Minor Miner

Chapter 1

Author's Disclaimer

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events portrayed are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Scott Michael Decker

January 2005

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Protagonist's Declaimer

He doesn't know what he's talking about. This novel is a work of friction. Since it is the product of the author's feeble imagination, I've changed the names, the characters, and the events portrayed to brighten the dim, implicate the innocent, mock the guilty, and prod the indifferent clod from his stupor. Any resemblance to real events or actual persons, living or dead, is deliberately and maliciously intended. If you feel I've treated you unfairly in this novel, you're not alone -- welcome to the human race. If you wish to bring suit, however, please bring a space suit.

Marcia Willow Ames

January 2425

Chapter 1

Near the mining pit wall, Marcia pulled a lever on the core bore. The machine strained to pull the hollow, laser-tipped bit from asteroid rock. Something gave and the machine jumped. Humming Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, she planted a numbered flag in the bore hole and turned to pack her tools.

Afterward, she scanned the stars. I hope the core bore doesn't have escape velocity.

There it was, diminishing toward the face of Jupiter. The minimal gravity was beginning to slow the core bore's ascent.

Marcia glanced toward the middle of the mining pit.

A loader, squat and huge, barreled at her.

Marcia smacked the boosterpack blast button and vaulted herself out of its way just in time.

Jackknifing on its bucket against the wall, the loader somersaulted up the pit side and over the edge.

Meteors, that was close! She fought the boosterpack to bring her wild flight under control.

She stabilized a hundred meters above the asteroid surface, a hundred fifty above the pit floor. Her skin tingled from the adrenalin pumping through her arteries. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself. In her chest cavity, where her right lung used to be, an artilung read nerve impulses meant for her diaphragm and injected oxygen into her bloodstream. Sweat on her brow glistened for a moment in the golden light of the xenoglobes below. The semi-permeable stashell sank back flush to her forehead. The sweat boiling off her skin burned like carbonated water in the mouth.

Shaking, Marcia maneuvered toward the rogue loader. That's the second in six months to malfunction!

The first one had pulped her father against the pit wall. Unfortunately, his stashell had preserved his body for her to find later, staving off the hungry vacuum of space.

Landing beside the loader, Marcia sighed.

Laying on its bed, the loader spun its tracks crazily at the stars, like a beetle unable to right itself.

Blast, how am I going to repair it?

Of her three loaders, only one still ran smoothly now. She hadn't had the heart to repair the loader that had snapped a track while mulching her father.

Maybe I can fix it without looking at the stained blade. If I have to, I'll repair this one! She looked forlornly at the frantic tracks, the mangled bucket, the accordion bed. Perhaps, she amended.