Tevun-Krus #100

59 - Outer Prospect - @RJGlynn - New Frontier

Outer Prospects
By RJGlynn

Blackness. So total it sucked in the soul.

Captain Saba Aku smiled into it as she reclined in front of her ship's bridge viewscreen.

Interplanetary space. Two astronomical units from Earth. Almost three hundred million kilometres away from the man who'd gutted her life and disowned her.

It was a good day to be alive.

In her opinion, at least.

She cast the ship's pilot a dry glance; thought better of asking for another status update. Havana Drake, retired spaceforce commander, knew her job right down to the brand of grease on her flight suit, and holding the hands of "ex-royal brats" wasn't part of it. A scowl gouged her brow, permanent after seventy years of dealing with "braindead fools". Beyond her com mic, her jaw was as unforgiving as the clippers that'd butchered her hair.

Saba dragged dark, manicured fingers over her own shorn crop, grimacing on behalf of her former stylist. In the asteroid belt, practicality trumped vanity. Fortunately, the twenty-credit space-station cut was passable—possibly even flattering. The Main Belt was rough and under-resourced, but there was talent amongst the canteen whores and rock jocks if one looked for it.

She had to believe that.

Needed to.

She'd spent the ticket price. There was no going back.

Tapping the scarred console before her, Saba checked sensors. No sign of debris that might damage her bargain-bin survey vessel. Pretty much nothing in general. On Earth, art and cinema depicted the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter as a dense field of rubble, near certain death for any spacecraft. In truth, it was blissfully wide open; typically hundreds of thousands of kilometres between rotating chunks of rock.

Saba damped down nerves; ignored the nausea weightlessness still gave her after four months in space. Of the millions of rocks making up the belt, she was only interested in one.

2221 MO. A common carbonaceous asteroid she'd affectionately nicknamed "Baby Mo".

Her baby. Saba curved lips, eyeing the single object registering on sensors. Her future. If she played things right, got her baby surveyed and financed for mining, she'd be on the path to becoming a Mineral Baron within ten years. She was no miner, but she knew how to hire good people, run a business.

That was one thing her father had given her he could not take away.

Unlike her allowance, title, social-standing, and identity.

She winced, silently cursing the man she'd loved for twenty-eight years. He'd never been her father. According to his lawyers, the hugs and bedtime stories didn't count. Only the DNA. DNA that belonged to some over-muscled sailing instructor her mother had—

"Lady Aku—"

"Captain Aku." Saba sliced her pilot a killing look. Amateur or not, she hadn't blasted the last of her credits into space with this ship to be addressed like she was 'human payload'—a space tourist.

Havana's smirk minced that fine thought. "Approaching the asteroid now, Captain."

"Right. Put it on screen."

"Aye. Here it is, our baby. But—"

"What in the hell?" Saba jerked forward. The crater-scarred rock hanging in the blackness ahead she recognised from the official survey records—but none of those pitiful, token scans had featured a point of reflected light on Mo's largest crater.