Mercury Retrograde

Roulette followed the guys out the hatch of the hopper and down the gritty stone landing pad to the heavy blast-proof doors that lead into base camp. Behind them, a gantry crane had hooked up the hopper and was moving it to a shelf to perch it beside four similar craft. The stone-topped platform rose seconds after she stepped off. Looking up she shot the control booth a look. The operator there was grinning and shot her a thumb down wave.

"Oh, for the love of fuck Christ," she thought as she reluctantly nodded. "Another douche bag, robot making, want-a-be, thinking just because they can cobble together two pieces of metal that can challenge me. Fuck waffle!"

"Rue or you going to get in this airlock or sleep out here in the landing bay?"

Looking up, she saw Jack'o was holding the door for her. Moving with an energy she didn't really have to waste, she caught up with the others. They rode down past the various levels of base command and control and into to the lowest base levels where the miners made their residents. The rock wall vanished before them and the huge open cavern appeared. A hollow formed by a gas bubble in cooling magma, at some point the far distant past. In the first days on Mercury, the chamber had been located by seismic testing. The bore drill had pierced the old bubble, releasing perhaps a farts worth of ancient gas into the near-vacuum of Mercury's atmosphere. When the mining of surface ore began, this cavern had been a simple and easy place to convert to hold the workers in their off time.

The elevator slowed and moaned to a halt.

There was a guy who looked familiar but not too much so waiting for a ride up. Rue thought she had seen him at one of the, often crude, sports bars here in the base camp. He looked at their tired faces and grinned a welcome.

"Level six-sixty-six. Welcome to hell. Will you have smoking or smoking?"

Before anyone could answer, Hondo brushed past the man at a hustle. Rue saw the filthy man's wife moving towards the tall Latino with a bright smile. A chubby baby was squealing for its daddy, all but crawling out of her arms. Seeing the happy couple, Roulette felt a moment's envy but shrugged it off and shouldered her bag.

The guy waiting on the elevator stopped Rue before she could step past.

"Hey, are we going to be seeing the Rabid Rabbit in the arena tomorrow?"

Roulette shook her head.

"Nope, R&R is down till I can scrounge up another data block to replace the one that was destroyed last season. I'll be running the Butcher's Billy in the limited class." She shrugged at his disappointment. "If you want to see Rabbit so badly find me a 99Hard-G data block and I'll be happy to help you get your bunny fur fix on."

The guy laughed. "I can't say I'm that bad off yet, but the withdrawal pains are growing."

"Hey, Roulette! Move your tits! Some of us would like to get paid."

Looking past the fanboy, Rue gave Jack'o the finger and, with a soul-felt sigh, settled her heavy bag and followed the rest of her crew towards the graffiti scrawled administrations building. There was a small line waiting outside, maybe two crews worth but one group moved inside before she could fall in line behind Old Frank. She gave a tired wave to a small woman with heavy Asian features.

"You look like I feel, Rue." The woman grinned a bloody and black looking smile. Like a cow chewing cud, the betel leaves in her mouth never seems to stop being ground to a messy wet paste.

Before Roulette could do more than nod at Quan Lee, the door opened and the crew of H-Rig "Hard Harlot" came out grumbling about their pay but, at the same time, whooping and running like kids released from school early. A growly voice called out before the door could close.

"Next, damn it."

Quan Lee led her rig's crew into the office.

As they stood waiting they heard a few harsh words from inside, then the E-Rig's people filled out. Unlike the previous group, they left one by one, not in a cluster. And the joyous smiles were not as present. When the Asian pilot exited she waved off Jack'o offer of dinner and paused only by Rue for long enough to say.

"He's in a mood."

"NEXT!"

Roulette let Jack'o lead the way in, but she stepped between the Assessor and her people. If there was going to be heat, she was going to be the one to feel it. That -- in her mind at least -- was what made a pilot. Jack'o at her side told her he felt the same.

"Well, well. Look who decided to grace my doorstep. A-Rig, the pride of Mercury's mining company." Sam Cooker, the Queen Mining payroll Assessor on station smirked to show he was being sarcastic.

"Damn Skippy," muttered Old Frank. He and he alone on all of Mercury didn't give a pig's sweat about the boss in the Assessor office. He had seen too many asses in that seat to give swag to the current butt in the chair.

Shoot the old man a look, Sam Cooker pulled up their file.

"Let's see. You all did the full eighty-eight days. Props for that, so far you're the only crew which has earned that merit badge this season. Now the records show you averaged to drop of thirty blocks a day, or a total of two thousand, six hundred and forty blocks for the season. Sign my ledger."

There was a grumble behind Rue and a snarl beside her. Then her eyes lit on the pay per block.

"No fucking way! That's a full quarter less per block than last season!"

Sam Cooker shot her a look that said: "Suck on it."

Old Frank stepped forward and put his half-legible scrawl down on the old fashion, yellow-ish, paper-filled book. He took his money and left. After a moment Minnow followed suit. Hondo looked at the numbers for a long moment then he exchanged a sorrowful look with first Rue and then Jack'o.

"This looks short. Can you check the math for me, please?"

He was asking his pilots but it was Sam Cooker that answered.

"Two thousand, six hundred and forty blocks at five thousand dollars a block is nine million, two hundred and forty thousand dollars. Out of that, the company gets one third and the rig gets one third. That leaves three million and eighty thousand dollars for the crew. Minus the cost of food, fuel, and wherewithal leaves three million and some pocket change. Pilots get two full shares, the mechanics get a full share each and a laborer like you get a three-quarter share and had better be fucking thankfully it's not the half share you deserve. Now sign for it and get the fuck out my office."

Hondo swallowed down the anger behind his eyes, thought of his family and put down his scrawl. He hurried out to his wife and child were waiting outside.

Jack'o pulled a cigarillo from his pocket and struck an old fashion match on the side Assessor's desk. "Never let it be said you're not a swine and a scholar, Sam."

Blowing a puff of smoke at the man, he signed the ledger scooped up his money and nodded to Roulette on his way out.

Sam Cooker gave the looks Rue was shooting him a smile. "If you feel bad for the spic give him part of your share. Sign and get out."

Leaning down, Rue ignored the fact his eyes went to her tits and the display of cleavage her shirt was offering him. After eighty-eight days in an excavator living with five guys, the care about the male of the species hormonal-need to look at boobs was both old and worn pretty thin.

Roulette signed her name with a flowing elegance that was a gift from her mother's family. One of the few she had gotten to keep."I notice 'wherewithal' seems to be getting more and more expensive each season."

He chuckled, his hot eyes never her chest. "Yeah, life sucks that way."

"I want a printout."

That got his attention. "Oh, for fuck sake."

"My right, my call. Print it."

Grumbling his distaste, he pushed the thumb scanner at her for her to pay for the printing cost and -- when she didn't hesitate to press a finger to it -- got to his feet and went to the printer. A paper hard copy of the entire season's production and payoff scrolled out. Sam Cooker all but shoved it into her hand.

"Next!"

Roulette folded the paper and stuffed it into her jacket pocket as she went out. She saw a crew she didn't recognize waiting only till she was out the door to file in. She waved at a few faces that might be familiar, and who waved at her first.

Her mind was already tumbling numbers in her head to see what had to be paid verses what was going to have to wait another season's paycheck.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

After eighty-eight days the feeling of the ground not rumbling under her feet was mildly disturbing, but it was also a wonderful feeling. As clear a message she was off work as could possibly be given. Rue longed to get to her house and toss her working clothes into a corner to be forgotten for so many long enjoyable weeks.

And food!

Real cooked food that wasn't made to please six different tastes in cooking. Something she and she alone would enjoy.

The corridors that led off the main cavern and down deeper into the subsurface of Mercury were as familiar to her as the twisted warrens of dilapidated buildings in her childhood home of Atlanta. The smells were even similar to that far distant city. True the caverns here were anything but overcrowded, at least when compared to the human-thronged congested places where she had grown up. But the act of simple habitation had made these Mercury caves a pale flattery of humanity's excesses.

Cooking smells came from the open window of the place next to hers.

The laborer heavy family that lived there had moved in two seasons back and had seemed to be only adding to their numbers each time Roulette came home. There was the sound of children laughing. That was such an odd sound after months of nothing but the voices of growly men. With a smile, she worked up the effort to even wave back to the children as she passed. She giggled seeing them jumping about playing in the lighter gravity.

That brought the reality of their being here back to her in a way that took the humor from her. The knowledge of what that lesser gravity was going to do to their development, if they stayed here, which they were certainly going to do. No one ever seemed to leave the Mercury mines, save in spirit. Least way she could hope they got to leave then.

The idea of sad lingering ghosts of miners past walked those last few steps with her to her door.

Roulette -- like every person who worked one of the excavating rigs out on the surface -- shared her home with another miner. Lara Price, a woman with more mechanical skill than Minnow and Old Frank combined, had spent the time that Rue had been working here. On season and off season, the working realities of Mercury ... well, unless you're insane and think you can work two back to back seasons. There were a few people that had given that nightmare a try. Most of them cracked from the strain long before the end of the second seasons. The human mind was already reeling from the multiple oddities of life on a planet it wasn't adapted to, to then try and imposed one hundred and seventy-six days of nervous stress and confinement upon it. Well, the results weren't good.

Opening the door, Rue saw that Lara had painted the inside walls a soft mixture of blue and green. The blended color gradient reminded Roulette of a picture she had seen of some nature park. The blue of the sky with the green of the tall grass. Perhaps Lara had been looking at the same picture. Rue decided she liked it. Moving in she dropped her bag by her bedroom door. The door at the end of the hall was calling her name.

Admittedly on a planet as water poor as Mercury, the idea of a bath was insanity, but humans are human by natures so when these homes had been carved into the rock the idea of including a simple stone tub had been seen as a needed indulgence. It also gave the Queen Mining Company something else they could charge their workers for the use of. No one, and I mean no one coming off a rig would or could turn down a bath if they had access to one. And that water cost was, easily, a day's worth of her pay.

Or two, given these shorter wages.

But as the shallow tub filled with steaming water Rue counted it as money well spent. Besides, she only indulged in this once or twice per off season. That mitigated the cost.

And the fact her co-owner was a woman who similarly felt a need for such an indulgence, made it not seem too burdensome.

Shedding clothes that to her nose reeked of the burnt gunpowder smell of Mercury's heat blasted surface, Rue tossed them aside with delight and stood naked in her skin for the first time in far too long. A cramped bunk house co-occupied by a swarm of horn-dog men, who were liable to pop in simply to try and snatch a free peek, was not a place to stand naked about in for long. Rue delighted in being naked and getting to stretch, and scratch, and lift, and massage places which had been all but calloused by wearing too-stiff clothes, day after day. She smiled thinking about the soft things stashed in her closet. Clothes that she wore so infrequently they might have been all but new.

Stepping into the tub was a needed release of eighty-eight days of tensions.

Piloting a rig like Big Alice was not the most complicated thing to do, but it was the stress of being in charge of that much moving metal knowing a simple mistake could end your life. Knowing that in every direction death was surrounding you. The land was death. Temperatures that would freeze your skin in seconds. The air was death. An atmosphere so thin it required instruments to even detect it, you would breath out your last breath as a scream of snowflakes and then try to gasp in the vacuum.

The rig could die. The command compartment could be ruptured. There were fumes, given off in the compacting of ore into the "shit bricks,' which were toxic to breathe. If they got into the crew compartments ... well, death would be slower than breathing in the Mercury atmosphere. But that wasn't a desired ending for any crew.

And it had happened.

Black Betty had nearly been scorched by the morning sunrise. Naughty Natalia -- the original N-Rig --had lost her whole crew. The people topside didn't know they were even gone till the rig began to wander off its course. Cause of death was said to be medical. Somehow their enhanced immune systems --standard for all humans living off of Earth -- had been shut down. Radiation caused cancers, which would normally have been dealt with by the normal hyped-up immune systems, had instead destroyed the crewmen in mere hours. Some miners like Old Frank had made the suggestion that the nano enhancements embedded in those systems -- which flag such cancers for disposal -- had been switched off.

Exactly how that impossibility had been done varied by which conspiracy you cared to believe.

The warm water crawled up Roulette's skin in micro-inches as she slipped deeper and deeper. Like a lover's caress, the water went exploring into places that need desperately such a wet touch. Rue took a worn rag and with just a hint of some incredibly expensive, highly fragrant soap and began the all but fruitless task of slow washing away a season of mining stink. Even with such a flowery soap working at her skin, the stench wouldn't really vanish. Hidden, covered, suppressed? Well ... yeah, it could become all of those but gone ... no, not really.

Roulette knew in her heart she would always smell of burnt gunpowder.

Laying her head on the warm, smooth, stone side of her tub, she sighed as she rubbed at her tangle of pubic bramble. That was another thing she missed while working. It was damn all hard to masturbate in the rig. Sure she was left alone in the command room for often hours at a time, but that room was subject to both audio and visual monitoring. Rue had no desire for some vacuum-breather up top to be getting his rocks off watching her rubbing herself to relief. Or worse one of the grungy fuckers in charge down her at base-camp.

With slow lazy ease Roulette fingered herself till arousal began to build to enjoyable levels. She smiled thinking about the vibrating toys, dear friends she seduced herself with till they pleased her over and over. Plastic lovers who made her orgasm till she melted into human pudding. Rue grinned at the idea. For a moment she considered the idea of getting up out the tub and making the toys happy she was home. But the water was still warm, and the bath too relaxing. Besides, there was time. It would be another season before she would again sit behind the controls of Big Alive.

By then even masturbation would be wearing thin.

Well, good thing there was all the destruction and mayhem she had to look forward to till then. And who knows, she might even decide to have a bit of body-on-body contact while she was off work this season. She certainly got enough offers from the others miners here in base camp. Offers of sex that ranged from...

"Hey baby, wanna fuck?"

...all the way to "You hold her down first."

Roulette smirked thinking about the reaction those two fellas must have gotten at the base hospital. She had never seen them again, so she could only guess whether they had lived or died. The mere rumor of their fate had prevented any type of repeat of that night. She was perhaps one of the few women who could walk into any part of this underground warren of tunnels and not have to fear for her safety. Or that she would get to keep her underwear on at least.

Not that she always wanted to keep her underwear on.

With a moan, she rubbed her clit harder. There were certainly people down here in the base camp she wouldn't mind getting all sweaty with. Laying a leg over the side of the tub she spread herself allowing warm water to flood deeper into her. Like wet kisses on her, neither lips Rue was more and more leaning toward the thought of taking her toys to bed.

Leaning her head further back she took a few deep breaths and began small circles beside her clit. A need for her nipples to also feel something caused her to cup each of the firm mounds and pinch the hard points.

With her growing need to orgasm a demanding itch to scratch, she sank a finger into herself, moaning at both the silky feeling within and equally the hard warmth of that single digit inside her. She moaned, she groaned, she whimpered as she added two fingers, she...

... fell asleep.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Waking up hours later when the laws of thermodynamic -- having grown tired of simply removing heat from bath water -- began to apply to her own body temperatures.

Shivering uncontrollably, Rue crawled from the tub and grabbed her robe.

A brisk walk to the kitchen and to the auto-chef saw her with a steaming cup of what could laughingly be called coffee. "Well, at least it's hot," She thought to herself as she moved into the living room and curled herself up in her favorite chair. An extruded plastic version of the Asian rattan "Papasan" chair, it hugged her and she curled up in it like it was her nest. Wrapping herself around her warm mug, Roulette woke slowly and enjoyed being able to do so. Her normal wake up routine aboard the A-Rig was more a matter of trying to not hack up a pound of mining dust while getting dressed in a cramped, cold, and overly smelly bunk room.

"Mother... "

It took the home computer a second to adjust to the change of voice calling after it. "Yes, Roulette? How may I help you?"

"I need to get caught up on the arena battles for the last season. Give me an overall and my normal a list of challenges ... oh, for the next five days."

"Yes, dear."

The nearest screen flickered on and a video window expanded. As stat data scrolled past on the margin, Rue sipped her coffee and watched the remote-controlled robots trying to destroy themselves. The lighter gravity of Mercury had given a rebirth to the once ancient vid-sport of robot fighting, but in bizarre ways. For one it was simplicity to make a heavy metal robot jump over or all but fly away from their opponent. A sport once confined to a flat floor, it had taken on an acrobatic quality bordering on gymnastic insanity.