The Belt now had religion. God was with us. Hallelujah. We were keeping comms chatter to a minimum but I opened a link to the ship’s systems so I could watch us land. See what this shit hole looked like. Maybe just to depress myself a little further.
It looked like a scar. The station was in a recessed crater created by strip mining. It looked like an old quarry suspended in the night.
The asteroid itself was a little over twenty kilometres in length. As we sank into the scar and the cameras panned around, I could just about make out some of the other asteroids that formed the Gorgon family. They looked like potato-shaped rocks suspended in the sky, utterly static, though obviously they weren’t. There were vast fields of solar panels tethered high above Gorgon’s surface. They, along with a fusion reactor buried far from the main station and hydrogen cells, provided fuel for the town-sized camp. The floor of the scar was covered in prefab vacuum-proofed buildings, storage tethers and dry docks for the massive factory ships with their insectile legs for gripping and burrowing into asteroids. There was something parasitical about the factory ships. Their enormous industrial mass drivers reminded me of stings. Several of the heavy-duty tethers had ice asteroids attached to them. They would be processed for fuel and much-needed water. The dormitory, commercial, administration and vice areas were recessed deep into the rock. This was largely to help shield from radiation.
Space in the scar was busy with the ponderous movements of incoming and outgoing factory ships, the faster tugs, faster still intra-system clippers, enormous super-carriers and the barely tolerated tramp independents like ours. All of this was being watched over by a BPIC destroyer. I had seen military facilities in the colonies less well armed than this station. Piracy was a big if rarely actualised fear, but I suspect that much of the weaponry was to prevent annexation either by a nation state or more likely by another extra-planetary corp. They had missile, plasma and laser batteries, rapid-firing railguns, mass driver cannons and even one of the huge particle beam cannons.
The landing pads were at the base of the scar against one of the rock walls. On the ship’s external lenses I saw our manoeuvring engines fire as we slowly sank into the crater. We were tracked by weapon systems all the way. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being swallowed. I barely felt the landing, though I heard metal protest ominously throughout the ship. The cargo airlock concertinaed out to mate with the Loser’s Luck.
We’d already used the ship’s comms to text ahead our request to meet Wilson Trace, the BPIC regional director who ran Freetown Camp 12. We’d been pleased that he’d agreed to a meeting. We were less pleased when we saw his conditions. Before we were allowed anywhere near Mr Trace we had to have security locks put on all integral weapons and an inhibitor jack in one of our plugs to dull enhanced reactions. It went without saying that we had to be unarmed. We didn’t like it, but it was either that or we would have to mount a major operation and make yet another powerful enemy to get Merle out. Besides, it would be nice to not have to resort to violence for once.
The plush office was a marked contrast to what we’d just walked through. There had been no luxurious carpet, no laser-carved basalt desk and very few recessed windows looking out over the tangled industrial mess of Gorgon’s scar. Instead we had seen deep-set eyes lined with scar tissue from botched re-implant jobs on the faces of gaunt, indentured miners who had little care that their stale sweat added to the stench of oil and badly ventilated air. Many of them showed signs of radiation poisoning or seemed to have respiratory problems. They bunked in the streets. The bunks were stacked high, each with its small locker. The miners were charged for them. Fights were commonplace and nobody did anything, though BPIC Armed Response watched on. The guards even had exo-armoured personnel and light mechs in case the miners got out of hand. I couldn’t see that happening — it looked like most of the Belt zombies had given up years ago.
As desperate as the miners looked, they were nowhere near as sad as the wrung-out-looking, presumably once-attractive men and woman who worked the vice franchise. At least they weren’t slaved, I’m not sure I would have coped with that. Gaudy, badly maintained neon signs promised pleasure that the reality of the bars seemed to refute. The Yakuza had won the vice franchise for Freetown 12. The gangsters and the guards were the only people who looked well fed. Many of the Yakuza were stripped to the waist, gangster ink on display, and all of them wore shades. They had watched us pass impassively. The miners and the hookers had looked at us less impassively. I could feel their resentment.
For some reason Pagan had seemed pleased that the Yakuza were running the vice franchise and had split off from the rest of us to speak to them. I hoped he wasn’t going whoring. Mudge had given him a list of exotic pharmaceuticals he wanted picked up. Pagan had seemed less than pleased about this. It would have been better if Mudge had gone with Pagan but Mudge insisted that his people skills would be of use to us with Trace. I had my misgivings.
We’d walked right through the so-called entertainment area of the station. It had been so quiet. People weren’t talking, just drinking or rutting or taking some recreational substance to try and make it all go away for a little while. There were no sense booths. Nobody here could afford them.
As we climbed through the levels towards the corporate offices, the bunks in the alcohol- and blood-muddied dirt of the street became small wage-slave cubicles. The offices got larger and more luxurious the higher we went until we found ourselves in Trace’s.
He kept us waiting so we understood how important he was. When we were finally escorted into his office we found ourselves covered by four guards with M-19 carbines. There was also an automated twin fast-cycling rotary laser system protruding from the wall above and behind Trace’s desk. That was overkill. It was the kind of weapon used for point defence on spacecraft. I guessed this guy was paranoid.
Trace was obviously engaged in a sub-vocal conversation on his internal comms link. He continued with it apparently oblivious to us. It looked social judging from his occasional laughter and easy-going demeanour. Of course this was all for our benefit. He looked like every other suit I’d seen. Indeterminate age, handsome but indeterminate looks bought in a salon somewhere. Neat, tidy. Probably paid over the odds for a suit, the specifications of which would be important to people who knew such things. I was going to forget about this guy as soon as he was out of sight. He was a corporate cliche complete with katana and another shorter sword on a rack behind his desk.
The only thing that did stick out was his eyes. They were obviously expensive designer implants but they weren’t designed to mimic real eyes. Nor were they the non-light reflecting matt of our hardened plastic lenses. His were shiny black mirrors. You saw yourself in his eyes and you looked small. I didn’t think I was going to like this guy. Mudge had also made up his mind.
We were expected to stand. There was some shouting and Mudge almost got shot when he threw himself into a seat. I wished I’d gone with Pagan. Mudge lit up a cigarette.
‘Actually, it’s no smoking in here.’ Trace’s accent was one of those weird non-accents that people who lived in space had. I’d always thought it made them sound desperate to not come from anywhere.
‘I know,’ Mudge said agreeably. I groaned inwardly and Cat glared at him. We were off to a good start. A little bit more sub-vocalisation and Trace finished his call. I inclined my head towards the guards and the lasers.
‘You’re safe. We just came here to talk,’ I told him.
His mouth twitched into a momentary and humourless smile. ‘I’ll keep this brief. Merley Sommerjay is a thief, a bad one, and you have committed terrorist acts against this very corpora-’