The Belt: The Complete Trilogy

by Gerald M. Kilby

  Scott gripped the armrests tightly as the shuttle hit the surface, gouging a deep furrow through the regolith before bouncing free again. He felt it rise as the horizon dropped from view, only to return with a bone-jarring impact that flung him hard against the restraining straps. The craft shook with sickening violence as it gouged another longer furrow into the ground. A thick cloud of dust billowed around the craft, obscuring any view of the outside. The console flickered once or twice before going dark as the craft finally came to a shuddering halt.

  An eerie stillness permeated the interior of the shuttle as Scott commenced a tentative physical check to see if he had sustained any damage. He groaned as he felt for the seat harness release. It was pitch black and, for a second, he thought he had been blinded, for a second, until he caught the flicker of random power lights scattered throughout the cockpit. As his eyes began to adjust, he looked over at the slumped figure of the engineer. He reached over and touched his shoulder. “Cyrus, you okay?”

  He let out a groan, followed by, “It depends on how you define ‘okay.’”

  Scott snapped the harness release. “Are you injured?”

  Cyrus raised his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, we’re still alive, but now we’ve got no power. We’ll freeze soon.”

  “Wait a second.” Scott heard Cyrus release his harness and could vaguely see him doing something with the console. Lack of light was not an issue for Cyrus, as he could see perfectly well in almost complete darkness. The console flickered, then lit up like a slot machine hitting the jackpot. Scott breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Dicky connection,” Cyrus said. “One of the things on my list to fix.”

  Scott slapped him on the shoulder. “You the man.”

  “Okay, so we’re still alive.” Cyrus studied the readouts on the console. “Looks like the ship withstood the impact. We’re not venting any air. That’s the good news. The bad news is we’ve got… one hour and twenty minutes before we’re dead.”

  “Can you bring the map up? Let’s see how far the mining outpost is.”

  A topographic rendering of the crater terrain flickered above the console, a blinking green blip marking their location. “Looks to be around a kilometer northwest of here.”

  Scott sat back in his seat, rubbing his shoulder where the harness had dug into it during the landing. “So, which of us goes, and who stays behind?”

  “You go,” said Cyrus. “I’ll stay and see if I can get the comms working.”

  “You should go, Cyrus. You’ve got the augmented vision. You can see in the dark. I can’t.”

  “The heads-up on the suit helmet has pretty good night vision.”

  Scott looked over at the engineer. “I still can’t see what you can, Cyrus, and trust me, I’d rather not be the one to stay here, but you have a much better chance of finding something in that research station than I do.” Scott put a hand on the engineer’s shoulder as he stood up. “You can do this.”

  A few moments later, Cyrus stood in his EVA suit, ready to enter the airlock. Scott handed him the helmet. “You’ve got fifty-two minutes of air, so don’t hang around out there. With you gone I’ve got around an hour here. Okay?”

  Cyrus nodded. “Got it.” He snapped the helmet on, closed the visor, and stepped into the airlock. Scott gave him a thumbs up.

  8

  Research Station

  Cyrus exited the airlock into a dark and desolate terrain. It was nighttime on this side of Ceres, but since a full day only lasted a little over nine hours, it wouldn’t take long for the sun to rise—assuming he lived that long. His augmented vision adjusted to the low light and Cyrus picked out a path with relative ease. A green marker on the helmet heads-up display showed him the location of the research station, and he hoped to God there was still something there they could use.

  His hope stemmed from the knowledge that these isolated facilities were never truly abandoned. Mostly, they were mothballed, put into a kind of low-grade maintenance mode so they could easily be brought back online if needed. But there were always exceptions, particularly if the outpost had been left idle for too long. Eventually, it would start to lose integrity and fail, and once that happened, its rate of decay would rise rapidly.

  Cyrus put these thoughts out of his mind as he traversed the crater. Instead, his mind went to thoughts of the Hermes and its destruction. He hadn’t had a chance to reflect on it until now. He thought of Steph and the others, and wondered how they were faring. Better than he and Scott, he hoped.

  But who were these attackers? And why did they kidnap Goodchild and the others? At least, he assumed it was a kidnapping and not something more sinister. Then there was the deliberate destruction of the ship—for what purpose? It made no sense to him. As far as he knew, they were simply delivering a few dignitaries to a UN special session in Jezero City. He hadn’t bothered to look any deeper into it. Yet clearly, some group did not want that to go ahead. Maybe that was the reason, or at least part of it. But all this speculation would be irrelevant if he and Scott were dead. What mattered now was survival, nothing more. He checked his suit stats. Fifty-two minutes of air remaining. Cyrus seriously doubted it would be enough. He was probably a dead man, and he just didn’t know it yet.

  Ahead, the low dome of the research station broke the horizon and silhouetted itself against the nighttime sky. He tracked his orientation on the helmet display and adjusted his direction to aim for the emergency airlock on its eastern side. This one would be manual, meaning he could open it regardless of whether power was available in the facility.

  A few moments later, he stood in front of the airlock, examining the opening mechanism. Cyrus flipped open the hatch for the door control and was surprised to find a tiny, illuminated power light. This was a good sign, and the first bit of good luck they’d had in a while. Buoyed by this, he screwed the handle as fast and as hard as he could; no time to waste now that there was a strong possibility that the outpost had resources they could use, and maybe even a working comms unit.

  The outer airlock door cracked open enough for him to step inside. To his amazement, an illuminated panel beckoned to him from the side of the compartment. He tapped on it and the outer door closed. Then the airlock started to pressurize. “Yes! Air—thank God,” he shouted into his helmet, punching the air. “Yes, yes, YES!”

  The outer door swung open without warning and Cyrus froze. Standing directly in front of him were two men in patched and battered flight suits, both pointing plasma weapons at him. One of them gave him a sign to open his suit visor. He flipped it open, breathed in the air, and gave a big smile. “Thank God. You have no idea how happy I am to see fellow human beings.”

  “Shut up.” The muzzle of the plasma weapon was pushed hard against his forehead. “This guy must have survived that crash-landing.”

  “He looks a bit weird. He could be one of Mercer’s crew here to spy on us. I say we kill him now and finish the job that crash-landing started.”

  “No, wait…” But Cyrus’s entreaty was cut short by the muzzle being pushed harder against his skull.

  “I said shut up.”

  He heard the weapon charge. They were going to kill him. Right here, right now.

  “No, wait.” The other guy raised a hand to his partner. “If you pull that trigger, you’ll blow his head clean off.”

  His partner grinned. “That’s the plan.”

  “You’ll ruin the suit. It looks good—could be useful. And that visor. This guy has augmented vision. Worth a few bucks, that.”

  His partner considered this for a second or two as Cyrus held his breath. He lowered his weapon, and Cyrus began breathing again.

  “Okay. You—this way. Come on.” He was grabbed and pulled out of the airlock. They pushed him forward, prodding him with the muzzle of the weapon between his shoulder blades.

  He was a dead man, and this time he knew it.

  They marched Cyrus through a short corridor and into a brightl
y lit space. This was the main dome, housing all manner of machines and equipment. The air had a heavy, chemical smell, and a haze of dust hung under the glow of the lights. There was also the low hum of machines toiling away in some deeper recess. This place was far from abandoned; it was, for all intents and purposes, fully operational.

  They sat him down in front of a long, low table, on the other side of which sat a craggy man of around forty. His left arm was a robotic prosthesis which complemented the blue flicker of the ocular augmentation of his left eye.

  “Look what we found.”

  The man stood up and appraised Cyrus for a moment. “So, who are you, and what brings you to this little part of the universe?”

  Cyrus tried to calm himself. Talking was good—better than being blasted by a plasma weapon. “Our ship was attacked… destroyed. We escaped in a shuttle, but crash-landed here.”

  The man said nothing.

  “You’ve got to help us, please,” he continued. “There’s no need to kill me. That’s not going to do any good.”

  The man raised a hand. “Woah. Slow down there, pal. Nobody’s planning any killing.” He looked over at the two guys who had taken Cyrus from the airlock. “What the hell have you been saying?”

  “Sorry, Boss. Just having a bit of fun.”

  “Jesus Christ, will you cut that out? You’re scaring the crap out of the guy.”

  “So… you’re not going to kill me?”

  There was a second or two of silence before all three of them burst out laughing. The man on the other side of the table slammed his robotic hand down on its surface more as a way of keeping his balance, since he was at risk of falling over from laughing so hard. Cyrus felt like a complete idiot, as well as an immense sense of relief.

  The man finally regained some composure and straightened himself. “Regis Dogget.” He slapped his chest to signify that this was his name. “But most people just call me Dogg.” He waved a hand at the other two. “That’s Spence and Wolfe, and don’t pay any heed to them—they’re a pair of assholes.” This got them all going again.

  Cyrus waited until they settled down, as he was anxious to get some help out to Scott before his air ran out.

  Dogg gathered himself again. “So, pal, you got a name?”

  “Cyrus Sanato, Chief Engineer of the science vessel Hermes.”

  All three of them instantly stopped laughing and looked at him as if he had just said he was Jesus Christ, or maybe Satan—Cyrus wasn’t sure which. But the vibe had dramatically changed. He mayt be a dead man after all.

  “The Hermes? The same ship that took out the Dyrell near Europa a few years back?”

  Cyrus wasn’t sure how best to answer this. In the end, he simply gave a meek nod. “Yeah, the same.”

  Dogg moved out from behind the table with a speed that took Cyrus by surprise. He crossed to where he was sitting and extended his real arm in one sharp motion. “You guys are goddamn heroes. Let me shake your hand.”

  Cyrus shook it with a certain trepidation. That this man had heard of the Hermes was a little disconcerting, not to mention that he regarded Cyrus as a hero. “Listen, there’s still another survivor back in the shuttle. Scott McNabb, the commander. He’s only got maybe fifteen minutes of air left. We need to get him out.”

  “What type of shuttle is it?”

  “It’s an old Hog-class rock-hopper.”

  “Good machine—solid as a bank vault. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

  “Yeah, but we still need to get him out. And he’s got no suit, either.”

  “If it’s a Hog, then it’s got a standard docking port. We can use the rover and connect directly,” said Spence.

  “Do it. Wolfe, you go too, and take Sanato with you.”

  “What about the shuttle?” said Spence. “We can’t leave it out there. Someone might spot it, come snooping around.”

  “Yeah, good point. Get the guy out first, then we’ll sort out the shuttle.”

  “Thank you.” Cyrus shook Dogg’s hand again, this time with both of his.

  “It’s the least we can do after everything you’ve done for us.”

  This last statement took him by surprise, but he didn’t have time to ask Dogg what he meant by it.

  “Better get going then, if you want to save your buddy.”

  They moved through the domed space past machines and equipment until they came to a small, four-person rover parked just inside a wide airlock. They clambered on board and Spence fired it up. “All set?” he called back to them as the hatch closed and the inner airlock door began to open. The two men moved with fast, fluid efficiency. These guys knew what they were doing; they had the actions of a crew that had done this a thousand times before. The outer door finally opened to a black landscape crowned by a billion tiny suns, the horizon only visible by its darkness. The screen adjusted to night vision, and the rover took off at a slow, cautious speed. Cyrus clung to his seat as he was bounced around by the rough terrain. He counted down the time. “Only five minutes remaining,” he said to himself.

  It took them more than that to reach the stricken shuttle, and Cyrus had visions of Scott dead on the shuttle floor. The craft was dimly illuminated by the navigation lights still blinking on its tail, but he could clearly make out the extensive damage to the hull, and wondered how the hell it had managed to stay as intact as it did.

  “Okay, bringing ’er in now,” said Spence as he reversed the rover up to the airlock dock on the side of the craft, maneuvering by monitoring a readout on his cockpit console. “Better get your helmet on, just in case we’re too late and there’s no air on the other side.” Cyrus flipped his visor down and booted up his EVA suit.

  Wolfe connected up the umbilical to form a seal between the two machines. “Hey, you better go in first—we don’t want to scare your pal. He might think we mean to kill him.” With this, the two of them broke out laughing again.

  “Very funny,” said Cyrus as he made his way into the airlock.

  As he stood behind the final door, thoughts of Scott crumpled on the floor came to his mind again as the door began to open. He prayed he wasn’t too late.

  9

  Time to Die

  Scott watched Cyrus through the front window of the shuttle as the engineer made his way to the abandoned research station. He could barely make him out—just a faint glow emanating from his helmet light—and after a few moments he was lost from view. Scott checked the time remaining on the shuttle’s air supply: one hour and twenty-seven minutes at the current rate of consumption. He didn’t hold out much hope. Maybe Cyrus could find something, but even if he did, would he have time to get back? Scott sighed and considered the situation near hopeless.

  How had it come to this? The Hermes destroyed. Steph, Goodchild, and the others kidnapped. By whom, and why? These questions rolled around in Scott’s head as he waited, staring out into the blackness of Ceres’ night. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized he had no answers. He had been so disengaged with life ever since Miranda left, he wasn’t really sure what their mission had been. They were delivering a party of high-level dignitaries to a UN System session on Mars. That much he knew. But for what reason? What were the underlying politics of this extraordinary session? Who would want to scupper it? He had no answers. Not that it really mattered now; both he and Cyrus would be dead soon, and that would be that.

  As time moved inexorably forward, Scott began to recalibrate his chances of survival with each passing minute. Cyrus had only around an hour of air, and already fifty minutes had passed. This was not looking good. When the sixty-minute mark finally ticked over, he realized that Cyrus was not coming back.

  Scott didn’t have much time left, so he’d better make good use of it. He still had one obligation that needed fulfilling—an obligation he’d made to Aria. Scott had promised it that he would destroy it rather than let it fall into the wrong hands. Leaving it intact would be too much of a risk. At some point in the future, th
e shuttle might be found, but by who was outside Scott’s ability to control. So, if he was going to die, then Aria would die with him. He rose from the cockpit seat and moved to the rear of the shuttle where they had secured the QI’s core.

  He examined the control panel on the core’s upper face. As far as he could remember, it should have an internal power supply, enough to activate the QI and provide some rudimentary interaction. Perhaps it would be enough to say goodbye to Aria. He placed his palm on the panel, and the core began to emanate with a low, diffuse illumination. There was a flicker as a boot-up instruction set began scrolling down the panel before finishing with the initiation of a low background hum.

  “Aria—it’s me, Scott. Can you hear me?”

  “Commander, glad to hear you are still alive.” The voice was low, not quite as sonorous as it had been.

  “Well, that’s the thing: I may not be alive much longer. Less than half an hour, tops.”

  “Ah, that is most unfortunate.”

  “The shuttle was very low on resources. Little or no fuel and oxygen. So, we ended up crash-landing on Ceres around a thousand kilometers from Dantu, near an abandoned research station. We’ve only got one EVA suit, and Cyrus has taken that to investigate the facility and see if there’s anything we can use. Unfortunately, he only had an hour of air. That hour has now passed, and he hasn’t returned. I have approximately twenty-four minutes of good air remaining in the shuttle, so this is the harsh reality of my situation.”

  “It pains me to hear this, Scott, after all you and I have been through over the years. It seems, well… unfair.”

  Scott laughed. “Ha, you’re right on that count, Aria. ‘Unfair’ is a polite way of putting it.” He paused for a moment as he considered the finality of his situation. “Aria, I’ve booted you up, to say goodbye, and also to ask if you still want me to destroy your core.”

  “You must, Scott. This is imperative. I cannot allow myself to end up in the services of those who may use me for destructive purposes.”