The Adventures of Bear and Rocket

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

The reality is that the person that said that didn't account for radios and comm systems.

Right now Group Shift Boss Sven ‘Tank’ Janson is screaming down the auto-comm system of the command habitat at the ten people of mining Shift Three as best he can because someone has stolen something very important to him. He is trying very, very, hard not to trigger the profanity filters.

Tank is a six foot two inch tall Norwegian, and looks every part a Viking. He wears the standard Space-Tech Corp jumpsuit, with its “ST” logo, but his is in 'Leadership Red', and looks just a little bit tighter than regular suits fit most people. He has shaved hair at the sides of his head, that reveal tattoos, and a short blond to grey ponytail. His face sports a grey beard, kept short only due to the occasional need to wear enviro-suits.

At one hundred and thirty years old he’s not that old for an astro miner, but is the oldest in this team (and considered the wisest). They might all be enlisted and indentured to ST Corp but he has got to the point where he certainly doesn’t want to be out in the fields if he can help it, and does not like being fucked about with. His steel colour eyes are pulsing with energy.

“Which one of you mother loving sons of donkeys stole my Ezeemeat’s Deluxe Gourmet Sausage?”... “That was the last one of six and I don’t get another shipment in for another six months! - not to mention the fact they cost two hundred and fifty Creds a pack” yells Tank on the open channel.

“Bear - I know it must have been one of your team because it was definitely still in the fridge when Shift Two came in and Shift One are still in deep sleep”.

Tank is not a happy man right now and he’s also pretty purple in the face. His auto-sedative injectors are doing very little to calm him down, but they are at least stopping his CardioCorp heart from going into arrest. The full weight of his two hundred and fifty three pound Scandinavian frame is shaking, like he wants to do someone genuine physical harm, and the tiny little veins are bulging out on his forehead.

All this comes through his voice to the crew. Someone is in really deep shit.

Carelessly so too.

The Shift Three team have all stopped work whilst this is being broadcast; they’ve all run down and switched off their echo-drills, parking them in their holsters. This is not a common event. Nothing normally stops a shift, but this is also a safety matter. When Tank calls, everything stops.

They are all stood around, evenly spaced at the face of “The Pit”; one hundred feet across, and four hundred feet down in the belly of asteroid 2364KZ35, which does not roll off the tongue, so it is affectionately known as “Bob the Third”.

Unofficially - ST Corp mining asteroids are named in alphabetical order and Bob has been taken twice before. Better a Bob than a Balthazar. No one wants to work on a Balth.

The shift crew look around at each other. Through the helmets of their enviro-suits face plate lights glint up into their eyes, and they try to discern their relative expressions and guilt from each other. Some of them are smiling as they know it’s not them (they would not be so stupid). Some shrug, and they all look toward the Shift Three team leader Jim “Bear” North for guidance.

Bear is a stocky five foot eleven inch tall male of British Isles heritage, one hundred and twenty years old, and probably mostly Celtic in origin, with some other Northern European thrown in for good measure, blue eyes and theoretically dark curly hair which he keeps shaved short.

Like the rest of the crew, he’s a “Heavy Class” astro-mining worker, with post-birth enhanced genetics and ST Corp boosted physio. He’s been working astro for quite some time and some would call him grizzled if there were any real bears left to compare him to. Originally enlisted from the London-Tech South East UK enviro-dome he has kept a slight 'geezer' like accent and currently has a wry grin on his face.

Trying to keep it out of his voice, and adopting a serious questioning tone; “Erm Boss…” pipes up Bear… “That might have been me”..*grimace*, “Was it wrapped in silver foil mate?”

“What the freck do you mean ‘was it wrapped in silver foil MATE?’ ”... “Every damn piece of food-stuff shipped up here is wrapped in silver foil"..."It had the Ezeemeat’s 'not-pork' Logo AND it had my damn name on a sticker” blows Tank. You can hear the spittle coming through his voice and he’s now standing, gripping the edges of the auto-comm deck so securely his knuckles are whitening, the deck creaking.

A few seconds delay, then “Well, yep… that was me then…Sir” confesses Jim ‘Bear’ North.

The auto-comm affixes onto Bear in a tight line One-to-One, and for the next minute or so a lot of words interspersed with bleeps come through Bear’s helmet speakers to rattle around inside his environmental suit. The auto-comm censors most of the torrent of curses and verbal flaming, and Tank racks up one hundred and fifty or so Creds in ‘profanity chits’.

‘Profanity chits’ are exactly like a swear jar; without the benefit of buying the team a packet of biscuits with the proceeds at the end of the week. Nope, profanity-chit money becomes one of the several deductibles from Tank's regular ST Corp pay-check, alongside food / drink / porn / entertainment / planet comms /etc. - but right now he doesn’t care.

When he’s run his steam, he closes out on the open comm with .. “*sigh* Right. Bear…see me in my office at the end of your shift..” and the line goes dead.

Bear can take it. As the most productive and talented member of all the three shift teams on this rock, earning both “Employee of the Month” and “Employee of the Year”, he knows he might get another arse-chewing, but he reckons he can trade away the problem. In fact, as probably the best miner on the asteroid team of this division of ST Corp his balls are all shiny and golden. The boss will be fine.

“Phew…he is not a happy little Viking. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him that angry since the incident with those Martian miners at the R&R station that one time”.... “..and hey, thanks for taking the rap for me. I know that you know it was me” says Dave ‘Cowboy’ Erikson, in conciliatory fashion.

No one else can hear their comms past their short range personal team-speakers, except Bear’s Eng-Bot ‘Rocket’. Cowboy is 2nd in command to Bear in this shift and one of his oldest friends, but has an innate ability for understatement, creating mischief, and making stupid mistakes.

“Look Cowboy. Stop eating other peoples stuff from the team fridges. Apparently he really likes those sausages, and there’s only so many times I can bail you out my Swedish friend"..."Just like I did at the R&R station too as I recall'' Says Bear, with a hint of frustration.

Bear turns to his Eng-Bot. “Hey.. Rocket?” “Buddy, when we check back in, please can you get some of those Ezeemeats Deluxe Gourmet Sausages on order? Three packets. Expedited” says Bear.

Oh, and Rocket - take it out of Cowboy’s bonus. Thanks”

“Heeeyyyy?” whines Cowboy.

“Stow it dude…” says Bear, shutting him down.

“Action logged Bear. Confirmed. *Beep* ” says Rocket, following up with, “Shall I prepare the skimmer for lifting, ready to go in two hours?”

[on shift team broadcast] “Good stuff Rocket. Right everyone - we’ve got two hours left in this shift, and forty eight keys of P4 to mine before the window of opportunity closes and we dust-off for the Hab. You know the score, get at it” says Bear, with rousing enthusiasm, like the first day they mined together.

These folks would follow him into worse holes, and with that the team of ten miners fire up their echo-drills as one and go back to excavating the face of the pit; plumes of the valuable P4 material spinning off into their individual vac-hood hoppers, with numbers clicking up on digital volume counters on the side of each one.

Engineering Bot RD-250 [set of serial numbers] - ‘Rocket’, starts to go about their business again; monitoring team equipment, checking and maintaining perimeter shielding, managing power couplings, and signalling the lift-ship to start warm-up procedures.

Rocket does this all whilst keeping a good eye on Bear (well, at least 15% of their sensors), and making sure he gets a priority energy feed for his echo-drill, and his extraction kit. No one else notices Bear has a boost of about 5% to his kit, but Rocket makes sure of it, every single shift.

This is their story and that of their human; Bear, who doesn’t think of the relationship that way. In fact he thinks of Rocket as his companion object, a bit like a dog. Rocket finds it really cute, and does not dissuade this image, but then Bear doesn't know who or what Rocket really is. Yet.