Harvest

Jora sat on the edge of the bed. His warm, deep-brown hand, calloused and strong, ruffled Raz’s auburn hair. When Raz didn’t move under the covers, he shook the larger man’s shoulder. “Raz, wake up.”

“I don’t want to.” Raz tried to roll away from the intrusion but was held firm. Jora’s slight frame hid enormous strength.

“You don’t want to; I don’t want to. I just want to go home. Shift starts in an hour,” Jora said. “Get up so we can have breakfast together, at least.”

“We’ve made it this long,” Raz said. “We can see this through to the end.”

“Yeah, yeah. Captain Durand won’t be happy with anything less than the five-year, 250 percent bonus. I just didn’t think five years could feel so long. I can only do the same thing every day for so long, you know.”

“Even if that thing is me?” Raz asked.

“I don’t get tired of you, no. Because every day you’re a slightly different type of asshole.”

“Ouch. At least we’re together.”

“Yeah. But if there’s a mechanical reason to turn back, I’m calling it. No second-guessing, no talking me out of it.”

Throwing the covers off, Raz sat up on the edge of the bed. He was easily twice as massive as Jora. Muscles rippled under his olive-tan skin as he stretched. “Wait, is it our anniversary yet?”

“No, that’s next week.” Jora kissed him between his shoulder-blades. “Or is it the week after next? I don’t know, it isn’t today. Get dressed, I’ll see you in the galley.”

Raz stood and stretched once more, pressing his hands against the low ceiling. “See you in ten.” He rapped his fist against the ceiling once, making the metal walls of their cabin ring.

Breakfast consisted of one potato and one green onion from the hydroponic garden with egg-flavored protein powder reconstituted and cooked into an approximation of scrambled eggs along with a mug of strong coffee. The second-shift crew was in for a nightcap of vodka made in the still in engineering.

Lada Bird, the chief navigator, picked at her breakfast. Close-cropped black hair topped a pale pink face, currently crestfallen. “Man, I wish more of the plants we started with had survived.”

“At least we still have the potatoes,” Raz said, pointing to the bottle of vodka sitting in the middle of the mess table.

Ayla Durand entered, filled her mug with coffee, and added a shot of vodka to it. She was tall, having to duck through the low doorways, and had close-cropped black hair, reddish-brown skin and bright brown eyes. “It’s going to be all-out today, so be ready.”

“What’s up, Cap?” asked Raz.

“We’ll be harvesting today,” she said. “Decent nebula where we can grab up some more organics along with a full resupply of hydrogen.”

“Oh good,” Raz said. “I thought you were going to say it’s my turn to clean the algae out of the CO2 scrubbers again.”

“Good idea, Bianchi. You can top off the food generator with that before we get to the nebula.”

Raz groaned. “Okay, okay. That’s what I get for being a scientist on a science ship.”

“It’s not a science ship, it’s my ship,” Ayla said, “I was just dumb enough to take this gig.”

“Ah, you love this shit, Cap.” Lada raised her own mug of coffee. “Who else would volunteer for a mission like this? They said support yourselves in space for five years, and you heard, ‘Get away from everyone for five years’ and signed right up!”

There was a smattering of laughter among the crew. Jora snorted once and Raz nearly choked on his coffee. “Lada’s got you there,” Raz choked out.

Ayla ignored it. “Bashir,” she said, gesturing at Jora with her mug, “how’s the work on the recyclers?”

“Recyclers are back online since yesterday at sixteen-hundred hours. I can start prepping the gas separators for harvest right away.”

“Good, we harvest in ten hours, all hands.” Without waiting for a response, she left the galley.

After tossing their trays in the recycler chutes, Jora and Raz parted ways to do their work. Jora logged on to the terminal in the maintenance bay and checked the date: Thursday, 495-10-14, day 1472 of the mission, and three weeks to his anniversary.

Jora logged the task he was doing and the commands to lock out the controls of the gas separators in the terminal. With the muscle memory that came from four years of doing the same thing every day, he grabbed his tool belt as he walked by the workbench without looking and fastened it around his hips.

Jora’s work for the day was simple but tedious; a thorough inspection of the gas separator, replace any worn parts, and log the results. The gas separator would pull in everything they harvested from the nebula, filtering out the large carbon molecules, the metallic elements, and then the gasses. The hydrogen would be further filtered to separate out the deuterium from the protium.

For every part he replaced, he printed another, making sure they had at least two spares of every part, down to the smallest nut and bolt. The only exceptions were the large pieces, like the mounting frame and the vacuum chamber. If those failed it would require hand-welding smaller pieces from the printer.

Once he finished with that, he checked the supplies for the printer. They were good for iron, copper, zinc, nickel, gold, titanium, aluminium, silicon, and several types of plastics. What they were lacking was lithium. Without that, the fusion reactor would not be able to generate tritium from the deuterium, in order to run the more powerful deuterium-tritium reactions the ship relied on.

“Raz, do we have metallics analysis on the nebula?” he asked over the intercom.

“Not much showing,” Raz said. “There may be some further in, but the outer envelope is pretty soupy; blocks the scanners. We won’t know more until we get in there.”

“We’re running low on lithium. If we don’t find some soon, we’ll have to go back.” Jora smiled. “Not that I’d complain about that. We get the four-year bonus anyway.”

“Then let’s hope we find some.” Ayla did not sound amused. “We’re getting that five-year bonus even if you all have to get out and push.”

They all gathered on the bridge as the ship dropped out of super-C. The nebula shone in front of them, hinting at the stars in its midst.

“Deploy the catch-net and set a course into the nebula.” Ayla stood by her seat; her eyes fixed on the spectacle in front of her.

“Never gets old, does it?” asked Lada.

“Never.”

Jora watched for as long as he could, up to the moment the charged net began to flicker. It was dragging in material, and he would need to stand by the gas separator. The next two hours were slow, the numbers on the separator slowly rising. He keyed the intercom. “Aside from hydrogen, everything is still in trace amounts. And it looks like we’re slowing down?”

“Entering a void,” Ayla said. There was a murmur of voices over the intercom.

“What’s going on?”

“Maintain orbit here. Get up here, Bashir. I need an engineer’s assessment.”

“On my way.”

Jora entered the bridge and looked out the viewport. A small, bright star sat at the middle of an empty expanse. “It’s a star.”

Raz tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the terminal monitor. In the view from the telescope a disk appeared around the star, with a few bands swept clear. “There’s everything there, up through transuranic elements. We’re in the remnants of a supernova, and the birth of new star system.”

“Nice. So, what did you need engineering for, Captain?”

“There’s a lot of everything we might need out there, but it’s not gas and molecular dust.” She leaned on the edge of her chair. “Do you think we can harvest from there?”

“I’ll have to do some calculation, see what we have on hand, and get back to you.” Jora read through the numbers on the monitor. “The net as is won’t hold up, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”

“You’re not telling me to pack it up and go home?”

“No. Like you said, everything we need is right there. I’m an engineer, and I haven’t had a good challenge in years.”

“You have twenty-four hours to come up with a plan, or a damn good explanation of why it can’t be done.”

“Yes, Captain.”

After poring over the numbers for four hours straight, Jora sighed. “This isn’t working.”

“Eat something,” Raz said, pushing a tray in front of him. “Might help clear your head.”

“Thanks.” Jora ate the bland soup.

“Maybe talk me through it? What’s the biggest problem?”

“The shields. Even if I rig something up that can handle the junk out there, the shields aren’t meant to take that kind of a beating.”

“Isn’t this ship rated for planetary take-off and re-entry? How do the shields—”

“Raz, you’re a genius!” Jora pulled up the images from the earlier scans. “These empty bands here… those are planets, or at least on their way to being planets. Captain, I think I have it!”

Ayla raised her head from where she had been resting on the mess table. “We land on one of the planets?”

“Not likely.” Jora began drawing diagrams on the terminal. “They’re probably still molten. What we need to look for is a narrow, partially cleared ring. There’ll be a large asteroid or planetoid starting to clear its neighborhood, but still small enough to not maintain the heat of the impacts. We hang on the back side of it, use it as a shield while we dig into from there.”

“Risks?”

“Something big hits it and it splashes us.”

“That’s easy enough,” Raz said. “We scan all the likely candidates and find the one with no large objects on an intercept course. For a couple hours, anyway.”

“Why only a couple hours?” Ayla asked.

“There are millions of objects out there, all colliding and interacting. It’s going to be chaotic for the next billion years or so.” Raz stood. “I’m heading to the lab to find our candidates and build an orbital probability model.”

Ayla turned to Jora. “Will a couple hours be long enough to get what we need?”

“Assuming the asteroid has it, sure.” Jora finished his soup and converted the rear cargo bay into a mining platform while Raz hunted for a suitable target.

With their target selected and course laid in, Lada maneuvered in behind the asteroid, matching its speed. While the ship turned its belly to the rock, Jora checked his vac suit and entered the airlock to the rear cargo bay. He had emptied it of everything except the loader arm on which he had attached a makeshift digger and evacuated all the air.

“I’m ready,” Jora said.

“Bird, bring our belly right up to that thing.”

“On it.”

Jora opened the rear loading door and watched the surface of the asteroid draw closer. He extended the arm to its maximum reach. “Five more meters.”

“Five meters, creeping in.”

“Easy, Lada.” Ayla’s voice was tense.

Jora watched the arm get closer to the surface. “Three meters.”

“Three meters.”

“One meter.” Jora retracted the arm before it impacted the surface. “Hold it here.”

“Holding.”

“Easy, Lada.”

“Digging now.” With slow, deliberate movements he began digging into the surface of the asteroid. As the scoop moved closer to the deck of the cargo bay, the artificial gravity overcame that of the asteroid, enabling him to dump the scoop and go for another.

The lights from the cargo bay reflected off the fresh scar, winking with what could be ice or metals. He pulled in the second scoop and dumped it when he heard popping noises over the radio in his helmet.

“How are we looking, Bashir?”

“Looking good, Captain. Raz, are you getting readings from the sensors in the cargo hold?”

“I’m getting it. Looks like —”

“Bashir, you need to hurry. We’re getting pelted out here.”

“Right. I’ll just keep digging until you pull us away.”

He pulled in the third scoop and felt the ship vibrate beneath him. The surface of the asteroid pulled away from the open door. “What’s happening?”

“We’re creating a gravity well, and everything loose on the surface is rolling in between us and the asteroid,” Raz said. 

“Quick guess on how much lithium we have?” Jora asked.

“You’ve pulled in eighteen kilos of material,” Raz said, “so my guess would be four or five hundred grams. It’s a motherlode.”

“We need at least twice that.”

“It looks like you found the sweet spot,” Ayla said. “We can keep going or try again later on another rock.”

“You’re right about the sweet spot.” Jora looked at the piles between himself and the open cargo door. “How much time can you give me?”

“We’ve tracked an incoming asteroid, off-plane, bigger than this one. Looks like a collision course. Forty minutes, max.”

“I can do it,” Jora said. “Get me back down there.”

The lights went red, and the impact alarm sounded over the radio. “Everyone in their vac suit. Bird, I’ll take the controls while you suit up.”

The asteroid approached the open door again, much faster than it had the first time. Jora winced, expecting an impact. Instead, the ship stopped closer than it had been before.

Moving as fast as he could, Jora pulled scoop after scoop out of the asteroid. As it was mostly just a collection of dust and rocks held together by gravity it was easy going.

“Five minutes to impact, collision course verified. Close it up, Bashir.”

Another vibration shook the ship. This time, Jora could hear it as a low thump; the sound waves carried up through his bones. He tried to pull in the scoop, but something in the asteroid had shifted, wedging it in place.

“Come on! Get back here!”

“You’re running out of time, Bashir. Close it up!”

“The arm is stuck.”

The ship pulled away from the asteroid, only to have the stuck loader arm jerk the two of them together. “We need to get out of here!”

“I’m going to dump the arm.” Jora stepped away from the controls and pulled the pins that held the front of the arm to the cargo bay floor. The rear pins were jammed, the mounting plate pulling hard against them. “I need you to give me a little slack. Ten centimeters, even.”

“I’m trying!” Lada’s voice was panicked. “We’re jammed on something underneath.”

“Lada, lift the nose, just a hair.”

“Uh, o– okay.”

As soon as the plate relaxed against the pins, Jora pulled them both and the ship began to separate from the asteroid, the loader arm falling into it, now a permanent part of it. “Go! We’re clear!” He closed the cargo bay door and collapsed.

“Get us out of here, Bird.” The relief in Ayla’s voice was obvious. “Bashir, I’m going to need some exterior work from you. We got dinged pretty hard there. Showing hull damage in section B-9.”

“Sure thing. Let me clean the dust off my suit and get my vac welder. We’ll have to leave the cargo bay in vacuum until we get the alkalis sorted and stored in oil. Don’t want to start a fire.”

 “We can worry about that after you get some sleep. We’re not leaving until we’ve all rested. But Bashir,” she asked, “did we lose my loader arm?”

“We did.”

“Can you build me a new one?”

“Maybe,” he said, “probably. But if we start running low on materials again, it’s someone else’s turn to do the mining. I don’t think my heart can take that again, and I want to be alive to collect that five-year bonus.”