Battle in the Belt (Stark Raven Voyages Book 3)

  Battle in the Belt

  By Jake Elwood

  Copyright 2015 by Jake Elwood.

  This is a work of fiction. A novella. Totally made up. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, asteroids or space stations is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  A clank echoed through the bridge of the Stark Raven as her landing struts connected to a steel docking plate mounted on the surface of asteroid CER976. The asteroid, a worthless lump of rock some two kilometers in length, served mostly as a stable point of reference. The real place of interest in the area was Xiao Station.

  Liz Jones leaned back in the pilot's chair and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, sighing in quiet relief. They were in the asteroid belt, just over a billion kilometers from Saturn, far enough that their pursuers would never find them. Best of all, the passengers who had crowded the ship to an unbearable degree were finally, gloriously leaving.

  She could hear the tramp of booted feet and an excited babble of voices as more than a dozen people trouped through the little ship heading for the ventral airlock, and her lips peeled back in a tight grin. The Raven had six tiny cabins, which meant adequate space for her three human crew and up to three passengers. The fourth crew member, a robot named Rhett, didn't use a cabin, but he took up enough of the scant remaining space that the ship had felt crowded when they left Hera Station back in Saturn's rings with two passengers on board.

  When they'd picked up a distress call on the fringe of the belt and taken on nine frazzled castaways from an escape pod, the little ship had begun to feel like a sardine can. Not that Liz had ever seen canned fish. She'd never seen Earth, but she understood the idioms of the planet well enough.

  At that moment Earth with its billions of people sounded like a nightmare to Liz. After a week of hot-bunking and endlessly bumping elbows with the passengers she was entirely fed up with her fellow human beings. The passengers were nice enough, but they were ALWAYS THERE! The only time she was ever alone was in her bunk, and even then it smelled of Carmelita's rose perfume.

  A gloved hand landed on Liz's shoulder, and she jumped, then lowered her hands reluctantly from her eyes. A young man with a wispy dark moustache stood looking down at her with a shy smile. She racked her brain for his name. Alonso? Edward? Probably Edward. He was already in his vac suit, ready to leave the ship. His helmet was under his arm.

  "I wanted to say goodbye," he said, his voice soft and earnest. "And to thank you for saving us. I know it hasn't been easy for you having all of us on your ship."

  She opened her mouth to deny it, shrugged instead. "It's all right."

  "However bad it's been here on the Raven, he said, "it was much worse in the escape pod. Thank you."

  Some of her irritation faded away. It had been building for a week, so there was plenty left over, but she managed to smile up at him. "I'm glad we could help you."

  "God keep you safe." He smiled again, then hurried away, lifting his helmet into place. Liz swivelled her chair around and watched the bridge door slide shut. For the first time in seven long days she was alone in a room so big she couldn't touch two walls at once. It was marvelous.

  The door slid open once again, and a middle-aged couple in fancy designer space suits leaned in. They had their helmets on with the visors retracted, and she could see a narrow slice of their genial faces. Gavril and Philomena were paying passengers who'd been with the ship since Saturn. Ever since the rescue they had endured hot-bunking and extreme crowding with cheerful good humor, and they hadn't even asked for a refund.

  "You got us here safely, Liz," Gavril said. "Thank you."

  "It's been great," Philomena added. "I've been writing the kids about you. You're an inspiration to the women of Earth. People still think space is a man's environment, but broads like you and me are showing them differently, right?" She winked.

  Liz smiled in return, surprised to find that her smile was genuine. Only hours before she'd indulged in a fantasy of stuffing both of them out the airlock and leaving them to drift in a hundred-year orbit around the sun. After all, they'd paid in advance. Now she felt almost misty-eyed as the door slid shut once again. She wouldn't actually miss them. That was going too far. But having them on board wasn't so bad.

  When the last passenger was gone the crew convened on the bridge. James Chan, the captain, plopped himself into a seat and stretched. "Sweet Buddha," he said, "the ship feels huge all of a sudden."

  "I know what you mean." Joss, at twenty the youngest crew member by a decade, did a pirouette with her arms outstretched. "See that? I didn’t hit a single person!"

  Chan chuckled. "More to the point, we're finally below the design parameters of the air filters." He sniffed theatrically. "I barely smell feet at all."

  "Next time we get a distress call," Liz muttered, "let's ignore it." When the other two gave her startled glances she scowled. "Okay, I don't mean that. But let's not take on any more passengers for a while."

  "That sounds good to me," said Joss. "Maybe we can pick up a small cargo." The Raven had very little cargo space, but sometimes people needed documents transported, or a few kilograms of precious metals. She turned to Chan. "Do you mind if we don't clean up the ship for a little while? I'd really like to go shoreside."

  Liz snorted. "I don't care if he minds or not. I've already booked a room at Franny's. I'm leaving in a few minutes, and I'm not coming back for three days." Franny's claimed to be the best hotel in a hundred thousand kilometers, which was less impressive than it sounded, as it was the only hotel in a hundred thousand kilometers. Still, it was quite a place by any standard. The rooms were huge, there was a spa that was famous across the belt, and there was even a swimming pool.

  Chan grinned. "I think a little shore time is just what the doctor ordered." He looked around the bridge. "I love the Raven, but I could use some time away myself." He turned to the last member of the crew. "Will you be going ashore, Rhett?"

  The gold and black butler robot shook his human-like head. "I am satisfied to remain on the ship, Captain."

  "Well, let me know if you change your mind." Chan stood. "I'm going to go and see if anyone stole my last pair of clean socks. I think that Da Silva guy took some of my underwear." He walked off the bridge, shaking his head. "What kind of a person steals underwear, for pity's sake?"

  Liz was the last to leave the ship, checking the status of every system from her console on the bridge. Finally she turned to Rhett. "You'll keep an eye on things while we're away?"

  "Certainly, Madame."

  "You'll call me if anything important comes up?"

  "Of course, Madame."

  "You have to stop calling me Madame."

  "Very well, Ma'am."

  Liz rose from her seat. The robot seemed content to stand in one spot at the side of the bridge and not move until the humans returned. She had a sudden mental image of him waiting until he was alone and then putting on a dress and dancing to show tunes. She suppressed a rising giggle. "Are you sure you're okay here by yourself?" She felt foolish as soon as the question left her mouth.

  "Perfectly fine, ma'am. Thank you for your concern."

  She stared at his blank face with its glowing red eyes. Was there a person, a personality behind that bland mask? Conventional wisdom said not, but she'd never met a robot quite like Rhett. "All right," she said at last. "But I think you need to get out more. See some sights. Party a little. It might help you be less stiff."

  "I have a polymer body," Rhett replied smoothly. "Stiffness is inherent to my nature."

  Liz peered at him. "You know, Rhett, if I didn't know better I'd swear you just made a joke."
/>
  Rhett didn't reply.

  "Well, nobody does deadpan like a robot. I'll see you in a few days."

  "Enjoy your shore leave, ma'am."

  She suited up and headed for the ventral airlock. The aft lock was more comfortable to use, but it wasted a lot of air. The ventral lock, set in the ship's central corridor, required her to bring her knees up to her chest and wriggle into a barrel-shaped space. It was awkward, but it wasted no more than a cupful of air when the outer hatch dropped open beneath her.

  The Raven's artificial gravity field propelled her downward until she was below the skin of the ship. She fell into weightlessness, rebounding from the steel surface of the docking platform. There were no facilities on the platform. It was simply a stable place to moor a ship.

  Liz got a boot magnet against the platform and straightened up. Half a dozen ships were in sight, some moored to the same platform as the Raven, some jutting over the nearby horizon. She clomped her way to the edge of the platform, put a foot onto the rocky surface of the asteroid, and pried the other foot free. That sent her drifting away from the asteroid. She squirmed around until her body was parallel to the landing platform, then touched the throttle of the thruster belt strapped around her hips.

  The platform streamed past, and she tilted her body to follow the curve of the asteroid. Another platform passed beneath her, then a third. At last she cleared the bulk of the asteroid and saw Xiao Station before her.

  The center of the station loomed about a kilometer from the asteroid. Xiao was a cable station, a habitation moored to more than three kilometers of cable with a counter-weight on the far end. The station and the counterweight spun around each other endlessly, the centrifugal force giving an artificial gravity. The spin made cable stations a nightmare to moor to, so Xiao Station had a docking chamber at the center of the cable.

  The docking chamber was a silver ring a hundred meters across, open to vacuum. Finding the exact point of rotation was a near-impossibility, especially as people and materials came and went or moved up and down the cable. The docking chamber was off-centre by fifteen meters or so, which made the wide circular opening on the near side seem to wobble as Liz approached. Exact center was somewhere within the hundred-meter opening, giving Liz a perfectly stationary target to aim for. She angled her body, gave her rockets a little spurt, and let momentum carry her forward.

  The counterweight was to her left, a vast steel net full of boulders swinging majestically through the void. To her right was the station. At this range the cable was invisible. The three sections, linked by an enclosed elevator shaft, seemed to loop around under their own power.

  The outermost section, known as "A-Section," had Earth-normal gravity, she knew. That was where she would find the pool, the casino, the spa, and the bulk of the hotel. The industrial heart of the station was in A-Section as well.

  B-Section was a smaller habitat a third of the way from A-Section to the docking chamber. C-Section, the same size as B-Section, was another third of the way along, much closer to the point of rotation. Since centrifugal force varied in linear fashion with the radius of rotation, the apparent gravity in B-Section was two-thirds of a g. In C-Section it was one-third g. Prospectors who had spent long months in microgravity would conduct their business in the offices set up in C-Section. If they wanted to acclimate to a full gravity, they could spend a few weeks in C-Section, then a few weeks in B-Section, before moving at last to A-Section and taking on Earth-normal weight.

  From Liz's perspective the habitats were three gleaming white boxes in a perfect line, widely separated, moving like dancers in a stately formation. They would complete a full circle every ninety seconds or so. The Coriolis Effect would be significant, but far less than what she'd encountered in the smaller fast-spinning ring stations.

  She made tiny adjustments as she crossed the gulf, each one adding to her momentum, until at last she had to squirm around, point her feet at the docking chamber, and brake. A good propulsion system would include a braking rocket mounted on the top of the helmet, she decided. Maybe sprouting directly from the forehead of the suit, so you could keep your eyes on your destination as you braked. She wondered if she could patent the concept. Patents didn't mean much this far out, but back on Earth they were a pretty big deal.

  The docking chamber loomed below her feet and she abandoned her daydream, focusing instead on her landing. The edges of the opening and the far wall were padded, she was amused to note. Not everyone had the basic skills of suit navigation.

  One last touch of her rockets sent her drifting into the docking chamber as delicately as a mote of dust in atmosphere. The chamber was nothing more than an open steel can, the back wall liberally dotted with handles, the padding scorched here and there by newbies who had triggered their suit rockets too late. Liz bumped feet-first against the far wall, letting her legs buckle so she didn't bounce off. The wall turned slightly against the soles of her boots, turning her body. A handle came into range and she grabbed it.

  The lateral motion of the handle brought her sweeping around in a gentle circle, and her feet began drifting outward, or "down" as she would think of it for the duration of her stay. She had a semblance of weight now, but it was minimal. She let go of her handle and let herself drift down to the next grip, and the next. Soon her feet were resting on the inside of the ring, the "floor" of the docking chamber.

  There were no stairs down to the roof of C-Section. Instead she put on a harness and used a giant carabiner to clip herself to the fat steel cable that formed the spine of the station. She clambered through a little hatch in the floor of the docking chamber and let herself fall.

  At first her progress was quite slow. The safety line connecting her to the carabiner stretched out at an angle of almost 45 degrees from parallel to the cable. The angle slowly reduced as she descended. Her weight increased and she fell faster and faster. The carabiner scraped against the big cable, eerily silent in the vacuum of space. She was still not moving very quickly as the top of C-Section rose to meet her. She clamped her gloved hands to the cable to brake a moment before her feet hit a padded circle on the top of the habitat.

  She unclipped the carabiner, dropped it and her safety harness into a bin full of matching harnesses, and bounded across the top of C-Section, heading for a door marked "Entrance." She wedged herself into a tiny lock, waited while it pressurized, and clumped down a short staircase into the space station proper.

  Three hours sprawled across an enormous bed watching dramas on a giant vid screen was all it took for boredom to set in. She took a last look around the glorious isolation of her hotel room, then changed into her best jumpsuit and headed out to explore the hotel.

  The pool would come later, she decided. The hotel boasted a swimming pool big enough that the surface was visibly curved, a luxury almost unheard-of in the belt. The water would be shallow, she knew. Almost no one off Earth knew how to swim. She was sure she could work out the basics, though, once she had a chance.

  First, she decided, she would hit the casino. Taking on a herd of refugees from a life pod was such rotten luck, fate bloody well owed her. The cards were going to be kind to Liz tonight. She could feel it.

  The card room was a luxurious expanse of deep carpets, faux-wood trim, and muted light. She found a game of five-card stud with stakes she could stomach and lowered herself into a chair.

  "We have a new player." The dealer was a tiny Chinese woman with frosty eyes that said she would brook no nonsense at her table. "Ante up, ladies and gentlemen."

  Liz pushed a chip out and settled in to enjoy her evening. She barely glanced at her cards. Her plan was to fold repeatedly for a while as she took the measure of her opponents.

  There were four other players, a heavy, loud, boorish man in a garish red and blue shirt, a pair of young women in short dresses wearing plenty of makeup, and a solemn young man. The loud man was easy to read. He played aggressively, recklessly, betting heavily on almost every hand and trying to scare
the others away with steep raises.

  The two women were conservative players, clearly trying to enjoy a night out, making their money last as long as possible while they reveled in the excitement of the game. The solemn young man played conservatively as well. Liz turned her attention to him.

  He was blond, with a sharp angular face and intense brown eyes. He seemed quite young at first, but the creases around his eyes said he was older than he looked. She finally decided that he was close to thirty, her age, or a bit older. He was quiet and focused, but as she watched he slapped his cards down with a dramatic flourish. When he won the pot he smiled from ear to ear, and his face was briefly transformed. He became a gleeful little boy for the time it took to rake in his chips. A moment later his quiet, intense persona was back in place.

  "Got room for one more?"

  The speaker was a dark-haired man somewhere in his mid-twenties. He had a Mediterranean look to him, though the races that had emerged back on Earth meant little out here. He gave Liz a searching look as he sat, then gazed around the table.

  "New player," the dealer said, and flashed the newcomer a brief smile. "Ante, please."

  She dealt, and Liz began working the table. For mediocre hands she would pick up a stack of chips, riffling them from hand to hand to let everyone know she planned to raise. For strong hands she would fidget and scratch her chin before reaching for her chips. Most of the players fell for these simple ruses, and she managed to scare the two ladies into folding a few times.

  The loud man, however, was oblivious to anyone's body language. She played him differently, goading him with a low snicker whenever she wanted him to bet. He won often, but when he lost, he lost big, and his temper rose with every pot that escaped him. His obvious frustration made every win sweeter, and soon Liz was enjoying herself thoroughly.

  She'd been playing for most of an hour when a drink appeared at her elbow. She looked up in surprise and saw Edward sauntering toward the table. His face was flushed from drinking, and his habitual shyness was gone.