witness who chose a side in front of a corporate inspector.” “That’s cold.” “You wanted the truth and not the comfortable version.
Pick one.” The hauler dropped through a shear and everybody’s stomach came up and went back down.
One of the salvage contractors laughed at the bondsmen from across the bay, plate on his shoulders, rifle between his knees.
“First one down a hole always goes green,” he said, to nobody and to all of them.
“You’ll be fine.
Just don’t be the one who runs.
Runners get shot on the entry team, that’s not a threat, it’s a headcount problem.” “How many entries have you done?” one of the bondsmen asked.
“Forty.
Give or take a few I don’t count.” “And how many crews came back whole?” The contractor’s grin held for a second past where it should have.
“Eat before we land,” he said.
“You won’t want to after.
And keep your lamp on your belt, not in your hand.
Hands get busy.” Nobody ate.
“You want more truth?” Kael said.
“Here’s the part I’d rather you didn’t have.
I don’t know if I’m strong enough for whatever’s down there.
The last time the thing in me came out, three men died who had nothing to do with anything, and half the nerves in my arm cooked, and I couldn’t have stopped a single second of it.
I’m walking into a place built by people who did this deliberately, with a bad leg and no training and a woman leading the expedition who would sell me on sight.” “Then why go.” “Because staying means dying slower.” She looked at him and he let her.
“That’s not a reason,” she said.
“That’s a comparison.” “It’s the only kind of reason anybody down there gets.” The hauler banked and the twin suns swung across the cracked viewport and lit the whole bay orange for four seconds, and every face in it looked scoured.
Then the door at the forward bulkhead opened and Vos came through it with her slate under her arm.
She stopped in front of Kael.
“You’re on my manifest.” “Yes, ma’am.” “I didn’t put you there.” “The office did.” “The office does nothing without being pushed at.” She looked down at him, at the bandaged forearm inside the sleeve, at the leg he had stretched out because he couldn’t fold it.
“Why does a bonded miner with a wrecked leg want a posting into a sealed structure in storm season.” “I don’t want it.
It’s a transfer.
Nobody asked me.” “Try again.” Kael let his eyes drop to the deck, which was where a bondsman’s eyes went, and let the answer come out small.
“There’s nothing left up there for me, ma’am.
Pell’s dead, the foreman’s dead, the crew won’t sit near me.
Whatever’s south is at least new.” Vos was quiet three seconds.
“That’s almost honest,” she said.
“You’ll carry line for the entry team and you won’t touch anything with a mark on it.
If a wall has writing, you don’t put your hand on the wall.
Two of my last three site losses were laborers touching things.” “Yes, ma’am.” “And you.” She turned to Mara.
“Sorting line.
Four years.” “Yes.” “You can read a manifest and you argued your way onto one.
That’s more initiative than the rest of this bay put together.” She was already moving toward the flight deck.
“Stay near the one with the leg.
If he stops walking I want to hear about it before he’s on the ground.” The door shut behind her.
Mara let out a slow breath.
“She likes you.” “She’s inventorying me.
There’s a difference and it matters.” “Does it?” “It will when she’s finished.” The descent took twenty minutes.
The voice climbed the whole way down, and it didn’t get louder so much as it got closer, the difference between a hand on a door and a hand on your shoulder.
Kael sat with his jaw locked and his heart going and something in his chest that wasn’t fear and not want, and he identified it eventually and did not enjoy the identification.
It was relief.
The thing under the world was the first power on this planet that had reached for him without wanting to price him.
That was exactly how a hook works, and knowing it changed nothing at all about the pull.
The southern continent came up under the viewport in the last minutes.
Ochre desert going black at the edges, a range of peaks carved by sand into shapes like fingers pushing up out of the ground, and past them on the western horizon a wall of dust standing two kilometers high and walking east at the pace of an unhurried man.
The storm front.
Three days, maybe less now.
The hauler’s struts hit black stone and the whole bay rang, and the contractors were up and moving before the ramp finished dropping.
Cold air came in off the plateau, thin and iron-tasting.
Kael stood, put weight on the bad leg, and took the first step down toward a place that had been waiting for somebody exactly like him since before anyone alive could count.