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ASTEROID MINING CAMP, UNKNOWN ASTEROID

Tracy began dawning her spacesuit in the gear locker. She had just finished breakfast and wanted to get a head start on getting ready for work.

The door to the gear locker buzzed and swung open, in walked a short, pudgy, man with curled brown hair and a pencil mustache.

‘Ready for today’s mine? We’ve never been to this one.’ He said smiling.

‘It’s just another cave, Dillon.’ Tracy rebutted.

Now that her space suit was on, she clunked over to a yellow metal box. The protective Miner’s space suit weighed an additional 40 pounds, making it difficult to move around in this gravity controlled area. These suits were designed to protect humans from the vast range of exposure and danger the average asteroid miner may encounter. Tracy opened the box which reviled an assortment of tools. There were giant drills, hammers, shovels, lights were hooked on the top of the box. She began tossing tools into a small wheeled cart behind here, once this was filled she heaved the wheeled cart over to their all terrain vehicles, stationed near the exit of the gear locker. She began loading the equipment onto the vehicles.

This took several trips as there was a significant amount of materials and tools needed for these mining operations, made even longer by the weight of the suit and tools.

‘Why are you bringing that, I don’t intend on staying out there.’ Dillon said pointing out the thermal blankets and pop-up exoskeleton shelter.

‘Trust me, you’d rather have it than not.’ She smiled. By now other members of the mining crews had entered the gear locker and begun putting on their respective suits and preparing themselves for the operation. The energy was buzzing, small conversations all merged into a dull roar, unintelligible between all the commotion happening at once. It did not matter, it was in the gear locker and only at meals that all the crews were able to mingle, exchange stories, see friends, and more. Sometimes, due to mining schedules, Tracy had gone months without seeing members of other crews, only to find out a friend had been killed or transferred.

After some time and mingling, another woman stood on a metal box, looking out sternly at the crowd of miners.

‘All right! Listen up!’ She had a hoarse, commanding, low voice. The kind you would expect out of a Marine who had served for thirty years. The room quickly ceased their chatter.

‘We’re going to be mining the list of precious metals already identified in your tools. It’s been preset so that we don’t have to do too much searching. The handheld beacon tool given to the team leads will also have a mineral locator that will flash on the screen when a mineral we are looking to collect is found.’

‘Quick question! Yeah, why is it we aren’t being told what we’re looking for? Normally we have a full list of minerals we search for.’ A team leader in the crowd asked.

‘Customer is a government entity, contents of this mine will be concealed at their request.’

This wasn’t necessarily unusual. Tracy had been working for the Asteroid Belt Mining Company for about 3 Earth years, just over 1,000 days, and during this time had worked for a few government contracts. There was usually a silly amount of secrecy to these, but it was never serious, the miners were generally trusted, as they were paid to be confidential as well. This was a little different, mining plots were already mapped and selected by the customer, normally this is done by management and planning at the company.

‘Your assignments and locations have been pre-loaded into team leader’s devices. Let’s move out, everyone should be back to the gear locker in 12 hours.’ The leader finished the meeting with a moment of silence for miners that had been lost in previous operations, then everyone carried on with their load outs.

‘Where’s the rest of the crew?’ Tracy asked Dillon.

‘Maddie, George, and Soren are all finishing loading out the rover. I’m going to go pee’ Dillon said as he made his way to the head.

Tracy approached the group,

‘Pretty weird, them not telling us what we’re looking for.’ Maddie said greeting Tracy.

‘I’m not too concerned, we just need to focus out there.’

‘You are always concerned! Your crew hasn’t had a single mishap in like nine hundred days!’ Soren chuckled.

Tracy looked out the window at the landscape. Before her, the view was split by a jagged and sharp horizon of white, grey rock, and the deepest black sky one could imagine. The rocks had the appearance of a freshly cooled volcanic eruption, it was fragile and would fracture in sharp shards that had been known to puncture spacesuits. This material was incredibly difficult to walk on, as at times it would crumble. The sky, always a night sky, had not a single star in it, it was pitch black, adding to the endlessness effect that space has, an empty void. There was something haunting about it, so still, yet unstable.

‘Are you scared something is out there?’ Maddie teased.

Tracy, was still transfixed on the view, ‘No. I’m scared that nothing is out there. For miles… And that we will be forgotten.’

The crew was unnerved by her ominous tone, she snapped out of her deranged thoughts, smiling.

‘We will be fine though, like you said, no accidents in over nine hundred days. It’s nine hundred and thirty-eight days, by the way.’ She said chuckling.

The crew loaded up and all boarded their mining rover, Tracy loaded the coordinates.

‘All right, everyone’s load out is good, everyone has weapons, gear, water, and food?’ The crew acknowledged.

The rover was third in line, with the other rovers pulling out of the gear locker into a tunnel that led onto the surface of the asteroid.
The crew followed the others out and watched as the first rover turned right and headed across the bumpy landscape, while the second one went forward. Tracy’s crew went left.

Tracy watched as the other rovers disappeared into the distance, and tried to regain her focus on the task at hand. Something felt strange about this mining mission, but she couldn’t place it.

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