Justice and Prosperity
Milton J. Davis
Asteroid 11-471 was one of millions of rocks trapped in the sun’s orbit, but to the Dobbins family, it was hope. Ben and Tonya Dobbins spent all their savings and sold all their belongings for a chance at a better life not for them, but for their four children. Their future was in the stars, and they were determined to make the best of it.
Ben Dobbins laughed as Tonya squeezed his butt through his A-suit. The mine shafts had been secured and oxygenated for months, but old precautions were still taken. He turned to face his wife, her honey-brown skin glowing. He swept his hand over her braided hair, and they kissed.
“I wish I was going with you,” she said.
“No, you don’t,” he replied.
Tonya patted her plump belly. “I’d rather be working than pregnant, especially on this rock. It’s all your fault.”
“I remember someone else involved, as well.”
Tonya punched his stomach. “Get out of here.”
Seven, their service bot, joined them at the door. It held up his lunch cannister.
“You forgot this, Mr. Dobbins.”
“Thank you, Seven. At least something around here has a memory.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” Seven said. “I’ll attend to breakfast.”
The couple watched Seven stroll into the kitchen.
“It was expensive but worth it,” Tonya said.
“I wouldn’t say all that,” Ben replied.
Tonya pushed him toward the door.
“Get out of here before you make me mad.”
“Love you,” Ben said.
“Love you, too.”
Ben walked down the corridor to the main tunnel. Five minutes later, the work sled appeared, packed with his shift members. They greeted him with grunts and waves as he climbed into the sled.
“It’s gonna be a great day,” he said.
Marcus Delany chuckled. “You have to say that. You’re the supervisor.”
Ben patted the blond man on the back. “We work for ourselves, remember? I feel like we were close to another vein yesterday. All the signs were there.”
Sherry Rosenstein nodded in agreement. “One more and we’re off this piece of shit.”
“Cluster, here we come!” Yuri shouted.
“Hey!” Ben said. “Don’t talk about home like that!”
They all laughed. The covert colony had collected enough rare metals to pay for jump-ship transit and recolonization documents to the Cluster. Another good strike would set them up for life. They voted to extend their time for that very reason, despite increasing their chances of detection. It was all or nothing.
The shuttle sped down the corridor until it reached the drop shaft. It hovered and its passengers prepared for the descent. As the craft made the final adjustments, there was a flash from above. The shuttle exploded.
* * *
Seven was prepping the dishes for the washer when it detected motion at the entrance. Determining it was probably Mr. Dobbins returning for some forgotten item, it placed the dishes down and proceeded to the door. It was almost there when the door burst inward, slamming against it with a force that knocked it to the floor. Seven attempted to rise but its leg joints were damaged and it was pinned under the door by trampling boots. Its sound sensors picked up noises of distress followed by weapon blasts. The blasts continued until the screaming stopped. Seven sent out a distress signal and struggled to stand. The door was lifted and two humans in atmosphere suits looked down on it, their faces obscured by their shields.
“What is that?” one of them said.
“Server bot,” the other replied. “Must be a wealthy colony if they can afford that.”
“Hey,” another voice said. “We hit the jackpot!”
“The fuck you talking about?”
“They’re mining rare earth metals! They have a shitload of it!”
“Bingo!” one of the humans said. “I told you prowling the Belt would be worth it. Let’s find the cache then sprint.”
“What about the bot?”
“What about it? We got minerals.”
“Never leave anything to waste.”
A human reappeared. It extended a tubelike object. There was a flash, and Seven’s sensors went dead.
* * *
Danforth Anderson sat at the small dining room table, then took off his helmet, revealing his grizzled face. He removed his gloves, then rustled his straw-blond hair with a calloused hand before gazing around the cramped space. A frown formed on his face, and he spat on the cheap tile floor. He’d spent most of his life living in shit quarters like this, hewing rock for the Corpos before he got smart and stole an old transport ship and changed his life. Ever since then, he’d been a pain in the ass for them. But even revenge gets old. It was time to move on, to get back to living. This was a big step.
He stood, then walked through the quarters. He passed the little bedrooms, then entered the family space. The woman lay there dead with the children, their blood spattered on the walls and pooling on the floor. Dan squatted to get a closer look at them. Dead people stopped bothering him a long time ago, especially since he was the one who killed most of the ones he’d seen. He grabbed the woman’s hair, then looked into her lifeless eyes.
“Pretty,” his said with a gravelly voice. “Too bad.”
He stood, then left the room. As he entered the main room, Skyles hit him on the comm.
“Talk to me.”
“We found a hauler,” she said.
“Can it fly?”
“Yep.”
“Good. Have the boys gather the rich rock and take it to Blade. Once y’all get it all secure, meet me at the living quarters.”
“Will do.”
Danforth took a tour of the illicit base while his boys loaded the ship, his countenance hardening with every corpse he passed. It wasn’t the carnage that bothered him; it was the unnecessary use of it. These people had been defenseless. It would have been just as easy to round them up, take the rich rock, then fly away. It was an illegal dig, which meant they couldn’t report what happened even if they’d wanted. He shouldn’t have put Kelly in charge of the landfall. The man was a murderer. Toby and Matt did whatever Kelly told them to do. Danforth decided he’d make better decisions next time.
He worked his way back to the main chamber. His comm clicked again.
“Talk to me.”
“We’re here.”
“Good. On my way.”
Danforth ducked his head as he entered the main chamber. Kelly, Toby, and Matt stood shoulder to shoulder, their suits decorated with clothing and other items they’d taken from the people they killed. Skyles sauntered up to him, a smirk on her face.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” Danforth replied.
Danforth smiled before he addressed them all.
“Boys!” he said. “We’ve been scouring these rocks for five years hoping to hit the jackpot. Well, here it is!”
The chamber echoed with cheers.
“Y’all have made me a rich man,” Danforth said.
Kelly’s face went from jovial to stone cold.
“You? What about the rest of us?”
Danforth answered him with a bullet to the forehead. Skyles shot Toby through the neck; Danforth emptied his gun in Matt’s back as he attempted to run away. Skyles put an extra round into each of them before standing by Danforth.
“Should have done this a long time ago,” she said.
“Better late than never,” Danforth replied.
“We’ll have to get a new crew,” Skyles said.
“We will, once we jump to the Cluster.”
Skyles grinned. “Prosperity is one step closer.”
Danforth patted her shoulder.
“It is.”
* * *
Keeko peered at the damaged circuit board through his magnifier, the hot soldering iron quivering in his left hand. The medicine was wearing off, and the trembles had returned.
“Fuck!” he hissed.
He placed the soldering iron down and groaned as he stood then scratched his ass. Fluffing back his salt-and-pepper Afro with his fingers, he shuffled across the repair room to his medicine box. He opened the container, then frowned. He was down to his last two. Keeko shrugged as he took the bottle from the box, popped open the lid, then dumped the pills into his mouth. He ambled to his fridge, took out a water bottle, and washed the bitter medicine down his throat. He held out his hand, watching it until the trembling subsided. Keeko trudged back to his workbench and was about to pick up his soldering iron when the entrance door slid aside. Mario strode into the shop, a bot draped over his shoulder. Keeko’s eyes went wide. He jumped to his feet, waving his hands.
“Mario! Don’t—”
Mario dumped the bot on to Keeko’s workbench, shattering his magnifier and the circuit board.
“You dumbass!” Keeko shouted. “Look what you did!”
Mario looked at the workbench, then shrugged.
“My bad. Hey, boss wants you to harvest this bot’s core. He’s got a buyer for the body.”
“Might as well give him the core,” Keeko said as he lifted the bot to get what was left of the board and his magnifier.
“Nothing’s free,” Mario replied. “You should know that by now.”
Keeko scowled. “How soon does he need it?”
“Tomorrow.”
Mario didn’t wait to ask if tomorrow was possible. Bossman’s word was law; if he wanted it done the next day, it would be done. Keeko didn’t need another month added to his indentured contract.
Keeko perused the bot before cracking it. This was a quality unit, definitely not salvage. Whoever brought it in stole it. If it was raiders, the owners were probably dead, too. The number 7 was etched on its left breast, another sign of a high-quality job. Now here it was, resting on the tabletop of an indentured repairman’s workbench. Couldn’t get any lower. He probed the cranium until he located the seam. He popped it opened, then extracted the core. Keeko tossed it, then caught it. It was dense, which indicated high-level programming. Procedure called for him to wipe and recondition it, but Bossman said the shell had to be ready by tomorrow. He placed the core on a nearby shelf, then cleared his workstation. There was a buyer’s holotag on the body. They wanted the shell to be converted into a pleasure bot, which meant he’d have to do a lot of wet work. That also meant sealing off the frame to make sure there would be no seepage before dunking the shell into a skin vat.
Keeko went to work, changing his soldering tip and switching to an appropriate solder for the task. All the while he worked, he kept glancing at the core. It wasn’t often that he had access to a unit that interacted with humans as a domestic. He was curious about what images it stored, what secrets it contained that he could harvest and sell on the Mesh. The thought made him hurry; he completed the sealing in half the time. He rolled the shell onto a cart, then pushed it through the clutter to his skin vat. He grimaced; it had been so long since he used the thing that the solution had soured. It took another hour to drain the vat and replace the elixir, which luckily had not gone bad as well. As the solution warmed, he slathered nano paste onto the shell. The prep alarm rang, and Keeko submerged the shell into the vat. It would take ten hours for the skin to form, and another three hours for it to cure. That gave him enough time to finish his board repair, then dive into that server core.
“The hell with it,” he said. “I deserve a break.”
Keeko got the core from the shelf, then placed it on his table. He went to the fridge again, this time for bread and meat paste. He made a quick sandwich, grabbed his water, then ambled back to his bench. Keeko pulled open his bench drawer, then took out his Ocs. He put them on, then linked to the core.
“Okay, let’s see what you got,” he whispered.
He tapped the on button and the app intro started. Keeko skipped it with the twitch of his head.
“Last entry,” he said.
The image swirled, then he was standing at a kitchen counter, prepping dishes. Keeko felt the wetness on his fingertips, then shut off the neural sensors. He wanted to see the last minutes, not feel them. He had no idea what was about to go down.
There was a banging on the door.
“Oh shit,” Keeko mumbled, his mouth filled with sandwich. Seven went to the door. There was an explosion, and the door slammed into the bot. The rest was carnage. Keeko stopped eating. He watched until the recording went dead, then took off the Ocs. There were tears in his eyes. He knew shit like that happened all the time in the Belt, but to see it was another thing. He waited for a few more moments before putting the Ocs on again. He gestured with his hands as he fast-forwarded through the grim parts and uploaded the faces of the raiders. He linked to the Mesh to transfer the images, then stopped. Who was he kidding? Even if he was able to find the bastards, who would go after them? The law was too busy trying to keep “undesirables” from jumping to the Cluster. Nobody gave a damn about a bunch of murdered squatters.
“File it away, Keeko,” he said. “Ain’t nothing you can do.”
* * *
Skyles maneuvered Blade as close to the ship before them as she dared. Danforth looked ahead to the transition gate and smiled. The line wasn’t as long as he remembered from ten years ago. It was getting more and more expensive to buy passage, and the means to getting enough crits were getting fewer. Finding that squatters camp was a true blessing.
Skyles set the ship on auto, then pulled up her holoboard. Her well-manicured fingers flashed across the keys as she prepared them for inspection. Danforth looked at her with a frown.
“You sure this is going to work?”
“You better hope it does,” she said. “Just get ready to do your part.”
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
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