Belters

by Greg Alldredge

  With the precision of a trained army, the security personnel started slapping their shock sticks on the plexiglass shields. The shit was about to hit the fan. Lea knew the troops would spare no one when they started cracking heads. There was nothing to stop the corporations from striking back at anyone who held up station operations and profits.

  “Last chance, clear the way, or we will clear it.” This came from a man well behind the line of armor.

  The old woman below was correct. This was not a time for Lea to be on the streets. She had no ticket, no travel documents to prove she needed to reach the ship at dock thirty-nine alpha. If this crowd didn’t break up soon, she would be lumped in with the strikers. Just another target for some slap-happy corporate goon.

  The mob’s reply came swiftly after the order to disburse. Condoms filled with all manner of unthinkable contents were launched via held elastic straps. Colorful bombs flew over the crowd and landed amongst the security forces. Busting on impact, the stench affected the suitless mob more than security.

  On an unheard order, the line of uniformed thugs advanced with a methodical pace. Shields remained interlocked. One foot planted before the following foot was pulled up. The mob had no chance against the trained unit.

  Lea knew the protest was doomed before the first contact was made. The sound of electric arcs zapping the bare flesh of the protestors was quickly followed by screams of agony. The front ranks dropped to the ground as soon as they were touched by the hot tips of the nonlethal weapons. The mob was outgunned and out-trained. Lea needed a safe place quick, or she risked being trampled when the hangers-on in the rear ran for cover.

  The nearest bar had no front wall. The only thing blocking the crowd from taking shelter inside was a row of lightweight tables and chairs lined up as a makeshift barricade. By the looks of it, the wall wouldn’t stop a handful of sugar-filled first graders. It took Lea only a few steps to clamber over the top and into the limited safety of the dim bar.

  From the street, the screams of the shock sticks hitting flesh echoed through the dark cavern. Scantily clad bargirls cowered in the deepest part of the joint, hiding near the only male in the place. A formidable-looking bouncer who also trembled near the back wall.

  “Is there a way past this?” Lea asked to the people sheltering in place. Her head turned to inspect the chaos outside.

  “No.” The only answer, a few heads shaking in response.

  “If it gets too bad, there are the heads… We can barricade ourselves in there.” The beefy man tried to sound reassuring, but his fear was plain for Lea to see, even if the other women ignored it.

  “Screw this, I don’t have time.” Lea worked her way back to the line of plastic furniture. Outside, the mob was not as fearless against a trained response as the organizers had probably wished. Those in the rear fled quickly, scattering down the maze of corridors that twisted away from the Circus. The army of cameras would be documenting the events. Lea was certain the ringleaders would be caught and punished. An unarmed mob had little defense against the power the corporations would bring to the party.

  Outgunned and outmaneuvered, the front lines of the protestors took one hell of a beating. This would make for wonderful news, how the brave security forces fought back against the lawless armed resistance of the strikers. Since the corporations owned the news, there was little chance for the truth of the event to reach anyone who cared.

  Lea knew this protest. This strike was doomed to failure. Of the two hundred thousand souls who called Ceres Station home, only about two thousand worked for the major corporations. Yet those two thousand people lived like royalty, while the others barely scraped by.

  The rich would do what was required to remain in power. That was the way it always was, and the way it would remain. As far as Lea was concerned, humans were hard-wired to take advantage of one another. Better to be one of the powerful than the downtrodden.

  The fight died down. Now was as good a time as any to risk it. Any on the ground who still moved were given an extra shot of electricity for good measure. The troops had started securing the fallen unconscious back to back, so if they did wake up, they would not be able to run away.

  Lea pulled out her Eastern-Alliance papers and held them high to the nearest armored enforcer. It took all her effort to not flinch when the suit of armor approached, shock stick held ready to zap the shit out of her.

  “I need to reach dock thirty-nine alpha… the FlyRight ship… The Virgil is scheduled to leave soon.” Lea dropped every name she thought of. “Doctor Abe of the FlyRight Corporation is expecting me.”

  The ship’s manifest could be checked in an instant, with Lea not listed. The helmed woman had no reason to let her through. She only hoped she knew enough facts to bullshit her way past a woman with other things like a riot on her mind.

  It had been many years since she felt the sting of the shock stick. She could think of no reason to wish the experience once more. The reply came quicker than Lea expected. The woman before her shifted the riot shield and waved her through the line.

  “Thank you,” Lea muttered before breaking into a trot to the required dock. She needed to make that ship. There was no way she wanted to be on Ceres Station once the investigation into this mess started. She might never get away, or worse, they might throw her ass back on a transport headed to Earth. Nothing good would happen to Lea if she stayed on Ceres.

  Clear of the chaos, Lea only jogged for a short way. Certain she looked stressed enough, there was no need to add to the strangeness of her journey.

  The story would have been more dramatic if, past the conflict line, there had been more hurdles to reach the ship. However, once clear of the ranks of security personnel and deeper into the docks, there was little indication the mob affected the operations of the station in the slightest. The people’s protest would be a blip on the corporate bottom line, hardly worth the pain those endured at the end of the shock sticks. The story might not even break into the news cycle back on Earth. Too far away and not enough blood for headline news.

  Clear of the battle, Lea slowed to a fast-paced walk. No need to advertise her haste to the whole station. She knew her actions were being recorded. No need to make it easier to follow her movements by acting abnormally.

  If her life had been a film, she would have needed to beat on an airlock hatch, pleading to be let on the ship, begging even to save her life. The reality wasn’t so melodramatic.

  She reached berth thirty-nine alpha, and the tattooed engineer from earlier stood outside the umbilical. From the body language, it was clear he was being dressed down by a large-chested man with curly dark hair, sporting the golden markings of a ships master tattooed around his wrists. This must be Master Baal, mentioned once before.

  The pair stopped talking before she reached earshot.

  “I’m sorry… is this the Virgil? Are you Master Baal?” Lea asked.

  “You are dismissed.” The dark-headed man spoke to the tattooed engineer before turning his attention to Lea. “Aye, it is… I am… Why ya asking?” the man asked with a raised eyebrow. His accent was hard to place. Her years of travel had given her a chance to hear and learn many different accents, but this sing-song clip of the words was unique to her ear.

  Lea picked her words carefully. She didn’t know which side of the team this man played for. No need to piss him off at the first meeting. “Doctor Abe asked me to join… the expedition. I have thought it over, and I want to accept her offer.”

  The man’s face revealed nothing. Rather, he keyed the coms unit on his wrist. “Can someone ask the good Doctor Abe to join me on the docks?” The answer came over his earpiece. Lea heard the slight buzz of words in reply. She gained no clue as to the content.

  “Your name Lea Roy?” Master Baal asked.

  It took all her training for Lea not to bolt and run when Master Baal asked the question. That was a name she’d not used in many years, since before she started working for the assorted employers as
a freelance jobber. Her answer choked out from a tight throat. “That is me.”

  Her tone must have puzzled the man. He paused, watching her, his gray-colored eyes boring deep into her anxiety of discovery.

  Rather than give in to her fear and react, she stood waiting.

  He finally gave the answer. “The doctor is busy, but she has been expecting you. Glad you made it through the… unpleasantness. We leave shortly.” With a wave of his arm, he motioned her toward the airlock hatch. “Welcome aboard. We will get you settled in a berth as soon as we clear the station.”

  With so simple words, Lea inserted herself into an unknown crew, with an unknown destination. She wasn’t sure if FlyRight and Doctor Abe were behind her attacks, but there was only one way to find out. Lea only wished she didn’t need to attach herself to a ship with so little information. From where she stood, there was no choice but the one thrust upon her.

  Chapter 14:

  AD 2100 Inner Belt – Daniel Frazier

  “Listen, all your fucking around hasn’t done shit… We are down to an hour of power left.” Ava floated at the door, watching Margaret and Jacob. They had tried unsuccessfully for hours to get the reactor started. Each failed attempt drained more of their limited juice from the batteries. No matter how many jumpers the pair ran and burned out components they bypassed, the rods would not lift to let the reaction heat up. With time growing short, everyone’s patience ran thin.

  Something so simple as physics, and they couldn’t get the machine working long enough to let the fuel react and take its natural course. For the want of a nail, Jacob mused.

  He wanted to lash out, angrier at his failure to make the machine work than any accusation Ava might have. She was only showing her fear. A deep breath helped temper his words. “We could suit up.” Jacob wasn’t surprised his exhale frosted when he spoke. The jerry-rigged heaters in the crew quarters struggled to keep all the ship’s compartments warm. Even with doors shut to unoccupied rooms, the temperature continued to drop.

  They were going to freeze to death long before they ran out of O2 or rations. Looks like he didn’t need to worry about dying from the radiation, after all. Something needed to go their way, or else the struggle so far would be for nothing.

  “There is no way we can fix this with any sort of suit on…” She held her hands out, wiggling her fingers. “We need our fingers free.” Still bundled in a blanket, Sweets had taken the tablet and spent the last hours trying to override the damaged circuits. With no luck. The woman’s frustration grew with each failure.

  Jacob didn’t know the security woman, but he couldn’t believe she could remain so calm. Death stalked them all, but Sweets maintained her composure better than both miners. With each failure, his heart sank a bit more, depression creeping into his soul. The peculiar woman showed no signs of the cold, save some bumps mixed in with the blisters.

  “This should be working…” Sweets traced the schematic with her finger. “It is a simple control circuit. We push this button…” She pointed to a black button labeled control rods. “The low voltage energizes these servos… That should move on the main power to the motors… causing the control rods to lift. Once the control rods are free, we have all the electricity we need…” She motioned to a dial. “If we need to, we can override the computer control to ramp up the power…. This is all basic electronics.” She pressed the button, and still nothing happened. “Child’s play.” Her final words directed at herself.

  “Every time you press that damned button, we lose more time.” The strain of events took a toll on Ava. Jacob understood the miner well enough to know her voice raised an octave or two under stress. Soon the woman from Mars would break glass with her screech. Ava was barely holding it together as it was. The closer the time came… This might be ugly at the end.

  “We have to do something… I don’t want to die like the others.” Margaret went back to reading the manual.

  “Maybe they were the lucky ones. They went out quick, a blast of energy, and poof… they died.” Ava moved back and forth at the hatch, her arms burning off excess energy.

  Still focused on the manual, Sweets asked, “You are sure the Miyajima is dead?”

  “What else?” Jacob turned his attention to the reactor unit itself. The huge box sat in the center of the auxiliary power space. “The Frazier ran cold, and the blast fried our systems. With your ship decelerating hard to intercept… the powered systems had to take a beating.” He slowly shook his head. “Unless the ship was hardened against a nuke attack…” The final thought remained in his mind. It would do no good to speak useless rumors.

  Sweets shook her head.

  “And once your ship lost engines, it just kept heading out into space. No way to slow down or adjust course. With all the rocks around this section of space… If anyone survived on board, they have their hands full… Probably in the same boat we are in. Hopefully, worse…” Ava spit the next words. “Serves them right for nuking us.”

  Jacob jerked his head toward Ava. “Look, we have been through this. No sane captain would detonate a nuke and catch themselves in the blast…”

  “And the Miyajima didn’t carry nuke warheads…” Sweets didn’t attack Ava, only focused on the manual.

  Ava scoffed, “A sane captain wouldn’t sneak up on a ship unannounced like a bloody pirate to scare the shit out of defenseless miners.”

  Sweets’s voice rose in response to the verbal attack. “If you hadn’t jumped this claim, we never would have been here. You wouldn’t have been here…”

  “The corporations can’t claim all of known space for themselves… It isn’t fair.” Ava looked ready to launch herself at Sweets.

  “Please!” Jacob pushed himself between the pair, trying desperately to defuse the tense situation, “Can you calm down? You’re both wasting O2.”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck… We will freeze long before we suffocate. My anger keeps me warm,” Ava shouted.

  “If we only have an hour left, can you prep the suits…? It will buy us some time while we try to figure this out.” Jacob motioned to the door.

  Ava hung there. “We have some extra mining suits I don’t know about? I would rather die than climb back in that mosh pit of a crap-filled suit I scraped off. The others are shot.”

  “The EVA suits might be good to go. They were offline… The controls might not be fried. Will it kill you to check them out while we try to figure out what is wrong?” Jacob knew it was a long shot. Most of the ship’s systems that were offline smoked from the blast of errant energy. There was no reason to tell Ava that, the woman knew. Something to keep her busy for the last moments they had to live might give him a small quantity of peace. Jacob sensed her anger would only grow until Sweets was forced into attacking his friend.

  The security force woman had muscle like she’d trained in earth normal gravity. She probably could kick the shit out of both miners. Jacob didn’t want his last moments to be a party of some three-way deathmatch. If he was going to die, he wanted it to be as peaceful as possible. The med bay held several classes of drugs that would numb any pain of freezing to death.

  Ava disappeared without another word.

  Jacob returned his attention to the reactor shielding container.

  Sweets mumbled to herself while studying on the tablet.

  “She isn’t normally like this… We lost a lot of people on this ship.” No engineer, Jacob studied the large metal box that held their salvation. He knew the ship carried little in the way of fuel. There wasn’t much to burn. The ship’s drive relied on large amounts of electricity to generate plasma that caused the thrust to accelerate the ship. All the time he spent reading from the internet as a child, he should have spent some bandwidth researching the advances in spaceship drive technology. It was ironic to die because of what boiled down to a failing light switch on a huge kettle.

  “We all lost people.” Margaret didn’t look up from her reading.

  “Yeah… I know… M
aybe we are wrong. Your ship was newer than ours. Maybe it didn’t get hit as hard.” Jacob tried to sound upbeat, but he didn’t believe a word that spilled from his mouth.

  “No… Ava is probably right. Captain Riki… Miyajima’s captain was a hothead. I won’t miss her. But my team… they deserved better than this. We were only doing our job.” Sweets wiped her blistered eyes with the back of her swollen hands.

  Jacob sensed it was time to change the subject to something more productive and in line with saving their asses. “Look… the control rods are just a large bunch of… well, rods…” Jacob tapped on the reactor shielding. “Can’t we just crack this bad boy open and lift them by hand?” He glanced back for approval on his wild idea.

  Sweets stared at him with a blank face. “If you want to flood the ship with radiation and kill us all… sure, that might work. At least we would be warm…” She shook her head. “The reactor is still hot, making power to maintain its coolant flow…”

  “Okay, not my best plan…” A quick glance at the timer showed they had forty-five minutes left.

  “No… not the best…” Margaret stretched out and pushed off to float upright. She took the tablet with her, drifting from one panel to another. Her fingers played over the labeling system. “But it gives me an idea.”

  Jacob followed her progress, dividing his focus from her movements to the ticking clock.

  He nearly jumped when Sweets said, “Hand me a number two Torx driver.”

  Jacob had been reduced to an errand boy, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass, if it helped them live. The tool was easy to find. Chief Boffin had kept the engineering spaces clean enough to eat off the decks. Handing her the tool, he asked, “You got a plan?”

  “Maybe…” One by one, the screws turned from the panel. Jacob collected them and placed them in a mag-tray, easy to find if they lived long enough to put the ship back together.

  “Should I ask?” He risked a question.

  “The control circuit is just a way of controlling a lot of power with a smaller voltage and amps… less likely to kill you if something breaks. Behind this panel, we should find the main contacts that send power to the rod’s lifters. If we can find a way to engage the contacts, the power should flow, and the rods should rise. Once contact is made, the controls should keep the rods out and the reactor humming along.”