MiNRS (9 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Drive Shaft

Elena told me where to
look for Alek. I fired up the digger and found him sleeping exactly where she’d described. He hadn’t moved an inch.

Alek was pale and cold, and looked like a ghost. I tried to grab the crumpled Melming Mining poster from his hands, but he clutched it so tightly, it began to rip, so I stopped.

But there was hope. He had gotten up and tried to find us. He wasn’t trying to fight me anymore. I maneuvered him into the cockpit seat and crammed in beside him. I turned on the digger, and we drove back to camp.

He still wasn’t talking, other than some indecipherable mumbles. The only words I could pick up were
three
and
Rosales
. He might have said
Brock
, but he dozed off.

Back at camp I lifted him out of the cockpit and laid him on a makeshift cot Mandeep had set up with some blankets and coveralls. He woke up and gave a start upon seeing Elena again.

Elena somehow managed to get him to eat sliced celery and drink chocolate milk. He threw up the first few mouthfuls, but he finally kept some down. The color started to come back in his cheeks, and he even nodded a thanks to Elena and Mandeep.

I watched Elena, impressed with how she was able to work with him. She relaxed when she spoke, coaxing him to eat. Or maybe she was just trying to get one more soldier healthy and ready for the coming fight?

•   •   •

Later that evening I read a few more chapters of
Oliver Twist
. Maybe I’d been hoping to find the map, to prove to Elena that the beacon was real. But there was no map—just the continuing saga of Oliver the orphan.

Oliver grew up, escaped the orphanage, and became part of a band of street kids, being trained as a thief and a pickpocket by an old man named Fagin. Oliver was befriended by another orphan, the Artful Dodger, who was funny and incredibly skilled at lifting the valuables
out of the coats of passing pedestrians. They’d walk away with no clue they’d just been robbed.

The Dodger got me thinking.

“Time to meet, Fearless Leader,” Elena said, interrupting my thoughts. “I’ll go get everyone together so you can rally the troops.”

I nodded, shaking my head at her use of the word
troops
. I watched her walk away, took a deep breath, and braced myself for my speech. Elena’s return had delayed it, but it was now time to put my nerves aside. The sound of approaching footsteps still made my pulse race.

Finn was putting Darcy to bed while the rest of us gathered around the digger.

I leaned against it and began to speak.

“We need to talk together about what to do.

“Food needs to be rationed. I know some of you have been tempted to sneak some extras”—I tried not to look at Jimmi—“and that’s okay, but it has to stop now.

“We need to conserve water.

“We need to find toilet paper.

“We need to
not fight
each other.” I rubbed my nose and glanced at Pavel, his mouth set in a thin line.

“We have to keep moving.” With this last one, I rapped my knuckles on the digger for effect, and smiled. “And
all the things I just mentioned get a lot easier with this.”

Elena jumped in before I could go on. “There are more than a dozen diggers. We can use them to run, hide, look for food, explore, survive. But . . . we can also use them to fight.”

That made me flinch. I didn’t want Elena to mention that possibility yet. It was too scary a thought, and I could see everyone start fidgeting—stealing glances at each other. Maria began shaking.

I quickly stepped in front of Elena and held my hands up to calm everyone. “Not that we are going to do that unless we absolutely have to, and I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Our job now is to stay safe and alive.”

Elena began shuffling a pebble on the ground with her foot, refusing to look up at me.

“The diggers can help us move, find food and water, and I know how to drive one. But we can all learn how. And there’s no time like the present.”

To show how easy it was to drive one, I jumped into the cockpit of my digger and fired it up, moving slowly down the tunnel.

I looked back, expecting to see a MiNR parade, but only Elena was following. I turned off the engine and stood up.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “It’s not far, and we can all drive back.”

Maria and Mandeep walked away from us. Maria cried, “I’m not ready. I can’t.”

Mandeep draped her arm around Maria’s shoulders and led her back to the beds.

I looked at Elena, who was frowning at them.

Jimmi stood with his arms crossed, sneering at the digger. “Only an idiot would get behind the wheel of that deathtrap. I’m no idiot. You wanna kill yourself, Little Melming, go right ahead.”

Pavel pressed his lips even more tightly together and did not say a word.

“I’ll go!” someone called, running up to the digger. Finn. “This looks
so cool
! You’d have to be an idiot
not
to want to drive one.” He leaned his head into the cockpit and looked at the glowing panel, letting out a low whistle. “Awesome.”

Elena looked at him quizzically but smiled. “That’s the spirit,” she said.

His enthusiasm didn’t work on Maria’s sadness, but it did seem to dig at Jimmi’s and Pavel’s pride.

Pavel took a step toward us and then looked at Jimmi. “Whatsa matter, Murphy? Scared?”

Jimmi gritted his teeth. “Scared that a moron like you
will crash into me.” But he started following as well. Before anyone could change their minds, I sat back down and drove to the garage.

•   •   •

The practice sessions continued for a few days. Finn was a natural, as was Elena. Jimmi was getting the knack of it, but Pavel was going to need more practice—he was always forgetting to start his disrupter before hitting the wall.

Mandeep was able to coax Maria into taking part, as long as Maria was guaranteed she wouldn’t have to fight. We combined the driving lessons with work, driving from camp to the infirmary and cafeteria, grabbing as many supplies as we could. We also grabbed the mattresses off the cots.

I’d stayed behind on the last of these trips to take one final search of the elevator shaft, hoping to find some trace of the lost map. I tried digging into the debris but found nothing. I did find out that all the elevator shafts had now been filled with fallen rock and concrete, so there was no way left for us to go up, or for anyone else to come down.

I drove back, both sad and cheered by the thought.

Elena was waiting for me by the other diggers.

“I think we need to have a real training exercise,” she
said before I could even get out of my cockpit.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

She nodded. “Good. A mock attack then?”

I sighed. “Elena, you saw the reaction when you even suggested the thought of a fight. These guys are not ready yet.”

“You know we have to fight, and soon.”

I hung my head. “Elena, why are you so eager to risk everyone’s lives?”

“Christopher, do you know what a real leader has to do in a real war?”

“This isn’t a real war.”

She ignored that. “Coventry,” she said. “That’s how far a real leader is prepared to go.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It was during World War Two. The English had cracked a German code. They could track all the German troop movements, ships, planes, submarines. It could turn the tide of World War Two. One of the first things they deciphered was a German plan to bomb a city, Coventry.”

I stared at her, unsure where she was going.

“You want to be a leader? Okay, imagine you’re the top guy in England. You just found out Germany is going to bomb Coventry. What do you do?”

“Save Coventry?”

“If you save Coventry, it tips off the Germans that you know the code, and they’ll never use it again.”

“So what did he do?’

“He let the Germans bomb Coventry. At least, that’s the story.”

I paused. “That’s horrible.”

“No. That’s how far a true leader has to go. In war, you sometimes have to sacrifice your own people to win.”

I thought about what she was saying. Could I ever do that? No. And I hoped I never had to truly find out.

“How about a different kind of story?” I said at last, thinking of the Artful Dodger. “Pickpockets.”

She stared at me. “Is this a joke?”

“No. It’s from a book. If you are smaller and unarmed, you can’t fight back on equal terms. Instead you take what you can when you can.”

She cocked her head. “I’m listening,” she said.

“We are not ready for a fight,
but
 . . . small targeted raids could work. Raids designed to slow the Landers down, frustrate their efforts, and keep them here longer, ideally, until the Blackout is over and we can alert Earth. And if we can do those raids quickly and stealthily, we can get away alive.”

“Guerilla tactics?” Elena said, nodding, but clearly still debating. “Could work. But we have to strike fast. What should we target?”

I pulled out my notebook. “The storage depots. I’ve done some calculations about how much ore has been mined since we arrived on Perses. The ship you saw is clearly meant to haul cargo.”

“They certainly cleared more storage space by dropping hundreds of bombs.”

“And much of the ore that’s been moved from here to the main depot hasn’t been processed.”

“They still need to separate the actual minerals from the rock.”

I nodded. “Again, I’m just going by some rough estimates, but I think it will take them the better part of the Blackout to do that.”

“And once they are done, they’ll go back to Earth, and we’ll die a fast or a slow death up here on Perses.”

“And they’ve already been on Perses for more than a week.”

“Well, Fearless Leader, let’s get everyone ready.”

Chapter Fifteen

Disasters

The first raid was my idea,
and it was a disaster.

It wasn’t even a real raid. We staged a mock attack on the core-scraper, just to see how well we could get in, get out, and use the diggers to maneuver in the rock.

We lost our first digger when Mandeep swerved too quickly and ripped into the engine block of Finn’s machine. It could have been way worse. A foot closer to the cockpit, and Finn would have been seriously injured or killed.

After extracting Finn from the wreckage, we reassembled outside the infirmary.

“Look, everyone. You’ve got to pay closer attention to the directional indicator on the map. The arrow needs
to be pointing directly ahead, right up the middle. If it swerves, it means you are off course.” We’d gone through this in training over and over, but in the stress of a real, or close to real, scenario, it had been one of the first lessons they’d forgotten.

Elena stood next to me. “There’s also a motion sensor on the front of the digger. It picks up vibrations in the rock. It will alert you if you are close to something that’s moving.”

“So you can avoid loose rock or other diggers.”

Mandeep’s shoulders sagged. I wasn’t trying to make her feel bad, but we couldn’t afford to mess up in a real raid.

“It’s a lot to keep track of, I know. That’s why today is just a practice run.”

Elena stood with her arms behind her back and began to pace from side to side. “MiNRs, listen up. We want to attack in a line, left to right. But we don’t want them to anticipate where we’re coming from. So we also want to stagger the ETA of our entry into the target.”

“Can you put that in English, General Rosales?” Jimmi said.

Elena scowled as Pavel joined in. “Shall we recon with a mission over and out, and rejig with a . . . ,” he said, smirking.

I frowned at both of them. “The idea is to have one of us do quick salvage while the others are there for backup.”

“Or demolition,” Elena added. “Don’t worry too much about destroying stuff. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

“The main thing is to get in and out quickly. This is a mock raid, not a mock battle.” I stole a quick glance at Elena. She was frowning. “And remember that we can talk at close range,” I added. “The diggers have radio capability.”

Elena pointed toward the ceiling. “The Landers can’t pick up the signal way up there. Things will be a bit different for a real raid when we’re closer to them.”

“But for today feel free to keep your radio on for the whole drill.”

“Otherwise, pretend this is a raid on a Lander food depot. Don’t worry about taking prisoners,” Elena said, a steely look in her eyes. I felt a pang of sadness. As much as Elena had agreed to my plan for mini-raids, I knew that she really wanted to fight, and kill, Landers. All I could do was hope that never had to happen.

I strapped on my helmet. “Let’s get back in those diggers. Aim for the twenty-eighth floor. We cut in from the exterior wall. In and out quickly.” I had a faint hope
we might find the lost map on the twenty-eighth floor. I was tempted to tell everyone else about the map and the beacon, but I remembered the blasting Elena had given me, so I kept it quiet for now.

“Let’s see what we’re capable of,” Elena said.

We fired up the diggers and cut into the rock, rising toward the ruined hull of the core-scraper on a steep angle.

We reached the level of the twenty-eighth floor, then flattened out and approached in a set sequence. I went first, Pavel second, then Mandeep and Finn. Elena would come at the floor last, “sneaking in” as the imaginary “Landers” were distracted. She would steal some food or sabotage some part of their operation.

Pavel swerved unexpectedly before we’d gone more than a few feet, gunning his engine and cutting right across my path. My disrupter hit the resulting air pocket and stalled. I was supposed to be the first one into the building, but now I’d be lucky if I got there before Elena. That was worse than not getting there at all, at least for the sake of our little rehearsal.

“I’m out,” I called into the radio. “Number One is down.”

“Wimp,” Elena called back.

“Ha-ha,” I said, but I smiled. Joking was one way to
alleviate the stress. . . . That was, if she were joking.

“I’m going in,” Mandeep called over the radio. I heard the sound of cracking concrete, then a much louder rumble. “Uh, guys. I think I just took out a support beam.” As if to back her up, the rumble got louder.

“That was Finn,” Mandeep said. “He just took out another beam. Stuff falling all over the place!” She sounded panicked.

The rumble grew even louder, and constant.

This was a very bad thing.

The core-scraper wasn’t as stable as I’d hoped. The top floors must have continued to collapse. The pillars had been holding it up.

“Elena, pull back! Abandon!” Mandeep called into her radio. Then her radio went silent.

“Negative,” Elena said. “I’m going in. I need to test my aim.”

“Get out of there!” I yelled. “Everyone back to the camp. Now!”

“I can’t see Mandeep anymore,” Finn said, his voice trembling.

“Finn! Reverse, reverse!” I yelled. I could hear him through his radio firing up his engine and slamming it into reverse.

I hoped my disrupter had cooled enough to start up.
I nudged against the wall and fired it up. It burned blue and began dismantling the rock. I gunned the engine and sped toward the core-scraper.

I broke through the wall close to Mandeep. Her digger was crushed, a giant slab of concrete pinned down the entire front section.

I slammed my fist against my steering wheel.

Then I saw something moving in the cockpit. She was alive!

I turned my digger toward her. My disrupter had shut off, but the drill would work. I cut through the debris between us slowly. I could see her fingers scraping against the latch, desperately trying to escape before more concrete came crashing down.

“I’m almost there. Hold on!” I yelled, though I suspected she couldn’t hear me.

I began digging through the slab that was pinning the cockpit lid down. The drill ate away, sending chunks of the concrete flying.

Just then Elena shot through right next to me. Her aim was accurate but incredibly ill-timed. She slammed sideways into my rear, knocking me off target.

The front of my digger listed to the left and began slicing into the shell of Mandeep’s cockpit. A few more seconds and she would be shredded. I strained with all
my might to turn the steering wheel back to the right. I could feel the muscles in my arm ready to rip. With a lurch, the digger moved and began slicing back into the concrete. Finally the slab spit apart completely. Mandeep shoved her latch open and flew out of the wreckage.

I opened my cockpit and pulled her in next to me. I closed the lid.

“Hold on,” I said.

Mandeep was breathing so fast, I thought she might explode. I slammed the digger in reverse, swung to face the rock, and ignited my disrupter.

We sped back to camp.

Mandeep practically leaped from the cockpit, stumbled to her bed, and curled up in a ball under her sheets.

Maria marched up to me angrily. “What did you do?” she spit an inch from my face.

“There was a problem with the structure of the floor. I got her out. She’ll be okay.”

“She better be,” Maria said, shoving me backward. Then she sat down next to Mandeep and patted her hand, whispering to her softly. Soon they were both asleep.

I knew how she felt.

Why hadn’t Elena listened to me? Why hadn’t she stopped?

She’d always been like that, of course.
A force of nature
is what my mom used to call her.

But putting everyone else at risk? That wasn’t the Elena I knew.

I knew I wasn’t the same Christopher. But I held out hope that if we could just get through this, get through the horror, then we’d be friends again. Maybe we’d be more than that.

I was lost in these thoughts when Elena returned. She leaped out of her cockpit with a huge smile.

“That was a blast!” she said, slapping me on the shoulder. “I can’t wait to do it for real!”

“You could have gotten us all killed!” I hissed, trying not to wake Mandeep.

Elena took a step back. Her smile evaporated, and her face was as still as stone. “This isn’t a game, Nichols. We need to know what we’re capable of.”

“I know. You said that. Well, one of the things you need to ‘be capable of,’
Rosales
, is following the plan. Or would you prefer to spend our first real raid back here, babysitting?” I thought sounding like Elena might get her to listen to me.

Elena glared at me. I couldn’t tell if she was hurt or just angry.

“Remember when we all agreed we needed to work
together? We still need someone to act as a leader, and that seems to be my job, so let me lead. That means that when I say get out, you get out. Do. You. Understand?”

She continued to glare, saying nothing. She swung her backpack off her shoulder and opened it up. It was filled with food and supplies she’d salvaged from the core-scraper.

I stared, incredulous.

“How?” I said, not quite able to visualize how she could have done all this in just a few minutes in the middle of a collapsing building. “That’s amazing,” I said.

“Not questioning your authority, sir.” She stood back up straight. “I hit your digger, but if you’d operated according to plan or signaled your location over the radio, I could have avoided you. I knew I was supposed to arrive close to Mandeep, so I was planning on saving her. When I saw you were there, I decided to actually test our original plan and do a search for supplies. I found some.”

I started to feel guilty about ripping into her, even though she had disobeyed an order. “You could have told me your plans too.”

Elena gave a quick nod. “Noted. Communication will be more open in future, sir.”

“Don’t use the military lingo.”

Elena paused and in barely a whisper said, “It helps . . . me.” There was something in her voice, a slight tremor. She even bit her bottom lip. Everyone had been through so much, and we were all coping in so many different ways. I reached a hand toward her.

She dropped the backpack at my feet and took a step back.

“There’s more in the back of my digger, and there’s still more on the other floors of the core-scraper.” She pointed at the backpack. “This is what I’m capable of. No more practices needed. We can fight and fight now. Finn, Mandeep, Jimmi, and you and me . . . We are ready.”

“Let’s stick to the raiding plan for now,” I said.

“Yes, sir. If you say so, sir.”

I pulled my hand back. “Thank you,” I said finally. She turned and began to walk away when I added, “Thank you, Elena.”

She stopped but didn’t look at me.

“You’re welcome,
Nichols
.”

Then she turned her head slightly, and I saluted.

She smiled briefly, then turned back and walked away.

But she had smiled.

Maybe there was hope after all.