Orion Wolf
There was one problem about mining in the Kuiper Belt.
It wasn’t the distance, or the time, or even the distinct lack of gravity. Puck knew this better than anyone. He had spent fifty long years on that rig and he had seen every kind of tragedy.
Torn suits, frozen corpses drifting into irreclaimable oblivion, ripped apart by tiny shards of rock; the only problem was the fragility of human anatomy.
Suit up, land, ensure the landing mechanism was embedded in the rock, tie yourself to the ship and drill, baby, drill. It should be simple. It is simple.
He sat in the captain’s chair of the vessel, watching as another bright young man began to understand the particular call of the void it took to mine for the great Martian Imperium.
As it just so happened, he bore the same ruddy brown hair and the same blueish eyes that Puck had in his youth. He recognized himself and he knew that the blessing might also be a curse.
“Be careful, Janus.”
“Got it, dad.”
The asteroid they sat on was just pulled into orbit as an extra-solar object. It was from somewhere far away, slung into a web and caught by the sun.
He’d been watching it for many rotations. There was no danger. It was stable and ready for mining. Not too hot, not in the habit of crashing into others, and certainly in no danger of – well anything else. No danger. His wife made him promise.
But still, he couldn’t get his mind off of what could happen to his son.
Janus was wearing the best mechanical suit on the market, used by the Imperator’s own army. He shouldn’t be worried.
He watched him offload the drill, which wasn’t really a drill, more like a blast furnace that melted everything it touched, securing it in a protected tank.
“Where do I plug it in?”
“Where do you think you plug it in?”
“Right.”
“Be careful not to plug it into the solar cables.”
“Dad, come on-”
“If I didn’t tell ya’, you wouldn’t know.”
A small chuckle came over the radio.
Janus set the drill on the ground and plugged it into the ship, where Puck could activate it remotely.
“Come on back, kid.”
As the drill booted up, the less precious elements turned to magma in the sifting bowl, iron and nickel, roiling together like the old primordial soup.
Janus retreated to the bay doors and watched the drill work.
The ship was analyzing the composite materials found in the magma. Few things could surprise Puck, trace amounts of iridium or palladium were common, but what he had not seen before was a high concentration of – nothing.
Unknown Element – Twenty-five percent
“What does that mean, Dad?”
“Probably just some glitch or something.”
“Should we stop?”
“No. The old Icarus has seen a lot of bullshit, Janus. Just let her work it out.”
Puck turned from the dashboard and walked towards the fridge behind the captain’s chair, decorated with all sorts of tourist port magnets from Rome to lo. He opened it up and grabbed a bottle of Demeter Lite Beer and cracked it open on one of the magnets.
“Nothing else to be done until it’s full of the stuff.”
“What do you think we’ll find?”
“Iron. Nickel. Some palladium or iridium. Uranium, maybe if we’re lucky. Department of Energy’s always looking for more and more of that and a government contract would put me into early retirement.”
“What’s the craziest thing you have found?”
Puck chuckled, “Quit your shit, Janus. You know I can’t tell you that.”
“It’d be a lot cooler if you did.”
“So what’s with you and this fancy Roman University?”
“Dad…”
“You think you’re better than me? Not cut out for lowly asteroid mining?”
“No, Dad- it’s just—“
“I’m fucking with you, buddy. Have a beer. I’m proud of you for sticking it to me and your Ma. Besides, I wouldn’t wish this life on you anyway.”
“You’re not upset with me?”
“I was fuming when Betsy came in with the letter, but you know how she never minds her goddamn business. And I think she’ll be better suited to this life than you ever were.”
Janus hugged his father and took a swig of the beer.
“Atta boy. Now, what do you want to do with those freaks on Mars?”
“Uh… y’know the Em’manuelle Broussard Archive?”
“The Em-Bros, yeah, it’s hard not to when they’re always on the news for being a pain in
the ass for the government.”
“Yeah, I… I think I want to work for them.”
“That’s a dangerous job, kid.”
“More dangerous than asteroid mining?” “Touche.”
The dashboard started beeping loudly.
“Hold on, Papa’s coming.” Puck stood up and walked over to the controls to stop the drill. He clicked the button and looked out the window.
The magma was blisteringly red and orange and yellow, and bright like the sun. It was a normal sight, but as the true sun crested over the ship and began shining on the tank, there was a flicker of a gold, opalescent liquid, separating from the magma like oil and water, refusing to incorporate. It did not emanate its own light, but shone like a mirror the bright light of the sun into Puck’s eyes, causing his eyes to blink it away.
“Fuck me!”
“Dad? What is it?”
“What the hell is that?”
Puck didn’t look back at the substance but, instead looked down at the composite collection of materials. And at the bottom of the list, at forty-five percent, it read: Unknown Element. Please seek ship maintenance for software update.
“Didn’t you update it this morning?”
“Call your mother. Tell her we’re going to be late.”
“What?”
“Do what I said, Janus.”
Puck put a suit on and went out to collect the haul. The entire thing was a spectacle to look at. How could a liquid be separated from magma? Wouldn’t it evaporate? Wouldn’t it burn? Unless it wasn’t a liquid at all. But, a sort of plasma. It looked like a nebula of indigo, gold, and red– the types of colors that skin would turn as it began to bruise. They were separate, but bleeding into one another like dye might bleed into a cloth.
“Ma wants to talk to you.”
“Tell her to give me a second.”
“She’s not happy.”
“Shit. Okay, then put this in the cargo area, I’ll talk to her I guess.”
Puck returned inside to the phone, where a woman yelled loudly over the speaker.
“You told me you would keep him safe. That it would just be a normal haul. And you went and found a new fucking element, I swear to god, Prometheus, I could kill you.”
“My love, my darling, my wife whom I love with every fiber of my soul, I would allow you to do these things with vengeance, but you can only do those things if I return home in one piece.”
“You’d better.”
“Call the Union. Tell them exactly what I told you.”
“Are you going against-”
“Don’t say that. This is a Martian vessel.”
“Right. Right. Unknown cargo. Need protection against pirates.”
“Right.”
“I swear to god I’ll kill you if you die.”
“I fear it’ll be much worse than that if I’m caught.”
“What is it? Do you know?”
“It looks like I don’t know. It looks dangerous and I have no idea what the fuck it is. I had the periodic table memorized at seven, and this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll tell the Union. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I will.”
“I love you.”
“I’m going to drop Janus off at home. If I go down, he’s not coming with me.” “Okay.”
“I love you too.”
“The planet of lo mourns today for Prometheus and Janus Day, a father-son mining duo, whose ship, The Icarus, went missing over a month ago somewhere near Ceres.”
The woman on the screen was frowning, her ice blue eyes demanding attention from the rest of the screen. Her platinum blond hair and the particular white pallor of her skin made her look nearly like a sculpture. Almost blue and translucent – like plastic. Like plaster – like porcelain; a doll, held aloft in front of the camera, playing out some little girl’s imagination.
I despised it.
“They were pillars of their community. Janus was slated to attend the Athenaeum next semester under an internship with the Em’manuelle Group. Prometheus was nearly fifty-five, having spent most of his life dedicated to supplying the Imperium with materials from far flung asteroids. They leave behind Prometheus’s wife and mother of Janus, Nadia Day, and her young daughter, Beatrice Day.”
Her deep blue blazer was bejeweled with sequins and her hair was done up in a sort of frayed contraption. Comical amounts of nearly purple blush dragged from her dimples to the pronounced creases of her eyes. Her eyebrows were manipulated by dark colors, that turned them into an expression of perpetual sadness and I could’ve sworn there was glitter on her cheeks, intended to look like tears.
The crowd made a perfectly timed noise, expressing sympathy for Amphirite’s ’emotions’.
Her sister, the antidote to her gloom, perked up like some wind-up puppet. She looked at Amphirite, the vision of abject misery, and smiled, “Oh, Amphi, that’s so sad. How about something to cheer you up?”
Her eyes were the most gaudy shade of dark green, best adorned in the kind of gold that fell in strands at the side of her face– long and free around the same powdery white skin as her sister.
She put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, and an absent thumb rubbed her arm as Amphirite cried in swelling seas of tears, “The Sun blesses us with warmth, and dwelling in the deep blue- it just— it’s not good for you. For anyone❞
“Of course, Gal.”
“So let’s talk about something else. What about our lovely Imperator?”
The crowd began to cheer and I switched off the holoscreen, rolling my eyes. I was
thankful for the silence, not filled by the shrill voices of fake sympathies.
The room was dark, lit only by the ambient light of the skyline just outside my window. I found myself drawn towards the windowsill and the wobbly wooden chair that sat beneath it, marred by the test of time.
A blanket enveloped me like a sort of hug as I shuffled over to the chair, and sat there as I looked up at the night sky. I knew, somewhere, there were stars– far past the barriers of the dome that encased the city. Every night I looked, waiting for the lights to turn off or the power grid to fail as they always did at some time or another. If I timed it well enough, I could see the stars.
But, not that night.
There was nothing but darkness past layers and layers of bright, blazing light- spilling into the streets, flickering- obscuring anything past the dome.
I picked up the pack of cigarettes by the ledge and put a hand in my pocket to find nothing but fabric.
“Shit.”
I looked around the chair, and a light glinted off of something metallic under the couch I had just peeled myself from.
I left the warm blanket and I stooped down to the old wooden floor, creaking beneath my feet, reaching my hand into the unknowable dark beneath the furniture.
It was a moment or two before I felt something. A piece of popcorn was immediately followed by a gum wrapper and then finally, my hand settled on the cool engraved metal of the lighter.
“There you are, gorgeous.”
The lighter in my hands was like an old friend. Given to me by someone who mattered, not that it mattered much anymore. There was a flaming sword engraved on the front, what someone who dealt in old world historics might call a scimitar, followed by the letters S.A.
“You don’t mind that you’re stuck with me right?”
Of course, the lighter didn’t respond. The response came with the click of the gas and a roar of the flame.
“No, you don’t. Loyal to a fault.”
I returned to my chair and I cracked the window open, letting in the air. I wish it could say it eased something, to light the cigarette and breathe the smoke into blackened lungs. It does for a moment, my mind is clear and I feel calmer- collected. But after one or two, there’s a feeling like fear collecting at the base of my neck. I begin to think and the thoughts always roll back in waves much more violent than the ones that came before.
A cigarette can’t heal a wound any more than a bullet can heal grief. And believe me, it always makes things worse.
I took a drag of the cigarette and closed my eyes, listening to the distant tune of the city. Rome was alive with the sound of distant sirens and recklessness with abandon. And though it was far too late for any young children to be out on the streets, I looked over at the courtyard of the complex to find five children, playing baseball with a piece of plastic and a broken pipe.
Needless to say, It wasn’t going very well.
The phone rang across the room and I breathed in one last sinful breath before shaking the ash off and setting what was left of the wasteful thing in the tray.