Beltrunner

by O’Brien, Sean

  “Now you, South.”

  Collier complied silently.

  Rahford caught the weapons and said to Collier. “Now, South, the wand.”

  “Rahford, listen. You think your corp will back you, get you out of the trouble you’re going to be in. They won’t. They’re going to get the wand from you and then let you rot on an Authority prison sleeper. They’re going to say you were just a rogue captain who was not following corporate policy. They—”

  “You don’t understand corporate loyalty, South, but then, I don’t expect you to. I also don’t care what you think is going to eventually happen to me. Give me the wand. I’d rather not have to kill you, since that would make things difficult for the corp, but I will if I have to.”

  Fletcher had moved away from Collier, crouching. Collier sighed and produced the wand, delicately manipulating the controls as best he could. He dare not look at the cheat sheet — he was simply going on memory. He pressed the final sequence, opened the tube, and flung it at Rahford.

  As soon as he did so, he dove for Fletcher to protect her. The wand spun end over end, spewing a pale yellow gas. Rahford fired, but his gun was aimed at Collier’s previous position. The projectile struck the control panel and ricocheted around the control suite, sparking when it made contact with the metal surfaces.

  Rahford swung the pistol to where Collier and Fletcher had fetched up against an aft partition, the wand still spewing a faint yellow cloud. The pungent smell of the gas assaulted Collier’s nostrils and eyes, but it did not smell as it should have. He did not have time to wonder at this, as Rahford’s weapon was now trained on him.

  Rahford blinked twice and shook his head, then fired. The spinning magic wand was between the two men, and the bullet spanged off the tube and sparked. Collier heard the bullet impact the bulkhead next to him, and the magic wand was now spinning crazily end-over-end. Rahford’s bullet had hit near the bottom of the wand, and as it came toward Collier it spun rapidly. He reached out and seized the wand, almost by instinct, his eyes burning and his lungs protesting.

  Through the confusion, Sancho came on the cabin comm, his voice no longer flat. “Skipper! Fluorine concentrations dangerously high! Beginning maximum atmosphere replacement.”

  Rahford rubbed at his eyes and growled. Collier was coughing and squeezing his eyes shut as well, and Fletcher had doubled over retching. Collier forced his eyes open to see Rahford fumbling at the neck control of his suit.

  Half-blindly, Collier pushed off the bulkhead and launched himself at Rahford face-first, the wand held before him like a spear. Rahford finally found the control he was looking for and started to shut his helmet, the glass dome springing up from behind his head and circling down to his neck. Collier thrust the wand ahead and managed to get it wedged between the neck and the closing glass dome. Rahford’s helmet was unsealed, a five-centimeter gap between the glass and the neck. Collier started quickly to tap and slide on the wand’s control surface.

  Rahford drew a few breaths and looked at Collier before him. He smiled silently and brought his pistol up, but not before Collier finished his manipulations and sent a cloud of fluorine into the helmet, yanking the wand free of the glass dome and allowing the suit to seal itself, trapping the deadly gas inside.

  Rahford screamed, his voice muffled behind the glass, and he tore at the neck of his suit, dropping his pistol. His legs flailed around as the gas went to work on his eyes and throat. Collier retrieved the pistol, his own eyes still tearing, and coughed mightily. He pushed off Rahford’s body, which was still spastically twitching as he screamed and scrabbled at his helmet release, and checked on Fletcher. She had curled into a ball and was coughing violently, squeezing her eyes shut. The air in the cabin began to swirl again as Sancho activated the scrubbers, and in seconds the powerful odor had vanished.

  Collier looked at Rahford, who had gone limp. Continuing to cover him with the pistol, Collier found and pressed the helmet release catch. The glass swung back to the shoulder recess and revealed Rahford’s face. He looked as if someone had splashed acid on his skin — burn marks had already formed near the nose, eyes, and lips, but he was still breathing.

  Collier called to his computer. “Sancho, contact the Ad Astra ship. Tell them that their Captain has—”

  “Belay that,” Fletcher said, her voice hoarse. “We’ll take him aboard the Barton. We can give him the—” she stopped to cough, then resumed, “attention he needs. Plus place him under arrest.”

  “Sancho, check that. Contact the Clara Barton, please. Put them on cabin com.”

  Fletcher made the arrangements with her ship, ordering two of her own crew to retrieve Rahford’s body and describing the nature of the emergency. Her adjutant had seemed shocked at the diagnosis of fluorine poisoning, but had complied with Fletcher’s orders. Sancho recommended Collier and Fletcher wash out their eyes with water, so the two took turns at the small bathroom dispenser doing so.

  “Sancho, what was the maximum concentration of the fluorine gas in the cabin?”

  “My sensors detected 30 parts per million.”

  “What are the long-term health effects of exposure at that level for the short time we were in it?”

  “There won’t be long term effects for so small a dosage. I would still get checked out, though, when you can, Skipper.”

  Fletcher stood away from the sink and motioned for Collier to use it. She dried her face with the suction towel and said through it, “Your computer sounds different.”

  “Yeah, well,” Collier said, “that’s a bit of a story as well.”

  “I’m sure. You’ve got more than a few secrets, Captain South.”

  Collier finished washing and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  The two Barton crewmen arrived, and under Fletcher’s orders took Rahford’s body back to the Authority ship. That left Collier and Fletcher alone in the cabin.

  “So, what happens next?” Collier said.

  “Well, we will try Rahford for his violations of the Belt Charter, probably successfully. I think you were right — his corp will want to disavow any connection with him. But you made a powerful enemy in the Ad Astra folks.”

  Collier laughed. “I don’t know if you noticed, Agent Fletcher, but they already hate me pretty good.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “I meant,” Collier said after a pause, “what happens with me? And the artifact.”

  Fletcher drew a breath, coughed again. “You said you want to incorporate.”

  Collier blinked. “Sure, but I only want that to get the trade secret protections. I don’t want the wand taken from me.”

  Fletcher smiled grimly. “Captain, what makes you think the trade secret laws will stop the corps from coming after you? You just had a guy in here who was going to kill you for the wand. You think that if you were a corporation that would end?”

  Collier shook his head slowly. “I suppose not.”

  Fletcher rose from her seat and began to put her suit back on. “I don’t know where you can go for protection, Captain.”

  “What about the Authority?” Collier said.

  Fletcher sighed. “I wish I could tell you that we could protect you. But we both know that isn’t true. The Authority is controlled by the corporations. Ultimately, we will bend to their will. You know that, I know that, the whole damn Belt knows that. Some of us are trying to change that, but…” she shrugged and continued to suit up.

  “Then … wait, you’re leaving?”

  “I have to get back, start processing Rahford, let the Ad Astra ship know what happened.”

  “What about me?”

  “As far as I am concerned, you are free to go.” She zipped up her suit and held her helmet in her hands.

  Collier stared at her. “You can’t be serious. That’s it?”

  “No, it’s not,” she said quietly back, her v
oice tired. “But think about that trade secret business. Think about how the corporation was going to get away with what they tried to do to you today. I can’t tell you what to do. I’m just a poor civil servant.” She put her helmet on and secured it. She shouted through the glass, her voice muffled, “But for what it’s worth, Captain, I hope you figure it out. Good luck!” she cycled the inner door of the airlock, stepped through, and closed the door behind her.

  *

  Several hours later, the Clara Barton and the Ad Astra ship left together, both headed back to Ceres. Collier floated in the control cabin, having surveyed the damage Rahford’s bullets had done to the ship. None of the wounds were impossible to repair or bypass, though it did mean some inconvenience as some control surfaces had to serve double duty. Sancho reported all systems functional and the ship ready to resume course to Ceres.

  “Not sure we should go back there, Sancho.”

  “Why not, Skipper?”

  “They’ll be waiting for me.”

  Sancho paused. “But, Skipper, won’t that be true anywhere now?”

  Collier thought. “Yeah. I guess so. If Ganymede had heard about it, surely Mars, Luna, even Earth had. There’s nowhere in the system I can hide.” He idly toggled a control surface switch on and off, the corresponding monitor flickering as he did so.

  “Then … what’s there left to do?”

  Collier stopped flicking the switch. “Stop running.”

  “Skipper?”

  “Stop running. She wanted to change her world once, too.”

  “Who? Fletcher?”

  “No. Su.” Collier sighed. “‘In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.’”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Collier wasn’t listening to Sancho anymore. He knew what a corporation feared most. He knew how he could protect himself.

  And better still, how he could finally begin to change things.

  *

  Thirty-six hours later, he floated down the access tunnel on Ceres toward the quadrangle, his vacc suit comfortable in its bulk. This time, he had not only planned his speech, he had rehearsed it. Sancho had come close to forbidding him from carrying out his plan, arguing that the danger was simply too great.

  “A single lunatic, Skipper … that’s all it will take!” he had almost shouted.

  “By that logic,” Collier had replied, “I’m always in danger. A single lunatic could be anywhere.”

  “Don’t chop-logic, Skipper. You’re making yourself a target by doing this.”

  “I’m already a target. All I’m doing now is standing in the open. Where’s the best place for a target to be?”

  “Hiding where no one can get you, obviously!”

  Collier had shaken his head. “Nope. I thought the same thing, but it’s actually the opposite.”

  He had asked Sancho to contact any of the remaining independents in the area so they could come to Ceres with him, and Sancho had done surprisingly well. It turned out that more than a few of the independent ships were run by Calibans, and within a few hours Sancho had established an impressive network of independents who would be present on Ceres when Collier needed them. The thirteen independents who would be in attendance represented perhaps a third of all independent Belters, who in turn represented perhaps one-quarter of all the mining concerns, corporate or independent, in the Belt. It was by no means a majority of people, but it would have to suffice.

  The preparations had been rushed, but even so, Collier had discovered finding a tether berth to Ceres difficult. Ships of all descriptions had come to hear what he had to say. Once again, his eccentricity and hermit-like lifestyle had paid off. As far as he knew, no independent had ever made a proclamation such as his, and the fact that it had come from one of the oldest and most respected Belters in the system increased the intrigue.

  Fletcher had also broadcast more details of the arrest of Captain Rahford than was customary or even legal, and the word had spread even in thirty-six hours that something was brewing on Ceres.

  When he reached the end of the access tunnel and came out on the upper level of the quadrangle, he saw the ordinary, multicolored throngs of corp miners and officers, but their numbers were almost equal to the number of independents milling about on various levels. Collier allowed himself a moment of indulgence before he was spotted.

  “Showtime,” he muttered, and stepped up to the railing. He withdrew the magic wand from his backpack and clanged it on the metal railing in a repetitive fashion, like a judge’s gavel bringing a courtroom to order.

  “I’ve got something to show you all,” he said, once the clamor had died down somewhat and at least half the people in the quad were looking quizzically up at him. He brandished the wand. “And I have a message for the corporations. You’ve been squeezing us independents out for years and years. Some of you, even now, who wear the uniform of the Horizon Corporation, or Ad Astra Corp, or Hyperion Mining, or any of the others, do so because you think there was no other choice.”

  He paused and looked at the faces. They looked back more or less expectantly, though there were several who laughed and pointed.

  “Some of you might have heard what happened to me coming back from Ganymede. With a captain in the Ad Astra Corp. He wanted this,” he said, holding the wand aloft.

  “It’s not money that makes the corporations unbeatable — it’s secrecy. Well, I have a secret, too. My mistake was to think I could, or should, keep it to myself. So I am here to tell you what happened. Maybe most of you won’t believe it, or will think it doesn’t matter to you. But some of you will, and you will think that maybe you can find what I found, or find even more. The most important thing is that you will all know what happened, and you can do what you want with that knowledge. The corporations could have silenced me, but they can’t silence all of us. And this is one trade secret that will make all of their business plans worthless.”

  “So let me tell you what this thing is, what it does, and how I found it. Maybe there are more of them out there. I will need a volunteer…”

  Epilogue

  Barney Starcher slid his access card through the security lock and entered his kiosk. He tossed his tablet toward his desk, where it floated slowly to the surface. He rubbed the remaining sleep out of his eyes — he had not gotten as much as he should have, but then again, last night had been an unusual one. Collier’s demonstration had been impressive, though no one really knew what was in store for the future of mining in the Belt. If there was one device that could transmute elements perhaps there were more out there that could do much more. Starcher feared that his business’ fragile financial status would not be able to weather the coming changes, whatever they were.

  And Collier — the old miner had disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared, untethering hours after his demonstration. The Authority had been silent on the matter, even though all the major corporations were howling about trade infringement.

  It was going to be an exciting, if dangerous, few years.

  Starcher drew himself a coffee bulb and settled into his desk to look over the morning’s mail. His eyes widened when he saw a message from Collier.

  “Dear Barney,

  First off, let me say that I’m sorry I had to break in last night. You’ve really got to update your security. Sancho was able to override your codes in under fifteen minutes. Don’t worry — I haven’t done anything bad to you.”

  Barney stopped reading and looked wildly around his office. Nothing obvious seemed to be missing. He turned back to the letter.

  “Second, I wanted you to know that you’ve been a good friend through my whole career. You still believe in guys like me, and I want you to know I appreciate it.

  “I’m sure that’s all very goddamn heartwarming, but I think you should receive more than a simple thanks. If you’ll look in your bottom desk drawer
— the one where you keep that Tank 8 stuff (I had myself a snort or two, hope you don’t mind), you’ll find my real thanks. Should help you take care of your business. Do with it what you want — I know I’m putting it in good hands.

  “Take care, Barney.”

  Starcher opened the drawer and withdrew a meter-long white tube. Taped to the tube was a sheaf of paper with detailed instructions as to its use.

  About the Author

  Sean O’Brien is an educator and writer from Southern California. He is married and has two children along with an ever-growing number of animals. He was named Educator of the Year by the California League of High Schools and has been a head varsity football coach, television broadcaster, and Gilbert and Sullivan singer (though not a good one). He’s the author of two other novels, A Muse of Fire and Vale of Stars, and an anthology of short fiction entitled Wondrous Strange: 12 Amusingly Unexpected Tales.

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