7: Alpha Centauri

Author: Chaoseternus

Chapter 5: Fire Below

Aluminium Mine, Alpha Prime

Mining Engineer Tarva Thomason walked slowly cautiously down the tunnel, heading reluctantly towards the main seam of Bauxite, Aluminium Ore. She had been a mining engineer for seven years and, much like veteran soldiers claiming they could feel the eyes of the sniper that was about to fire on them, Thomason had developed a sixth sense for trouble. Today felt like an explosion, which was not of the good.

Luckily, the topside monitor, a burly mining engineer by the name of Felix Herons had not even blinked when she said she felt trouble was coming with the mine, he had just put his week old copy of the Times newspaper down, called in another engineer to help monitor the stations and began a full diagnostic of the whole mine, sensor sweeps, system checks the works. Working in a mine you quickly figured out who had a good sense of danger, and if they said something felt off you had damn better listen!
But nothing had been found by the time the extra engineer arrived, and so for the moment the mine stayed open, just with an extra engineer monitoring. That had been the request of the engineers when they signed their contracts, if one of them sensed trouble, an extra engineer would help monitor the mine for the next 48 hours. There hadn't been much of an argument, unlike big corporations out only for money, the RSS was a military organisation who wanted their people keep alive, and they were more than familiar with the remarkable ability to sense danger, many of the older veteran hands in any military organisation displayed it to some extent. Tarva stopped, and stepped back to inspect the last roof support she had passed, something having caught her experienced eyes. She looked closely at the hefty wooden support the mines used, not metal because metal could spark and sparks in a mine were often a bad thing, and they didn't have the dedicated mine rescue teams and equipment available to them that earthside mines did, yet anyway, and she cursed, reaching for her radio. "Felix, this is Tarva, Joist 1M-R-259, schedule for immediate replacement, joist is compromised, looks like it rotten inside"
"Another one? Right, added it to the log, and I'll write up a request for the Bio boys to have a look at the wood supply, too many are coming in rotten for it to be just chance"
"Thinking a bug, Felix?"
"Quite possibly, Tarva"
"Copy that, Tarva out" Tarva turned away from the joist and resumed her slow stroll down to the mine, stopping every now and then to inspect a joist, emergency supply cabinet or the rails, looking for problems, but finding few. This was a new mine and the miners and engineers the RSS had employed, and to a lesser extent to SGC were all top notch, hard workers, most of whom had been pulled from old British miming communities, devastated by the closing of so many mines. "Tarva, this is Hywdd at lower 4, we just had one hell of a bumper down here, can you come ASAP for inspection run?"
"This is Dafydd, Lower 1, ditto you're bumping"
Bumping all the way from lower 1 to 4? That was one hell of a bump. Tarva flicked her radio on, "Lower 2, lower 3, I assume you felt that too?"
"Lower 2, hell yeah, we're abandoning here, several joists have shifted and the dust is hellacious, wherever those strata shifted, I'm willing to bet it was right over us"
"Copy that lower 2, lower 3?"
"Lower 3, we felt it, not as bad as 2 but we're replacing joists in this section, and too many of the old ones just shifted or failed. We're abandoning"
"Copy" Tarvi flicked the radio off, used several words that would have her mother trying to use carbolic soup on her mouth if she used them in her presence, and switched to the control circuit. "Felix, this is Tarva, we have a situation, lower 2, lower 3 are abandoning and all lowers report heavy to dangerous levels of bumping, you copy?"
"Tarva, seismological picked up your bumping, registered as fairly standard bumping, just a layer of strata shifting due to the ore being removed"
"Yeah, well it must have been one hell of a shift to cause 2 and 3 to abandon..."Tarvi trailed off. "Tarvi, you okay?" Felix's concerned voice came over the radio a second later.
"Check Air! Main access Tunnel" Tarvi spat into the radio, a pit of fear solidifying in her stomach.
"Checking… oh shit! Firedamp in main access, building up fast, hit a manhole Tarvi, now!"
Tarvi jumped with a curse into the hardened bunker used for manholes on Alpha Prime just as the baring sirens of the automatic alarm filled the air.

Note:
Bumper. Loud thuds, which could shake a whole underground district, believed to be caused by the above strata settling after the removal of the coal/ore. More frequently heard at night.
Manhole. Small recesses driven into the sides of the headings at regular intervals where men could gain safety as drams past by, or when shot firing was taking place.
Firedamp. Explosive mixture of gases, usually only dangerous if allowed to build up, or if released suddenly into the mine from a gas pocket in the ore.