Tinto

Chapter 1

Yutani-Tinto Mining Ship: Tinto

Date: October 19th, 2123

Location: Jupiter L4 Trojan Asteroids

A great author once wrote 'Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.'

He certainly wasn't wrong. I remember first reading his books when I was at school, one of the great writers of the twentieth century. If only he could have known­–or maybe he did know–how empty and cold space really is, as well as being mind-bogglingly big.

It's times like this, when I'm sitting out here, waiting, that I ponder how small and insignificant my collection of molecules are in our vast universe. Also, having read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy again recently, makes me appreciate how fun it is out there in space, flying spaceships and hopping from outpost to outpost, it's everything Arthur Dent didn't want to do.

My name is Wren, and I'm the captain of the Tinto, a four-person mining ship currently hanging out in the Trojan asteroids at Jupiter's L4 point. The Tinto has been in service for about four years now, three of them under my command, she's my home. I fought tooth and nail to get her assigned to me, and she's never let me down. She's not as shiny as the day she was built but looks ain't everything.

My crew have stepped out for a while, surveying the hunk of rock we've been assigned to take apart and return to the Martian colony for processing. Early survey indications point to a sizable quantity of titanium, tungsten and osmium. The osmium is the payday we're after.

It was my turn to stay behind and keep an eye on the ship's systems today, which is fine by me. The new EVA suits the company dropped off at our last resupply stop chafe in all the wrong places, but I've got a plan in the works to get our old ones back. The problem is making sure the company doesn't find out, and that's where my crew come in.

This expedition is our twentieth as a unit, so by now, we're operating like a well-oiled machine.

'Yo, Cap! You still awake in there?' came a voice over the comms.

That would be our lead engineer, Cisco. He's a smug little bastard, but one of the smartest guys I know. He's the one who's going to reprogram our old EVA suits so that the company doesn't know we're not using their latest and greatest ones. It's something to do with insurance or health and safety, but we don't get paid extra for losing skin. It's also best that Cisco's out there in a suit than in here right now. We had curry for dinner last night, and we all know intimately what that does to his bowels.

'Cisco. Alive and well, thank you. How's the flatulence?'

A well-oiled machine that knows each other far too well!

'Smells like a Martian curry house in here, Cap.'

'Give it a rest you two,' said Jessica, my metallurgist. I'll just go out of my way and say it now, my crew are all clever shits, and I wouldn't run these trips without any of them. We're all loners, no one to speak of back home, wherever home happens to be. I'm from Earth, but Jessica and Cisco are Martian.

That just leaves Ortis, my demolition and mining expert. He's from a colony on Titan, and we found each other entirely by accident on one of my early trips out in the Tinto. I went out to Titan on a shakedown cruise, and the bugger picked my pocket not five minutes after docking for supplies. Unfortunately for him, I was wise to the antics of the colonists, and he ended up flat on his back, more than slightly winded. I was too tired to take offence, so he bought me a drink to apologise, which I later decided to be another ploy to rip me off.

I was right about that, but when he heard that I was heading for a shakedown cruise to the Jupiter Trojans, he changed his attitude pretty quick. Ortis had wanted to get off Titan for a long time, and he saw me as his ticket out of there. He also saved me from an ass-kicking in the bar, so I owed him. I was also a crew member short at that point, intending to find someone with his expertise on my return leg, but I gave him a trial run and never looked back.

'Hey, Jess, how's our rock looking. Got your samples yet?'

If she had responded, I didn't hear it as a sudden explosion against the hull made my ears ring and rattled my brain.

'Hull impact!' I shouted down the comms, as I jumped out of my chair to check the engineer's panel behind me, which was lit up like a Christmas tree. I stabbed at the console to turn off the alarms. No breaches were being indicated, but there had been an impact of some kind.

Then I heard it. The maniacal laugh of Ortis over the radio.

'What the hell did you do, Ortis?'

'Just a firecracker, Captain. Didn't even dent the hull plating.'

What an asshole.

'Do that again, and I'll personally drop your ass on Titan as we fly by, without stopping!'

'Aye, Captain,' he said. I could hear the satisfaction in his voice of a job well done. Being out here for as long as we have, shit like this happens from time to time. The key, I've discovered is to let the little things slide, but keep them handy for payback later.

When my heart had stopped pounding, I shook myhead and had a little chuckle. Not over the radio, of course, I can milk thisfor a few days at least.