Beltrunner

by O’Brien, Sean

  Beltrunner

  by Sean O’Brien

  Copyright © 2016 by Sean O’Brien

  e-Book Edition

  Published by

  EDGE-Lite

  An Imprint of

  HADES PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  CALGARY

  Notice

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  * * * * *

  Dedications

  To my father, who taught me what being a man is.

  To my brother, who taught me what a hero is.

  To my son, who taught me what matters.

  Contents

  Beltrunner

  Dedications

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  More from EDGE-Lite:

  Details

  Chapter One

  “Come on, come on. Show me the Ps.” It was becoming a liturgy. Collier hadn’t even raised the cabin lights — he had programmed Sancho to let him sleep, for all the good it had done him — but the glow from the console was more than enough to illuminate his craggy features. Rocinante was still executing her flyby of M-1875, sending back telemetry to Collier in the Dulcinea in full 3D color. Sancho was doing his best to analyze the data, as he always did, but Collier knew better than to rely solely on the computer. He was looking for something he couldn’t ever put into words, no matter how many belters back in Ceres had asked him to try. Not that he had been the center of any conversations for many years now. He had, at best, been a quaint curiosity some time ago, but now was an eccentric old man who was close to becoming a nuisance.

  “There! There it is! Mark it and bring Rocinante back in, Sancho,” Collier rewound the telemetry to the precise moment he had seen the signs, and told Sancho to lock the coordinates.

  “Coordinates locked in. Rocinante returning to her stable, Skipper,” Sancho confirmed cheerfully. “I’m always curious, boss — what did you see?”

  Collier had never been able to explain the markings of a P-vein on the surface: indeed, he had been caught more than a few times excavating what he was sure would be a strike only to find nickel and iron. But he was not about to abandon his methods. Deep impact probes were far more reliable, but they were expensive consumables he simply couldn’t afford. Rocinante was not equipped for laser mining, as many of the third-generation rock hounds were. All Collier had were his instincts and subjective experiences. And hope. Still, he made an attempt to explain his art to his computer.

  “There is a fissure there, running from the top right to the bottom left. Do you see it?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s a heavy-metal impact fissure. Bound to be some P in it, or at least nearby.”

  “How do you know it’s an impact fissure? Couldn’t it be just cleavage in the rock?”

  Collier snorted. “I know cleavage when I see it, Sancho. That’s not it. Takes a man to tell the difference.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Rocinante back yet?”

  “Still on approach. I’ve got a good track. Her stable is ready — all lights green.”

  “Good. When she’s tucked in, take us to M-1875. Right over the fissure. How’s the spin?”

  “Not too bad. Well under tolerance levels. Do you want to attach correctors?”

  Collier shook his head. “Not if I don’t have to. Takes up fuel. I’ll just go down myself, start cutting. Hover us one hundred meters away, but don’t deploy the canopy. What’s your estimated time until hover?”

  “Rocinante should be tucked in about ninety minutes from now. Under standard procedure, it will take me about two hours to achieve stable hover over the coordinates. So three and a half hours, Skipper.”

  “Great. Just enough time for a nap. Wake me when we get there. Or if there’s a fire or something.”

  “If there’s a fire, I’ll just evacuate the oxygen. Sleep well, Skipper.”

  Collier laughed at the computer’s joke, glad at the machine’s attitude. He had long dismissed the question of Sancho’s self-awareness as immaterial and worthless. It pleased him that the almost hopelessly outdated computer had quirks and bugs — including, possibly, sentience. That ill-fated experiment was one of the few taboo subjects left in the system. Earth was rumored to still have hundreds of thousands of rogue Calibans who had blended into the background of the planet’s artificial workforce. Perhaps some had left the planet to Luna or even Mars — no one was certain. Collier suspected that someday, Sancho’s increasingly corrupted programming would reduce him to uselessness, but he dared not take him in for an overhaul. If he had achieved sentience, Collier would be held liable. He did not relish the idea of being ground up in the Ceres bioconverter for fertilizer. And anyway, if Sancho were sentient, the computer would be killed as well in an overhaul. No, better to continue as he was, with a quirky, erratic computer who asked odd questions. Collier drifted off to sleep with a smile on his lips.

  *

  “New contact,” Sancho’s voice woke Collier instantly. “Approaching at 23 meters per second relative velocity. Distance 345.6 kilometers and closing.”

  “What the hell? Who is it?” Collier tore loose the sleep restraint and shoved off toward the control seat. Even as he maneuvered into his station he was glancing at Sancho’s readouts. One look told him all he needed to know.

  “Configuration suggests a mining vessel, highest probability—”

  “Ad Astra Corporation. Yeah.” Collier heaved a sigh and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as though girding himself for what he knew must come next. “Why didn’t we see them from farther away?” he asked irritably.

  “They were in obstruction,” Sancho said.

  Collier took a deep breath. No sense in blaming Sancho for that. “So, the Ad Astra guys want a piece of this rock too, huh?”

  “Affirmative. I’d say they are making for the same rock we are.”

  Collier studied Sancho’s readout. The corporate mining ship would catch up to him in just over four hours at this velocity. They would get to the asteroid at about the same time. His eyes found Dulcinea’s fuel supply indicator: every liter of propellant he used to increase his own velocity meant a slower return to Ceres later, but it might be worth it to get to the asteroid first and claim it before the corp could. Of course, there was no telling how fast the corp was willing to go to beat him to it.

  “Let’s talk to them, Sancho.”

  “Sure thing, Skipper,” Sancho said brightly. After a momentary pause, he said, “Contact established. Comm ready when you are.”

  Collier drew his breath and said, in what he hoped was a cocksure drawl, “This is the Dulcinea to approaching corporate mining ship. Who are you, and what do you want with my rock?”

  “Your rock, huh? I don’t think you’re going to be able to make that stick, Col.”

  His eyes half-closed when he heard the voice. The sudden dryness in his mouth and slight stirring in his loins betrayed the conflict w
ithin him.

  “Isa,” he croaked.

  “Corporate Captain Mitchell, Col. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

  There was no mistaking the casual venom in her voice. Even without a visual link, he could see her half-smirk and narrowed eyes. She always tried so hard to be serious and grim — but in rare moments of total honesty with him, she had revealed secret insecurities and fears that had made him love her all the more.

  For a time, at least.

  “Yes, it has. And you still haven’t answered me: what are you doing chasing my rock?”

  “For starters, Col, it’s not your rock. I know you haven’t filed a claim on it, and you certainly haven’t begun excavation. As far as I’m concerned, this is still a free asteroid. And we’re going to get there ahead of you.” Isa’s smugness was a shade too heavy.

  “I’ve got plenty of delta-vee in my tanks still, Isa,” he said, deliberately emphasizing her name rather than use her title, “so unless you want to spend a lot of your corp’s water, you should break off and look for another rock.”

  Isa chuckled mirthlessly. “Nice try, Col. You know we carry much more water than you. I can outrun you even from here, get to the rock ahead of you, set up the mine and begin processing while you’re still nursing those shit engines of yours. I’m surprised the Dulcet is still working, actually.”

  “Dulcinea. And she’s never been better,” he snapped. Isa knew very well how sensitive he was to comments about his boat. “You try to keep up, Isa. I’m going to get to the rock first, and then you’ll have to lay off. Don’t waste your corp’s water on a stupid race you can’t win.”

  “Since when are you so worried about Ad Astra’s profit margin?”

  “Since when are you?” He knew it was a childish rejoinder, but it came so swiftly and easily he barely knew he was saying it.

  Isa sighed. “You never did understand, Col. But after the last six years, I would have thought you would have come to the same realization I had.”

  “Nope,” he said, too much petulance in his voice. He winced at his own tone.

  Silence from the other side, during which time Collier ached to ask Isa questions: questions that he had never fully put away. Why had she left that morning six years ago? Her long letter, written on real paper and left on his pillow in some old-fashioned gesture that angered him even more at the time, had said much but answered little. How many times in the past six years had he wished he had not spaced the letter? How many times had he wondered if he would ever find it again, floating in the belt?

  His masculine pride won out, and Isa spoke before he succumbed to the wounds of the past. “Well. In any case, Col, this is the way it is now. I’m here, I have a corp behind me, and I will be able to get to the rock first. I’m only cruising now, but if I need to, I will fly by you like a missile and use an anchor on the rock to claim it. Ad Astra Corporation Mining Ship SCM-17, out.”

  Damn her. Damn her and her corporation.

  Even as he thought that, he couldn’t help but feel pleased that she had risen to prominence so quickly. He had always admired her cool competence — that and her quirky moments of vulnerability had first fascinated then excited him.

  Sancho’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Skipper, she’s increased velocity. Relative velocity now 29 meters per second and increasing by point 9 meters per second.”

  “She’s not kidding. Didn’t know corp ships were allowed to move that fast — I wonder what the performance is on the thrusters? She’s going to have to flipbrake before long,” he mused aloud. Isa had been right on at least one score: he had to save a certain amount of propellant for the return to Ceres, and Dulcinea’s thrust efficiency was not what it used to be. Sancho had warned him about microfractures in some of the thrust tubes weeks ago: if superheated exhaust expanded the cracks, he would not only lose the race to the rock, but have to limp back to Ceres at reduced speed.

  Damn it, he had to. Not only because he needed this strike, but also to show the corporation that a freelancer like him could not be shoved aside so easily. Ad Astra could not treat him this way, like an obsolete relic of a past time.

  He didn’t quite convince himself that the corporation was the target of his anger.

  “Sancho, go to eighty percent thrust, and inform me of any changes in thrust tube integrity. If we are holding steady, we’ll go to one hundred percent.”

  “Eighty percent thrust, aye. Recalculating vector to target. Recalculation complete, thrust in ten seconds. Secure for approximately one-eighth gee acceleration. Seven, six, five … pre-thrust deicing complete, tubes primed … two, one. Eighty percent.”

  Collier felt the gentle push into his chair as Dulcinea’s engines labored.

  Sancho chimed in again. “Revised telemetry: Ad Astra vessel relative velocity now forty-four meters per second, increasing by point two meters per second. Time to asteroid estimated at two hours, eighteen minutes.”

  Collier examined the data and squinted. “Will we beat them?”

  “Impossible to say, Skipper. I don’t know when she’s going to flip and brake — that depends on how much thrust she’s capable of, how much propellant her captain is willing to use, how—”

  “All right, skip it. When do we have to flipbrake?”

  “At our current acceleration, assuming you want to brake at the same rate, we should flip in forty-one minutes.”

  “Any cracks in the thrust tubes?”

  Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Collier thought he heard fear in Sancho’s voice. “Not yet. I can’t say if they will crack or not.”

  “Let’s go to one hundred percent thrust.”

  “We’ll be dangerously low on propellant when we get to the rock, Skipper. It’ll mean a very low-consumption return to Ceres.”

  “We’ll mine water from the rock. Go to one hundred.”

  “Assuming there is any,” Sancho muttered, and Collier couldn’t help but smile at his computer’s quirks. “Increasing thrust to one hundred percent. Stand by for approximately one-sixth gee. Five, four, three, two, one. One hundred percent.”

  The gentle weight increased almost imperceptibly. The sensation that he was lying on his back, looking “up” through the nose window, was a temporary illusion that he had little difficulty in dispelling. His years in space had trained his mind to ignore his inner ear.

  “Revised telemetry. Ad Astra vessel relative velocity forty-five meters per second, decreasing very slowly. Under point one meter per second per second. New estimated time to asteroid one hour, fifty-five minutes. Flipbrake in twenty-two minutes.”

  “Still no way to tell if we will beat them?”

  Sancho sounded slightly exasperated. “No, Skipper. Too many unpredictable variables.”

  “I know what you mean,” Collier nodded.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Skip it. No need to be apologetic. We’ve never really talked about women, have we, Sancho?”

  “No, Skipper. I don’t know what I can add to any discussion of romance. But I still have a rather extensive pornography collection.”

  Collier reddened. “Never mind that. I thought I told you to always forget when I access that?”

  “You do. But I remember you telling me to forget it.”

  “We’re not talking about this. It’s a perfectly normal, even healthy—”

  Sancho’s voice went cold again as he interrupted. “Revised telemetry. Ad Astra vessel has increased her rate of acceleration. Relative velocity now forty-three meters per second, increasing by point two meters per second.”

  “Shit. She’s not giving up.” Collier thought for a moment. Perhaps Isa was right: if she was willing to expend this much water to chase down the rock, he wasn’t going to be able to match her. Her ship obviously could outperform his, and she was not being miserly with her fuel.

  “How are the
tubes holding?”

  “No increased damage so far. But the likelihood is that I won’t be able to detect any cracks in time to shut down. If a tube cracks, we’ll lose it.”

  “Can we go to one hundred and five percent thrust?”

  Sancho was slow in replying. “Well, yes, but we won’t gain much. And we may pass the fuel threshold: we may not have enough to return to Ceres without cold-sleep protocol.”

  “I told you, we’re going to mine water from the rock. Don’t worry about fuel.”

  “If we go to one oh five, we run a greater risk of cracking a tube.” It wasn’t Collier’s imagination: Sancho was clearly worried now.

  “Okay. Let me think.”

  Sancho waited a beat, then said dryly, “That doesn’t fill me with confidence, Skipper. Can I suggest that maybe Captain Mitchell was right? We can’t win this rock.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her take this from me. Recalculate time of arrival at the asteroid assuming no flip-brake maneuver.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just do it,” Collier snapped.

  “If we continue at our present rate of acceleration, we will reach the asteroid in thirty-nine minutes. And we’ll be shattered to very small particles when we do.”

  “Okay. Alter course so that we will execute a flyby at … five hundred meters distance from the asteroid.”

  “Are you sure about this, Skipper? I don’t mean to challenge you, but this seems … well, crazy. You remember you told me five years, ten months and twenty-three days ago terrestrial if you ever tried to kill yourself, I was to stop—”

  “Yes, Sancho, I remember. I’m not going to kill myself, or you. You’re going to drop me off when you get near the rock.”

  “Okay. That still sounds like you’re going to kill yourself, Skipper.”

  “I’ll ride Rocinante and use its thrusters, plus my suit thrusters, to brake myself to a soft landing on the rock. You’ll flipbrake as soon as I leave the ship and start coming back for me. I’ll be fine on the asteroid until you get back. And once I land on it, it’ll be mine: Isa won’t be able to claim it.”