Dust

Chapter I: The Metal Angel

Half a meter deep in the asteroid, Esaul feels the drill break into a pocket. From the cockpit of the mining ship's drill arm, Esaul releases his finger off the trigger on the steering control to stop the drill and pushes a button on the dashboard to transmit. "We struck a pocket. Check for gas leaks."

"Hold on—Oh yea. That's beautiful." Arik, his mining partner, says over their radio. Esaul looks out his cockpit and sees his partner in his bulky space suit floating ten meters above the drill arm platform, using nearly the entire length of his tether. Arik is holding his camera out in front of him to check his shot. Esaul's temper grows short. "Arik, you are supposed to be watching the skirt seal for any gas leaks. Now get down there and do your job."

"Oh, sorry. You caught me at a bad moment."

"We have designated breaks for leisure."

"Yea. I kind of got carried away. I didn't think that the asteroid surface would breach this quickly." Arik puts the camera's strap over his space helmet and pulls on his tether, initiating his glide over to the skirt seal on the asteroid, and gently lands. He grabs on to the handles designed for traversing the skirt seal and maneuvers himself so he's facing the skirt seal headfirst with his feet pointed toward the drill arm cockpit. He pulls out a device from a thigh sleeve in his space suit and points it around the area of contact between the skirt and the asteroid surface. He attaches the tool to a magnetic pad on his glove and uses his two free hands to grab onto adjacent handles and pull himself to the next area to check for leaks. He traverses the entire five meter circumference of the skirt seal. He reports back "There's nothing to worry about here." Esaul pushes a button on the control panel to open the hydrogen intake vents along the skirt seal interior. Before Esaul adjusts the slider to increase suction, hydrogen gas flies through the vents, into the suction tubes routing back into and through the drill arm bay, and into the hydrogen storage tanks. "How's the haul?" Arik's voice asks over the speakers.

Esaul's frown fades away. "It's actually really good." He reads the chart in his cockpit. "We're getting a good flow rate. I'm impressed." Esaul lets out a chuckle as he exhales. "I say our hard work has been paying off."

"We got lucky," Arik corrects him. "After the past 10 days of this excursion, we were due for some good luck." Arik laughs to himself. Days. That word has no meaning this far away from Earth. They have no reference for how long they have been away, aside from the mission calendar on board their ship. They use led lights that run on a 24-hour cycle to mimic sunlight on Earth over the course of a day so they don't exhaust themselves over lack of sleep.

Arik then thinks of Becada, a nation that used to live on Earth. They spent decades drilling oil from their grounds and trading it with other countries. They bought territory anywhere in the world as long as there was oil beneath the rocks. Buying out entire islands, peninsulas, coastlines, and eventually continents was not enough for them. They were the first ones to develop technology for sea floor mining and even claimed ownership of Earth's waters after they had bought out every square mile of land with major oil reserves. Within a hundred years after their first territorial purchase, they clenched their fist over all of Earth's oceans. Not a single bullet was exchanged in a dispute over resources, and yet they managed to control all naval routes, and in turn all of Earth's economy.

But that power lasted only a few lifetimes. The rest of the Earth watched their fleets of oil drillers slowly dwindle as oil reserves dried up. Becada poured their black gold fortune into space flight technology. Others have had successful missions into Earth orbit, the moon, and even Mars, but none of them were able to break records every few years like Becada did. Not only did Becada impress the world with their satellites and spaceships, but their infrastructure for life in space was the first ever. Their most impressive achievement was Orchid City, the first satellite metropolis. They moved their capital and its entire population into Orchid City. They must've also had lights to mimic Earth's 24-hour days. Not only that, but thermostats, and pressure and humidity control systems to mimic Earth's seasons onboard Orchid City as it orbited the world below.