The biggest advantage of self-publishing is that you can bypass agents, editors, and publishers. Self-publishing's biggest weakness is the same. Without traditional publishing's nested layers of quality control, self-publishers can push out anything to market, no matter its quality.
In a wild west of self-published books, how can readers discern what books to read? One of the answers is giving free previews. That's what I've done by posting the prologue and first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity in this space. If you like what you read, consider buying it in paperback or ebook. Enjoy!
Prologue
After the dust storm blew through, it was like an alien world again. The footpaths and vehicle tracks were swept away. A fresh tawny film clung to the idle equipment and manmade structures. The steel mill’s gas wastes, which usually fogged in this end of the canyon, were scattered, giving clear views of Mars’s two moons to the south.
Regan resumed climbing the canyon’s east face. Slung over her shoulder were a climbing axe and a long-handled brush. They dinged the back of her helmet as she clambered over a granite outcropping jutting out of the sandstone.
She checked her footholds before applying her weight. Carbon dioxide frost layered on top of fine silt made the rock slippery. No problem, she thought. She’d been playing on these cliffs since she was four. Her slender limbs were ideal for spanning holds, easy to twist and fit in confined spaces. She didn’t even need to use her climbing axe.
Across the canyon, Torrance walked along the funicular rail, borne aloft on trestles built into the cliff that rose up between the town and the dull western expanse above. He blasted the track and towrope with compressed air, sending up puffs of red-orange dust. The dust that didn’t disperse stuck to his activity suit, camouflaging him against the cliff face. If he didn’t occasionally turn the compressed air on himself, the dust would corrode his suit and foul his air supply.
She knew which radio channel he was camped on in case they needed each other. She didn’t like talking when she was out here. In town, there were always people who you couldn’t help hearing, smelling, or touching. Solitude came at a premium no one she’d ever met could afford.
She cleared the shadow line cast by the west cliff. The slope leveled and she no longer required the use of her hands. Before her a rough volcanic plain tilted to the west, unvaried but for lava trenches cut into the plain. Most times she would have seen the broad flank of Alba Mons looming behind the solar farm, but all she saw now was the dust storm’s ruddy smear. To her left were the Cottian Hills and behind her, Artynia Catena, the 160-mile canyon her people called home.
She arrived at the substation at the solar farm’s southwest corner, where high-voltage transmission lines fed into an oxidized lead pipe buried in the claypan. The pipe followed the canyon’s east rim and was bundled to the funicular rail. After cleaning the solar panels, she would meet Torrance on the rail platform and ride it into town.
She brushed an inch of tacky dust off the transformers and moved on to the nearest panel, which had been locked up since the dust storm hit. As the first light in days touched a corner of the panel’s surface, the array’s motor grinded and the panel swiveled to face the brightest light source in the cloudless amber sky, the Sun. Most of the dust still caked on the panel cascaded to the ground on its own.
She gave the panel a once-over with the brush and proceeded along the row, repeating the process for each panel. There were 20 panels per row, 600 panels in all.
She made the turn at the southeast corner of the solar farm and started down the second row. To her chagrin, the panels she’d already cleaned pivoted all at once like a line of soldiers marching in formation.
She looked at the sky. An emerald light shimmered above the horizon, bigger and brighter than the Sun. It drifted north, leaving a trail of dark smoke.
Her mouth fell open and she dropped the brush in the dirt.
The descending object’s speed became apparent as it neared the surface, spanning the 2-mile-wide canyon in a fraction of a second. Regan shut her eyes to the blinding light.
The pressure wave struck first, no more forceful than a shove in the negligible atmosphere. Then the ground heaved violently, throwing her down. Something heavy fell on top of her. A stabbing pain shot up the backs of her thighs.
She twisted out from beneath the downed solar array and staggered toward the canyon. The ground all around her shook and fractured, slabs of clay thrusting up and down at wild angles, sifting the topsoil. Both transformers blew and showered the area with sparks.
Out of the north, a plume of dust and ash churned like a dust storm more violent than any she’d seen before. It engulfed New Monviso, gateway to the Cottian Hills.
She tuned her radio to the preset channel and keyed on her helmet mic. “Torrance!”
The boy’s voice shuddered with fright, barely discernible over a howl of static. “What’s happening?!”
“Something fell out of the sky. There’s a storm headed this way!”
She approached the rim cautiously. The quake was shaking loose massive swaths of rock from the escarpment and throwing them into the canyon. The route she’d taken up the east cliff face was gone. All the routes on the east face were gone.
She glimpsed Torrance clinging to the rail a thousand feet above the canyon floor. Even from a distance, she could see the trestles swaying, the joists buckling, bowing the rail like a clothesline. Steel was not supposed to bend like that.
She hurried south along the rim. “Hold on! I’m coming!”
She could reach the platform in 5 minutes at a dead sprint. She would ride it down and pick him up. The dusty towrope would degrade the pulley wheel and earn her a reprimand, but at least she and Torrance would be safe.
“Don’t!” he screamed. “The rail won’t hold!”
No sooner had his words reached her than the struts halfway up the trestle he was on severed. The supports on either side of the break leaned against the cliff, snapping from their bases. The trestle disintegrated and tumbled to the bottom of the canyon. Torrance’s diminutive figure vanished in the red haze. She heard his cries and the awful squelching sounds of his body being crushed under rock and steel.
Farther below, the town’s central dome collapsed, the roof inverting under hundreds of tons of fallen rock. The atmosphere displaced faster than Mars’s thin air could suck it out, creating a secondary debris field like an aureole around the dome.
Regan blinked in shock. The devastation below her was so complete, so sudden. All she had ever known was gone in an instant.
The plume reached the solar farm, burgeoning higher, arcing bolts of lightning to the ground. Her mind raced. She could still survive, but she would have to make do with what she had.
She ran from the cliff’s edge to a piece of rebar poking out of the dirt. A crack in the claypan had opened nearby, exposing the lead pipe 2 feet under the surface.
She went to her knees and wielded the climbing axe for the first time that day. She choked up on the haft and hacked frantically at the clay and topsoil, widening the crack. Sparks flew as the blade nicked the pipe.
Satisfied, she pulled a foil sheet from a pocket in her suit and wrapped it around herself like a shawl, pinching the edges shut in her left fist. She burrowed into the hole as far as she could and curled her right hand under the pipe.
The pipe must be broken in a hundred places from the quake, but the section she clung to held firm.
A blast of wind lifted the foil like a sail, tearing it from her grip. She lost sight of it in the dust and ash. She turned her shoulders to get her other hand around the pipe.
An enormous weight settled on top of her, crushing the air out of her lungs. She gasped and started to cry.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 1
The drill bit turned soundlessly between Felton’s boots, spitting flecks of slate-like rock. They bounced off his spacesuit, neither propelled by wind and gravity nor slowed by air resistance.
He released the clutch on the rock drill and extracted a round bar of rock a handspan long out of the cut. He tied it to the sling and winched it up to the Marillion for analysis.
“Sample’s on its way,” he said, spotlighting the sample with his headlamp, a solid white beam in the mellow wash of the cruiser’s floodlights.
“I’m ready,” he heard Castor say in the background.
Castor had pegged the asteroid as an M-type, a rarity in the outer Belt. Rare and valuable. If they didn’t document the asteroid’s mineral content, they exposed themselves to unscrupulous collectors low-balling its market value, a lesson they’d learned the hard way.
The sling jammed against the block on top of the winch. A reticulated arm reached out of the auxiliary airlock and untied the rock sample from the sling. The arm retracted, pulling the sample through the outer hatch.
“Got it,” Castor said.
Felton detached from the rigging and flicked the tip of his tongue against his lower-right wisdom tooth. The circuit in his jaw closed. The electric current made a faint ringing in his ear. He brought his gloved hands together to feel the resistance from the magnetic field. He bent down and stuck his palms on an ice-free patch of coarse stone.
Keeping his hips low, he climbed across the asteroid, pressing his crampons in the opposite direction as his arms to stabilize his body. He worked up a good lather methodically following his progressions. Reach, hold, step, rebalance, hold, step, rebalance, repeat. Between each hold, he turned his wrists to twist his hands off the stone.
This asteroid was big, bigger than the Marillion itself and a thousand times denser. With any luck, it would consist of minerals vital to sustaining life but that were too costly to ship out of the inner solar system.
“EVA time: 1 hour,” Levi said, his voice wound tight.
Levi got like that when his little brother left the safety of the cruiser. Compounding the stress was the chance this asteroid could all but erase the remaining balance on the ship lease. In that sense, everyone was wound a little tight. The anticipation had been building for a week.
Felton neared the point on the asteroid’s surface farthest from its center of mass, the point at which torque could be most efficiently applied.
“I’m at the rudder site,” he said.
He hammered a piton in the stone, hooked a D-ring through the eyehole on the end, and roped in. A flick of the tongue against the same tooth opened the circuit, de-electrifying the iron plungers in his hands.
He unloaded a pion rocket from the pack, one of two he had on him. This one would serve as the asteroid’s rudder en route to the collection point. The rocket was half as tall as he was and had four short nozzles. Below the nozzles was the accumulation chamber, a truncated, chrome-plated sphere bigger than his fist.
With a few swings of the hammer he staked the rocket’s tripod legs to the stone. Then he connected the battery. A neon diode pulsed, indicating the rocket was connected remotely to the ship’s computer.
“Are you receiving, Blake?”
“Sending and receiving,” Blake said. His voice took on a flat, robotic quality, a hint he was collaborating with his neural implant. He coded the rocket’s flight plan, entering variables for mass, mass distribution, and density, for which he would plug in real values when they knew more about the asteroid’s composition.
“EVA time: 90 minutes,” Levi called out.
Felton clawed the piton out of the stone and started toward the next rocket site. “I’m clear. Fire the rocket when you’re ready, Blake.”
Levi tsked. “You know we don’t test-fire the rockets till you’re back inside. That’s how we’ve always done it, cowboy.”
Felton hated being called that. “Just trying to move things along now that a sense of urgency is shared equally by commander and crew.”
“Not at the expense of safety,” Levi said. “Speaking of which, I noticed you didn’t protect that last traverse. What’s going to catch you if those magnets fail, huh? We’d have to cut the asteroid loose and come get you. Think of the time we’d lose then. Your tools are there to help you. Use them.”
Felton squinted up at the cruiser. Typical Levi. His determination and resilience were without peer, but he had no imagination. He viewed mining the Belt as a long grind for which his patience and circumspection were uniquely suited.
But it did not suit the rest of the crew. Felton was weary of the grind. So were Blake and Castor. It showed in their slumped shoulders, the hush of strained camaraderie. If Levi didn’t show a more expeditious attitude, he risked losing their confidence.
Felton had used that to convince him to chase this distant M-type when it was nothing more than a blip on the spectroscope. Even if the deviation from routine failed to pay off, the new life it gave the men was priceless.
“Go ahead and cut it loose anyway,” Castor said.
Levi’s breath caught. “Oh no. What’d you find?”
There was a thud as Castor dropped the rock sample on the console. “Over 90 percent carbonaceous chondrite. In a word, worthless.”
Most asteroids were carbonaceous chondrite, but they commonly had albedo characteristics of a C-type, not an M-type. They had been duped by false advertising.
“Worthless?” Levi said. “Surely it’ll fetch something.”
“There’s no line in the rate table for asteroids this rich in chondrite. If you want to send it for collection, that’s fine, but no one will bid on it.”
Felton sucked on his cold wet mustache. He wasn’t going to give up easily. If this asteroid was a dud, he was going to make sure.
“Send the sling back down,” he said.
He retraced his steps to the rigging, slung the drill on his back, and drilled a second sample 10 feet from the first cut. No one made a peep except for Levi, who continued to count off the time that had elapsed since Felton left the cruiser. To avoid radiation burns, industry best practice was to limit extravehicular activities to 4 hours.
Felton tied the second rock sample to the sling and winched it up.
The verdict came moments later. “It’s the same,” Castor said.
“That’s that,” Levi said wistfully. “Sorry fellas.”
The sting of failure resonated on the dead air. They had foregone an attractive play for this asteroid, enticed by the prospect of a big payday. That payday turned out to be fool’s gold.
Levi would bemoan the decision to come out here, especially since it wasn’t his idea to begin with. He might become more risk-averse as a result. Felton couldn’t let that happen.
“I’ll fetch the rocket,” he said. “Let’s regroup over supper. I’m famished.”
“I’ll have it ready in a jiffy,” Blake said.
Felton collected his gear and stuffed it in the pack. Back at the rigging fork, he pulled the pin and turned the crank to retract the barbs on the carbon steel tines. He squatted under the rigging fork and extended his legs to lift the tines out of the rock. He cut his feet from the asteroid and rode the rigging cable back to the cruiser, wrapping the lengthening slack around the tines.
The rigging gun was on the cruiser’s centerline. Felton wedged the rigging fork partway into the breach, then belly-crawled to the portside airlock forward of the wing, knees bent so as not to ding the fuselage with his crampons.
He climbed through the outer hatch, which irised shut behind him, and turned on the compressor. It started as a vibration and grew louder as air filled the chamber.
The Marillion was an old third-generation cruiser built for a conveyance of five, but even with four crew, quarters were tight. As there was no proper mess hall, they set up the frame for the unoccupied capsule as a dining table. When placed in the cockpit and centered behind the pilot bench, it left enough elbow room to seat all four men.
Felton left the burning smell of the airlock and stripped off his activity suit and coveralls in the mudroom, exposing his sweaty skin to the cruiser’s dank air. Forward one compartment, in the head, he washed and dried his scruffy beard, and he braided his mustache so it wouldn’t hang over his mouth while he ate.
Topside, in the cockpit window, the false M-type asteroid hung deathly still, robbed of its rotation. A band of brown specks spread out over a hundred million miles muted the Sun’s pale disc like wisps of cloud.
They sat around the converted dining table, Felton and Castor in the jump seats, Levi and Blake in folding chairs. Before each man was a cup of lukewarm recycled water, a 3-inch square slab of meat culture, fried pea pods, and a roasted beet.
The men looked expectantly at Blake, who, as senior crewman, recited a rote blessing to Providence and Fortune, then ate. That is, Felton, Blake, and Castor ate. Levi sat with his hands on his knees, staring dourly at the asteroid looming outside.
Blake nudged Levi’s plate closer to him. He spoke tenderly, as if to a child. “Let it go, lad.”
“I’m not ready to,” Levi said, eyes burning with rebuke. “Not until we agree on a strategy moving forward.”
“Can’t you wait till after supper before you go pointing fingers?” Felton said.
“If blame’s what you’re worried about, brother, I’ll spare you the suspense. I blame myself. I’m the leader of this outfit. That makes me responsible.”
“Give us a little credit,” Blake said. He gestured around the table. “We all agreed to the plan.”
The plan was to chip away at our lease until it was paid off,” Levi said. “Not to get distracted by the nearest shiny object.”
“Eat, lad,” Blake urged, trying to salvage a peaceful supper.
Levi cut a piece of liver and shredded it between his teeth. “I know better than to think you’re not upset. Don’t hold back on my account. Let’s hear it.”
“The only one who’s upset is you,” Felton said. “The rest of us are frustrated by the slow rate of progress. We took a chance and it didn’t pay off. So what? The alternative was to keep plodding along like we were before.”
Levi shook his head. “Don’t downplay this, brother.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” Felton said heatedly.
“Yes, that’s what you’re doing. You remember the play as well as I do: eight S-types lined up single file like a string of pearls. Not as pretty, but good enough to get the job done.”
Felton scoffed. “You’ve never seen a pearl, Levi.”
“I will when I go Sunward. But that won’t be anytime soon if we make tactical decisions based on whim.”
“Ask your shipmates if coming here was a whim, or if they think it was the right choice.”
Levi’s intense gaze alighted on Castor, who sipped his water to hide his face from scrutiny. Felton wasn’t worried about Castor, whom he knew was on his side. The question was Blake. A longtime friend of the family, he’d mentored Levi after their parents died. Sometimes Felton thought the bonds between them were stronger than their own bonds as brothers.
“Did you know half the rockrunners operating in the Belt don’t make a penny before their charters expire?” Levi said.
The din of the meal subsided. No one said a word.
“It’s not for lack of dedication,” he continued, “or industriousness. It’s discipline. They reach the Belt thinking they have oodles of time, and they go for the big score. They test Fortune without putting forth the effort. A crew may get lucky once in a while, but most of the time they don’t. Before you know it they’ve lost the plot. They’re behind schedule and it’s too late to change tack. It’s when you need a bet to pay off that it never does. So they end up where they started with nothing to show for the time and the work they put in.”
Felton sat back. Levi’s argument was devastating to his more aggressive agenda. He must have spent all week preparing it in anticipation of their failure.
“Now…” Levi rested the heel of his right hand on the table’s edge, past the midpoint. “This is the time that’s left on our charter.” He placed his left hand slightly forward of his right. “And this is how much value we have to provide the company to get in the black. We can’t afford wasted effort.”
“We’re going back to the string of pearls, then?” Felton said with disdain.
“There are no recoverable S-types in closer range. If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”
Felton glanced at Castor, who nodded. “We should stay aggressive,” Felton said. “The real mistake would be to reverse course. We owe it to ourselves to try again.”
“Try what again?” Levi asked. “Is there anything out here worth pursuing?” He posed the question as a hypothetical, not realizing Felton and Castor had planned ahead for this part of the conversation.
Castor cleared his throat. “Perhaps. While you were spearing the asteroid, I was looking around the neighborhood. I spied a viable candidate not too far from here. Another M-type. A shiny object, as it were.”
Levi’s brow furrowed. “Show me.”
They abandoned the meal, long since cooled, and went belowdecks. Mineralogy was farthest astern, directly beneath the tailplane. All four of them crammed inside. Castor referred to notes on his worktable and pointed the spectral telescope through a small bubble canopy.
Levi looked through the telescope and stepped back. Blake and Felton looked in turn. At maximum magnification, the asteroid was a featureless, asymmetrical blur. Compared to other asteroids Felton had seen, it was bright and ruddy, which matched the spectral profile of an M-type.
“How far is it?” Levi asked.
“Two-point-two million miles spinward,” Castor said. “Inclination to the ecliptic is 34 arc minutes, currently descending.”
“Two alleged M-types that close together must have a common origin,” Levi said. “If that’s the case, it could be another dud.”
“That’s possible,” Castor allowed. “Maybe even likely.”
“We won’t know unless we intercept it,” Felton said. “Look, we’re in the neighborhood already. If your tolerance for risk wasn’t used up before, it shouldn’t be used up now.”
“It’s not my tolerance for risk I’m concerned about, brother.”
Felton bit back a sharp reply. Provocation would only harden Levi’s resolve.
“What do you think, Blake?” Levi asked.
“You know the costs already. What we don’t know are the benefits.” He looked through the spectral telescope again. “Does it have the same rotational profile as the last M-type?”
“I can’t tell,” Castor said. “The high albedo obscures specific traits.”
Blake touched his neural implant, which was under his scalp behind his right ear. “Worst case, there’s a 4-percent chance the asteroid is true to type.”
“What’s the best case?” Felton asked.
“Fifteen percent.”
“Four to 15 percent, huh?” Levi chewed his thumbnail. “What does the real Blake think? The man, not the computer.”
“I think whatever you decide will be the right choice.”
Levi snickered. “You’re not making this any easier, old friend.”
Felton waited while his brother mulled over his decision. He knew, if Levi was deciding only for himself, he would reject the proposition in favor of grinding out surer, less reliable asteroids to meet their quota.
But he wasn’t deciding for himself. He was deciding for the crew. And the crew weren’t machines who cared only about probabilities of success. Even Blake, who was more machine than any of them, wasn’t like that.
“Cas,” Levi said at last, “after you give Blake the coordinates, I want you to inventory our supplies. I want to know how much this diversion has cost us.”
Felton pumped his fists. Now he just had to make sure they fared better on this attempt than on the last one.
“I was just in the stockroom,” Blake said. “I can tell you the food we have won’t hold out much longer unless we start rationing it now.”
“Duly noted. Ping the Kirkwood gap instead, Cas. Widest range possible without draining the batteries. Favor the closest supplier we’ve bought from before. Regardless how this next asteroid pans out, we’re going shopping afterwards.”
“Yes sir,” Castor said.
“Felton, I want you to tidy up the lavatory and seat the rigging fork.”
Felton groaned. “I cleaned the head last time,” he said plaintively.
“I know. Consider it discipline for disregarding basic safety measures on your last EVA. Your life isn’t the only life you toy with when you take frivolous risks. If you were trying to get my attention, you succeeded. It stops now, you understand? There are more productive ways of airing your concerns than endangering the crew.”
Blake and Castor shared an embarrassed look and went forward. Felton and Levi stayed behind a minute longer, the former burning with resentment of the latter’s authority.
“I know how smart you are,” Levi said. “But you have to act smarter. I can’t look after you all the time.” He squeezed Felton’s shoulder as he walked past. “Seat the rigging fork first. We can’t get underway until it’s secure.”
««««»»»» A loud rap roused Felton from his Pace-quickened stupor. He turned his head and sat up slowly. Dim light coming in through a gap in the pocket door streaked across his vision, which his visual cortex interpreted in shades of gray.
He shut his eyes, relieving the tightness that threatened to burst through his forehead. He reached for the pill bottle in the cubby beside his pillow.
“I’m up,” he commanded his mouth to say, but he couldn’t sense the motion of his lips or the sound his voice made.
He shook a rough, starchy Slug from the bottle and placed it under his tongue. It absorbed rapidly into his bloodstream, delivering a direct hit of amphetamine to the basal ganglia. The sweet taste was gone in 5 minutes, which felt like one to him. That was Pace: time dilation for spacers who had nothing but time on their hands.
The noises of the main deck became distinct: the repetitive click of a fan’s ball bearing, a fingernail tapping a screen, Castor’s light snoring in the capsule above.
Felton opened the pocket door and set his bare feet on the decking. He kneaded the stiffness from his calves and thighs as his internal clock caught up to real time. He curled his toes and traced the starburst pattern in the decking. The blood vessels in his eyelids assumed their normal violet-red.
As his senses gradually came online, he stood and stretched. His tongue twitched against his wisdom tooth and his palms stuck to the metal ceiling. He hung with his knees bent and let the cruiser’s artificial gravity straighten his nearly 7-foot-tall frame.
Opening his eyes, the dark shape of a nude woman stood out on Castor’s foot locker. Felton had painted dozens of nudes around the living quarters to pass the time and to “keep him company,” as the others teased. A reliable way to date the compositions was to contrast the size of the women’s breasts, with Felton’s crude imagination losing restraint over time.
He slicked back his stringy hair and shuffled through the cockpit. Blake sat on the pilot bench, his hand steady on the yoke. Levi stood behind him watching through the cockpit window.
“What’d you wake me up for?” Felton asked.
“We’re almost there,” Levi said. “We’re slowing down.”
Felton looked out the window at the black expanse that was the outer Belt. A speck of gray or brown could be a 40-ton asteroid a mile away or a 4 billion–ton asteroid a hundred miles away. Most asteroids were either too small to be worth their time or too big to alter their orbit. Fifty thousand to a hundred thousand tons was the ideal size.
He spotted a dish of oranges on the console. Lying open under the plate was a worn hardcover book missing its dust jacket. The page header included the title, Reef Ecosystems: Toward Sustainability.
It was from Levi’s collection. While Felton sought distractions, Levi read up on mankind’s home planet, his future home if Fortune shined on his ambition to go Sunward. This was his third read-through of that particular volume.
“What’s the occasion?” Felton asked, referring to the oranges.
“Blake’s idea of a birthday treat. While you were passed out, I completed my fourth trip round the Sun.”
Four cycles in the Jovian subsystem would have put Levi past middle age. Since they’d left Ganymede for shorter orbital periods in the outer Belt, cycles strictly measured were a quarter their normal length.
“Have an orange,” Levi said. “You’ll need the energy.”
Felton adored oranges. He picked one up and palmed it, feeling its pliant surface. “Just one. I wouldn’t want to hoard your birthday treat for myself.”
“Seeing you happy is the greatest treat, brother.”
He ate the orange one slice at a time, savoring the tangy citrus flavor and fleshy texture. He picked shreds of pulp from the insides of the peel and ate those too. The juice dried quickly and left a bitter residue on his fingers. He threw the peel in the compost.
“There it is,” Blake said, half-standing. He tapped a screen on the console and the heads-up display superimposed a pixilated outline over the view through the window. Levi flicked on the floodlights, bathing the M-type in soft light.
It was rounder than its predecessor, shaped like a deflated ball with one side pressed in. It rotated aggressively, giving the impression it was going to roll over them. Its surface was smooth and had a bronze luster.
Felton bounced on the balls of his feet. He had a good feeling about this one.
Blake’s eyes rolled back and his voice came out flat and monotone. “Mean radius: 130 feet. Volume: 913,000 cubic feet, give or take.”
“Wake up Castor and get dressed,” Levi said.
Felton roused Castor, who like him needed to adjust to real time. He opened his foot locker and removed his coveralls and spacesuit. He donned the ensemble except for his helmet and crampons. He returned to the cockpit, turning sideways to squeeze through the small passageway.
Blake had calculated the asteroid’s axes of rotation—all six of them—and projected them on the heads-up display. It completed a rotation about two axes every 85 and 89 minutes. That kind of speed was unheard of. The last one had not rotated half as fast about any of its axes.
“What do you think?” Levi asked, holding his chin in his hands.
“It’s straightforward enough,” Felton said. “The propulsion rocket will go in the bottom of that bowl, the rudder rocket directly opposite.”
“I agree. Where do you want the rigging?”
Felton pointed. “The bottom-right edge of the bowl will do.”
“Okay. Get the rockets ready. Blake, position us over that spot. I’ll prime the rigging gun.”
Felton passed a fully awake Castor on his way down to engineering, the cruiser’s nerve center, which smelled either of ozone or acetone depending on what repairs were needed. Tools cluttered the bulkhead and the decking was discolored by slow leaks from rusted pipe fittings.
He took down two tripods and two accumulation chambers from the rocket rack, and transferred 15 grams of antiprotons from the cyclotron to each chamber. The dispenser was slow by design. Moving the antiprotons too fast could destabilize the chamber’s vacuum seal and blow the cruiser to bits.
He dropped off his gear in the auxiliary airlock and returned to the cockpit. Levi sat beside Blake on the bench, aiming the rigging gun with the joystick. The barrel sight painted a green target on the bowl’s edge.
“Three, two, one…”
He squeezed the trigger. A blast of compressed air shook the hull. The rigging fork shot forward, cable trailing behind it, and pierced the asteroid’s stone surface. The barbs deployed, and a clamp on the rigging gun sprang on the cable to keep more from paying out.
Waves of energy whipped through the slack in the cable before it drew taut and yanked the cruiser forward. If they didn’t stop the asteroid’s rotation now, it would reel them in and pulverize the hull in slow motion.
“Grip is good enough,” Levi said, looking over a sensor readout. “Slow it down, Blake.”
Keeping one hand on the yoke, Blake hit the forward RCS thrusters to push the cruiser in the opposite direction of the asteroid’s spin. An alarm blared and the rigging fork bent sideways. It jarred loose and rebounded against the taut cable, thumping against the portside wing. The asteroid continued to spin, unaffected.
“Tough piece of rubble,” Felton said.
“Whatever it’s made of, it’s harder than the rigging,” Castor said.
“What’s harder than steel?”
Castor’s eyes glinted. “Diamonds.”
Levi balked. “The rigging weighs 700 pounds and leaves the breach at 200 miles per hour. And you’re telling me those steel tines didn’t penetrate?”
Castor pointed out the window. “You can’t argue against what we all saw.”
“I know, I—” He stopped, bemused, and scratched his head.
Felton had already settled on what to do. He watched the cogs turn behind Levi’s eyes. “Well?” he said impatiently.
“I’m thinking.”
It was hardly a moment’s indecision, but it felt longer to Felton. It felt like a microcosm of all the time they’d spent in the Belt grinding under Levi’s command to eke out a living. Felton loved his brother, but sometimes he couldn’t stand him.
He made an about-face and headed for the airlock. “Get as close to that rock as you can, Blake.”
Levi leapt to his feet. “Wait! We’ll try again. You can’t go out there while it’s spinning. It’ll throw you off.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Felton said. He went through the inner hatch and stepped into his crampons. “I’ll be fine.”
Levi opened his mouth to protest. Felton touched the panel, and the hatch shut in his face.
Chapter 2
Helmet attached and oxygen flowing through his suit, Felton purged the airlock. He pushed on the outer hatch and swung from the handle to land on his knees on the hull. He climbed around the fuselage to the rigging gun. Like he’d done a hundred times before, he released the clamp, untangled and spooled the cable, and reseated the rigging fork.
He inspected the tines and retractable barbs, which had taken the brunt of the failed spear attempt. Other than some new wear, they appeared undamaged.
“I’ll count that as a small victory,” Levi said after Felton delivered his report. “I was worried we were going to have to take the fork in for repairs. Come back inside. We’ll give it another try.”
Felton didn’t answer. He knew he should obey his brother. It was unlikely the rigging fork would be denied a second time, no matter what the asteroid was made of. But he couldn’t deny himself the thrill of wrangling this asteroid as they’d found it.
“Let’s do this the old-fashioned way,” he said. “Without the rigging fork.”
He waited for the fight he was certain Levi would put up. Instead the Marillion’s thrusters fired and the wing tip swung out over the asteroid.
“You win, cowboy,” Levi said with a sigh. “Since I can’t talk sense into you, we’ll do it your way.”
Felton crawled past the flaps and ailerons, locked in place since they’d left Ganymede. The asteroid loomed over him, sparkling like a jewel under the floodlights. Castor had been joking when he said it could be a diamond, but it wasn’t hard to imagine it consisted of mineral ore that was equally valuable.
Straddling the wing tip, Felton knotted three lengths of nylon rope together and tied off one end to the grappling hook. The other end he tied to a ring on his suit. He held the rope loosely and pinwheeled his arm. The grappling hook traced a spiral perpendicular to the wing.
He paid out a hundred feet of rope and let it go at the top of its spiral. The grappling hook sailed 30 feet over the asteroid’s leading edge, a perfect throw. He braked the rope slightly to curl it around the backside. Then he reeled it back in, dragging the grappling hook over the rock face. He felt it catch. He looped the slack over his shoulder and tightened both fists on the rope to make it pull him off the wing.
He glided hand over hand up the rope, approaching the asteroid’s serrated horizon. It was important to go slow at first. If his acceleration stalled the rope would lose tension and the grappling hook would slip.
Thirty feet from the asteroid, Felton spied his landing site. His momentum was carrying him toward a shaded pit to the right of a raised band of rock. He pitched his legs forward and touched down on his rear. He skidded to the bottom of the pit, which was no deeper than he was tall. His crampons dug in and he rocked forward on his feet, drawing the rope taut to create resistance. He whooped with triumph.
Sarcastic applause sounded from the cockpit. “Now let’s see how you move,” Levi said.
Felton remained still to acclimate to the asteroid’s centripetal force. He “stood” in the pit, but it felt more like hanging upside-down. The stars tilted dizzyingly.
He anchored to the asteroid and sent a wave through the long rope to slip the grappling hook. He wound it in, picked apart the knots in the rope, and put everything in the pack.
He flicked his tongue to mate his hands to the smooth stone. His grip was not as good as on other asteroids, and it took more effort to keep his footing. The lack of sharp angles in the rock provided few good holds for his hands and feet, and challenged his route-finding skills.
“I’ll drill the rock sample last,” he said. He knew he would tire quickly and wanted to get the hardest part out of the way first. He removed his anchor and climbed out of the pit. “Need a bearing on the rudder site, Blake.”
“One moment.”
The Marillion thrust sideways below the horizon, thousands of tons of intervening rock leaving Felton incommunicado. For a minute all he had for company was the hiss of his breath and the crackle of the radio. The cruiser reappeared on the other side.
“If the direction you’re facing is north, the rudder site’s 62 feet south-southeast,” Blake said.
Felton looked to his right. The only workable route he could see led straight east.
“I’m on my way.” He sunk a second piton into the stone. He would rely on protection to wrangle this asteroid.
“EVA time: 1 hour,” Levi said.
“Three hours till radiation turns your guts to soup,” Castor said. “It won’t be me that cleans it up.”
««««»»»» The bowl where the rudder rocket was going in was flat-bottomed. Fewer angles in the stone meant less surface area for the pion rocket’s tripod legs to grip.
Felton stooped low to see what he was doing. Sweat soaked his beard and combined with his hot breath to fog his helmet. To ensure the rocket didn’t come loose, he carved out opposing surfaces in the rock for two of the tripod legs.
“Three-and-a-half hours,” Levi said, patience wearing thin. “If you’re not on your way back in 10 minutes, I’m coming to get you.”
“Almost done,” Felton said. He drove the stakes through the feet of the tripod legs and connected the battery.
“Sending and receiving,” Blake said.
Felton climbed out of the bowl, panting heavily. The negative G forces made every move he made that much harder. Core muscles he didn’t know he had strained and buckled.
He cleared the bowl’s rim. “Let her rip, Blake.”
“Belay that,” Levi said. “Felton, what are you doing? We’ve been over this. We don’t test-fire the rockets while you’re on the asteroid.”
“The ship’s a moving target with the asteroid spinning like this,” Felton said. “Use the rockets instead of the rigging fork to bring it to a standstill. It’ll make coming back onboard that much easier.”
Levi hesitated.
Felton roped himself down. “Look, I’ll lay flat. The rocket exhaust won’t affect me.”
“It takes only a minute to calibrate the rockets to the asteroid’s mass distribution,” Blake said.
“Fine. Do it,” Levi said. “There’ll be a reckoning when this is over, brother. I don’t like being put in this position. You’ve been forewarned.”
Felton was too whipped to respond. In addition to body aches and muscle spasms, there was a burning sensation in his chest, usually the first symptom of radiation poisoning. Whatever form of discipline Levi had in mind, it couldn’t be worse than what Felton was feeling now.
The cruiser retreated to a safe distance and the rock under Felton jolted hard. He looked up and saw a sheet of alpha particles fan out above him. This was his favorite part. You thought you understood color until you saw a pion rocket firing up close.
The topsy-turvy motion of the stars stilled and the rocket cut out, the luminous exhaust fading in the distance. Felton rose off his belly.
“Okay. Come and get me.”
The cruiser floated overhead, the undersides of the wings turned toward the asteroid, presenting Felton a fat target. He removed his protection and squatted on his heels.
“What about the rock sample?” Castor said.
Felton cursed. He did not want to do this again all for an 8-inch bar of rock, not when he was already here.
He made a snap decision. He removed the rock drill from the pack and jabbed the bit against the stone. “Cutting the sample now.”
“What?!” Levi bellowed. “It’s been 3 hours and 52 minutes. The sample can wait. Get inside now.”
Felton started the drill. He heard Levi pacing in the cockpit, muttering to himself. “Get as close you can,” he ordered Blake. “Cas, bring me my spacesuit.”
A ruler on the side of the drill shaft showed Felton the depth of the cut. Four inches deep, the drill stalled. Felton reversed it out to inspect the bit, which was worn to a nub. It took a moment to replace it with the spare.
The industry considered a 6-inch bar representative of an asteroid’s content, but Felton liked to err on the long side. He wouldn’t this time. This stone was the hardest material he’d ever seen.
The drill puffed smoke and grinded to a stop. He turned down the speed to increase torque and reengaged the clutch. It was no use. The drill was stuck.
“What’s wrong?” Levi asked.
“It’s jammed. I can’t cut any deeper or reverse it out.”
“Decrease speed,” Castor said.
“I already tried that.”
“Okay. Try changing the angle of attack.”
Felton tilted the drill as far as he could and shook it back and forth. The motion roiled his stomach, intensifying the burning sensation in his chest. It definitely was not his imagination.
“You’re out of time, Felton,” Levi said. Apprehension tempered the anger in his voice. “Get your butt inside. We’ll troubleshoot the drill later.”
Felton ignored him. “I’m going to try chiseling it out.”
He hammered a piton into the stone flush against the drill shaft. He aimed a second piton at the same spot from a different angle. One swing of the hammer dislodged a chunk of rock. The drill, clutch still engaged, wrenched free and spun out of control. Felton dove out of the way, losing the hammer and both pitons. The chuck caught his flaccid pack and shredded it, accelerating toward him. He twisted to disengage the clutch. His suit alarm went off. He felt an icy, stabbing pain in his side.
“What happened?!” Levi said shrilly.
“The drill ripped my suit.” Felton touched his side where he’d felt the bit’s abrasive edges. His hand came away clean. “It just got the lining. I’m okay, but I’m leaking air.”
“Drop what you’re doing and get back here on the double. No more games.”
Felton reached into the cut in the rock and pulled out the sample. The end bloomed like a head of broccoli. He stowed the drill and rock sample in a fold in his shredded pack.
“On my way.” He loaded his weight on his heels and kicked hard to propel himself into space. He flung out his arms and legs, increasing his distal mass to minimize incidental rotation.
Blake had positioned the cruiser suicidally close to the asteroid. Felton cleared the gap in seconds. His magnets helped him stick the landing, but his right hand folded awkwardly under him, straining his wrist.
He scurried to the auxiliary airlock, his technique sloppy but quick. Halfway across the wing, his helmet fog cleared. His skin crawled and pressure accumulated in his joints and sinuses, telltale symptoms of the bends.
The suit alarm faded. His field of vision shrank to little circles. The last thing he saw was an arm reaching for him and pulling him into the airlock.
««««»»»» Flashes of memories mingled with sensory input. A hand squeezing Felton’s own transported him back to Ganymede, to his parents’ funeral. He was but a child, his adult mind a stranger to the boy’s body, still with the hands he was born with.
The coffins were lowered into the rock-ice. Levi stood with him, a head taller at the time, jaw set. Blake was there too, bringing the attendance in the family-reserved section of the funeral to three. Levi squeezed his hand. Why did he have to squeeze so hard?
A light flicked on, washing out the scene. “Felton?”
He was video-conferencing with Levi, a young, clean-cut Levi yet to be hardened by work in the mines. Something bad had happened while he was away training to be a tradesman. They were lowborn, but Levi had highborn aspirations, opportunities for which their parents worked their fingers to the bone to provide.
“What happened, brother?”
Felton remembered all too well. It was seared into him like the brands on the prostitutes who walked up and down Phrygia Walk.
There was nothing he could have done, nothing anyone in his position could have done. It was a pure accident that he was safe inside his activity suit when the airlock’s pressure seal failed. He loathed the indecision that had paralyzed him, watching his dad help his mom reenter her suit, putting her before himself. Yet in some ways her death was worse. He’d succumbed to the bends in minutes. It had taken her half a day.
“Is he awake yet?” a voice said.
“He’s coming to now.”
Felton’s eyes fluttered open. He was laid out on his back in the living quarters, one of his artistic creations posing luridly above his head. Levi and Castor knelt on either side of him. Blake stood in the passageway, eyes puffy and red as if he’d been crying.
Levi lifted an oxygen mask off his mouth and nose. “How do you feel, brother?”
Felton sat up and peeled his parched tongue from his palate. “Cut down to size.”
Blake handed him a cup of water. Felton dipped his fingers in the water and moistened his eyes. He swished the rest of the water around his mouth.
“That was some stunt you pulled,” Levi said. “Do you know where you are?”
“On the Marillion.”
“Yeah, but where?”
“The outer Belt.”
“What did you eat before the EVA?”
“Will you knock it off? I remember everything. I’m fine.” He handed the cup to Castor, who refilled it for him. “How long was I out?”
“About an hour. You never stopped breathing. You got a little frostbite.”
Blake wiped his nose on his sleeve and left for the cockpit.
Felton looked down at his spacesuit. The suit and his clothing over his lower back were shredded, and his exposed skin was red and raw. He tried to push himself up. His right hand, with the glove still on, adhered to the decking.
“We couldn’t figure out how to turn that one off,” Levi said.
Felton reached a finger in his mouth and poked his wisdom tooth. The magnets in his left hand turned on. Another poke and the magnets in both hands turned off. That was odd. The magnets were supposed to toggle on and off at the same time, not independently.
“Made carrying you inside exciting,” Castor said.
“If there’s one thing Felton’s good at it, it’s making the mundane exciting,” Levi said wryly.
Felton removed the glove and flexed his right hand. “I’m going to be on toilet detail till I die, huh?”
“Or until we pay off the ship lease.”
Those words danced like motes of dust before Felton’s eyes, their meaning manifesting slowly to his addled mind. Was it possible to receive such a windfall from one asteroid?
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking from Levi to Castor. “Be straight with me. How close are we to paying off the lease?”
“Closer than we were last week,” Castor said coyly. “A lot closer.”
“What was in that asteroid?”
Castor raised the rock sample with the broccoli bloom on the end. “Iron, nickel, and aluminum. I double-checked the metal rates. I conservatively estimate the next asteroid we send for collection will elevate us to the breakeven point. Every asteroid after that will be pure profit.”
“After Galactic Minerals takes their cut, of course,” Levi added.
Felton took the rock sample from him. In his bare hands, it felt solid, dense.
He rose to his feet and drifted into the cockpit, as if walking on air. He looked out the window at the asteroid, confirming it was real, that this wasn’t a continuation of the dream he’d just had. It was real all right, as real as the bar of rock he held.
He released a peal of boyish laughter. Visions of life after their mining expedition, resident in his imagination for so long, took on a new level of reality: returning to Ganymede, triumphant, the envy of all; traveling the solar system, living a life unbound.
“You really checked the metal rates while I was unconscious, Cas?”
“I did.”
“For all you knew I could have been dying, and you were counting up your riches?”
“A worthy cause you would have died for, too.”
Felton gave him a light-hearted shove. Levi walked up behind them, hands jammed in his pockets.
“You’ve done it, brother,” Felton said. “All the things you read about in your books, you’ll get to see them like you always wanted.”
“We’ll get to see them if you still want to go Sunward,” Levi said.
Go Sunward. It had been a popular saying for as long as Felton could remember, a rallying cry for those wanting to return to Earth to rebuild what a century of war and civil strife had destroyed. In one Jovian cycle, most highborns on Ganymede had emigrated, leaving the communes to be run by corporate transplants, often in extremis.
Earth was nearly everyone’s dream, but for lowborns it was a chimera. Levi’s ambitions to emigrate expanded to include Felton when their parents died, but they failed to take root in Felton’s heart. He was apathetic about putting down roots anywhere, as he was convinced endless toil was his lot wherever he ended up. All he really wanted was to not be bored.
“You don’t have to answer now,” Levi said. “There’s still a lot of work ahead of us. I’ll need to know before we set foot again on Ganymede. Think about it in the meantime.”
“What will you do, Blake?” Felton asked.
Blake’s eyes focused on him. While they’d been talking, he was interfacing with the ship’s computer, finalizing the asteroid’s flight plan. “I haven’t given it much thought,” he said.
“What about you, Cas?”
“First thing I’m going to do when I get back is visit the bathhouses.” Castor licked his fingers lasciviously. “Partake of the highborn fare.”
Blake made a face. “That’s a wise investment.”
“To each his own,” Felton said. He’d walked past the bathhouses numerous times out of curiosity. He’d never been a customer, and it wasn’t only because he couldn’t afford it. “Save a girl or two for me, okay?”
Castor popped his collar. “I’m not making any promises. This man will be in high demand.”
While they bantered, Blake turned toward Levi. “Congratulations, lad. Your mom and dad would be proud of you.”
“Thank you. We had Fortune’s favor.” He paused thoughtfully. “But that doesn’t mean our efforts didn’t make a difference.”
“Whose efforts, exactly?” Felton asked.
Levi’s face beamed. “It’s not my place to say.”
««««»»»» Their spirits rode high, and no one was in any frame of mind to rest. After sending the M-type on its way, they charted a course to the rendezvous point with their supplier.
Blake emptied the stockroom and prepared a blowout feast, made complete by two bottles of white wine they had been saving for such an occasion. Levi limited himself to one drink, but Felton was not so inhibited. They cheered on Blake and Castor, who waltzed up and down the main deck belting out Ganymedean drinking songs at the top of their lungs.
Felton picked up the wine bottle and freshened his glass. “May I top you off, brother?”
“No thank you,” Levi said. “I’ve had enough.”
“More for me, then.” Felton set down the bottle and clinked his glass on the table. “To Fortune! Better to be lucky than good.” He held the glass to his lips and drained it in one gulp.
“Easy, cowboy,” Levi said, taking the glass from him.
Felton belched. “You won’t be calling me that anymore. We’re leaving this line of work. Our time out here is coming to an end.”
“It is.”
Felton pulled Levi close so he could be heard over Blake and Castor. “Why are you so subdued, brother? Take a bow. You did it.”
“We did it,” Levi said. “As a crew.”
Felton shook his head. The wine made him effusive. “No. If it weren’t for you, I would have given up the grind long ago. You held us together. You kept us on course. I resented your methods. I grumbled and called you out in front of the others. I was wrong.”
“What about you?” Levi said. “Without you, we never would have gotten over the hump.”
“Stop it. There are scores of unemployed wranglers in Tros Station you could have hired to replace me.”
“But none of them are you, brother. I would have done anything to keep you on the crew. If you had demanded we mine the Hildas, I would have given in.”
“You would?”
“Absolutely, if the only other option was to split up. We’re family. That’s more important than anything. More important than going Sunward.”
Felton slouched in the folding chair and reflected as the last drink seeped through his nervous system. For better and for worse, Levi had stuck to him like glue after the accident that took their parents’ lives. He’d given up becoming a tradesman and gone to work in the mines. It was a difficult decision for any man on the cusp of a prosperous career.
Felton hadn’t made it any easier. He’d acted like a brute to his brother, as if he was to blame for the accident. He couldn’t recall ever thanking Levi for all that he’d done.
His head swam. The wine was coming back up—that and a whole lot more. He ran to the head to throw up.
When his stomach settled, he returned to the main deck. The dancing and singing had stopped. His shipmates stared at him in mock concern.
“What?” Felton said.
“The kid can’t hold his liquor,” Castor said as an aside to Blake, but clearly enough for Felton to hear. “I vote we cut him off.”
Blake clutched the wine bottle against his chest. “What a waste of perfectly good wine.”
Felton chucked a shoe at them. “You’re one to talk, old man. How many times did Levi and I have to drag your butt back to our place after a bender?”
“The best of us gets lost in the sauce. Losing your sauce, however…” Blake shook his head. “There’s no excuse for that.”
While they jeered and laughed, a buzzer on the console sounded. They had passed through a channel in the net-stream. Gaps in the net-stream were millions of miles wide in the outer Belt, far from grounded population centers.
Levi went to the console to acknowledge the alert. He scrolled through the ship’s feed. He grew still, then his face fell.
“What is it?” Felton asked.
Levi waved disgustedly at the feed monitor. The displayed item was formatted like a letter.
June 14, 2216
Dear colleague:
As you may have heard, Galactic Minerals Ltd. quietly has been fighting a class-action lawsuit brought in secret by representatives of the Artynia Collective investment group after the tragic events that occurred on Mars 2 months ago.
This morning, the Second Solar District Court unsealed the case records and announced summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. The Court has ordered GalMin to pay 305 billion credits in restitution to the victims of the tragedy. As of the last trading close, this sum exceeds the company’s market value many times over.
This is by no means the final say in the matter. The GalMin legal team has already filed for appeal in a higher court. While the appeal moves forward, however, GalMin must abide the Court’s order.
Thus it is with profound remorse that the Board of Directors has authorized the initiation of bankruptcy filings. As a result, all real and monetary assets controlled by GalMin are hereby frozen. Those assets include GalMin-owned properties and their acknowledged contents upon delivery to charterers, as well as expense accounts and employee credit accounts.
If the 305 billion credits in restitution is eliminated or reduced on appeal, the bankruptcy process allows said assets to be unfrozen on a case-by-case basis.
We apologize for this inconvenience. Per the terms of your charter, you are required to return all GalMin property in your possession to a licensed depot as soon as possible.
If you wish to report a grievance, please communicate it via the normal channels.
Best regards,
Trevor Amundsen, MBA, JD
Vice President of Operations
Galactic Minerals Ltd.
He dated the letter by the Gregorian calendar and signed with his full name and titles, as most Terrans did.
“What does it mean?” Felton asked.
“Galactic Minerals is going out of business,” Levi said. “They voided our charter.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Very,” Blake said soberly. “With the charter voided, we can’t run rocks in the Belt anymore. We can’t make money if we can’t run rocks.”
“It’s the same as failing to get in the black before the end of the charter period,” Levi said.
Castor scowled. “So they nullified our contractual obligations, which we’d all but met, and they took away all our profit potential.”
“But we’re so close!” Felton decried. “Can they do that?”
“‘Can they get away with it?’ is the question you should be asking. And yes, they can.”
“I know the charter forwards and backwards,” Levi said. “They’re within their rights.”
Felton reread the letter. How was it possible to lose all they were working toward in one fell swoop? The plainspoken words of the letter were a mocking answer to his incredulity.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “They’ve made millions from us.”
“On the flipside, they’ve been paying our way the whole time,” Blake said. He gestured at the table, laden with food and drink. “Even when we indulged, they didn’t quibble with the costs.”
“But they can’t just shred the charter when we’re this close to making some real money. No one would go to work for them if he knew that was part of the agreement.”
“I did,” Levi said.
“You knew this would happen if the company went under?”
“It was still our best shot at bankrolling a fresh start on Earth. How was I supposed to know they were being sued for 300 billion credits?”
“You’re the commander! You’re supposed to be the prudent one!”
Levi gritted his teeth and accepted Felton’s scolding. Blake and Castor stood silently, looking like they’d rather be anywhere but here.
Felton took a deep breath to rein himself in. “How come we didn’t hear about this until now?”
“Amundsen’s letter says the case was being heard in secret,” Blake said. “I presume that was to protect the company from market speculation. I don’t know what tragic events on Mars he’s referring to. Do you?”
Levi and Castor shook their heads.
Felton was at a loss for words. A cruel injustice was being perpetrated against them. He needed to know he wasn’t the only one deeply hurt by this.
“There’s no point in fighting it,” Levi said. “We have to comply with Amundsen’s order.”
Felton shook his head. “I won’t. Not until we exhaust all our options. Can’t we still make money for them? They should want us to keep working to help them pay down their debt.”
“It would take a hundred charter crews a hundred cycles to make them that kind of money,” Blake said. “At any rate, that’s not how the bankruptcy laws work.”
“I don’t care about the law! Where’s our copy of the charter? I want to see it.”
Levi opened a steel drawer under the console and removed a thin white binder. He handed the binder to Felton. “Knock yourself out. You’re only wasting time.”
Felton leafed through the laminated pages. “If you’re right, we’ve done nothing but waste time since we left Ganymede.”
Chapter 3
Nursing a headache, Felton read the charter cover to cover. He didn’t know legalese, but he knew airtight logic. Galactic Minerals had left them no recourse.
No one knew why Providence and Fortune smiled on some men and not others. It was a fact that they did, a fact as regular and unyielding as the speed of light or the law of gravity.
Why did highborns let their children mingle with lowborn children? To instill in lowborns the hope that attaining a higher station in life was possible, even though it wasn’t. There were exceptions, but they were few and far between.
Like a fool, he’d let a small part of himself be convinced they could buck the trend by leveraging their savings, time, knowledge, and industry. But that combination of assets still couldn’t beat plain old bad luck.
He left his capsule and went forward. His shipmates were gathered at the console. Blake was reading from the heads-up display:
“The courtroom was dumbstruck when the Honorable Ronnie Trevathan off the Second Solar District Court announced the judgment in favor of Artynia Collective et al. against Galactic Minerals: 305 billion credits. The judge reached the record-breaking civil judgment by adding the reported property damage to the profits the collective expected to make for the next 60 cycles. Payments to relatives of the victims accounted for less than 2 billion credits.”
“Victims of what?” Felton asked.
Blake paged through more news articles. “Looks like a Galactic Minerals charter crew sent an asteroid to Mars by mistake. The impact killed 2,100 people in a steelworker settlement.”
A satellite image of a remote canyon appeared. Misshapen structures lay half-buried in red-orange soil. Above the canyon, rays of ejecta surrounded a charred, smoking crater over a mile wide.
“Saturn’s rings!” Levi exclaimed. “To think a charter crew caused that.”
“If it was a charter crew’s fault, why did they sue the company?” Felton asked.
“Because the crew has no money.”
Blake pulled up the original article. “The judge cited Galactic Minerals’ negligence in properly training charter crews in the use of spacefaring vehicles and their equipment.”
“The training was good enough for us,” Castor said. “It was good enough for everyone except those guys, and the judge says the training was at fault?”
“Someone has to pay for that,” Levi said. “The judge was going to find the company at fault no matter what. This is the reason he gave.”
What Castor said got Felton thinking. “If Galactic Minerals’ negligence has adverse effects on everyone operating under their aegis, the rest of us should band together,” he said.
“To what end?”
“To be made whole. To get a piece of that 305 billion.”
Levi rubbed his eyes. “How?”
“By suing the pants off Amundsen and his ilk for leaving us in the lurch.”
“Really, Felton? We need to focus our efforts on what we can do for ourselves, not on what’s been done to us.”
“I am,” Felton said. “We can petition this loony judge, Trevathan. If he has a grudge against Galactic Minerals, he may want to stick it to them again on our behalf.”
“That would make you feel better, huh?”
Like an uncoiling spring, Levi picked up one of the folding chairs and smashed it on top of the makeshift table. A table leg split, and food and drink spilled onto the decking.
Levi continued in a raised voice, “Assuming the loony judge grants your petition, that doesn’t address the crew’s biggest need.” He dropped the chair, fixing his eyes on Felton. “Our supplies are running low and our expense account is frozen. We can’t make it back to Ganymede with what we have on hand.”
“We have the cruiser,” Castor said. “We can sell it and use the proceeds to buy passage to anywhere we want.”
“That’s the same as stealing. Any spacer with two brain cells next to each other will figure out we’re pawning someone else’s property.”
“What about the ship deposit?” Blake said. “They still owe us that. We could transfer the title for half the value of the deposit up front. That would give us some pocket money.”
“That’s not bad,” Levi said, rubbing his stubbled chin. “But then we’d have no ship.”
“What good is a ship if we can’t afford to stock it?”
It had taken Levi a Jovian cycle of scrounging and saving his wages to afford the ship deposit. The discipline that had taken and the trials he’d put himself through… Was all that for naught?
“We should hire ourselves out,” Felton suggested. “The Splendor attracts a lot of cross-Belt traffic. You know crew turnover’s a chronic problem for large ships going long distances.”
“It’s unlikely even a large ship can absorb all four of us,” Levi said. “The last thing I want is to split us up.”
“So what do we do?” Blake asked.
“We’ll rendezvous with the Splendor like we planned. When we get there, I’ll ask for Prescott’s blessing to shop around our services to his other clients.”
“We’ve dealt with Prescott a dozen times,” Castor said. “Why would he object to us looking for work?”
“Because our relationship isn’t that of customer and proprietor. We’re supplicants now. Would you trust a hungry spacer with no fuel and no money?”
Castor drew a ragged breath, the direness of the situation taking hold of his psyche. “You’re saying he’d turn us away, not even give us a chance?”
“That’s his right.”
“Bah!” Castor exclaimed. “Prescott’s rights. The company’s rights. What about our rights? You’re talking about dying, Levi. I didn’t sign up to starve out here.”
“It won’t come to that. I promise.”
“The Marillion doesn’t run on promises,” Castor said. “I don’t either.”
Felton regarded the remains of the feast. They’d eaten like revelers at a king’s coronation. The truth was they were paupers and hadn’t even known it.
“We’re not going to starve,” Blake said, sounding more assured than Levi. “Having no money isn’t the same as having no currency. We have our skills and the deposit, represented by the ship itself, to barter with. That’s more than the first spacers to come out this far had to leverage with, and they made do.”
“The last thing we need is to lose our wits,” Levi said. “The other crews know we’re in a spot and they’ll be wary of us. Any hint of disgruntlement could end our visit to the Splendor in a hurry. Be on your best behavior. Don’t give them an excuse to kick us out. If we think and act like vagabonds, we’ll be treated like vagabonds. If we think and act like dignified men, we’ll be treated as such. It’s self-fulfilling either way, so we may as well act like dignified men. Agreed?”
“Aye,” Felton and Blake said in unison.
“Aye,” Castor echoed with less enthusiasm.
Levi gave them their assignments. Blake and Castor carried out scheduled maintenance on the cruiser’s life support systems. Felton helped Levi swab up the mess on the main deck.
They worked in silence. Felton gathered broken pieces of glass in one of the community bowls they had served food from. Levi vacuumed up the spilt wine and water and threw it in the compost with the rest of the scraps.
“You all right?” Felton asked.
“I’m fine,” Levi said. “I got your attention, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t mean the mess. I meant losing Earth.”
“Oh.” Levi fidgeted with the vacuum attachments. “We haven’t lost Earth. We’ve been dealt a setback, that’s all.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
Levi turned off the vacuum. “What do you want me to say, brother? That I’ve had it and I’m ready to give up? I’m not giving up. I’m not going to pity myself like the riffraff we ran with in the commune, cursing Providence by day and praying to Fortune at night. We haven’t lost Earth. We’re going to keep trying. This isn’t the end, got it?”
««««»»»» The large swaths of blue, Felton had learned as a boy, were deep saltwater basins. White was water turned to vapor by the Sun except near the poles, where it was sheets of ice. Brown was bare ground and green was untended plants and trees.
Why did one half of Earth have so much more blue than the other half?
“Excuse me,” Blake said.
Felton stepped back and Blake swiveled the telescope. The firmament panned across the heads-up display, which mirrored the lenspiece’s output. He trained the telescope on a smaller object that was coming up fast.
The Splendor was a multi-hulled station. A dozen berths lined two wharves linked by a hexagonal concourse. Greenhouses and storage modules spanned the 70-foot beam.
The proprietor, Prescott, was a modern folk hero. A native of Titan, he’d been running supplies in the Asteroid Belt since before Blake, the oldest on the crew, was born. The secret to his longevity was loyalty earned from a fastidious respect for customers’ privacy.
Levi and Castor entered the cockpit. Castor’s face was drawn. Levi tuned the radio to the hailing frequency and fit the headset over his ears.
“Splendor station, Marillion, Hera class cruiser, designation 1337, merchant vessel inbound. How’s the weather?”
They heard the controller’s crisp voice. “Marillion 1337, Splendor station. Dark, dry, and clear. How’s rockrunning treating you?”
“Not at all, at the moment. Our ship owner went under.”
“You too? I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It could be worse. We could be gagging on salt fumes at the bottom of some mine on Ganymede.”
“Take heart. Providence and Fortune will favor you in your next endeavor.”
“Copy that.”
Felton rolled his eyes. It irked him to hear anyone, but Levi especially, making small talk over their abject failure.
“Marillion 1337, come left to heading 250 on the ecliptic and hold at 6 miles.”
“Heading 250, hold at 6 miles, Marillion.”
They waited through another transmission gap. “Marillion 1337, contact arrival control frequency 124.3, squawk 621. Be advised there’s another rockrunner outbound. Should be visible a couple miles off your port side.”
Felton pressed his nose against the cockpit window. A tiny cone of burning fuel streaked past, heading counter-spinward, slowing down to descend through the Asteroid Belt to the inner solar system. He lost the exhaust cone in the Sun.
“Frequency 124.3, squawk 621,” Levi read back. “Thank you, Marillion 1337.” He took off the headset and stood. “Take us in, Blake.”
“You got it.”
Six miles out, Blake received instructions from another controller to make final approach on Splendor’s 120th radial and dock to berthing node 12. Blake rolled the cruiser 90 degrees so their wings were parallel to the other docked ships. Metal grated on metal as the docking ring mated to its counterpart on the Splendor. The ring stress display went from null to yellow to green. Felton gassed the airlock.
Castor remained at the console while the rest of the crew headed for the airlock. “Aren’t you coming?” Felton asked.
“No,” Castor said. His face was drawn and he avoided Felton’s eyes.
Levi cracked his knuckles. “Come on, let’s go.”
Felton waited to speak until the inner hatch sealed with a hiss behind them. “Why’d you make Castor stay behind?” he asked.
“He’s a live wire,” Levi said. “He spoke earlier as if he was prepared to resort to violence.”
“He was only saying what we were all thinking.”
“Loose lips sink ships, brother. You know better than to give voice to such thoughts.”
“Do I?” Felton said with impudence. “Maybe I should stay behind, too.”
“I want you at Blake’s side. You’re less likely to stir up trouble if you have adult supervision.” He held up his hand to forestall further argument. “This isn’t up for debate. Trust my judgment. Please.”
They braced against the bulkhead as the direction of gravity’s pull shifted. They floated weightlessly in the null plane, the no man’s land between two contesting gravitational fields.
The outer hatch opened and a man, about Blake’s age but better groomed, stood in the berthing node with his hands clasped behind him. Prescott’s son-in-law. His face was supple and lustrous.
“How many are in the boarding party?” he asked. He had a Martian accent, lilting and guttural.
“Three,” Levi said. “Our fourth crewman will stay with the ship.”
The man studied Felton and Blake, getting their measure. “Very well. The proprietor would like to see you in his office.”
“All three of us?” Levi said, taken aback. In all their visits to the Splendor, this was a first.
The man nodded. “This way.”
The berthing node opened onto a crowded, well-lit concourse. Crews and workers flitted about, carrying supplies on trolleys and handcarts. Felton heard a variety of dialects, mostly Jovian and Martian. The heavy foot traffic caused them to bunch up.
“Business is booming,” Levi commented.
At the end of the concourse, Prescott’s son-in-law showed them into a sort of sitting room with six chairs and two small end tables. A second door opened and they entered a richly furnished office. Potted plants stood in the corners. A rug lay in the center of the floor. A skylight was set in the ceiling, the Sun positioned over its center.
Prescott, wiry and blurry-eyed, sat behind a long desk. He was flanked by two women on his left and a man on his right. His children, judging from the resemblance. They sat erect in high-backed chairs. The son looked upset, like he’d rather be somewhere else. The daughters were attractive for their age with fine hair, rosy cheeks, and full figures. They looked like the highborn women in Felton’s commune. Their father, on the other hand, had the look of a lifelong laborer: lean and hard. He’d worked for his wealth.
Prescott’s son-in-law took his place between the old man and his son. He made a small gesture with his hands, indicating they should speak first.
Sweat beaded on Levi’s forehead. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
Prescott’s eyes fixed on an imaginary point between Felton and Levi. “Likewise,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Although these eyes don’t see much, lately. Please sit.”
There were five chairs in front of the desk. Felton, Levi, and Blake occupied the middle three.
Prescott’s bloodless lips scarcely moved when he spoke. “The Galactic Minerals bankruptcy came as a shock to everyone. We had all heard of the accident at Artynia, but no one I have spoken to knew there was a lawsuit until the judgment was announced.”
“We were caught unaware as well,” Levi said.
“The courts out here were originally an extension of the corporations,” Prescott said. “They’re mostly fair, to their credit, but they go out of their way to protect a defendant’s identity, knowing how harmful a lawsuit can be to a company’s reputation.”
He coughed in his hand. “I can guess your circumstances, Levi. You contacted us, declaring your need for food and fuel. Since then, your expense account has been frozen. You don’t have the provisions to return to Ganymede, and you don’t have the credits to buy them.”
“That’s the gist of it,” Levi said. “I take it we’re not the first Galactic Minerals charter crew to visit since their bankruptcy hit the news wire.”
“As a matter of fact, you’re the second.”
“We run a business here,” the son said peevishly, leaning forward. “We’re not a charity, and we won’t be taken advantage of.”
“We’re not asking for charity,” Levi said.
“Michael,” Prescott said gently. His son sat back.
“What became of the first crew?” Levi asked.
“We granted them one day to plan their next move. When their time was up, we asked them to leave, and they left.”
Felton recalled the rockrunner that passed them during their approach.
The son-in-law spoke. “Rumor circulating among our workers is they gutted their ship and auctioned everything for a heroic dose of Pace.”
Blake grimaced. “That’s one way to save on food.”
“If only we weren’t short on fuel as well,” Felton said with a self-effacing smile.
“Was there no one they could make an arrangement with?” Levi asked. “Where both parties could profit?”
“Apparently not,” Michael said. “We’ll make you the same offer we made the others. You have one day to get your affairs in order. At the end of that period, you will detach and depart unless you have business to conduct. Are those not fair terms?”
Levi swallowed. “More than fair. Thank you.” He glanced at Felton and Blake, and stood.
“Wait,” Prescott said. He stood slowly, his joints popping. His daughter leaned forward in her seat, prepared to catch him should his legs give out.
“I shudder to think of where I’d be if no one spared me any kindness when I was starting out,” he said. “I’ll inform the other commanders about your situation. I’ll ask them, as a favor to me, to help you.”
Levi bowed his head. “Thank you, Prescott.”
They filed out of the office into the sitting room. Felton shut the office door.
“He’s aged a lot since we were last here,” Blake said.
“Michael’s asserting himself,” Levi said, plucking his shirt to circulate air around his body. “He’ll take over daily operations of the family business soon if he hasn’t already. With minimal involvement from his sisters, from the looks of it. Too bad he’s not as magnanimous as his father.”
“Who cares about the old man and his bratty kids?” Felton said. “What are we going to do?”
“There are nine ships docked to the Splendor besides ours. We’ll wait for Prescott to influence them and then pay each of them visit. Maybe one of them wants something that we can provide. Demand and supply.” He looked at Felton. “Don’t make any firm commitments until we’ve talked through it as a crew. Agreed?”
Prescott’s son-in-law stepped through the office door. He started, not expecting them to still be there.
Levi ushered them onto the concourse. “Let’s go.”
««««»»»» The Tartarus commander, bald and heavyset, reached up his left nostril and yanked out a tuft of short, bristly hairs. He examined them disinterestedly.
“I do need a wrangler and a mineralogist,” he said. “Mine are homesick. Couldn’t last one Belt cycle apart from their wives. I should have known better than to hire domesticated men. Husbands make bad spacers. I’m headed to Europa now to drop them off.”
He interlocked his fingers on top of his ponderous belly. “If I could take on your wrangler and mineralogist now, it would save me the pain of looking for new ones on Europa.”
Felton and Blake looked at each other. This lead was promising.
“For how long?” Blake asked.
“Standard contract is for one Belt cycle.”
“Could you take on two more? In addition to the wrangler and mineralogist.”
“I need two men, not four.”
Levi had said he wouldn’t split up the crew. What if this offer was the best they could get? Could the Marillion convey two men on short rations to Ganymede? If so, that only left the matter of fuel.
“Could you provide advance wages in the form of fuel?” he asked.
“I’d consider it for a reduced rate,” the commander said.
“How big a reduction?” He sensed Blake’s eyes searing the side of his head. This was more than Levi had authorized them to discuss. The first meeting was to gauge interest in negotiating a deal, nothing more.
The commander dwelt on the question, balancing Felton’s interest in making a deal against his own greed. “Forty percent I’d say is fair.”
“We can hash out the details later,” Blake said before Felton could react. “What would you charge to tow the Marillion to Ganymede, and to provide rations for us in the interval?”
“How much does she weigh?” the commander asked. Blake told him. The commander rubbed his chin. “Of course I’d do it if there’s money to be made. I’d need to run the numbers before I give you a quote.”
“Thank you for your time,” Blake said.
He stood abruptly and left the commander’s private quarters before Felton realized the meeting was over. Felton excused himself and went after him, skirting past the crew who were coordinating with Prescott’s workers to refuel the cruiser.
“What did you do that for?” he said as soon as he set foot outside the Tartarus. “He was ready to make a deal.”
“He still is, lad.” He moved aside for a passing clutch of workers. “If there’s one thing this neural implant has taught me, it’s the value of analog data.”
“I don’t understand,” Felton said. “Your implant can’t process analog data.”
“Exactly. Its input and output is limited to binary: ones and zeros, on and off, true and false. If it could decipher the human psyche, I wouldn’t be in this line of work, would you?”
Felton smirked. “I guess not.”
They walked to the last berthing node.
“My point is straight facts are secondary to perception at the negotiating table,” Blake went on. “How did Levi put it? Men treat you by how you act, not by what they know about you. The sharpest negotiators know the party least interested in making a deal usually walks away with more than what he came with.”
Felton knew that, but he hadn’t thought of it in those terms. “Even when we’ll settle for anything we can get?”
“Even then, because none of them knows what the other crews have offered us.”
“Which is next to nothing,” Felton said grumpily.
“They don’t know that.”
They reached the end of the concourse and entered the last berthing node. Blake knocked twice on the outer hatch.
A husky voice came through an intercom. “I was wondering when you would show up. The old man told me you were coming.”
Blake pressed the intercom button and introduced himself and Felton.
“Keegan Lockhill,” the voice replied. “Come in, gentlemen.”
The outer hatch opened and they entered the airlock. They crossed the null plane and the pull of gravity pitched behind them at a right angle. Blake jogged his head to balance his inner ear before going through the inner hatch.
They climbed 20 feet via rungs welded to the bulkhead. A man with a muscular build and spiked blond hair met them on the main deck. He led them to a compartment outfitted like a lounge with two upholstered sofas and a black leather chair set around a glass table spotted with cup ring stains.
Two men stood as they walked in: a short, stout man and a tall, slender man. Keegan, the Earthborn, was the former. He wore a knitted shirt open at the collar, displaying a five-leaf clover tattoo under a mat of curly gray hair.
Felton had seen tattoos like it before. The fourth clover leaf was analogous to Providence, the fifth to Fortune. A fair number of spacers believed Providence and Fortune were real and played a defining role in their success. On Keegan, Felton sensed smugness in the clover’s bold presentation more than anything else. Your gods favor me.
Felton knew Keegan by reputation only. He was the kind of spacer who formed the backbone of Prescott’s customer base: likely involved in illegal activity, but good luck trying to prove it. He didn’t put stock in credits, for their value was tied to the political games of bankers and bureaucrats. The only form of exchange he accepted was what he could see and touch—in other words, a cash-poor crew’s potential best friend.
“Welcome aboard,” Keegan said, arms spread invitingly. Four gemstone rings glittered on the fingers of each hand.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Blake said.
“It’s nothing.” He shook their hands, an archaic Terran custom. “Meet my officers, Luther and Cillian. My right hand and my left hand, if you will.”
Felton nodded wordlessly at Luther, their escort. The other man, Cillian, hung back slightly, declining pleasantries. A lidless bionic eye was set in his right eye socket.
They sat across from Luther and Cillian. Keegan dropped into the chair and rolled up his sleeves. “Apricot?” he said, reaching for a bowl on the table.
Felton declined as a matter of course. The apricots smelled fresh, lacking preservatives. The delicacy was notable for the wealth it bespoke, wealth some people spent their whole lives trying to accumulate.
Blake must have thought the same thing. “Is that real leather?” he asked.
Keegan rubbed his hands over the plush armrests. “As real as it gets.”
“Impressive. In my time I’ve only seen lab-grown cattle.”
“Who hasn’t?” Keegan settled back in the chair. “I took the hide in trade from a rancher in the New Asian hinterlands. There the cattle roam in herds—hundreds of head of real cattle—in prairie grass so deep you can’t see their legs.”
Blake smiled pleasantly. “That must be an awesome sight.”
“Why’d you leave it behind?” Felton asked.
“Why’d I leave Earth, you mean.” Keegan adjusted his sleeves again. “Economics. Where there’s want, there’s opportunity. There’s not enough want on Earth for my liking.”
“You don’t miss it?”
“No. Earth may fit some people’s ideas of paradise. Not mine. It’s too dull.”
“Our commander’s keen on migrating to Earth,” Blake said. “Are the rumors of renaissance true?”
Keegan waved dismissively. “Don’t believe everything you hear. Earth may be a land of plenty, but there are too many people to share it with. Too many people with loud opinions about what you can and can’t do. A man can’t take charge of his destiny like he can out here. He has to bend over to the authorities that other people, in their wisdom, put over him. If he has a mind to strike out on his own, he’ll just get picked off by a rival group.”
“Curtailing liberty is essential to the social compact,” Felton said. “It’s no different in the communes on Ganymede.”
“I’m not comparing it to the communes, ace. We have the means to live by our own rules.” Keegan reached in the bowl and popped an apricot in his mouth. “Now, what can we do for you?”
Blake spoke in a smooth, practiced voice. This was the fifth time he would deliver these remarks. “Well, our ship is the Marillion. It’s old, a third-generation cruiser, modified for rockrunning, chartered to us by Galactic Minerals. Her delta-V on a full tank is 22 miles per second. There are four of us on ship’s company. Felton here is our wrangler. I serve as pilot and navigator. Levi’s our commander. Castor’s our rock expert. We have few worldly possessions and no money.”
“I have no money either,” Keegan said. “I won’t fault you for that. Is this your first expedition running rocks in the Belt?”
“It was,” Blake said. “Out here running rock’s as close to routine as it gets for men like us.”
Luther crossed his meaty thighs. “When you send an asteroid for collection, how do you change its course?”
“Our wrangler attaches pion rockets to the surface,” Blake said.
“Fueled by antiprotons.”
“Of course.”
“Not an easy thing to come by, hey?” Cillian said. The silver iris in his eye rotated like a camera aperture, honing in on Felton. “How do you obtain them?”
“Between jobs we deploy a trap that filters particles out of the solar medium,” Blake said. “It’s best suited for deep space where there’s less chance of dust damaging it. We rarely spread it to its farthest extent.”
“Which is?”
“A million square feet.”
The pion rockets’ redeeming value struck Felton like a brainwave. He couldn’t contain himself. “We have dozens of rockets left over from our mining expedition,” he said.
“What do you reckon they’re worth?” Keegan asked.
“Not much by themselves. They’re disposable. But if you want to move heavy objects over long distances, there’s no better method.”
Blake hung his head.
“That’s one corner of the market we could expand into,” Luther said.
“We could,” Keegan said judiciously. “The real money in our industry’s always been in bulk shipping. Economies of scale and all that. And no Customs agents breathing down your neck.” He spit the apricot pit in his palm. “A day’s coming when trade beyond the Belt will be truly free. At the rate those simpletons on Earth are gaining power, they’re going to force a schism with the outer solar system. When they do, nothing will be off-limits for our clientele. The whole market will devolve to the shipper with the flattest rate per pound. There won’t be a niche left for men like us.”
“That depends,” Felton said.
“On what?”
“On what kind of men you are.”
A grin split Keegan’s face. “This one’s bright,” he said, indicating Felton.
Blake pursed his lips. “But not very sharp.”
««««»»»» Felton’s spacesuit lining consisted of three elastic layers, all of which the drill bit had ripped through. He cut away the mangled ends of fabric and cut six patches that would fit over the tears with an inch to spare all around. He backstitched the patches over either side of each tear and enclosed the new seams on the outermost and innermost patches. Then he hot-glued the seams and edges and spread the layers apart to dry.
In the capsule above, Castor dangled his feet and bounced a rubber ball in the corner. Felton set the spacesuit aside and picked up his shredded pack. The damage was more extensive but easier to mend.
When he finished, he picked the rubber ball out of the air.
“Sorry,” Castor said. “Can’t sit still.”
“You’re not bothering me.” Felton cranked his wrist and threw the ball against the bulkhead. It caromed to Castor, who threw it back underhand.
“Where’d Levi go?” Castor asked.
“He went to follow up on the leads Blake and I generated,” Felton said.
“Any of the crews show interest?”
“Just two, including Keegan Lockhill.”
“Keegan Lockhill the smuggler? Of Stardust fame?”
“More like infamy,” Blake said, joining them.
“You don’t like him?” Felton asked.
“Of course I don’t, but that’s beside the point.” Blake picked up Felton’s spacesuit and inspected his needlework. “I have reservations about dealing with such men as him. If we partner with him, we become accessories to any illicit activities he’s involved in.”
“No one’s caught him yet.”
“There are worse things than getting caught.”
“It’s not like we have options to choose from,” Castor said.
“We might. The Tartarus commander seems open to making a deal. And he’s headed for Europa. You couldn’t ask for anything closer to home.”
“Your home, maybe,” Felton said. “Some of us have no interest in going back.”
Blake intercepted the rubber ball and rubbed it between his palms. “Does that mean you’re going Sunward too?”
Felton shrugged. His brother had come so close to making his dream reality. How realistic was it to keep reaching for something when Fortune repeatedly slapped your hand away?
“Levi will talk to us before making anything final, won’t he?” Castor asked. “I’d feel better if I chose my plight over something I thought was worse.”
“You should feel better regardless. When has Levi not done right by you?”
The outer hatch opened and Levi walked through. He stopped in the passageway, cheeks dimpling. “Change your flight patches, boys. We’re Stardust crew now.”
Felton and Castor whooped and leapt in each other’s arms.
“Keegan will drop us off at the Galactic Minerals depot in Tharsis Port,” Levi continued. “There we can collect the ship deposit and find a new situation.”
“What does he want in return?” Blake asked.
“It’s as you suspected. He wants the antiprotons. He seems to think he can sell them to the electric utility on Mars to replace their aging solar and nuclear generators.”
“Can he?”
“How should I know? That’s his problem, not ours. He wants as much as he can get his hands on, so I told him we’d deploy the trap after the first jump. Crossing a quarter-billion miles of open space should net a fair amount.” He reviewed their dispositions. “The Stardust leaves in an hour, so I need to know straightaway if any of you have a problem with this.”
“I don’t,” Felton said.
“Me neither,” Castor said.
Levi looked at Blake. “What do you say, old friend? The crew stays intact. We keep the ship and our deposit. We even get a free shuttle hop to Mars, which brings us that much closer to Earth. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better deal.”
Blake bounced the rubber ball to him. “I trust you, lad. If you think it’s what we should do, I say we do it.”
The others went forward to make preparations. Felton lay back in his capsule and shut his eyes. He felt his hope rekindling, more for Levi’s sake than for his own. Maybe, just maybe, Fortune and Providence hadn’t rendered their final verdict yet.
Chapter 4
Clear of the supplier, the Marillion and Stardust matched vectors and fired their engines. They accelerated perpendicular to their orbital velocity, taking a steep angle relative to the Sun.
In the cockpit, Felton watched the needle on the fuel gauge tick lower while Blake worked the yoke. They would exhaust their fuel first, then dock to the larger freighter whose powerful jumbo engines would carry both ships to Mars.
A red diode on the console blinked on. “Fuel falling past 10 percent,” Felton said.
“Now we find out if Keegan’s word is as good as his bond,” Castor said, “or if the temptation to exploit a hapless crew is too much to resist.”
He had a point. When they ran out of fuel, Keegan could alter the deal at his discretion. They would have to accept whatever terms he imposed or be left adrift.
“I had Prescott witness our agreement,” Levi said. “If we don’t contact him from Tharsis Port, he’ll put the word out that Keegan and his crew are a pack of cheats, liars, and murderers. His smuggling days will be over. That’s enough incentive to keep him honest.”
“Who says there’s no gentlemen in the Belt?” Castor quipped.
Felton snickered. “Fuel passing 5 percent. Almost down to fumes.”
“I’m going to start throttling down,” Blake said. “The engines will overheat if they try to burn fuel they’re not getting.”
“Very well,” Levi said. He donned the headset. “Stardust, Marillion, be advised we’re burning through the last of our fuel now.”
They waited for a reply, but none came. Felton and Castor held their breaths.
“Stardust, Marillion, do you copy?” Levi asked, getting impatient. “Stardust, who’s minding the store?”
There was a scratch of static. “We’re here,” Luther said. “Acknowledge you’re almost out of fuel. We’ll fall in beside you.”
Felton laughed ironically. Castor shook his head.
“Ping us for our exact bearings,” Levi said. “We’re smaller and nimbler than you, so leave the docking maneuvers to us.”
“Okay.”
Moments later the fuel tank ran dry. With short, precise bursts from the thrusters, Blake inched the cruiser toward the Stardust. Felton’s eyes traced the freighter’s blocky lines as the hull expanded to all but swallow them up. Just one of its swept wings dwarfed their entire cruiser. The size advantage was a vulgar reminder of the inherent power imbalance of their arrangement.
They docked forward of the hold with a clang. They heard Keegan’s voice. “Marillion, Stardust, we’re showing capture.”
“Us too,” Levi said.
“I’ll await your confirmation before resuming the jump.”
Levi delayed his response to give Felton, Blake, and Castor an opportunity to speak up. They were at the point of no return. “Are we good to go?” he asked, cupping his hand around the mic.
“Yes,” Felton said. Blake and Castor nodded.
“We’re a go,” Levi said into the mic.
“Enjoy the ride, gentlemen.”
The Stardust engines fired, and they felt the Marillion lurch. In less than a second, the ship’s computer adjusted the gravitational field to compensate for the queer launch angle.
Suddenly the cruiser lurched in the opposite direction and their delta-V fell to zero. The Stardust engines were shutting down.
“Uh-oh,” Castor intoned ominously.
Levi quieted him with a look. He peered out the cockpit window, trying to spot the reason for the delay.
“Stardust, Marillion, did we just stop?”
There was no answer, only static. Minutes passed without a word of explanation.
“What’s the holdup?” Blake wondered.
“Keegan’s doing the math to see what he can get in exchange for our hides,” Castor said.
“One more comment like that and I’ll relieve you of duty,” Levi snapped.
Castor’s sarcastic smile vanished. “I’m only kidding around, Levi.”
“I’m not laughing. I’m all for using humor to blunt the sting of what’s happened to us, but there’s no place for a defeatist attitude on my ship, you understand?”
Castor looked down, hunching his narrow shoulders. “Aye.”
“Good.” Levi’s voice softened. “It’s important we have a clarity of purpose. We’re not working for profit anymore. We’re working for survival. I don’t like Keegan either, but I trust his motives. When we get to Tharsis Port, we’ll go our own way and we won’t have to deal with him again.”
Blake scanned the bulkhead. “Maybe we’re too heavy.”
“For a freighter that size?” Felton said.
“Yes. We’re heavy enough to move their center of mass. My guess is their computer couldn’t calibrate calculate a new burn angle quickly enough. Standard procedure in those circumstances is to stall the burn until a new flight plan is created.”
“If it were that simple, don’t you think they would have told us by now?”
Keegan finally came on the radio. “Sorry about that, Marillion. We’ve been doing some troubleshooting here. Looks like we’re going to have to use both ships’ engines to make this jump work. What’s the diameter of your fuel port?”
“Six centimeters,” Blake said. Levi relayed the size to Keegan.
“We have an adapter in that size. I’ll send Cillian out to siphon fuel to your tank.”
“Allow my wrangler to join him,” Levi said.
“That’s not necessary. It’s a one-man job.”
“I’ll feel better if one of my crew is there in case there’s a mishap on our side.”
Keegan paused. “Well, if it’ll make you feel better, I guess I don’t have a problem with it.”
Felton clapped his hands, overjoyed to have something to do. He hadn’t done anything useful since wrangling the last asteroid.
“No shenanigans,” Levi called over his shoulder. “Stick to our hull and stay out of Cillian’s way. I mean it this time.”
“No problem.” Felton tucked his coveralls and spacesuit under his arm and headed for the auxiliary airlock belowdecks, just off the mudroom.
Three minutes later he was on the hull. From the airlock, it was a short climb to the fuel port on the cruiser’s centerline, aft of the rigging gun but forward of the rear landing gear. He flipped open the fuel port door and waited.
Levi’s voice came over the radio. “How’s your suit?”
Felton inspected the seams on the patch on his side. “It’s holding up.”
A hatch opened under the starboard wing. Cillian emerged from within, a flexible 3-inch hose looped around his shoulder.
He moved like a gymnast. He kept his chest low and hips high, limbs in constant motion. He didn’t wear crampons or boots, but rather skintight leggings from waist to toe. When he reached a convex angle in the hull, he somersaulted and slid down facing the opposite direction, sometimes on his hands, other times on his feet.
In short order he bridged the docking ring to the cruiser’s hull. He drew up beside Felton and unraveled the hose.
“Brilliant technique,” Felton said. “You look like you were born to do that.”
“I’ve had a few helpful modifications along the way,” Cillian said.
Felton twisted his palm off the hull and wiggled his fingers. “Me too.”
He held the hose while Cillian attached the fuel port adapter. The fitting on the end of the hose threaded on next. Cillian tightened it until the gasket on the fitting was flush with the hull. Felton turned a screw on the port to open the fuel tank.
Cillian returned to the Stardust hull with the other end of the hose. The hose ran out of slack before he reached the docking ring, so he took the more direct route and jumped the gap between the ships.
“You’ll need to lower the gas pressure in your tank for the siphon to work,” Keegan said.
“Purging gases as we speak,” Levi said.
Cillian had to stretch the hose to reach the fuel port on the Stardust. The fitting on the end of the hose was crooked as he threaded it on the fuel port. It became stuck. He tried turning the fitting in the other direction to no avail.
“I can’t get it off the threads,” he said. “How about some help, hey?”
Felton remembered Levi’s warning. “Permission to come aboard?”
“You can’t do much good over there.”
Felton climbed onto the Stardust hull. He sensed a difference in his grip, neither stronger nor weaker. Warmer, perhaps. He was over the hold, which probably was climate-controlled.
“EVA time: 30 minutes,” Levi said.
Felton reached Cillian and steadied himself. “I’ll make slack. You make the attachment.”
“Right,” Cillian said.
Felton pulled on the hose, stretching it to its limit. Cillian jabbed the fitting with the heel of his hand until it jarred loose. Then he correctly threaded it on the fuel port.
“Let go,” he said.
Felton let go of the hose and scooted back to give him room to work. As he watched Cillian attach the hose, he felt a trembling through his contact points on the hull. He raised his head and looked around when he realized neither he nor Cillian could have caused it. He was about to dismiss it out of hand, but he felt it again, a shallow vibration directly under him, coming from the hold.
“Stardust, can you confirm engines and thrusters are idle?”
“Affirmative,” Keegan said. “Engines are idle and thrusters are offline.”
“What’s up, cowboy?” Levi asked.
Felton turned off his magnets and spread his hands over the hull. It was speckled with dings and dents, chipped paint showing the heat shield beneath. A hard rap with his knuckles produced the same sound. It was the sound you expected to hear when you banged a drum, which the hold was, in essence. It was the emptiest part of a freighter, even when full.
“I felt something,” he said.
“What do you mean you felt something? Like a maintenance operation?”
“Maybe.”
“Best practice dictates all ship operations unrelated to the EVA be deferred until personnel are safely inside,” Blake said.
“I know,” Keegan said. “That’s why I cleared the schedule.”
“Then what was it?” Felton asked.
“Here’s a clue, ace. We’re in the middle of an asteroid field.”
Felton couldn’t disguise the venom in his voice. “There are no asteroids in the Kirkwood gap, pal.”
“All right, let’s everybody calm down,” Levi said.
If a rock going at a relative speed of miles per second had hit the hull, everyone would have felt it, not just Felton. Something had caused the hull to tremble. It wasn’t him or Cillian, and it wasn’t an asteroid. It had to be something inside the hold.
Cillian gave the fitting on the end of the hose a final twist. He jostled it to confirm it was secure.
“All set.”
“All right, let’s move it along,” Keegan said. “Five-hundred-sixty gallons of fuel headed your way. That should be enough to finish this jump.”
Felton stewed quietly to himself. It would take ten times that amount of fuel, spread over several jumps, to make the Ceres transfer. Even more to catch up to Mars’s orbit. The reason Keegan wasn’t giving the Marillion its full allotment of fuel now was that giving it to them piecemeal kept them dependent on his provenance.
Cillian was watching him, studying him with that bionic eye. What did that eye see that a normal eye couldn’t?
Felton swallowed his apprehension and patted the hull. He thought of what he would ask this man if there weren’t five people listening to every word he was saying. What game is your boss playing, Cillian? What’s running loose in your hold?
He may not have known the answers to Felton’s questions. It depended on how involved he was in decision-making, how magnanimous and open Keegan was with his crew.
The hose twitched as the flow of fuel was cut.
Felton returned to the Marillion by the docking ring and unthreaded the fuel port adapter with the hose still attached. Across the gulf between the ships, Cillian reeled in the hose, looped it over his shoulder, and headed back inside.
Felton remained on the hull, lost in thought. He took in the massive freighter, the ovoid bulge of the hold.
What’s in your hold, Keegan?
“You coming, lad?” Blake said.
“Yeah.” Felton shut the fuel port door. He reentered the airlock and started the compressor.
“I’m in.”
The ships started their synchronized burn. Felton left his spacesuit in the mudroom and went topside. Blake was minding the engines, Castor the stress on the docking ring.
“Where’s Levi?” Felton asked.
“He took Keegan down to engineering to see the cyclotron,” Blake said.
“It sounded like something out there had you spooked,” Castor said. “What was it?”
“I don’t know.” Felton didn’t want to talk about it until he knew more. “Did Levi say we could move freely on the Stardust?”
“That’s Keegan’s call,” Blake said. “I didn’t hear him say we couldn’t.”
That was good enough for Felton. Wasting no time, he moved through the portside airlock. He crossed the Stardust’s null plane. Forward became up and backward became down. He climbed to the main deck. Except for the murmur of the engines, it was quiet.
He bypassed the lounge and wound his way aft through a series of sharp-angled hallways. He abandoned stealth and tramped aimlessly through the freighter. Worse than being found wandering around like a tourist by Keegan’s crew was being caught acting inconspicuous, like he had something to hide.
He passed amenities the Marillion crew would never dream of having: a dedicated mess hall, pantry, weight room, laundry. No wonder the Stardust was so big. But where was the hold?
A sharp, sour smell stopped him dead in his tracks. It wafted through an opening similar to the cruiser’s cockpit access.
He dropped through the opening into a corridor with metal lockers lining one side. The corridor ended in a double-sliding door restricted by a keypad. Keegan wouldn’t be any good at his job if he didn’t safeguard his contraband.
Before he could investigate the keypad, the door bolts retracted and the two door halves parted. Luther’s spiked blond hair brushed the top of the doorframe as he stepped across the threshold. He held a clear jug half full of water in his left hand. His right hand was reaching across his chest to put something in his shirt pocket.
He started when he saw Felton. He dropped his right arm to his side, both hands cocked back in a combative posture. Thickly knotted muscles rippled under his skin.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Felton cast about for an excuse. “I, ah, was looking for the head.”
“Doesn’t your ship have one?”
“Sure, but…” Felton clenched his thighs. “I bet yours is nicer.”
Luther smirked. “The head’s in the bow. That’s why it’s called the head.”
“Right. Thanks.” Felton sniffed the air. “Say, what’s that smell?”
“Vinegar.” Luther turned his back to Felton to conceal the keypad with his broad torso. Felton counted 10 button presses before the door bolts extended with a snap.
“Vinegar,” Felton echoed. “What do you use vinegar for?”
“We had a mold outbreak, so we scrubbed the bulkhead down here with vinegar. Prescott’s son wouldn’t let a moldy ship dock to the Splendor.”
“I never heard of a mold outbreak on a freighter.”
“This crew’s been around the Sun a few more times than you have,” Luther said smugly. “We haul cargo you’ve only seen in your dreams. So don’t waste my time with what you’ve heard and haven’t heard. Your experience is irrelevant here.”
“Now that you mention it, what are you hauling?”
“Nice try.” Luther pushed past him and advanced up the corridor.
“I thought we were one crew now,” Felton said to his back. “We should know what we’re getting involved in.”
Luther rounded on him. “Felton, isn’t it? A word of caution. We don’t answer questions. From anyone. It would behoove you to conduct yourself on the Stardust as if you were a guest. If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to shove off and find hospitality elsewhere.”
Cillian sauntered up behind Luther, carrying his spacesuit in a bundle on his hip. There was a red mark on his forehead left by the skull pad inside the front of his helmet.
“Luther! Bound for Mars at last, hey?” He snatched the jug out of Luther’s hand and jerked open a metal locker. “Having a chinwag with the fresh meat, I see.”
“Just reminding him not to poke his nose where it doesn’t belong,” Luther said.
Cillian stuffed his suit in the locker. “Noses have to poke somewhere, Luther. It’s their nature, isn’t that right?”
He lifted the jug to his lips and took a long draft, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His bionic eye trained on Felton.
“Isn’t that right?” he repeated.
“I suppose,” Felton said uneasily.
He kicked the locker shut. “That’s the trouble with spacers with long noses. They can’t help poking around as long as they’re attached to their owners’ faces.”
“What?” Felton said.
He sipped from the jug again. “I said the trouble with noses is they poke in places they don’t belong. It can’t be helped unless you cut the nose cartilage from its owner’s face. It can be done cleanly with a sharp enough knife.”
Luther looked annoyed. He shook his head and stalked off.
Cillian grinned toothily and watched Felton a minute longer. He left without saying another word. Felton waited to be sure he was gone, then headed back to the Marillion.
««««»»»» Blake gaped at him. “You want me to do what?”
Felton looked outside the stockroom to make sure they were still alone. He shut the door so they couldn’t be overheard.
“The hold door’s passcode is 10 digits, which means there are 10 billion possible combinations,” he explained. “Your neural implant can crack that in seconds.”
“I’m well aware of my abilities,” Blake said. He resumed stacking empty crates, from which rose the smell of stale vegetables. “I prefer not to use them to deceive others.”
“We’re the ones being deceived,” Felton said. “When I was on the hull, I felt something move. You remember. Keegan acted cagey when I mentioned it. Then when I went onboard, I smelled vinegar outside the hold door. They’re using it to mask whatever’s down there.”
“So what? It’s none of our business.”
“If they’re smuggling illicit goods, it is our business. You said yourself the law would classify us as coconspirators if Keegan was caught in a crime.”
“That doesn’t mean I go out of my way to look for incriminating evidence. Bless the Maker, lad! Do you know what’ll happen if we get caught? If you were this suspicious, you should have spoken up before we tied our fates to his.”
“I didn’t know then what I know now.”
Blake scoffed. “You know nothing, lad. All you have to go on is a funny smell and a gut feeling.”
“Look, you’re making it out to be worse than it is. The hold is at the end of a corridor that splits off from the main deck. All I’m asking is that you open the hold door. Then you can leave. I won’t need you after that. Unless one of them comes down that corridor at the wrong time, they won’t catch us.”
“I doubt it’s that easy. Men in Keegan’s line of work don’t last long by making it that easy.”
Felton changed tack. “Aren’t you the least bit troubled by the sweetheart deal Keegan made with us? It’s a lucky coincidence he values antiprotons so highly and we just so happen to have the ability to harvest them.”
Blake’s face screwed up. “What are you getting at?”
“What if the real reason he took us on was to set us up? What if he wants to get caught and he’s positioning us to take the fall?”
Blake wavered. Apparently he hadn’t considered that possibility.
“If any of that’s true, consider the cost of doing nothing,” Felton continued. “As long as we’re kept in the dark about what he’s doing, we can’t defend ourselves against accusations.”
He wanted to say more but held back. He’d given Blake a lot to chew on.
Blake leveled a finger at him. “The only reason I’m entertaining this is I know you’ll try to get into that hold whether I help you or not.”
“That’s right,” Felton said, although he hadn’t considered what he’d do if Blake said no.
“You know what Levi would say if you brought this to him.”
Felton snorted. “He’d kick my butt to Neptune.”
“And he’d be justified in doing so. I’ve known your brother his whole life. He’s always believed in hard work and doing things the right way. Even when it costs him dearly, as this trip has. You’re so much alike in that respect. Will stronger than iron.”
“So you’ll help me?” Felton asked.
Blake looked preoccupied. “I will.”
They quit the stockroom separately. Felton proceeded to the cockpit and busied himself with grunt work. Levi stood at the console directing the unfurling of the antiproton trap. The skeletal frame expanded in a great circle around the cruiser’s roll axis, the translucent membrane spreading like an insect’s wings.
Keegan looked on, sipping instant coffee from a mug, gemstone rings clinking on the ceramic handle. “Magnificent,” he said.
“Isn’t it?” Levi said. “The solar wind flows out from the Sun’s corona in waves. The antiproton yield varies depending on which part of the wave phase we’re in.”
“What’s your storage capacity?”
“Only 3 kilograms. Double that if we fill the accumulation chambers.”
Keegan switched his grip on the mug to adjust his sleeves. “Don’t say ‘only.’ Imagine how many nuclear reactors that can replace. And like solar, you have practically an unlimited supply. You don’t have to bother with mining and refining uranium.”
His enthusiasm rang hollow in Felton’s ears. “If antimatter could supplant nuclear power, they would have done it already.”
“You never know what technology those silly Terrans will turn on next,” Keegan rejoined. “They just might latch on to this as an alternative.”
“If they had any brains at all, they’d know this power is less stable than nuclear.”
“That’s a big if, ace. Remember who we’re talking about.”
Felton caught sight of Blake rising through the cockpit access. He moved toward the portside airlock and lingered at the inner hatch. Felton signaled discreetly that he would catch up. Blake nodded and boarded the Stardust. To keep up appearances, Felton remained stooped over his work for a little while longer.
A hand squeezed his shoulder. “You okay?” Levi asked.
Felton’s back stiffened. “Yeah.”
“What was that out there?”
Felton glanced at Keegan, who narrowed his eyes at him over the rim of his mug. He reflexively dropped his gaze and glimpsed Levi’s book about reef ecosystems lying open on the console.
He whispered, “You told me once there are predatory fish on Earth called sharks that patrol the shores and eat up smaller fish.”
“Yeah?” Levi drawled.
“But they leave some smaller fish alone because they swim through the sharks’ mouths and pick their teeth clean, preventing their gums from rotting.”
“Correct. They’re called pilot fish. They and the sharks have a mutual understanding. They benefit each other not by competition, but by cooperation. Now what’s that got to do with—?”
Felton spoke over him. “It’s not an equal relationship.”
“What?” Levi asked, becoming more flummoxed.
“What does it cost the shark if he breaks the agreement and eats the pilot fish?” Felton said. “He runs a slightly higher risk of gum disease. Big deal. Meanwhile the pilot fish gets eaten.”
Levi said nothing, his expression blank.
Felton took his leave. He strode across the cockpit as if on an errand. When he was out of sight, he slowed his step and ducked through the airlock. He climbed to the Stardust’s main deck, where Blake was waiting.
“This way,” he said. He led Blake to the hold, retracing his steps. He peeked guardedly around every turn, expecting to come across Luther or Cillian. But the way was clear. Felton was unsettled. Sneaking around the Stardust shouldn’t be this easy.
Don’t second-guess good luck, he told himself. Not when you’ve been dealt your fair share of bad.
They arrived at the deck opening and dropped into the corridor. “There’s the door,” Felton said, letting Blake move ahead of him.
Blake’s nose crinkled. “Is that what you smelled?” he asked. Felton nodded. Blake dried his hands on his pants and felt around the keypad. “That’s more than just vinegar.”
He pressed the 0 key ten times. He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the doorframe, facial muscles tensing as he tracked the electronic signals generated by his key input.
“It’s as I feared,” he said. “The passcode’s hiding behind an encryption. I can’t crack it.”
“Can you guess the passcode?” Felton asked.
Blake remained still as a corpse, only his lips moving. “It’ll take time. The software stretches the key input to 64 binary digits. The true number of combinations is an order of magnitude greater than your 10 billion.”
“How long do you need?”
“Searching all possible solutions would take 37 minutes. I could get lucky, though, and guess it within ten.”
“You better get started then.”
“I already have.”
Felton took position under the deck opening, straining to hear footsteps over the hammering of his heart. Much sooner than he expected, the door bolts retracted with a snap.
Blake swayed and straightened. “In you go.”
Felton stopped short. “You’re not coming?”
“Someone’s got to run interference in case Luther or Cillian finds us. Now go on.”
For some reason, the hold door had unlocked without opening. Felton wedged his fingers between the door halves and pulled them apart.
He turned sideways and squeezed through the gap across the threshold. Light from the corridor shone on three steps leading down to a grated floor and a row of large, stacked crates.
Blake slid the door halves shut, barring the light from the corridor. The metallic clank resonated long and loud in the hold, whose walls gave off a faint blue light.
Felton noticed the glow of a second keypad next to the hold door. Why would you install a lock on the inside? he thought.
He inhaled sharply, trying to identify this new odor not even vinegar could mask. It was like organic compost, but with stronger hints of human waste. He’d cleaned the head on the Marillion enough times to recognize that stench anywhere.
He descended the steps to the grated floor. He leaned against the crates while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The crates were made of a cheap composite material. There were no air holes in their sides to suggest living things, or formerly living things, were inside.
He tiptoed along the row, wary of disturbing the fragile silence. There was a gap in the crates against the starboard wall. He stepped around the crates and through the gap.
The smell intensified tenfold. His eyes watered. He could taste the rot and decay.
He raised his shirt to his nose and mouth to filter the foul air. Only his anticipation of what he may find kept him from retching.
He stopped. Before him sat a man, pale and gaunt, his back against the hold’s far wall. His chin rested against his chest, arms at his sides, legs akimbo.
Felton crept forward to get a better look. Is he unconscious or…?
His heart skipped a beat. There were more people, seven total, chained to the wall, seated or lying on the floor.
Stars above, what is this?!
To read more, here's the link to get Seeds of Calamity.
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