Belters

by Greg Alldredge

  Sweets shook her head, “Including the ships that patrol the skies and the mercs that guard the ships.”

  The central corridor was deserted. The twenty-meter walk to the cross tube should have been a quick one, but Margaret took her time. The solitude on the cramped ship was a welcome relief. Space was never a place for the claustrophobic or antisocial.

  They were still too far out to pick out the details of the ship attached to the asteroid, but Sweets assumed, based on the size of the rock, the craft latched to it was a smaller, older-classed mining ship. Anything but the smallest ship would have worked a larger rock. Everyone knew the bigger the rock, the bigger the haul.

  The airlock to the dropship was open. Her unit of eight sat on the benches, waiting for the call. They all looked up at the squad leader when she entered the space. Although they voiced no concerns, it was easy for Sweets to see the question in their eyes.

  “Go ahead and load up nonlethal loads. Should be an easy enough claim jumper. I don’t expect any trouble. Be ready to launch in forty-five.” Margaret moved to her PAE (powered armored environmental) suit. Even with a nonlethal load-out, her unit was not without protection, should the need arise.

  The armored space suits they wore were the top of the line Holly and Burnt produced. Any company that recruited and hired out mercenaries needed to provide the best equipment, or their applicants would dry up. Her crew was safe up to small ship-mounted weapons.

  Most civilian weapons wouldn’t scratch the finish on Margaret’s environmental suit, and the installed coil gun on her arm would stop a tank if loaded with the correct ammunition.

  Outfitted with lethal loads, her squad of eight, in a pinch, could take on all but the largest ships. In this single encounter, Captain Riki proved she knew nothing of the capabilities of the full H and B squad she carried.

  The Miyajima was armed with a single 40 mm rail gun and a few fire-and-forget, ship-to-ship missiles. All useless against a boarding party outfitted like Sweets. The woman who sat in the captain’s chair might technically be in charge, but Sweets controlled ten times the firepower under her command.

  It took years of trial and error to gather the right people for her squad. Her crew was loyal only to her, took orders only from her. She did her best to not waste that trust by leading them into unwinnable fights. Not every squad leader maintained the squad’s best interests at the forefront. Those leaders didn’t last long in Sweets’s line of work. If the squad didn’t leave them, they would frag the asshole from behind.

  Before she suited out, she gave the lightly armored dropship a going over. Little more than a skiff, the craft carried no arms. It served the purpose of a longboat from navies long dead. In many cases, the craft was considered disposable. Sweets had yet to leave a skiff behind.

  The unpressurized craft would allow the squad leader and her team to charge ahead of the patrol craft, drawing fire from the enemy, using the better maneuverability and acceleration to move in close. Anything but a direct hit on the engines or cockpit would cause little to no damage. The suits the team wore provided their best protection. Once in range, the team would EVA to their assignments. The ship would be the first target to control. Once any resistance was suppressed on the main ship, her team would spread out and collect any stragglers.

  No matter the craft mining the asteroid, this should be a textbook capture. Simple, easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. She didn’t anticipate any resistance or casualties.

  <=OO=>

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Daniel Frazier

  The sound of the proximity klaxon rolled Jacob from his rack. A thin curtain provided his only privacy. He looked up and found the red eyes of Ava looking back at him with a worried look.

  Third shift and Ava had gotten into a drinking game, and she did her best to pull Jacob into the fray. It took willpower, but he settled on refereeing the match. For the first few hours, then he succumbed to peer pressure.

  He never expected resisting Ava to be such an impossible task. The rules of the game were fluid, more made up on the spot. The goal of the game was to kill as many brain cells of every participant as possible. Including the ref.

  Overtaken by the moment, Jacob followed the lead of the others and joined in with abandon. Now his surviving brain cells grieved the death of so many and caused the worst hangover the miner had ever felt.

  A voice came over the intercom, “First shift, you’re needed on the bridge.” It was the first officer, Wu. With a crew of nine, three shifts of three working around the clock, Jacob had few opportunities to learn much about the others that called the ship home. Her voice seemed calm but still boomed in Jacob’s ears.

  Something was wrong, something bad.

  Two people should be down in the rock. The first officer manned the bridge. That left five to scramble out of their tiny racks and reach the bridge. The captain had his own quarters.

  In the tight spaces of the ship, none bothered with niceties like dressing for the emergency. All showed up like they slept. Besides, half-naked would make loading into the suits that much quicker.

  For Jacob, that was baggy white boxers. It didn’t matter when he saw how the others were dressed. He forced himself to ignore the thin white material that covered the women. He didn’t have time for that kind of reaction. Better to think of all of them as sisters. Romance on a ship never ended well.

  Captain Allen beat them all to the bridge. To call the space where the crew controlled ship’s operations a bridge was a throwback to sailing ships of days long past. There was only space for two crew to sit, and with Allen on deck, most of that space was taken by his lanky frame.

  Jacob and the others floated in the corridor that separated the bridge from the payload specialists’ seats and sleeping racks. The large size of the ship proved misleading for the interior habitation space. The bulk of the area inside the skin had been taken up by cargo holds and material-handling equipment.

  Space was never a place for the shy or claustrophobic. The bodies rubbed against one another in the lack of gravity.

  The first officer spoke. “We have a ship closing in on us. No hail has been received. Their transponder ID is turned off. They just appeared behind the dark side of the rock.”

  Allen asked, “Chief Boffin in engineering?”

  “You know that woman never sleeps.”

  Ava asked, “You sure it’s a ship…? How’d they find us?”

  “I can guarantee that is no ghost…” Captain didn’t hesitate, “The how’s and why’s are not important.” He studied the glowing green screen. “Without knowing their intentions, we have to assume they are pirates. First, you stay on the bridge. Monitor their progress. We will never be able to outrun them. Our only real chance it to make small and hide. Hope they aren’t here for us. Just in case, stash half of the good stuff. We will try to buy our way out if boarded.”

  Jacob was surprised at how quickly the orders flew. He had to assume the captain had dealt with situations like this for decades. It was the first time he’d encountered trouble of the human kind in space.

  “My shift, suit up. We are heading into the rock to help secure operations. With any luck, we will be back on board, and this bogie will pass us by. First, have third shift secure the refinery unit. Kill as much heat as possible.”

  Jacob wanted to argue that space was too damned big for coincidences like this to happen. He was no expert on subtleties of hiding in space, but he knew two things. The area outside the ship was damn cold, hovering around -100 Celsius in the shade. There was no way to hide the heat of the ship and keep the people inside alive, short of putting a mass of rock between them and the hostiles. There was no way the Frazier could move the rock and not give themselves away.

  If this blip was a Foo Fighter or some trigger-happy human, they were screwed, sitting ducks in a barrel of fish, waiting to be harpooned.

  <=OO=>

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Drop Ship

  The retractable hangar pulled back from the skiff, a
nd the strike team separated from the Miyajima.

  This brief moment during detachment, the squad leader let her mind wander, eyes closed. Dwelling on the future did nothing to help calm the nerves of those around her. She knew that, while her mind drifted aimlessly, she maintained a peaceful look on her face that inspired calm in those around her. Right now, her fighting team needed a calm before the storm.

  Margaret was happy to sail free of the confines of the patrol craft. As invincible as the ship’s crew thought it was, Sweets knew it as fragile as a bubble waiting to be popped. The crew never wore suits while making an approach. One day, the arrogance of the fleet would be discovered. To the death of all on board.

  Luckily for the sailors, combat was rare in space. Any sane person knew the chances of mutually assured destruction was huge in any fight. Given the engagement distances, and lack of meaningful shields, even shrapnel from a battle might take out friendly ships. That was if the combat was confined to conventional weapons.

  Given the small size and armor of her crew’s suits, they were protected from all but the most energetic projectiles. Radiation was her largest concern.

  The thought of nuclear weapons used in space scared the hell out of her. The shielding of her suit would offer some protection. With a near blast, the nature of radiation would overwhelm the shielding. Even worse, if the explosion was near, the gamma and X-rays would heat ships and crew like a bag of popcorn. The human skin would split as the insides cooked. Not the way she wanted to check out.

  Good news, there was no sneaking up in space. The heat produced from an approaching ship made it hard to hide against the frosty backdrop of space. Government and corporate ships had libraries of heat signatures of every known ship. If the scow they approached had been moving, they would know everything about it before they left.

  Even masking their location, they knew enough. Their target was an old Takahashi Heavy Industry Shoho (Happy Phoenix) class freighter converted into a mining ship. The belters loved the older models. They were easy to fix, built with multiple redundancies, and if they had a good crew, easy to operate. Damned near impossible to break. The best thing was they picked up no indication the ship was armed.

  The old solid-state ship would never be as fast or agile as a modern craft like the Miyajima, but the modern warships had their own limitations. Fluid-state electronics, what most new technologies depended on, had yet to be tested in open conflict. Sweets was no computer nerd. She only thought of the new gear as crystal computers, even if she understood that thinking was wildly inaccurate. Margaret hated trusting the new tech, even if her suit was littered with the crystals.

  The people who lived their lives in the belt worked with what the companies cast aside. Few independents carried weapons strong enough to threaten the corporate ships. The farther past Mars orbit, the older the gear seemed to get. Corporate ships and the various stations excluded.

  The governments of Earth rarely left the close proximity of the mother planet. Protecting the important shipping lanes that brought the needed supplies home. They focused their sights inside the orbit of Mars and outside the new station in the clouds of Venus.

  The colonies and stations were a mess. Made up from a mishmash of different Earth alliances and corporate installations, none of the populations were powerful enough to wrestle control from the ruling class. All the old hatred and prejudices followed humanity off-planet.

  For now, the major alliances of Earth were satisfied. Eastern- and Western-Alliance, European and African Union, all postured around the gravity well of Earth, threatening violence with no real desire to turn the cold war hot. The flaccid United Nations stood in the middle of the mess with their hands full of humanitarian crises, which only grew deadlier every year.

  The solar system was a tinderbox, too many unused weapons waiting for a test fire. Even if nobody wanted to fight, Margaret assumed sooner or later the cooler heads would no longer prevail. Something or someone would start a shooting war out in the black. When it happened, humans might not survive this next big one.

  “Sweets, we got movement down on the rock.” Jones, the pilot, broke her wandering mind.

  The squad leader asked without opening her eyes, “How many?”

  “I only saw one. Looked like they are working on securing the rig. I don’t think they have seen us yet,” Jones reported.

  “I’ll take care of the rock. Javier, you got the lead on the miner ship.”

  “Yes, boss,” the voice rang in her ears.

  A quick look at her heads-up display showed her the tactical situation. “It is time… Everyone check your gear. Let’s go catch these scallywags… Everyone remain frosty, remember these are people too. Keep your head on straight down there.” Out of habit, she crossed herself.

  The doors to the unpressurized skiff opened like a clamshell, and the troopers stepped off into the black. The freighter, twice the size of the Miyajima, rushed towards them. The rock was larger by a magnitude of ten.

  If the crew decided to play hide and seek, Sweets might order her squad to wait them out. Sooner or later, the thieves would come out of hiding when they ran short of air.

  <=OO=>

  Jacob and Ava worked deep into the bore tube. The gear needed to mine the asteroid ore wasn’t much different from the gear needed for the same task on Earth, only more expensive. If they were boarded, the longer it took for pirates to recover the gear, the better chance the crew had of escaping with their livelihood intact.

  Like on Earth, after exploration came exploitation, only at a pace more appropriate for the twenty-first century. At the beginning of space exploitation, many asteroids were covered with a fine layer of debris, not much larger than the size of marbles. This rich material was easy to collect and refine into precious materials. The rock the crew of the Frazier worked had this material swept away years, perhaps decades, before.

  The rocks in near orbit to the Mars, Earth, and Ceres stations were the first mined. The asteroids that couldn’t be brought to a station for extraction were attacked by swarms of robotic asteroid sweepers. Like an army of space Roombas, they collected all the loose material and returned home with the dirt to be processed.

  In the early days, the regolith found on celestial bodies fueled the three-dimensional printers that built the stations and outposts. That space dust made the exploration of space profitable.

  The swarms of sweeper robots still traveled the asteroid fields looking for profitable rocks to sweep, but the larger combines had moved into rock cracking. Turning the larger asteroids into workable ore, via strip mining or sinking a shaft. All in the name of profit.

  The Frazier’s team didn’t have the luxury of corporate support. They mined like the gold miners of the nineteenth century. They followed a vein of ore, digging out the best parts of the rock and refining the lot of it on board. Each day, they pulled a small amount of oxygen, hydrogen, iron, gold, platinum, and carbon out of the asteroid. Never enough to get rich but plenty to keep the lights on and pay the crew.

  First Officer Wu’s voice crackled over Jacob’s com unit. “I got an ID on the bogie”—static—“It is a Bang-eoja Class Patrol Craft…” Before she finished, the message static drowned out her voice.

  “Wu, say that again. You’re breaking up.” The normally clear tones of Allen’s voice sounded as distant as the ship. “Wu, say again.”

  His only answer was static.

  “Maybe they’re jamming us?” Ava worked right next to Jacob, but he only heard her over the coms. She sounded hollow, like the captain. Something was hinky.

  “No need to worry…” Allen sounded worried, even if in a tin can. “You two keep at it, I’m heading to the surface… to check on things.” His voice trailed off, not from distance but from jamming. “No… Don’t…” The words that rattled out of the speaker didn’t sound human. The voice had to be Allen’s, even if it didn’t sound like him.

  If he said more, Jacob never heard it.

  Ava turned a
nd faced him, her troubled look unmistakable through the twin layers of the synthetic faceplate. Her lips moved, but Jacob didn’t hear a thing.

  What started as low vibration turned into a violent shake. The thought of a quake rushed through his mind.

  With a push from Jacob, Ava started for the surface. The tunnels shook, and rock broke free from the wall. The rubble floated in the microgravity, obscuring vision.

  The work lights flashed out.

  Jacob’s suit lost power.

  He floated, trapped in the unpowered suit he once loved, unable to move. The exoskeleton became a tomb.

  That was when he noticed the waves of light rolling down the shaft. Light wasn’t the correct term. It was more like the walls of the tunnel glowed with the red fire of aurora. Only Jacob knew that, without atmosphere, that was impossible. Like sailors of old, an unexplainable experience flashed before the miner’s blurred vision.

  This space version of Saint Elmo’s fire couldn’t possibly be a sign of good luck.

  Jacob didn’t have long to contemplate the light’s meaning or source. He lost his struggle and dropped off, unconscious.

  Chapter 04:

  AD 2100 Earth Eastern-Alliance – Shanghai

  Reo forced himself to appear comfortable in the hard-seated molded chair. The bones of his slender frame mashed against the unforgiving surface, lighting bolts of pain from his ass to the base of his skull. In the little waiting room, he found the most effective form of torture in the guises of a simple molded office chair. Plop a skinny ass down in this device for a few hours, and the person would tell you anything an inquisitor wanted to know.

  To endure the pain proved Reo’s lot in this life. There was little choice but to wait for the adjacent meeting to end, or he would have left and grabbed a tea or stronger beverage. When summoned, an agent’s duty was to answer the call with a smile in their heart—or suffer the wrath of the Party.