Page 4 of Fated to the Dragon Alien

Cerani didn’t. Not right away. She turned her gaze to the lift again, watching the empty shaft where the mine yawned below.

Something had shifted. Not just in the rock.

She didn’t know what the controller had seen when he looked at her. Just that it hadn’t felt like routine.

And she no longer believed the Axis did anything without reason.

Whatever this was—they weren’t done with her yet.

TWO

Stavian

Stavian stood in the central command center. It was on the surface level, where transport ships came and went. He gripped the edges of his console as he watched the diagnostic report glitch once, then blink green across the mine schematics. It was too fast. Scan incomplete. He knew the timing. Knew the mines.

Telren Tok’ca, a short Grakian female and an Axis-issued medic, tapped her own wrist panel and announced, “Sweep’s done. No critical destabilization. Reopen tunnels and resume standard rotation.”

“Don’t reopen them,” Stavian said. He pointed to the flashing data feed. “The sweep only covered sectors A through D. You skipped the lower shafts. We had tremors across E levels.”

Telren shrugged without looking at him. “They’re not registering on critical sensors.”

“Because you’re not running a full sweep.”

“We don’t have time for another one. Your directives say to maintain output. You want to keep your rank or flag the entire lot for replacement?”

Stavian narrowed his eyes. “I want the truth before I send people back underground.”

“They’re not people,” Telren said, turning toward the main lift. Her white uniform fluttered over her slim frame, the Axis emblem sharp against her collar. “They’re convicts conscripted to mine as part of their sentences. Replaceable. We have fresh units scheduled for intake—ten cycles out. You’ll barely feel the gap.”

Stavian’s chest pulled tight. “That’s your solution? Let them die off and send the next batch in, then the next? We will run out of Axis convicts.”

“No, we won’t,” she replied without a pause. “If you’re this worried about miner health, maybe you took the wrong position.” Telren’s voice had the bored edge of someone who’d been stationed too long. “Suit diagnostics are mostly clear. Breathers reset. They’ll be fine.”

“They aren’t fine,” Stavian snapped. “Half of them can barely remain upright. You didn’t even run a secondary toxin check on the EP valves. I watched a prisoner called Stelrak collapse out of rotation last shift and be taken offline. His mask was leaking for cycles, and he wasn’t flagged. How much equipment will fail before the next order of suits arrive?”

Telren finally turned to face him. For a second, something possibly real passed through the older female’s eyes. But then it vanished, replaced by that same tired detachment. “You know the miners by their names and not their designations?”

“Some,” Stavian explained. “It’s my job as the controller of this facility to know who is here.”

Telren shook her head. “Orders to commence work as soon as possible came from Axis Central. You’re welcome to file a review if you want to wait two dozen cycles for a reply.”

Stavian slammed the side of the diagnostic terminal with his bare hand. “All I want is for the miners I have to remain alive,”he said. “Breathing. Standing upright. Not rotting in a tunnel while some bureaucrat checks boxes three systems away.”

Telren folded her arms. “You’re coddling these miners. If they hadn’t committed felonies in Axis-controlled systems, they wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s no excuse.” Stavian took a step forward. “You cut the diagnostics short and now you want to dump these workers into a shaft without a clearance sweep because you don’t want to fall behind schedule.”

Telren raised both brows. “It’s not my job to care. It’s not yours, either, Controller. And you’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

Stavian stared at her. “I’m not interested in easy. I’m interested in keeping this facility stable, which doesn’t happen if half the workforce dies.”

“You made quota last cycle,” Telren said. “By Axis standards, that’s a success.”

“By Axis standards, it’s also legal to harvest credit from corpses.”

Telren snorted. “What exactly do you want, Stavian?” she asked, switching to his name. “A cease rotation order? For what? A handful of wheezes and some low oxygen alarms? They’ve lasted longer in worse air and you know it.”

“I want a toxin panel run on every suit that came out of tunnel set E within the last cycle,” Stavian said. “I want a med review of all flagged miners.”

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