The miners watched the spectacle intently, captivated by the destruction they had caused. Mara noticed that they seemed aroused at their power, and it had whipped them into a near frenzy.
She watched curiously at the inexplicable behavior. Larue had missed his target badly, and the hook had fallen short. It was an easy mistake to make while under the influence of gravity. Larue had simply not adjusted properly for it as compared to the various asteroids they had worked in the past; asteroids that usually had little or no gravity to them.
The men quickly settled their bets and exchanged their treasures as they had many times. There was an organized commotion to their system.
Mara watched Larue, who had placed the huge chunk of platinum on the table, surrender it to Johan, who was collecting on all bets. Johan set the hunk of metal into a chest near his feet, safe from the others. He appeared pleased with himself as he placed his reward into it. Mara rolled her eyes as she looked on.
Johan surveyed the miners in the room and waited for any further bets to be paid out. Larue, without his fortune-sized chunk of platinum, skulked away towards his bunk, done for the evening.
She was in a state of disbelief. It hadn’t appeared the miners had bothered to decontaminate the hook or the grappling mechanism they were using. The threat of contamination was ever-present, and she had noticed several other lapses in judgment by the mining team in just her few days in their rig. This was just the latest flagrant violation.
“Typical,” she thought to herself. She was becoming angry at the blatant disregard for procedures. Her thoughts were turning angrier than she had already been when she was interrupted by another voice.
“Hanson, give it a try!” Murphy blurted out again.
“I told you I’m not shooting,” Hanson reiterated. “And you’re feeling a little too lucky right about now, Murphy.” he joked.
“C’mon, Hanson, let’s bring out the big money!” Murphy continued.
“Shouldn’t you quit while you’re ahead?” Hanson yelled back.
As Mara watched the scene, she noticed that Johan had begun to look her way. “Hey Murph, lay off Hanson,” he said. “Everyone knows you’re trying to throw the odds… Take bets on the girl,” he suggested. “She’s an unknown.”
“Hell,” he laughed. “I’ll pay five-to-one if she hits that ice pillar,” Johan shouted, looking at her with a purposefully belittling smile. He reached down and brought out a special scale, a mass calculator. It was designed to operate in low gravity, and it was used strictly for measuring the precious metals they were mining on the asteroids.
Mara shook her head. “I’m not getting involved,” she yelled from across the chamber. “You shouldn’t be firing that out here anyway. What if you hit the reactor, or the fuel tanks?” she asked.
Johan laughed quietly as he continued setting up the table.
“It’s safe to fire the rail-gun, Mara,” Hanson said, stepping towards her. “It’s not any different from any other asteroid we do this on. How do you think we break down the ice for the fuel tanks, or get our water?”
Johan interrupted them. “C’mon love, you gotta feel the power of a rail-gun. A girl like you will understand,” he continued, and his heaving lungs ended in a typical coughing fit.
Mara looked over the scene with a healthy dose of caution, then she looked back up at Johan. “So, what do I get?” she asked. “You’re giving five-to-one if I hit it… If I take a shot and hit that ice pillar, what do I get?” She looked squarely at him, knowing it would be taken as a challenge. She raised her eyebrows waiting as he calculated his response.
Mara could sense that things were getting personal. She knew that she needed to be trepidatious with Johan, and she knew he would not take her challenge lightly. He still hadn’t answered her.
“You know what, Johan?” she continued. “I’ll fire your rail-gun, and if I hit that ice pillar out there, I want your men to fix that crane, and I want that cable working when we get connection with the sub,” she demanded.
Johan stood erect. He quietly surveyed the room, and Mara saw his face grow tense with her challenge. He was carefully crafting a response.
“How about if you hit that pillar of ice, we don’t leave this mission for better prospecting?” he said as he started laughing, and his men laughed with him.
Mara felt her chest grow tight for air. “Fixing the crane is your job!” she told him. “That’s what NASA is paying you to do,” she continued, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have to win a bet to get you to do your job.”
Johan looked out at the men in the room, all of whom were silent. Mara knew he would not back down easily to the encounter. She could see him carefully determining the best way to come out on top of the engagement. His eyes returned to her.
“Actually, my job is to mine asteroids,” he said. “It’s not to fix the crane or take orders from you. You don’t even have contact with your sub, so what good is fixing the crane going to do?” There was a satisfied smile on his face when he finished. The men in the room seemed to be laughing to themselves.
Mara felt as though she was fighting for air. She wondered what the consequences would be of pushing Johan further. She forced a gulp of air down to loosen the lump that was growing in her throat.
“Johan,” she said respectfully. “I need the crane fixed, and I need you to follow the rules you agreed to,” she said. “Or you can forget it.”
He began to laugh harder. “Or I can forget what?” he asked. “That you are here by our good graces,” he said. His men were laughing with him again. A smug grin crossed his face as he looked at her.
Mara clenched her teeth with determination. “Are you afraid I can hit the target?” she asked him. “You can always back out… I mean, if the stakes are too high for you, just say so.”
Johan stopped laughing and his jaw jutted from his face. He seemed to be taking the situation much more seriously.
“Fine,” he said, as he raised his arms as if in surrender. “We’ll fix the crane for you. You hit the pillar of ice and I promise we’ll fix it. It’s not like you’re going to hit anywhere close to it anyway,” he said smugly.
Mara looked at his grinning face in front of the room. The sight of the smile grated into her skin.
“Going rate is five-to-one if anyone else wants to get in on the action,” Johan said. “I said five-to-one. C’mon, there’s gotta be some action on this one,” he continued.
The bets began to flow in. Every single one of the men placed a bet against Mara. The men were falling over themselves to place a bet on Johan’s side.
Mara let out a scoff of breath, annoyed at the miners for betting against her. Then Hanson approached the betting table. Curiously, she saw him reach into his undercoat pocket and discreetly pull out an amazingly beautiful nugget of gold. He held it out for Johan to see. The chunk of precious metal had been worn in his pocket long enough to be highly polished. He placed the gold nugget in front of Johan and signaled that he was taking the five-to-one bet. He was betting on Mara.
She watched the exchange, stunned that Hanson was betting for her. She glanced up at the captain as the gold nugget traded hands, and when it did, she saw Johan glaring at his first mate. He placed the piece of gold toward the rear of the betting table, as if taking it away from Hanson permanently.
The rest of the men made their exchanges. Several other bets started to roll in and more pieces of valuable metal landed upon the table. They all continued to be against Mara, despite the five-to-one odds.
When the commotion died down a silence overtook the room. There were no more bets to be placed, and eyes had turned to Mara. It was time for her to take the shot.
She climbed the large metal framework to the rail-gun cabin in front of the men, and she surveyed the interior cockpit and the controls. They began to try and distract her, shouting distasteful jokes at her. Her
eyes didn’t leave the instruments. She settled into the seat, making several minor changes to the settings. She tried to ignore the miners.
The men watched her tinker with the controls, figuring she was stalling. Some of them chuckled as she attempted to get comfortable. They continued to call out to her, attempting to intimidate her. “Before the ice melts,” one of them shouted.
Mara checked the battery meter. She checked the trigger and double-checked the shot angle. She turned knobs and meters and made the slightest adjustments to the mechanisms. Then she adjusted the acclimation meter and double-checked for declination. She could feel her confidence in the controls and settings growing.
The men grew silent as they watched her work the machine. She seemed to know her way around the cockpit of the large mechanism. Murmurs filled the room as the miners began to reassess their bets.
Mara depressed the charge button and the humming sound of batteries and electronics began to overtake the room. The whining sound of electricity ramped up as the battery power increased. Lights on the meter flashed on, one by one down the line, indicating that more and more of the battery was ready. The light on the monitor turned green. Mara could see a button light up on the control panel that read, ready to fire.
She took a glance around at the men, who had been rendered silent by the charging electrical system, and then she looked down the targeting sight and squeezed the trigger.
The pulse of the rail-gun sent vibrations through the cabin again as the grappling hook flew beside her and out into the black sky. She leaned away from the blast of debris shooting by. A cloud of dust and particulate blew out of the guide rails and other framework as the harpoon was sent hurtling away.
Every miner tracked the arc of the hook as it proceeded across the horizon. The grappling hook spun as it flew. It arced upward into the sky and created a pulsating light that only built anticipation as it flew away. The moon’s gentle gravity began taking effect on it, steadily pulling it towards the ground.
Barely a sound was heard in the drill chamber as every miner watched. The hook sailed for several seconds, made the apex of its arc, and then began descending. The head of the grappling hook continued to spin and send a distant pulse of light towards the crew, as if it were a beacon of destruction.
Several more silent seconds passed. Anticipation, suspense, and then finally, the gratification they were waiting for.
The hook disappeared into the face of the ice pillar, and the crew watched for the splash of ice that would signify an impact. As the large grappling hook struck the pillar it sent shards of ice splintering in all directions. It was as though a bomb had blasted the spire into a million gleaming pieces, all of them emanating from the point of contact.
The destruction was so severe that the pillar split into several pieces and slowly fell to the ground around the base of what was once the spire. It was complete devastation.
The men stood and watched the display purely for the entertainment it offered them, forgetting they had lost their bets. Seconds passed while large chunks of ice went spinning through the dark sky, arced into the distance, and then came crashing down onto the icy plain.
It was the larger chunks of ice that took the longest to collapse. The pillar toppled to the ice below and released even more ice onto the ground around it, creating aftershocks from the original impact.
Mara could slowly feel the attention turning to her as the shower of ice settled onto the landscape. The miners were silent.
“That’s a hit,” Hanson said, the first to break the silence.
There was a murmur from the men at what they had just seen. They had lost their bets, all of them except Hanson.
“Johan, the lady said she wanted us to fix the crane,” Hanson said with a smirk.
“I heard her,” Johan replied curtly.
Mara turned inside the cockpit of the rail-gun and hung her legs over the seat, reenergized from her victory. She had a clear vantage upon which to look down upon the room. She noticed Johan had an angry expression on his face, and she stopped climbing down.
“You can forget the crane,” he shouted to her. “I’m not fixing it. What good is it if you don’t even have a sub to use?”
Mara loosened her jaw at him. “Johan… You agreed… That was our bet!”
“Our bet was you show me you can contact the sub,” he said loudly. “I told you there ain’t no reason to fix that crane if you don’t got a sub to use down there.”
“You’re backing out on our bet?” she yelled.
She glanced around the room. The miners were grinning at her, and she could tell they had been in on the joke. She felt her teeth clench together, and her stomach churned.
Johan was shaking his head at her. “I said I’ll fix it if you contact the sub. Until then, we’ve got more important things to do.” A smile indicated his sense of self-satisfaction, knowing he had the sole power to make or break her entire mission.
“Now you know how things work on my rig,” he told her, and he laughed.
Mara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Johan gathered his things, and he began to take in the bets he had collected from the men. The satisfied smile on his face left a pit in her side.
She remained in the cockpit of the rail-gun, looking down on the room. She watched Johan weigh Hanson’s gold nuggets and add several chunks of metal and ore to his collection. Hanson’s winnings were significant. They would set Johan back quite a bit.
“I’m gonna have to cover the rest with some Astromine creds. Ok?” she heard Johan ask, and Hanson nodded.
Mara decided that she preferred to wait for the miners to leave the room before she came down from the rail-gun. She sulked in the seat there, not wanting to interact with these men any more than she had to. She watched them with complete disdain. Johan and the rest of the miners finished their business and left the room, and she began to climb down.
She was making her first steps off the ladder when she noticed that Hanson had stayed behind. She attempted to briskly walk by, and he made a quick gesture at her with his arm. For some reason she stopped.
“Told you that would be fun,” he said with a proud grin.
Mara shook her head. Her heart was beating hard. She tried to leave, but he moved and cut her off.
“A word of advice?” he offered.
Mara didn’t answer, waiting for him to move aside.
“Never try to force a deal with someone that doesn’t need anything from you,” he said, with a smug smile. He was counting his winnings in front of her.
She tried to walk around him again, but she was too angry not to say something. She stopped and turned to him. He was placing the gold nugget into one of his pockets when she turned.
“You know, where I come from, a bet is a bet,” she told him.
Hanson shook his head as he continued to sort his winnings into his pockets. He raised his eyebrows at her. “Not with Johan. I take it you haven’t been on many mining rigs, have you?”
“Well, I’m glad it paid off for you,” she said sardonically, glancing down to where he had stuffed the gold nugget into his suit. She tried to leave.
“Where’d you learn to shoot a rail-gun?” he asked as she left. Mara stopped to consider if she would answer. She turned to him, and her eyes went to the floor and back up, questioning his reason for asking.
“Antarctica,” she said. Hanson just stood there, and she waited a moment to see if another question would follow.
“You’re surprised I can shoot it?” she asked.
Hanson still wasn’t saying anything. She was growing weary of even being inside the Zephyr with him. She regretted coming over at all. She wasn’t sure why she was still standing where she was.
“You’re a good shot,” he said after a moment. “So, what were you doing in Antarctica?” he asked.
Mara took in a heavy
breath, feigning exhaustion, but she found herself answering anyway.
“I was training for this mission,” she said. “The mission that you are trying to end before it even starts. I spent almost six months in that frozen wasteland dealing with all kinds of crap; glaciers, frostbite, bad food, and bad weather…” she complained. She chuckled to herself. “But they didn’t teach us how to deal with assholes.” She stared purposefully to let him know who she was talking about.
Hanson smiled. She couldn’t tell if he had thought it funny or if he had taken offense.
He began walking toward her, and as he did, he had dug his hand into the pocket of his mining suit. Mara suddenly wondered if he could have a knife, or a hammer, or if he’d try to hurt her for insulting him. She began to think of a way to defend herself, or an escape plan. He kept approaching her, hand in pocket.
Mara felt herself taking a step backward. Then, as he neared her, he pulled out the gold nugget. He held it in front of her on the palm of his hand, and he gestured for her to take it.
Mara looked at it, surprised that he seemed to be offering it to her. She tried to read his intentions. She thought it must be a joke. She remained frozen in front of him, the nugget hovering on his hand right before her.
“Take it,” Hanson said, holding it out further.
Mara looked at the gold, and back at him. “I don’t want it,” she told him. She turned away, as if it had been tainted by the evening’s events.
Hanson held it out for her further, tempting her with it. He raised it to her slightly again. “It’s yours. Take it. You earned it,” he said. “I knew you were bluffing,” he told her. “It’s not fair to take all the winnings.”
Mara looked down at the nugget but refused to acknowledge him. She felt a sense of pride at not taking it, and she had decided right then she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“It’s no good to me,” she told him. “I prefer you honor your bet. You can’t make it up to me with that.”
Hanson curled his lips in a disappointed expression, then tucked the nugget back into his pocket. “Suit yourself,” he said.
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