“Thank you.” The relief was palpable in Ellie’s voice.
Caroline wanted to yell at her for saying thank you at such a thing, but there was little fight left in her. “How do I do it?”
“Hit me in the temple, or the kidneys, or a main artery, just make it look like they killed me. Thank you Caroline, you were my best friend,” Ellie sounded peaceful.
Caroline couldn’t take it any more, and she drove her hand forward, the blade sinking into Ellie’s temple. The broken woman’s body tensed and then went slack, her arm falling and her chest ceasing to move.
“Goodbye Ellie,” Caroline said, tears running tracks through the metal dust on her face. She kissed Ellie’s head, pulling the blade out and wiping it on Ellie’s clothes. She tucked it into her sleeve and looked at her friend. After a few moments it was too much, she turned and left for her lean-to, remembering the times they’d hung out at one another’s living units, their parents also close friends.
Sure, they’d had their problems with school and parental authority, but looking back it had been perfect.
Now they were all gone, Ellie’s parents, Caroline’s and now Ellie too.
The shift siren went up, and Caroline turned from her lean-to to the parking lot of trucks. For the next 22 hours she’d be running ore from the mines to the processors.
The work never ended on Osdal Actual.
Chapter 12
Bandit Two
Entering Oort cloud
11/3266
It had been two months since they’d left Reclaimer, and even with their imparted velocity they were still heading towards the system at a decent speed.
For the last couple of weeks Bandit Two had been bleeding speed, approaching velocities that the freighter was actually meant to work at, not really suited to a system to system transport.
Everyone was thoroughly bored with one another; they worked out, practiced fighting, played cards, read and did whatever they could to keep themselves from being bored.
Thankfully, they had all gone through the training course with Combat Shuttle pilots so they were also working on their Shuttle qualifications.
It was easy enough putting the freighter into simulator mode and running them through the various tests. In return, the Combat Shuttle crew learned how to fight with everything from their fists to an AMR.
Hell, they’d even got bored enough to join in on the Vibra-Blade sparring.
Doing anything was better than nothing.
Thankfully, no one had decided to pack their bags with explosive spicy food, and instead they’d brought as much fresh food from the cafeteria that they could beg, borrow or steal. It gave them something to enjoy other than the bland food bars.
There was no smoking allowed on the freighter, so gum and dip were the normal currency of poker games and barters.
“Watch out for that one,” Young said, pointing to an asteroid that was thousands of kilometers away. He sounded as bored as Yu felt.
“Thanks, tips,” Yu said. The Oort cloud in any system is a sparse sphere of asteroids that hangs outside of a solar system, some were denser, others not so much. Osdal’s was really dense, but in space terms that still left hundreds of thousands, or even millions of kilometers between groupings.
The closer they got to the system the more asteroids they’d find.
“Once we wrangle ourselves a rock and mine, then we’re just a week away from civilization. I need a shower,” Young said, stretching in her seat.
“Uh huh, will Haas be joining you in that shower?” Yu asked, and her stretch stopped mid-way.
She was a good looking athletic woman, a bit short, but smart and adventurous. Yu was honestly curious if she liked men, or was more inclined to the same sex, like him.
“Wha? How did you… Uhh? Have you told anyone?” She pitched her voice low as she looked to the hatch that led to the cargo hold, as most people were getting some rack time.
“No, I haven’t told anyone,” Yu said with a smile.
She sighed in relief.
“They already know,” Yu added, laughing as the tension that had left her body came racing back.
“Shit!”
“They don’t care; you’ve seen them with leave in the mess. They’re horn dogs, don’t matter much to them,” Yu reassured her.
“Start with that next time, I nearly had a heart attack.”
Yu just smiled and laughed, doing his best to keep it down.
A boot flew into the cockpit. “Shaddaup! It’s like sleeping next to the fucking gossip girls,” Dashtund complained, his way of telling them he could hear them.
“Stop moving, dickhead!” Dominguez muttered.
“Sorry babe,” Dashtund said, his voice low.
Yu pressed a button, closing the hatch to the cargo hold and Yu and Young burst out laughing.
“Holy shit, I think my sides are going to break,” Young said, panting.
“Watch out he’ll throw another boot!” Yu said, both of them breaking out into laughter again.
Some time later they wound down, feeling a hell of a lot better.
“Seriously though, we’re all happy for you two. After the last time you two were off talking in the mess alone we thought something might happen,” Yu said.
“Well thank you.” She gave him a genuine smile.
“Better be, took all our tricks and sticking you together in a freighter for two months!” Yu said, pointing at her, his serious face dissolving into a smile.
Young was about to say something, when her screen sent up a warning signal.
They turned their chairs to face forward, and Young’s hands danced in mid-air, the implants in her hands attached to her eye, making a hologram that only she could see.
“Found a nice rock,” She said, tension evaporating as Yu’s hands moved away from the alert button and weapons console.
“Miners would give up ships for these scanners. This asteroid’s got a good concentration of rare metals, and heavy platinum content. Not all that far in either,” she said, her hands moving out and rotating in the air.
She pinched the air and threw it at Yu.
Yu got a copy of her view and opened it up with his implants, and he looked over the asteroid; out here they were bigger than the inner rings.
He looked at the varying scans that turned the asteroid into a layered diagram showing the different materials throughout. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a really good guesstimate.
“Now we just need to find somewhere to land,” he said, keeping an eye on the better deposits and searching for an area that could fit the freighter, and didn’t have frozen materials underneath.
The freighter was good at regulating its heat, but it still had bled off, in vacuum it didn’t go anywhere. If it was on a rock, then the struts would act as a heat sink, pouring heat from the freighter into the ground. But if you were on frozen materials that could mean a really nice bang as it sublimated and exploded. Not the best plan.
“How does this look?” he asked, marking a point and sending it to Young.
“Looks good to me, flight plan in five, going to need to burn off this speed.”
“Okay, run a check on that surface, don’t want to be on any ice pockets, of anything.”
He was a great pilot, but Young’s area was sensors. She’d have an answer for him that could be etched in stone.
***
“Join the EMF they said, it’ll be fun they said. You’ll see cool planets and asteroid belts! I fucking hate recruiters,” Tal growled, broadcasted to the entire platoon.
“Bunch of assholes,” Sasaki agreed.
“Never wanted to be an asteroid miner?” Jerome asked, smiling.
The responses came in, ranging from No, to Go fuck yourself.
Jerome laughed in his helmet as he worked the grinder at his feet. Most people were on them, they were collapsible units with a power and extraction tube that fed into a processing machine that separated rock from useful metals. The were on EMFCs, in case they needed
to grab materials for the machine shops that lined their hull. Cheaper to mine an asteroid than pay for refined metal.
He made sure that the drill didn’t go nuts, and others moved around checking lines. Bobbie was checking through the processor and making sure the rocks being spit out were going away from the asteroid and their freighter.
Mark and Dooks were shifting good material from the hopper to the freighter. Thankfully, the freighter was on zero grav and the asteroid’s micro-gravity was minimal, making it easy to carry hundreds of pounds of separated metal.
It also made things like walking around a tad difficult, and everyone was wearing magnetic and pick boots. If the magnets didn’t work, then the picks dug into the ground on contact.
Jerome didn’t want to be an asteroid all of his life, so it was interesting.
He opened a private channel to Mark. “Wonder if our people are doing this back at The Yard?” Jerome said.
“Well, from those reports, it sounds like we’re processing asteroids a hell of a lot faster. Madeline was talking about making tugs to rope asteroids and bring them back to the smelters. I don’t think they have this kind of operation on anything but test asteroids. I’m gonna see if Moretti knows a few tricks to get the plans and software on the scanners back to them. Do them more use than us”
“Upstanding citizens that we are,” Jerome said.
Mark let out something between a grunt and a laugh.
“Well, for right now we need this to keep up our cover,” Jerome said, slowing down his grinder’s blades as he found a good vein. No sense in keeping the blades sped up and wasting good material.
“Fuck, I think I’m getting the hang of this,” Jerome complained on the platoon wide channel.
“Before I met you guys I was a good-to-do CEO, then the second of an uprising, and afterwards I’m a glorified asteroid miner and I can’t even smoke!” Moretti complained.
“Just got to get used to dipping,” Holm said, spitting.
Jerome worked the bit of chew in his own mouth and spat into the squeeze bottle he’d rigged in his helmet.
“Savage,” Moretti said.
Holm and others laughed.
Even though being a miner wasn’t the most fun, it was something different. It wasn’t sitting around in a cargo bay; now that was boring as shit.
“Moretti, we’re picking up some signal traffic, thought you might want to check it out,” Young said from the freighter’s cockpit, where she was watching the scanners and communications systems.
“You truly are a goddess in human form.”
“Intel nerd,” Iliev muttered.
“Don’t knock it till you try it!” Moretti said, and Jerome saw the man push off his grinder and float above the ground, using outcroppings to propel himself into the freighter.
“Someone got music?” Dooks asked after a time.
“I got some, mostly metal and such though,” Mark said.
“I’ll give it a go, getting bored as fuuuuck out here,” Dashtund complained.
“It ain’t everyone’s tastes,” Mark warned.
“Put it on, I can hear Bairamov’s heavy breathing already, and it’s worse than his snoring,” Zukic said.
“Low blow, Warrant,” Bairamov complained.
“Mouth breather,” Zukic shot back.
“Skinny bastard,” Bairamov returned.
Jerome laughed in his helmet. Zukic was a higher rank, and they respected that, but being all uptight about it all the time was enough to get anyone bent all out of shape. When the time called for it they would do what he said without question, but here with little to no threat around, shooting the shit was perfectly fine.
The sounds of a piano tingled across the platoon’s implants.
“Mama,” The song started, and there was knowing laughs from the crowd.
“Bohemian Rhapsody, you sneaky fucker.”
Jerome smiled as he listened to the timeless song that had for some reason been adopted by military personnel ever since it had been first released.
By the third line everyone was singing along, smiling and half-dancing on the asteroid surface. They looked like a bunch of idiots, and it was great.
Chapter 13
Bandit Two
Oort cloud Osdal System
12/3266
For two weeks they’d had decent hits on the grinder, and on the third they’d found the platinum and copper vein they’d been searching for.
They’d filled all but the bare areas they’d need to sleep in. It was tight as hell, but doable.
“Okay, let’s get this show on the road, next stop, a fucking shower!” Yu announced to tired cheers. They’d worked themselves ragged to finish mining, and the refining centers and the stations around them were so close.
Just a week to go, Yu thought, pushing off with the thrusters and putting power into the engines.
He swung wide off their asteroid and headed for the nearest refining station.
Young was on sensor watch; the further they got into Osdal, the more asteroids they’d come across. “Beacon is good on the asteroid.”
They’d left a marker on the thing that would only respond to their codes, that way they could come back if they needed it.
Moretti insisted that money was the most useful tool in the information business. Since credits weren’t going to be accepted in a system where the banking system was down, they needed to trade or get some monetary equivalent in order to get themselves outfitted like Osdalians, and grease the right palms.
Moretti took up one of the two seats that was behind Young and Yu. He used his implants to go through different information channels, confirming that the camps existed, and he also believed that Harmony had instituted a monetary system. They were buying up materials, he believed to make tools meant for war, and also materials that they were shipping to Housapel and Fernix.
He was working on building profiles of the key players and the different systems in place. All of it was being beamed back to the carrier fleet, which was slowly moving towards Osdal. There were tens of other groups trying to insert themselves into Osdal.
Some of their goals were to lay down sensor nets so that the Carriers knew where the Osdals were, so no one could get a sensor reading of them, or see them.
Others were there to enter the Chosen’s ranks, still others worked the organic planets and asteroid belts or refiners.
In an ideal situation they would have a person in every major area Harmony used.
None of the people with Yu believed that would happen, but anything was better than nothing.
***
Mark was in the cockpit with Bobbie when the refinery and it’s attached station came into view.
“Fuck it’s ugly,” Mark said.
The Refinery looked like multiple rough boxes stacked together. At one end there was a massive docking platform. On the other side there were large freighters with robots moving to them, loading them with refined materials. One freighter lit up it’s drive, pushing away from the dock and heading towards Osdal Actual.
The station seemed to have built off of the side of the refinery. Boxes came together at odd angles and sizes, built into a rough pyramid with docks and slips jutting out here and there. It was built for function over aesthetics. Leading to a very ugly looking station.
Lights blinked erratically and solar panels reflected light as they tried to gather as much energy as possible.
Shuttles and mining tugs moved around the station, moving lights and the readings from the view screens showing them against the inky dark of space and the grey boxes of the station.
Inter-system freighters twice the size of Bandit Two were hooked up to what looked like tubes. According to the information brief, that was where the refined material was pushed out from the refinery and into the collecting freighters. They’d then take it off to designated stations, which would turn them into compound materials and send them off to shipping stations dotted around the system.
“Lo
oks like paradise to me. Showers, beds and less recycled air,” Bobbie groaned and made his eye twitch.
“Yu, I think I need a replacement Cargo Master, this one’s broken!” Mark complained. Eying the clusters of antennae’s docks, and parts of the station.
“Dick,” Bobbie said, laughing.
“What, you two… shit!” Yu halted as he turned to face the cargo hold. “We’re less than a few hours away!” He said, getting excited cheers to ‘About fucking time’ and “I swear I should have gone on the direct flight,”
“Oh shut up Dashtund,” Tyler sighed.
“Yes boss, right away boss, shutting up boss!”
“Yu you, fuck that sounds weird as shit,” Mark said.
“Get it more times than you’d ever want to dream of,” Yu said.
“Sorry dude, but you want to take the stick?” Mark asked, indicating his seat.
“Nah, nothing like doing it for real. You’ve done tens of landings, you didn’t even crash on the last three,” Yu said.
“Thanks, really helping my confidence here,” Mark sighed, resigned to his seat.
He corrected the flight plan as the refinery called to the craft, and Moretti took the message, talking to the crew. Ten minutes later and Mark’s flight plan adjusted to put him on the correct offloading platform.
Mark took deep breaths as he got closer, remembering to focus on the screens instead of relying on his eyes. Numbers and schematics were his friend; his eyes could misjudge things badly at the speeds he was travelling.
He input a burn rate on the shuttle’s thrusters, bringing their speed down.
The burn rate went up, the main engines firing heavily when they were twenty feet above the offloading platform. Mark adjusted to meet the refinery’s motion, then it was simply using thrusters above the craft to push it down onto the offloading platform.
He got down, letting out his breath in a rush, and the landing crew came out, securing the freighter to the deck. Another man came to the door and a flurry of robots moved to the rear of the freighter.
“I’ll handle the stuff,” Moretti said, grabbing his helmet and jumping into the cargo hold.
“Good job Mark,” Yu said, slapping Mark’s shoulder.
Osdal (Harmony War Series Book 3) Page 8