"Oh! You little mongrel, you dare bare your teeth at me?" Sister Jing, humiliated, lunged forward to give A Liang a savage beating. But the waiter behind the bar couldn't stand by and watch any longer; he grabbed her by the arm and said,
"Blood Rose came looking for you this morning. I forgot to tell you afterward. Hurry up and go see the boss in back. Stop making a scene here..."
Her eyes red and bloodshot, Sister Jing glared at A Liang and the others. "Ptooey—" She spat on the floor, turned, and headed deeper into the Ration Center.
Watching Sister Jing walk farther and farther away, the younger waiter let out a long sigh and helped A Yun to his feet. "Don't blame your mother. Phantom Mist has addled her mind. And not just her — in all of Huang'e City, is there a single addict who's normal?"
Then the waiter pulled out a wound spray and sprayed it over A Yun's injuries. That stuff stings badly when it hits an open cut; even grown men usually can't help groaning. A Yun didn't even furrow his brow. His face showed nothing at all.
A Liang knew A Yun's heart must be breaking, and was about to try to comfort him, but A Yun spoke first.
"A mother beating her son is only natural. I haven't seen my mother for seven years. Mother wants to give me all the love she owes me. You don't understand — a mother only ever beats her son for her son's own good..."
Looking at A Yun's solemn, earnest face, they all knew he wasn't being sarcastic and he wasn't confused; he meant every word. But the more sincerely he meant it, the more infuriating it was. Faced with that stubbornness of his, the three little friends felt anger boil up in their chests.
"Like we'd bother with you! Let your mother beat you to death, see if we care anymore!" With that, the three little ones turned and ran off.
After the waiter finished treating A Yun's wounds, he had no idea how to comfort him either, so he could only bring him some food and let him sit in the corner and rest.
While A Yun sat alone in the corner nursing his wounds, in the deepest part of the Ration Center, in a lavishly furnished room, Seven's mistress Blood Rose was happily savoring a fine wine that was a specialty of Three Seas Star. Sitting before her was Sister Jing, inhaling Phantom Mist vapor.
"So A Yun hasn't had any contact with Wuchang and the others for quite a while now?" Blood Rose suddenly asked.
Hearing the boss put the question to her, Sister Jing hastily switched off the Phantom Mist vial and said with a fawning smile, "That's right. Ever since he came back I've sounded him out a good many times. He always says he's not in touch with them anymore. I don't think he's lying..."
Blood Rose thought it over. "The way that boy is so attached to you, he shouldn't lie to you. But somehow I just can't feel easy about it."
"Oh, boss, set your mind at rest. A Yun told me Wuchang really was attacked by the cannibals — the wound on his shoulder is a bite from them, and by all accounts they drank a good deal of his blood too. Think about it: on all of Huang'e, who has ever gotten away from the cannibals alive?"
"Mm, you have a point. A Yun's story matches Poison Wasp Adu's, so it looks like neither of them is lying." Here Blood Rose suddenly smiled. "You want to keep this act going? These past few days I've watched you get addicted to playing the mother."
Sister Jing laughed at that, laughed so hard the powder caked on her face flaked off. "Oh, listen to you. A dumb kid like that — if I don't cheat him, someone else will just cheat him for free. You have no idea: the boy doesn't hit back and doesn't talk back, and he still earns me dozens of gold coins a day."
"You know I can't get through a day without three vials of Phantom Mist. Don't give me away — just let me enjoy a few more days of this..."
If A Yun had been there to hear it, he would likely have gone raving mad and killed this drug-addicted woman on the spot. So the whole thing around A Yun was a plot. The woman who called herself A Yun's mother was a fake through and through. And poor A Yun was still sunk in his fantasy of motherly love, unable to pull himself free.
Quite a while later, Sister Jing, full of Phantom Mist, came back out into the main hall. Perhaps the drug had soothed her mood; perhaps their conversation had left her with a trace of guilt. She actually walked over to A Yun's corner and sat down beside the sleeping boy.
"Silly boy, Mama was wrong to treat you that way just now. Mama really can't stand life without her Phantom Mist. Forgive me, all right..." Sister Jing's hand gently stroked the wound on A Yun's head — the wound she herself had just opened.
"Sleep now. Don't blame your mama, all right?"
Sister Jing gently stroked A Yun's head. In his sleep, tears kept running down A Yun's face. Maybe he was dreaming; maybe he had never been asleep at all. But one thing was certain: tomorrow A Yun would work even harder to steal things for his mother. So long as it bought his mother money for her drugs, A Yun would endure any hardship at all.
The night had grown deep. The sleepless aren't only A Yun and his "mother": within the three mining districts Seven controlled, a small mobilization meeting was under way.
Under the bright searchlights, gray volcanic ash drifted down like big goose-feather snowflakes. On this freezing night, at the bottom of the A332 pit, more than a hundred experienced miners had been gathered together by Seven. On paper they had been politely invited, but one look at the whips and stun batons in the thugs' hands and the pistols on their belts was enough to keep any of those miners from counting himself a guest.
"My good brothers, the newest of you has been with me two years, I'd reckon. Since we're all old acquaintances, let me ask you: what kind of man is Seven?" Seven asked from atop an alloy tool platform.
But Seven's question drew no response at all. Not one of the miners below knew how to answer. Seven wasn't embarrassed in the least; he pointed at his own nose and said,
"Loyalty — it's loyalty!" Seven declared shamelessly. "Here on Huang'e, you go counting up the bosses on the streets — if I, Seven, rank second for loyalty, who the hell dares rank first?"
"Wouldn't you say so...?"
"Yeah..." Seven's speech earned nothing but a limp, half-hearted response.
The slab of muscle in Seven's cheek twitched of its own accord; he seemed thoroughly displeased with the miners' answer. "You lot are a pack of criminals exiled from other planets, stowaways, and deserters and pirates besides. You've been skulking around the universe, and if I, Seven, weren't protecting you, you'd have been lined up and shot long ago. Put bluntly: I, Seven, am your guardian god. I am your second father and mother."
"Now I, Seven, have run into a bit of trouble, and I need your help. Let me say the ugly part first: whoever helps me through this is still my brother. Anyone who makes trouble — don't imagine you'll leave this pit alive."
By now Seven wasn't even bothering to hide it. He shot a glance at Adu, and Adu led dozens of thugs charging into the crowd. The thugs had alloy bracelets hanging all over them; they dragged miners out and clamped the bracelets onto their wrists one by one.
The hundred-odd miners were no fools. One look at those bracelets and they knew they were in deep trouble.
"Confinement bracelets! Those are the confinement bracelets the prisons use — there's explosive in them..." Nobody knew who shouted it first; the next moment the whole crowd was in chaos, people shoving frantically in every direction.
Since this place was called a pit, its walls rose far higher than its center. The thugs laid into them from above with whips and stun batons, lashing with all their strength, driving the miners who tried to flee back down.
"Shoot! Shoot right now! Kill a few and they'll all settle down!" Seven, up on the alloy rig, was so furious his nose was bent out of shape; he gave the order at once.
Gunfire finally rang out, and three innocent miners fell into pools of blood. That settled the hundred-odd miners; one after another they squatted on the ground, hands clasped over their heads.
"Fuck your sister! All I'm asking is for you to dig ore, aren't I? Just your own old trade, isn't it? What the hell are you running for? I hand you some respect and you won't take it. Listen up, all of you: double the charge packed into every confinement bracelet. Now let's see who still dares run."
"Listen carefully, all of you. Within one month, you have to dig me out crystals longer than ten centimeters. Otherwise, you can sit in this pit and wait to die." With that Seven turned and left, leaving behind nothing but a crowd of miners with terror in their eyes.
The same scene played out in all three mining districts Seven controlled. Altogether more than four hundred miners were driven down into the pits by Seven — especially in the B1313 pit he had just seized, where Seven had the highest hopes, cramming in over two hundred miners.
No question about it: all four hundred-odd miners had undetachable confinement bracelets locked on their wrists, and if anyone dared disobey, the explosive inside would tear him apart without mercy.
In the space of a single night, Seven's atrocity had spread across the whole of Huang'e. The miners here were little different from slaves, but no one had ever really dared to use them as slaves, because once you did, no drifter would ever choose to dig for you again — after all, there was more than one contractor.
What Seven had done tonight was killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, but Seven had no choice: Mine Supervisor Roda had handed him a death order. This was an all-or-nothing gamble — win, and every chicken and dog around him would rise to heaven on his coattails; lose, and not a chicken or dog would be left alive.
Crystals over ten centimeters long were not so easily come by. Across the entire Horsehead Star Ring there were only some twenty interstellar frigates, and that was thirty-odd years of accumulation. From that figure anyone could easily work out that producing even one crystal of this standard a year was already a fine yield. Wanting to get one within a month was daydreaming, plain and simple.
From that day on, contractors all over Huang'e were guessing at what Seven was really up to. Hard as the truth was to guess, one thing was certain: Seven had landed himself in serious trouble.
Seven was not the only one in serious trouble. Dozens of kilometers south of Huang'e City were Wuchang and his group. Once the ship's cannon stopped firing, this little band of refugees had begun heading toward the southern beaches, because only near the sea could they find anything to eat.
But on the second day of the squad's march, something unexpected happened.
Nights on Huang'e were bitterly cold. At times like these Wuchang always missed Earth's campfires, but Huang'e was a planet from an early geological age: life flourished only in the oceans, and the land was still a barren waste.
Here there was no firewood to burn — not so much as a blade of grass was to be found. Fortunately, Wuchang and Pike had never taken off their miner jackets, and those held a good deal of emergency supplies: simple mining lamps that gave off light and heat, for instance.
Four mining lamps clustered together gave off a good amount of heat — enough, at least, to make the little cave they sheltered in as warm as spring, and with rocks wedged into the entrance, the place really did give a person a sense of safety.
Just as everyone was getting ready to turn in early, a rustling of footsteps suddenly came from outside the cave. In that instant, everyone went on alert.