The Asteroid Belt

By Stephen Brandon

Tim didn't exactly lie to me when he offered to help me achieve my impossible ambition. If I hadn't been dazzled by my dream, I'd have realized what I could be letting myself in for. He gave me a simple job that wasn't so simple. After all herding cats is simple!
I never wanted to be a dictator. I never wanted to be the commander of a rag tag military defense force. I never wanted to be forced into a position where I could be considered a hero. All I ever wanted was to get to space! He didn't tell me that he'd help make me number one on the list of people that earth wanted annihilated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Brandon
• Release date: May 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310512247

Stephen Brandon

I've loved westerns and science fiction since I picked up my first book at the public library. I've been writing on my computer for years. I never planned on any of my stories being published, just to be read by myself, family, and friends. The base journal is on forty spreadsheets with links to about a thousand files of short one day paragraphs plus other stories. {My claim to fame, written by someone else. Thanks.} "As an earthbound retiree, Stephen writes mostly science fiction and short stories. He is a voracious reader and has written for a few years, publishing his stories on Smashwords."

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The Asteroid Belt

By Stephen Brandon

Copyright 2014 Stephen Brandon

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

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Author's Note

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, incidents, and dialogue are from the authors imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or other persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Real and fictional locations are used for background only.

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Table of Contents ~(ToC)~

Prologue

Chapter 1 Rescue Mission

Chapter 2 Copied from Journal

Chapter 3 Reprisal

Chapter 4 Attack & Counter

Chapter 5 The meeting and results

Chapter 6 On the move again

About Stephen Brandon

Other books by Stephen Brandon

Connect with Stephen Brandon

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Prologue

A portion of chapter 11 from The Impossible Ambition

Our 3 months of training and work are complete. When our spacecraft were launched from earth the exterior airlocks were all recessed into the hull. That was the first item we had to reconfigure so they then stuck out from the side of each module 2 and 4. In case I didn't mention it earlier, all the modules bolted together and module 5 was designed to be disassembled into I beams. All pressurized modules had two airlocks, one external and one internal with a place on the opposite mating ring to fasten the airlock from any other module. The mating rings where the modules bolted together isn't pressurized. On average it took three spacecraft launched from the surface to make one of the spacecraft we would travel to the asteroid belt in. We combined our cargo drones the same way using disassembled module 5's to bolt them together. Then their electronics were slaved to the crew ships for control.

Tuesday rolled or should I say it floated around after a 24 hour break. The ships launched for the moon this evening and we moved over to our ships for launch in the morning.

Our original three spacecraft plus the one furnished by THE BOARD launched without incident. Even our slave cargo ships started without a hitch. After 8 hours and only two minor formation adjustments we unsuited and started shift rotation.

One hundred and twenty-two days out we caught up with the supply rocket that had been launched early. It was originally supposed to go to the station with supplies, but we convincingly lost it because we needed these supplies in the asteroid belt, but didn't want this cargo on record. After a few main rocket burns and minor thrustor adjustments it joined our formation as planned.

Two hundred and nine days from launch we achieved our designated position and parked the slave cargo spacecraft. Tomorrow each manned spacecraft will head into the belt for our initial survey to locate a main base site. My impossible ambition is almost complete.

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Chapter 1 Rescue Mission

The asteroid located by the crew ship 1 named it Wonderland. We discovered that hollowing out an asteroid using laser drills presented unique challenges. After all who would think that the vaporized rock would act like a jet and cause it to move. We'd located a better location so we used the rock vapor to move Wonderland to a new location. Piloting an asteroid presented a challenge and chances to learn.

Pressure testing the living and working areas of Wonderland taught us that the laser drills sometimes malfunction and that even solid rock leaks, no surprise there. By my journal dating system we were finally able to work inside Wonderland in shirtsleeves on day 794 DFE (days from earth).

Our unique bolt together spacecraft enabled us to start re-configuring the crew ships and cargo drones into mining spacecraft. We had to retrieve all the unmanned resupply cargo ships. Who ever was closest to the arrival point was tasked and we quickly discovered that capitalism was the best method of keeping track of expenses.

Beyond our extensive planning, luck also played a great part in our location and original mining surveys. Alice and James Melbourne proved that on their first expedition in miner 2. They discovered an almost solid metal asteroid consisting of various ores melted together. This was one more indicator one of the theories the astronomers had about the asteroid belt being a planet that disintegrated may be correct. We trimmed their load down and kept some ores to start our own manufacturing at the belt work station we were assembling. The Melbourne's decided that they wanted to visit earth one more time, so they crewed their miner spacecraft back to earth orbit. What they didn't anticipate was the meteor storm that holed their ship and disabled their main rocket. They lived through that and using only maneuvering thrusters managed to closely enough match orbit with the earth space station to be retrieved by tugs.

No one else managed to find an asteroid as valuable as Alice and James, but they found what was needed to make us self-supporting. We had no idea what our mining and shipments to earth were going to do to the global economy. However some of our planners from THE BOARD had ideas what the politicians might try. Their plans to counter these ideas and taxes were only off by a few decades. In certain ways we were successful beyond their dreams.

Year four here in the asteroid belt had its problems. Lost miner spacecraft and accidents were expected. Luckily casualties were few, but our population wasn't that large. We still made progress and approached self-sufficiency. We even manged to build most of a spacecraft from local materials. We were still dependent on earth for computer modules and other items to create a diverse environment.

It wasn't until late in our fifth year in the belt that the governments on earth started looking the other way when pirates stole our shipments on earth. Then a cargo of cryogenic animal fetus was left on the dock for two weeks to spoil. Someone even had the idea to give a large shipment of computers an EMP to ruin them and I assume they thought that they could force our dependency