When I next woke up, it was to the unfortunate sensation of someone kicking me in the side. The deep, full-body ache that I felt from being initially stunned in that old woman's house wasn't present, which I idly noted in the back of my mind probably meant that what our jailer used to knock us out again had been something different.

"Looks like I timed it better this time," The familiar, cruel voice of the taunting human said from above me. "Get up, we are here."

As I started to stand, our jailor kicked my hand out from under me, knocking me to the ground again, stepping away quickly with a chuckle. When I finally looked up enough to even think about retaliating, he was already by the door, the control unit in his hand. I bit back a curse, realizing I had just missed a solid opportunity to attack him silently.

"It's time for you to go and time for me to get paid," He said. "And before you start complaining, if I have to knock you out and drag you myself, I will, but you're going to be really sore by the time I'm done."

I gave Tatnia a look, and together we followed the bounty hunter off of his ship, the bounty hunter staying about three or four meters away at all times. As we were led out, we passed by four other bounty hunters, each of them watching us closely and thumbing their own collar control units.

As we stepped down onto the landing pad, we both immediately recoiled at the stench of the planet. It was acrid, the air sharp enough to burn my nose. I resisted the urge to cough because it would only make it worse, but my lungs still burned.

Seeing our reaction, the human bounty hunter laughed, already pulling on a breathing mask. I cursed under my breath, lifting up my shirt to breathe through and mentally chanting that whatever damage the air was doing to our lungs, I could reverse with a healing spell.

As we stood on the landing pad, suffering and waiting, I got a good look at the surroundings. In the distance, I could see massive smoke stacks by the hundreds, pumping out green-brown fumes into the air. Whatever was making that green smoke was making a lot of it because the color hung in the air, tainting it. There was no wildlife that I could see. The grey-scale colored ground was rocky, sandy, and dry. This planet was dead, and we were about to be stranded there.

I turned my head to look behind us, spotting the four other bounty hunters, weapons drawn and ready to stop us if we tried anything. I mentally cursed as our chances to escape before we got stuck here continued to shrink.

As the pain in my lungs started to become unbearable, a speeder pulled up to the landing pad. It was boxy with a rough, heavily salvaged and repaired look and had a clearly after-market box built in the backspace, enough for four or five people. A red-faced humanoid, whose species I didn't recognize, stepped out, already wearing a mask.

"Why aren't they wearing masks?!" He demanded, looking at the bounty hunter harshly. "They are useless if they can't karking breathe! You two, get into the back of the speeder, now!"

Tatnia followed me as I climbed into the speeder, desperate to get out of the hazardous environment. The door sealed shut behind us with a hiss, and I quickly cast fast heal on myself, the burning in my lungs vanishing after the second cast. I cast healing hands on Tatnia, her breathing evening out as I did. She nodded in appreciation, and we both examined the interior of the speeder. The box we were in was clearly designed to hold people who didn't want to be transported, like slaves or prisoners, and was separated from the front by a metal barrier and a small metal grate.

While the barrier between us and the driver was well built, there was hardly any reinforcement built into the exterior walls, which I could only assume was because only an idiot would try and bust out into the surface of a planet that was so clearly deadly. Because of that, we could see the driver yelling at the bounty hunter, who clearly didn't care. He held out the control unit, prompting the driver to pull out his own more intricate-looking model and press them together. After a moment, the driver put away his control unit, pulled out a com, and spent a minute talking to someone before turning away and walking back to the speeder without another word.

He climbed in and slammed the door shut behind him, taking off his mask and putting it down on the seat next to him. Any hope that his earlier anger was out of some kind of empathy for our health was immediately smashed to bits as he finally spoke.

"Alright, listen up! I'm only going to give this explanation once. I'm the foreman in charge of mine 'D,' branch 'U,' where you two will be working from now on. You two are worth nothing but the spice you bring up. If you bring up spice, you eat. If you don't, I kill you and throw you out of the dome myself. Understood?"

"It seems simple enough," I responded. "My name-"

"I don't give a karking firebird shit who you are. Your designation is D-U-4353, and your friend's is D-U-2953," He responded, not even looking back at us. "Whoever you were before this is dead. Welcome to your afterlife."

He refused to say anything after that, ignoring any attempts by myself or Tatnia to engage him. I briefly considered trying to cast calm on him to make him more pliable, but the spell's effects didn't last nearly long enough for me to be useful, and even if it did, I had no idea what we would do next. As horrible as it was, we needed more information.

With negotiation turning out to be a bust, we settled in, watching the barren gray landscape move by. We had only been traveling for a few minutes when we stopped at a small building, a checkpoint. A quick look up, and I could see that it was stuck in the wall of a massive bubble.

"A shield of some kind?" I asked, nudging Tatnia and pointing up. "Probably to keep breathable air in."

"You're smarter than you look." Our driver said. "The air inside is breathable. The air outside isn't. Remember that if those smarts tell you that you could try and escape."

We passed through the checkpoint, crossing a blue mag field to enter. The air here was much cleaner, lacking the green tinge that was poisoning the atmosphere. From there, we only had to wait a minute, the driver pulling up to a massive ferrocrete facility. A garage door along one side opened up, and the self-proclaimed foreman drove us inside. Seconds after we crossed the threshold, both Tatnia's collar and my own let out a beep. When the driver stopped, having parked in the corner of the garage, he turned to look at us for the first time since we first saw him.

"You heard that beep? That is your collars entering the control field of this facility. You leave that field, and you die. You attack me, you die. You attack your fellow workers, and you die. You attempt to sabotage equipment, and you die. The only thing that does not end with your death is mining for mediari, the component of spice we are after. Understood?"

"Understood," I responded.

I knew this game, even if the addition of "you die" was new.

"Good. Now get out."

We turned to the speeder door and saw that an armed and armored Aquilish guard was standing outside the speeder, waiting for us. He already looked annoyed. I stepped out first, and before Tatnia could climb out of the speeder, I got a stomach full of fist for my efforts. The large tusked and hairy guard let out a low, wet rumble that I could only guess was laughter. Tatnia climbed out quickly, starting to step menacingly toward the guard, but I stood quickly and stopped her.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"That's just what he wants," I said.

The guard led us through the building, undoing our wrist restraints and passing us off to dark green-skinned Rodian as we entered the interior open space of the large ferrocrete structure. There, in a massive courtyard, was the mine, a huge hole in the ground, lined with a single metal walkway leading downwards into the poorly lit hole. In the center enormous crane system, built into the ferrocrete structure around the courtyard, slowly lowered a large platform into the hole.

We stopped there for a moment, the guard pulling open a cabinet and passing both of us heavily used filtration masks. They covered our entire faces, and while they were ancient, patched up, and a mismatch of different color parts, they seemed functional. We both quickly put them on, and before we could do anything, the guard shoved me forward after a few seconds. I didn't understand his words, but it wasn't difficult to understand his actions.

The descent into the massive mine was disconcerting. The sky was slowly swallowed up by the slowly shrinking mouth of the mine shaft. It was hard to tell just how deep we went, the carved walls and metal walkway so nondescript that you quickly lost track of any identifying features.

The only real features were the offshoot shafts, marked by a place for the crane platform to connect to and a flat space for people to load crago onto the platform. The first three were empty and devoid of activity, while the fourth one and down had a few people working and two guards standing by. On the fifth offshoot, dozens of people worked to push sealed crates onto the same platform that had passed us going down. I also spotted five more guards, all armed and armored.

At the seventh offshoot, this one marked with a large usk symbol, the Rodian guard stopped, said a few words to a male Twi'lek guard, and immediately headed back upstairs. The Twi'lek turned and shouted at one of the workers, an older human man covered in dirt and scars. He walked toward us and listened to the guard for a few seconds before turning to face us.

"You speak Basic?" He asked.

"Yes, we both do."

"Good. Cisoc wants me to lead you to the end of the tunnel," He said simply, nodding back into the offshoot. "Let's go."

"What's your name?" I asked as he led us into the tunnel, the already low light level dropping even more.

"What's yours?" He asked back, looking over his shoulder.

"Deacon."

"And your friend?"

I turned to look at Tatnia and shrugged, getting an eye roll in response.

"Tatnia."

"Right. You can call me Fareff." He responded, though really clearly not caring.

"Why did Cisoc ask you to lead us down here?" I asked.

"Because he is lazy," He responded. "And as a reward for good behavior. I get a break from lifting, and he doesn't have to walk all the way down here."

Fareff continued to lead us down into the offshoot mine, which had started to dip downward as well. Along the walls of the tunnel, I could see evidence of miners chasing deposits of what I assume was spice, some spots marked with light drilling, others gouged several feet in. After about five minutes, we could hear the sounds of equipment and working ahead. It was also getting dustier, the air getting harder to see through. I tugged at my mask to make sure it was secure.

When we finally reached the end of the mine, Fareff stopped, giving Tatnia and I the chance to look around. The mine was at least ten meters tall and fifteen wide, the same as the poorly lit tunnel leading to it. It was clear they had been mining in this spot for some time, having carved out a wide tunnel with three vague walls, each lined with multiple platforms, scaffolding set up to let the miners dig and carve out the solidified spice, or at least this particular type of spices main component from the walls. The whole room was lined with lights to the point that it was almost too bright.

I could see the foreman nearby, the man who had picked us up, standing near one of the portable light towers that lit everything up. He had a small work area set up, including a stool he was sitting on, watching the three or four dozen miners as they worked. A few feet away was some sort of hover platform with simple controls and a small seat, no doubt what he had used to get her so much faster than us. Fareff headed straight for him, leading us to where he was keeping watch, two guards standing with him. The fact that we were about to be handed off to the same person who had brought us in finally broke my resistance.

"Hey, do you have a twin? Because I swear-"

My mouth was starting to sass before I even realized it, my frustration making my control slip. The foreman must have seen it coming, though, because he reached out to a table at his workspace and tapped something. I didn't even have time to do anything before Tatnia dropped to her knees, her mouth open in a silent scream, her body convulsing. It continued for a full three seconds before the red-skinned humanoid stopped, pulling his finger off the button.

"I've worked in this mine for thirty years, prisoner," He said, spitting something onto the floor between us. "I've seen it all, I know your type. I know you're the type to get over pain quickly. You're not a special prisoner. Get over yourself, or your friend here is going to pay for it."

I wordlessly helped Tatnia to her feet, her legs shaking slightly as she stood. She grabbed my arm tightly and squeezed, shaking her head when I looked at her. The foreman's hand moved over to the table again, finger hovering over the button.

"And now you say 'Yes, Sir,'" He said, staring me down.

"...Yes, sir," I responded, clenching my fist as he smirked.

"Good. Smarter than you look," He responded, moving his hand away from the table.

I could feel Tatnia slowly unclenching.

The foreman spent five minutes explaining how the process worked, leading us to the closest worker, a male Tartuga, who was dressed in a bright orange prison uniform. He was using a large, handheld device to break up the stone, the machine firing waves of some sort of pressure or compressive force. After a moment, cracks and fissures slowly started to form in the rock wherever he focused the grinder. He then gently put down the large piece of equipment, grabbed a hammer and a small pick, and started breaking apart the stone. Occasionally he pulled out a chunk of dark maroon material, which he carefully stored in a satchel on his left hip.

"Use the resonance grinder to soften the stone, then use your tools to break it up further," The foreman explained. "Do not overuse the resonance grinder, it will reduce the mediari stone, the spice component, to powder. Do not aim the grinder at anyone, you'll be forced to clean up the mess, and then I will kill you. You share the resonance grinder with whoever else is on your platform."

Before I could ask any questions, a pair of tools and a satchel were placed in my hands, and a second set handed to Tatnia. Without another word, the foreman turned and walked away, leaving us on our own. Tatnia and I shared a look, silent for a few moments.

"You best get to work," Our platform buddy said, not looking away from his spot. "Your quota might be smaller today, but if you don't hit it, they won't feed you."

I let out a curse and put my tools down, bending over to pick up the resonance grinder, hefting the large machine, and looking at Tatnia. I wasn't exactly happy about it, but for now, it was time to get to work.