The Ghost Mine Read online

  A Science Fiction/Horror Novel

  Published by

  www.splickety.com

  The Ghost Mine

  Published by

  Splickety Publishing Group, Inc.

  www.splickety.com

  ISBN 978-1-942462-12-5

  Copyright © 2018 by Ben Wolf, Inc. All rights reserved.

  www.benwolf.com

  Cover design by Kirk DouPonce of DogEared Design

  www.dogeareddesign.com

  Available in print and ebook format on amazon.com.

  Contact Ben Wolf directly at [email protected] for signed copies and to schedule author appearances and speaking events.

  All rights reserved. Non-commercial interests may reproduce portions of this book without the express written permission of the author, provided the text does not exceed 500 words. For longer quotations or commercial concerns, please contact the author via email at [email protected].

  Commercial interests: No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are all products of the author's imagination or are used for fictional purposes. Any mentioned brand names, places, and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, bear no association with the author or the publisher, and are used for fictional purposes only. Any similarities to individuals living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wolf, Ben

  Ghost Mine, The/ Ben Wolf 1st ed.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Created with Vellum

  Table of Contents

  Endorsements

  Content Advisory

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for The Ghost Mine

  "Wow! The Ghost Mine is a phenomenal story. Ben Wolf excels at so many elements of storytelling, it’s impossible to identify a single gem:

  Richly developed characters; a fascinating and detailed future of machine-human hybrids and deep-space mining operations; an intriguing mystery; shocking-yet-believable twists; breakneck action; and more than a few leave-the-lights-on/eye-watering moments of sheer terror.

  Now imagine all this in the hands of a deft wordsmith. Man!

  Think Aliens meets Ender’s Game meets Rambo. Taut, vivid, and captivating, The Ghost Mine will leave you breathlessly bandaging paper cuts from flipping the pages so fast. This one’s a definite winner."

  - Robert Liparulo, bestselling author of the Immortal Files and the Dreamhouse Kings series

  "A snappy, fun wild ride from hell! Wolf’s knock-out novel brings all the sci-fi intensity of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies together with a Michael Crichton style thriller. When space colonization goes wrong in The Ghost Mine, it means a long, nail-biting night of sheer reading delight! Positively unputdownable!"

  - Brandon Barr, USA Today Bestseller, author of the Song of the World Series

  "The Ghost Mine is dark and dangerous—sci-fi horror in the vein of Aliens and The Thing. If you like intense pressure, hazardous conditions, and a deposit of gore and treachery, then grab your pickax and a light and dig right in.”

  - Kerry Nietz, award-winning author of Frayed and Amish Vampires in Space

  "A brilliantly blended story of sci-fi and horror with heart, romance, and drama that'll keep you turning pages until the very end.”

  - Daniel Kuhnley, author of Dark Lament

  "Fans of Aliens, line up—The Ghost Mine is a chilling sci-fi thriller that leaves you wishing you had a plasma repeater ready for whatever horror comes ripping out of the pages."

  - Steve Rzasa, award-winning science fiction author

  "Ben Wolf's latest novel, The Ghost Mine, is a Dantesque trip into hell, complete with demons, spirits, and plenty of evil. If you enjoy tales of fending off fiends in tight, underground places, then jump into this novel.”

  - Kyle Pratt, science fiction author

  “The Ghost Mine is one enthralling, edge-of-your-seat ride. Ben Wolf has combined the environment of mining with that of science fiction, space travel and high tech weapons. It is a successful marriage. You cannot put this novel down.”

  - Peter Younghusband, Reviews by Peter

  “The Ghost Mine is a thrill-a-minute roller coaster, only through a far off space mine that will most likely kill you rather than let you finish the ride.

  Okay, so readers will survive the tale, but your expectations will be shredded with plot twists, action, betrayal, and probably lots of death.

  Ben Wolf has crafted an entertaining journey into darkness. Don't miss this one!”

  - Jason Joyner, author of the Rise of the Anointed series

  “Not only is Ben Wolf a handsome man, but he’s a damn good writer as well!”

  - Kirk DouPonce, Future Presidential Candidate

  This book is dedicated to all the

  monstrous people in my life.

  CONTENT ADVISORY

  The Ghost Mine is an “R-rated” book. It contains profanity, gore, sci-fi violence, horrifying situations, and minimal non-sexual nudity.

  It’s scary, too, so read it with the lights on.

  1

  Andridge Copalion Mine 1134

  Sector 6

  0900/2700 Hours

  “Do this wrong, and you will put the whole operation at risk.” Etya Stielbard observed the hundred or so workers down in the mine from her box-shaped office. It loomed fifty feet over them and protruded into the mine by about thirty feet.

  But she was speaking to one of them in particular.

  Mark Brown, her fiancé, kept drilling, but he turned his head toward her and frowned. “Do you always have to be so melodramatic?”

  Etya smiled. Mark always had a way of making her smile. “I am not being melodramatic. I am being serious. Be careful.”

  Mark shook his head. It reminded Etya of those stupid bobble-head figurines he kept on the mantel by his bed, and she smiled again.

  “We’re fine, Etya.”

  “That is Doctor Stielbard to you, Mark.”

  “Well, then it’s Foreman Brown to you.”

  “Scans show erratic radiation levels.”

  “They’re well within a safe range, Etya.”

  She sighed. As much as he made her smile, sometimes he also made her want to smack him. “Doctor Stielbard.”

  “Like I said, they’re fine.” Mark pulled his left arm back, and the robotic appendage attached to his mech suit retracted with it. Many of the
miners around him wore comparable suits, each composed of a network of wires, hoses, and casings supported by a lightweight alloy skeleton.

  Mark wielded an old-fashioned drill bit on the left arm of his mech suit and a dozer-style scoop on his right. Despite Etya’s prodding, Mark insisted on using the archaic versions of the advanced tools the other miners used. He’d started using them years ago in one of Andridge’s other mines on Omiris-8 and hadn’t switched back since.

  Etya touched a holographic image projected onto the glass window in front of her. It turned from green to red, then back again, signaling that she’d sent the image to Mark’s suit. “The seismograph is also indicating potential for increased tremors in this sector.”

  Down below, the green image blinked onto the clear protective shield that framed the enclosure around Mark’s head. It disappeared just as quickly. He’d hardly looked at it.

  Etya frowned. “Perhaps we should—”

  “Please, Doctor Stielbard. We’re fine.” Mark’s drill revved, and he extended it into the crevice below him again. Chips of dark blue rock pelted his protective shield and bounced off.

  “What is the point of having me onsite if you refuse to heed my warnings?” Etya asked.

  Mark grinned, but he didn’t stop drilling. “Your accent really sharpens when you’re angry.”

  Etya rolled her eyes.

  “Um… you guys know we can hear everything you’re saying, right?” Gruden, another miner operating a mech suit, turned toward them both. Unlike Mark, he used a class 4 purdonic laser to do his drilling.

  “Do not complain to me.” Etya folded her arms and nodded toward Mark. “He is the culprit.”

  Gruden huffed. “I don’t care whose fault it is. Keep your pillow-talk to yourselves.”

  “Just focus on your drilling, Gruden,” Mark said. “Last time you lost your focus, you nearly turned Omar into a eunuch.”

  Etya failed to stifle a laugh, and a round of guffaws sounded over the comms. Mark looked up at her, and their eyes met.

  She’d lucked out. Mark was handsome, despite the jagged scar that ran down the right side of his face. She loved his eyes the most. They were dark blue like the rocks from which they now mined copalion, the most efficient—and most volatile—energy source known to the galaxy.

  But unlike the blue rock that made up this godforsaken planet, Mark’s eyes housed his soul—vibrant, rebellious, and enrapturing. They’d captivated Etya the moment she first saw them. Now only his eyes held her attention more than the glimmering diamond on her ring finger.

  She smiled.

  “I think I need therapy for that, man,” Omar said. He and two others not wearing mech suits crouched near an electrical panel in the leftmost corner of the cavern.

  Omar headed the mine’s maintenance team, and today was his second day back on the job thanks to Gruden’s laser and recovering from the subsequent skin graft on his inner thigh.

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Gruden pointed his laser at the crevice before him, and it flared to life with a beam of harsh yellow light.

  Gruden’s laser melted the rock into glowing purple lava, and his left mech arm scooped it out with a compressed energy shield that resembled a large, misshapen spoon made of green light. He piled the molten rock onto a nearby mound of dark blue, and it oozed down the sides and slowly hardened.

  “When’s lunch?” Harding’s mech straightened up with a severe quiver. The mechs were made for heavy labor, but Harding exceeded the maximum operator weight by at least fifty pounds.

  Etya hadn’t yet seen it, but Mark had once described how it took two men to cram Harding into his mech every morning.

  “Forty-two minutes from now,” Jeffries replied. When Gruden eyed him, Jeffries shrugged. “What? I may be a third of Harding’s size, but I’m just as hungry.”

  A few more chuckles sounded over the comms, and Etya shook her head. She opened her mouth to say something snide, but a red flicker on the glass in front of her stole her words.

  “Mark, the sensors are fritzing.”

  He kept drilling. “Which ones?”

  “The seis—”

  A tremor rocked the cavern, and Etya steadied herself on the computer console, but as quickly as the shaking started, it subsided.

  “The seismograph?” Mark asked.

  “How did you guess?”

  “I know a good geologist.”

  Etya smiled again. “According to protocol, we are supposed to—”

  Another tremor began, this one slower as it built to a full quake. The men crouched in their mechs to lower their centers of gravity, part of the protocol Etya had started to cite. Upright mechs on shaky ground often meant broken mechs on their sides or backs later on.

  The other hundred or so miners in the sector leaned against walls or the numerous support beams that framed the cavern or also crouched and covered their heads in case of falling rocks.

  Etya gripped the computer console again to keep upright, but she eventually had to crouch as well to keep from falling over. The quake continued for close to a minute.

  When the trembling finally ceased, Etya slowly stood. “That is two in a row, and the second exceeded any tremors we have registered so far. According to company protocol, we need to evacuate the area until we can ascertain what is causing the seismic activity.”

  “Woohoo! Rock-surfing, then an early lunch.” Jeffries’s mech nudged Harding’s mech with one of its alloy arms, and they both laughed.

  Mark’s mech straightened up, and he nodded and relayed the order. The miners began filing toward the doors down and to the left of Etya’s glass office. One of them tapped the screen on the access terminal adjacent to it, but nothing happened.

  Mark looked up toward the office. “Terminal’s not working. Open the blast doors, Etya?”

  She didn’t bother correcting him this time. When she tapped the screen to disengage the door locks, it beeped in the negative and displayed an error message.

  “Etya? The doors?”

  “I am trying.” She tapped it again and again, but the same error message appeared each time. “The computer keeps generating an error. The doors will not open.”

  “What’s the error code?”

  Etya adjusted her glasses. “624B-CON. Hold on a second. I will look it up.”

  “Don’t bother. It’s a containment breach. Something’s wrong with the air system. The quakes must’ve knocked something loose.” He looked up at the enormous turbines embedded in the cavern ceiling.

  Etya followed his gaze. The turbines had stopped spinning.

  The turbines ventilated excess noxious gases from the sector and pumped a purified blend of nitrogen, oxygen, and a touch of hydrogen in to replace them. No turbines spinning meant a potentially harmful buildup of toxic gases, although in a cavern this size it would take awhile to cause anyone any serious harm.

  Murmurs spread among the gathering miners, but Mark stepped before them with his mech hands raised.

  “Take it easy, everyone,” he said. “We’ve trained for this scenario. We have plenty of time before the gases in here can accumulate to harmful levels, so I want all the mechless miners to calmly head to the nearest safety lockers and grab a filtration mask. Put them on, and then we’ll work on getting out of here.”

  The miners formed orderly lines leading to the four safety lockers in the cavern and began extracting transparent filtration masks.

  In theory, Etya should’ve been safe from the gas. A separate air processor provided ventilation, but she put on a mask anyway. Mark would’ve insisted. It sealed to her face, pressurized, and clouded slightly with her first shaky exhale.

  “Etya, can you run an override?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I can try.”

  “Good. Work on it.” Mark turned to the mechs while Etya typed her override code into the system. “Power down your mechs and get masks on. They should have plenty of charge, but I’d rather conserve power in case we need them later on. I’ll stay in mine
for the time being, but I need one of you to toss me a mask.”

  Gruden powered down his mech first, and the others followed suit until all of them stood free of their alloy monsters.

  Mark’s protective shield opened, and he released the bindings on his left arm. The mech’s left arm lowered to his side, limp.

  Gruden tossed a mask to Mark, who caught it and secured it to his face. Mark closed his shield and strapped his arm into the mech again.

  The computer beeped in the negative when Etya confirmed her override code. She frowned and entered it again. As a department head, her code could access just about everything in the mine. Perhaps she’d mistyped it.

  “Any luck, Etya?” Mark asked.

  “Not yet. I’m trying again.” She typed the last digit of her code onto the screen and tapped the “Confirm” button on the glass. It again declined her code. “The computer is rejecting my code.”