Chapter Text
D-16 came online to darkness, a splitting helmache, and an exorbitant amount of dust in his vents. According to his rebooting heads-up display, he was alive despite the mine's latest attempt to offline him.
Hooray.
That’s another one in my favor and the mine is still at zero , he thought sardonically, Better luck next time.
His optics adjusted to the darkness, aided by the weak dim glow brought on by his biolights. The light revealed rocks pressing down around him on every side, giving D-16 only a couple inches to move around. The light mounted on his helm flickered back on.
Illuminating even more rock.
This was not the first time that D-16 was caught in a cave-in. They were never pleasant, but he had long outgrown the phase where he would hyperventilate, optics sparking, hot fear coursing through his neck cabling, the air filled with the screeching of his plating grating against what would become his tomb. Instead, he slowly got to work unearthing himself from the wreck and ruin.
Several damage indicators popped up on his HUD as he moved a couple boulders off him into a semblance of a wall structure to avoid more of the tunnel crashing down. The pain indicators were automatically subdued to be dealt with later. An older miner had shown D-16 how to manually reorganize his priority trees, reducing pain to a tertiary-level data string between him and getting out alive.
When he had successfully unearthed himself and ensured the ceiling would stay put, he activated his TTE low-frequency comms. Due to being completely underground, regular comms were ineffective in communicating with the surface or his own unit, hence the low-frequency comms.
“D-16 checking in. Anyone come in? Over.”
A slight crackle was his response.
“I repeat, this is D-16 checking in. Anyone come in? Over.”
Another crackle, this time disturbed by someone returning the comm.
“…bzzt…This is A-24…sorry…stupid rocks..bzzt…bzzt-copy or 10-4 or whatever the code is…”
D-16 breathed a sigh of relief. At least one mech in his unit was ok.
“What’s your status, A-24?”
“Non-critical yellow. Over.”
D-16 shifted, “Do you need assistance? I can make my way over if you give me your last known coordinates. Over.”
“Negative, D-16. Just…bzzt-the EAP-bzzt.. establish contact with surface-bzzt ... .the others should be ... .at the refuge bay….”
“Wilco. Over and out.” D-16 cut off the line.
Surveying his surroundings, D-16 spied the feeder tubes that ran along the tunnel's ceiling now crumpled on the floor. One was cracked open, revealing tracking transceiver tags, smashed to pieces. Each miner was fitted with a transmitter that let out a signal every 15 minutes. The feeder cable with the tracker tags would pick up the signal and send it to the rest of the network, so every miner was accounted for as far as upper management was concerned. But with this many tracker tags destroyed, a whole unit of miners had just disappeared from the active database. D-16 would not mind disappearing from the database. His plating itched at the thought of someone constantly tracking him.
This could even be an opportunity to consider taking less than company-approved permanent leave…
With a shake of his helm, D-16 dismissed the thought.
What was he supposed to be doing? Right, reestablishing communication with the surface and trying to not die. Time to play “How many communication relay terminals does it take to contact the surface?” An old favorite.
Using what he could see of the minecart tracks inlaid in the ground as a guide, he began making his slow and careful way along the collapsed tunnel. Sweeping his light as he went to see if there were any wireless application-level gateway terminals or even redundant wired two-way terminals. There should be one posted every 50 klicks or so…
Ah, there.
An ALG wireless terminal set into the roughly hewn wall, protected by a still intact support beam, gleamed at him. D-16 could not help but smile a bit. He was in luck.
He went to the terminal and pressed the call button, “This is D-16 on level T-18 reporting a cave-in and requesting rescue. Do you hear me? Over.”
A response was not immediate, but the miner was not too concerned. The ALGs had to go through several communication layers before reaching the intended destination. If the cave-in caused by the recent tremor affected more than the mining level he was on, it would take even longer to receive a response as the servers tried to keep up with the influx of emergency status reports.
Several moments passed by, and the ALG stayed silent.
Again, he pressed the call button, “I repeat, this is D-16 reporting from level T-18. We have sustained a cave-in and need rescue. Copy? Over.”
The ALG remained mute. D-16 worried for a second that he contributed to the influx and ensured he was not getting a response for a good hour or two.
If that was the case, he glanced around, then it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at the console.
Crouching down, he grasped the edge of the terminal and began to pull it out from where it was set in the wall. The ALG finally made a sound as it screeched along the rocky terrain until it was pulled far enough to expose its maintenance panel. Popping open the panel, he looked at the internals and readouts while muttering what he could remember of the last time an ALG was undergoing maintenance.
“Layer one is for input, but there are hidden layers as well,” he mused while checking status indicators by a faded internal system chart, “But the status is green, so it's still working despite the cave-in. Layers two and three are also clear. Hmmm, ah!… Dangit.”
D-16 glared at the offending layer four, the transport layer, and the mocking red status indicator by its label. Every other layer was in working condition except for the most consequential layer. The previous layers collect and encrypt. The fourth layer is in charge of transporting that data to the surface. Which was oh so conveniently broken. D-16 could send all the distress signals in the world. No one would receive them.
In other words , D-16 thought as he banged his helm on the terminal in frustration, this is an exercise in futility.
Standing back up and abandoning the terminal, he continued down the tunnel. Stopping occasionally to carefully move debris out of the way. No need to cause a second cave-in out of haste.
And he was moving in slight haste, away from the ALG and the maintenance panel he was not supposed to know about.
D-16 was not supposed to know a lot of things. Not the layer system that an ALG operates under. Nor was he supposed to know about the tracker tags, the 15-minute signal intervals, and the network they reported to. All that a low-class miner was deemed able to do was ‘push this button to talk.’ But D-16 had watched the maintenance crews in the shadows. Watched them argue, get upset at the consoles, joke, and explain things to new maintenance mechs whose knowledge packets had not yet been fully integrated. D-16 had watched, listened, learned, and waited.
Waited for what? D-16 was not ready to admit it to himself yet.
Access to forbidden knowledge aside, he would need to look for a wired two-way redundant communicator. If he could not establish contact with one, he would have to consider more desperate options for getting out before his fame went into stasis from lack of Energon.
Since the cave-in occurred while he was on a deeper level, it would take a while for any rescue team to find him…if they even bothered to send one after him. Depending on the severity of the cave-in, he might be in stasis by the time they come to collect his frame and bring him back to consciousness.
If they bring him back to the land of the living.
Will they bring me back online or smelt me, like what they do in Kaon?
With these troubled thoughts, D-16 continued his search.
Several two-way terminals were posted along the tunnel, and others were kept in refuge bays. The miner's best bet was to find a refuge bay since, as one destroyed specimen attested as he stepped over it, the external two ways were more than likely crushed to dust.
Rounding a corner D-16’s light shone on what appeared to be a busted white trailer someone had offloaded and promptly left. Which, to be fair, was what happened.
Contained within the trailer-esque refuge bay would be a two-way wired redundant transmission console, tarps, emergency rations, and several other fittings for continued survival for another orn. Additionally, refuge bays were built to withstand rugged conditions. However, they were not impervious to gravity and megatons of pressure suddenly crashing down.
D-16 wrenched the bay’s bent door open with a huff. He quickly regretted opening the door when he spied the broken casings of emergency energon rations and the exposed sparking wires hanging precariously above them.
Energon was highly volatile. An exposed wire could easily make the substance detonate. If there were large amounts of Energon nearby, it would be enough to spark a chain reaction that would build up in force and take out half of the mine complex. Best to keep it contained in the bay and not risk blowing himself up.
He duly noted the compromised bay as something to report.
“The drink of gods and mortals, the prize for which a miner toils, yet its life-giving hue, is also destruction’s death bringing blue,” D-16 mused to himself. “Not bad, but the meter is all over the place.”
The refuge bay was spared more attempts at poetry as the miner carefully bypassed the active hazard and went to the two-way communication terminal.
He picked up the transceiver, whacking the side of the console for good measure like he had spied some techs do, and smartly hit the transmitter button.
A slight crackle signals a working connection.
Hope bloomed in his chest as an anxious breath caught in his vents.
“….bzzt…Huuuuhgk…bzzt-kzaaa….” Pained, labored breathing was all that came through from the other side, punctured with a sharp choke.
The line gave one last crackle and went dead.
Bewildered and his energon lines growing cold, D-16 moved the transceiver away from his audial receptor.
He tried to reactivate the call only to be greeted by the monotone “beep beep beep” of no connection.
He rushes to tap the button again, “Hello?! Are you ok? What is your position?”
Nothing.
Tap tap,
“Hello?!”
Tap tap.
“This is D-16! Can you hear me?!”
Nothing comes through the transceiver.
The miner let out a frustrated oath.
D-16 swore he had heard a mech’s final breaths crackling from the transmitter earlier. But all facts pointed to the communicator, like all others leading to this point, being broken.
The communicator is slammed back in its case.
Now it’s extra broken.
A flash of red plating registered in the corner of his eye.
D-16’s shoulders sagged in relief at the familiar color.
All mining units had accent colors to denote what level they were assigned to work. The miners that work the dangerous red levels, T-13 through T-18, had red accents on their plating to indicate their station. D-16’s plating, under all of the dust and grime, had accents of red to go along with the required black and yellow safety decals.
“Finally dig yourself out, A-24? Only took you a hundred vorns…” He trailed off, glancing to the side.
There was no one in the bay except for D-16.
D-16 quickly left the refuge bay.
The second refuge bay he found was less of an active danger zone.
Opening the door, he tentatively looked inside to check for sparking wires and leaking Energon.
No broken cubes in sight, and the wires were still in place. Perfect.
D-16 looks towards where the terminal is stationed and jolts back at the sight of a red-plated mech standing by it, with his back to the miner.
“When did you get here?” D-16 asked.
D-16 thought the bay was empty. It was empty when he came in.
The mech refuses to answer beyond heaving a choked breath before the bay’s emergency lights flicker and shut off.
D-16 winced as the bay plunged into darkness, closing his optics for a brief second. His helm light went off as well.
The lights shudder back on with a faint hum.
It’s just D-16 again in the bay.
He promptly nopes out of there.
He’s heard enough spark-ghost stories from his unit and the occasional black-level miner to know that when you see mechs that may or may not be there you leave.
There is no more debris to move out of his way as he hurries to the last refuge bay in this tunnel section. There are still boulders, collapsed supports, and mini sludge-slides of Energon mixed with mud oozing closely to downed wires and feeders to evade, but nothing major to make him stop.
If this last refuge bay follows the trend of being dysfunctional, D-16 will need to resort to even more drastic measures. Namely, following the tunnel down to the shaft that connects this level to the surface, where miners deposit the mined raw materials on a lift. And hey, D-16 alone did not exceed the maximum load weight. If the lift is working, he could hitch a ride. On the other hand, if the lift was not working, which he was certain was the case, he could climb up to another level and try his luck there.
The third refuge bay comes into view, silent in its white visage.
D-16 tentatively looked in, armed with a crowbar that he had found discarded nearby. He had lost his drills in the tunnel collapse following the tremors. Will the crowbar have much effect on spark ghosts? Maybe not, but it was helping him feel calmer about the situation.
With the makeshift weapon in hand, he checks the Energon cubes.
No leaks. No mech.
He looks at the communication terminal.
Looks intact. No mech.
He does a complete 360 turn of the room.
No mech.
D-16 makes a beeline to the terminal. He picks up the transmitter piece and hits the call button. The transmitter gives a familiar crackle before letting out a dial-up tone.
D-16 sagged with relief. The connection was established and steady. Now he just needed to wait for the other side of the line to be picked up.
“Hgraaakh….you…,” a choked breath sounded behind D-16, freezing the energon in the miner’s lines.
D-16 whipped around, brandishing the crowbar with both servos, abandoning the transmitter.
He nearly drops the crowbar in horror.
Standing before him was the red-plated mech he had seen earlier. The mech loomed over D-16, casting a shadow that engulfed the miner. The specter’s optics blazed white hot cerulean. The dual light cast ghastly shadows on the rest of the mech’s frame, most notably on the grizzled hole of his chest plates.
Layers of plating torn asunder and crumpled, shards of glass barely hanging on to a shattered window frame, with the claw marks of whoever had forced the plates asunder and inflicted the mortal wound etched into the ragged chasms. A mysterious pink fluid dripped from the chest plates, carving streams down the specter’s battered frame to pool on the ground. Within the chasm, in the deepest recesses, faint sparks went off where the mech’s spark should have pulsed with a bright blue light. Instead, there was only a dark pit.
“Wh-who are you?” D-16 asked. Clenching his servos around the piece of metal to make them stop shaking. “Who did this to you? Do you need help?”
The spark ghost tilted his helm and gazed at his victim with unseeing optics.
“Don’t you remember?” The spark ghost gurgled out, more of that strange pink fluid seeping out behind a cracked battle mask.
The specter took a bloody breath. The emergency lights shuddered with each rattle of the mech’s vents.
“You killed me.”