Belters

by Greg Alldredge

  The coms remained down. “I hate to interrupt, but we have a situation in here.” Ava’s voice shouted from the common room. The words broke Jacob from his pity party.

  He must have been dehydrated. Despite the need to cry, no tears flowed from his eyes. It was for the better. Ava would have ridden him into the ground if he showed up with eyes filled with tears. “Yeah… On my way.” He grunted. Arms strong from years of carrying himself pulled his weight along the hall, the handholds spaced so he flew through the ship with practiced grace.

  A woman’s low growling voice reached him before he made the common area. “I said let me go now, and I will put in a good word for you… Kidnapping security force personnel is a serious offense.”

  The strange woman had survived. She seemed pissed. Jacob didn’t blame her. The situation would surely get worse before it improved.

  Jacob came upon a tense situation. Strangely enough, the woman he rescued appeared calm, despite the fact Ava had tied her arms and legs to the rack supports. The female miner was true to her word. She had all but stripped the security force woman down to her thin undergarments. She had to be freezing. Jacob found it hard to make out the blisters from the goose-pimpled flesh.

  The worst part was Ava standing guard over her with a power drill aimed at her chest. Every time the woman spoke or twitched, Ava would flinch and squeeze the trigger, causing the impacting diamond bit to spin a few inches from the woman’s breastplate. If Ava slipped, Jacob’s rack would be covered in gore, and the woman would surely die.

  “What did I miss?” Jacob forced himself to remain calm. There was more than enough tension in the air already.

  Ava swung the improvised weapon in his direction. “You should have left her outside.” She used the heavy core drill as a pointer with each word jabbed at his groin. At least his friend’s ire was directed at him, not the helpless woman.

  “We had this discussion… It isn’t going to happen.” Jacob needed to defuse this situation quickly, or Ava might not let the sole survivor live. The only person who might know what happened to them needed to live long enough to tell her side of the story. “The reactor started?” he asked.

  If looks could kill, Ava’s eyes would have shot holes in his skull. “No.” The drill point now came up to Jacob’s face. “You going to live?”

  Jacob couldn’t distinguish the sentence as a question or a threat. He risked resting his hand on the wicked-looking business end of the tool. “Maybe you should go try to start it… I’ll look after.” He remembered the woman’s nameplate. “Sweets.”

  There were a tense few seconds while Ava deliberated over her options. Jacob being from Earth and Ava from Mars, the chances remained high he was still stronger than his friend, even without his legs.

  “I’ll go, but…” Ava paused at the exit and glanced back at Sweets.

  Jacob took it as an implied threat and promptly ignored his friend.

  She floated, the tool still in hand.

  Jacob said, “You don’t need that to get power back online…”

  Ava pushed off with her legs, drill in hand.

  “Sorry about that.” Jacob took a quick glance at how Sweets was bound to the rack support stanchions. It was lock wire, so he needed wire cutters to free the woman. She shivered from cold or exposure, didn’t much matter to Jacob. After his quick inspection, he focused on the woman’s face. No need to appear like a lecher.

  “She always this insane?” Sweets asked with a guarded voice.

  From the woman’s reaction, it was obvious to Jacob he was more bothered by her near nudity than she was.

  Pulling a blanket from the rank above his, he did his best to cover her shivering body. “Only when blasted from space…” He forced himself to smile, working hard to keep his hands from touching— “You didn’t catch us on our best day.” When she didn’t comment, he filled the silence with sound. “Your name is Sweets, right?”

  “Margaret Sweets… Yes.” The woman introduced herself. “What should I call my kidnappers? It would be nice to have the correct names when I file the arrest report…”

  “Listen… it isn’t like that.” How could he possibly explain? Rather than waste what little time they had, he gave up before starting. With a push, he floated to the far side of the compartment. The crew storage lockers and junk drawers should have what he needed. Jacob found a pair of wire cutters in a catchall tool drawer. “My name is Jacob…” Telling Sweets he pulled her busted ass suit in from the vacuum of space might ease the situation, but that wasn’t his style. “My friend is Ava.”

  The woman never commented, her eyes glued on the tool he held. The debate raged in his head. If he cut her free, she could prove a massive problem. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to live in a world where he was required to keep any woman bound away from the limited medical attention she needed.

  “You need treatment. We were all exposed to a massive blast… of radiation.” Jacob slipped the edged cutters over the first wire and clipped the strand. Arm’s length from her now, he spotted the blisters raised on her flesh like his. Her state-of-the-art suit must have offered better protection from the event than the miners’ suits did. Close to the surface, she should have suffered more exposure than the crew deeper in the shaft.

  The woman didn’t move while he worked.

  Her first arm freed, she flexed, and Jacob recoiled for fear of being attacked. Instead, the woman gingerly touched the sores blossoming on her face. “Am I?” Her touch paused on her lips. “Am I… scarred like you?” The words came with a halting pace. Jacob had taken a long look in the mirror while the med bot treated him. There was no way around the fact he looked like shit. A cross between a greasy pizza and an overcooked pork rind.

  Jacob shook his head, and rather than cut her second wrist free, he pushed off to the tool drawer and retrieved an inspection mirror. He doubted she would use the mirror as a weapon, and it might give her something to take her mind off her near nudity. He busied himself with cutting her free while she spoke.

  “Where… what happened to my ship?”

  Jacob shook his head. “I don’t know. I was kinda hoping you could tell us what happened. We were deeper in the shaft when… when the shit hit the fan.”

  “Sorry. I’m not sure. Did anyone from the Miyajima survive? What about my team?”

  “I didn’t find anyone.” Her wrists and ankles free, Jacob reached out for the mirror. “We found you near our captain… He didn’t make it. None of our crew made it. You are the only other person we found. Our electronics are fried. If we don’t get some things working, we will all die soon enough. No need for us to fight now… First, we need to survive.”

  She placed the mirror in his hand, her thoughts kept to herself.

  “We need to hook you up to the med computer… get your treatment started, or you will get sicker until you die.”

  Sweets must have been in shock. She nodded but didn’t move. Thank all the gods she didn’t attack him. He was in no shape for a tussle.

  Jacob reached into the rack and offered her his hand. “Please, let me help you.”

  Sweets took his hand. “You said the reactor isn’t working?”

  “Correct.”

  “So the engines are…?

  “Offline.”

  “And we are on batteries?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long until we freeze, or the CO2 gets too high?”

  Jacob chuckled. “Long enough for us to get you to the med bay and back, I promise.” He wished there was a better answer, but things needed to get fixed, or they would all die soon enough.

  The med unit confirmed what Jacob assumed. Somehow, Sweets received a smaller dose of radiation than Jacob and Ava. The better suit protected her.

  She sat perched on the treatment table while Jacob watched the scans. “Good news, you should fully recover.”

  “If we don’t die from…”

  Jacob didn’t know how to read the woman. “One probl
em at a time.”

  “I can’t get the damned thing started. The batteries are running low.” Ava had discarded the wicked-looking boring tool for a tablet computer. “I can’t make heads nor tails of these damned prestart instructions.”

  “If…” Jacob didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but he felt they needed to know. “If we received a blast of ionized radiation, chances are good we lost a good portion of the electronics… We might never get the thing started.”

  Sweets shook her head. “Are neither of you engineers?”

  “Look, grunt, we are miners. We crack rocks. You murdered our crew…” Ava spit the words and tossed the tablet at the pair in the infirmary. The woman stormed off before a reply came.

  “These older ships are made so most anyone can run them. They are built tougher than the newer models.” Sweets pulled the monitor tabs off her chest.

  “You’re an engineer?”

  “No, but all Holly and Burnt employees are required to have a basic understanding of ship components… You never know when you might be called upon to fill in…” Sweets didn’t finish the words. She didn’t need to. Jacob knew what the mercenary implied.

  Sweets worked for the largest service provider in the solar system. The mercs filled slots on ships and stations systemwide. They had a habit of being in the hotspots when the balloon went up. Only the most skilled and resourceful survived in that line of work for long.

  “Care if I take a look? I might be able to find a workaround.” She reached for the tablet.

  Jacob had no choice. He didn’t know shit about the ship’s systems. But if they lived long enough, that was an ignorance he felt compelled to change—and quickly. A few meters away hung a pair of crew coveralls. He reached them with a slight push. “Can’t have you freezing to death before you save our asses.” He tossed the covering to her.

  She nodded. “Good. I’m not ready to die just yet.”

  Chapter 13:

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Ceres Station

  The flashing pink, blue, and purple LED lighting cast painful shadows in the narrow corridors. The majority of the station-installed white lights had been disabled by the locals. They must have felt it helped the ambiance, or at least helped to hide the squalor, with the constant darkness found underground.

  Like the red-light districts of old Earth, Lea knew the colors shouted advertisements for services rendered. The given professions practiced by those people, hidden in the privacy gained behind closed doors. The sin of others was a little secret everyone knew but few openly discussed. Even in space, the prudish behavior of Earth couldn’t be shaken. The few were always ready to limit the freedom of the many. Anything to control the actions of others.

  The oldest profession thrived throughout the solar system. Lea shook her head. She had no reason to judge, given her vocation. What she did for a living was nothing to brag about.

  The neighbors and their habits didn’t bother her. She needed a place to hide. Now she searched for the best place, where few questions were asked and fewer answers given. Long ago, the poor learned to keep their mouths shut in order to survive. The mantra, snitches get stitches, never changed.

  The glowing blue lights of three Zs was her clue she had found what she needed. A place built only for sleep. The racks offered inside would be small but relatively clean, hopefully with few bedbugs showing up for a free meal.

  A woman in her late forties sat in a plastic rocker, her gray hair pulled back into a tight bun. She smoked a chrome pipe. The undeniable smell of cannabis was thick in the air, an outdated mode of recreation if there ever was one. Eatables had taken the place of ragweed decades ago. Most only smoked the shit for sentimental reasons.

  “You need a room?” the woman asked before Lea reached her. A ring of smoke circled her head like a halo.

  The Earth woman nodded. No need to chitchat here. Time was money, and Lea was keeping her away from her smoke.

  “I can help you out then… if you can pay, of course.” The tip of the pipe pointed Lea’s way.

  Lea held out her arm so the woman could scan her credit.

  The impossible happened in an instant. The transfer failed, a red light flashed declined.

  Lea’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Sorry, honey… You got cash?” The older woman pointed to the red word. Tapping the screen on her arm with the pipe tip.

  “That can’t be…” For once, the normally nonplussed Lea found herself gobsmacked. Fear welled from deep inside her.

  She had given the old woman the dark web-hosted numbered account. Her most secure, secret, and private stash of get-out-of-town funds. It should have been untraceable by anyone. Even the strongest government or corporate hackers should be kept at bay. It was one of the places she felt her savings safe from unwanted intrusion, the account she felt the most secured. “Are you sure?” Lea asked.

  The woman tried once more with the same rejected results. “Sorry, dear… maybe there is a problem with the system.” She cleared her throat. “Sometimes they have glitches… Out here, the net can run slow…”

  Bullshit, Lea thought. Someone had done the unthinkable. They’d hacked the unhackable. FlyRight or some other unknown player fucked her royally and didn’t even bother with a kiss good night. “I’m sorry… I need to go.” The dragon lady Doctor Abe must be behind it. There was no other explanation. If not Abe, then who? Someone screwed her, and they were going to pay.

  “You shouldn’t. Now is not the time for a single woman to go wandering about the station… alone.” Lea ignored the stress-filled warning the woman called after her.

  Her mind was thousands of kilometers away on Earth, specifically San Francisco. She flipped from one secret account to another, with the same results each time she checked a different place to hide her hard-fought-for earnings. Lea’s pace quickened with each account she checked and found drained.

  Back in the CBD, perhaps she was the target after all. Someone forced her to run from Earth so they could steal a goodly portion of her life savings. For once in her life, fear and anger drove her reactions. There was no time to plan her next steps. Her time grew shorter by the tick of the clock.

  For the better portion of her life, Lea considered herself so clever. Always one step ahead of the competition, never the victim of crime but the perpetrator. She was the cause of bad things happening to people, never the target. In an instant, her world view had been shattered. The impenetrable firewalls she constructed between her private life and her career of choice had been torn down by an unseen assailant, and now she found herself destitute and one hell of a long way from home.

  Emotions flooded her mind. She wanted to cry, shout, and scream all at the same time, but she couldn’t waste the time. She needed to reach the Virgil, the ship that carried the FlyRight crew.

  Any normal time she would have noticed the shacks that made up the businesses along the Circus strip, all with lowered roller curtain doors locked tight. People huddled in the dark recesses of the bars that never closed, the garish lights turned low, the blaring music silenced. For once, the Circus lay in silent slumber. Beyond surprising for the place that never slept.

  What did catch her attention was a gray-haired old man, dressed in filthy white robes. He held up a sign. “The End is Near.” It looked written in blood.

  Lea whispered to herself, “When I catch the bastards, yes, it is.”

  Armored and armed security personnel patrolled the streets, devoid of the normal throng of partiers stumbling from one bar to the next. So focused on her current problem, Lea didn’t even notice something odd was happening on the Ceres Circus. The shit was about to hit the fan.

  Her progress was stopped when she reached the docks. Met with a wall of turned backs, Lea was stopped well short of her destination. A mob of locals had gathered. Lea needed to climb a recycle bin to discover the problem. From the added height, she spotted the line of power-armored security forces facing off the crowd. The banner held high in the front
ranks announced the problem. “Strike” was the only word scrawled on the two-meter-wide banner held between two poles.

  The line of clear riot shields and shock sticks had stopped the advance of the mob onto the working portion of the docks. The advance to the line of ships’ umbilicals might be stopped, but the results were the same. All traffic to the outgoing crafts was halted. Lea was too far away to even see if the Virgil was still where it should be. If it left early, she was even more screwed.

  The public announcement system boomed a warning, “You are in violation of station regulations. You are gathered without a permit. Disperse or face the consequences. You have no right to assembly. Go home before we are forced to take action. For your own safety, we ask you to halt this illegal action.” The voice kept repeating the pleas for sanity to regain. From the chants of the crowd, there was no reason to believe they cared what the voice said. Any normal person could see violence was about to break out.

  Freedom of speech and the right to assemble were quaint notions killed long ago by a population more bent on public safety than freedom of anything. When it was deemed that hate speech should be limited by force, if necessary, it wasn’t long before those in control harnessed the newfound power and curtailed all sorts of dissent as hate speech. All it took was a new definition of hate. Simply disagreeing with the powers-that-be became hate speech and was banned.

  On Earth, censorship became the new norm, all in the name of safety. None bothered to ask who the restrictions helped most or protected more. With each stroke of the pen, the public gave up one right after another. Soon, if the rulers had their way, even thinking the wrong thing could be cause for arrest. Uttering a hateful word could already land a person behind bars, or disappeared for reeducation. All in the name of public safety and harmony.