Belters

by Greg Alldredge

  “I knew you’re a sound sleeper, but that was insane.”

  “Ready for the test?”

  She nodded. “We will watch from out here, check for puffs of frost as the air escapes. I will bring up the pressure slowly.”

  “Affirmative.” Jacob waited before adding, “You can let me go now.” Her suit’s arms had wrapped around his body, pinning him to the outer hull.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ll check the far side.” Ava scrambled off him and headed for the far side of the ship. “I’m going to try a few psi first. Far below one bar.”

  Given the vacuum outside, any pressure on the inside would find a way out. What they needed to do was find and seal the leaks before their limited O2 escaped into the void.

  “Half a bar… You know if we survive this…” Eva stopped talking.

  The silence proved more than Jacob’s frazzled nerves could take. “What?”

  “It looks like the seals are holding.”

  “What if we survive this?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking. If we survive this, we will never pay for another drink.”

  Jacob couldn’t help but laugh. Impending death had hung over their heads for too many hours in a row. They needed a win. “Like you ever paid for a drink…”

  “What can I say? If you had perfect legs, you could say the same.” Ava must be tired as well. The giggle was lightyears out of her normal character.

  “I think I would settle for a sacrificial pizza.”

  “That could be your superpower, pizza on demand.”

  “Wasn’t that a slogan for an early century pizza joint?”

  “Not sure… Jacob, all indications are the pressure is holding… taking it up to 1 bar.”

  Jacob held his breath, waiting for a seam to burst and blow their short supply of air out to space. “How long should we wait?”

  “Not sure. If we have no pressure drop after an hour, we will call it safe.”

  “Sounds great. I need to get out of this suit. I stink to high heaven.”

  “Not so fast, sweetheart. We will need to keep the suits on until we make sure the life support is working. It’s going to be colder than a well digger’s ass inside. Head to the bay, we will wait inside.”

  “At least we can run some tests with the med bay.” Jacob nearly added more but held off.

  “Yeah, let’s see if all this work was to give us a place to die.”

  His four hands worked in unison, hand over hand, toward the open cargo hold. Ava’s words happened to echo his morbid thoughts. They needed to wait for the longest hour ever, but at least they would be near the med bay when the coast was cleared.

  Jacob called to Ava. “You go check out your blood. Just follow the instructions. I got one more thing to do.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll get started on the life support as soon as the test starts.”

  Jacob was glad his mining partner didn’t ask what he needed to do. There was no reason to lie, but Jacob decided a lie through omission was much better than the truth right now.

  Chapter 09:

  AD 2100 En Route to Ceres – EZS Conveyor

  The EZ-lift corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Holly and Burnt, operated the EZS Conveyor between Ceres and Earth, built for one mission: the relativity short haul between Ceres Station and the platforms connecting Earth with geosynchronous orbit. A short distance in space was an order of magnitude larger than anything experienced on Earth.

  Thinking about the distances traveled, time, and the speeds made Reo’s head spin. Still, Ceres was less than halfway to the outer stations, with an orbit just inside the asteroid belt. The dwarf planet made for a logical steppingstone for human expansion into space. However, with gravity at three percent of Earth, it was not and would never be the place for Reo to live. He missed the weight of Earth.

  If the advertisements were to be believed, humans had been on Ceres long enough to hollow out huge chunks of the rock, giving an appearance of an enclosed mall on Earth. A Garden of Eden in a chunk of space rock. Reo would believe it when he saw it.

  The travel time between Earth and Ceres was constantly changing due to the orbits of the two bodies. Thinking about orbital mechanics and travel times always gave Reo a sour stomach. The trip was scheduled to last seven days. Given he’d already wasted two days to reach Indonesia, another five to reach the head of the Phoenix lift—by the time they ever approached the location of the event, a month would have passed.

  The chances of his ex finding anything of usefulness out in the black of space seemed remote at best. Given the time to reach Ceres from Earth, and then the trip out into the dark, this had to be the stupidest decision thrust upon him in a long line of terrible decisions. Somewhere in the hierarchy of the Party, the Force, or both, an ignoramus was allowed to make important decisions concerning Reo’s welfare.

  Snipe hunt. He had heard the term while in school. The idea was to take an unsuspecting person out into the woods late at night to catch small flightless birds and leave them—lost. All as a prank.

  Given that there were few trees in the slums of Manila, the joke had never been pulled on Reo. Though he once convinced a girl to explore the service tunnels under his old neighborhood. That night, the only thing on Reo’s mind was a different type of exploration, with no leaving her alone in the dark.

  The term cabin fever Reo heard before but never understood until now. The file he’d been handed took all of about an hour to read. The Party had no clue what caused the unnamed burst of energy out in the deepest regions of space. Given that most of the trip from Earth to orbit he’d been laid out sick, asleep, drugged with space sick pills, he should consider himself lucky. He didn’t. Even with the extensive library of video from Earth, Reo wanted to go for a walk. There was shit all to do for the hours, days, weeks required to reach any destination in space.

  No matter the confined space, Reo went for his walk. It turned into more of a pace. Back and forth, the walkway between the cabins became his walking track. He walked to take his mind off how truly fucked he was. It didn’t work.

  How people survived an ocean voyage of the olden days was beyond his scope of understanding. At least he didn’t need to cope with the constant rocking of an oceangoing ship. He imagined puking hard enough to throw his boots up over the side.

  “Will you please stop?” The peculiar Western woman spoke on one of his passes.

  “Stop what?” Reo didn’t slow.

  On the next pass. “The pacing… can’t you give it a rest?” Reo walked by without pause or comment.

  By the accent, she was from North America, given the population density of the continent and given circumstances, somewhere in the old United States was likely. Her accent was not strong enough to make a more precise, educated guess. He’d gathered no surface thoughts around her. Either she was not strongly thinking about anything important, or his reading skills were atrophied from his sickness and self-imposed isolation.

  “Please come sit down for a moment.” This from the androgynous Asian person who sat next to her. From the accent, northeastern China. Again, no thoughts leaked through. This brief meeting turned stranger by the second. If Reo could no longer read thoughts—the possibility excited him and scared the hell out of him at the same time.

  Reo had kept the volume on his ability turned down for the trip. It was the only way he’d get any sleep. Too many voices chattering away at once to make sense of anything, anyway. He’d been quiet for so long he’d nearly forgotten about the ever-present voices. However, direct communication with a fellow human should have brought their internal voice to the foreground, making it louder than the senseless chatter.

  Rather than ignore the invitation this time, he decided to sit and be a good travel companion, or at least to sit and practice his readings. He didn’t want his skills to atrophy more from disuse. A small test was called for.

  “I’m Lea.” The Western woman said, holding out her hand.

  The Chinese person follo
wed the lead. “I am Tian.”

  Reo hesitated. He’d turned up the volume in his head but wasn’t receiving any meaningful voices. Fuck all. If his readings were broken in space, he would be retired once he returned to Earth. He stood and nearly ran to his cabin.

  “I told you he was a doubi,” Tian spoke to his back… That he could hear with his ears just fine.

  Maybe someone planted an ESPer inhibitor in the area. They were rare, but it could happen. In all his research, he’d never heard of space travel affecting ESPer abilities… This had to be something new.

  He needed to send a message to report in. This was important. People up the chain needed to know. The problem was there was a chance the telepaths on Earth would never receive a report. Should I risk a written report over open channels?

  If the remote viewers were affected, that would be why the decision was made to send an agent into space… Shit… Babushka sent me because I am expendable. She knew this might happen.

  The errant PEK waves must be stopping his readings. In theory, like cosmic rays, there was nothing in space to stop the PEK radiation from reaching him.

  Before he risked making a fool of himself, he needed a better test.

  He opened his diplomatic case. Inside a concealed compartment sat his limited supply of Blast injector pens. The quicksilver drug would enhance his limited ESPer abilities. From the outside, it still looked good, sealed, and ready to use. He carried so little of the special sauce he didn’t dare waste it on a simple test. Better to try this without drugs until he learned more. If this failed, he might be able to find more Blast on Ceres.

  Reo needed to stifle a nervous laugh, he had a better chance of finding a unicorn on Ceres than a source of ESPer enhancing drug.

  He needed a better test. Outside his cabin sat the two fellow passengers, Tian and the Westerner. It was time to see what happened if he turned up the power to his ability naturally.

  “Sorry about that… I didn’t mean to run off. I haven’t been the same since we left Earth.” Reo joined the two people and slowly started cranking up the power on his ability.

  The two shared a sideways glance. Reo knew they were thinking bad thoughts about him, but he couldn’t pick up a damned thing.

  “So the nausea hasn’t stopped?” Tian asked.

  Reo listened to the words and thoughts. He got nothing, save a buzzing in his brain like someone set a mosquito free in his skull. “No… it’s better. Moved lower, you could say.”

  The woman from the West snorted a chuckle.

  That was when Reo realized he’d just admitted to having diarrhea or gas to total strangers. Still not a peep of a reading from her.

  He said, “Sorry… I didn’t catch your name.” He risked offering his hand to the woman. There was an off chance she could be a fellow reader but skilled in psychometry. The ability to read via touch… He needed to risk direct contact to find out more.

  The woman took his hand, but before she said a word, Tian interjected. “This is Lea, she’s an inspector… She checks to make sure our drugs are dope.” Tian giggled at her lame joke.

  Reo didn’t read a thing. From the blank look on Lea’s face, she didn’t read anything from Reo.

  This silence called for drastic measures. Reo cranked his volume to eleven. The bug in his head exploded into a raging swarm, all fighting to land in his inner ears.

  Out of reflex, he twisted and turned, both hands shot to protect his ears. Anything to stop the noise.

  He never realized it was so far down to the deck.

  <=OO=>

  The room had changed. Reo sat in a roughhewn straight-backed chair at a round mirrored table. His hands gripped the edge tighter, anything to keep his head from spinning. Three empty chairs waited for missing occupants.

  Where the hell am I?

  His question went unanswered.

  A strange reflection stared back from the mirrored table. Reo sat dressed in flowing black robes with bizarre silver and gold markings down the sleeves. Atop his head rested a black dunce’s cap, again adorned with strings of unidentifiable runes, all etched from precious metals.

  The cabin and furnishings of the spaceship were replaced by a circular stone room. Hell.

  The ship’s indirect LED lighting changed to flaming sconces.

  He felt a moist heat from the stone and flames instead of the ever-present cool, dry spacecraft atmosphere.

  Reo found himself someplace he’d never experienced before. His pulse throbbed in his temples. At least the buzzing sound had disappeared.

  A rolled scroll lay on the table between his hands. The red wax seal was inscribed with the words:

  Secrets taken to the grave.

  I must be… Maybe I suffered a stroke, and this is my mind’s way of coping with the death of my brain cells.

  Focused solely on the scroll, his tentative hands reached for the parchment.

  “Open the dammed thing already.” Lea’s voice boomed in the small stone room.

  He jumped in surprise. If the chair Reo sat in was a normal modern seat, he would have tipped over backward. Instead, he barely scooted the heavy hunk of wood furniture when he tried leaping to his feet. His legs tangled in the long black robes, and he ended up tumbling to the unforgiving flagstones.

  His eyes shot to where Lea stood. She was dressed in skintight black-leather bikini-looking armor. Next to Lea stood a snorting Tian, dressed in dark blue robes. The Asian’s hair had been cropped into a bowl cut, complete with monk’s tonsure. The baggy tunic still did a wonderful job of concealing Tian’s true sex.

  Reo rolled on the rough slate floor, bouncing quickly to his feet. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

  “You tell us,” Tian said.

  “Really, this isn’t our dream.” Lea moved her hands over her scantily dressed body. “Or should I call it a fantasy?” Her eyes closed to a glare. “You disgust me.”

  Reo felt the blood rush to his cheeks. It had been many months since he’d shared the intimate company of a woman, but he’d never had any round-eyed fantasy… that he knew of. Reo risked a stupid question, “Listen, do you two know what is going on?”

  “How can we know more than you?” Lea grunted. “But this all looks mighty kinky if I was to guess.”

  Tian moved to the closest chair and sat down. “Surely, you brought us here.”

  “I…” Reo’s words failed him.

  Lea joined Tian at the table.

  “Well?” Tian asked.

  “Well, what?” Reo returned to his seat.

  “Are you going to open the missive?” Lea asked, motioning with her eyes to the scroll.

  “I’m not sure I want to.” Reo’s reach only made it halfway to the scroll. “I think… I’m afraid.”

  “Why?” Lea did little to hide the impatience in her tone.

  Tian’s voice remained calm and logical. “It is only a piece of paper. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “What if I open it, and it says I’m dead?”

  Lea laughed at his fear. “I’m not sure it works like that…”

  Tian’s tone softened. “If you are dead, not opening this will leave you just as dead. Will it not?”

  “That sort of makes sense.” Reo pulled his hands back and dried his sweaty palms on his wizard’s robes.

  “Of course, it does.” Tian nodded.

  “We are here to help, after all.” Lea chuckled.

  “Maybe we should wait for…” Reo cocked his head to the empty chair.

  “Do you know who is missing?” Tian raised an eyebrow.

  “No,” Reo shot back.

  Lea growled. “Then fuck ‘em. Not our fault they are late.”

  “Don’t work so hard to hide your true feelings there…” The Westerner’s words surprised Reo.

  Lea shot back a wicked grin. “Never accuse me of catching anything like feelings.”

  “Are you going to open it or not?” Tian asked.

  Reo reached out and grabbed the
scroll. A flick of his finger broke the seal. He should have spent more time inspecting the damned thing before opening it. His eyes drifted over the first line of script, the words flowing from his lips without thought.

  Once strangers meet and become the whole.

  While shadows rise and courage falters.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Lea broke his concentration.

  Reo glared at the imaginary woman. “I don’t know. Mind if I finish reading the damned thing?”

  “Sorry.” The loud woman leaned back in her chair, arms crossed.

  Reo returned to reciting the words written in script.

  Once strangers meet and become the whole.

  While shadows rise and courage falters.

  One will be willing to pay the toll.

  Little of life will be unaltered.

  One will come to slide down the hole.

  One will rise to greet the offer.

  Once strangers meet and become the whole.

  “What’s that smell?” Tian asked.

  The aroma of ammonia assaulted his sense of smell. His eyes started to water in response… He lost sight of the words and the others who sat near. Words he suspected were of high importance faded from his sight.

  <=OO=>

  Reo coughed, the stench of the smelling salts forced him back to reality.

  Opening his eyes, Reo expected to see a familiar face looming over him. He didn’t. A strange man dressed in the bright orange uniform of the EZ-lift shipping company stood over him.

  “You all right?” the stranger asked.

  Reo’s eyes darted around the room. The puzzling buzzing returned with a vengeance. Reo dialed back his power, trying to control the sound. He lay on a table in a space like any number of medical exam rooms he’d been tortured in over the years. “That depends on where I am?” Except in this one, everything was tied down. He must still be in space. This part wasn’t a dream.

  A frown spread over the man’s face. “Listen, I’m the MedTech here… Call me Lewis. Where do you think you are? Do you remember what happened?”