The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) by Ruby Lionsdrake Page B

issued a few voice commands, telling it to refine its search and try again.
    “ And look for clumps of stalactites, stalagmites, and pillars in larger than typical quantities,” she added, remembering that her retired miner had mentioned seeing a “forest of dangly rocks” near the ruins. She wished she had recorded that conversation, since it had been over a year ago, but at the time, she had been in the middle of gathering data for another treasure hunt. She had not thought much of the miner’s tale until she had chanced across a news story about how an ancient alien outpost believed to have once been a refinery had been found in a cavern on one of the asteroids in the Brockian Band. The archaeologists had been all over that one in an instant, so there had been little point in exploring. But she had done some research and learned that the particular ore concentrations prevalent in that asteroid were found on a couple of planets and moons in the outer rim, including the one that her retired miner had spoken of.
    The tent flap opened, letting in a draft of icy air. Commander Thatcher and Val Calendula walked in, the latter carrying a first-aid kit that Kalish hoped had a nice painkiller in it. The bleeding of her wounds had slowed down—though her shredded clothing had stuck to the gashes, and she wasn’t looking forward to having it pulled away—but every time she shifted or even took a deep breath, a stab of pain came from the area.
    “ Ms. Blackwell.” Commander Thatcher clasped his hands behind his back. “I must inform you that we were unable to locate cave openings in the areas you suggested.”
    “ Not in any of them?” Kalish slumped, forgetting the pain that came with the movement. Even if maps of the privately owned planet weren’t widely available, she had paid well for one, and it had included several cave openings. She had assumed that finding them wouldn’t be a problem, only that they might have to check a number before locating one that led into the larger cavern system.
    “ No, but it was suspicious,” Val said, waving for Kalish to take off her jacket. “At least one of your sets of coordinates looked like a blasting site, like miners had been in the area, blowing up parts of the mountain.”
    “ That’s odd,” Kalish said. “Some of those caves were hundreds of miles from their operation.”
    “ We surmised that the blasting may have been done to block the cave entrances,” Thatcher said.
    “ Oh?” Kalish carefully peeled her jacket away from her injured side. “Like maybe the miners found out about the other doors into their operation and didn’t want people snooping around?”
    “ We tried to blow our way into one, just to see,” Val said, “but once a cave has been, ah, caved in, I guess you would say, it’s tough to re-cave it.”
    “ Re-cave it?” Thatcher frowned at her. “I do not believe that ersatz vocabulary is appropriate when reporting to an employer.”
    “ Well, what would you call it?” Val raised her brows at him.
    “ There is no geological term for reclaiming a cave. Once the speleothems and support structures have been demolished, the cave ceases to exist.”
    “ Uh huh.” Val shifted back toward Kalish. “We couldn’t re-cave it.”
    Thatcher’s eyelids descended halfway, but he did not correct his lieutenant again.
    Val moved the desk and the light to get a better look at Kalish’s wound, ignoring the maps hanging in the air as she did so. Thatcher walked up to the image, though.
    “ The size and complexity of this cavern system is fascinating,” he announced. “Given the dryness of the exterior of the planet, the amount of water that must have been required to hollow out such extensive caves is remarkable. Perhaps the climate has changed over the years—a result of a terraforming program that did not fully take? Or could not be sustained once abandoned? That might explain how such large predators could have evolved in such a dry and barren