Belters

Chapter 13:

Chapter 13:AD 2100 Inner Belt – Ceres Station

The flashing pink, blue, and purple LED lighting cast painful shadows in the narrow corridors. The majority of the station-installed white lights had been disabled by the locals. They must have felt it helped the ambiance, or at least helped to hide the squalor, with the constant darkness found underground.

Like the red-light districts of old Earth, Lea knew the colors shouted advertisements for services rendered. The given professions practiced by those people, hidden in the privacy gained behind closed doors. The sin of others was a little secret everyone knew but few openly discussed. Even in space, the prudish behavior of Earth couldn’t be shaken. The few were always ready to limit the freedom of the many. Anything to control the actions of others.

The oldest profession thrived throughout the solar system. Lea shook her head. She had no reason to judge, given her vocation. What she did for a living was nothing to brag about.

The neighbors and their habits didn’t bother her. She needed a place to hide. Now she searched for the best place, where few questions were asked and fewer answers given. Long ago, the poor learned to keep their mouths shut in order to survive. The mantra, snitches get stitches, never changed.

The glowing blue lights of three Zs was her clue she had found what she needed. A place built only for sleep. The racks offered inside would be small but relatively clean, hopefully with few bedbugs showing up for a free meal.

A woman in her late forties sat in a plastic rocker, her gray hair pulled back into a tight bun. She smoked a chrome pipe. The undeniable smell of cannabis was thick in the air, an outdated mode of recreation if there ever was one. Eatables had taken the place of ragweed decades ago. Most only smoked the s**t for sentimental reasons.

“You need a room?” the woman asked before Lea reached her. A ring of smoke circled her head like a halo.

The Earth woman nodded. No need to chitchat here. Time was money, and Lea was keeping her away from her smoke.

“I can help you out then… if you can pay, of course.” The tip of the pipe pointed Lea’s way.

Lea held out her arm so the woman could scan her credit.

The impossible happened in an instant. The transfer failed, a red light flashed declined.

Lea’s heart skipped a beat.

“Sorry, honey… You got cash?” The older woman pointed to the red word. Tapping the screen on her arm with the pipe tip.

“That can’t be…” For once, the normally nonplussed Lea found herself gobsmacked. Fear welled from deep inside her.

She had given the old woman the dark web-hosted numbered account. Her most secure, secret, and private stash of get-out-of-town funds. It should have been untraceable by anyone. Even the strongest government or corporate hackers should be kept at bay. It was one of the places she felt her savings safe from unwanted intrusion, the account she felt the most secured. “Are you sure?” Lea asked.

The woman tried once more with the same rejected results. “Sorry, dear… maybe there is a problem with the system.” She cleared her throat. “Sometimes they have glitches… Out here, the net can run slow…”

Bullshit, Lea thought. Someone had done the unthinkable. They’d hacked the unhackable. FlyRight or some other unknown player f****d her royally and didn’t even bother with a kiss good night. “I’m sorry… I need to go.” The dragon lady Doctor Abe must be behind it. There was no other explanation. If not Abe, then who? Someone screwed her, and they were going to pay.

“You shouldn’t. Now is not the time for a single woman to go wandering about the station… alone.” Lea ignored the stress-filled warning the woman called after her.

Her mind was thousands of kilometers away on Earth, specifically San Francisco. She flipped from one secret account to another, with the same results each time she checked a different place to hide her hard-fought-for earnings. Lea’s pace quickened with each account she checked and found drained.

Back in the CBD, perhaps she was the target after all. Someone forced her to run from Earth so they could steal a goodly portion of her life savings. For once in her life, fear and anger drove her reactions. There was no time to plan her next steps. Her time grew shorter by the tick of the clock.

For the better portion of her life, Lea considered herself so clever. Always one step ahead of the competition, never the victim of crime but the perpetrator. She was the cause of bad things happening to people, never the target. In an instant, her world view had been shattered. The impenetrable firewalls she constructed between her private life and her career of choice had been torn down by an unseen assailant, and now she found herself destitute and one hell of a long way from home.

Emotions flooded her mind. She wanted to cry, shout, and scream all at the same time, but she couldn’t waste the time. She needed to reach the Virgil, the ship that carried the FlyRight crew.

Any normal time she would have noticed the shacks that made up the businesses along the Circus strip, all with lowered roller curtain doors locked tight. People huddled in the dark recesses of the bars that never closed, the garish lights turned low, the blaring music silenced. For once, the Circus lay in silent slumber. Beyond surprising for the place that never slept.

What did catch her attention was a gray-haired old man, dressed in filthy white robes. He held up a sign. “The End is Near.” It looked written in blood.

Lea whispered to herself, “When I catch the bastards, yes, it is.”

Armored and armed security personnel patrolled the streets, devoid of the normal throng of partiers stumbling from one bar to the next. So focused on her current problem, Lea didn’t even notice something odd was happening on the Ceres Circus. The s**t was about to hit the fan.

Her progress was stopped when she reached the docks. Met with a wall of turned backs, Lea was stopped well short of her destination. A mob of locals had gathered. Lea needed to climb a recycle bin to discover the problem. From the added height, she spotted the line of power-armored security forces facing off the crowd. The banner held high in the front ranks announced the problem. “Strike” was the only word scrawled on the two-meter-wide banner held between two poles.

The line of clear riot shields and shock sticks had stopped the advance of the mob onto the working portion of the docks. The advance to the line of ships’ umbilicals might be stopped, but the results were the same. All traffic to the outgoing crafts was halted. Lea was too far away to even see if the Virgil was still where it should be. If it left early, she was even more screwed.

The public announcement system boomed a warning, “You are in violation of station regulations. You are gathered without a permit. Disperse or face the consequences. You have no right to assembly. Go home before we are forced to take action. For your own safety, we ask you to halt this illegal action.” The voice kept repeating the pleas for sanity to regain. From the chants of the crowd, there was no reason to believe they cared what the voice said. Any normal person could see violence was about to break out.

Freedom of speech and the right to assemble were quaint notions killed long ago by a population more bent on public safety than freedom of anything. When it was deemed that hate speech should be limited by force, if necessary, it wasn’t long before those in control harnessed the newfound power and curtailed all sorts of dissent as hate speech. All it took was a new definition of hate. Simply disagreeing with the powers-that-be became hate speech and was banned.

On Earth, censorship became the new norm, all in the name of safety. None bothered to ask who the restrictions helped most or protected more. With each stroke of the pen, the public gave up one right after another. Soon, if the rulers had their way, even thinking the wrong thing could be cause for arrest. Uttering a hateful word could already land a person behind bars, or disappeared for reeducation. All in the name of public safety and harmony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pair stopped talking before she reached earshot.

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

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

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

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

“Your name Lea Roy?” Master Baal asked.

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

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

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

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

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