One Last Dream

20. Tipping of the Scales

Kyle sighed. He had had an inkling at first. His two assigned roommates had appeared a bit too interested in being chums with him. He brushed it off at first due to his new celebrity status, but there always seemed to be at least one of them with him at all times —which had felt very odd to him. But it was very obvious now. They were meant to keep an eye on him. Whether to keep him safe or restrict his actions... or even both, he didn't know. Who put them up to it? The governess? The cult?

He didn't like this one bit.

He stepped through the checkpoint and then, after a quick pat down, followed Oliver to meet their new manager.

***

Captain Zhen Huang of the northeastern excavation tunnel was a polarizing man. At six feet tall he made for a rather imposing figure made even more so by his forceful way of speaking. He was quick to insults and anger but was just as quick to apologize and recognize fault. By now most of those working under him knew how to deal with him. But the main reason he was Captain was that he knew the ins and outs of each of those working under him. Love him or hate him, he understood people and how they worked.

"Mr. Liang!" Inspector Chen heard the captain bark as they stepped off a transport car into one of the drill mech hubs. "That Unit 019... Why hasn't it been sent for repairs? I thought I told Chan to do it yesterday?"

"Oh? I thought we did send it out," the manager peered down at his tablet. "It says here it's already gone and come back. It was just a minor motor failure in one of the arms."

"Oh is it now?" the captain let out a guffaw, "Those guys sure do work fast don't they? Good thing you've got everything all organized. Would've been pretty awkward if we had sent it out again wouldn't it. BAHAHAHAH!" he let out another hearty laugh. "Let me tell ya, Inspector, Mr. Liang here's damn good. Anything comes up, I fully recommend this guy for a promotion."

"Come now, sir, I'm just doing my job," Mr. Liang said, holding his arms behind his back formally.

"Lookit this guy! That's what I'm talkin' about!" Captain Huang said, clapping the guy roughly on his shoulder almost knocking him over. "Alright what've we got? What's been going on in these tunnels? I saw that that iron node's been going strong, shipments have been up 10% since last month!"

Inspector Chen was in the process of evaluating the tunnels as preparation for their new plans to try to outrun the Rust. The main entrances for the tunnels were located on floor 48 but due to the nature of the projects, they could extend outwards and end up far below that of floor 50. There were three major tunnels: the northwest, southern and eastern tunnels. Each of these branched out into further smaller tunnels which had a manager in charge of each. Her main goal these next few weeks was to see how much resources they would be able to extract and which tunnels had the potential to form a longer term living area.

The knowledge of the Rust spreading in was still top secret, known only to the nobles and a few key figures. Not even the Captains in charge of the different departments knew the truth –including the interim Enforcement Chief.

As they rode through one of the five main tunnels of the northwest mining operation on the transport rails, the manager rattled off numbers: tons of iron, copper, even water being extracted. Alongside this was a rough number of workers they had available, number of accidents, casualties, recruitment, and training efforts. Wrapping this up was the equipment. The individual driller mechs were one thing, but for the deepest darkest operations they utilized the massive Crust Churners. Each of these was easily twice the size of a four bedroom suburban house.

These massive behemoths were the same ones that they had used to dig the foundations of the underground bunker they resided in currently. They had ten in total, each requiring constant maintenance due to the massive amount of work they put out.