Asteroid minting operation V106 2004

Paul Anka

"I'm playing it again."

"Please don't Paul."

I flicked the switch

"10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
We're leaving together
But still it's farewell."

Groans filled the small ship, but you know fuck em, It was my turn to pick the music.

"Really man? Really?"

I shrugged.

"It's either this or listening to more disco, because that's what we have."

You got a big cross section in space, you had true believers, scientists, engineers, refugees, people who needed money badly, adventurers and a whole bunch of other things. In the last 4 years space had been opened to the masses and the masses came through.

"Akmed, you're backing me on this right?"

He shrugged. Five men in a tin can, our job was to find a rock with valuable materials and safely drag it back to the Fingers. Or the four World trees around Jupiter and the one on Mars. Once that was safely done the rock would be disassembled, put on a barge and the minerals sold on Earth. We would get minimum wage plus a percentage off the profit. This is better then it sounds, a good rock could get you a solid 10 thousand.

The song ended and we sighed as the disco returned.

"Why is it that we have like 100 songs and 90 of them are fucking disco songs?"

A collective round of shrugs, Our ship was one of the assorted armada of scrapped together tinkertech invading the solar system. People thought that the best of the best would be out here doing this job. But after the World trees and a couple years the leaders threw in the towel and just offered on the job training.

I grimaced.

"Is that?"

"Yeah, Shinzan industries, that's one ship down."

It happened, sometimes an accident would happen and you would end up seeing a destroyed ship.

"Salvage rights?"

I shook my head.

"Mark it down, send the coordinates to the Fingers, the chinese are going to want to pick up their boys."

There were some grumbles, you could get stuff from Earth, and they sent a lot, but it wasn't enough, it was never enough. I've seen twinkies sell for over 20 bucks a piece. Speaking of which, I looked at our K-rations.

"I still have no fucking clue what these things are."

What the fuck is blackfiskar? They looked like weird little octopus candy, no one touched it, our rule was try to only eat stuff you were familiar with, or at least try to.

"It can't be worse then eating soylent, or those cricket patty things."

I nodded at Akmed.

"That's what they never tell you about space, the food sucks.."

In space no one can hear you scream, but they also don't talk about how the oxygen scrubbers can't quite remove the sent of a fart, and while the food was nutritious, it tasted like ass and gave you gas. Which kind of hovered like a fog over the ship. Keep in mind our ship wasn't that big, we're talking about something roughtly the size of a Greyhound so it was even worse.

"Scanning."

God, more music from Abba, the next track.

"NO!"

I looked at Vasquez, it was his turn.

"I'm on it."

'Dancing queen' was on the banned list, the list of songs, on the rotation that none of us wanted to listen to again, Disco Duck was also on said list, it was a slowly expanding list.

"Why are we only allowed to pick one song?"

It was a question I asked a lot, replies involved data limitations, not wanting any distractions, things like that. I looked at the time.

"I'm on it."

I did a systems check to make sure nothing had gone wrong and we would'n't, you know die horribly, because that was a thing. I looked forward.

"Hey guys, I'm going to do a mineral scan on that rock."

It was about 12 times the size of our ship, just small enough that we could burn through our anti gravity to take it safely to Mars, Just large enough to make it worth our while.

"Scan away Paul."

I turned on the little tinkertech laser that some former Case 53 made and then watched the feed.

"Iron, Nickle, we got a bingo guys."

Bingo's were rocks that had more then a tenth of the bounty book. You see, Earth needed a lot of things, there were an army of Tinkers in space and on Earth which wanted, needed things like rare earth metals, and other resources. Then you also had the civilian market, the military one and everything else.

There were cheers, we went in and shot out the grappling hooks, we then carefully clamped down on the rock and went over the math.

"What's the ETA, Paul?"

"Right now Mars is the closest, and post T-day it's the quickest option. We're going to burn through more G-Juice but we will save time."

"And be able to eat something that doesn't taste like ass."

With that done we burned our rockets and started the trip to Mars. Defiance was a shitty city by Earth standards, but it was the biggest city you saw off Earth, and worst come to worse you could take a portal to Earth and go there.

"One week people."

That brought up the next issue of space, boredom, the fucking boredom. The first thing you do is stare outside and marvel at the majesty of it and then the fucking boredom hits.

"Pokemon battle?"

I shrugged, and brought out my gameboy, we were able to get some older models from somewhere and facing off against each other was a way to remain sane.

"I still have some batteries."

"Enough to last the week?"

"Probably not, they limit our totes."

"Too bad."

We connected the cords and played a couple rounds, Vasquez did some exercise and then we switched, we had already told every joke we knew, dirty and otherwise. When the batteries died, the debates started.

"Picard was the better captain."

The goal wasn't to win, it was to kill time, positions would be taken and then defended to the death because dear god it was boring. I performed another check as the debate went on and-

"No fighting inside the ship."

Vasquez calmed down and the debate raged on, I smiled as Mars came before me, the oceans were tinted green, algae blooms had covered the entire mass of the martian ocean and were hard at work at scrubbing the air. They said that the air would breathable by 06.

"Strap in guys, we're going to hit turbulence."

I powered up the anti gravity and put it to maximum levels, then slowly and carefully made our decent.

"This is V106 coming in for landing."

"Reading V106, you bringing cargo?"

"We got ourselves a bingo rock, sending the data package."

"Data recived. Iridium, thank god."

We landed the rock and then released the hooks, and landed in the zone. I turned off the antigrav and immediately felt like shit.

"Hate this part of the job."

There were grimaces, you worked out, you exercised, but a month in zero gravity left you feeling like shit when you got back to normal. I walked on unsteady legs to the masks, we put them on and Vasquez punched in the code, I felt the breeze and just stood there for awhile. These moments, this is what made the job worth it.

"All right guys, let's head to the Tree."

We staggered forward like zombies, toward the huge, city sized tree in the distance. We saw some prefabs outside of it, but most people in Defiance lived inside the World tree, mostly because having to wear a gas mask all the time got old fast. A portal opened for us and we waited for the room to turn green.

It did and another door opened, we walked inside the tree, a mining rep smiled at us.

"Your checks have already been deposited."

We grabbed our pay stubs, 50 thousand, not bad for a months work, and then I sighed.

"Fucking taxes."

The rep frowned.

"Yeah I'm sorry, but with the war going on, and the money needed to make Mars livable and all the other shit."

"We just make 20 thousand, Earth fucking us again?"

"They don't want to fund NASA, but they're giving those boys more and more to do, this is how it all gets paid for, it's still more then what you would get working on Earth."

We shrugged, it was true.

"Well you know the rules, two weeks off after a job, have fun."

We smiled and then made our way to the showers, we carefully peeled off our suits and put them in the bin and then we just let the hot water pour over us.

"Ever wonder where this water come from?"

I shrugged.

"I don't fucking care Vasquez, far as I'm concerned Woody's an honorary human right now."

He nodded as the hot water pored on him.

"Starbucks?"

I closed my eyes, yeah you couldn't escape Starbucks, they were located on all the Trees.

"I don't know, let's see if any local places have popped up."