by Aaron Bunce
by
Aaron Bunce
Autumn Arch Publishing
Iowa
www.Aaronbunce.com
Copyright © 2019 by Aaron Bunce
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or literary publication.
Publisher’s note
This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters, and incidences are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, events or locations, is completely coincidental.
A product of Autumn Arch Publishing
Cover art - Eder Messias
Cover art - colorist: Joel Chua
Cover art - typography: Christian Bentulan
Interior design: Aaron Bunce
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-7338095-2-8
Amazon KINDLE: B07VRDYD1Y
1st Edition – 2019
Day 1
1230 Hours
Jacoby poked irritably at the conveyor feed button. He waited, tapping his boot impatiently. Nothing happened.
“Load next,” he growled, but the computer didn’t respond.
“Piece of crap!” He pounded the monitor housing with a calloused palm. The screen flickered and went black. Figures. First Anna, and now you. He reached around and started tightening the various cables behind the monitor.
“Women, crappy work gear, and fucking hangovers. Why can’t anything just work like it’s supposed to?” he muttered.
“You and your lady friend have another fight?” Mike, from the adjacent workstation asked. Jacoby had been so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice him approach.
“Stinking dumpster fire of a night, man,” he said, fidgeting with his workstation.
“Yeah? Looks like it. You look like shit. She hassle you about re-upping your contract?”
Jacoby nodded and glanced at his reflection in the glossy monitor. His hair was a tangled mass of brown. Dark bags hung beneath his blood-shot, brown eyes and there were more than a few white hairs mixed in with his stubble. He looked like hell.
“That’s why I’m all on my lonesome, man. Dragging a lady all the way out here is a sure-fire recipe for trouble. She want you to transfer back home?” Mike asked absently, flicking rock fragments off of his shirt.
“No!” Jacoby snapped, and immediately regretted his tone. “She, uh, doesn’t want to have anything to do with her folks, but she also says that deep space mining is for people who’ve got nothing and nobody…who’ve got no sense of adventure. She wants us to move on, maybe set up in one of the colonies…maybe Mars and take up terraforming work. I don’t know. One minute she’s practically begging me to bring her out here to get away from her family, and the next thing she wants to go somewhere else. Her folks are in her head, man, she just won’t admit it. The money’s better than anything I’d get planet-side. They’re filling her head with garbage.” He glanced at his workstation as the monitor beeped.
“You aren’t married to her…I mean shit, have you two ever had sex? If you want to stay, why doesn’t she just go back to Earth?” Mike asked.
Jacoby shook his head and rubbed his eyes, and then turned back to Mike and caught sight of his sour-faced supervisor, Janice, entering from the admin hallway. Lately, their interactions seemed to be butt chewing’s or nasty looks. He’d received a performance write up the day before, which devolved into an ugly shouting match and the threat of a suspension. He knew he wouldn’t receive any more warnings. Jacoby would simply be stranded in deep space, without a job.
He tapped the load button again, but kept an eye on Janice. The conveyor motor finally started to hum.
“Anna’s my best friend. We’ve been close since we were kids…even when her folks forbid it. Her mom is a real piece of work, trying to always set her up with one sleazy piece of shit after another. Always the same kinds, too – a financial broker with his own yacht, or an attorney with the right name, or some corporate tool clinging on to daddy’s coattails. She got me off Earth, and then I snagged this gig, and got her out of the Lunar colonies. It just worked out for both of us. Anna understands me better than anyone else.”
“Well, Anna’s hot, bro. So you know, if she gets tired of you and needs a new friend, or roommate, whatever you call it, I’ve always got room in my quarters. And I would so hit that! I’d love to see those long legs wrap around me, and those tits! Man, I’d hit that…”
“Shut up, ass,” Jacoby groused. The thought of Anna with someone like Mike made him sick…sicker than the ideas of all the other wrong guys her mom had forced on her throughout the years. Mike laughed, scratching his stubbly chin, turned around to track Janice, and leaned back in on Jacoby’s station, his breath hot with cheap coffee and something sour.
“So, if she’s so keen to get off Hyde Station, how’d you get her to agree to another year out here?” Mike asked.
Jacoby looked away, his brow furrowing as the computer finally cycled loudly through its deep scan and mineral analysis protocol. He reached up to rub the sleep from his eyes, but did not respond.
“Wait. You didn’t tell her before you re-upped your contract?” Mike scoffed, covering his mouth and leaning back dramatically. “Damn, no wonder she’s so pissed with you, man! Like I said, I’ve got room for her if she needs a new roommate.”
Jacoby flipped him the bird, but he had already turned to walk away. He lacked the necessary patience to put up with his bullshit. He turned back to his monitor, rubbing his temple and wishing for some relief from his pounding headache. To top it all off, his mouth still tasted like stale liquor.
Guys like Mike couldn’t understand the value of someone like Anna. He didn’t have to deal with the expectation and the disappointments of her family, their shadow stretching halfway across the galaxy.
What do you see in Jacoby? He’s just a dirty miner – the son of a factory worker, collecting laborer pay in the middle of nowhere. A friendship with someone like that will bring you no benefit. Now…Braniman Kopecky’s son was just promoted to Senior Tech advisor. He just bought his own private shuttle, and I hear he just broke up with his girlfriend. Anna hated their meddling, their nearly incessant game of “climb the social ladder”. He understood her in a way that her own family couldn’t, and she him. They had something stronger than friendship. Something her parents couldn’t, or refused to understand. It was love, even if they weren’t able to articulate it to one another. She was his person, and he was hers.
Ignorance really is bliss.
“Analyzing sample, please standby,” the computer chirped, breaking him from his melancholies. Lines of data appeared on the monitor, flooding the screen in a wash of numbers and metallurgic data. He had to look away. The numbers and symbols flashed by so quickly they made his stomach turn.
“Mineral analysis complete. Composite iron, tungsten, nickel. Radioactive elements cobalt, iridium, rhenium. Trace targets silver ten percent, palladium fourteen percent. Warning, void detected,” the computer said, spitting out preloaded target results before beeping loudly.
Jacoby perked up. Fourteen percent palladium! That was double anything he had ever processed. A hundred pounds of palladium would more than cover his quota. Hell, it might even land him a bonus. It might crack a smile on Janice’s fossilized face. Hell, she’d probably shatter.
“Now that would be a sight!” he said, dismissing the unreliable computer’s void warning whil
e reveling in the idea of his supervisor crumbling into pieces. He smiled at the thought, the tension working to pull his face in a permanent scowl releasing just a bit.
The conveyor started to turn, and a moment later the hatch slid open. A large chunk of rock appeared, roughly twelve feet in diameter. Pre-processing had already pulled the gravity anchors out, leaving a number of perfectly bored holes.
“Chart results, grid layout.” Jacoby stepped back and sized up the asteroid. A laser grid appeared, breaking up the rock in sections. Each square opened up with a wave of a hand, displaying that section’s mineral composition in a three dimensional hologram. He circled, scrutinizing each section until he found what he was looking for.
“Rotate sample ninety degrees clockwise.” He donned his apron and reached for his face shield, but reconsidered and pulled on his goggles instead. The idea of being trapped in a sealed mask with stale liquor breath was far from appealing.
He donned his gloves as the tool ring descended around his workstation. He pushed a fresh fusion plug into his plasma saw and adjusted his goggles. Jacoby checked the computer’s cut vector and depth, but leaned in as one of the holographs changed. The computer had updated the image with a hollow cavity, roughly the size of a basketball. There was a void after all, and it was sitting directly over his palladium deposit. Damn! Maybe it’s just ice. Or, the scanner is acting up again.
Every rock jockey knew the protocol. It was drilled into their heads continuously. All voids were to be drilled, tested, and secured before cutting or processing began. Jacoby knew it was for a good reason. If a void was a pocket of methane or hydrogen sulfide, it could be ignited by the heat of plasma cutting. Explosions in deep space mining made a bad day worse, and he didn’t want Anna taking him home in a box. Tested samples were always processed by the Hazard and Special Drilling team, and any deposits they processed would be theirs to claim.
“I ain’t giving away this haul,” he muttered, glancing over to make sure Mike wasn’t looking before waving away the void hologram. Then he deleted any mention of the cavity from the computer. He knew what would happen. H.S.D would pad their numbers with his find, and he’d get a dud rock full of junk mineral or ice in return. He’d fall even further from quota and Janice would finish tearing him a new hole. He’d never get a chance to work a day of his new contract. She’d just send him packing.
The plasma saw hummed gently, the contact points heating up as the shield unfolded. Jacoby lowered the blade into his first cut, the hot plasma easily parting the smooth rock. The air around him was filled with the hot, salty smell of melting silicate.
Jacoby followed the computer’s angle, cutting quickly. He felt a tremor in the handle. It’s just the saw. Probably needs resonance adjustments again. He pushed the blade deeper into the rock, confident in his decision to continue.
The handle shook and jerked violently. He panicked and tried to pull the saw free, but it moved sluggishly. If the saw became stuck, the rock would cool and fuse to the blade. They would never get it out. Forget quotas, Janice would eat him alive if he ruined a ten thousand credit plasma saw.
He put all of his weight forward and felt the saw break loose. It cut for just a moment before sinking in all of the way. Jacoby’s wrists turned painfully and he stumbled forward. The saw’s safety engaged as his hand came free, instantly powering the tool down.
Cursing, Jacoby kicked the rock. He leaned in and yanked on the handle, but it was stuck firmly in place. A strange noise filled the air, leaking out and around the saw blade. It sounded like a basket of angry snakes.
A cloud of vapor burst from the cut rock, enveloping him. Small, wet droplets spattered Jacoby’s face as he staggered backwards. Gas! He swiped at his face, but it was in his nose and mouth. He had already breathed it in. No, not gas. Gas isn’t wet.
Filling with panic, Jacoby stumbled towards the emergency button on his work terminal, a plan forming in his mind. I’ll tell them the void didn’t show up on scans. That it was an instrument malfunction. They had to believe him. That way, they couldn’t blame him for the ruined saw either.
He dropped a heavy palm on the duress button and sagged forward onto his knees. He suddenly felt very tired, very heavy. Jacoby tried to remember the excuse he had concocted, but his thoughts had grown sluggish. His head throbbed and everything began to spin.
He lifted a hand and managed a single step towards Mike before sprawling, face first onto the ground. Jacoby rolled over, gasping for breath as people swarmed all around. A fuzzy, dark ring settled over his vision. Someone was shaking him and talking, and then everything went black.
* * *
“Jacoby! Wake up. Jacoby!” someone shouted out of the darkness.
Air flooded into his lungs as his eyes popped open. He was flat on his back, a host of faces hovering above him, all staring and whispering.
“Well, hey there, Jacoby. I thought you were having a fit there for a moment. You okay?” Jacoby’s vision cleared and he focused in on a face. It was Yuri, the shift emergency responder.
“Uh, what happened?” he sputtered, looking at his workstation, and then locked eyes with Janice. Her face scrunched up in a sharp scowl, her lips pulling back to expose coffee-stained teeth. The fluorescent lights set the wrinkles around her eyes into sharp contrast, making her appear withered and hard. She looked pissed.
“You went down like a bag full of tailings,” Yuri said.
“I got lightheaded. Think maybe I’m coming down with something,” Jacoby lied. Better to deal with Janice later, after some cool down time.
“You look a little rough. Why don’t you head down to the clinic and get yourself checked out…we’ll send the electronic documents on ahead for the doc. At the very least get a vitamin booster and some rack time.” Yuri helped him up, and looked to Janice. She pressed her lips together, forming a pencil-thin line, but offered no argument. At least none she would share now. It would come later, when he alone could take the full brunt of it.
Jacoby signed the incident form and declined a wheel chair, insisting he was capable, even when Yuri argued that someone was supposed to accompany him. He hung up his goggles and apron and walked out into the plant proper. The din of mechanized conveyors, plasma saws, and hydraulic pumps instantly washed over him. It made his ears ache and his head throb.
Jacoby smashed his hands over his ears and ran. He turned a corner and stumbled past a crowd of people, stopping only to smash the call button. They cast him strange looks, whispering behind their hands, but he didn’t care.
The doors opened quickly, the large space beyond windowless and empty. Jacoby jumped inside, and refused to pull his hands away from his ears until the transit elevator doors closed fully. He hit the button for A ring, just as one of the lights overhead flickered and went dark.
He slumped into the darkest corner, savoring the quiet. The elevator hummed gently up the large tube, leaving the production hub behind as it slipped silently towards the habitation rings.
The door chime sounded a while later, the sudden noise punctuated by a ring of flashing, colored lights around the door. His fists balled up without thought and he almost punched the elevator panel. Anger washed up in a massive wave and his vision started to narrow.
Jacoby smacked his forehead against the wall and spit out a forceful breath. He took another and finally managed to unclench his fists. Why did the noise…make…him…so…angry?
The clinic was busy when he arrived, so Jacoby checked in and took a seat. He tried to ignore the murmurings, but the hushed conversations quickly irritated him, like a sink dripping incessantly while he was trying to sleep. He stared into the black of space beyond the window and counted the stars.
1415 Hours
Jacoby bounced his face off the window when a nurse called his name. He’d been counting stars one moment and snapped to the next. Had he dozed off, and if so, for how long?
He limped back to the exam room. His body ached. Not just his joints, but his muscles,
and even his skin. He stayed as cordial with the nurse as possible, but the room was full of instruments, and they all seemed to make noise. The clinic physician walked in with a flourish. He was short, with a pronounced belly and an odd, rigid lilt to his step…an old injury perhaps?
The doctor tapped and swiped on the screen of his overly large data point. He was balding, with a relatively round face, a pronounced cleft in his chin, and cheeks that sagged down to hide his jawline. His eyes were the only thing remarkable about him – the right an almost golden-brown, while the left shone icy-blue in the screen’s bluish light.
He scanned his screen for another long moment, before going straight into a well-practiced spiel.
“I’m Doctor Reeds. The nurse’s notes here say you’re not feeling well today? Had an incident on the production floor? Well that’s no good, no good at all. Lots of people on station are struggling with bugs right now. You trap this many people together in a sealed can floating in space and bugs are gonna flourish. They go gangbusters. So, the old saying goes: misery loves company.”
Jacoby could only nod. He had a full-blown rock crusher rumbling in his head and his saliva felt thick. He thought that he might actually throw up. Doctor Reeds checked his temp, his glands, eyes, nose, and throat. Pretty much everything every doctor ever seemed to check. Reeds then proceeded to ask him a large number of questions, some personal, and some pertaining to his work. Jacoby tried to focus and answer honestly. The doctor’s voice was irritating, however, not to mention the tap tap tap of his fingernails against the screen.
“Yep. Definitely think that’s it. Someone on the last ore freighter from Earth had a virus…influenza E. Nasty little bug. Problem is, it’s not a bacterium, so antibiotics are worthless. All I can do is give you a booster pack of vitamins, minerals, and synthesized immune boosters. I’ll send a com note down to production excusing you for a few days of rest. I do need your consent to draw a blood sample for base analysis and cultures, just to satisfy company requirements, and then of course your screens will all have to come back clean before we can clear you for work again,” the doctor said, the wheels of his chair squawking loudly.
