Free Escape by Jasper Scott

station. And according to the scans his buoy had taken, there was no tetrillium anywhere close to the surface. Which means anyone not looking past the surface of this rock, isn't going to see anything but rock.
    Surely there must be a tunnel, then? How else do they get to the station?
    Kieran keyed his sensors for a detailed scan, but he couldn't get a clear image beyond the surface topography. There were a few particularly deep craters, but nothing that looked like a tunnel. Something must be jamming my scanners. Kieran shrugged. Either that, or it's solid rock straight through to a tetrillium core .   .   .   . unlikely.
    Kieran smiled, suddenly realizing what he was missing. The signal from his buoy was coming from dead ahead, yet there was nothing but solid rock in front of him. Remembering how his buoy had mysteriously disappeared earlier, rather than making physical impact like he'd expected, Kieran fired his flitter's thrusters at 25% thrust, and hoped his eyes hadn't been playing tricks on him.
    Proximity alarms began to blare, and Kieran watched the red, point-of-no-return number begin blinking on his rangefinder again. At current speed and acceleration, 93 micró-astroms was the point of no return.
    He'd just passed it. Right or wrong, there was no turning back now. Kieran winced as the surface rushed up to greet him. For a split second, he had a moment of utter clarity. He'd made a horrible mistake.
    He could actually count the pebbles and grains of sand as they came crashing through his transpiranium cockpit canopy. Then he knew he was dead, because he couldn't see a thing —
    Except the blinking lights and instrument panels in his cockpit. Awareness dawned just in time, and Kieran yanked the throttle into full reverse. His velocity quickly ran backward to zero, and Kieran laughed at himself. Even though he had been expecting it, he had somehow mistaken the hologram at the entrance of the tunnel for solid rock.
    Kieran flicked a switch, turning on his flitter's bow lights. He found himself staring down a fathomlessly wide and deep hole. His flitter's bow lights lanced uselessly through the darkness, finding nothing to illuminate. A quick look at his sensors dispelled the illusion of nothingness. He was surrounded by solid rock — floating in the entrance of a tunnel that was approximately a milé-astrom in diameter, and an indeterminate depth. About 100 milé-astroms away, the tunnel curved out of sensor range. Whatever elements the asteroid was made up of, it was playing havoc with his sensors.
    Well, even if it's only 100 mA down — and based on his buoy’s gravitic imaging scan he doubted it — that's one keficking deep hole. Why would anyone put a station that far beneath the surface?
    Kieran frowned. Whatever is hidden at the core of this rock, someone went to a lot of expense and trouble to hide it. He should turn around and pretend he hadn’t found anything .   .   .   . Kieran jammed the throttle forward. He wasn't going back having spent over 2000 tokens for nothing. If I'm lucky, whatever is hidden at the center of this rock, will be valuable to someone — even if the only value is in my silence. Someone might pay him to keep his mouth shut. Maybe.
    Unable to see anything visually, Kieran was stuck with IFO — instrument flight only. He kept a keen eye on his sensor display, making gradual adjustments to his course in order to stay in the center of the tunnel. For whatever reason, the tunnel had been dug in a long, twisting curve.
    Curious.
    Kieran felt his heart pounding insistently in his chest. He kept his velocity low — hovering around 0.2 mAps, just in case there were undetected obstacles in the tunnel. The deeper he went, the more length his sensors added to the tunnel.
    After a couple minutes, Kieran passed through a hazy cloud of dust, and his sensors found a mining buoy about a milé-astrom to port (left). There's one. So where's the one I fired yesterday?
    It would be a bit of a