Book Three
The Belter's Story
by
Natalie K. French
and
Scot Bayless
Copyright © 2015 by Natalie K. French and Scot Bayless
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the USA
First Printing, 2015
ISBN 978-1518748936
Scry Media LLC
www.scrymedia.com
www.nataliekfrench.com
www.scotbayless.com
Cover illustration by Scry Media LLC. Other illustrations used by permission and are the exclusive property of their originators or copyright holders.
CHAPTER ONE
The lavender-white icedigger groped for traction, rocking from side to side on its back while its dozen thickly armored anguipods waved helplessly. At the tip of each snakelike appendage, a pair of titanium-silicate pincers opened and closed reflexively, grasping for purchase that would never come.
I watched its desperation with care, offering no assistance, until Jase came by and hooked the toe of his boot under the creature's ten centimeter carapace, flipping it upright. Slowly, dorsal plates flexing as it plodded across the broken floor of the chasm, the digger worked its way back toward the clump of violet nodules wedged in the ice; towards its home.
"What are you doing out here, Crom?"
I didn’t like it when he shortened my name. A 'nickname' he said. I didn’t feel like reminding him for the millionth time that my name was Crom-ley. So I stuck with the question at hand. "I'm watching a digger struggle for life. At least I was —"
Jase cocked his head to the side and regarded me from behind blonde eyelashes. His helmet was fogged near the collar-ring, obscuring the serious set of his mouth. His green eyes scrutinized mine and we sat with mirrored attention. Neither one of us blinked.
"Why do you do that?" he finally asked.
"Because I can."
I knew he could feel the turmoil inside me. Long ago, I'd come to realize that our shared DNA made us more aware of each other's mental state. I knew it, even if I didn’t understand it.
I’d been watching the diggers for a long time. They seemed to feed off of the deposits of violet-colored nodules that threaded through the ice. We called the stuff europine, after the moon of Jupiter where we made our home.
Speckled with black and colors that ranged from reddish violet to deep indigo, the nodules were everywhere in the rilles. We found them in clusters, more as we descended, closer to the ocean. They were mostly mineral, metallic silicates, kind of like geodes, except their interiors were full of organics, valuable ones — the kind you need if you're going to try to make a permanent home in the Outer. The kind you get from living tissue, that, even with nanomorphic assemblers, you simply can't manufacture. Before we discovered these strange little rocks, Earth and Mars pretty much had a chokehold on our food supplies. For the people out here, europine was more than a living, it was life.
We mined the nodules now. Hundreds of tons every year. It was slow work. The ice was too unstable for heavy equipment, forcing us to gather the nodules by hand. And the diggers were everywhere. They always flooded out of the ice during shift changes. Well, more shuffled really. They weren't that quick. But there were thousands of them, most no bigger than the palm of my gloved hand. I could scoop them up by the dozens whenever I cared to; whenever my curiosity needed satisfaction.
I knew there was so much more to Europa than what we could see. Even after a couple of generations, we had only the dimmest notions of what went on under the ice. There was an ocean down there. Salty, warmed by the heat of the moon itself, filled with living things we never saw. We didn't care. There was life on Europa, for all the good it did us. Everything was full of metal silicates. You couldn't eat them. You couldn't use them for anything. So we scratched out our living by picking up purple rocks and selling them to the Trade Guilds on Mundus. Nobody much cared about the rest.
But I'd noticed something. My bots seemed to act differently around the europine deposits. They seemed to be attracted to it, almost like the diggers — which made no sense whatsoever. Whenever I was in the rilles, my little ZB6 utility bot didn't malfunction as often around the stuff. It would seek out a nearby europine deposit and just sit there, hovering close, almost as if he was studying it. Without understanding why, I knew that its behavior was an answer to a problem I hadn’t known existed, that I didn't even know how to articulate. But I knew I wanted to figure it out.
Jase didn’t care about any of that, so I didn’t bother explaining. He preferred the company of people to bots, which was unusual for a Belter. We aren't the most social splinter of the human species. I never told him, but I considered myself to be one of the lucky ones in that he seemed to prefer my company over most others.
I felt a close affection for Jase. Perhaps I loved him. That's not something Belters do with ease. Love. Life in the Outer doesn't leave much room for it.
Between us, Jase was the better looking one. We were supposed to look the same and we did. At least we used to. I knew why we didn’t anymore, but I wasn’t ready to tell him — not yet.
"Why are you always messing with the icediggers?" Jase was forever in my business.
"I’m not messing with them."
"Mom says you should leave them alone too."
Irritation simmered in my belly, "Why do you call her that?"
"Because that’s what she is. What’s with you today?"
I knew he wanted to talk, but I wasn't interested. Jase always pushed against our way of life. It was exhausting. I exhaled deeply, causing a little bloom of vapor on the inside of my helmet. I could see myself reflected in the curve of plastic, a parabolic me with fog-colored eyes and white-blonde hair that was already turning gray in my thirteenth year. "Just call her by her name, okay? Call her Madera like everyone else."
"But she’s not everyone else’s mother. Only ours. I should be able to call her that." Jase was being obstinate today.
I muttered and pushed past him. My tiny SU-7 fixbot, 'Su', followed, checking for anything about my suit that might need attention. She seemed especially interested in the seal ring of my helmet and orbited my head like a drunken halo.
Jase made a shooing gesture at her. "Why do you have to bring that thing with you everywhere?"
"She's more useful than you might think." I commented as I slipped a small europine nodule into her intake hopper.
Fixbots are little factories. They're incredibly versatile, capable of fabricating just about anything they need for their repair jobs on demand. Normally, you'd stock them with standard base elements, but I'd had this idea, one that as far as I knew, nobody else had bothered with. I'd wondered what would happen if I let Su try her hand at picking apart europine.
The process can take a while. Sometimes a long while. Fixbots use nanites to do their molecular level magic, foregoing the speed of particle furnaces as a concession to the fact that they aren't as useful if they weigh ten thousand kilos and incinerate their owners. She'd been ingesting the stuff for months now, the experiment well under way. Su accepted the offering with a little chime.
Jase walked ahead of us, meandering as he always did, balancing on fractured blocks of ice, hopping from one to the next as he chatted about his upcoming trip. Our parents had paid dearly, six months of mining added to their tour, to get Jase passage to the Inner. He wasn’t meant for this life — the life of a Belter. Certainly not a Belter on Europa. Digging up little purple rocks b
y hand. Living subsurface to avoid Jupiter's ferocious radiation. Endless hassles with the Jovian Fuel Combine. None of us cared for it that much, but Belters are a stoic lot. Except Jase. Nothing about him fit the way we lived. That much was evident. He even avoided his bots.
I adjusted my wrist comp and the thick plastic straps that held the armored torso panels in place over my stiff exo suit. Only in the past few months had I been allowed to go into the deeper crevices and begin my apprenticeship. It was an art, our father, Sardar, liked to explain. Far more than hammering away at a pile of rock and ice. We shaped, sculpted, taking a craftsman's pleasure in finding our way through jagged seams to the best deposits.
There was a lot to know and more that could go wrong. The ice in the rilles was constantly shifting. On the surface, it was as hard as iron, but down here, closer to the ocean, it was softer and far less stable. Warmth from below made the ice shift and fracture, but we'd learned to take advantage of that, finding our way into newly opened spaces, to the europine.
Careless digging could kill you. So could a misplaced step. And sometimes, when you broke into a seam, the icediggers would come spilling out. They weren't dangerous one at a time, but a swarm was another story. Their little pincers could puncture a suit or lop off a digit with ease.
A miner's life was dark, dangerous and solitary. Which is why most tours in the mines lasted a few months at most. Survival wasn't the issue. We could last almost forever with the right equipment and supplies. The problem was more psychological. Too long in the ice and you could just lose it. Happened all the time. And my family was already coming up on eight months.
But Jase wasn't like us. Despite our genetic similarity, he wasn't like me at all. He had no talent for the work we did. In fact, he was a liability. He could never seem to remember the safety protocols, as if they wouldn't stick in his mind. He should have been a disappointment to us, but instead he was like some graceful pet. His light hair, his green eyes, his easy and unselfconscious charm. We all loved him — and we covered for him. He was our only luxury in a land of ice and stone.
"So where are we going this time?" I asked, as I finished my equipment check. My suit was encrusted with a dozen embellishments — extra armor against the cold and the occasional physical mishap, bot extensibles that I used to make the mining easier. Belters are resourceful if nothing else. We repurpose everything, including bits of our decommissioned bots. I'd even been thinking about integrating Su into my suit.
Jase continued to hop along next to me like an excited child while I tightened and checked straps and gear.
"It’s along the edge of that big rift. I found a cavern and you’ve got to see it."
"I thought you didn’t like going down there, into those tight spaces."
"This isn’t like that at all. It has a huge opening and these amazing rocks. I wanted to show you. Not Dad."
"You mean, Sardar," I interjected.
"Whatever." Jase waved off my correction. "It’s going to be great. I think it’s something new."
I smiled despite myself. Jase loved anything new, anything different. It was a frustration and a delight.
We walked in easy silence as we picked our way deeper into the rille. Far above us, the whisper thin atmosphere of Europa twisted and glowed in the sleet of fast moving ions that whirled around Jupiter. Up there was frozen death and ravaged DNA. But down here, there was life and even beauty.
As we approached our destination, the ice beneath us bucked and tiny cracks spun through the wall to our left. Nothing major. Just part of the constant flux of Europa's crust. But we knew, at least I knew, that it meant we needed to be on our guard. The ice could be fickle.
Jase saw me pause. "The quakes happen a lot around here. I noticed that before, when I found the cave."
He was the only one who ever ventured far from our hab. It’s not that we were forbidden per se, but none of us saw the use in it. We had all we needed, the mines, our habitats. All together. No need to look beyond. But Jase was always different.
"You’re not going to believe the colors" He continued, as the quake shook itself out and the ice settled.
"Here it is!" he cried.
Jase stopped in front of a narrow vertical crevice that slashed diagonally across the face of the ice cliff we'd been following. The opening would accommodate him easily enough but my bulkier suit was going to have trouble fitting through the gap.
"Not closed in huh?" I smiled at him and he grinned big, pleased at my grudging display of humor.
"Come on inside." He waved me forward more as he wriggled into the opening.
As I followed, my utility harness got hung on some unseen protrusion and I couldn't move forward without releasing it.
"Just leave it. It’s not like anyone's around to take it."
The harness, and the tools it carried were my apprenticeship gift from Sardar. I wasn't just a kid helping out any more. I was a miner and, when I'd learned the trade, I'd become a journeyman, qualified to work in the deepest rifts, where the richest seams lay. I couldn't wait to go deep.
I wasn't thrilled about leaving my new tools just lying out here in the rille, especially my cutter — a fusion-powered device that every hard-scrabble Belt miner knew how to use. It could rip through almost anything. But he was right. There wasn't anyone in this whole sector who wasn't family or very nearly so.
Su was hovering just outside the opening. "You watch out for this, okay."
I then turned and wedged my way after Jase, further into the cave.
The cleft narrowed more as we progressed. I didn’t mind at all, but I suspected Jase found it uncomfortable. He didn't seem to do well in tight spaces like this.
"Why are we doing this? How did you even find this place?"
"I wanted you to see them. The rocks I mean."
We slid around a shallow curve in the crevice and had to lean back, at an awkward angle, to fit our bodies through the narrow opening. And then we were through.
The cleft opened into a huge space, a gigantic void in the ice. My mouth dropped open in wonder as I took in the sheer vastness of the place. The far wall had to be a good kilometer away. Above us, slabs of ice leaned together into a vault that extended almost half that far.
And, everywhere, there were nodules of eruopine. Trillions of them. Gigatons. I was looking at more of the stuff than all the Belt miners in all the generations since we first came to Europa had gathered. This was so far beyond the mother lode there wasn't even a word for it.
"What. Is. This?" I breathed.
Jase smiled at my obvious amazement. "Told ya it was awesome."
"We have to go tell Sardar right now."
"But I wanted you to see. Isn’t it beautiful?"
"Yeah, Jase. It’s um, pretty. But do you know how much wealth we’re standing on right now? Do you have any idea?"
Jase frowned and lowered his white blonde head. "We can’t tell anyone."
"What?"
"You can’t tell," He pleaded. "I wanted to show this to you. Because it's beautiful. Not so they can dig it up. So they can destroy it. That's all we do."
Something heaved under the violet-colored mounds. Something big.
Jase was standing in front of me. He couldn't see what was happening, but he saw my face.
"Crom, what's wrong?"
My voice cracked, swinging into falsetto as my throat clamped down on my fear. In that moment, everything changed. In that moment I knew. "Behind you!"
I was too late.
CHAPTER TWO
The mountain of europine under Jase's feet lurched upward and burst open, revealing an icedigger the size of a small cargo lifter. Jase turned his head and started to say something, but he was silenced by the impact of the thing's front pair of anguipods.
Meter long pincers, glowing hot pink and indigo, snatched Jase by his legs and yanked him upward. His voice started cutting in and out. His comm must have been damaged, but I could hear, "What? No!" and then an eerily rising note, li
ke a scream, but thinner. His suit was depressurizing.
I didn't know what else to do, so I grabbed his gloved hands and pulled, leaning my weight against the monster's grasp. Under my feet were thousands of little europine spheres, like ball bearings. My boots skidded over them and I fell, still clutching Jase's hands, still jamming my feet against anything that would give me leverage. We pawed at each other, trying for a grip we couldn't quite find.
Jase's suit kicked into emergency mode and I could see a faint glow inside his helmet as the backup somashell engaged. Its millimeter thick deflection field would keep his body pressurized for more than long enough to get him to safety if I could just pull him loose. I started to reach for my cutter and then remembered — it was outside, with the rest of my kit.
The edges of my boot soles snagged on some hidden crack in the ice and, for a moment, I had leverage. I lunged, hooking my hands under his armpits and then thrusting with my legs, pulling with every erg I could muster while Jase's screams strobed through his dying comm.
And then he came free.
I tumbled backward with Jase clutched to my chest, slamming flat on my back as the digger disappeared beneath the europine mountain.
"Don… ve… me, Crom."
I scrabbled backwards with Jase's limp form on top of me, thrusting with my legs, shoving myself over broken ice and scattered purple spheres.
"Here, Jase. I got you." I rolled him off of me and sat up. Then I looked down.
Below Jase's hips there was nothing but the pale shimmer of the somashell, sealing the hole where the bottom half of his suit used to be. White bone and pink flesh were awash in dark red blood, all held neatly in place by the somashell's field.
With no warning at all, my stomach lurched and I vomited into my helmet, the stench of bile mixing with the odors of sweat and fear. The reek of it stung my eyes and my stomach clenched again. My mouth filled with saliva, but I clamped my jaw shut and swallowed. Jase's external monitor said he was still alive and horror was a luxury neither one of us could afford.
The Belter's Story (BRIGAND) Page 1