The Lights of Bányzsa

If we slid off the switchback, we had four seconds of free fall before hitting the thermal sump.

I kept my right hand flat against the dashboard grab handle, my boot hovering an inch above the passenger floorboards. The cab rocked hard as Buggy Three took the first hairpin turn. Below us, the black drop swallowed the reach of our high beams.

"Ease the retarder," I said. "Don't touch the service brakes."

Dr. Lórágy Folyosy did not touch them. His knuckles were pale against the leather wrap of the steering wheel. A fresh streak of graphite grease marked the side of his jaw from our tire change forty minutes ago, dark against his skin. He sat straight, spine rigid as an iron surveying rod, driving an eight-ton rig down a forty-degree shale slope like he was sitting for an academic portrait.

"Retarder is at twenty percent," he said. His voice was clipped, steady. "Engine speed is holding at eleven hundred."

"Give it twenty-five. The wet slate wants to throw the tail out."

He nudged the brass lever on the steering column. The transmission groaned under the cab, a deep planetary grind that vibrated through my boot soles and straight up my shins. The rear six wheels bit into the loose scree. The rig slowed by two miles an hour.

"Better," I muttered.

"I am aware," he said.

A jolt tossed us sideways as the left front tire climbed a basalt ridge. Lórágy did not flinch. He adjusted the steering three degrees left, caught the slide before the rear bogies drifted, and leveled the nose.

He was getting good at this. Too good for a man who spent his life pressing subterranean ferns into glass slides.

My shoulder brushed his bicep on the rebound. Through the heavy canvas of his field jacket, the heat came off him in waves. The cab was cold, smelling of damp limestone and the sharp copper tang of the radiator vent, but between our seats the air felt crowded.

I looked away, fixing my eyes on the dark canyon wall.

"Two more turns," I said. "Then the grade levels out onto the Bányzsa shelf."

From the jump seat behind us, Director Margit Ványzsa shifted her boots against the floor grating. She had spent the last two hours clutching her survey binder to her ribs, staring at the back of Lórágy's neck like she wanted to bore a hole through his skull with her eyes.

"We are forty minutes behind schedule, Dr. Folyosy," Margit said. Her tone was smooth, poison poured over cold zinc. "My advance drilling crew reached Bányzsa two hours ago. They are already preparing the core samplers for the lower vent."

Lórágy did not turn his head. "Your crew did not stop to replace a slashed sidewall in Sector Nine, Director. Nor did they have to dodge a ceiling collapse your seismic charges nearly triggered."

"My charges would have cleared the main gallery," she countered.

"Your charges would have buried us under two thousand tons of basalt," I said without looking back. "Sit on your hands, Margit. The driver is working."

Margit made a quiet, sharp hiss through her teeth, but she shut her mouth.

I checked the side mirror. The yellow spotter beam cut through the descending fog. The air outside the sealed cab was turning hazy, thick with pale orange spore drifts that clung to the windshield glass like pollen on wet paint. The concentration was climbing. We were three hundred feet above the floor of the Bányzsa shelf, right at the thermal boundary where the hot vent air met the cold mountain downdrafts.

Lórágy glanced at the exterior pressure gauge mounted by his left knee.

"Spore count is rising," he noted. "Point-zero-eight milligrams per cubic meter."

"Still breathable through standard masks," I said. "For another hour. Once the thermal vents cycle at eighteen hundred, the floor of the shelf turns into a soup."

"Then we make the depot before the cycle."

"Look ahead," I said, pointing through the wiper arc. "There's the shelf cut."

The switchback flattened out. Buggy Three rolled off the fractured shale and onto a solid ledge of leveled granite, forty feet wide, bordered by a rusted iron guardrail.

Two hundred yards ahead, cutting through the amber gloom of the cavern vault, a cluster of high-pressure sodium lights burned bright yellow.

Bányzsa Outpost.

The station was built directly into the base of a sheer granite buttress. It looked like an armored bunker welded onto the mountain: corrugated steel walls three stories high, heavy exterior air ducts wrapped in canvas insulation, and a wide concrete apron leading to Docking Bay Alpha.

"Look at that," Lórágy murmured.

"Don't celebrate yet," I said. "Check the beacons."

Above the primary roll-up blast doors of Bay Alpha, two heavy rotating strobes flashed blood-red against the damp concrete.

The bay doors were down. The heavy hydraulic locking pins were fully extended, their steel shafts gleaming with fresh grease in the beam of our spotlights.

Lórágy slowed the buggy to a crawl. He brought the rig to a halt twenty paces from the apron edge and pulled the handbrake lever. The hiss of the air line cut through the quiet cab.

"Why is the primary bay sealed?" he asked.

"It shouldn't be," I said. "Bányzsa is a mandatory transit depot. The bay is supposed to remain pressurized and unlocked for incoming convoys until eighteen hundred."

Margit unbuckled her jump-seat harness with a sharp snap.

"My advance crew arrived first," she said, leaning between our front seats. Her smile was thin, razor-edged. "Under Section Four of the Shared Expedition Protocol, whichever division establishes initial physical control over a forward depot holds administrative priority over bay access and atmospheric reserves."

Lórágy stiffened. He turned around in his seat, his dark eyes narrowing on her.

"Section Four applies only during declared seismic emergencies, Margit. You cannot lock us out on an open shelf."

"The shelf spore density is currently classified as an ambient biohazard," Margit replied smoothly. She tapped her lapel, where an orange consortium clearance pass hung from a brass chain. "My foreman exercised emergency discretion to safeguard our drilling rigs and biological cultures. If your Bio-Extraction team wishes to dock Buggy Three inside the main pressurization chamber, you will sign over sixty percent of your rebreather reserves to the Geo-Stabilization division."

Lórágy's jaw set hard. A muscle jumped along his cheek.

"That would leave my researchers with sixteen hours of air in the lower breach," he said. "It is a death sentence."

"It is resource optimization," Margit said.

Before Lórágy could reply, Margit hit the rear cab release latch. The side door popped open with a heavy thud of pressurized gaskets.

"Margit, stay in the vehicle!" Lórágy snapped.

She did not listen. She slipped through the door onto the steel running board, her canvas parka pulled tight around her throat, respirator already clamped over her mouth and nose. She pulled a handheld electronic transponder from her coat pocket, keyed a four-digit code, and held it toward the small pedestrian airlock thirty feet to the right of the locked blast doors.

A green light flashed on the pedestrian hatch. The steel door slid open two feet. Margit stepped inside the airlock vestibule, turned to face us through the reinforced glass port, and hit the manual seal.

The heavy steel door slammed shut behind her.

The lock indicator above the pedestrian door turned solid red.