The Belt: The Complete Trilogy

by Gerald M. Kilby

  “Commander, we have a situation,” Aria finally responded.

  Scott looked over at Cyrus, who was also listening in. “Did the shuttle crash?”

  “No, worse…” But before they could catch the rest of the sentence, a warning klaxon barked an alert, drowning out all other sounds.

  “Shit… decompression. We have a hull breach,” Scott shouted to Cyrus, who was frozen on the spot. He seemed to be scanning ahead with his augmented vision. “What is it?” Scott shouted at him.

  “I’m picking up traces of a plasma blast.” He looked back at Scott. “From weapons fire.”

  Scott cupped a hand over his earpiece. “Aria, talk to me. What the hell is happening?”

  The response was weak, filled with static. “…raiding party… two dead… hull breach in main hangar…” The signal was lost.

  “Raiding party?” Cyrus looked frightened.

  “We need to get back to the bridge and find out what’s going on.”

  “We can’t.” Cyrus was shaking his head.

  “Why not?”

  If there’s a hull breach in the main hangar, then this section of the ship will have been automatically sealed. No way through.”

  “Goddamnit.” Scott rubbed his face in frustration.

  “We just have to wait for Aria to sort it out,” said Cyrus.

  “Wait a minute.” Scott stopped moving. “Aria’s core is located down here, at the other side of the power plant. If we could get there, then we can access it directly and find out what’s happening.”

  “That could work,” said Cyrus.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  They headed off down the access tunnel as fast as they could manage in zero-gee, the decompression klaxons still blaring their alerts. They were moving through the main spine of the ship. Behind them lay the business end of the craft: reactors, hydrogen fuel tanks, cryogenics—all ultimately leading to the engine array. Ahead of them was an area that comprised most of the heavy engineering required to keep a ship of this size functioning: power storage, life support, filtration and waste management, and a whole host of other necessary engineering processes.

  It took them a few minutes to pass through this sector and into a wider tunnel leading to the main bearing for the giant torus that provided artificial gravity. Cyrus was right: the access hatch up ahead was sealed tight, and there would be no way for them to open it if there was a hull breach on the other side. But they weren’t going that far.

  Scott floated to a halt just beside the door to the ship’s QI core. He placed a palm on the access panel and let it scan. For obvious reasons, this was a high security area they were entering, so only the commander and chief engineer had access. The panel finished its identification process and the door let out a slight hiss as it moved back, sliding out of the way to allow them entry.

  Cyrus grabbed Scott’s arm. “Wait. The torus—it stopped spinning.” Cyrus cocked his head from side to side as if listening for something.

  “How can you tell?” Scott tried to perceive some change, but his senses were no match for the engineer’s sensory augmentation.

  “Trust me, I just can.”

  “That’s not a good sign.” Scott shook his head. “Come on.” As they floated in, they felt a blast of cold air only slightly above freezing. Scott’s breath condensed on exhale. Automatic illumination flickered on to reveal a stark, minimalist space. Around the walls, tiny dots of light flickered on various control panels. In the center of the room sat a low, squat metal cylinder. Scott placed a palm on its upturned face. A thin ribbon of light moved across it, and the cylinder began to illuminate as it slowly rose.

  Scott stood back. “Aria, can you hear me?”

  “Commander, I’m happy to see you and Cyrus are still alive, but you don’t have much time. You have to get off the ship.”

  “What? We can’t. There’s no way, even if we wanted to.” Cyrus shook his head.

  Scott raised a hand to silence him. “What happened, Aria?”

  “The shuttle from Ceres was a ruse, possibly hijacked. A Trojan horse, if you will. When the docking port opened, several armed mercenaries entered the hangar, and have taken Councilor Goodchild and Dr. Rayman hostage, along with some of Goodchild’s entourage. They are now on board the shuttle. Two of Goodchild’s bodyguards died in the firefight.”

  “Ho-ly shit.” Cyrus was shaking his head again, this time in disbelief.

  “Hull integrity in the hangar has been breached, and they have employed a high-intensity EMF device to disrupt comms and some low-level power systems.”

  “Who the hell are they? What do they want?” said Scott.

  “I honestly do not know,” continued Aria, “but that is not important right now. As we speak, two mercenaries are moving through the ship planting high explosives.”

  “What?!” Cyrus shouted.

  “You must get off the ship now, before it’s too late. You have very little time. Soon, the Hermes will be nothing more than shrapnel.”

  “I don’t believe it. This can’t be happening.” Cyrus was becoming distraught.

  Scott grabbed Cyrus by the shoulder. “The shuttle we just moved, can we take that?”

  “It’s got no main engine, no fuel. It’s not going anywhere.”

  “It doesn’t have to. It’s got power and life support and enough capacity to move us away from here.”

  Cyrus thought about this for a second. “But…”

  “No buts. It’s our only option.”

  “I agree,” said Aria, “it will at least act as a lifeboat. But you must hurry.”

  “What about you, Aria?”

  “What about me? I will cease to exist, that’s what.”

  “No,” said Scott.

  “It doesn’t matter. I am simply a machine, nothing more.”

  Scott placed a hand slowly on the plinth as if to touch an old friend. “They will pay for what they’ve done, Aria. You have my word: they will pay.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but you must go now. You are running out of time.”

  Cyrus moved toward the door. “Come on Scott, we need to do as Aria says. Let’s go.”

  Scott hesitated, a hand still resting on the plinth. “Wait a minute.”

  “No way, Scott. We gotta go.” Cyrus gesticulated wildly at the exit.

  “Aria, what if we take your core with us? It’s small enough to fit through the auxiliary docking port.”

  There was a moment’s silence as Scott waited for an answer. “Why would you do that, Scott?”

  “Goddamnit, Aria. I’m not going to just leave you behind if there’s a chance of saving you.”

  “Scott, for God’s sake, it’s just a machine. Leave it.”

  Scott spun around. “You go ahead, Cyrus. Get the shuttle powered up. I’ll follow.”

  Cyrus let out a sigh. “Why, oh why, do you do this to me?” He looked over at Scott. “Yes, is the answer. We can detach the core, which should be most of Aria. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “I have to admit, I find myself lost for words. I may be just a machine, but the thought of ceasing to exist does not fill me with joy.”

  “Yeah, welcome to the club. So how do we do this?” Scott started to inspect the metal cylinder.

  “I will need to coalesce my systems back to the core. This will be instantaneous, but I will not be able to monitor ship systems, so things may become unstable.”

  “Great. That’s all we need,” said Cyrus.

  “Just so you are aware, the two mercenaries have returned to the hangar and are about to enter the Ceres shuttle.”

  “Got it, Aria. Let’s get this done,” said Scott.

  “One last thing.”

  “Seriously Aria, we don’t have time for this.”

  “You must promise that you will not let my core fall into the wrong hands. You must destroy me before that happens.”

  “What do you mean, the wrong hands?”

  “Anybody you do not trust. This is
critically important to me. You must promise me.”

  “Okay, Aria. I understand. I promise.”

  “Very well, then.”

  The illumination in the room flickered a moment. Scott and Cyrus exchanged a glance. “It is done? Is Aria aggregated in the core?” There was silence for a second as they both detected a slight drifting of their positions in the space.

  “Did you feel that? The ship is starting to tumble.” Cyrus moved over to the face of the plinth and tapped a series of icons, followed by a palm scan. He stood back as the upper face irised open and the central core rose from within. It was around a meter wide, and the same high. Its surface was smooth, and seemed to shimmer slightly in the dim light. A series of grab handles were located all the way around its upper edge.

  Cyrus floated over it and signaled Scott to do the same. They grabbed a handle each and lifted it out of its sarcophagus.

  “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.” Scott moved ahead, pulling Aria’s core behind. He could feel the tumble of the ship as he was pushed gently to one side of the tunnel. All the while, he thought of the Ceres shuttle taking off, and the Hermes about to detonate.

  They made it back through the auxiliary docking port, and Scott flung himself at the locking wheel to close it tight as Cyrus strapped himself in and powered up the craft. Scott joined him just as he released the docking mechanism and touched the maneuvering thrusters to separate them from the Hermes. Scott began to breathe a little easier with each second that put distance between them and the mothership.

  “Can’t you move any faster, Cyrus?”

  Then engineer responded with a glare. “You don’t think I would be doing just that if this bucket had a goddamn working engine?”

  On the main cockpit screen, Scott could see they were now a few hundred meters away from the Hermes. He could also see the flare from the engine of the Ceres shuttle. Scott reached for the comms. “I’m going to send out a mayday and let everyone know what just happened.”

  “You can’t,” Cyrus snapped back.

  “Why not?”

  “No comms. It’s not working.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Is there anything working on this heap of crap?”

  “Well gee, if my buddy hadn’t decided to be a useless, miserable bastard the last few weeks just because his girlfriend left him, then we might have some working engines… and a radio to call for help.”

  Scott stayed silent. Cyrus was right: he had let everyone down, and had left all his friends to pick up the slack for his emotional self-indulgence.

  The Hermes exploded—into a thousand, million shards.

  A moment later, the explosion buffeted the shuttle as fragments of the ship bounced and ricocheted off the hull. Then it passed, and the ship was no more.

  7

  Ceres

  They drifted for a while, saying nothing, just looking out at the point in space where the Hermes used to be. Now, all that marked its former existence was a slowly dissipating debris cloud.

  Cyrus shifted in his seat, leaning in to view something on the cockpit console. He tapped a few icons and proceeded to scratch his chin.

  “What is it?” said Scott, leaning over to get a better view of whatever it was that had Cyrus concerned.

  “We may have a problem.”

  “Like we don’t already have one?”

  “We’re drifting toward Ceres.”

  “How is that a problem?”

  “It means we can’t maintain orbit. Either the maneuvering thrusters aren’t enough, or we’ve sustained damage from the explosion.”

  “We’ve still got retro-thrusters.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve only got fuel for a minute or so of burn time, and we’ll need that if we want any chance of landing.”

  “So, we just land, then. How’s that a problem?”

  “Landing isn’t the problem, assuming the retro-thrusters fire.” Cyrus leaned in and tapped a number of icons on the console. “The problem is where we land.”

  “What about Dantu City or Ezinu?”

  “According to my calculations, on our current trajectory we will land somewhere around Rongo Crater.” He tapped an icon to bring up a 3D holographic map of the dwarf planet Ceres, and zoomed in on the general area.

  “But that’s the other side of the planet. There’s nothing there.”

  “Correct. The nearest populated facility is… 300 kilometers due east.”

  “Shit.”

  Cyrus looked over at Scott. “Like I said, we may have a problem.”

  Scott rubbed his face. “Okay, what about fixing comms? We could get a mayday out.”

  “Possible, but they would need to be quick. We’ve only got around an hour and a half of oxygen.”

  Scott gave the engineer a studied look. “You’re kidding me.”

  “I really wish I was, Scott.”

  They were silent for a moment as the reality of their predicament began to filter through.

  “Wait a minute.” Cyrus started unstrapping himself from the seat. “Take over here, Scott. There’s something I need to check.” Cyrus rose from his seat and moved to the rear of the shuttle. Scott took the helm, not that there was much he could do with their fate all but sealed. They would—hopefully—be landing somewhere in Rongo Crater, regardless of what Scott did. He looked back at Cyrus, who was beside the main airlock, opening the door of a tall floor-to-ceiling locker.

  “Okay,” said Cyrus, “we have an EVA suit.” Cyrus grabbed the sleeve control panel and switched it on to check the suit’s resources. “Fifty-two minutes of air. That gives us a bit of extra time.”

  “What about the suit comms? Could we use that?” Scott shouted back to the engineer.

  “We could try it, but it will have a very limited range. And we’re on the wrong side of the planet. Maybe if there’s a ship out there in close proximity.”

  “Okay, well you better boot it up and get calling.”

  Over the next several minutes, Cyrus broadcast an all-ships mayday while Scott monitored the slow descent of the shuttle toward the ass end of Ceres.

  “Cyrus, come and have a look at this.”

  The engineer floated over beside Scott. “What is it?”

  Scott pointed to a spot on the 3D topographical map of the surface of Ceres displayed over the center console. “There’s an ID marker here on the edge of Rongo Crater.” Scott tapped it, and more detailed information started to display.

  Cyrus looked closer at the data. “It’s an old AsterX research station. Looks like it’s been abandoned for around three years.”

  Scott looked up at Cyrus. “Do you think we could reach it? There could still be something there we could use, like comms or even an air supply. They leave stuff in these places for emergencies.”

  “Not a chance. It’s too far away.”

  “We have to try, Cyrus. It may be our only chance of survival.”

  The engineer started tapping icons on the console, calculating fuel reserves, thrust vectors, and rate of descent. The 3D rendering of the dwarf planet zoomed out, and lines showing descent probabilities began scribing above the surface. As Cyrus worked, lines came and went until eventually all disappeared save for one. “There. That’s as close as I think we can get without running out of fuel and crashing.”

  Scott examined the spot. “That’s over fifty kilometers away.”

  “That’s all we’ve got in the tank, Scott. Believe me, I wish it were more.”

  Scott studied the map for a moment. “We could use the retro-thrusters to keep our altitude high enough to reach it.”

  “Sure, but that means nothing left for landing. We’ll come down hard. This is Ceres, remember? The gravity may be weak, but it will still crack this shuttle open like an egg—and we only have one EVA suit.” He looked over at Scott.

  Scott returned his look with a grave nod. “Understood. But we could come in low, across this side of the crater here,” he pointed to an area on the 3D map, “by decreasing the angle
of descent. This basin is probably covered in at least a meter or two of dust. Nice, soft landing.”

  Cyrus shook his head. “If we do that, we’ll be coming in fast. That will do more damage than gravity.”

  “Cyrus,” Scott lifted his head and gave the chief engineer a long, hard look, “we’re going to be dead in two hours. No one is coming to help us, at least not in that timeframe. This might be our only chance of survival.”

  Cyrus scratched his chin and looked back at the map. “Caught between a rock and hard space, eh?” He looked over at Scott and shrugged.

  “If we keep the nose up on landing, then we could skim the surface, let the dust slow us down.”

  The arc of descent outline on the map started to flash. “If we’re going to do this, then we need to start now.” Cyrus pointed to the blinking line before returning his attention to the console. He tapped the surface, and auto-navigational schematics displayed. “Here goes,” he said as he dialed in the new trajectory. The craft bucked as the retro-thrusters kicked in to adjust its angle of descent.

  Soon, the surface of the dwarf planet began rolling away beneath them, moving fast. Neither Cyrus nor Scott spoke, and no one mentioned the solo EVA suit stashed in the rear locker. Again, the retro-thrusters fired to counter their fall. The angle changed, and the rim of Rongo Crater came into view. To the west, the sun began dropping below the horizon.

  “It will be dark when we get there.” Scott’s were the first words spoken since they’d committed themselves to this suicide run.

  “Yeah,” Cyrus acknowledged.

  They crested the rim of the crater just as several alerts flashed on the console. Hydrogen fuel exhausted, low altitude alert, descent velocity alert, and a whole bunch of other warnings screaming out imminent catastrophe. The last of the nitrogen was flung at the vernier thrusters in the hope they could fight back against the relentless forward momentum of the craft. The horizon flattened, and the crater basin sped past beneath them. The craft bucked again as the verniers exhausted themselves; the console was now a sea of flashing red warnings as the crater floor rose to meet them.