The Earth Trap

Chapter 1: Garbage Pick Up

DATE: Year 308-B. Sol 377

LOCATION: Earth Debris Field

STATUS: Unauthorized Salvage

The first rule of the Halo is that the dead don't stay dead. They orbit, they leak, they collide, they burn. And the small ones pierce.

Jimi Phoenix drifted in the silence, his magnetic boots locked onto the hull of a 22nd-century comms satellite. Below him, the Earth was a swirling marble of gray clouds and bruised wine dark oceans, huge and suffocating. He tried not to look at it. Looking at the planet was bad luck. Bad Earth. Defiled, abandoned, inhospitable.

Click. Hiss.

His regulator cycled. The sound was wet and rattle-heavy, the signature of a Type-4 scrubber that was three months past its service date.

-Come on, you beautiful thing, Phoenix purred.

He wasn't talking to the satellite. He was talking to his left arm. It was a heavy-duty hydraulic loader arm he'd welded onto his flight suit after he lost the original in a card game on Ceres. It was strong enough to crush a diamond, but the neural lag was a killer. He thought grip, and the servo whined for a half-second before the metal claws clamped down on the satellite's maintenance hatch. It took some time getting used to.

Whirrr-CLANK.

-Atta boy, Phoenix muttered.

He raised his right hand, his human-scale manipulator, and tapped the prayer beads wrapped around his wrist. The cold steel washers and copper nuts clicked against his faceplate.

He murmured a few prayers.

-Keep the vacuum out. Keep the air in. St. Eligius, guide the torch.

He thumbed the ignition on his laser cutter. A blue flame sparked in the void, silent and hot. Maximum setting.

He started cutting. It was slow work. The Halo was a graveyard and a garbage patch and a museum and a minefield. Millions of tons of debris from the old Earth--shattered hulls, frozen bodies, shrapnel--orbited at thousands of miles per hour. If his ship's sensors missed a piece of paint chipping off a dead destroyer, it could punch through his suit like a railgun round.

Phoenix checked his heads up display. The Mighty Sparrow was drifting two hundred meters away, running dark. Its transponder was currently spoofing a registered Ore-Hauler named The Byron Lee.

O2 Level: 64% Debt. Status: Critical.

The text blinking in the corner of his eye was more dangerous than the debris. He owed fifty kilos of Heethree to a loan shark in the Tumble. If he didn't come back with something shiny today, he wouldn't need to worry about oxygen; they'd just vent his suit and sell the parts.

The hatch gave way. It floated free, spinning lazily into the dark.

Phoenix grabbed the rim and pulled himself into the satellite. It was like a time capsule. It was a time capsule. The interior was vacuum-sealed, protected against three centuries of decay. Floating in the center of the wire nest was the prize Phoenix was looking for: a black box drive.

This wasn't one of the cheap MTC crystal-chips. It was a lot older. From the Before time. Black matte finish. Gold connectors. No branding. It looked like a brick of pure darkness. These were mini-nuclear bombs.

-Jackpot, Phoenix muttered.

He reached for it.

Thump.

A vibration rippled through his boots, a low-frequency shudder that traveled through the vacuum, through the metal, and into his bones.

Phoenix froze. He knew that feeling. It was the displacement wave of a fusion drive, big, braking hard somewhere in the vicinity.

He killed his laser torch, grabbed the drive, shoved it into his kangaroo pouch, kicked off the bulkhead, and launched himself back into the void.

He spun in zero gravity free fall, orienting himself toward The Mighty Sparrow.

But he wasn't alone.

An MTC Patrol Cutter, marked black and orange as part of the Blockade authority.

The railguns were already following him.

-Yil, Phoenix cursed with a hiss, tapping his beads again. Once for luck, twice for a favor, three times for a miracle.

His helmet radio crackled. The voice was crisp, bored, and expensive--an officer breathing premium air.

-Unidentified scavenger, the voice said. This is Captain Delavan of the Martian Trading Corporation. You are in violation of the Earth Zone Exclusion Rule, the Historical Preservation Directive, and, well, it looks like you're flying with a spoofed transponder.

Phoenix grabbed a strut of the dead satellite to stop his drift. He looked at his ship. He calculated the distance. If he burned hard, he might make the airlock before they fired. But The Mighty Sparrow's engines were cold; it would take thirty seconds to warm the reactor.

He was dead in the water.

-Talk to me. You're out of luck, Delavan sneered. I can save the circuit judge a lot of paperwork and leave you right here.

Phoenix looked down at his mismatched hands--the delicate human glove and the rusty hydraulic claw. He looked at the black drive in his pouch. It was enough money to buy a new life. Now it was just evidence.

He sighed, the CO2-heavy air tasting like copper in his mouth.

-This is Jimi, from the Mighty Sparrow, Phoenix replied, his voice raspy from the dry mix. I, I surrender. Don't scratch my ship please. It's older than you are.

-I don't care about the ship, Delavan shot back. You and the drive.

The MTC ship opened its bay doors. A tractor beam latched onto Phoenix's suit and pulled him in, out of the Halo and into MTC hell.

He looked back at Earth one last time. It was almost worth it. The bay doors slammed shut. The darkness was total.

Chapter 2: Cornered

LOCATION: MTC Patrol Cutter Brig

STATUS: Detained

The first thing they took was the suit.

Without his hydraulic frame, Jimi felt like a jellyfish dragged onto a beach. He sat in the interrogation chair, his limbs heavy and useless. The Cold Moon was spinning at a simulated 0.8 Earth Gravity. It was standard for MTC officers, raised in the settlements on Mars, crushing for a space-bound scavenger.

His chest ached. His heart, adapted for the float of the suit, thumped against his ribs like a trapped bird.

The room smelled aggressively clean, sterile. It smelled of ozone, vanilla, an MTC favorite scent, and the chemical tang of recycled air that had been cycled and recycled until it had no soul.

On the metal table between him and the door sat the black box. It looked small and stupid under the harsh fluorescent lights.

The door opened.

Captain Delavan stepped in. He wasn't wearing a suit. He wore a crisp, midnight-blue MTC uniform. All the features of an exo-suit were hidden in the uniform. He looked well-fed. His skin was tight and rosy, the sign of a man who drank real water and slept in a gravity bed every night.

He didn't look at Jimi. He looked at a pad in his hand.

-Jimi Phoenix, Delavan said, smacking his mouth as if it were dry. Bit of a dramatic name?

Jimi leaned back, trying to look comfortable while his spine compressed.

-The gravity, man, he spat back.

Delavan tapped the pad. "

-Your name is Lyons. That sounds fake too.

Jimi kept his face blank. It was a small thing, a name. But hearing it out loud made him itch. It reminded him of the orphanages in the Tumble. It reminded him of being a nobody.

-Who cares? Jimi rasped, struggling to breathe without his suit. What do you need a name for if you're just gonna yil me in the derriere. You charging me or what?

Delavan finally sat down. He picked up the black box, the drive. He turned it over in his manicured fingers.

-This is a Class-A Pre-Zero artifact, Delavan started. Encryption is military grade. Probably contains telemetry data from the old Earth defense grid. On the open market, this buys you a new ship. Maybe even a condo on Io.

-Then keep it, Jimi said. Consider it a bribe. Just let me go, would you?

Delavan laughed. It was a dry ugly sound. He dropped the drive on the table.

-I don't want the drive. I have warehouses full of them. We strip-mined the Halo fifty years ago. The only reason we leave scraps like this out there is to bait the rats.

That was a lie. He didn't know what it was. He was just patrol. A different department of the MTC handled acquisitions, the Settlers' word for what Dwellers call scavenging.

Delavan leaned forward. The vanilla smell coming off him was suffocating. Phoenix eyed the drive. He could get it back, pocket it when Delavan wasn't looking.

-I pulled your file. You owe fifty kilos of Heethree to some nasty people. You have three outstanding warrants for smuggling in the Belt. And your air subscription looks like it expired two days ago. Technically, you're stealing MTC oxygen right now just by breathing in this room!

Jimi swallowed. The dryness in his throat wasn't just the air mix. How'd he get this cornered?

-Get to the point, Jimi said, starting to fidget in his seat but moving closer to the drive.

-The point, Delavan said, is that a Circuit Judge is docking at Checkpoint Zero in forty-eight hours. If I process you, you go before him. For the smuggling alone, that's ten years in the sulfur pits on Io. You won't last six months without your suit.

Delavan swiped his pad and slid it across the table. It showed a grainy image of a ship--a massive, ugly freighter comprised of rusted cargo containers welded together.

-This is the Marley, Delavan said. Flagship of the Earth Zionist Movement Fleet. They are currently headed to The Tumble. It took them months to get there. They depart for Earth in three days.

-Zionists, Jimi scoffed. Nutjobs. They want to go back to Earth. For what? It's not hospitable.

-They have a new leader, Delavan said. One of the flippers from the Sagan Cities.

Flippers were young people who turned away from the careers the scientifically minded Sagan Cities on Jupiter prepared them for to join the society and economy, such as it was, of the wider Solar System.

-Can't be older than twenty one, named Himalaya Market. Been with the EZM for six years, big part of their gains legitimacy-wise. Now He claims he has a route through the debris field.

Jimi raised an eyebrow.

-A Saganite? Leading a bunch of Dweller fanatics? With a route I don't know about?

-Market is a problem, Delavan said. He's charismatic, educated, and convincing thousands of indentured workers to break their contracts and join his little pilgrimage. It's going to be bad for business.

-So kill him, Jimi offered. You know, with your railguns.

-We can't make martyrs, Delavan replied. And besides, the New Earth Consortium approved a flight plan. They need to keep the EZM mollified or they'll walk out of the consortium. They can't afford that kind of challenge to their legitimacy, not right now.

They just let them in.

Delavan tapped the table. The black box drive was gone but he didn't notice.

-You can see the dilemma. We need someone to infiltrate the fleet. Someone who knows the Halo. Someone who can fly a piece of junk ship through a debris field without hitting a mine.

Jimi stared at the officer.

-You want me to pilot for them?

-I want you to guide them, Delavan corrected. Market wants to land on Earth. You will get them through the blockade. You will guide them to the surface. And once they land, you'll plant this.

Delavan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silver disc. It looked like a coin, but it hummed. A homing beacon of some sort.

-You plant this in their camp, Delavan said. It broadcasts a distress signal on a pirate frequency. That gives me legal clearance to enter the atmosphere and secure the area.

-Kill them. Why bother? The poisoned atmosphere on Earth will do that. What are we talking about? No one's been on the surface for hundreds of years. Do you buy the EZM's hokey about a healing Earth too?

-What's that matter to you? You plant the beacon. You leave. I wipe your debt. All of it. The Syndicate, the warrants, the air tax. You walk away with a clean slate. And your lungs will be fine. We'll take you and your ship to the Tumble, where the Marley's supposed to arrive in a few days. Jimi looked at the silver disc. It was heavy. It was the weight of a thousand lives.

He looked at Delavan. If Jimi said no, he was going to the Pits. He'd die coughing up lung tissue in a sulfur mine.

It's better to live for one more day. He reached out and took the beacon.

-I want my suit back, Jimi said. Not your slop. And I want my tanks topped off with the premium gas.

-Fine, Delavan said, welcome to the MTC.

-Don't say that, Jimi shot back.

Chapter 3: Yes

DATE: Year 308-B. Sol 384

LOCATION: The Tumble (Sun-Mars L5)

STATUS: Indenture Contract Negotiation

-We are burning for The Tumble. Your ship is clamped to our hull. Try not to worry about the paint, Delavan told Jimi over the radio.

-She doesn't like piggyback rides. Her gyro gets confused.

-Then she better get used to it. You're cargo now. Until you close the deal, Delavan said.

The Tumble didn't have gravity; it had centrifugal force and the weight of desperation, and the Cold Moon's skiff had deposited Jimi there, in mid-flight, to tumble into it. The Tumble, run by the Inner Belt Cooperative.

It was a floating city in space, built from smashed together cargo containers, dead engines, and hollowed out asteroids, spinning just fast enough to keep vomit on the floor. It was the solar system's drain. Wash outs, flunkies, exiles and stubborn survivors ended up here.

Jimi walked through the bazaar, his hydraulic arm whirring softly. He kept the servo-strength low. You didn't flex in the Tumble unless you wanted to start a riot.

The mood in the corridors was ugly. The price of algae paste, the Slurp, had tripled in the last half cycle. The MTC was blaming the Orbital Winter, the increasing flight times between planets and space settlements as orbits diverged, but something else was happening. Somebody was hoarding foodstuffs, from the source. The White Ships weren't docking anymore. The food had stopped flowing.

Jimi pushed through a crowd of starving miners and found the bar. It didn't have a name, just a dinghy neon sign that said YES.

Inside, the room was divided by a literal line painted on the deck plates in UV-reactive white paint. Dwellers in rusted suits, drinking fermented engine coolant, smelling of ozone and sweat congregated on one side of the line. The other side had a pressurized bubble of filtered air for richer patrons.

And standing right on the edge of the line, peeking into the bubble wantonly, was Himalaya Market.

He was impossible to miss. He wasn't wearing an exoskeleton. He wore a flight suit of woven white fabric that looked softer than anything Jimi had ever touched. He didn't have a tank on his back; he wore a sleek, silver collar. It was a rebreather that cost more than Jimi's ship. Life was a lot less heavy for some people.

He was a Pristine, his skin flawless, glowing with health. He stood a head shorter than the stretched-out Dwellers, the effects of being raised on Earth-like gravity in the confines of the Sagan Cities, but looked twice as strong. He radiated the kind of confidence that usually got people robbed.

-I'm telling you, Market was mouthing off to a skeptical miner. The blockade is a paper tiger. The MTC is afraid of Earth because they know they don't own it. It belongs to us. To the people who are willing to breathe the air.

-Poison air, the miner grunted. I'm hungry.

-Then eat, Market said. He reached into a bag at his feet and pulled out a red fruit.

An apple. A real, biological, grown-in-the-dirt apple.

The bar went silent. That was fifty chits of calories in one hand.

Market tossed it to the miner. Then he pulled out another. And another. He started tossing them into the crowd like he was feeding pigeons.

-The Earth is an orchard! Market shouted, smiling like a lunatic. This is what waits for us! Not the Slurp. Life!

-That's rich coming from a Saggie, one of the miners scoffed before biting into an apple.

Jimi watched from the shadows. He's going to get himself killed, he thought. And then I'm going back to the Pits.

He stepped forward, his heavy boots clanking on the deck.

-Save the sermon, Market, Jimi said, his voice cutting through the noise.

Market turned. He looked at Jimi, at the rusted hydraulic arm, the scratched helmet, the prayer beads on his wrist. Market looked delighted to meet him.

-A skeptic, Market said. And a scavenger, by the look of that rig.

-I can keep you alive, like I have myself. I'm almost 40. I hear you're looking for a navigator for The Marley.

-I'm looking for believers, Market corrected him.

What a pigu, Phoenix thought.

-You can't believe in material things, you'll be let down every time, Jimi said. You need a mechanic.

Market smiled, about to launch into another speech, when something moved behind him.

A small shadow detached itself from Market's leg.

It was a child. Wildborn.

The child couldn't have been more than six. He was a Lanky, limbs too long for his torso, a head too big for his neck, black eyes and wide. He was wearing a tragedy of an exo-suit. It was a chest piece made from a flattened traffic sign, legs reinforced with PVC piping, and a yellow helmet that looked like it belonged to a mining drone.

He didn't speak. He just stared at Jimi.

-This is Bit, Market said, his voice softening. I found him in a container on Phobos. He's, he's shy.

Bit was one of the terms of endearment used for children under the age of three. When they survived early childhood they were finally given names. Phoenix was sure Market didn't know this, but he didn't say anything.

Market reached out to pat the kid's head. The kid flinched. It was barely visible, but Jimi saw it. Bit didn't like the Pristine hand. It was too soft. It felt fake compared to the gunk the child was used to.

Bit took a step toward Jimi instead. He tilted his oversized helmet, looking at Jimi's left arm, the massive, scarred hydraulic claw.

Jimi didn't move.

-Careful, kid. The servo drifts.

Bit reached out. His gloved hand, tiny and trembling, touched the exposed piston of Jimi's elbow. He ran a curious finger over the weld lines, tracing the scar where Jimi had fused the industrial loader to the flight suit.

Market watched, surprised.

-He hasn't let anyone but me within three meters of him for a month.

Bit looked up at Jimi. He tapped the metal arm twice.

Jimi felt a weird tightness in his chest. He looked at the kid.

-Yeah. It's a Type-4 Loader. Good torque. Bad lag. Type-4. Type. Four. It's a higher number but it means it's worse. Everyone wants a Type-1 but there are barely any left yet.

Jimi looked at the kid, he wasn't used to children but it clearly wasn't tracking. Bit nodded solemnly. He stepped closer, standing in Jimi's shadow, turning his back to Market.

Market looked at the two of them.

-The boy knows, Market whispered. You aren't just a mechanic. You're a guardian.

-Don't you start, Jimi said, before looking down at Bit. He thought about the MTC beacon in his pocket. He thought about the betrayal waiting at the end of this trip.

Low odds they'd even make it that far. He could just bail here, pick up work on a ship and, and then what? The Martian Trading Corporation had The Mighty Sparrow, and that was his life.

-I'm a pilot, Jimi growled. Fifty chits a day. No sermons.

-Okay, Market responded, handing Jimi an apple. Welcome to the Pilgrimage. We leave on the next beat.

Jimi caught the apple. It felt heavy. Bit was still standing by his leg, vibrating with the silent hum of the station. He passed the apple to Bit, who smiled eagerly and ate the thing in three bites, hugging Jimi's leg tightly.

Great, Jimi thought. I just adopted a shadow.

Chapter 4: Flying Out

DATE: Year 308-B. Sol 385

LOCATION: Docking Bay 67, The Tumble