Belters

Chapter 14:

Chapter 14:AD 2100 Inner Belt – Daniel Frazier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweets shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ava disappeared without another word.

Jacob returned his attention to the reactor shielding container.

Sweets mumbled to herself while studying on the tablet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Should I ask?” He risked a question.

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

He only half played dumb this time. “Listen, lady, I’m only a rock pounder, I ain’t got none of that fancy learning…” Jacob hesitated before asking. “Why do I feel there is a but coming?”

Sweets shrugged. “They are behind this heavy panel to keep fingers away… safely away from danger. The human body abhors high voltage… If we slip, we will be dead. Also, if the rods pull out and we can’t lower them…”

“What?”

Sweets snorted a sick laugh, “Boom, or maybe only a meltdown. Either way, we die.”

“We will be dead soon, anyway.” The timer kept a steady pace.

“My point…” The panel free, Sweets pushed it to Jacob’s waiting hands. “Time for something drastic, I think.”

Jacob watched as the woman eyeballed the internal workings of the unit. For him, the interior was a mass of pretty lights and undistinguishable components. It would be a deadly gamble for him or Ava to try any of this.

“Here goes nothing.” Sweets held her hand dangerously close to the glowing innards of the control box. A cold sweat dripped from the tip of her nose.

Jacob didn’t hesitate, “Wait… Maybe I should be the one to stick my fingers inside that damn thing.” His guts tightened as soon as the words finished.

Sweets shook her head and chuckled. “I’m not sure now is the time for misplaced gallantry or machismo… I am capable of doing this myself.”

“You misunderstand, this is all about logic. If you fail, we all die. You and I both know Ava or I are not going to figure this damn problem out. However, if I do it and die, you have a second chance to try again… after…”

“You’re dead.”

Jacob forced a weak chuckle. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” He still had plans for a peaceful death if he had a choice.

“I have to admit, your logic makes perfect sense, even if it rubs me the wrong way. Okay, cowboy, you get to play hero.” Sweets pushed away from the exposed unit. “You need to press right here… and touch nothing else.” Sweets pointed at a clear hunk of plastic that looked harmless enough. The blue, glowing rods surrounding the target all looked killer.

“Or else…”

“Yes. Or else…”

Jacob took a deep breath, stalling. “I have to ask… How many volts we talking about?”

“Enough to push a spaceship…”

“Thanks… I figured as much.” He moved to push where she told him.

Margaret’s words caused him to pause. “Besides, it isn’t the volts that kill, it’s the amps.”

“Great, I’ll try to remember that.” Left hand braced on the panel, Jacob pushed his right hand where Margaret told him too.

His body lit up with fire as the voltage coursed through him from a live wire he slipped and brushed against. A screaming reached his ears, but it couldn’t be his voice. His muscles seized at the jolt. He stopped breathing, body one giant spasm.

In all his life, he’d never felt the pain that he did for that split second before he was thrown off the hot circuit and bounced off the far bulkhead, more like a rag doll than a broken human. Thankfully, somewhere between electrocution and impact, he lost consciousness. He was wrong, death was extremely painful.

AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil

The ship left Ceres Station and all the drama between the factions on the docks. Lea wanted to learn more about the riot and the strong-arm tactics of the corporations to shut down dissent, but right now, she didn’t dare search for any news about the incident. Chances were high she was monitored.

She wanted to corner this Doctor Abe and choke some information from her in private, but there was no way that might happen any time soon. Due to her rash actions, Lea was committed to the journey now. No matter the cost. If she caused too many problems with the mission, she might be locked in her quarters, or worse. The deep dark of space was a large place, and easy to hide a body in.

As a last-minute addition to the crew, the chances were good she never made the manifest listing the passengers of the Virgil. In a way, that was good. She would be safe if the people after her were other than FlyRight.

If the conglomerate was the one behind her recent heartaches, Lea literally walked into the lion’s den with less than a stick for protection. That wasn’t completely true. The woman was not without a few skills to protect herself. Hopefully, she would not need to put them to the test. Space, after all, was not her prime element.

The Virgil was huge compared to the scows she’d traveled on in the past. This one was a design she’d not seen before. In truth, she hadn’t seen outside the skin of the ship. Once Master Baal approved her joining the expedition, she was hustled into her small private quarters. Larger than anything she had on the Conveyor or the lift into orbit. At less than nine square meters, it was still larger than what she expected. This family ship must be made for the long hauls. That was the only explanation for such extravagant use of space.

Her few things stowed, the time came for her to explore the ship. If there was any hope to discover what this Doctor Abe played at, she needed to know what obstacles lay before her. The palm of her hand opened the sliding door from her quarters, and right outside stood Tian, ready to key the intercom. Both took a reflexive step back as their noses nearly touched in the exchange.

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard you made the ship.” Tian started in zer voice filled with youthful exuberance.

“I can hardly believe it myself…” There was no lie in that statement.

Tian prattled on, “If they didn’t tell you, you’ll need to make any last-minute calls or data queries within the hour. After that, all coms will be censored by the captain and Doctor Abe.”

“What the hell?”

“I know, right… It all sounds so mysterious. Just like a spy movie.” Tian grabbed Lea’s arm and pulled her from the safety of her quarters.

Lea had worked in the dark before when a ship killed all coms, but it normally was some sort of research mission or, worse, a paramilitary vessel. However, those were always run on a corporate ship where the captain was god personified. On this family ship, it would be hard to keep secrets of any kind.

Lea whispered while they walked down the corridor alone. “Do you know anything…? Do you have any idea what we have gotten mixed up in?”

“Sorry… No… At least we have each other.” Tian remained too happy, like this whole experience was exciting. People normally thought naïve ideas like that right before the screaming and dying started.

“We need to find out what the hell is going on.” Lea struggled to get the words out. Tian was all right to pass the time with, but her need for constant contact would only make Lea’s work all the tougher.

“Have a little faith… I’m sure we are on the right path. Something larger than life put us here. Everything happens for a reason…”

The weird clichés worried Lea nearly as much as the puzzling situation she was forced into.

“Let me show you around. The galley is huge.” Tian yammered while giving her the grand tour. How the youngster learned so much in such a short amount of time was beyond Lea. The programmer might be a better source than she thought.

Despite how cheerful the crew seemed, the passengers didn’t share their enthusiasm for being torn from their lives. No matter how Lea sliced it, this was going to be a long trip.