Chewing Rocks (2 page)

Sno recognized that her mood swings were sliding from one end of the happy spectrum all the way to the other not so pleasant end. She was sure it was not a bi-polar issue, but just that she seemed to have lost her grip on her emotion control levers. She would flare into seething anger and forget about it
the next. This time she had no intention of forgetting her anger over the broken autojacks.

The asteroids in the belt
may not be tightly packed across this portion of space, but they had more or less settled into a delicate dance around each other. A loose rock, whatever the size, slamming into one of its neighbors would shift trajectories and throw off the movement of the dance. One such out-of-synch wild rock could start a chain reaction that could destabilize whole regions of asteroids.

With a delicate chime, the suit popped open and let in a blast of cool air. Sno sighed and twisted free
. She stepped down the ladder to reach the deck. True to rock miner superstition she reached up and patted the suit in the chest about where the heart would be as if saying ‘Thanks for the ride’. Even with her six foot five inch frame she could still only reach to mid chest on the massive power suit.

Sno ran her hands through her red hair, fluffing it back out where it
had been mashed down by the suit’s helmet. She bent at the waist, twisting and stretching to get out any kinks, her lean muscular frame flexing easily.

She wanted to immediately get the autojacks on the workbench and start tearing them apart, but after more than a dozen years of mining
, she knew better. She hated the plumbing in mining suits; therefore the first order of business was a trip to the head. Then she needed to indulge herself in a brief stop at the galley, for a protein shake if nothing else. And as always, she needed to make a stop on the bridge to check all systems.

Besides, she was nude and the ship’s air always felt
a bit too cool after the snug comfort of a power suit. She had not worn panties because they get in the way of the suit’s plumbing. She may not like suit plumbing and had not used it, but she had plugged it in. She wanted to be prepared if she needed to use the facilities. She had not worn a bra, because she just did not need one, not in a suit, not in the ship’s one third gravity, not even when she worked out in the gym under full standard gravity.

Sno had left her jeans,
t-shirt and sneakers in the suit room next to the personnel hatch. She did not feel any sense of embarrassment as she padded quietly along the corridor because she was alone on her ship.

Sno was only quiet on the
outside; inside she was snarling, “I am going to skin those morons at United Mechanical. I think I will start with that smarmy earther with the greasy ‘stache. Bastages! All of ‘em! Lifetime warranty, my sick Aunt Sadie! Brand new out of the box autojacks that aren’t worth the airspace they take up and neither are those S.O.B.s that sold ‘em to me. I don’t know what Ernie was thinking hiring on earthers. Ernie is at least a Martian. He should know better. Maybe I should tie them naked in the hydroponics’ leech vats. Let the leeches feast on their worthless scrot sacks. Yeah, if I gotta wait for replacement parts from Earth, that is what I am gonna do: leech vats!”

Chapter 2.0

“Hey, Red.”
Vitoria Encarcion called out cheerfully as Sno stepped through the doorway into the Whyte Mining Company’s offices. “You’re back way too soon. We barely had time to fumigate from your last layover.” Vittie was officially the company’s receptionist/office manager. Before Vittie had immigrated up from Earth six months ago and started dating Sno’s father, the Whyte Mining Company had not needed a receptionist, much less an office manager. All of the day-to-day tasks had been handled by Willem: the CEO, CFO, CIO, COO, janitor and Sno’s father all rolled into one.

“Suck vacuum,
gravity girl,” Sno snarled back. “I told you not to call me Red.” Sno didn’t like Vittie. The woman was eternally cheerful. She may have eased some of Dad’s workload and certainly his stress levels, but she was still a gravity-fed earther. Sno was a third generation asteroid miner and as proud of that fact as of anything else in her life. Almost as proud as the fact that she was space born.

Vittie smiled,
“Yep, you also told me not to call you Chastity, Miss Whyte or even sweetheart, but I can’t call you Sno. That is a weather condition, not a nickname.” Vittie knew Sno did not like her, but she did not let it bother her because over the last few months Vittie had come to realize Sno did not much like anyone.

“Where’s Dad?” Sno snapped.

“He is out getting brunch, lunch, lupper, or whatever meal we are supposed to have at this time of the day. Want me to cell him and get him to bring you something?”

“No. I ate on
the Sedona while going through docking maneuvers. Plus, unlike a lot of people around here, I’ve got work to do.”

“He went to Mario’s
for subs?” Vittie grinned, throwing the information out as a question.”

The Whyte Mining Corporation was headquartered
in Arizona City on the planetoid Ceres. Ceres was the size of Texas and it was the biggest chunk of rock in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but it was not much of a planet. Arizona City was Cere’s only town and it was not much of a town. It’s restaurants were even less stellar. Mario’s Subs, Suds, Spuds and Grub Pub was the best of the lot and Sno’s favorite. Still, she was not about to change her mind after she had said no the first time.

Sno snarled, “I said
no. Do you need a map to a dictionary or can you guess the meaning of no by the context of the conversation? Never mind. Did you or Dad get around to filing the warranties on the last shipment of jacks or are they still in the to-be-filed box?” She began to dig through stacks of data chips and their associated forms.

Vittie looked thoughtful, “I would guess
they are in the to-be-filed box. Like I said, you haven’t been out that long. Did you have trouble with the autojacks?”

“All four went tango uniform just barely out of the
packing crates.” Sno barely spit the words out.

Vittie looked confused, “Tango uniform?”

Sno shook her head sadly and rolled her eyes, “Earther education not all what it is cracked up to be, huh? Tango uniform; T.U.; toes up, as in how a rat goes when it dies.”

“Ah
,” Vittie smiled. “It is an idiomatic expression.” She swiveled her chair around and pointed. “Don’t look in that stack, darling. Look in the box under the chart table. I think the warranties are there. Was it just the autojacks that gave out or did your core systems act up again?”

Sno said, “
Don’t call me darling, either. I am not anyone’s darling. And Sedona’s core is fine. Some of the applications ran a bit squidly, but it’s nothing so bad I can’t live with it.”

Vittie replied without a smile
, “Until you don’t.”

Sno nodded, “There is always that
.” She grabbed a handful of documents from the box. “Got ‘em. Lifetime warranty, my pleated patootie! I am going to force feed these jacks to those morons at United Mechanical ‘til they choke.”

Vittie nodded, “That is your call, but
I am pretty sure that would void the warranty. Maybe you should let Willem handle the exchange. He just got them calmed down from your last visit. It is helpful to have a pleasant relationship with your suppliers.” She continued, overriding Sno’s response. “And by-the-by, we have good news on the equipment side; Queene Mines did an upgrade on their fleet’s application and core systems. Willem was able to get enough of their old cast offs to retrofit all our ships and some to spare.”

Sno looked interested, “Really?
” A ship’s core was the central control node of the computer. It was just like the part of a human brain that ran the autonomic functions, running all of the processes the ship needed to sustain human life and function without thinking about them: environmental, artificial gravity, collision control, power generation, power consumption and a host of other functions. A ship’s applications or ‘apps’ ran the peripheral programs, like communications and hot water for showers.

Sno said, “
Queene has always scrapped their leftovers in the past rather than let us get any upgrades. I wonder what changed their minds.”

“I imagine it was their new regional manager Evelyn Queene.
” Vittie gushed, “She is just the nicest woman. And she is the daughter of old Rex Queene. Imagine a member of the Queene family coming all the way out here to fix things herself rather than send any number of competent plant managers. You know, she had your dad and me over to dinner last week. She brought her own chef with her all the way from Paris.”

“Would that be Paris, Texas
or the one on Mars?”

Vittie grinned, “That would France,
cheri. Don’t be silly. Paris, Mars isn’t anything more than a dusty research station and I don’t imagine the one in Texas is too cosmopolitan either.”

“
Yes, and the one in France is dirty, smelly and overcrowded with more unwashed, undereducated immigrants from the Middle East and Central Africa than with Parisians. I watch the newscasts just like everyone else. And don’t call me ‘cheri’, either. I know that is just French for sweetheart. Nice try, though.” Sno continued, “So, did Dad run the stuff from Queene through the cleaners yet? Not that I don’t trust Queene Mines, but…well, I don’t trust Queene Mines.”

Vittie tried unsuccessfully to hide her bigger than normal
grin. “Willem ran all of them through the scrubbers and filters twice. They are clean and free of any kind of bug or virus our software can detect. He has already upgraded the Flagstaff and Bisbee.” She pointed at the monitors built into the wall. “They are already back in the belt. Check those statistics against the Sedona’s stats and you’ll see why your Dad worries about you going out alone. He is in the middle of downloading the Winslow. Now that you are back I am sure he will want to stop and upgrade the Sedona.”

Sno almost shouted, “
Ninety-nine point five! Look at the Bisbee; she is running almost perfect. And the Flag is not much behind her.” Sno didn’t need to look at the Sedona’s monitor to see her apps ‘n core efficiency rating was running only in the mid-sixties. She glanced anyway and almost shuddered.

There were thirty monitors on the wall. One for each ship, or would be if they had thirty ships. The Whyte Mining Company only owned six mining ships and one
old tug. The company owned ships lit up the first seven monitors: the Sedona, the Wittenburg, the Flagstaff, the Oatman, the Bisbee, the Winslow and the tug Phoenix. The monitors reflected each ships current status and material flow. The ships were old, but still serviceable.

Normally most of the other monitors were dark unless Whyte contracted to buy an independent
ship’s material. Sno could see four other monitors were lit. She remembered her father had contracted to buy any material transmitted by a couple of mining engineers down from Io. They were on their honeymoon and thought asteroid mining sounded like an adventure.

Sno
shrugged mentally. Maybe chewing rocks in the asteroid belt was an adventure compared to chewing rocks on Io’s mining colony. They would certainly have more alone time. They would actually make a profit on their honeymoon if the value line on their transmission was a good indicator. They were already making enough to pay for the lease on their ship plus all of their consumables.

“Who are these other three?” Sno pointed at three lit monitors
, indicating a connection. All the data was static and had been for a couple of weeks. Normally a ship was in constant communication with the company; for safety reasons if for nothing else. When she was in the belt, Sno often went for long periods of time without an actual conversation, but the ship talked to the company office all of the time. That is, when her apps were not on the fritz.

Vittie shrugged and smiled. “Willem contracted to
a group of gentlemen. And before you say anything: yes, they are from Earth. They had three old mining ships they bought used from Syntheco and wanted to try prospecting.”

Sno
asked, “Any word from them? These screens have been stagnant for a while.”

Vittie said, “No. They said they would call when they were ready. Willem said if they wanted to be alone, then we would leave them alone. Sound familiar?” Before Sno could respond Vittie continued, “Besides, we don’t have any company assets tied up in their prospecting and we don’t have any liability to them unless they send
matter into the coffers.”

Sno nodded.
If the prospectors were even average navigators the three ships should be close to being outside of the belt proper where they could micro-jump the ship closer to their expected destination. Jumping a ship from anywhere near the slightest gravity well was as dangerous as jumping into an area filled with hard astral bodies. Most of a miner’s shiptime was spent moving either up or down the solar system’s ecliptic to empty space where they could micro-jump to more empty space somewhere else before moving into the belt again.

As S
no scanned the monitors she could see the Wittenburg, Oatman and Bisbee were all feeding matter into their converters for transmission to the coffers of the company’s Arizona City plant. The Flagstaff was outbound and not yet at a mining site. The Winslow and Sedona showed in port at the company docks.