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The technicians who worked alongside Bruit in the control station were fond of listening to recorded music, but the music could scarcely be heard over the unrelenting drone of enormous drilling machines, the low bellowing of the lift beasts, and the roar of departing shuttles.

The walls of the control station were made of transparisteel, thick as a finger, whose triple-glazed panels were supposed to keep out the ore dust but never did. Fine as clay, the resinous dust seeped through the smallest openings and filmed everything. As hard as he tried, Bruit could never get the stuff off him, not in water showers or sonic baths. He smelled it everywhere he went, he tasted it in the food served up in the company restaurants, and sometimes it infiltrated his dreams. So pervasive was the lommite dust that, from space, Dorvalla appeared to be girdled by a white band.

Fortunately, everyone within a hundred kilometers of Lommite Limited’s operation was in the same predicament—miners, shopkeepers, the beings who tended the cantina bars. But what should have been just one big happy lommite family wasn’t. The recurrent incidents of sabotage had fostered an atmosphere of wariness and distrust, even among laborers who worked shoulder to shoulder in the pits.

“Group Two shuttles are loaded and ready for launch, Chief,” one of the human technicians reported.

Bruit directed his gaze to the droid-guided, mechanized transports that were responsible for ferrying the lommite up the gravity well. In high orbit the payloads were transferred to LL’s flotilla of barges, which conveyed the unrefined ore to manufacturing worlds along the Rimma Trade Route and occasionally to the distant Core.

“Sound the warning,” Bruit said.

The technician flipped a series of switches on the console, and loudspeakers began to hoot. Miners and maintenance droids moved away from the launch zone. Bruit looked at the screens that displayed close-up views of the shuttles. He studied them carefully, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

“Launch zone is vacated,” the same technician updated. “Shuttles are standing by for liftoff.”

Bruit nodded. “Issue the go-to.”

It was a routine that would be repeated a dozen times before Bruit’s workday concluded, typically long past sunset.

The eight unpiloted craft rose from the ground on repulsorlift power, pirouetting and bringing their blunt noses around to the southwest. The air beneath them rippled with heat. When the shuttles were fifty meters above the ground, their sublight engines engaged, flaring blue, rocketing the ships high into the dust-filled sky.

The ground shook slightly, and Bruit could feel a reassuring rumble in his bones. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For the next hour, he could relax somewhat. He had turned from the view of the launch zone when his bones and his ears alerted him to a shift in the roaring sound, a slight drop in volume that shouldn’t have occurred.

Sudden apprehension tugged at him. His forehead and palms broke an icy sweat. He whirled and pressed his face to the south-facing transparisteel panel. High in the sky he could see two of the shuttles beginning to diverge from course, their vapor trails curving away from the straight-line ascent of the rest of the group.

“Fourteen and sixteen,” the technician affirmed. “I’m trying to shut down the sublights and convert them back over to repulsorlift. No response. They’re accelerating!”

Bruit kept his eyes glued to the sky. “Give me a heading.”

“Back at us!”

Bruit ran his hand over his forehead. “Enable the self-destructs.”

The technician’s fingers flew across the console. “No response.”

“Employ the emergency override.”

“Still no response. The overrides have been disabled.”

Bruit cursed loudly. “Vector update.”

“They’re aimed directly for the Castle.”

Bruit glanced at the indicated tor. It was one of the largest of the mines, so named for the natural spires that graced its western and southern faces.

“Order an evacuation. Highest priority.”

Sirens shrieked in the distance. Within moments,