I've been in the mines for three years. You start at thirteen. Old enough to screw, old enough to crew. At least that's what Uncle Narol said. Except I didn't get married till six months back, so I don't know why he said it. Eo dances through my thoughts as I peer into my control display and slip the clawDrill's fingers around a fresh vein. Eo. Sometimes it's difficult to think of her as anything but what we used to call her as children. Little Eo—a tiny girl hidden beneath a mane of red. Red like the rock around me, not true red, rust-red. Red like our home, like Mars. Eo is sixteen too. And she may be like me—from a clan of Red earth diggers, a clan of song and dance and soil—but she could be made from air, from the ether that binds the stars in a patchwork. Not that I've ever seen stars. No Red from the mining colonies sees the stars. Little Eo. They wanted to marry her off when she turned fourteen, like all girls of the clans. But she took the short rations and waited for me to reach sixteen, wedAge for men, before slipping that cord around her finger. She said she knew we'd marry since we were children. I didn't. "Hold. Hold. Hold!" Uncle Narol snaps over the comm channel. "Darrow, hold, boy!" My fingers freeze. He's high above with the rest of them, watching my progress on his head unit. "What's the burn?" I ask, annoyed. I don't like being interrupted. "What's the burn, the little Helldiver asks." Old Barlow chuckles. "Gas pocket, that's what," Narol snaps. He's the headTalk for our two-hundred-plus crew. "Hold. Calling a scanCrew to check the particulars before you blow us all to hell." "That gas pocket? It's a tiny one," I say. "More like a gas pimple. I can manage it." "A year on the drill and he thinks he knows his head from his hole! Poor little pissant," old Barlow adds dryly. "Remember the words of our golden leader. Patience and obedience, young one. Patience is the better part of valor. And obedience the better part of humanity. Listen to your elders." I roll my eyes at the epigram. If the elders could do what I can, maybe listening would have its merits. But they are slow in hand and mind. Sometimes I feel like they want me to be just the same, especially my uncle. "I'm on a tear," I say. "If you think there's a gas pocket, I can just hop down and handscan it. Easy. No dilldally." They'll preach caution. As if caution has ever helped them. We haven't won a Laurel in ages. "Want to make Eo a widow?" Barlow laughs, voice crackling with static. "Okay by me. She is a pretty little thing. Drill into that pocket and leave her to me. Old and fat I be, but my drill still digs a dent." A chorus of laughter comes from the two hundred drillers above. My knuckles turn white as I grip the controls. "Listen to Uncle Narol, Darrow. Better to back off till we can get a reading," my brother Kieran adds. He's three years older. Makes him think he's a sage, that he knows more. He just knows caution. "There'll be time." "Time? Hell, it'll take hours," I snap. They're all against me in this. They're all wrong and slow and don't understand that the Laurel is only a bold move away. More, they doubt me. "You are being a coward, Narol." Silence on the other end of the line. Calling a man a coward—not a good way to get his cooperation. Shouldn't have said it.
