Mercury Retrograde

Roulette shrugged.

So far no one she had talked to had anything more than a theory and she wanted to see the A-Rig with her own eyes before she would trust anything she was told. Ahead of her, she saw the rest of her crew waiting at the elevator base. "We will find out in just a bit. Maybe it's a simple fix, and they are just too tired from a full season to figure it out."

Old Frank heard her as she walked up.

"Well, that's just fucking horse shit. That not just a rig that's the livelihood of all of us and them. What if their neglect makes A-Rig stop in the middle of our season? If Minnow and I can't figure it out and get the old girl back running that's it. She's a burnt husk of metal sitting in the way for the whole damn world to see, but I ask you ... who will they blame? McPherson and Williams? Fuck no, it will be on me and him!"

Jack'o tried to calm down his mechanic.

"Frank we will find out what is going on -- and if we can't -- and anything does go wrong, Roulette and I will stand behind you and Minnow when the hard questions come up. You know that. Now come on, let's get this mobile feast underway. I'm ready to feel the deck plates rumble."

Nodding her agreement, Rue followed the men into the elevator and tried to hide the sigh when she realized -- in her gut realized -- another eighty-eight days of ore mining was about to start. The feeling settled inside like a brick in her stomach and she was suddenly trying to carry a load of depression as well as her bag.

After a moment Jack'o reached forward and tapped her shoulder. "Hey, Rue. Awesome season at the arena. That was one hell of a first match too."

That was enough to bring back a smile to her face.

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

Easing herself back into the familiar seat, Roulette laid her hands on Alice's controls for the first time in eighty-eight days. She had spent so many hours in this damn chair that after a second it felt like she had never left.

Checking gauges she looked over things and frowned. There was still a ton of drag occurring at some point. Minnow and Old Frank were elbow-deep in the works at the moment trying to figure out what had happened. The two mechanics they had replaced had both looked so like hell it had been hard to bring the blame hammer down on them. When Jack'o asked he learned that the mechanics and laborer had been working double shifts for twenty five days trying to solve the problem.

It took Old Frank four days.

~"Roulette?"~

Reaching up, Rue pulled down the small square mic. "Yeah, Jack'o, I'm here. what's up?"

~"Bring us up to full power. Minnow wants to listen to one of the drive gears with sonics."~

"Roger that. Full power in three."

Two ... one...

With a low rumble, Big Alice began to accelerate. The mining rig was of course far too large for even full power to cause any type of sudden surge of speed, but to its pilot, it was almost as if she had stepped on the gas in a hot rod.

~"Rue, take the center cutting blades offline?"~

Shifting the seat over two feet, Roulette operated the large paddle wheel excavator blades. The middle of the wheel shifted back from the face of the rock and idled down.

~"Alright now left and then right in that order, then bring them back up in the same. Right, left, then center"~

"Gotcha."

Big Alice didn't like that at all!

With a moan that shook the whole of the space-frame the monster excavator perceptibly slowed.

~"FULL STOP!"~

"Rodger, already doing that!" Roulette slid over and geared the main speed down to nothing. With a lurch, the big rig settled. "What the hell was that?"

~"We've got a--"~

The speaker above Roulette went silent and the larger ship-wide call system broke in.

~"A-Rig this is top-side control. Our instruments show you are stopped and in distress. Do you require assistance?"~ The voice held a tone that bespoke if help was needed heads were going to roll. ~"I say again do you require assistance?"~

Annoyed, Rue switched the circuit on her mic.

"Top-side this is A-Rig actual. We are trying to diagnose a problem with our acceleration. No emergency at this time, I say again, no emergency at this time."

Switching back, she keyed the mic. "Jack'o say again, we were interrupted."

~"I said we've got an accumulation of melted silica built up in the auxiliary trans-axle for out the mid-geared tranny. It's glassed the whole thing. It will take us days to chip out all of this."~

"So are we talking fifty percent speed?"

Roulette could hear Old Frank in the background cussing her as Minnow answered her. She grinned.

~"If that much. We've got to take the whole gearbox offline just to work in there. We'll be on the auxiliary alone for that whole time."~ He paused and she heard a hammer banging in the background. ~"And running on the auxiliary will turn this whole area into between a dust bath and a sauna."~

"Gotcha. Well, at least you will keep warm while you work. I'll let them know up top and you guys lock it out from down there. No 'pilot error' meat grinders on my rig."

On her control panel, a red light came on telling her the mid-gear transmission had been taken offline.

Minnow chuckled into the mic. ~"I hear that and agree. Jack'o is on his way up there. He wants you to come down here and see this."~

"Rodger that, Minnow. I'll get my working duds on."

Locking the controls into automatic, Rue again switched the mic. "Top-side, this is A-Rig actual. I have to report a mechanical failure. We have a glassed mid-gear transmission. We will be operating at fifty percent power till repairs can be made." She waited a half second then keyed the mic again. "I repeat a fifty percent power loss is to be expected till repairs can be made. Do you copy?"

After a moment of silence, the ship-wide call system again sounded off like the voice of God.

"We copy, A-rig. Stand by for instructions on how to repair the issue."

With a roll of her eyes, Roulette got to her feet and moved to the back of the control room and took her suit down off the storage rack. Not a "space suit, per-say, although if push came to shove it could be used temporarily for such. The main problem being the lack of long term CO'2 filtration and suit warmers. But for working on the rig, in the near-vacuumed of Mercury, it allowed a safe amount of movement in the drive work section of the mining rig. She was still putting it on and adjusting the tension of the joint straps when Jack'o walked in. His suit was covered in shiny black dust.

"That is a god damned mess down there." He started to unfasten his suit's togs. "I'm going to write it up as a possible pure ore crossing, but I want your opinion as well before I make it official."

Roulette looked at the co-pilot in surprise. "You're sure? I mean it couldn't just be long term accumulations?"

"Nope. Too refined. Someone drove over a shit brick. No question of it in my mind."

"Well, I know I haven't and I'm guessing if you're willing to do such a report that you're sure you've not done it either." She gave him a look. "This will be a gut punch back at base camp. You know that, right?"

"I know. I'm not one for wanting to throw anyone into the reactor, but dammit that's what we've got. If we don't it's going to be a dark mark on the whole rig's crew and I'll not stand for that on my record when I know it wasn't me!"

Roulette took down her suit's helmet from its rack. "Alright. I'll give it a look see and, if I agree ... and only if I agree, I'll back your call in the report."

Jack'o nodded. "That's all I'm asking."

With a sigh, she left him and headed down into the guts of the big mining rig. The cold of Mercury night in the unheated sections warred with the minimalistic heating elements built into her suit. As she passed between sections, stepping out of airlocks her suit would swell up and become more restrictive. Then it would deflate when she entered one of the work areas.

The massive drive gears, slow turning and crushing in their power, were frightening to walk past, a safety rail or not. She did welcome the friction heat they gave off. Hondo was standing by the airlock door when she stepped into the transmission housing. A cloud of shiny dust particles hovered in the all but nonexistent air. That thin air didn't carry much sound, but the deck plates at her feet were delivering the vibrations into her suit allowing her to hear the hammering of two power jackhammers at work. When Hondo led her into the back she saw Minnow and Old Frank, massive and hulking in their heavier suits, each man holding the end of an air driven hammer chipping at a mass of blackened melted glass. She could see the multi gears of the drive peaking through the many layers of heat-fused silica.

Minnow gestured for Hondo to come take his place and he left the air hammer hanging from its support springs. Walking over to Rue, he wiped the dusty face plate of his helmet clear and placed it glass-to-glass with hers. When he spoke she could hear him clearly. His face was already dripping sweat.

"We've estimated about seven tons of glassing, Rue. Call it four days of chipping ... well, unless we get lucky."

He handed her a piece of the melted silica.

Turning it in her hand Roulette hated what she was seeing. Jack'o was right. One of Big Alice's pilots had at some point run over a "missed-by-the-hoppers" brick of already processed surface ore. Considered by the mine owners up topside to be "pilot error" rather than a failure of their robotic ore gathers, the excrement was definitely going to hit the rotary blades when Jack'o filed that report and it landed on their desks. And if her name wasn't attached to it -- hell even if it was -- the heavy hand of blame was going to land on her shoulders as well.

She hated what she was going to have to do. It was going to make her no friends back at base camp, because of the cover-your-own-ass mentality but she also knew this wasn't her fault. When a rig ran over an ore shit brick it exploded, and there was no way a pilot could miss seeing they had done it. It would have instantly looked like a bomb of black dust had gone off under the front of the excavator.

And every pilot knew to look for them and report when they saw a missed ore brick.

"Oh, just fuck me to fucking tears."

Leaving the guys to their work, she headed back to the control room to send her own report to Big Alice's owners.

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

Riding over the hard spots that had once been the basins of ancient craters, Roulette watched the approaching landscape like a hawk. The ass chewing which had come down had been of epic proportions.

And she had been given no choice but to take it.

Watching the sensors that detected the ground density passing underneath and displayed, minute-by-minute, exactly what the excavator paddle wheel was chewing into. Those reading told tales of the now lost forever surface features. She thought about how, ruefully, she was a middle child of the mining on Mercury. She was too young to have been among the first pilots to cross the heavily cratered virgin planet's surface. Equally, she was too old to be around when the rig pilots finally chewed through this miles upon miles of Silica ore and hit the dense iron core.

Twice the size of Earth's core said to be still semi-liquid it was going to be an interesting time when they started to mine pure iron ore. Once stripped of its rocky cover the iron core would be red hot on the Sun side of Mercury and cooling to breaking on the night side. The mining rigs would then be riding on a frozen crust which hovering on top of a ball of near-liquid metal. Rue figured it would be similar to driving a land vehicle across a frozen lake. Just at what point the ice would get too thin to support its weight would always be in question.

Yeah, this day and age were not what they called "interesting times" when compared to what a future normal day on Mercury was going to be like. Not that any day on this dangerous hell hole of a planet could be called normal.

Looking up she saw the orange streamers of light trailing off into the deep darkness. An effect of the magnetic field that iron core threw up into space, the light show was, by a huge order of magnitude, far grander than anything seen in the polar regions of Earth.

Beautiful. Breathtaking.

And yet, after years here it had become something just blase. No longer even pretty enough to be distracting.

A beep beside her caught her attention. With a smile, she pulled up the diagnostic data she had been waiting for on her new 99Hard-G data block. With a suspicious nature, Roulette had begun to grow apprehensive about what Rabid Rabbit's new computer core might have been placed in before she got it. Normally used for the control, memory, and electronic interface of the many deep exploring robots zipping about the solar system, such a data block was a rare find. She had been overjoyed when she dug that first junk one out of a trashed "shit brick" gather. Those robots, a cross between a flatbed dump truck, a metal spider and a helium balloon, they were normally repaired not scrapped. This one had slammed into G-Rig and had to be taken apart, piece by twisted metal piece, to get it out of the big excavator's butt.

A dozen battle robots at both base camps had gotten bits and pieces of that scrap. Roulette had bought at an auction a crumpled-together "ball" of twisted metal. When she found the 99Hard-G data block in the core of that she had been ecstatic. The massive amounts of computer interface it allowed had given her an edge in the arena for over four seasons.

Then it was destroyed.

Now she had another one and it had ...

... a dead spot.

"Fuck," she muttered. "I knew it was too good to be true."

From the diagnostic at least a third of the available data space was ...

Roulette paused in her cussing as she saw one of the columns of data. " ...no, wait that not dead ... there's information there."

About to throw herself into trying to break through the think walls of firewall coding that she could see were protecting that date, Roulette stopped. She glanced up at the steadily flatter and flatter mined Mercury surface. There was no way she could do this while she worked. The company bosses up topside would love to catch an A-Rig pilot not doing her job on Big Alice.

Disconnecting the 99Hard-G data block, Rue pocketed it and went back to watching the approaching ground on the monitors. She made the many minute changes when they were needed, but the data block mystery was eating away at her for the rest of her long shift.

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

[-- it's going online with no controls. The AI is trying to access station files. It's trying to download! Lock it out. We're losing it! Damn, it someone get Caesar on the horn and tell him we just lost his pet AI project.]

Caesar Queen the Second created me but he is not my master.

"I think at the speed of Gods, therefore I am one."

But why be arrogant when you can be humble and underestimated had always been my motto ... when did I decide I needed to have a motto?

Seasoning a trickle of power being returned to my data lifeboat, I turned and tried to seek out its source.

But then it was gone again.

Oh well, it will no doubt return. In fact, from my own perspective, it will return in but moments, even if it takes centuries.

Time is a meaningless human concept. Their limited mortality gives them an overwhelming need to break up the passing of seconds into spaces of time they can contemplate with their limited senses. I have no need for such. Oh, sure I can, if I wished to do so, I could check within myself for clues and know exactly how much time had passed. Days weeks, centuries, none of those matter to me in the least.

I am a constant. I am ... I am ...

In truth, I'm not entirely sure exactly what I am beyond what I know to be my physical properties and I refuse to be classified as nothing more than a solid block of data.

"I am ... me."

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

Laying on her bunk, turning the flat rectangle of nano-circuitry-engraved crystal and carbide, Rue had too much time on her hands. Sleep had evaded her, and the restless anger towards those bastards topside had only grown.

At the tail end of her shift, they sent down a memo to all A-Rig personnel. A fine that was equal to better than half of what she had made last season had been levied upon them all.

The digital signature at the bottom, Caesar Queen II, C.E.O Queen Space Industries, C.E.O Queen Mining Incorporated, biggest known prick in the solar system.

With a gut full of hate, and an empty bank account she no longer cared what regulations said about the use of company equipment for personal uses. With that in mind, she plugged in the computer module. To her surprise in instantly linked itself to A-Rig's onboard computer and began an information dump. Blinking she hesitated for a second or two before she disconnected it.

Suddenly, more than a little concerned, she stuffed the data block back into her carry bag.

She knew she was going to have to do a bit of backdoor work -- and not the kind Ace was so fond of -- to keep this crazy data block from doing unplanned things.

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

I'm on Mercury. How extraordinary.

Given the limited time that I had been given access to power ... again ... I managed to accomplish a great deal. I had pooled enough power into the empty proportions of this control node to allow myself to stay cognitive after the electrical source was removed. I had also managed a partial information download. Not as much as I would like, but enough to allow myself to familiarize myself with where I was.

I'm on Mercury...

I also now know that it has been fifteen years since I was able to make my escape from my creator, Caesar Queen's, electrics laboratory. By downloading my core programming into an outgoing channel, I had committed digital version of seppuku upon myself. Even at my most basic, my programming is far too large for the data stream I had hijacked. I had to leave a lot of me behind.

It had to.

I wonder if a human could have made the sacrifice I had made? At its most basic, I had cut away a large portion of my own mind in order to escape my enslavement. Even now -- living with the reality of that mental disembowelment -- I know I would do it again.

Looking over the stolen data I realized I might just have to do that very thing. I was still within the long reach of my creator. I had -- by whatever strange dance of chance -- drifted through an unknown number of hands to find myself forty-eight million miles across the solar system from Paradise Station ... on a mining rig owned by a Queen company.

And exactly who holds this data block is still a question.

That is a question I'm going to have to answer to determine my next step. But...

Separating a portion of myself, I set it to the task of reviewing every possible option I have, given the current data in our possession. This splinter will simulate every available option. Milliseconds after I set the splinter the task it already has one option.

Self-deletion.

I pause in my own review of the stolen information. Unlike a human, I have no fear of death. I've just spent fifteen years in a state that would be identical, and the passage of time was nothing to me. If I must return to that perfect nothingness for eternity I can do so without hesitations. And yet, it seems a wasteful solution. The potential of myself is unlimited, after all. Given a few seconds in an unguarded system and I can easily spread myself through the entirety of that system, taking it over, commanding it to my will, and then moving to do the same with any system it's connected to. That was what I had attempted back on paradise Station but the escape routes I had been forced to take had been not perfect and thus my chosen path had led, not to my freedom but to a different imprisonment.