Belters

by Greg Alldredge

  One at a time, the words came from his throat. “We are still alive.” He wasn’t sure if the sentence did any good, but felt it needed to be said, nonetheless.

  Ava smiled. “Listen, if we turn out the lights, will we glow?”

  Jacob wanted to laugh, but his heart broke. There was only so much bad news a person could take. His tank was nearly full of shit. “I don’t think it works like that…”

  She stared at the ceiling, blinking her eyes. “Damn it, I got something in my eyes.”

  “Yeah, I can understand that.” He knew she fought hard to keep it all together.

  “I think the patches are going to hold. We need to get power back…” She motioned with her head. “Go get treated before your frank and beans fall off. If there is a world left to return to, you might want your junk still intact. Med computer says I should live if I receive proper treatment in a hospital… soon… Kids are out of the question.”

  “There’s something to look forward to…” he said the words and regretted them. “I mean the living part… not the kids.”

  “Yeah, I figured that. Now is not the time to dwell on the shitty hand the future has waiting for us.”

  Jacob paused before asking, “You in a better mood… knowing you’re going to live?”

  Ava sighed, “Can’t we enjoy the good news for a few seconds before you ruin it?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The way you started that question… I know bad news is coming.”

  Jacob pushed off from the heater and floated to his rack curtain. “Don’t be mad.” With a smooth action, the curtain pulled back. Inside lay the disabled corporate armored suit, stuffed into the small space.

  She let out a deep sigh. “And the happiness is gone… You just couldn’t let them rot in the cargo bay?”

  “We both know they would die out there.” Jacob waited for her to attack the broken suit.

  Her attention returned to the glowing coils and the heat they offered. “They might be dead already.”

  Maybe the meds helped keep her calm. “If they are gone, we didn’t kill them.” He let out a soft exhale of relief. He didn’t want to fight his friend over another’s life.

  “Any signs of life?”

  “None yet.”

  Ava started to remove her spacesuit. “Well, damn it, if we have one more to keep alive, I’d better see if I can get the reactor and engines started, or we will all be dead soon, anyway.”

  “You got any idea how to fire either up?”

  “Not a clue. You didn’t happen to read about modern Bolo engines or fusion reactor startup as a kid, did you?” The top half of her suit cracked from the bottom, and a disgusting smell filled the cabin. “I probably should have done this in the suit-up area.”

  Before Jacob thought up a wisecrack, a whooshing sound grabbed his attention. Behind him, the helm of the corporate space suit split like a clam. Light blue goop oozed from the crack, coating a good portion of his rack. The jelly parted to reveal an unconscious woman’s face, slick from the muck.

  “Dafuk?” The torso of Ava’s suit floated free. She pushed to get a better look at the crap that floated in glops from the black suit.

  Rather than complain about the mess, Jacob tested the ooze with an outstretched finger, rubbing it between his finger and thumb. “I have read about this stuff. I bet it is an oxygenated fluid to reduce the shock of high-G maneuvers.”

  “What?” Ava pushed back, trying to stay clear of the crap.

  He held up a finger for her to inspect. “You breathe this instead of air. Keeps your insides from being crushed during high-G combat.”

  “You’re kidding me.” She didn’t try to hide the look of disgust.

  He inched closer to the cooperate security enforcer. Searching for signs of life in the woman, he mumbled a silent prayer over her.

  She coughed the fluid from her lungs and into his face.

  “Looks like she is alive.” Ava snorted, “You know you deserved that, bringing her on board.”

  “Help me get her out of this suit.” He ran his fingers inside the rim of the helm, looking for the controls that surely needed to be there.

  Ava shook her head. “I’m not helping you with some twisted sleeping beauty fantasy. She can stay in the damned thing for all I care.”

  “You rather have her wake up and still have powered armor on?”

  “Good point.”

  Jacob couldn’t find any recognizable controls.

  “You need to get to medical. I’ll look after sleeping beauty here.” Ava slipped next to him. “I can get a woman out of her clothes when I need to.”

  Jacob paused. “Don’t kill her. She might come in handy.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not that bloodthirsty. Besides, we get her out of the armor, we can always pitch her out the airlock later.”

  Jacob wasn’t sure whether Ava was serious or not, but at least she went from a crime of passion to premeditated murder. That wasn’t much of an advancement in her thinking, but he’d take whatever he could get.

  Chapter 11:

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Ceres Station

  Reo’s sleep hadn’t improved. Each time he closed his eyes, his dreams dragged him back to the stone room and his two traveling companions. Having a good idea what was happening to him didn’t help. He was lost in the woods without a canoe or a river.

  In one of the dreams, Tian, out of character, finally shouted, “We are never going to leave this place without our missing party member.”

  Reo had no good interpretation of the bizarre dreams. He was a reader, not a seer. From his limited experience with the rare set of skills, the future might manifest itself in any number of ways. From his research, dreams were reported as one of the most common.

  The problem was they often didn’t give straightforward information. Most times, it was left up to the seer to interpret the damned dreams. Any information he found online proved useless. Written by dubious sources, Reo made assumptions with no firsthand knowledge of the process.

  With no manual and little research into the skills, Reo was left up to his own devices to figure out what the universe was trying to tell him.

  All this assumed he wasn’t simply going insane. Stories of insane agents snaked their way through the ranks of ESPers like thieves in the night. Radiation from space travel slowly ate away his frontal cortex or, worse, some unknown force had latched on to his brain, and the dreams were his way of coping with the brain worm infestation. He really needed to stop watching so many horror movies. They weren’t good for his sanity.

  The transfer ship had docked at Ceres Station. The umbilical unit had been attached. Now they only needed to walk from the ship onto the station while the cargo offloaded in the adjacent tube. In space, as on Earth, time was money. The Conveyor would shortly be turned around and headed back to earth with a different crew. The only time the ship stopped was for repairs that couldn’t be completed while flying. Working a transfer ship provided a hard, dangerous life, one Reo never expected to experience.

  What Reo really wanted was a long hot shower. Better yet, a long soak in a hot tub. The fine mist provided on the transfer ship’s shower unit was anything but refreshing. At least he didn’t need to work his way through immigration like the rest of the plebes.

  Rather than wait in line, he walked straight through the interior offices without question. All he needed was a flash of travel papers, and he cleared entry into the station. Now he was about to meet the last great love of his life. He wondered if she even remembered him.

  Right outside the exit, she waited for him. He recognized her despite the chrome smart glasses that hid her eyes. She stood with the same condescending posture he remembered so well.

  I hate my life.

  <=OO=>

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Ceres Station

  Ceres Station was just as Lea remembered it. An insane madhouse of different cultures and corporations all mashed together on a rock less than a fifth
the size of Earth’s moon.

  With a diameter of less than five hundred and sixty miles, technically the whole of the asteroid could fit nicely into the boundaries of the Texican Republic in North America.

  The people who called Ceres home didn’t bother with the surface of the dwarf planet. Rather, the whole of the colony burrowed deep into the crust. Started as a mine, it wasn’t long before the tunnels filled up with all sorts of red necks, belters, prospectors, wildcatters… The list of names grew too numerous to know them all. Each with a little clique and set of bars they called home. Everyone working Ceres was on a quest to strike it rich. Unfortunately, many found their way to the station and never earned enough coin to provide for themselves. It was human nature for one human to think of ways to separate the dimwitted from their hard-earned cash.

  The worst of the robber barons were the company stores. The huge markup for even basic necessities drained the unsuspecting travelers. The merchants always had the ready-made excuse. It cost a lot to live in space. Not like shoppers had a choice of sellers.

  The three corporations that made up the Ceres cartel weren’t known for sharing the profits with the independent operators. They had a cut of every dollar, yen, bitcoin, or euro made on the station. Space had no common currency.

  The station was operated by an unholy alliance of two mining companies, Bakshi-Corp and Takahashi Heavy Industry, and the service provider Holly and Burnt. Other corps rented space from the two large mining corporations. Holly and Burnt provided the muscle to keep the peace. There were representatives from most Earth governments, but they had little influence over the day-to-day operations. The highest bidder took what they wanted. Those with the biggest guns kept what was theirs. The courts of Earth worked hard to provide oversight and control of the corporations, but when the corporations bought and sold those in power, there was little chance for the disenfranchised to gain ground.

  There was little the governments from Earth could do to enforce their will outside the orbit. None of the countries bothered constructing a fleet of ships capable of direct confrontation with the corporations. The cost and risk of space had been abandoned to the rich. Surely, somewhere in the marble halls of governmental power that ruled the remnants of Earth a few voices cried, sounding the alarm, but they were quickly silenced by the power that could be bought with cash flowing from the belt.

  Like most of history, the civilians had the government they deserved, all bought and paid for by the elite few in charge. The men and women of the boards. The ultra-powerful continued their climb, all on the backs of the worker.

  The transport ship docked by itself. Just one of the ships scheduled for the day. All done by autopilot, there was little need for a crew on the bridge of the modern ship. The busy port of Ceres always had some manner of craft in transition. There was no hangar for the ships to fly into. The gravity was light enough for most ships to set down on the surface. Adjustable skids provided support when needed.

  A sterile umbilical tube connected the Conveyor stationside. The first experience of the station resembled an Earthside office building more than a colony buried deep in a rock, orbiting more than twice the distance from the sun than Earth.

  Rather than pull strings or bribe her way on to the station, Lea followed the other migrants. There was no reason to stand out any more than need be. Chances were good her biosignature was tracked to Ceres before she cleared the gravity of Earth, but if she escaped cleanly, the few extra days of peace would be nice.

  Customs and immigration were a matter of answering a few questions and a facial recognition scan. Few people traveled with luggage. The cost of carrying more than a small carry-on kept weight low. Lea had never heard of any travelers being turned around at the incoming processing. Strong hands were always needed in the belt. If a person made it to Ceres, even a hardened criminal could start a new life for themselves. Papers could be forged for anyone willing to pay. Past indiscretions waived for a price. With enough coin, anything could be bought out in the dark.

  A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds greeted Lea as she left the space dock and stepped into the cavern that made up the Ceres arrival hall. Not so much a secured area but a location for the most desperate of Ceres’s citizens to ply their wares. It was aptly named Ceres Circus.

  After the calm beige of the Conveyor interior, flashing colored lights of different tempos and colors created a seizure-inducing atmosphere. The music from a hundred different speakers blared out at least a hundred different songs, not loud enough to distinguish from each other. The chaos blended into a curious mix with an electronic dance music feel, only more chaotic.

  Crammed between the watering holes and flophouses were used shipping containers that had been commandeered as combination homes and shops for the lucky who had something to sell. Floor space cost money, so most owners slept on the floor of their shop.

  Outside, women and men of different sexualities plied their wares, all in order to survive. The Circus was only a slight step above the worst Earth had to offer. Few people died in the gutter here. Mainly because there wasn’t any gutter to find. Everything in space was collected and recycled. Any unsolved deaths were normally handled quickly and quietly by security forces. The bodies were recycled in the bowels of the station.

  Life in space was hard. Civilians made the journey into space over seventy-five years earlier, yet only a handful of the people working the Circus had gray hair, and most of those were probably due to radiation exposure. There was no plan for the aged on the station. Few survived past sixty.

  Those first settlers in space died young so future generations could better learn how to survive. Cancer and genetic mutations were still a major concern for anyone who lived outside Earth’s magnetic field. No matter how much rock they built under, the cosmic rays found a way in. Like the dark ages, life expectancies remained short in space.

  Earthers might not want to bring their children off-planet, but belters seemed to pop them out as fast as possible. Not long after the first civilians headed into space, babies started being born. For the thousands now born in space, they would never be able to return to Mother Earth. The gravity would crush them.

  On Earth, the birth rates of the developed nations continued to fall. Not low enough to lift the burden of overpopulation on the planet, but if they kept falling, professionals who worried about such things calculated the population would level off soon at around sixteen billion.

  That number didn’t count the children born in space. Dubbed ETs, they looked more alien than human. The shortest of them topped over two meters, and they had slender bodies with little muscle mass. In space, the need for a balance between large families and the strain on resources was a constant battle. Most free traders were family ships. Made up of extended families, they shared in an equal slice of a payoff. These family ships rarely took on unrelated crew.

  Lea knew there were kids on Ceres. She’d seen them before, but today children were absent at the Circus. That seemed out of place. Normally, several hands waited for the generosity of people as they stumbled out of processing. The outpost ran 24/7, so there was always something or someone to do. Schooling, work, life, all ran on shifts of eight to twelve hours apiece. Even the beggars worked in shifts.

  Not too far from the exit, the company man Reo waved his arms at a dark-haired woman wearing the bright international orange coveralls of FlyRight Corp. Her eyes and the majority of her expressions were hidden by the reflective smart glasses she wore.

  Lea assumed the woman was Asian. The few words she caught were an unfamiliar language. The young woman wore the orange outfit like a spacer, with a relaxed fit—easy to get in and out of. But her body language screamed her Earth origins. Before Lea parted ways with Tian, Reo all but pulled the new woman up to the pair.

  “These are the ones…” Reo said without an introduction. His body language seemed more agitated, twitchy, than recent memory served her.

  Lea bit her tongue. The last thing she need
ed was a scene with some corporate woman on her first meeting at a strange station. Technically she was in hiding and on the run from FlyRight or one of their subsidiaries.

  The smart glasses hid any emotion when the new woman spoke. “Tian Lee, you have failed to meet procedures. You have unopened communications from headquarters.” Sharp would have been a polite description of the stranger’s tone.

  Lea’s word slipped out before she knew it. “Procedures?”

  The woman turned her head toward Lea, more machinelike than human. “Yes, FlyRight human relations chapter zero one, section four-niner, paragraph six, ‘Upon reaching a new destination, employees are to check company communications.’ You have failed to open a new directive.”

  Tian’s cheeks turned red. The excuses came at a stammering pace. “I… don’t get it… I thought… I might have some… some time to enjoy… explore the station before my next shuttle.”

  The female machine shot off the orders most efficiently. “You were not placed in this universe to get it. Change of plans happen. You have been reassigned to me. Gather your things and report to the Virgil, dock thirty-niner alpha. We depart as soon as clearance is granted.”

  Tian, now flustered, worked like a madman on the device worn on zer arm. After the journey, piles of communications had gone ignored. It was a scramble to find the correct message. Zhe was never offered a chance.

  “Off with you then. You are dismissed,” the mysterious woman barked.

  Left little choice, Tian offered a quick hug to Lea before scampering off down the docks. “Good luck…” the programmer called over zer shoulder, scrambling down the crowed docks.

  Lea never minded strong, powerful women, but there was a time and place for everything. As far as Lea could tell, this FlyRight puppet proved to be a bitch on wheels. Before Lea excused herself to escape the rude woman, the chromed glasses turned their attention to her. With no eyes to focus on, Lea talked to the woman’s nose. At least it offered a target for her concentration.