Майк Берри - Macao Station

‘Piss off, Sal,’ Rocko replied automatically.

Lina laughed — she couldn’t help it when she heard the wounded innocence in Rocko’s voice. ‘Oh yeah, I forgot,’ she said. ‘How is the lady friend , Rock?’

‘She’s fine. And she is just a friend, whatever you dickheads think.’

‘I’m sure that’s true,’ answered Lina. ‘Well say hi from us, next time she lets you get your breath back.’

There was a click as Rocko pointedly switched his comm into ignore mode. But he soon switched it back on again and Lina knew he wasn’t really pissed.

The cut chunks of rock formed three tightly-converging dotted lines now, pointing back towards Macao Station. With a bit of zoom Lina could also see the bolts from the other wing, over in Blue-Nine, forming their own ordered procession, if a little less advanced than her own wing’s. The others must have had a delay in starting.

The diags came back from the hydraulic system. It was losing pressure at an increasing rate from a rupture in one of the reservoirs, probably caused by a minor accident station-side. The ground crew should have spotted it really. That was supposedly what they were for. The cutting arms would likely become inoperable within the hour. Lina ran through all the camera angles, and eventually she spotted a microscopically-thin trail of leaking fluid that formed an inky ribbon, stretching off into space. She cursed under her breath, but not quietly enough to prevent the others hearing.

‘What’s up?’ asked Sal with forced casualness. Sometimes, when things went wrong in the belt, somebody ended up dead or hurt. Not often, but it had happened before. Everybody feared the inevitable next disaster.

‘Nothing serious,’ Lina said. ‘I’m just losing some hydraulic fluid.’

‘Wanna head back? We’ll be okay.’ Sal, despite being ranked below Lina, suffered from a persistent desire to look after her. Lina knew this stemmed from the time when Sal had been involved in a brief affair with Lina’s then-husband, and Marco’s father, Jaydenne. Marco, born on board, had still been a baby at the time. Sal, a pretty redhead several years younger than Lina, had offered him the attention that Lina herself had been unable or unwilling to supply. But Sal, who had still been a newcomer to Macao, had given Jaydenne up because of her conscience. Lina suspected Sal had loved him. She couldn’t imagine how hard Sal’s decision had been. Sal had worked hard across the intervening years to ingratiate herself to Lina, and to be fair, it had worked. Jaydenne had gone to Platini Alpha, leaving his wife and infant son behind like unwanted baggage. Their relationship had, by that point, been dead for some time anyway. Sal had remained, and had become a friend.

‘I’ll see if I can last it out. If the tool arms stop working I guess I’ll have to drop it back. Maybe there’s another ship that I can grab.’

‘I don’t think there’s a spare at all,’ replied Rocko. ‘Unless you want to take one that hasn’t been pre-flighted.’

‘I guess I might have to,’ said Lina, her voice slow and unenthusiastic. ‘Maybe some of them will be done by then. Anyway, this one was checked.’

‘Maybe it just sprung,’ suggested Sal. ‘Could be from a micro-impact. Otherwise, the power-on diags should have caught it.’

‘Could be,’ Lina said. ‘I didn’t notice an impact, though. Maybe they can just bodge it — quick weld, bleed and refill.’

‘Maybe,’ said Sal without conviction.

For a moment then, Lina felt how tenuous, how fragile their existence was out here. She could actually sense the delicate, straining bonds that held everything — the Kays, the station, the people, their whole overburdened frontier world — together. The vastness of space loomed around her, endless in every direction, a vista without horizon. She felt tiny and vulnerable, a single byte lost in the cacophonous datastream of creation. She looked up at Macao. The station loomed through the rock-haze, turning darkly about its hub, its two huge spokes like muscular arms that gripped its outer rim. It didn’t look like a place that could sustain life. For all its bulk, it looked too fallible, too delicate. This was a feeling she had suffered from more and more of late. She shook herself, shivering, and turned up the heater.

‘When’s that damn shuttle getting here again?’ asked Sal after a while.

‘Soon,’ answered Rocko. ‘It should be soon, right?’

‘It better had be,’ said Sal. ‘I heard Gregor’s out of real beer.’

‘Oh that’s just bloody great! Thanks for that!’ enthused Rocko falsely. ‘I’ll sleep easy now I know that, Sal. We’ll expect a riot, then.’

‘You two, cut the crap!’ demanded Lina. It was unusual of her to curse, and it surprised the others into obedient silence. ‘The supply shuttle is due next week. Maybe everyone can restrain the urge to riot until then.’

‘At least we’ll get our new batch of psychos for the lifers’ wing,’ added Rocko quietly, possibly expecting further reprimand.

Lina’s Kay had diced up the last of its asteroid and she pointed it towards the next likely-looking candidate. The face of the new rock loomed huge and cliff-like, glinting in the ship’s spotlight. She wondered briefly what epic journey had brought this chunk of stone to Soros, what cosmic furnace had originally smelted it, long before humanity existed. The belt was an archive — a stone recording of ancient stellar history. It would still be here when Macao fell into final, terminal disrepair and was forgotten.

Lina mentally shrugged and relaxed back into her chair. The asteroid was rotating gently in the vertical plane and the ship struggled briefly, feathering its thrusters, to match the rock’s motion, little blasts of gas hissing into space. It aligned itself and anchored on. A few marble-sized stones pinged gently off the hull and ricocheted away.

‘Yeah, well, I don’t think any of us are too thrilled by that ,’ agreed Lina, remembering her own similar comment to Eli. ‘But I guess it keeps the station spinning. And I think there’s only gonna be one this time.’

Rocko’s Kay moved gracefully above Lina’s, its waving tool arms like jellyfish tentacles, coming about and lining itself up with a new rock. There was another cushioned jolt as Lina’s mass driver launched its next bolt towards the station.

‘Yeah, but he sounds like a pretty rough customer,’ said Sal. Her Kay was off to Lina’s left, industriously sawing and processing, tool arms moving in a surgical ballet.

‘So I hear,’ agreed Rocko. ‘Guy called Carver. Another nutcase, originally from Aitama. Shipped from there to the high-security prison at Platini Alpha. I guess even they got sick of him, though, so we get him next. Multiple murder, of course.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Lina, having nothing else to say. She shivered again, even though the heater was on high now. Why send psychopaths and murderers to a remote mining outpost? Surely there was a better, more central place to incarcerate them? Maybe somewhere a bit better prepared than Macao.

Her Kay’s arms were weakening now, struggling to apply the cutters forcefully enough to the rock. She willed them to persist but could do little else. In theory, one of the other craft could have attempted to patch the external skin of the reservoir in space. In practice, it would be a pretty dangerous manoeuvre — a job best left to the ground crew.

‘So,’ said Sal in a brighter tone. ‘You guys reckon Eli’s gonna find gold in the uncharted sector?’ Her Kay was coming about now, too, having exhausted its first rock. Sal moved it deftly through the shifting maze and approached a new one.

‘Maybe,’ said Lina. ‘Who knows what’s really out here? Must be something worthwhile somewhere.’