Station 35 was a dot on the nav screen. It meant ore buyers and fuel sellers, necessary transactions and unwelcome human contact. The Miner needed the first and dreaded the second, but cash meant freedom and she couldn’t eat rock. So she set her course, made sure her dwindling fuel would get her there, and then thought no more about it.
She laid eyes on Station 35 a week later, loaded with ore and low on everything. It was big and ugly and damn near deserted.
She first met one of its inhabitants in orbit, a vacuum-mummified corpse tethered to an orbital path marker and clutching a sign that read, “NO FIREARMS. WE MEAN IT.”
So it was that kind of place, then.
She’d been waiting patiently in a holding orbit for five hours, listening for the OK to dock. At least, she’d waited as patiently as anyone could as her fuel burned down below the one percent mark, past the point where the engineers who’d built her spacecraft expected any sane person would still be operating it. The station crew knew she was there; they’d scanned her half a dozen times. They just hadn’t given the OK. Or signaled why they wouldn’t. Or said anything at all. She tapped her fingers on the pilot’s console, had the computer run another radio equipment diagnostic, cranked down the gravity and temperature control a little more, and that all still counted as patient, in her opinion.
There had been plenty of opportunities for her to curse herself over the fuel squeeze, and she’d made use of them efficiently on the long trip from her claim. Even with a hold full of asteroidal nickel-iron to sell, it had been so easy to stay one more day, and then another. No people in a million clicks, just silence and work, her plants and her books. She’d stayed too long, and then she was low on fuel, low on water, low on cash to pay her claim fees. Another week and the government would seize it for non-payment. Of course, long before then the fuel would run out, and when the life support, power, and grav plating all ground to a halt in turn she’d asphyxiate, floating, in the dark.
The station looked abandoned. It was a big gray monstrous thing, chunky and ugly. Burrowed into the side of an asteroid, it looked like a giant spider clutching its bloated egg sac. The big round hab complex had a set of windows that glowed with a venomous green light that flickered red. It had been military once; most of them had. All along its gray steel skin, wherever some rating with a paint nozzle had found room, it bore the number 35 at all angles and configurations, except for the one spot with a 53. Converted to commercial use, someone had at least been bright enough to remove the great big sub-C cannons, leaving flat round patches where the emplacement had once wielded armament capable of flinging mass hard and fast enough to obliterate even the best-armored cruiser. There were probably still some junky little lasers for zapping trash and other projectiles, but she couldn’t see them from so far out.
The comm light blinked, and she slapped it before she could register that it wasn’t the dockmaster. A big round face filled the small comm screen, unshaven and with a swollen red nose that had been broken for him pretty thoroughly, leaving bruises rimming bloodshot eyes.
“Mining ship Cincinnatus,” she said automatically. It was redundant, since he could see her identifier on his screen just as clearly as she could see “Transport ship Cassandra” below his beat-up face. She just didn’t feel like saying “Hi.”
“Hey,” said the trucker, his voice muffled for obvious reasons. “Glad I caught ya. You ain’t aiming to dock here, are you?”
She bit back a remark proposing an alternate reason she might have sat in a docking orbit for five hours. “I am.”
He was already shaking his head. “I’d push on to the next station if I were you. Ain’t far to 36.”
“What’s the matter, is the place abandoned?” She felt her hand tighten involuntarily on the arm rest. There might be fuel and water in an abandoned station, and there might not, but there wouldn’t be money to pay the patch fees.
“Might as well be. Anyone decent up and left a long time ago. All that’s left is the assholes who did this.” His hand flicked into view to indicate his broken nose.
She glanced at the ad beacon, which still offered ore-buying as a station service. She frowned.
“They still buying ore and selling supplies?”
He blinked like she’d flicked him in the face. “Yeah; I mean, I guess. The provisioner’s open, anyway.”
Her shoulders released some of their tension, and she sat back in the pilot’s chair. “Then I’ll be fine, thanks.” When it looked like he was about to say something, she interrupted, “Is there something wrong with the port? Almost all the berths are open, but I’ve been waiting for the clear to dock for hours.”
He shook his head. “Portmaster’s crooked as hell; probably playing chicken. He got me with a two hundred credit fine for docking without permission, when I thought my radio was busted.”
She winced.
“Listen,” he said. “This place is bad news.”
She sighed, hopefully not too obviously. People. “Thanks for the concern, but I don’t have the food or fuel to make it to 36. I’ll keep my eyes open, don’t worry.”
He looked skeptical. “Hell, if it’s fuel you need, I can spot you some. I’m about at the last marker buoy, I can stick around–”
“No thanks,” she said, and tried to make it sound polite. There was no way. Either she’d have to kill a would-be pirate using fuel as bait, or worse: she’d be in debt to a stranger.
“I just don’t want blood on my conscience.”
“If there’s blood, it won’t be mine.”
They stared at each other until he looked away. “Your call. Just keep an eye out for their ‘welcoming committee’, goddamn little shits.”
“Will do.” The faint memory of manners tugged at her conscience. “Thanks for the warning. Safe flight.”
“Safe flight.” He nodded and the picture blinked out.
The Miner rubbed her face with both hands and glared at the comm system, which still showed her dock request pending.
“Ship, auto-accept dock permission,” she said aloud. “Notify me immediately.”
“OK, boss!” the ship computer’s chipper voice replied, and she was up and out of her chair.
She went to the plant room, the bunk she’d converted. Two plastic shelves of orchids and another with three bonsai trees filled the small space with a heady, earthy atmosphere. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. It was warm and humid with the ship’s cooling systems cranked down to save power. It felt nice, even as a trickle of sweat crept down her neck. The hatch closed behind her, leaving her in the dim light of plant room night – she was so far out of daytime sync with them it wasn’t even funny – but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t make out greens and purples and pinks in the low light, but she knew they were there. That was the point; wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she knew they were there. She had a center.
“Hey boss, the fuel level is down to zero point five percent. You instructed me to–”
“I know,” she interrupted, and then swore. Two hundred credits was a lot of money to her just then. Her whole cargo would only go for maybe thirty, thirty-five grand. But a tow could be much more expensive, assuming they even had a working tugbot.
She pulled the hatch open and stepped into the upper corridor of her small ship, glanced into the opposite hatch and thought again about selling her service rifle that hung uselessly above her bunk. She couldn’t fire it onboard without risking a hull breach. There was really no point to keeping it. Nor the sword that hung beneath it. Or any of the other mementos.
“Docking permission accepted, boss.”
The Miner snapped out of her musings. It took some doing to maneuver her heavily-loaded ship, but she wrestled it around to its final approach. Then she collapsed in her seat, feeling the weight of the last few sleepless nights and the stress of the low fuel gauge.
A half-empty station wasn’t so bad. Ideal, in some ways. Sell the ore. Pay the debt. Don’t attract attention. Get the hell out of there. No problem.