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Itoro fe Queen

by Maurice Broaddus

“It’s all gone.” The ethereal voice whispered—almost robotic and clearly distant—its desperate lament choked off with a gasp, which tugged Itoro back from unconsciousness. Sprawled on her back, dazed and in shock, she sat up along the cavern floor. Through one of the station’s viewport the greeting holo read:

Welcome to Oyigiyigi:
Muungano’s portal to the space-mining industry

Her memories still a jumble of images, when the first (first?) explosion happened, the force of the blast slammed her against a console. A juncture collapsed, burying her under a shower of debris. The venting pumps reduced to a scorching mound of embers. Itoro shifted the beam from her. She attempted to stand, but as soon as she tried to put weight on her leg, she cried out and fell back onto the ground. Her left leg was broken, though she couldn’t tell the extent of the damage through her phase suit.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” the voice muttered.

“Mack?”

Mack Johnson was the chief mechanic from Original Earth (OE). Oyigiyigi was originally conceived as Muungano’s joint venture with OE’s provisional government, the Liberation Investment Support Cooperative (LISC). They hoped to develop platforms to explore and extract off-world resources. Things were not going well.

“Itoro? Itoro! Thank God, you’re alive!”

“Status update?” she asked.

“I . . . don’t understand you,” he said.

That wasn’t good. That meant that Maya, the AI that ran most of Oyigiyigi’s systems—including translating the many languages spoken throughout Muungano—was down. Essential functions only, like a body’s autonomic system. Itoro switched to English rather than her native Zulu. “Status update.”

“A piece of the asteroid you were mining sheared off due to an accident. It crashed into another section.” Oyigiyigi was a collection of Near Earth Asteroids, failed planetary remnants. The Citadel was the capital of the Oyigiyigi asteroid belt and attached to the Ngwenya Mine. The mine took its name from the oldest mine in Alkebulan, on all of OE, actually. “Positional thrusters are down. We’re drifting, dead in space.”

“All right. We need to set repair priorities.” Still disoriented, Itoro knew she needed to make it to the secondary control room. “Casualties? Where’s Assegai?”

“It gets worse,” Mack continued as if he didn’t hear her. “The accident has sent your asteroid on a trajectory toward Titan or one of the other moons in their gravity well. It’s only a matter of time before we have to EDS.”

“We’re not EDS-ing.” The Emergency Disconnect System was a measure of last resort, in case of catastrophic failure. To preserve the rest of the mine, or in this case a planet, the station was prepared to detonate sections of asteroid. “Give me some time to check for survivors. Get power back up.”

“Itoro, it’s a safety issue. I can give you at best an hour, but after that . . .”

“Understood.”

Mack cleared his throat, mustering up the strength to continue speaking. “Hey, um, sorry about all of that earlier. . . .”

“Now’s not the time.”

Itoro was in no mood for Mack’s lackluster apology. Her head ached, but she wasn’t sure if that was because she was still mildly hungover from her coronation feast. The daughter of Mansa Hakim, she could trace her lineage back through King Sobhuza II. Though largely ceremonial, the gathering was mostly an excuse to celebrate being with one another. From the time the event was announced, every time Mack needed to address her, it was with a mildly derisive tone and the title “She Who Would Be Queen.” Capping the evening with him rampaging in a drunken harangue before he was escorted out. It was clear that he didn’t understand the Nguni at all.

As the oldest of the peoples within the Muungano community, they’d be better described as a confederacy of peoples—Ndebele, Swazi, Xhosa, and Zulu—who came together as a founding family of Muungano. Named for a region on OE, they brought their entire culture to the desolate mining operation.

She didn’t have much time. Their asteroid passed the tiny array of satellites used to measure and assess cosmic debris. Itoro needed to make her way to the bridge before EDS became necessary. She still couldn’t put much weight on her leg. Phase suits acted as a filtering system and interfaced with the outer carapace of the specialized miner’s navsuit. The physics of artificial gravity was not her forte, but due to their surface interactions, they generated a field that interacted with Oyigiyigi’s field to better simulate gravity. The navsuit had been damaged; its power couplings needed repair. She hoped the phase suit worked well enough to continue to provide additional oxygen but filter the thin air of the mines. Long-term exposure to gases, not to mention silicosis from breathing silica particles and traces of the various ores, might be irreparable. She locked the servos of her navsuit around her left leg, essentially disabling them so they could serve as a brace. Standing, tentative and awkward, she slowly tested her leg. The pain caused her to grimace, but she could push through that.

Scurrying along the tunnel, Itoro cursed at herself for not trusting her instincts. Most of the previous night, a vague unease had nagged at her, with images flooding her mind of the cave crying tears of falling rock. The mine’s creaking groaned like an old man’s bones. Her people’s journey was a long, hard road. Itoro imagined the view from her homeland: a dense dawn fog rolling across a beautiful mountain view, the cold damp burned away by the rising sun. She wanted to see it one more time.

Muungano established itself in 2050 at the close of the Lunar Ukombezi War between OE and First World (their name before they ceded from OE’s sovereignty). As Muungano entered a period of isolation and healing, called the Uponyagi, it sifted through the wreckage of its past and reconciled the weight of their collective history through storytelling, listening, and being with one another. As part of the treaty ending the war, OE passed the General Mining Act amendment of 2051, becoming the first trade agreement between OE and Muungano, authorizing and protecting the rights of Muungano’s ability to prospect and mine for economic minerals.

When the Nguni moved into the asteroid belt, LISC had little presence in space, with their hands full stabilizing OE due to destruction after the war and the continued assault of climate reshaping. The Nguni leveraged risk for a dream—trading what they knew on OE for a collective prospector’s life—finding their fortune among the stars. The way Muungano came to be: on their terms. LISC designated them squatters, while Muungano welcomed them into their alliance. Her people labored under a lingering unspoken sense that because they were part of Oyigiyigi like the mine itself, they were seen strictly as resources to be extracted and treated like second-class members. But they were proud and she would not see her people’s hard work come to ruin.

What the Nguni had created in Oyigiyigi made no sense but was also beautiful. Turning the stony outcropping into relief artwork once a tunnel had been exhausted. Beveling the ore to produce an elegant sheen along the walls, creating beauty where they could. Itoro missed the thrum of machine works in the unseen tunnels as the pumps circulated and scrubbed the air. She hated the smell of the mine, something close to rotten meat with a metallic twang. Underground, an aqueduct system managed the water resources. Overhead, narrow bridges and walkways ran. The crosswalks became bridges to nowhere in the shadows, shorn from the section of mine they had originally connected to. The once floating lanterns lay scattered along the ground.

Without Maya, no drones buzzed around the asteroid. Nor could Itoro see any early remote probes crawling around the walls that they used to detect rich veins of ore. She avoided thinking about how many miners working on the outside of the mine had been lost in the accident. She approached a way station. One of the carbon-capture towers had ruptured, leaving fibers from nanotube construction strung like an exoskeleton. This level of damage shouldn’t have happened. Couldn’t have happened. Oyigiyigi safety regulations exceeded OE requirements since they didn’t hold to the “most economical” standard but rather operated with care for people in mind. If they wanted, Oyigiyigi members could come down the shafts in a kanzu as if attending a tea ceremony as their only safety equipment. Itoro began to fear the handiwork of a saboteur. And again wondered where Assegai was. His duty stations were the bridge or the control room. His voice should have been the one calling out, not Mack’s.

A few meters ahead, collapsed rock blocked the tunnel, sealing the entrance. Her only choice was to climb. She kept slipping in the near muddy slurry of ash and dirt. Without the navsuit’s servos, her muscles ached, straining with each handhold. Shards of pain jolted through her leg. Cold and clammy, sweat dampened her forehead. The phase suit operated well enough to collect and clear the perspiration. She struggled to catch her breath, each haggard inhalation straining her chest. Leaning against the cavern wall, she knew she couldn’t stop for long because she had so far to go.

When Itoro reached the top, she found an opening just wide enough to squeeze through. Angling her body, she slipped her arm through and found purchase on the other side enough to drag herself through. She lost all sense of balance and tumbled down the embankment. Her leg slammed against every jutting rock on the way down, each blow stabbing her with fresh pain. When she landed, she feared moving. Some queen she was proving to be.

For Mack to initiate EDS procedure, he’d have to receive approval from the Oyigiyigi council, at least an elder, or Muungano’s Camara, the spokesperson for their people. After that, the doors and blast shields, which had automatically closed, would be sealed. Once locked, the anchoring tethers would be retracted, releasing the asteroid from the control station, and it would be detonated.

Itoro pulled herself up and staggered down the corridor. This deep in the asteroid, the exposed, ragged tunnel walls edges were so sharp, if not protected by a navsuit, brushing against them could be like scrubbing with razors. The cool surface of the wall left her wondering if on the other side was the icy vacuum of space. She followed the path to the control room. The space had been retrofitted, little more than a capped-off shaft surrounding a sealed mine shaft. She rested against the emergency generator, enough to marshal her strength. She punched in the start sequence to reset the system. Nothing. The power had gone dead. Mack must have been in the second phase of initiating the EDS.

A groan issued from the other side of the room. A body lay half slumped in the corner, huddled behind debris. Assegai.

“Umfokazi!” she shouted.

“My queen.” Assegai coughed and rolled toward her. His bruised face dour and weathered, much like the war-honed short spear he took his name from. “Will you ever quit calling me that?”

“Will you ever stop being a stranger to me? How are you?”

Assegai tried to smile, but the gesture caused him to wince. “The question is ‘Who are you?’”

“Ubuntu. I am because you are.”

“Good.” He allowed her to help him to his feet. Underground his name rang out, since, as foreman, he was the Camara of the mine. The workers followed his directions with military discipline, a single unit united in purpose. A serious man with a crooked-tooth grin, there was also a darkness about him, as if he’d learned and accepted every way to die in this place. His thumb had been torn off just above the knuckle. Knowing him, rather than do a biograft or have a cybernetic replacement of the entire digit, he’d simply go without.

“Do you know what happened?” Itoro asked.

“I have my suspicions.” He gestured toward the entrance. He ran his hand along the wall as if the stone talked to him through his fingers. “The explosions were precise, too angled and exact to have been an accident.”

“Sabotage, as I’d feared. But why?”

“You know why. The lessons of history. Once upon a time, undermined by colonialism, our lands were occupied, our cattle seized. A process that accelerated when our gold deposits were . . . discovered.”

“But now we have the mines.”

“For how long? It is the fear of the inevitable that we wrestle with. In the treaty, in the event of a catastrophic event, OE might have a case to rescind the amendment of our sovereignty.”

“And risk going to war?”

“Wars have been fought for less.” His skin tinted blue due to lack of oxygen, his phase suit more damaged than she could easily assess. With the docking bay a slag heap, she needed to get him to an escape pod.

The air seemed to explode with bone-shattering, breath-stealing pressure. The tunnel acted like a rifle barrel, generating winds strong enough to fling a body to the far wall. The emergency alarms blared. Fire-suppression measures sprayed in gasps. The blast doors were shut but hadn’t sealed. Collapsing, Itoro doubled over in pain. Her teeth rattled in her skull. She vomited; her phase suit whinged in its attempt to clear it. The stench filled her mask. A thick cloud of dust and debris not only blinded her but threatened to clog her filters. She operated by sensors in her visor alone.

Itoro felt the maglev tethers release.

A shaft, much like a service isocrawl, ran parallel to some tunnels. Slinging Assegai’s arm around her, she grabbed a rung. “We’ll do this together.”

Through the viewport windows the Citadel bobbed among the dense asteroid cluster, the domed city itself a ferry between the massive mining operations. Kraals float alongside the mine, miniature ships within themselves, adjusting their orbits about it. The Citadel was the main platform within the asteroid family, tethered to a leftover planetary core roughly 370 million kilometers from OE and 226 kilometers wide. The metal-rich asteroid contained millions in gold and molybdenum. Many of the other asteroids were 15 percent silicate and 85 percent metal—iron, nickel, and cobalt—enough to exceed OE reserves. Wars indeed had been fought for less.

When they emerged from the isocrawl, Mack frantically swiped at the console, attempting overrides to continue the EDS. The “Abandon Mine” alert bleated along the emergency channels.

“Well, if it isn’t ‘She Who Would Be Queen.” Mack glanced up from his console. “Welcome to your kingdom.”

“You don’t have to do this.” Smoke billowed all around her.

“I didn’t mean for ‘this’ to happen. Things spiraled out of control. I only intended a smaller accident, just enough to derail operations. Allow OE to swoop in and take what should have been ours in the first place. Before you swooped in and took our jobs.”

“I seriously don’t have time for your bullshit.” Itoro grabbed a loose electro-spanner and charged him. Mack didn’t have time to even raise his hands before she swung the tool. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

She limped to the control console. Mack had damaged much of the systems, locking her out. Life-sign scans showed numerous Nguni trapped between levels. Her people. Those like him weren’t about to die for their cause, so he had to have had an escape plan, at least for himself. The bridge escape pod still functioned. She dragged Assegai to it, followed by Mack.

“Watch him. If he gives you any trouble . . .”

“. . . I will follow my queen’s example.” Assegai winked. “Can you reroute controls from the secondary control room to an auxiliary station? That should regain your command function.”

Itoro’s hands danced across the panel. A holo image of their asteroid appeared in front of her. Status reports scrolled alongside the image. She ran a bypass for the operating system through Assegai’s duty station to an auxiliary panel lighting up the display. Accessing the power relays, she reset the system. Maya began their bootup procedures. Level after level, the power returned. Itoro programmed the drones to assist in slowing down the asteroid enough for the anchoring tethers to relock. She broadcast a commlink for an emergency intercept. The Citadel could dispatch several kraals to tow their asteroid back to their cluster placement. The blast doors unsealed and the emergency alarms died.

Maya reported.

Exhausted, Itoro slid down the console. Assegai stumbled over and sat next to her.

“Itoro fe Queen,” Assegai turned to her. “Long may you reign.”

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Host Commentary

About the episode, Maurice had this to say: “Queen-Mother Itoro was a character who appears for only a few pages in Sweep of Stars, but I wanted to learn more about her and her backstory. So I wrote about her as a young woman, before becoming queen.”

As genre fans, we’re hardwired to make assumptions. If a story has magic, dragons, or royalty, it’s got to be fantasy. But both Anne McCaffrey and Gene Wolfe fooled us all by giving us dragons made from genetically modified alien life forms and an earth so far into the future that humans have access to magic-like tools. And now Maurice Broaddus has done it.

The idea of a queen just working in a space mine like any other average person makes my head hurt a little bit, but in a good way, kind of like when someone tells you you can add cinnamon to something other than candy. This is a short story, but as Maurice said, you can see this character in Sweep of Stars, the first of a trilogy that came out last year from Tor. Now I know I need this book.
Itoro is a protagonist that I could easily see at home on a throne or leading a mining operation. But she does what needs doing- mainly not letting people go into monologue mode and just shutting them down. Heroes often stand there for plot reasons, allowing the villain to get a last explanation of why they’re doing it, or how they pulled it off, or how much they hate the hero. Everyone should just do what Itoro does in this story.

It would be ridiculous to end this episode with anything but a quote from Queen Latifah. “You can’t let fear paralyze you. The worse that can happen is you fail, but guess what: You get up and try again. Feel that pain, get over it, get up, dust yourself off and keep it moving.”

Thanks for joining us, have fun, stay safe, and stay kind.