They laughed at that, jabbing each other in the ribs before muscling the heavy pneumatic hammer off of its platform and easing it down onto the broken rock on the tunnel floor.

Ghosh had an amused look on his face.

“What?” Kalico asked. She stepped aside so Jin and Masters could maneuver the bulky hammer past. It was a makeshift thing that they’d had Tyrel Lawson up in Port Authority cobble together out of parts scavenged from who knew where. Water dripped and spattered on her helmet as she squinted against the bright lights to inspect the mazework of cracks crisscrossing the ceiling.

Ghosh waited until the two miners were out of hearing. “Long way from Turalon, aren’t we?” A beat. “Listening to you bantering with the guys, I wonder if we’re even the same people.”

“A long way.” Kalico agreed, stepping forward to get a better look at the metallic shine that reflected from the cracked stone: gold, silver, lead, antimony, maybe some copper, and a host of the rare Earth elements like rhodium, beryllium, scandiums and the like. Those took a better eye than hers to identify with the casual glance. “Why do you bring that up?”

Ghosh indicated the departing miners with a jerk of his head. “They’d crawl through hell for you, you know. We all would. Watching you just now, you’re a million years away from that woman who came here on Turalon figuring she was going to whip the whole planet.”

She snorted in a half laugh. “Just because I’ll engage in ribald banter with my people?” A pause. “Yeah, I know. Donovan does that. Knocks you down, beats you into the mud, and waits to see if you’ll get up or be eaten by a slug.”

“No slug’s gotten you yet.”

Though the mobbers had come close once. The four-winged fliers traveled in colorful hoards; they had come within a couple of seconds of slicing Kalico into ribbons while she stood in the supposed safety of her fenced compound. She fought the urge to reach up and run a finger along the scar that ran the length of her jaw. It was one of many that crisscrossed her skin, this way and that, in a pattern not so different from the cracks in the shattered rock that surrounded her. The miracle was that she was still alive.

“Tell me about this.” She pointed at the face where water seeped from the colorful rock to drain down the stone in silver trickles. “We’re way behind schedule. By now we were supposed to be driving a manway and chute up into the Number One. The pump up there is running twenty-five hours a day, and the stope is filling. How far do we have to go?”