by Alan Black
“Nod, Blinkin and Winkin?” she thought. “What kind of goober names are those for mining vessels?”
Suddenly she cursed, “Crap on a crutch! I should have seen this before. Those earthers are setting right on top of my rock. If they are poaching, I swear I will skin them alive, contract or not.”
Sno sent copies of the navigational overlays to the office and snapped in a call to all three contract ships. There could not be an answer from the office for a couple of hours. There would not be an answer from the Blinkin, Winkin or Nod for another three or four minutes, even if someone was sitting at their comm boards.
Frustrated with the situation, Sno slammed her hand on the arm of her chair. The laws of physics enabled her to jump across the solar system in a split second, but she would have to move through the asteroid belt on engines alone. Sno wanted to get to her claim as fast as possible, but she immediately rejected the thought of trying a micro-jump. Better to get there late, than not get there at all; or worst case, get there dead.
While she knew of crews who micro-jumped around in the asteroid fields, Sno also knew it was a recipe for disaster. First, any gravity well at all, even less than one percent standard gravity could throw off the computer calculations, sending a ship jumping into nowhere or anywhere. More than likely it caused a ship to jump into whatever body was leaking the offending gravity. Healthy living beings were not designed to materialize inside solid rock. It was just not a recommended activity.
Doing this the hard way would take a couple of days of running her engines at maximum speed. Maybe they had read her beacon and moved on. Maybe they could be warned off when they called back. Or maybe Dad or Vittie at the office could reach them to warn them off.
Sno waited on the bridge for answers. She had all four brand new autojacks unpacked and prepped for work. Plus, she completed a preventative maintenance breakdown on her suit, with the exception of cleaning and sanitizing the lining, saving the niceties of suit maintenance until last. But, she was more than anxious to hear from the earthers, to check on them and to chase them off her claim if need be. She needed this claim, as did Dad and the Whyte Mining Corporation.
Profits were down and expenses were up. Whyte Mining was still in the black, which according to the rumor mill was more than any of the other three bloated corporate entities on Ceres. Money was tight and when money was tight it meant doing without extras.
Sno knew they paid their ships crews less than Queene Mines, Synethco and General Divisions, but their crews were loyal enough to stay. Partly it was because the Whyte Mining Company was a small organization and did not have a bigger company’s layers of bureaucratic nonsense. Mostly it was because the Whytes offered higher bonus packages for good hauls. Their crews were paid a small base salary, but they could make more in the long run if they worked hard and mined large quantities of the right raw material.
She had been hearing talk of a General Divisions plan to bring in huge mining scoop ships that could swallow asteroids whole, breaking them into pieces inside their giant rock chambers. Sno had seen the technical data on such mammoth ships, but she could not see how such a major expense could be justified by the return. The ships were simply designed by adding engines to Io mining rig platforms. Such monsters worked well on Io where they could make a profit running twenty-four/seven. But space was big and there was a lot of down time between asteroids in the belt. Still, if any of the big companies brought in scoop ships, it would be the death of Whyte Mining.
No one had calculated the effect of quickly removing so many gravity generating bodies. The solar system was composed of a delicate push-pull gravity balance, intertwined within Sol’s massive gravity well. Even minor changes might have unintended consequences. Small mining ships could make asteroids disappear over the course of a few weeks or months. The theory was that one asteroid here and one there would help maintain balance. But the giant scoop ships could clear huge sections of the asteroid belt in very short order, eliminating their accumulated gravity output. That output loss may be meaningless, or it could be enough of a change to begin shifts in other spatial bodies.
After an hour Sno sent a second message to the three contract ships. After two hours she sent another message to them, and a second one to Dad. After three hours and unanswered messages, she went to the corridor storage locker and prepped her shotgun. If anyone had put holes in her rock, she was going to put holes in them. She wanted all of her equipment in top working order when she met up with those stooges.
Chapter 10.0
Sno stripped her asteroid’s internal memory beacon as the Sedona slid next it, coming to a complete stop. The beacon had recorded the approach of the three ships, their contact with the beacon and the direction they had headed as they left.
The Blinkin, Winkin and Nod were still close enough to register on the Sedona’s sensors. They were parked in orbit around the next closest asteroid about ten thousand klicks out. Sno cursed to herself. She had hoped to mine this entire cluster alone, as closely grouped asteroids often contained similar components. But still, she thought, they had left the one with her beacon alone.
She was close enough now that standard communications would have no discernable lag time, so she should be able to contact them easily enough. She nudged the Sedona into static orbit over her beacon and began to shut down unnecessary systems.
The Sedona hiccupped again and everything went dark. All Sno could see was the stars through the front view shield. There was pitiful little light from the sun reflected off her asteroid.
“Um, Sedona, what’s going on?”
There was no answer.
Sno asked again, “Sedona?” There wasn’t any response. “Ships computer, please respond.”
Again there was no answer.
Sno reached down below the bridge console and unclasped the emergency flashlight clamped there. A bright, white light stabbed through the darkness on the bridge. She sent the light splashing across the bridge console.
There was nothing to see. All of the sensors and systems appeared to be shut down. She dropped her hand to the air vent. She could not feel any air movement. Life support had gone out. She set the flashlight in midair and let it go. It hung where she left it, splaying its light across the console. The anti-gravity was out along with everything else.
Sno toggled open comms calling on the contract ship’s specific frequencies and on an open broadcast frequency. “Sedona calling the Blinkin, the Nod or the Winkin: do you read?” At this distance there would not be any time lag in the conversation. If someone was on one of their bridges, they would hear her and respond, but only if her comms were working.
If Sno lived with her Dad in his condo on Ceres, she would have just checked the power outlets, fuse boxes, and even the lights in her neighbor’s windows to see if all of the power was out. However, on the Sedona this should not have happened. Everything ran on different circuits with different backups running on different power supplies.
She snapped open a panel and saw one lone red light blinking. It was the automatic distress signal indicator. When the ship shut down, the distress signal was activated automatically and began broadcasting. As it was battery operated, power outages would not affect it.
Other ships had receivers that could not, by law, be shut off. Someone somewhere would get her distress call, but they were not legally required to help as Good Samaritan laws had not reached this part of space.
Sno snagged her flashlight out of mid air and with a push she left her chair, sailing down the corridor to the engine room. She had spent the last few years living on the Sedona. She knew every handhold, foothold, every brace, grip and clamp needed to move about faster than she could have walked with the gravity working.
The Sedona had four separate power supplies. There was no way all four would or even could, be shut down at the same time. Yet, none of the four machines were working. They did not normally make noise or even vibrate when they were running, but there wasn’t any power outp
ut. She checked the fuel bins; they were all packed to the top with inert scrap rock, with the exception of the charlie unit. It showed a slight decrease in its fuel bin. She had been using the charlie engine on her outbound trip from Ceres and the amount of missing scrap rock appeared normal for such a short trip.
Sno tossed some of the bravo unit’s fuel into the rock crusher’s chamber. She slammed the door closed on the huge bin. The system was designed to pull apart rock from mined asteroids, breaking them into component matter and then transmit the matter direct to the Whyte Mining warehouses coffers. Put anything in the bin, close the door, close the huge garage-sized hatch in the ships hull, hit the button and the system started to pull anything inside apart at a molecular level.
Only now, it would not operate on no matter how many times she mashed the transmit button. There was an emergency shut off button at her fingertips. She pushed the button in frustration, but nothing happened.
She took her flashlight and floated back to the bridge. On the way she stopped by the equipment room and grabbed a screwdriver. She swam up to a panel on the back wall of the bridge, placed the screwdriver in the slot and hit the button. Nothing happened. The powered screwdriver drew its power wirelessly from the engines, just like all powered equipment on the ship. And just like every piece of equipment on the ship, there wasn’t any power to draw.
“Dag-nab-it,” she cursed at herself. “I am such an idiot. I should have known it draws its power directly from the engines. I guess I have to do this the hard way.”
Sno headed back to the equipment room, pausing at the galley hatch. She wanted to just toss the offending screwdriver on the galley counter top and put it away later. But if she started doing that there would come a time when she would not be able to find anything on the ship. With a sigh she passed the galley to go to the equipment room and hung the screwdriver on its designated peg. Without looking she knew there wasn’t a manual screwdriver. Why would there be a manual screwdriver when a power driver always worked?
Returning to the galley, she grabbed a butter knife and headed back to the bridge. She resisted the urge to rush. She knew life support was off. For that matter everything was off. Rushing around would just get her heart rate up and that would get her breathing up and that would just use more oxygen.
The Sedona was not a big ship as mining vessels go, but for a crew of three or four it was big enough. For just one person it gave Sno plenty of room to move about. She estimated she had at least a year’s worth of water and food if she rationed it properly. Even with that, the ship’s larders were not even close to full. The Sedona could generate and recycle more with the material already in storage. But without power, all of the recycling systems were off. Besides she would be out of air in thirty-six hours, give or take a breath or two.
She slipped the knife’s edge into a screw slot and twisted. It took her much longer than normal to loosen and remove the screw because the butter knife was not under power and the blade kept slipping out of the slot. But sooner, rather than later, the panel popped free. Sno placed it beside her, letting it hang in mid-air and turned back to the computer panels. All of the lights were lit. The calendar/clock was ticking along normally. All of the lights that were normally green were still green. The battery back up system was working fine and all computer systems seemed to be on and operating.
“Okay,” Sno said. “Let’s try a complete reboot.” She hit the power button. One by one the lights blinked out. She counted slowly to fifteen and then turned the computer back on. One by one the lights came back on. The display flashed command after command and the system booted back up.
Sno wondered, “Why boot? It’s a computer. It is not a foot, so why do we say it boots up?” Then she wondered, of all of the things she had to worry about, why she would wonder about that at time like this. The computer came up, all systems looked normal. She pulled out the keypad, unrolled it, and plugged it in. Typing slowly, one finger at a time, she typed in “QUERY.”
The computer responded, “READY.”
Sno typed “RUN DIAGNOSTICS.”
Immediately the computer responded, “DIAGNOSTICS COMPLETE.” Even the fastest computer could not have run diagnostics on all of the ship’s systems so quickly. The Sedona certainly could not have performed a complete diagnostic is less than a minute.
Sno typed, “DISPLAY POWER OUTPUT FROM CHARLIE UNIT.”
The computer displayed a graph showing the output from the charlie unit at one hundred percent.
Sno typed, “DISPLAY LIFE SUPPORT APPLICATION READOUTS.”
The computer display showed life support functioning at one hundred percent, even the gravity was reading at one standard Earth gravity.
Sno glanced at the wall panel and her flashlight floating in the air. The Sedona’s computers were reading everything was going working fine, but nothing was.
“Queene Mines!” she spat out. “Those sons-a-mothers sold us defective computer applications and core. The stuff is reading right, but not sending the command data to the systems. I am going to beat that Queene Earther to jelly when I get back…if I get back.”
“Stop,” she told herself. “I may have been screwed by Queene, but I will only make it worse if I let myself get angry and do something stupid. Getting angry will burn as much oxygen as rushing about. Be calm, think slow, act slowlyer…or slower…more slowly?” She smiled in spite of herself. “I never was much good at grammar, not much call for goodly talking when I chew rocks by myself.
“All right, Miss Whyte. Dad is right. Let’s try to keep our emotions under control. Think like a princess.”
Sno grabbed the panel floating next to her, slowly putting it back in place. She glanced out the main bridge viewport toward where the three contract ships were. Of course, she could not see them, but she had been sending messages for hours now. Plus her emergency signal would be screaming at them. If they came to investigate, and left as soon as they got the emergency signal, under minimal power they would not reach her for a couple of hours.
A mining ship could travel at exceedingly fast speeds, up to tens of thousands of miles per hour if given enough time. But they were designed to start slow and build speed as they went. They were not sprinters, but more of a long haul design. The slowest part of any trip was the first or last one thousand kilometers.
Since Sno had plotted the three contract ships at about ten thousand kilometers away, they would be able to reach a high speed getting to her, but they would also have to start slowing down at the midpoint or they would shoot right past her when they got here. That is, assuming they would bother to break off mining operations to come to her aid.
“Lunch first. I think its lunch since I remember eating once since I woke up. So, it can’t be breakfast. What time is it anyway? Maybe it’s dinner time.”
Sno snapped off the flashlight and found her way to the galley in complete darkness. The flashlight ran on rechargeable batteries, but no telling how long they would last if she ran the light all of the time. She had to turn it on again in the galley to find a meal.
She took her lunch back to the bridge, sat in the command chair and snapped on the flashlight to eat lunch. She knew it was lunchtime and not dinner because the meal she selected was clearly labeled a “lunchtime feast for the discerning working woman.” It claimed to have all of the nutrients and vitamins necessary for a hard working career woman, but with just the right amount of calories and carbohydrates to keep her figure trim. It was shelf stable, requiring no refrigeration and it was self heating. The picture on the box showed a career woman in a dress eating at a desk.
Sno snorted. “As if I am going to wear a dress to work! I don’t care so much about trim and fit; I can’t seem to put on weight even when I want to. There aren’t too many fat rock miners in space. This had better taste good or I’ll…no…” She stopped herself. “There I go again, I was just about to threaten the…” Looking at the bottom of the pack she continued. “The Promise Food Company of India, Indo
nesia and Brazil, a division of General Consolidated AgriScience. That is just not princess behavior.”
She slowly chewed her lunch. She smiled and thought, “Not bad, not like Mario’s though. It’s a little chewy, but a nice flavor in a strange sort of way.” She looked at the package again. “What the heck is ‘mandarin orange squid over fettuccini?”
She knew when money got tight, the Whyte Mining Company had a tendency to buy it’s foodstuffs in bulk on the spot market. That sometimes meant buying whatever was cheapest, even those brands and flavors no one else wanted.
Sno snapped off the flashlight again. She glanced out the viewport to where the three contract ships should have been. She would not be able to see anything until they were practically on top of the ship, but she could not help but look. She propped her feet up on the main console and tilted her chair back. She tried not to stare out the viewport, but in the dark there wasn’t much else to do.
Sno woke with a start. She was still on the bridge, leaning back in the chair. She could have been asleep for hours or just seconds. Without power to anything on the bridge she had no way to know how long she had been asleep. She could not even tell by how stiff she felt, because she had fallen asleep in zero gravity.
Even though she was theoretically seated in the chair, she had only lightly strapped herself in. She had done it more out of habit than requirement. She often slept in her bunk without strapping in or dropping the privacy screen. In zero gravity there were no pressure points to rub or any gravity pulling at her muscles.
She looked out the viewport towards the contract ships, but there still wasn’t any sign of them. Something had awakened her.
“Maybe I just have to pee.” She told herself.
She reached up to grab her flashlight. It should have been floating where she left it, but it wasn’t there.
“Excuse me?” she said. “That isn’t right.” She waved her arms around her, but could not find the flashlight. Her movement caused her hair to fly about her head, but instead of just continuing to sway about in the zero gravity, her hair slowly settled into place across her face.