Belters

by Greg Alldredge

  “Welcome to Ceres. I understand you are between stops. An individual of your skills might prove useful on our expedition.” The words sent a cold shiver down Lea’s spine. Few knew she was here. Fewer knew what her qualifications might be. “Reo here suggested you might be looking for gainful employment.” The woman from FlyRight finished her thought.

  The thought of spending a second enclosed on any ship with this person caused her stomach to flop.

  Before forced into an answer, a spacer walked up. It was easy to tell the type, tall and slender from a lifetime in limited gravity. Life in space mostly offered limited microgravity. The gray ships coveralls sporting reflective strips made a sharp contrast to the corporate woman who stood before her.

  To make the difference more pronounced, the man had pulled off the shoulders and tied the arms around his waist. The man flashed his family tats with pride, snaking down the right side of his face and disappearing under his clothes. Each belter on a family ship wore an intricate pattern of symbols. It acted as a way to distinguish ship and qualifications. Belters plainly wore their resume etched onto their skin for everyone to see.

  Lea knew a few of the different symbols’ meanings. Anyone who worked in space needed to know a few. The man was an engineer. That explained away some of his gruffness. Grease monkeys had a valid reputation for universally being better equipped to deal with machines than people. Being sent on an errand as demeaning as telling a passenger to get their ass back to the ship must have hurt the man’s ego to no end.

  For those who couldn’t read the cryptic tats that covered the man, the name of his ship was emblazoned on his tight-fitting wifebeater undershirt: Virgil. “The old man sent me to tell you we got clearance. We leave in one hour.”

  Lea had never met too many spacers, but she knew enough to know they didn’t normally talk with the thick, broken accent like this guy did. He was either an aberration or he put on a show for the corporate stooge.

  “Would you mind not interrupting our conversation?” The women did little to hide her exasperation.

  Lea bit her lip to hide the smile. Normally she hated to see any man talk down to a woman, but in this case, it might be well deserved.

  “Listen, dragon lady, I don’t work for you, see. Master Baal tells me to jump, I says how high. Youse tells me to jump, I says piss off. Now I did what the master tells me to do.” Before the “dragon lady” gave the man a piece of her mind, he turned and started off the direction he came.

  “You will kindly address me as Doctor Vizminda Abe or simply Doctor if the former is too many words,” the woman blustered to the man’s back.

  Lea watched the woman’s hands clench in anger. With no release, she might explode before the ship reached its final destination. The spacer answered the good doctor with a single raised middle finger. Lea coughed to hide her snort.

  “I will talk to the captain about that man’s insubordination.” Doctor Abe was going to have a hard time dealing with the crew of a family ship. Most the independents hated taking a corporate contract of any kind. Considered it akin to selling their soul to the devil. Taking a slot on the ship might be worth the hassle simply to watch the woman implode.

  Rather than accept the offer, her excuse came quickly, before Lea cut off the conversation. “No, thanks. I have a job. I need to be going now.”

  “Suit yourself, we leave within the hour if you change your mind.” Her arm reached out and, with the first outward appearance of nonhostile emotions, touched Reo’s arm. “This way.”

  Crap on a cracker, what a bitch. Lea was happy to escape that bullet. Now she needed to find a place to hole up and let the heat die off. Given enough time and cash, she should find out more now that she was safely off Earth.

  She hadn’t made it far when the strained voice of the company man Reo reached her. “Lea, please wait a moment.”

  The urge to run was overruled by her need to keep a low profile. She didn’t need some ass running after her shouting her name. A quick spin on her heel, and he nearly ran into her. “What?” The words came out harsher than she intended.

  “I wish you would reconsider… I think we should all stick together…” Reo twitched more than normal. The stress of space travel had taken its toll. Lea would bet the man would never make it back to Earth sane. Some people just weren’t made for space.

  “Why…? You barely know me.” The words sounded hard, but it was the God’s honest truth. He had zero reasons for needing her on Herr Doctor’s crazy train.

  He lowered his voice to barely a whisper. “Something bad is coming… Once strangers meet… Listen, we should stick together.”

  “Listen, I have a job waiting.” It was only half a lie. She did need to find out if someone was out to cut her life short.

  “Please just think about it… I don’t think you are safe here on Ceres.”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever… You should go. The doctor is probably waiting.” Before Reo stopped her, Lea spun and hustled on her way. The man was losing it quickly, and she sure didn’t want to be near when he finally cracked.

  The stress of modern life, well some people just couldn’t take the load of crap life threw their way.

  There was a good reason Tian unplugged during the flight from Earth. The daily grind of constant connectivity found on Earth had become a real health risk for many. The peak of first-world problems, on-demand information at the fingertips, left little time for relaxation. Many people found sleep difficult with so much information.

  In developed countries, a cottage industry had cropped up. Retreats were created with artificial black zones with no reception. People who could afford the price would check in for a week to decompress from the constant information bombardment. Space travel did most of the same thing. Connectivity was available during travel times, but for a steep cost. Nothing came free out in the dark.

  During the trip, Lea unplugged for a different reason. Since she traveled on diplomatic clearance, she got off Earth clean. As soon as she reached out for clues or tapped her numbered accounts, the timer started. If she was lucky, it might take hours for anyone after her to spot her activity. More than likely, it would only take seconds. Her only hope remained the distance from Earth, which might give her a few days before she needed to skip Ceres and head to a new spider hole. Some people might accuse her of paranoia, but her mistrust of people was the reason she survived in such a dangerous profession for so long.

  Now Lea needed a place to call home for the short term. A hole where she could tap into that well of information to seek out some tidbits of truth.

  The docks were lined with all manner of flophouses, most rented by the hour. Signs flashed with offers of privacy, hot bodies, and cold beer. Everything a crew needed to fill those desires left untouched while in space.

  Since most of the people on a ship were related, romance could get a tad tricky. Pulling into a place like Ceres was a way for singles to meet up and do what humans have always been good at. Making more of them.

  The Circus was well known in the solar system as a place to find Miss or Mister Right-now. Despite, Earth’s puritanical attitudes concerning sex and sexuality transporting into space, humans still worked hard to make little copies of themselves.

  Personal contact was a complication Lea didn’t need. Besides, the closer to the surface of the station, the less shielding there was. If Lea ever decided to have kids, she needed to limit her exposure to cosmic radiation as much as possible. That meant finding a room deeper under the protection the rock offered.

  Housing near the surface was relegated to the poor and disenfranchised. The newest, most luxurious places to live and visit on Ceres, or any station built in space, were the deepest.

  Three levels down should be out of the way, protected, and still cheap enough to not raise eyebrows. All she needed was a coffin room, a place to access the net and lay her head to sleep. A room not much larger than a casket was easy to find. They were the type of place most transit workers house
d up when not looking for a sexual partner.

  Making her way down the ramps to the warrens of midlevel tunnels proved simple. Avoiding crowds, she sidestepped the lifts, opting to stretch her legs after the long confinement. The light gravity made for easy travel. She hadn’t noticed how thin the crowd was. Even if this was midshift, the Circus should be going full tilt. There were few locals about, only company personnel and ship’s crew.

  If she hadn’t been distracted, she would have made it a point to be more aware of her surroundings, but the damned dragon lady… doctor threw her for a loop.

  <=OO=>

  After the confrontation, Mindy had taken hold of Reo’s elbow and led him through the station loading docks. His old flame continued to speak the whole time. The steady drone of her voice allowed Reo’s mind a chance to wander.

  He was surprised when he found himself in the stone-lined room, still trapped with the two women. Somehow, he jumped in midconversation.

  “Shut up all of you.” Reo stood from the table, his anger at not being able to decipher the clues of the riddle driving him insane. To make matters worse, he could not open the door. No matter what he tried, his subconscious would not let him continue the dream until the last person showed.

  He slowly banged his head on the door. Not too hard, as his mind did a wonderful job of recreating the pain he imagined inflicting on himself.

  Lea and Tian, his comrades trapped in the dream, talked behind his back. Lea asked, “Who do you think the fourth chair is for?”

  “I’m more concerned with the trope they will represent.” Tian chuckled.

  “How so?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Dressed as I am, I represent the cleric, religious… wisdom… at least in a fantasy setting.”

  Reo hit his head too hard. Stars flashed before his eyes.

  “Dressed as he is, I would think Reo is a mage.”

  “And he is supposed to symbolize intelligence.”

  “That’s a laugh… Wait a moment, what the hell am I supposed to be dressed like this—lust?”

  “On the contrary, I would submit you are meant to be a thief, cunning—”

  “Deception,” Reo added.

  “They are tropes. It isn’t an exact science, no matter how fanboys want to think it is.”

  “So the missing person is?”

  “The fighter.” Reo didn’t need to see who spoke to know who it was.

  “Mindy?” He looked over his shoulder to find his ex-girlfriend dressed in a highly polished chrome armor breastplate.

  “I was wondering when I would make my appearance.”

  Reo slammed his head into the door once more, and the portal moved under the assault of his forehead.

  “We are here.” Mindy’s voice pulled him back to reality.

  They stood before a huge airlock door of a spaceship. A shiver ran up his spine.

  Chapter 12:

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Daniel Frazier

  Jacob wanted to drop to the floor of the corridor outside the infirmary, curl into the fetal position, and cry his unfair life away. The call of self-pity was an uncommon feeling for him. However, at this moment, life seemed too unfair for words.

  The results of the medical scans were as the man feared, before the suit telemetry crapped out, the medical machine calculated he’d received a lethal dose of unspecified radiation. Why he’d not cooked in his suit like the others was anyone’s guess. According to the remote dosimeter, he should be dead. His blisters grew in size. The damage done to the outer layers of his skin would leave him forever scarred. If he lived long enough to scar.

  The fact he wasn’t dead yet should have been cause enough to celebrate. Injected with meds to flush out the contamination and enough iodine to lace a salt mine, he’d been treated. The efforts were only temporary until better treatment could be received. Like Ava, if he received proper medical treatment in the next few weeks, he should, against all the odds, survive.

  There would be one hell of a story to tell if they made it out alive.

  The radiation wasn’t what crushed his spirit to move. When the screen flashed, “Unknown spinal muscular atrophy detected,” too many painful memories flooded back to him. With the added stress of the past few hours, he simply couldn’t take it anymore.

  Growing up was never easy. The social pressures and stress of fitting in during childhood had always left behind an inordinate amount of causalities. No one had discovered a way to make reaching adulthood easier. Facing the struggle, alone, as an unwanted ward of the state, crammed into a system overloaded with other unwanted children didn’t help.

  Now he lay alone, crying in the hall. A situation that only pissed him off more. Life engrained in him the need for strength, but at times, he couldn’t find it.

  Jacob had come to accept his disability. The fact it might help him control the mining rig even helped him silently admit the loss of his legs might have helped him escape his old life on Earth.

  As a young man, the first problems with his mobility became apparent shortly after puberty. Along with the acne and other signs of growing up, Jacob became clumsy. Like his legs had a mind of their own. Loss of feeling and tingling that never went away were a constant reminder he was different. He complained to his caseworker about what he was feeling, or the lack of feeling, in his legs, and the overworked social worker ignored him, told him he’d grow out of it. Went so far as to tell him it was all in his head, all kids faced the same problems, suck it up, and other pearls of wisdom to sluff the boy off.

  Well, Jacob showed her when, one morning, he couldn’t get out of his rack in the group home. The headmaster accused him of faking it. No matter how hard they beat him, Jacob crawled out of bed but couldn’t stand. A group of boys followed as he dragged his lifeless legs out of the room, taunting him. The old headmaster pushed him along with a belt. Finally, a layman follower at the facility stopped the assault and stood between the bitter old man and Jacob. He took the belt from the old man and threatened him with it.

  In many ways, the young man named Layman Ping saved Jacob’s life. That was when the first sign of kindness made its appearance in an otherwise miserable life.

  That was when the physical pain truly started for Jacob. Taken to one state doctor after another, Jacob suffered as they tried to discover what was wrong with him. Different illnesses were batted around: ALS, MS, MDMNA, Schneider syndrome. The list grew more exotic and remote with each new visit, but none agreed on what caused the paralysis.

  The final diagnosis was a nonspecific spinal muscular atrophy. Which basically meant his legs didn’t get the correct signals from his brain. Jacob would be stuck in a chair until he could afford implants for his legs or an exoskeleton to help him walk. All very expensive treatments. They called it HBS after the doctor who diagnosed the illness.

  Despite all the advances to treat common sicknesses, there was no approved treatment for what ailed Jacob. If he’d been born of money, there were more than a few experimental therapies that might have worked, but no human tests at state-run clinics. The cynic in Jacob wasn’t surprised when the government failed him once more, leaving him a cripple.

  So many times, he wanted to give up, to push his wheelchair onto the subway tracks, down a flight of stairs, anything to stop the agony, both physical and mental. Through it all, Layman Ping stayed with him. A constant ray of hope in Jacob’s dour existence. His words, “Dum spiro spero,” rang in Jacob’s ears.

  When the state money ran out for his treatment, and no cure was discovered, Ping kept Jacob going. Giving him a place to stay.

  It was at the layman’s insistence, as a way to continue treatment, that Jacob applied for the corporate-sponsored mining suit testing program. Located in Philadelphia, the boarding school would take care of all Jacob’s needs while enrolled. The classes proved a godsend.

  When Jacob was accepted and excelled in the simulated zero-G training, his life began to look up. Still, the corporate doctors could not find out why his leg
s fought against him. The best they discovered was a combination of genetic and environmental factors caused his rare form of paralysis. The good news was it didn’t seem to be affecting his internal organs or progressing to more of his body. The doctors assured him he’d live a very long legless life.

  All would have been perfect with Jacob’s future until word reached him that Layman Ping had taken ill and was calling for him.

  Jacob dropped everything and rushed cross-country to the man’s side. Ping had been the father Jacob never truly had.

  Words failed Jacob when he found the man he loved stretched out on a wooden bed with no mat. He looked ancient. The years had not been kind to the man. Ping was only twenty years older than Jacob, but he looked older than the rotten old headmaster once did.

  With a weak motion of his hand, Ping called Jacob to his side. With his dying breath, he whispered, “Always remember the world is nothing but reflections and echoes of the truth. You need to find your truth.” The man died on the next breath.

  What the fuck does that mean? Jacob thought. He looked around the room, and everything before him looked false. His whole life had been predicated on a lie. Jacob had followed the rules, did as he was told, and the system failed him.

  If he stayed on his current path, the future was laid out. The way set for him was to play the cards dealt and end up broken like the man who just died. There was no way Jacob was going to die a young man, alone, with not even a mattress to call his own.

  Jacob rolled out of that room and sold the few possessions he had. With a little research and groveling, he found a friend who could get him hired on as a freelance miner. Anything to leave the reflections of his old life far behind him. It was time to make his own way in the world. For better or worse, he would not rely on another for his freedom. He needed to see the solar system before he died.

  After his first freelance mining ship, his reputation as a hard worker preceded him. The jobs lined up as crews needed filling out. Finding a job became easy. When the Frazier offered a cut of the haul, he rolled at the chance. With enough cash, he hoped to one day pull back the reflection and echoes of life and find an underlying truth. It might all be for naught, but he’d be damned if he would die a corporate stooge fighting for the next promotion.