Somewhere in the Outer Belt
400m of lumbering meta alloy slugged it’s way across the asteroid field. The Abzu’s Bounty, ice hauler out of Ceres, would never win any beauty contests. Over 80 years since the keel was laid it had been modified, expanded, re-purposed and basically fucked with for a generation. Long gone were it’s glory days of transporting heavy materials for the colonisation of the belt. Now it served a more mundane but no less vital part of the cogs of survival in the far reaches of the solar system. Reaping water from frozen rocks to refine and supply the millions of lifeforms to which the building block of life was so vital. Yet it paid pittance. Market prices dictated by the earthbound corporations that sponsored the endeavours through a blanket of front companies and carefully concocted conglomerates kept the belters barely in the black, most in the red. Resentment continued to run high. One day the belt would shake off the yolk of inner influence, so some would say, but even fewer spoke of the essential continued reliance on both parties to each other in more intertwined logistical and practical intrigues than most minds could hope to ever comprehend.
Freedom, a word used far too much with far too little of it’s true understanding, for life in the belt was governed, no, ruled by degrees of managed freedom, managed by others. However, for many, the mere perception of freedom extended simply to the airlock door. Earning your own scrip, doing your own thing, playing how you liked and loving who you wanted without the eyes of an inner security feed vicariously watching you was enough for most, and for you. For whatever reason detaching yourself from rock bound ventures you found solace and your own unique perception of freedom aboard the Bounty.
The life of ice haulers is harsh, accidents happen, insurance is expensive and death is simply millimetres away, beyond the life sealing environs of a multi-layered vac suit or plexiglass visor.
Your team, I suppose you could call it that now, after celebrating your hundredth snag with a party in the cramped confines of the mess hall, sharing drinks, sweat and more in the pursuit of your ‘freedom’, C Watch.
Three watches aboard the Bounty, 8 hours on, 8 hours refinery and 8 hours sleep, r and r. The ‘on’ part was where it got interesting. Each team comprised of a team leader, a demolitions man (bang man), a pilot (wings), and engineer (wrench) and a medic (body boy). All had their specialisms. The leader, a jack of all, ready to step in to support all, the bang man, to oversee the charges that would, set to just the right yield, crack the asteroid like an egg, softly, so the fragments could be harvested, the wings, to pilot the ‘tin can’, the rudimentary safehouse that would drop and grab on to the asteroid, from which all would emerge to do their work and shelter in if needed. The wrench, who would fix the things others broke, and the body boy, who plugged holes in those who should have been more careful. All however, were trained to do the job millions did aeons past, to go into dark and dangerous places to extract the valuables within. Your team had nicknamed themselves the 49ers, after some crewmen dug out some old movies from the past.
For the most par though, the ‘on’ time was spent in transit on the Bounty to the next find, which made for extended r and r. No one complained.
The duty readout pinged across your terminals for the day, you’d suspected that this was upon you, since the braking burn had been at a relatively comfortable 0.3g for 30 hours, and only in the last 2 hours had the drive been cut, and all of you woke from the end of your sleep period floating a few inches above your bunks, restrained by your sheet straps, lest you find yourselves with your head in a wardrobe or something similarly ridiculous.
Your day was about to start.
CHARACTER GEN WILL BE DONE ON THE FIRST SESSION.
The make up of the team will be;
1 from Earth, Mars and the belt with one other.
1 Wrench
1 Wings
1 Body Boy
1 Leader
Have a think about your concepts, feel free to discuss in the forum.
