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Briefing

The vast machine which is Storm Mine Four crawls across the trackless wastes of the Blind Heart. It is hunting unreliable desert weather fronts and the abruptly savage winds which stir up mineral-rich sandstorms and whirl valuable ores into flying seams.

They know all this - why am I bothering with it? I pretend to underestimate them so they feel superior and underestimate me. .

A talented captain, backed up by a skilful pilot, can stay with a storm and follow its most productive ore-streams as they swirl and twist past the open mining vents. Robots can do these jobs and any of the others required to operate the mine, but to achieve the full economic potential of the equipment, to really suck the wealth out of the dense, scouring clouds of blasting grit, takes instinct and a subtlety of touch which cannot be programmed into anything less complex than a human being.

But it doesn’t matter because they’re so far behind the game they have no choice but to underestimate me...

Kiy Uvanov and Lish Toos are one of the best captain and pilot teams the Company currently has on its database.

Unfortunately the rest of the crew of Storm Mine Four do not reach the same standard of excellence and eight months into the two-year tour of duty disaster strikes. There is a suspicious death.

Paranoia spreads.

Then one by one they die.

Almost from the first there can be no doubt that someone, or some thing, is roaming the empty levels and deserted corridors of the huge mine, murdering randomly and without mercy.

Except that they did doubt it of course. Doubt and paranoia - where would we be without them? Well, I wouldn’t be hiding out on this weirdly backward planet...

When it finally becomes clear to the captain what is actually happening, only three of his crew are still alive. Two of them are completely insane and Pilot Toos and even Uvanov himself lose touch with reality and begin to see ghosts and apparitions. In the throes of horror they conjure out of nowhere an oddly dressed man and a primitive girl to fight beside them as they struggle to recognise the unthinkable, the unimaginable.

Impossible as it still seems, what they face are robots, normally functioning, fully inhibited Vocs and Supervocs, which have been modified on site, in the mine itself.