Belters

by Greg Alldredge

  The fact Lea wasn’t much of a mechanic didn’t faze DiSanto. He was happy with doing the work while Lea provided someone to keep him company, handing him tools from time to time. One thing she had forgotten was how any ship needed constant maintenance to keep flying safely.

  The crew was allowed breaks when they needed them. DiSanto took advantage of them often. “No need to work too hard. There is always more work waiting for me.” He chuckled the first time he slinked off.

  Free for the moment, she slipped away from the chatty DiSanto. With the engineer heading off to find Tian, Lea needed a break and coffee… possibly something stronger. She poked her head into the galley, the smell of a fresh pot pulling her into the space.

  Mindy sat at her normal place. The corner table and tablet lay before her, an effective deterrent to anyone who might approach for light conversation.

  Except for Lea. She was never afraid of pushing her way into a conversation when she needed answers. A packet of warm liquid held between her hands, she kicked off the bulkhead in the doctor’s direction.

  “Any news on Reo?” Lea asked. She knew the answer already but asked regardless. Every morning before heading to meet DiSanto, she passed by the med unit, hoping to find the doubi awake. All so she didn’t miss an opportunity to choke information out of him.

  Mindy shook her head without looking up. Her gaze was fixed on a batch of squiggly lines running over her tablet.

  Lea pressed on. Her time with DiSanto and his irritating personality had worn on her. For once, she needed the company of someone with a few more brain cells. She asked, “Is that Reo’s brain scan?”

  Mindy looked up and blinked. “No… why do you ask?” The doctor’s eyes were bloodshot. She must care for the pained Reo more than she let on.

  Lea raised her right eyebrow. “Listen, I’m no expert, but I visited the med unit this morning, and the machine hooked up to him has squiggly lines that look a whole lot like that.” Lea pointed to the tablet with her packet of coffee.

  Mindy did the strangest thing, she blinked—more than once—like it took a moment for Lea’s words to register. The tablet was pushed into Lea’s hands.

  “Come with me.” Doctor Dragon Lady had returned. With practiced efficiency, Mindy pushed off from the table and shot at breakneck speed toward the med bay.

  Lea didn’t have a whole lot of choice, so she followed along, doing her best to not squeeze the coffee pouch or smash the doctor’s tablet between her and a rail.

  She followed at a more sedate pace. Lea wasn’t sure what the rush was. Not like Reo wouldn’t be there when they arrived.

  Mindy beat her to Reo’s side. Lea pushed her way into the space, and the diminutive doctor hovered, inspecting the machine Lea assumed was recording Reo’s brain waves.

  Lea wasn’t happy when the woman snapped her fingers three times and demanded, “Tablet.”

  Lea fought the urge to slap the device upside the other’s head. Rather, she handed the hunk of plastic over.

  After only a second, Mindy called out, “Doctor Patel… Please come here. I found… something.”

  She found? Lea didn’t need a second. She knew the waves matched up perfectly before they reached the bedside of the stricken man.

  The two chattered away like two magpies over a tasty meal of garbage. The slang and technical lingo was lost on Lea. Words like “impossible” and “amazing” slipped in from time to time.

  Once she had given the pair their say, she interjected, “Not to sound like a total uneducated rube, but what the hell is on that tablet, and why is it so important?”

  Mindy shifted her body so she could give Lea the full effect of her disdainful gaze. “The waves coming from Reo’s brain matches perfectly with the background radiation leftover from the… event. The afterglow…”

  Lea ignored the newfound patronizing attitude. She held out her hand. “May I see the tablet a moment?” She didn’t need to point out to Mindy that it was the unscientific fixer who found the connection.

  The shorter woman handed over her tablet.

  It only took a glace between the two, and Lea spotted what she thought. “Look… I will admit they are very similar, but they aren’t an exact match.” She pointed to a small bump that only happened on the tablet. “Look here. What’s this blip here?”

  The two chattering doctors stopped to inspect where Lea pointed. Each, in turn, took the tablet and compared the readout to Reo’s scan.

  Lea didn’t need a closer inspection to know what she knew. The problem was she didn’t understand the significance of it all. “Yes?” she finally asked.

  “We need to talk to Master Baal.”

  Mindy nodded as soon as Doctor Patel spoke.

  “Mind telling me what is going on?” Lea asked.

  “It seems Mister Ng is doing the impossible. He is synchronized with the universe.”

  “And that?” Lea pointed to the blip.

  Mindy shrugged. “It looks like someone is trying to talk to us.”

  Lea held her tongue. What the hell was she supposed to say after all that?

  The pair kicked off the deck, heading towards the bridge. “Now that we know what we’re looking for… We might be able to filter out some of the static to reach the message.” Doctor Mindy was too happy.

  Lea was certain she should have shown more concern for her former—whatever they were. “What about Reo?” Lea called after them.

  The two doctors never paused. Mindy shouted back, “He isn’t going anywhere.”

  Lea shook her head. Didn’t the pair know anything about popular culture? If the vids were to be believed, soon Reo would awaken and start murdering the crew as an unstoppable mind-controlled zombie.

  There was no way she wanted to be the one alone with him when he woke. With a push of her legs, she followed after the two chattering doctors. Let some other fool be first. Lea chuckled at her morbid sense of humor.

  <=OO=>

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Frazier

  Thankfully, the spiders never returned. It took every argument Jacob had to convince the two women he needed to stay on the bridge. He used the excuse about monitoring the coms, and his useless legs, any reason to stay glued to the only vantage point outside, where the spiders must be hiding.

  If the bastards were going to attack, he wanted a chance to warn the others. At least that was what he told himself.

  The two women didn’t mock him to his face, but he heard the pair speaking in guarded whispers. He was certain it was about his mental state. They refused to even believe what they saw as real, but Jacob knew that, no matter how fantastical the thought was of a spider in space, he knew what he saw was no mass hallucination. Something was out there, and in his gut, he knew it meant them harm.

  The stress of constantly expecting to see the impossible paired with the boredom of seeing nothing wore on him. He only drifted off briefly before the feeling of tiny legs crawling over him woke him from a fitful sleep.

  He’d just drifted off…

  “Independent miner Frazier, this is the Virgil. We have picked up your distress signal. Please inform us of your current situation.” This time, there was no mistaking the voice that filled the Frazier via the PA system. The signal was degraded from distance, but it was clear enough to hear.

  If there had been gravity, Jacob would have fallen out of the seat with excitement. Rather, his sudden jerk caused him to float free of the recliner. He twisted to reach a handhold before pulling himself to the controls. He shut down the transmitter playing the distress call and keyed the mic. “Virgil, this is the Frazier. I can say right now we are happy to hear the sound of your voice.”

  “That is wonderful, but what is the manner of your emergency?” the female voice answered back.

  “We’re pretty much fucked,” Ava shouted up from the crew’s quarters.

  “Shush…” Jacob shut down the mic much slowly. Ava’s words surely transmitted. He glared in his friend’s direction before trying once mor
e. “Most of our systems were damaged by a sort of radiation burst that killed a majority of the crew. Only the people underground survived… That was over two months ago. We sure need your help off this rock. Our engine controls are gone.”

  “Is it safe for a recovery?” the Virgil asked.

  Ava had moved into the small bridge. She spoke before Jacob had a chance. “Yes, the ship is secure.”

  He flipped the transmit switch before he hissed. “Should we tell them about the spiders?”

  Ava motioned to smack him in the back of his head but stopped. “Hell, no, they will think we are gonzo… Hell, I’m not sure we didn’t all imagine the damned thing.”

  Sweets floated into the bridge. “It would do no good to warn them of an impossible insect we have not seen since the initial encounter. It would only serve to make our stay that much longer as they ascertained the risk to their ship.”

  “Still…” Jacob shook his head slowly, uncertain of his words. “We should warn them…”

  The two women nodded at each other. Ava pulled him out of the way.

  “Virgil, this is security officer Margaret Sweets of H and B. We are secured and ready for your rescue. Once you reach us, we can transfer over via EVA. Please have your med team standing by… We all suffer from exposure to radiation of some sort.” She gave a short pause before asking, “Do you register any other ships or craft in the area?” Her voice remained calm, even if Reo knew the pain she felt.

  “Negative. Yours is the only signal. Do you have a call sign? We can search for them,” Virgil asked.

  The words caught in her throat. “Miya… APC11 Miyajima… and a skiff… a drop-shuttle…”

  “I read APC11 Miyajima and a drop-shuttle. We will search for any signatures while we make approach.

  “Thank you, Virgil.” Sweets flipped off the mic.

  For the first time, Reo noticed a tear on Sweets’s cheek.

  He knew if they had not heard a peep from the crew of the Miyajima, they were lost. When the blast hit, they were still at speed, decelerating hard to intercept the Frazier. Any ship caught in the blast went dead in the water. If the crew survived, they would be millions of kilometers from the Frazier. Without knowing the trajectory, it would be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. The Frazier might be tethered to a rock in space, but the rock hurtled on fast enough to maintain its orbit around the sun. He didn’t know the precise speed, but Jacob knew it was pretty damned fast.

  “Roger that. We are burning hard to match your speed and heading. Making contact in five hours. Working out intercept calculations now. Take care, Frazier, the cavalry is on the way.”

  “Thank you, Virgil… Frazier out.” Sweets switched off the coms. “Now, let’s get ready to get off this shithole.”

  “Virgil over and out.” The coms went back to the steady static. The sound of silence was now deafening.

  “I’m going to pack…” Ava pushed off.

  “I doubt any ship’s master would allow you to bring a large quantity of gear. Most would be concerned about contamination. We face a good deal of time in quarantine.” Sweets tended to kill most good news.

  “What about cargo?” Jacob asked. He spotted Sweets’s raised eyebrow reflected in the screen.

  Sweets droned on like a professor from some fancy university. “According to international salvage law, the ship and any cargo belongs to the owners of the ship. Once abandoned, the ship and cargo can be salvaged by anyone who finds it. Sorry, unless you are owners, you have no claim to the craft once you leave.”

  “Bullshit…” Ava called back from the crew compartment. What she did, he didn’t hazard a guess.

  Jacob wanted to argue. His life had been tied up on the Frazier for months now. Allen owned them both wages. Even if the captain died, they should be granted some compensation for the time lost.

  However, there were other concerns. He knew they should warn the rescuers about the spiders, but he was like every other human ever born. At heart, all he wanted was to be saved off this damned rock. All manner of justification—risking the crew of the Virgil, a ship full of strangers—ran through his head.

  The reasoning he settled on: the whole event was made up in his mind. Either the radiation sickness or the solitude had given the three a momentary lapse of sanity.

  That reasoning seemed more logical than giant space spiders. The more he thought about it, the more laughable the actions and thoughts that had driven him over the past weeks seemed. Fuck a bunch of spiders, anyway.

  Chapter 20:

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Frazier

  “I must admit, Virgil, you have to be about the prettiest sight this girl has ever seen.” Sweets kept her vision glued on the ship overhead. “Give us fifteen to finish suiting up, and we will be ready to receive your team.” Sweets paused for the briefest of moments before tentatively asking, “Any contact with the Miyajima?”

  “Sorry, Frazier, we are still searching, but no heat signatures have been picked up in the immediate area. Don’t give up hope just yet. We’ll keep looking.”

  Jacob watched the reflection in the glass. Their eyes briefly met, as the security officer did her best to hide the pain.

  “Thank you… for the help… getting the casualties over is appreciated.” Sweets abruptly keyed the transmission off.

  “Roger that.” The woman’s voice from the Virgil came back with military crispness.

  Sweets pushed off from the bridge, in an instant back to her commanding self. “Let’s go, people, we have company coming.”

  Jacob wasn’t sure who spoke on the far side of the void, but she seemed the model of efficiency. That sturdy woman’s voice helped him hold his fear in check. Waiting for the unthinkable to happen had ruined his sleep for too many cycles. His thinking turned fuzzy, and he knew it. When he closed his eyes, only spiders waited for him.

  Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, time didn’t matter as long as the three made it safely to the other ship and they escaped this damned void. He stifled a shiver that ran up his spine. Something lurked out there, he was certain. The hair on the back of his neck rose each time he thought about his encounter during the last EVA. Damned those spiders.

  Never a collector of stuff, his meager possessions had been stuffed into a duffel ages ago. The majority of his weight allowance would always be taken up by his ultra-light wheelchair. The device followed him everywhere. It was the best one he could afford, worth a whole month’s pay out in space, where the need for a chair was limited.

  During an extended stay on Ceres, he paid a guy to make it for him after his first profit in the mines. For where he lived, the machine was a beauty: all aluminum and carbon fiber where possible. His wheels weighed in at less than five kilos, light even by Earth standards.

  Despite his limited mobility, he would rather not have to rent a chair or crawl on the decks of another’s ship or any station. He felt enough of a freak as it was. Besides, his chair had a few extra accessories not found on normal Earth medical devices. Amazing how little security searched anyone in a wheelchair. For most people, his disability made him invisible.

  His time waiting neared an end, but Jacob felt zero relief. He kept watch, waiting for the unthinkable to happen.

  The whole of the Virgil’s approach, he sat strapped into the pilot’s seat, watching the fleck of a ship grow in size as it slowed to match course and speed. Even at a safe separation of one hundred meters, the ship looked like most other family ships, if perhaps brighter or maybe cleaner. However, people from Earth might call it alien.

  The Virgil was never meant for atmospheric flight. There was no need for symmetry or aerodynamics. Laid out on a central grid, the compartments were strung together like giant Conex boxes and gigantic tanker cylinders. Some organized four around the axis, some five. From the outside, he could spot no pattern. Each module was connected via an umbilical or hard lock, depending on how the points mated up.

  From Jacob’s perspective, the ship looked like chaos i
ncarnate. With little rhyme or reason for the placing, the ship looked thrown together like a child’s toy. Even the shuttle looked like a collection cropped from several other ships. Soon that ragtag skiff would take them the short distance over. The suits were merely a formality.

  The Virgil had none of the elegance of the Frazier. Despite detesting the last few months on this ship, he hated to leave this forced home of his behind. The only contact with the crew of the Virgil had been the woman’s stern and efficient voice, but at least she seemed in control.

  That had not been the case since the accident. The survivors of the Frazier were never in control. They bounced from one catastrophe to another. If not for the excellent design of the Frazier, they all would have died long ago.

  From his vantage point, only chaos waited for them. The only portions of the Virgil that resembled what many might consider a real spaceship was the fore (bridge) and aft (engineering) sections, those parts that changed little over the course of the ship’s life and loadout.

  The modular design offered a ship’s master and family an incredible amount of flexibility while outfitting for deep space runs. The downside was it gave intruders a myriad of locations to breach the hull and worm their way inside.

  That was what now bothered Jacob. What if the spiders found a way inside?

  For a moment, he second-guessed if leaving the Frazier was the right choice. They had plenty of supplies. They’d be able to live several more months lost in space.

  Jacob shook his head. There is no such thing as space spiders, he thought to himself repeatedly. He bit his lip. The pain helped focus his mind.

  For a moment, his concentration shifted from the Virgil to his reflection that stared back. It was the face of a stranger. Due to the blisters and sluffing skin, he had let his beard grow. Now patches of fur covered his face to match the bald spots on his head. Shaggy hair in desperate need of a trim had been pulled back into a thin man-bun, not too tight or more hair would have come out. It also hid some of the missing patches of hair. He looked twenty years older than he should have and fifteen kilos lighter than before the accident.