The Crack Chapter 1

Seleh, third-tier Elder of the T’ska Mining Hive, woke up from a fitful sleep with a sharp pain in

his belly.

“Is it that time already?” he groaned, extending his eyes-turrets from their protective sockets.

Seleh’s stomach answered with another spike of pain. Yep, it was that time.

Grumbling, Seleh wiped sleep-grit from his eyes and uncoiled himself from his mate (third one this cycle).

His joints popped and creaked like a cargo hauler in need of a lube job as he slowly scuttled out of the

sleeping pit, taking care not to step on anyone.

One of the couples extended an eye-turret. “You should really get those legs checked, manager.” they said

in unison.

“I know.” Seleh said, opening his three-lobed jaw slightly. “Never seem to have the time.”

“We know the feeling.” The couple said, retracting their eye-turrets.


Seleh scuttled onto the edge of the sleeping pit. He shook some loose sand off of his body. “Cracking rock

crushers” he grumbled as he scuttled towards the reclamation pit. They always made the sand too coarse.


A nymph in technician’s colors woke up and scuttled over to Seleh, “Good Sleepshift

Seleh-Elder!”

Seleh rolled his eye-turrets and turned around. “Good Sleepshift…uh…uh…”

“Technician-First-Class Alza.” Said the technician, showing the ID stripes on her backside. “I know that

this is kind of a bad time, but I just had a great new idea for…”

Seleh groaned. “Technician, do you remember the protocol for submitting proposals?”

“Uh, yes elder. Uh….” Alza reached into her carry pack and pulled out a tablet. “Uh, lets see…article

Alpha subsection skal…”

“Article Beta subsection Klin states that all proposals are to be submitted in tablet form to your supervisor

for review.” Seleh growled.

The Technician shrank back “ Yes, yes elder, I’ll get right to it.”

Alza scuttled off. Seleh sighed. Didn’t anyone read their manuals anymore?


-


Seleh leaned over the reclamation pit and opened his mouth. A lumpy mass of crushed crystal slid out

of his throat- the leftovers from last shift’s meal. It fell into the pit with a muffled thud. Seleh spat out a bit

of leftover crystal into the pit and raised his head. There was a faint grrrr… as the pit ground the crystal into

powder, ready for the growth ponds.

Seleh shuffled over to the pit’s reflective wall. He stretched his centipede-like body out to its full

length. Hmm… not too bad. As always, he’d entered his male phase smoothly. His four arms were ripped

with cable-like muscles. His scaly body was as lean and as fit as a nymphs, with no remaining stretch

marks from last cycle’s egg clutch.

Seleh opened his three-lobed mouth, exposing neat rows of glittering crystalline teeth. He ran his mineral-

fiber tongue over the teeth; he groaned. The teeth on his upper jaw-lobe were noticeably cloudier and duller

than the rest of his teeth. They’d soon be discarded.

Seleh groaned. Those teeth had just come in a few shifts ago. They should’ve at least lasted until next half-

cycle.

Note to self Seleh thought. For Endmeal, skip the crystal strips. Soft food onl…..”

Something popped in Seleh’s body.

“What w-?”

A wave of searing, hide-cracking pain washed over Seleh’s body. The Elder fell to the floor, his needle-

like legs stabbed at the floor like daggers, chipping away bits of fusestone. His body thrashed about like a

scaly whip, cracking the reflective wall in several places. Selehs tongue began detecting strange,

indescribable scents. His eye turrets spun in their sockets , turning the world into a blurred whirling

nightmare.

Something was placed over Seleh’s breathing hole. He got a taste of something horribly bitter, and the

world mercifully faded away.

-

Seleh slowly awoke in a gray, featureless void, feeling like he’d been caught in a crystal grazer stampede.

Am I dead? Seleh thought. He had to be. There was no way he could’ve survived something like that.

Seleh swiveled his eye-turrets around. Where am I? If this was death, then he was sorely disappointed.

There was no immense, crystalline paradise deep in the Core. There was no icy-cold cell high in the

Infernal Heights. Just an empty grayness extending as far as his eyes-domes could see.


Tendrils of fear began to crawl through Seleh’s mind. Maybe there’d been some sort of accident shortly

after his death. Maybe, by some unimaginable stroke of bad luck, his soul had become trapped between the

land of the living and the afterlife; doomed to spend the rest of eternity suspended in a featureless limbo.

Seleh began to panic. No, it couldn’t be. He’d lead a productive life; surely the Creator wouldn’t let of its

valued offspring become trapped! Would he? WOULD HE?!!!


Seleh’s pump stopped for a second tensed. What was that? He strained his aural surfaces. He thought he’d

heard something. Like someone talking through a layer of glass.

“…ow..is… eh?”

Seleh’s pump sped up. Were there other souls trapped here?

Seleh tried to call out to the voices, but his tongue refused to cooperate. It hung in his mouth like a dead

rockworm. Something wormed its way under Seleh’s scales. There was a sharp hiss, and a brief stinging

sensation in his belly. The greyness began to fade, revealing an army of amorphous, fuzzy blobs.


The blobs began to gain focus. The greyness faded away completely, revealing the eyestalks of a Healer.

“Praise the Creator, he’s awake!”

-

Seleh rotated his eye-turrets around, trying to get his bearings.

He was laying on a Healer blob in the Colony’s medical chamber. Charts and sensor readouts flashed across

the creature’s gelatinous hide like a living light show. One of its tentacles was gently probing underneath

Seleh’s scales.

The blob wasn’t the only one keeping Seleh company. What looked like half of the colony was clustered

around him; Technicians, accountants, miners, and even the resident Soultender was there.

“Yes…yes….and yes!” The Healer said. It pulled the tentacle out from under Seleh’s scales with a greasy

slurp. “I’m happy to announce that the elder’s vital signs are stable and that he should make a full

recovery!”

Everyone in the room gave a huge rattle of relief.

The healer pointed a tentacle towards the exit. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you all to leave. The elder needs

his rest.”

The crowd slowly filed out of the med bay, whispering prayers of thanks.

Seleh held up a claw “Healer, what… ”

“…happened to you?” The Healer finished. “ Well, from the looks of it, you had a major pump failure.”

Seleh tensed. “Pump failure? I‘m not old enough to have a pump failure.” He said. These days, “elder” was

just a rank. Seleh was only 400 cycles old. Not exactly a nymph, mind you, but hardly elderly.

“ I’m afraid that’s a common misconception” The Healer said. “ While pump failures are more common in

elderly Adults, they can happen to anyone past nymphood.”

The healer brought up a diagram of a body. “You see, pump attacks are caused by mineral buildup in….”

The Healer droned on. Seleh rolled his eye turrets. Healers may have been marvels of genetic

engineering, but sometimes they were a little too helpful. In theory, these lectures were meant to teach be a

patient more about his condition and how he could best recover from it. In practice, however, they acted

more like a kind of verbal anesthetic.

Seleh growled; he had better things to do than to listen to a Healer gurgle on about capillaries and internal

mineral buildup build-up.

“Healer.”

The Healer turned its eye stalks to Seleh. “ Yes, Elder?”

“Am I fully healed?”

“Well your body seems to have recovered quite nicely, but I’ll need to…”

“Am I fully healed or not?”

“Well…” The Healer hummed as it checked its findings. “Yes.”

“Good, then if you don’t mind, I have to get to work.”

The blob reeled. “Back to work? But Elder I still have tests to run. For all we know, that pump failure might

only be a symptom of…”

“Healer, are you aware of article 4 of the Hive operations manual?”

The Healer hummed for a second as it accessed the files. “A colony’s elder has the right to terminate a

procedure if he feels it will affect operations in a deleterious manner.”

“Exactly, now if you don‘t mind?”

The Healer released Seleh. “Very well Elder. It goes against my designed instincts, but you are free to go.”

Seleh slid off the Healer. “Thank you Healer.” He said as he scuttled out the hatch. There was work to be

done.

-

Seleh scuttled into the administration chamber, itching to get back to work.

As always, the chamber was a hive of activity. A virtual army of administrators coiled themselves around

data pillars, sorting and filing data from the Colony’s various systems and subsystems. At least, that’s what

they should have been doing. About half the administrators were busy chatting with each other or watching

entertainment vids.

Seleh shook his head. Gone half a shift and this is what happens. He swore if it wasn’t for him this place

would fall apart. He cleared his breathing hole. Everyone froze. The chamber became deathly quiet.

“Don’t you have some work to do?”

The adepts quickly reopened their work programs and started working as if their lives depended on it.

“That’s better!” Seleh said. He scuttled over to his command station and coiled around his personal data

pillar. He punched the power button on his terminal. Nothing. He gave the machine a good whack. Again,

nothing.

Figures. Seleh groaned. He tapped the intercom button on his pillar; “Maintenance, command station.”

A technician scuttled over to the command station. “Is there a problem, Elder?”

“This machine won’t turn on. Fix it now.”

The technician saluted. “Yes sir.” He opened a maintenance panel and wormed his body inside.

“Katah! There’s the problem.”

Something clicked. The data pillar holoscreen flickered to life. The technician withdrew his body.

“There you go, manager!”

“Good, now leave. I’ve got work to do.”

The technician quickly scuttled off. An aide came by and placed a bowl of stim crystals on a holder.

“Thank you.” Seleh said. He scooped up a handful of crystals and poured it down his throat. He felt a slight

pricking as the tiny crystals tumbled down his gullet, then the familiar rush.

That’s much better. Seleh opened up his work program. A line of pure gibberish appeared on the holoscreen

Wha…? Seleh refreshed the program.

58r9sy8f0 dfgetufg je8fvljd

“What the Heights?” Seleh said. He tapped an icon. Several files appeared onscreen. Their names were

also gibberish.

Seleh searched through his files. Everything, from progress reports to procurement forms, was an

unreadable mess.

An agitated Seleh tapped the intercom icon and summoned another technician.

“What’s the problem, Elder?”

“Look at my screen.”

The technician obeyed. “Elder, I don’t see anything wrong.”

“Are you blind? It’s pure gibberish!”

“ What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?!” Seleh pointed at a scrambled progress report. “Look at this! Can you read any of it!”

“Yes, Elder, I can read it perfectly.”

Seleh growled. He did not need this. He pointed to an aide. “Aide, come over here.”

The aide hurried over, careful not to spill his basket of stim crystals. “Yes , Elder?”

Seleh pointed to the holoscreen. “Can you read this?”

The aide tilted his head “Elder?”

“Can. You. Read. This?” Seleh ordered. What was wrong with these people?

The aide studied the screen for a few pumps. “ Yes. Yes I can, Elder.”

“What does it say?”

“It says ‘ so far, extraction of the mineral deposits at site Beta is proceeding ahead of schedule. Subsequent

blasting have revealed the veins to be larger than expected, so we may need to requisition…”

“That’s enough!” Seleh shouted. He scuttled over to a pillar and pulled the adept off of it. He studied the

screen. It was a letter, written entirely in gibberish. Seleh raced over to another column and practically tore the adept off of it. On the screen was a half-finished report, all of it completely unreadable.

Seleh suddenly felt very, very cold. It was as if his entire body was soaked in liquid dihydrogen monoxide.

His upper body slumped to the floor, unable to move.

The aide scuttled over to him. “Elder, are you all right.”

“I’m…fine.” Seleh said, slowly raising his upper body. “I just need…a little time off… “

Without a word, Seleh dashed into the lift

“Where do you wish to go, Elder?” The lift said.

“Medical, and hurry.”

“Acknowledged.”

The lift doors hissed shut. Seleh tried in vain to calm himself down.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.