Page 85 of Protected By the Convicts
Chapter Twenty
VAUGHN
Vaughn pushed his way past the men clogging the entrance to Mine 12. It was the fifth mine he’d reported to since first shift. He was well into third shift and starting to drag, but he couldn’t stop, not when so many miners were getting sick.
The ventilation equipment had failed in two mines, leaving several miners ill from zurlite dust. Ten had to be sent to the med-center from Mine 23 alone, where the miners had been carried out unconscious or disoriented. He had no idea how many miners Dr. Linzer was treating over in Mine 30.
“Ventilation’s not working,” said Talbert, the new manager for the mine. “I put in a call to Satterley yesterday when we first started having issues, but he never replied. The damn thing finally stopped altogether today, before we could sound the alarms and get the men out from the lower levels. And now the damn engineer’s nowhere to be found. Pearson’s heading over in his place, but he’s not as good as Satterley.”
Vaughn started working on the first of the six men laid out on the ground. The blood monitor showed his blood oxygen level at 52 mm Hg, too low. Vaughn gave the man a shot of specially developed nanites to start scrubbing the man’s blood and improve the oxygen levels. The nanites were slow, but they’d make him stable for transport to the med-center where he’d need a full oxygen scrub and lung assessment. Vaughn hoped the man didn’t inhale too much zurlite dust as the last batch of men had. Clearing zurlite from a man’s lungs was long and arduous, not to mention painful for the patient.
“Satterley’s your unit mate, isn’t he?” Talbert asked. “He doesn’t talk much, but he took a swing at a miner a few days ago for talking dirty about a female. Her name was Hannah, I believe. I haven’t even seen any females here except the first batch that arrived yesterday.”
Talbert was one of the managers who Foley brought in from another mining colony. The man was competent enough, but he talked too much.
“Yes, they’re in my unit,” Vaughn said, hoping the man would shut up. He didn’t want to think about Hannah, especially when he needed to focus on triage. He could do nothing to help Hannah, and that was killing him, but he could save these men. He had to focus on that, and that alone, or he’d fall apart. His work was the only thing keeping him going at this point.
Vaughn moved onto the next man. Talbert followed.
“I hear she left. Level 5. Bad luck there.”
“I need to focus, Manager,” Vaughn said, keeping his tone neutral.
Talbert slapped him on the back. “Understood. But tell that engineer of yours he better get his ass down to these mines and check the ventilation out. For all my mines. Eleven through fifteen. You prisoners aren’t the only ones with quotas. I can’t afford to keep losing workers to ventilation breakdowns. And if anyone dies or zurlite production drops below my quota, I’m turning him in.”
“I’ll relay the message, Manager,” Vaughn said as he injected the next man with blood nanites. From the cursory examination, Vaughn concluded that all the men had zurlite poisoning. Ren better have a good excuse for neglecting notice of a possible problem, especially with the ventilation.
* * *
A hand shook Vaughn awake.“Leave me alone,” he said. He’d been dreaming about her, about the woman who’d brought meaning to his life.
“Get up,” Sersie said, shaking Vaughn’s shoulder again. “Ren’s been spotted over by the water treatment plant.”
“Let me sleep. We’ll talk to him when he’s done with whatever he’s fixing.”
Sersie grabbed Vaughn and pulled him off the bed. Vaughn’s eyes flew open the moment he struck the floor.
“What the fuck, Sersie!”
“He’s not fixing anything. He’s standing on one of the footbridges over the river. They think he might jump.”
“Fuck!” Vaughn shot up and pulled his clothing on. He shoved his boots on and was out the door in seconds, following behind Sersie. “What time is it?” he asked as the raced through the jungle.
Sersie pulled out his datapad to check. “Second shift is about to start.”
Vaughn was too tired to be dealing with suicidal men, and he was the last one to talk Ren down, considering there was nothing he could say to the man that would change reality. Hannah was gone. They all had to accept the fact that she wasn’t coming back. No one left Veenith.
They reached the footbridge. The only ones there were two maintenance workers clearing vines from the bridge.
“Did he jump?” Sersie asked.
“You mean the engineer that was here? No, he left a few minutes ago. Toward the rail line.”
“Which stop?”
“That’s just it. He didn’t head north or west. Rather, northwest, where there’s nothing but jungle and track.”
Ten minutes later, they found Ren sitting on the rail line in the middle of the jungle. He cradled a canteen as he sat there cross-legged and mumbling. Blue eyes dragged upward to Vaughn and then Sersie with a hint of recognition on his face turning to disgust.
